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BraveHat
Last of the Daedalians
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 Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 10:39 pm Post subject: 1 |
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This continues an argument extro, myself and others were having earlier this year in the Ask About Atheism thread. As usual, an off-topic tangent started taking way too many pages, do I thought I'd see if I can sum up the significant points here:
The tangent began after Zag, discussing atheism, stated the following general principle:
| Zag wrote: |
Generally, the scientific search for truth says to find the simplest description of reality that fits observable phenomena. |
Extro responded to that principle with an interesting statement:
| extro wrote: |
Regarding the truth that sentience exists in the universe, and the lack of any evidence tying it to any particular physical processes or conditions, wouldn't the simplest description be that sentience exists everywhere? |
Extro, if we take the term "evidence" to mean specifically scientific evidence, or evidence that can be intersubjectively verified, a term you expounded upon in the thread, then I readily agree with the your first two premises, namely:
1. Sentience exists in the Universe.
2. There is no scientific evidence tying it to any physical processes or conditions.
What I don't readily agree with is your conclusion that the simplest description is that sentience exist everywhere. To expound upon that later in the thread, you wrote:
| extro wrote: |
I've tested one object for a given property - no more than one. It tests positive. I've no sensible theory that would suggest why that property might correlate with other properties of that object, such that I could expect that property more likely to be present in objects that have those other properties. It is reasonable to wonder what other objects have this property. The possible conjectures are:
1) Only the tested object. Highly impropbable.
2) Only similar objects. But I have not the vaguest theory that suggests a reason between the one property and all the others by which similar objects are similar.
3) All objects.
4) ??? |
There are at least two ways we can aproach the phenomena:
1) In search of scientific truth
Since there is no scientific evidence tying sentience to any physical processes or conditions, I contend that the simplest description if sentience is that it exists here. This description does not imply or deny that it doesn't exist elsewhere. It requires no further assumptions about sentience. It is the simplest description that fits the observable facts.
2) In search of a pragmatic working model of reality
Since scientific truth can't take one past oneself in regards to sentience, the only way to expand one's model of it in order to apply it to the larger world is to assume it exists in things that behave similarly to oneself. It is for this reason that I would punch a beanbag before I would punch a small child in the face: while the beanbag might experience the subjective experience of pain, the child, exhibiting behavior far more similar to mine than the beanbag, is assumed as far more likely to experience pain subjectively, and since that experience is undesirable, I would spare him.
I don't understand any approach that compels one to conjecture that sentience exists in all things.
Please explain or copy & paste an explanation from the other thread.
_________________
"I am declaring it a terrible tragedy for me to die. You may disagree..." --Antrax |
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Zag
Tired of his old title
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| Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 11:49 pm Post subject: 2 |
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Without a suitable definition of 'sentience' then the whole argument is a little silly.
For instance, I'll provide a suitable definition of momentum, something which exists in the universe but isn't obviously matter or energy:
Momentum is a property of a cohesive body of matter (usually solid, or solid enough to be treated as such). It is defined as the product of mass times velocity, which means that there is no absolute value for momentum, it is determined by the frame of reference. The significance of momentum can be observed when two objects collide: the path of each object will change, but the total momentum of the system will be preserved. |
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Zag
Tired of his old title
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| Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 11:58 pm Post subject: 3 |
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| BraveHat wrote: |
| 2. There is no scientific evidence tying it to any physical processes or conditions. |
This, also, is clearly untrue, for the definition that you were implying above in your description of punching the beanbag vs. the baby. Those things that exhibit the sorts of actions that make me think that the object is "like me" in terms of feelings and sensation, ALL (that is 100% correlation) have a functioning central nervous system.
There's another point that supports the theory that these two things are related -- that is, the observable manifestations of sensitivity and the functioning nervous system. If I take a being that does exhibit these behaviors, and cause its nervous system to stop functioning (i.e. kill it), it stops exhibiting these behaviors. Again, this is not proof, but the extremely high correlation of one with the other implies that the two are either related or have a common cause. |
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BraveHat
Last of the Daedalians
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 1:43 am Post subject: 4 |
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| Zag wrote: |
| Without a suitable definition of 'sentience' then the whole argument is a little silly. |
| Wikipedia wrote: |
In the philosophy of consciousness, "sentience" can refer to the ability of any entity to have subjective perceptual experiences, or "qualia". This is distinct from other aspects of the mind and consciousness, such as creativity, intelligence, sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality (the ability to have thoughts that mean something or are "about" something). |
The "redness" of red, the painfulness of pain, the experience of "what it's like" to experience xyz, these aspects of subjective experience cannot be directly observed in anything other than oneself, though one knows it exists because one observes it in oneself.
| Zag wrote: |
| I wrote: |
2. There is no scientific evidence tying it to any physical processes or conditions. |
This, also, is clearly untrue, for the definition that you were implying above in your description of punching the beanbag vs. the baby. Those things that exhibit the sorts of actions that make me think that the object is "like me" in terms of feelings and sensation, ALL (that is 100% correlation) have a functioning central nervous system. |
But since there can be absolutely no scientific evidence that the processes of the central nervous system is connected to a subjective experience of them, one has to assume a connection to come up with that definition, which was the point of the beanbag/child example.
| Zag wrote: |
| There's another point that supports the theory that these two things are related -- that is, the observable manifestations of sensitivity and the functioning nervous system. If I take a being that does exhibit these behaviors, and cause its nervous system to stop functioning (i.e. kill it), it stops exhibiting these behaviors. Again, this is not proof, but the extremely high correlation of one with the other implies that the two are either related or have a common cause. |
The definition of sentience being used distinguishes it from any kind of behavior. There are obviously connections between a nervous system and behaviors of the body containing it, but what isn't obvious and, in fact, impossible to determine is whether or not there's a connection between subjective experiences (sentience) and these processes.
