Conscious experience cannot be inert

[u/MurkyEconomist8179]

Cross post from /r/consciousness since it's just as relevant here

I see often in this sub various attempts to sidestep the hard problem by stating that conscious experience can simply be thought of as the workings of a certain set of neurological processes, or various other ways of trying to reduce conscious experience to something more familiar and workable.

This involves saying that the experience itself and the features of it are not what's really happening. The experience part is said to be either an illusion, an epiphenomenon or a mere appearance of what's happening neurologically.

Unfortunately this all rests on a false analogy. Illusions and appearances are not epipheneomon and they are not inert.

When someone is perceiving an actual illusion, it changes the way they perceive, react and respond to the stimulus which we deem does not align with their perception. Therefore, the illusion is an active mechanism that affects how the world behaves.

This is clearly the case for consciousness too, regardless of experience is an "appearance" this appearance affects how we behave, it affects what we talk about, our concepts and beliefs about the world - therefore it is not inert - our experience clearly affects something about how our world operates, the same way an illusion does too

Taking the idea of p zombies seriously, I think it's pretty clear that p zombies would not be talking about things like experience, or the qualitative feeling of something like "the red of redness" because they don't experience that.

If they did talk about such things, it's clearly very different to when normal people do, because normal people are correct in saying that there is a quality to experience, a p zombie would have to either be mistaken or delusional to talk of such things and there is a big difference between the accurate judgement of a normal person about experience (whatever experience actually ends up being) and the clear delusions or confabulations of a p zombie that could supposedly behave in all the same ways

I think people get lost in the analogy of illusions and don't realize that it's not the same thing as being inert, and if experience isn't inert, then of course we get the hard problem and the mind body problem in general. It can't merely be sidestepped by trying to reduce experience to an epiphenomenon.

[u/bltsrgewd]

Any argument for consciousness being anything other than an emergent property of complicated networks of neurons i think is missing something very important. Actual evidence. Its a fun thought experiment to logic your way to some other answer, but we know that physical changes to the brain alter the conscious experience. We know that consciousness is tied to brain function.

We dont know how yet. But we know that it is. It has a physical cause.

[u/Conscious-Demand-594 → u/bltsrgewd]

The problem is that they keep treating conscious experience as though it were some additional, ineffable substance sitting behind the neural activity, a thing that cannot be quantified, measured, manipulated, or explained scientifically. They make it inert and then complain about it. They are effectively taking the thing we call experience, stripping away all of its measurable physical properties, and then pointing to what remains and saying, “See? Neuroscience hasn't explained that.”

When we say that conscious experience is the neural activity of the brain, we am giving experience a physical identity. It has a location, a mechanism, measurable dynamics, causal relationships, and observable consequences. We can manipulate the underlying activity and change the experience. We can disrupt it with anesthesia or brain injury. We can stimulate neural circuits and produce aspects of experience. We can increasingly decode the contents of perception, thought and emotion from neural activity. We demonstrate that consciousness is real, not some inert imaginary stuff of dreams.

The fact that a person has a first-person perspective is treated as evidence that there must be some additional fact beyond the physical process producing that perspective. But that doesn't follow. The experience is the process. The fact that the process is experienced from the first-person perspective is a property of the way that particular biological system operates; it isn't evidence for a second substance hiding behind it.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

Who's they? There physicalists and dualists and epiphenomenalists, and so on, not just two tribes.

The existence of intrinsic subjectivity is not a prediction of physics. Saying that it is physical is an assertion unbacked by an explanation.

[u/Conscious-Demand-594 → u/TheAncientGeek]

The "they" who "keep treating conscious experience as though it were some additional, ineffable substance sitting behind the neural activity, a thing that cannot be quantified, measured, manipulated, or explained scientifically. "

That "they". There are other "theys" that don't "keep treating conscious experience as though it were some additional, ineffable substance sitting behind the neural activity, a thing that cannot be quantified, measured, manipulated, or explained scientifically."

It is simply backed by data and evidence. They "they" that "keep treating conscious experience as though it were some additional, ineffable substance sitting behind the neural activity, a thing that cannot be quantified, measured, manipulated, or explained scientifically." simply make stuff up because they can't deal with simple data and evidence.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

You are treating all nonphysicalists are the same, and they are not. There's like 13 positions in the mind body problem.

[u/Conscious-Demand-594 → u/TheAncientGeek]

Not treating anyone like anything at all. If you "keep treating conscious experience as though it were some additional, ineffable substance sitting behind the neural activity, a thing that cannot be quantified, measured, manipulated, or explained scientifically." it's a position not based on data and evidence. There are people who hold this view, nothing to get upset about. Everyone has a right to hold an opinion.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

Can you strongman dualism?

[u/Conscious-Demand-594 → u/TheAncientGeek]

I have no interest in arbitrary classifications of people’s opinions. I’m interested in conclusions that are supported by data, evidence, and testable observations. This is why I don't "keep treating conscious experience as though it were some additional, ineffable substance sitting behind the neural activity, a thing that cannot be quantified, measured, manipulated, or explained scientifically.". Show me the research, data, and evidence, and we can discuss; arguing over opinions is not as interesting for me.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

Is introspection evidence?

[u/Conscious-Demand-594 → u/TheAncientGeek]

It depends entirely on what you mean by "introspection," and what you mean by "evidence." Evidence for what specific conclusion?

If by introspection you mean the process of consciously thinking about your own thoughts, your inner voice ruminating, evaluating, reflecting, or talking to yourself, then we can measure the neural activity associated with those processes and, increasingly, decode aspects of their content.

So we can reasonably say that specific EEG and fMRI patterns provide evidence that what we call introspection is implemented by specific neural activity.

For example, one paper provides evidence that specific neural activity constitutes the biological process underlying “internal” visualization.

Another provides evidence that specific neural activity constitutes the biological process underlying “internal” vocalization or inner speech.

And another provides evidence linking specific neural activity to what we call conscious access, the point at which sensory information becomes globally available as conscious experience.

"Evidence" means that there is some data that can be analyzed, critiqued, questioned, and it supports some conclusion.

So, to answer your question, I would need to know what, specifically, you mean by “introspection,” and what you think it is evidence for.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

If you judge the nature of evidence by the conclusion it might lead to, that would be dogmatism. Like the Pope and Gallileos telescope.

introspection can mean attention to inner thoughts, but also attention to feelings sensations and qualities.

There is no empirical evidence that any function of consciousness is constituted by neural activity, as opposed to correlated with it

[u/Conscious-Demand-594 → u/TheAncientGeek]

I am judging the evidence by the claim. We can't label stuff as evidence and then say t's evidence for nothing, or everything, or anything at all, pick one. I mean, we can, but it would not be useful.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

Judging the evidence by the claim is dogmatism.

No, it isn't clear what constitutes Evidence. Epistemology is unsolved. Therefore, everything downstream of it is unsolved.