_________________
"I am declaring it a terrible tragedy for me to die. You may disagree..." --Antrax |
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Thok
Oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 1:44 am Post subject: 5 |
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| extro wrote: |
| Regarding the truth that sentience exists in the universe, and the lack of any evidence tying it to any particular physical processes or conditions, wouldn't the simplest description be that sentience exists everywhere? |
The most powerful argument for the existence of any sentience ("I think therefore I am") ties it fairly strongly to a relatively precise physical location.
The next few most powerful arguments for sentience ("Those other weirdos on this planet also seem to be sentient") also limits it fairly strongly to a physical location.
(I could also make the argument that the universe is too big and possibly expanding too quickly to be sentient; it can't communicate with parts of itself because any communication is limited by the speed of light, so the sentience would fracture into multiple pieces over time.) |
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BraveHat
Last of the Daedalians
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 2:30 am Post subject: 6 |
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| Thok wrote: |
| The most powerful argument for the existence of any sentience ("I think therefore I am") ties it fairly strongly to a relatively precise physical location. |
Technically, to tie it with the definition of sentience used, it would have to be something like "I experience, therefore I am". But even that isn't really an argument for the existence of sentience, rather it's an argument for the existence of the self. In other words, it ties the self to sentience, rather than sentience to the self. "I experience, therefore experience is" is probably the argument you're looking for.
| Thok wrote: |
| (I could also make the argument that the universe is too big and possibly expanding too quickly to be sentient; it can't communicate with parts of itself because any communication is limited by the speed of light, so the sentience would fracture into multiple pieces over time.) |
I see no reason to think Universe can't be sentient and experience it's own fracturedness of info.
_________________
"I am declaring it a terrible tragedy for me to die. You may disagree..." --Antrax |
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Zag
Tired of his old title
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 2:40 am Post subject: 7 |
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| BraveHat wrote: |
The "redness" of red, the painfulness of pain, the experience of "what it's like" to experience xyz, these aspects of subjective experience cannot be directly observed in anything other than oneself, though one knows it exists because one observes it in oneself.
But since there can be absolutely no scientific evidence that the processes of the central nervous system is connected to a subjective experience of them, one has to assume a connection to come up with that definition, which was the point of the beanbag/child example. |
Huh? It's very easy to show the connection. Cut your optic nerve, and you'll stop experiencing redness. Cut your spinal column and you'll stop experiencing pain in a whole lot of your body.
You act as though you've demonstrated that experiencing pain is something more than the neurons firing which indicate pain to what you refer to as your consciousness. You haven't.
There's a whole spectrum of sentience. It's much easier to relate to in, say, chimpanzees who exhibit communal grooming. But the fact that a fly will fly off when something large is slamming towards it is the same basic sentience that you imagine that you experience, just a simpler form. The fly's reaction is something that we can pretty completely explain with the organic chemistry of its body. The fact that yours is many orders of magnitude more complex does not mean that it is a fundamentally different thing. It's just more complex. |
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Thok
Oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 10:51 am Post subject: 8 |
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| BraveHat wrote: |
| I see no reason to think Universe can't be sentient and experience it's own fracturedness of info. |
Just for the record, would you consider somebody with multiple personality disorder to potentially have multiple version of sentience, or just one?
(Yes, this question is imprecise; the intent is to see if a sentient being can break up into multiple sentient beings even if the physical form is mostly the same.) |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 3:38 am Post subject: 9 |
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| Zag wrote: |
| BraveHat wrote: |
The "redness" of red, the painfulness of pain, the experience of "what it's like" to experience xyz, these aspects of subjective experience cannot be directly observed in anything other than oneself, though one knows it exists because one observes it in oneself.
But since there can be absolutely no scientific evidence that the processes of the central nervous system is connected to a subjective experience of them, one has to assume a connection to come up with that definition, which was the point of the beanbag/child example. |
Huh? It's very easy to show the connection. Cut your optic nerve, and you'll stop experiencing redness. |
Clearly our nervous systems evolved to produce complex behaviors conducive to survival, based on input from the environment via the senses. Cut off the input and the system cannot respond appropriately to the environment. We can objectively observe that. Cut my optic nerves, and I can't tell you the colors of objects before me. I'll tell you that I'm not having any subjective experience of colors (barring hallucinations, etc), but telling is a behavior. All of that is objectively observable behavior. What we don't objectively observe is the existence of any subjective experiences. We observe behavior. So first of all, there's no intersubjectively verifiable evidence I stopped experiencing redness when my optic nerves were cut, because there was no intersubjectively verifiable evidence I ever did experience redness.
More importantly: Nobody is suggesting that subjective experiences aren't in some unknown way correlated with physical things. When my optic nerve is cut, some particular activity somewhere within my brain ceases, and I stop having the subjective experience of redness. Similarly perhaps, when a rock dropped from a cliff hits the ground, it stops having the subjective experience of falling. When an electron drops into a lower orbital around an atom, it's subjective experience of ... whatever you want to call it, of being in that higher orbital, ceases. There's no objective evidence any of these subjective experiences existed in the first place.
| Zag wrote: |
| You act as though you've demonstrated that experiencing pain is something more than the neurons firing which indicate pain to what you refer to as your consciousness. |
No. You're acting as if the subjective experience of pain can be observed, so that you can know what it correlates with and what it doesn't correlate with. You can only observe behavior.
| Zag wrote: |
| There's a whole spectrum of sentience. It's much easier to relate to in, say, chimpanzees who exhibit communal grooming. But the fact that a fly will fly off when something large is slamming towards it is the same basic sentience that you imagine that you experience, just a simpler form. The fly's reaction is something that we can pretty completely explain with the organic chemistry of its body. The fact that yours is many orders of magnitude more complex does not mean that it is a fundamentally different thing. It's just more complex. |
This is the problem that always comes up in discussing this, the slippage from sentience, to behavior with no indication of sentience. The fly's reaction is behavior. My reactions, though many orders of magnitude more complex, are not a fundamentally different thing. Neither indicate the "sentience that I imagine that I experience" in any form ... nor am I imagining it.
Again, I have no doubt that machines with architecture much like current computers, with peripheral sensory devices attached, can behave in remarkably complex ways, far closer to humans than flies or even chimpanzees, if not indistinguishable from humans. But knowing how this machine works, I know that all its behavior is explainable without positing some indescribable, not objectively observable, subjective experiences. Hence, I'd have no objective evidence that such a machine is more likely to have subjective experiences than is a stone. And the same is true of humans. Like the fly, as you know, the human's reaction is something that we can pretty completely explain with the organic chemistry of its body (if not yet in practice, in principle). Including its reactions like typing paragraphs of English about it's alleged subjective experiences. Knowing how the organic chemistry of the human body, in all its complexity, produces these behaviors, without having to posit some indescribable and not objectively observeable "subjective experiences" to complete that explanation (which couldn't complete an explanation anyway, given their indescribable nature) ... in that situation, I've no objective evidence to conclude a human is any more likely to have subjective experience than is a stone. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 10:14 am Post subject: 10 |
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| Zag wrote: |
| But the fact that a fly will fly off when something large is slamming towards it is the same basic sentience that you imagine that you experience, just a simpler form. The fly's reaction is something that we can pretty completely explain with the organic chemistry of its body. |
I'm not sure what you're saying here. On the one hand, "the same basic sentience that you imagine that you experience" might suggest I don't. On the other hand, if we're acknowledging the fly has sentience, because of its complex reactions we can completely explain by it's physiology, then would we also acknowledge a complex mechanical fly has sentience? Or in general, anything that exhibits behavior, like a mousetrap, or a computer?
Understanding something's behavior is precisely why we wouldn't use it's behavior to conclude sentience. |
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Zag
Tired of his old title
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 10:58 am Post subject: 11 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| Understanding something's behavior is precisely why we wouldn't use it's behavior to conclude sentience. |
Then you've left the realm of anything like scientific exploration and discussion, and you've just moved into pure faith.
I deny that sentience, of the sort you're describing, exists at all. Now the ball's in your court to show that it does. Since you're denying behavior and observation, you've got nothing left other than to claim that it's so obvious (to you) that it needs no proof. There's no compelling argument against solipsism, either, except for it being ridiculous.
As far as I'm concerned, you are welcome to believe on pure faith anything you like, ridiculous or otherwise. Please don't bother me with it. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 6:43 pm Post subject: 12 |
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| Zag wrote: |
| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| Understanding something's behavior is precisely why we wouldn't use it's behavior to conclude sentience. |
Then you've left the realm of anything like scientific exploration and discussion, and you've just moved into pure faith.
I deny that sentience, of the sort you're describing, exists at all. Now the ball's in your court to show that it does. |
I can't show it does, in an intersubjectively verifiable way. But I know it does.
| here, extropalopakettle wrote: |
| Nsof wrote: |
| Why/Are you sure there is sentience? |
The nature of knowing it doesn't come with an answer to that. I know I'm sentient. I can't prove it to you, or rationalize it to you, but I can hope others will say "yeah, I know I'm sentient too". |
And others do. It isn't faith at all, it's the least faithful kind of knowing something that there is.
| Zag wrote: |
| Since you're denying behavior and observation, ... |
I've suggested nothing remotely of the sort, and quite the opposite. I wholeheartedly embrace the observation of behavior and the physical mechanisms that can be observed to create it.
| Zag wrote: |
| As far as I'm concerned, you are welcome to believe on pure faith anything you like, ridiculous or otherwise. Please don't bother me with it. |
There's nothing based on faith here, and I think the real issue is that understanding this threatens things you, unknowingly, hold on deep faith. It shouldn't bother you, but it does. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 6:45 pm Post subject: 13 |
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| BraveHat wrote: |
Extro, if we take the term "evidence" to mean specifically scientific evidence, or evidence that can be intersubjectively verified, a term you expounded upon in the thread, then I readily agree with the your first two premises, namely:
1. Sentience exists in the Universe.
2. There is no scientific evidence tying it to any physical processes or conditions.
What I don't readily agree with is your conclusion that the simplest description is that sentience exist everywhere. To expound upon that later in the thread, you wrote:
| extro wrote: |
I've tested one object for a given property - no more than one. It tests positive. I've no sensible theory that would suggest why that property might correlate with other properties of that object, such that I could expect that property more likely to be present in objects that have those other properties. It is reasonable to wonder what other objects have this property. The possible conjectures are:
1) Only the tested object. Highly impropbable.
2) Only similar objects. But I have not the vaguest theory that suggests a reason between the one property and all the others by which similar objects are similar.
3) All objects.
4) ??? |
There are at least two ways we can aproach the phenomena:
1) In search of scientific truth
Since there is no scientific evidence tying sentience to any physical processes or conditions, I contend that the simplest description if sentience is that it exists here. This description does not imply or deny that it doesn't exist elsewhere. It requires no further assumptions about sentience. It is the simplest description that fits the observable facts. |
"here" meaning ...? Pure solipsism, you and you alone have sentience?
We're asking about what, in the observeable physical universe, sentience has some correlation with. And we can make some rather universal observations about correlations that are actually known to exist.
| here, extropalopakettle wrote: |
First, putting the whole sentience thing completely aside, and dealing only with what hard science typically deals with, I think correlations fall into two categories:
1) The most basic laws of physics - correlations that are observed to hold universally, but are not explainable in terms of more basic laws. These are like axioms in a mathematical proof system. Of course, I don't know how we can ever be quite sure we've hit on one of these. Sub-atomic physics, string theory, etc, ... new findings ... may change what we held as axioms to be theorems deduced from lower-level axioms. In any case, these "axiomatic" correlations, that essentially are the basic laws, either:
1a) They exist - basic laws (correlations) that can't be explained as the result of more basic laws, or ...
1b) An infinite regress - every law is actually a correlation explainable as resulting from lower level laws.
2) Correlations that can be explained as the result of a combination of more basic laws.
Concerning sentience, I think there can't be an explanation of a correlation between it and anything else. The lack of any intersubjective verifiability means the correlation can't be observed, nor can the nature of subjective experiences be described in terms of simpler properties that are observed or deduced to correlate with anything else. |
So then, given the unique circumstances of your observation of sentience, wherein regardless of whether there is a correlation between it and you, it and humans, it and things with DNA, it and things that "process information", or no correlation between it and anything more than between it and anything else ... wherein regardless of whatever possibility, you could only possibly observe sentience in yourself, from this you would deduce, among all the possible kinds of correlations between sentience and something, and there being no possible explanation for such a correlation (not simply no known explanation), which would you conclude most likely to be correct?
| here, extropalopakettle wrote: |
| My intuition is that the more complex the description of what it is sentience correlates with, the more reason there needs to be to believe it. The least complex descriptions are "everything" and "nothing", and the latter can be ruled out. "All points in space" would be low on the complexity scale of descriptions. The description of a biological neural network is highly complex ("biological neural network" is not a description). |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 7:46 pm Post subject: 14 |
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| Zag wrote: |
| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| Understanding something's behavior is precisely why we wouldn't use it's behavior to conclude sentience. |
Then you've left the realm of anything like scientific exploration and discussion ... |
I have a system (the fly, for instance) which exhibits behavior that I can explain completely from its physical nature, without employing in the explanation a supposition of some "sentience", which 1) I can't observe or detect, and 2) I can't describe in any objective way. It is absolutely good science that I would not conclude such "sentience" is present in such circumstances. Everything observed is explained without it, and it itself isn't observed. |
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Zag
Tired of his old title
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 8:17 pm Post subject: 15 |
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So you're saying that one of the defining characteristics of sentience is that it should not be something that you're able to comprehend the mechanism of?
| Quote: |
| Everything observed is explained without it, and it itself isn't observed. |
Just like everything else you've tried to claim is sentience. The ball is still in your court to show that this thing exists at all.
| Quote: |
| I can't show it does, in an intersubjectively verifiable way. But I know it does. |
Is this not the very definition of faith?
As I said, I respect and welcome your right to believe whatever you like based on your faith. Don't expect others to do so, though. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Thu May 03, 2012 2:34 am Post subject: 16 |
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| Zag wrote: |
| So you're saying that one of the defining characteristics of sentience is that it should not be something that you're able to comprehend the mechanism of? |
I'm not saying what anything should or shouldn't be. I'm talking about a very familiar thing, part of every moment of my waking existence. We went on for pages about it starting around here: http://greylabyrinth.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=6810&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=467 ... but I'm willing to continue trying to make clear, as I'm fairly confident you're sentient too, and are thus familiar with what I'm talking about.
| Zag wrote: |
| The ball is still in your court to show that this thing exists at all. |
And I've made clear I can't do that. I'm certain it can't be done. I've had others say "I know exactly what you're talking about" from the start in conversations about this, and others with a little more leading have said "Ah, yes, I know what you mean", because they experience it, as I do, every single waking moment. There is no ball in my court here. If you want to deny it exists, fine. It doesn't change what I know, and what others say they know.
It's kinda like I'm communicating with an alien on another planet, and I'm trying to explain what "planet" means. I figure he's standing on a planet, he won't be so astonished that I'm standing on a planet, I'm not trying to prove to him that I'm standing on a planet, or that a planet exists, but just trying to convey to him what "planet" means, so when I say I'm standing on one, he says "oh yeah, of course, me too". That's what this is like.
| Zag wrote: |
| Quote: |
| I can't show it does, in an intersubjectively verifiable way. But I know it does. |
Is this not the very definition of faith? |
No, faith is at the opposite end of the spectrum from knowing something with certainty.
| Zag wrote: |
| As I said, I respect and welcome your right to believe whatever you like based on your faith. Don't expect others to do so, though. |
I expect nothing of others, but as I've said, you're confused in thinking this has anything to do with "faith". I'm really not interested in a debate about whether or not sentience exists, any more than I'd be interested in a debate about whether I exist. I know it exists - know, not believe, not faith, and I've no interest in convincing anyone it exists, any more than I'd be interested in convincing you that you exist. I really do believe (though I could be wrong here) that you know what I'm talking about, but it kinda rattles you because you realize it doesn't fit neatly into your "there's-a-scientific-explanation-for-everything" view, a view which really IS a matter of faith. Either that, or there's just this huge misunderstanding, which I've very carefully tried for pages and pages to clear up, to no avail so far. |
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Zag
Tired of his old title
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| Posted: Thu May 03, 2012 4:48 pm Post subject: 17 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| Zag wrote: |
| Quote: |
| I can't show it does, in an intersubjectively verifiable way. But I know it does. |
Is this not the very definition of faith? |
No, faith is at the opposite end of the spectrum from knowing something with certainty. |
From Dictionary.com
faith [feyth] noun
2. belief that is not based on proof:
You believe a thing for which you can't show any evidence of its veracity. This is what faith means. I'm not talking about Faith, but just faith, though I'm not terribly interested in either. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Thu May 03, 2012 5:29 pm Post subject: 18 |
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| Zag wrote: |
| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| Zag wrote: |
| Quote: |
| I can't show it does, in an intersubjectively verifiable way. But I know it does. |
Is this not the very definition of faith? |
No, faith is at the opposite end of the spectrum from knowing something with certainty. |
From Dictionary.com
faith [feyth] noun
2. belief that is not based on proof:
You believe a thing for which you can't show any evidence of its veracity. This is what faith means. I'm not talking about Faith, but just faith, though I'm not terribly interested in either. |
Nor am I interested in either.
But I do have proof of my own sentience, it just isn't intersubjectively verifiable - I can't show it to you.
But again, this can only be either a stubborn denial of something easily seen, or a complete misunderstanding. Bravehat rehashed and summarized some of the past discussion, I think from assuming a starting point of the audience knowing what it is, in our everyday experience of reality, that we're referring to when we say "sentience" and "subjective experience". You're either stubbornly playing devil's advocate with "show me" over something we know can't be shown, or you're not understanding what we're referring to, and are imagining something postulated to exist, rather than the everyday reality that is most directly and certainly experienced as reality, and from which all other things are postulated to exist. I will try (sometime later today) to explain yet again what we're talking about, if nobody beats me to it. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Thu May 03, 2012 11:29 pm Post subject: 19 |
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OK, I wrote up the below, I don't know why ... in the hopes that if you truly have no idea what I and others are talking about, that it will trigger some glimmer of recognition. But so much has been said about it already, that I'm afraid you'll just again slip over to the obvious "we can explain how brains produce behavior", which I've agreed with since maybe before you were born, and which is off in another direction.
Imagine that I'm an intelligent alien life form visiting Earth. My biology is radically different in many ways, but I have color vision, and the portion of the spectrum that is visible to me is the same as what humans can see. To make it interesting, I'm a tetrachromat, meaning my eyes have 4 kinds of color receptors, each sensitive to a different color light, as opposed to human trichromatic vision, which has 3. Coincidentally, for sake of discussion, 3 of my primary colors are the same as the human primary colors: red, green and blue, but I also have color receptors that are sensitive to yellow light. I sit at a human built RGB computer monitor with you, and I learn your names for all combinations of red, green and blue.
We look at the above image together. You point at a color and tell me it's "red", and I tell you I call that ልቩ፮. You point at another color, tell me it's "yellow", and I say I call it ፘጯጇጷ. Another you say is "green", and I say it's ቓቈሂሂጱ. Etcetera.
We go outdoors, and you describe dandelion flowers as "yellow". But wait ... you just previously called ፘጯጇጷ "yellow", and now you're calling ጬፙ፷ቋ "yellow". They don't look at all alike to me. To me, the color of the light reflected from a dandelion looks different from any I saw on the computer monitor. I can see the color of the dandelion as completely distinct from any combination of red, green and blue, just as tricromatic humans see any one of their primary colors as completely distinct from any combination of the other two. I tell you that in my language we call this color ጬፙ፷ቋ, and it looks nothing like the combination of red and green light, which to me looks like ፘጯጇጷ, both of which you call "yellow".
So, I know that what I experience as ጬፙ፷ቋ, and what I experience as ፘጯጇጷ ... completely different color experiences to me, you seemingly experience identically, and call "yellow".
I begin to wonder: What you call "yellow" ... does it look to you (the way you experience it) like my ጬፙ፷ቋ, or does it look to you like my ፘጯጇጷ? Or perhaps neither?
Does your "red" appear to you (the way you experience it) as my ልቩ፮ appears to me? Does the question make sense?
Let's say we have imaginary advanced technology capable of observing everything happening in each of our brains, down to a subatomic level, and the computational power to model it down to a level that we can predict exactly what either of us will do in any situation. We can see what's going on when you say you're seeing "red", and what's going on when I say I'm seeing ልቩ፮. Does that allow you to understand what my experience of ልቩ፮ is like? Will it allow you to say why, when I see yellow light, or when a certain area of my brain is stimulated with an electrode, it looks like ጬፙ፷ቋ? It does allow you to predict that I'll move my muscles in such a way as to produce sound that says "that looks ጬፙ፷ቋ". But what does it look like to me? And why does it look that way? What sort of sensible theory will explain the conditions under which matter, as the atoms in a brain, produce an experience like ጬፙ፷ቋ, when you have no idea what the hell ጬፙ፷ቋ is like?
I can't describe what ጬፙ፷ቋ or ፘጯጇጷ look like so that you can tell whether either of them look as yellow does to you. I have my names for them, but it gives you no insight into my experience of them, just as I have no insight into your personal subjective experience of yellow.
Now, we sit together and we build a simple machine that measures wavelengths of incoming light. It can discriminate between what I call ጬፙ፷ቋ and what I call ፘጯጇጷ, and light up one of two indicators labelled ጬፙ፷ቋ and ፘጯጇጷ (both of which are yellow to you). We build this with cheap stock parts from Radio Shack (or Maplin in the UK?).
Now, we wonder, does your subjective experience of yellow correspond to this simple machines subjective experience of ጬፙ፷ቋ or ፘጯጇጷ? Does that question even make sense? Do either of us have any reason to believe this machine has anything like your or my subjective experiences? We've each got, or claim to have (I know I do) subjective experiences of colors that we can't really describe to the other beyond saying what labels we attach to them. We've built a simple machine that behaves in a very predicatable, easily understood manner. What reason is there to believe that there's more going on there than meets the eye, something that can't be described? It's certainly easy to imagine this thing doesn't have subjective experiences. |
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Deception
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Thu May 03, 2012 11:51 pm Post subject: 20 |
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extropalopakettle: I agree with what you've said so far, however don't you think that it is dangerous to use beings with organic makeups which we don't know exist in any relation as examples for explaining a universally organic experience? This time I don't think it caused any problems because you could use known existence to express your point, however in some cases I think that using such examples could be problematic.
Slightly off topic, but I wanted to say something. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 12:36 am Post subject: 21 |
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| Deception wrote: |
| extropalopakettle: I agree with what you've said so far, however don't you think that it is dangerous to use beings with organic makeups which we don't know exist in any relation as examples for explaining a universally organic experience? This time I don't think it caused any problems because you could use known existence to express your point, however in some cases I think that using such examples could be problematic. |
I'm not following. Two phrases threw me, more the second one (I think):
1) beings with organic makeups which we don't know exist in any relation
2) a universally organic experience? |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 1:06 am Post subject: 22 |
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A thought experiment:
(from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/#2 ... italicized clarification added by me)
| Quote: |
| Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor (this has been a lifelong restriction). She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal chords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’.… What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then is it inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false. |
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Thok
Oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 1:17 am Post subject: 23 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| Long discussion about light |
You've given what's essentially a paraphrased version of Mary's Room. I'll link to that discussion rather than try to reiterate the arguments pro/con that thought experiment (except to say that I feel arguing for it vastly understates the sheer amount of physical experience one can experience; one of the better responses I've hear to that argument is that Mary sees red and thinks "Aha, I was entirely correct about what red is like".) |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 1:21 am Post subject: 24 |
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| Thok wrote: |
| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| Long discussion about light |
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Well, not actually about light at all, really, but ...
| Thok wrote: |
| You've given what's essentially a paraphrased version of Mary's Room. I'll link to that discussion ... |
| Thok wrote: |
| ... I feel arguing for it vastly understates the sheer amount of physical experience one can experience. |
I don't follow; how so? |
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Thok
Oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 1:27 am Post subject: 25 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| I don't follow; how so? |
You missed the last comment I posted in an edit. Mary's reaction to coming out of the room might be "Aha, I was entirely correct about what red is like". It might seem counterintuitive, but it might be true!
Edit: To give a more concrete example, it's possible that brilliant neuroscientist Mary can manipulate the part of her brain that processes incoming signals from her eyes so that the relevant part of her brain receives a signal that Mary is seeing a red apple. This would allow Mary to experience red without "seeing red".
Last edited by Thok on Fri May 04, 2012 1:42 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Deception
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 1:42 am Post subject: 26 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| Deception wrote: |
| extropalopakettle: I agree with what you've said so far, however don't you think that it is dangerous to use beings with organic makeups which we don't know exist in any relation as examples for explaining a universally organic experience? This time I don't think it caused any problems because you could use known existence to express your point, however in some cases I think that using such examples could be problematic. |
I'm not following. Two phrases threw me, more the second one (I think):
1) beings with organic makeups which we don't know exist in any relation
2) a universally organic experience? |
You're using the physical nature of a species which is nonexistent (or rather, to the best of our knowledge, not existent) to show that sentience (an intrinsic property of all organic things on earth, or at least of humans) is impossible to prove. My issue comes when you assume that sentience can possibly exist in a creature of the nature of the alien. Since you can not understand sentience past it being an inherent attribute of yourself, you can't say that anything can have it. You don't even have physical evidence to suggest that it might have it.
I tried to write a counterexample, but I'm getting all mixed up right now; maybe I'll post one later. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 1:49 am Post subject: 27 |
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| Thok wrote: |
| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| I don't follow; how so? |
You missed the last comment I posted in an edit. Mary's reaction to coming out of the room might be "Aha, I was entirely correct about what red is like". It might seem counterintuitive, but it might be true! |
I know of many counterintuitive things that turn out to be true. To lump this together with them, I don't feel does it justice. It is rather curious though, that on the one hand we have the physical which is entirely subject to description - I can write notes on how to perform a physical experiment, measure results, and send them in an email to a distant person who can reproduce them and understand completely (intersubjective verifiability) - and on the other hand, from time immemorial, no writer has ever managed (and not for lack of pondering the mystery of the seeming impossibility of it) to adequately describe the nature of a subjective experience at all - a color, or a fragrance - only merely by association with external physical things the internal experience is commonly associated with. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 2:07 am Post subject: 28 |
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| Deception wrote: |
| You're using the physical nature of a species which is nonexistent (or rather, to the best of our knowledge, not existent) to show that sentience (an intrinsic property of all organic things on earth, or at least of humans) is impossible to prove. |
My intent was really just to talk a bit about subjective experience in such a way that it becomes clear what I'm talking about for anyone who might yet not understand, and who thinks I'm puzzled by how behavior comes about.
| Deception wrote: |
| My issue comes when you assume that sentience can possibly exist in a creature of the nature of the alien. Since you can not understand sentience past it being an inherent attribute of yourself, you can't say that anything can have it. You don't even have physical evidence to suggest that it might have it. |
Yes, there is really no difference between the alien being and the hastily concocted electronic device I mentioned. Both exhibit some behavior regarding discriminating colors of light. It's very clear I've no reason, from the devices behavior, to suppose it has awareness of subjective experiences, or indescribable color sensations. But neither the human nor the alien have any rational reason to regard the other any differently, in terms of having sentience, than the simple device, when each understands the physical basis of the behavior of the other. And really, the human has no rational reason to regard himself more sentient than the device, on the basis of behavior. It is on the basis of having subjective experiences, which can only be known by being the subject, that one knows one's sentience. So the only basis for my judging the device less sentient than me is the accident that I'm not the device, which would be the only way I can know it's sentient ... not a good basis at all. |
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Thok
Oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 10:37 am Post subject: 29 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| from time immemorial, no writer has ever managed (and not for lack of pondering the mystery of the seeming impossibility of it) to adequately describe the nature of a subjective experience at all - a color, or a fragrance - only merely by association with external physical things the internal experience is commonly associated with. |
Of course writers can't adequately describe a subjective event. Words are an imperfect model for real life, and writing about an event always simplifies it. You just have more tolerance for somebody writing "The rose was red" then "His heart filled with rage." |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 11:08 am Post subject: 30 |
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| Thok wrote: |
| Of course writers can't adequately describe a subjective event. Words are an imperfect model for real life, and writing about an event always simplifies it. You just have more tolerance for somebody writing "The rose was red" then "His heart filled with rage." |
Using words ... enough of them, carefully, and or pictures (those should count too), I can describe to someone how to build machinery and devices, or how to carry out procedures, to very exact specifications. I don't think it's a matter of imperfection. Using words and pictures, no matter how many, I can't conceive of a way that either of us might communicate what our subjective experience of red is like, so that I can have even slightly more confidence in knowing whether our experiences are alike.
Science is done using words to a fair degree of perfection. We put satellites in orbit around Mars using devices and methods described with words. How can science describe whether, and why, some precisely described physical activity in the brain produces an experience of ጬፙ፷ቋ or ፘጯጇጷ, when we can say nothing about ጬፙ፷ቋ or ፘጯጇጷ except to say those are the names some members of some species have attached to them? |
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Thok
Oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 11:39 am Post subject: 31 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| pictures (those should count too) |
There's a difference, because there's a difference amount of processing that your brain must do to turn a word into an internal idea and a picture into an internal idea.
It's important to note this processing exists, and it's not intuitive how to reverse the processing your body does of inputted stimulus (or if this process can be reversed consistently; there can be signals that your brain creates by itself that don't depend on any external stimulus.) If there was some sort of device that took signals directly from your brain and input them directly in my brain and bypassed the processing, then we might be able to more precisely communicate the type of internal states you think characterize sentience.
| Quote: |
| Science is done using words to a fair degree of perfection. |
Science is never done to perfection. (Only mathematics has perfection, and even there we run smack into Godel.) There's always a margin of error. The trick is to make the margin of error small enough that we don't notice it. This process is faster for some objects of study than others. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 12:38 pm Post subject: 32 |
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| Thok wrote: |
| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| pictures (those should count too) |
There's a difference, because there's a difference amount of processing that your brain must do to turn a word into an internal idea and a picture into an internal idea. |
The point is: communication. By whatever means.
| Thok wrote: |
| If there was some sort of device that took signals directly from your brain and input them directly in my brain and bypassed the processing, then we might be able to more precisely communicate the type of internal states you think characterize sentience. |
How would I determine whether the internal state of my computer-controlled robot "characterizes sentience"?
| Thok wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Science is done using words to a fair degree of perfection. |
Science is never done to perfection. |
Note "fair degree" ... with increasing precision. As opposed to communicating the nature of subjective experiences wherein we have not gone beyond the stone age. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 2:24 pm Post subject: 33 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| Thok wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Science is done using words to a fair degree of perfection. |
Science is never done to perfection. |
Note "fair degree" ... with increasing precision. As opposed to communicating the nature of subjective experiences wherein we have not gone beyond the stone age. |
Unfortunately, the indescribability ("ineffability" seems to be the word of choice among philosophers in this field) of subjective experiences, which makes it difficult to prove anything about them, also makes it difficult to prove they are ineffable. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 2:44 pm Post subject: 34 |
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| Thok wrote: |
| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| I don't follow; how so? |
You missed the last comment I posted in an edit. Mary's reaction to coming out of the room might be "Aha, I was entirely correct about what red is like". It might seem counterintuitive, but it might be true!
Edit: To give a more concrete example, it's possible that brilliant neuroscientist Mary can manipulate the part of her brain that processes incoming signals from her eyes so that the relevant part of her brain receives a signal that Mary is seeing a red apple. This would allow Mary to experience red without "seeing red". |
I missed the edit here. To me, manipulating her brain so that she experiences red is "seeing red", for purposes of this discussion. She would have the subjective experience. From understanding all the facts involved in the physical processes of the brain, down to the finest detail, but without ever having a subjective experience of color, can she know what the subjective experiences of red, green and blue will be like prior to having them? |
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Thok
Oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 11:36 pm Post subject: 35 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| How would I determine whether the internal state of my computer-controlled robot "characterizes sentience"? |
You'll never know if you don't try.
If I were you, I'd start by trying to consider border cases of the one example of sentience you are sure (how sentient are you when you are dreaming/falling asleep/recovering from exhaustion after heavy exercise.)
| Quote: |
| To me, manipulating her brain so that she experiences red is "seeing red", for purposes of this discussion. She would have the subjective experience. From understanding all the facts involved in the physical processes of the brain, down to the finest detail, but without ever having a subjective experience of color, can she know what the subjective experiences of red, green and blue will be like prior to having them? |
I sort of see a definition of sentience here as "Internal reactions of the brain to external stimulus". In which case, I'll agree that one can know the facts of the experience of red without knowing what that experience is like, but in the same way that one can see a picture of a pipe without seeing a pipe. (There's a bit of a semantics game going on here, however, with the fact of seeing red being distinct from the actual experience.)
I somewhat doubt this is what you are going for. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 1:07 am Post subject: 36 |
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| Thok wrote: |
| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| How would I determine whether the internal state of my computer-controlled robot "characterizes sentience"? |
You'll never know if you don't try. |
That went over my head.
| Thok wrote: |
| If I were you, I'd start by trying to consider border cases of the one example of sentience you are sure (how sentient are you when you are dreaming/falling asleep/recovering from exhaustion after heavy exercise.) |
Consider how?
| Thok wrote: |
| Quote: |
| To me, manipulating her brain so that she experiences red is "seeing red", for purposes of this discussion. She would have the subjective experience. From understanding all the facts involved in the physical processes of the brain, down to the finest detail, but without ever having a subjective experience of color, can she know what the subjective experiences of red, green and blue will be like prior to having them? |
I sort of see a definition of sentience here as "Internal reactions of the brain to external stimulus". |
Internal reactions don't, logically, necessitate subjective experience, and subjective experience need not be related to an external stimulus.
| Thok wrote: |
| In which case, I'll agree that one can know the facts of the experience of red without knowing what that experience is like, but in the same way that one can see a picture of a pipe without seeing a pipe. |
I don't see a similarity. Seeing a picture of a pipe will help me identify a pipe. I don't believe it's possible for Mary, the neuro-scientist, locked away for life in a black-and-white world, never seeing a color, to be prepared to leave the room and identify red, green and blue. I don't believe any amount of knowing the deepest physics of what's happening in the brain when human subjects experience red, green and blue, will allow one to know which experience is which, from the experiences, when one first experiences them.
| Thok wrote: |
| (There's a bit of a semantics game going on here, however, with the fact of seeing red being distinct from the actual experience.) |
Not a game, just the very common ambiguity of language that this area is fraught with. Seeing, awareness ... these can mean functional/behavioral things in relation to the environment that can be observed (I can easily make a robot which "sees" and "is aware of its surroundings" in this sense), or they can mean having subjective experiences like seeing or being aware of whatever, which need not have any associated functional/behavioral aspect. |
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Thok
Oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 2:01 am Post subject: 37 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| I don't see a similarity. Seeing a picture of a pipe will help me identify a pipe. |
Seeing a picture of a pipe won't give you the scope of scale of a pipe (is it huge or microscopic)? It won't give you any characteristic smells or sounds that go with being in the same place as a pipe. It won't let you get a feel for how heavy a pipe is.
That's roughly the same level of filtering merely knowing but not seeing red will do.
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I also think you are underestimating how measurable/describable your subjective experiences are, and if you tried to measure them, you'd be surprised by the results. But that would require you to try to measure them. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 3:11 am Post subject: 38 |
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I don't believe knowing physical facts about colors and how they're experienced, without experiencing them, will ever allow one to then identify red, green and blue.
| Quote: |
| I also think you are underestimating how measurable/describable your subjective experiences are, and if you tried to measure them, you'd be surprised by the results. But that would require you to try to measure them. |
Can you suggest how one might try to measure or describe them? How would you measure your experiences of red and green, so that an alien might compare your measurements against his own and know whether your and his experiences are similar? How could the alien even know that there was a subjective experience behind what you described or measured? |
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Thok
Oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 9:49 am Post subject: 39 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| I don't believe knowing physical facts about colors and how they're experienced, without experiencing them, will ever allow one to then identify red, green and blue. |
If one never sees color, one never sees color. But that doesn't require the concept of "subjective experience"!
Let's say you install Doom on your computer, but never play it. Your computer knows everything there is to know about Doom (it's in the source code), but does it learn something when somebody plays it? (It might, in terms of optimizing power usage spikes or something, but I suspect you wouldn't consider that sentience.)
| Quote: |
| Can you suggest how one might try to measure or describe them? How would you measure your experiences of red and green, so that an alien might compare your measurements against his own and know whether your and his experiences are similar? How could the alien even know that there was a subjective experience behind what you described or measured? |
Brain wave activity, mostly (which could be correlated to other collected brain waves.) Possibly other things that correlate well with these subjective activities. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 4:48 pm Post subject: 40 |
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| Thok wrote: |
| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| I don't believe knowing physical facts about colors and how they're experienced, without experiencing them, will ever allow one to then identify red, green and blue. |
If one never sees color, one never sees color. But that doesn't require the concept of "subjective experience"!
Let's say you install Doom on your computer, but never play it. Your computer knows everything there is to know about Doom (it's in the source code), but does it learn something when somebody plays it? (It might, in terms of optimizing power usage spikes or something, but I suspect you wouldn't consider that sentience.)
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Maybe I'm not getting your analogy here at all.
I install Doom on my computer, and then later I play it. I can't see anything here that wouldn't be analogous to setting up a chess board, then later playing a game of chess. Each is a physical system with which I interact when I play the game.
The point of the whole "Mary's room" thought experiment is that there is something to the subjective experience that isn't understood from understanding all the physical facts involved. Mary knows all the physical facts of what happens in a brain when a person exhibits behavior that suggests a subjective experience of red, or green or blue. When she steps out of the room, and I show her three objects, one red, one green, one blue, she has those subjective experiences for the first time. If she could see within her own brain, and see what's going on physically, perhaps then she could deduce "this new color experience I'm having is the one called red". But from having the experiences alone, without seeing the physical things going on inside, while having the red, green and blue experiences, she does not know which is which.
This can be denied, and I'm still reading through some attempts at denial, but so far I don't think denial is very plausible. Furthermore, it seems to me the attempt to deny must be motivated by strong faith in physicalism ... faith that it applies in a realm that neither reason nor evidence would suggest it applies, a realm that even the deniers recognize is utterly different from where physicalism has ever applied.
| Thok wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Can you suggest how one might try to measure or describe them? How would you measure your experiences of red and green, so that an alien might compare your measurements against his own and know whether your and his experiences are similar? How could the alien even know that there was a subjective experience behind what you described or measured? |
Brain wave activity, mostly (which could be correlated to other collected brain waves.) Possibly other things that correlate well with these subjective activities. |
So you're measuring something physical (brain waves), correlated with something you can't measure or observe (subjective experience). How did you establish such a correlation? If I'm measuring my own brain waves against when I say I'm having subjective experiences, what will that tell me about a significantly different kind of system (an alien, or a robot) that behaves similarly to how I behave. I measure what's going on inside it, very different from what goes on inside me, when it says it has subjective experiences. Perhaps the robot, programmed to emulate me, to emulate my talking about subjective experiences, is also programmed to measure its own internal activity when it would say it's having a subjective experience. Should I conclude the alien or the robot even has subjective experiences??? I understand fully the complex physical events that make it behave as it does ... how it's behavior is produced. What evidence do I have it is having subjective experience?
Furthermore ... the answer is not: its behavior. If I conclude some little glob of brain cells (or some computer circuits) behaving a certain way, has a subjective experience of seeing red, I can grow them in a petri dish (or wire them on a breadboard) and induce them to behave that way perpetually, and I will have something exhibiting no behavior that I ever would have thought evidence of seeing red - something taking no input associated with red, and producing no output associated with red. |
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