/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17852358]

How is it possible for "people" to deny things as fundamentally obvious as qualia, the mind,
and subjective mental experience? How is it even possible to be an eliminative materialist/physicalist when it is so obvious that mental phenomena are distinct from physical things? This is literally the ultimate NPC philosophy.

[Anonymous No.17852405]

>>17852358
>i've been thinking in terms of Camus' Rebel. In the rebel, he focuses in on what he calls "metaphysical rebellion", which is to say the rejection of theological philosophy. the rebel, like sade, the dandies, etc., reject basic facts about reality so as to form a new one.

This rough bastardization of a summary i think explains a lot about why academia is such trash these days. i don't want to say "existentialism bad", but the truth of that statement seems plausible

[Anonymous No.17853516]

the fact that you think in terms of qualia in no way proves its existence, it's simply a mode of thinking about how we act in the world among countless others

[Anonymous No.17853558]

>>17852358
I know anon, it's so bad that I think materialists must simply be unable to comprehend it. Dennett literally believes his own mind is an illusion. How can you reason with a guy like that.

[Anonymous No.17853569]

>>17853516
No but it does require some kind of explanation, which materialism cannot provide which is why they try and put the square peg in a round hole by saying that qualia doesn't exist or is reducible to states of matter somehow.

[Anonymous No.17853585]

>>17853569
I didn't say materialism is correct, just that qualia isn't undeniable

[Anonymous No.17853617]

>>17853585
Well anything is deniable. We all have to start with a leap of faith that our experiences are real. So long as you aren't a solipsist there is no reason to deny qualia.

[Anonymous No.17853644]

>>17852358
By being P-zombies

[Anonymous No.17853663]

>>17853617
you are still stuck in your view of qualia being fundamentally undeniable even when supposedly talking about it from a distance like this. I reject it because I see it as a constrictive dead end that will never be "solved". what a better view is I can't really say yet, but if you somehow find it useful more power to you I guess

[Anonymous No.17853673]

>>17852358
>when it is so obvious that mental phenomena are distinct from physical things?
literally prove it retard. why cant thought be physical? Why can’t it be our interpretation of neurons and synapses firing off and shit? I don’t even agree, but you have a bugman argument

[Anonymous No.17853685]

>>17853663
Like I said it is deniable but so what? You could literally deny everything which is where materialism ultimately ends up. Something being deniable or 'unsolvable' 'unprovable' doesn't mean that we don't have valid reasons to believe in it like we believe in all sorts of things that can never be proven.

[Anonymous No.17853721]

the ultimate proof of a non local conciousness is the half a century of published and reviewed psychological papers on the phenomenon of remote viewing and precognition
well it's actually over a century if you look at soviet research

[Anonymous No.17853744]

>>17852358
Consciousness may as well be just part of our perception, no? What stops it from being an accidental property of the body? Or, alternatively, a result of a certain moral-epistemological view? Are there tests verifying otherwise?

For the time being, I see no reason to be anything other than a skeptic towards the concept. Perhaps quantum science will answer the question eventually.

[Anonymous No.17853756]

>>17853721
Scientists have theorized consciousness is located in the electrostatic field which emanates from and surrounds the brain.

[Anonymous No.17853760]

>>17853673
Dennett outright denies the existence of qualia/consciousness entirely, not just that it's reducible to the physical.

>why cant thought be physical? Why can’t it be our interpretation of neurons and synapses firing off and shit?
If this were true, why aren't we neuroscientifically omniscient? If qualia and neurological processes are the same thing, there's no difference between knowing what the color red "looks like" and knowing the neurological mechanisms that cause the sensation of red.

[Anonymous No.17853762]

>>17853756
u mean like the wired in lain??

[Anonymous No.17853770]

guys I'm scared, what if there's no god looking out for me and I won't be alive after I die, gee golly

[Anonymous No.17853775]

>>17852358
you might like this
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2020/09/guest-essay-daniel-dennets-brain.html?m=1

[Anonymous No.17853776]

>>17853760
Not that anon, but thought is obviously not separate from the physical, since it is also subject to time. You can't explain how the sequence of thoughts in relation to the physical works (and there IS a sequence to observe) without recognizing that there is a connection between the two.

[Anonymous No.17853797]

>>17853776
Interactionist dualism and reductive physicalism are not the same thing.

[Anonymous No.17853798]

https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n18/galen-strawson/real-naturalism

a physicalist dunking on Dennett

[Anonymous No.17853848]

>>17853797
No, but if your head was severed from your body, how much of consciousness do you think would be left? And if the answer is none, then what is there suggesting the existence of a single mind / unity of mind which sits at the base of the arguments in favor of consciousness as a substance independent of and separate from the physical?

>interactionist dualism says that they can affect each other while still being separate though

I'm not seeing the evidence or reasoning for entertaining the theory though. The whole "consciousness is like a radio signal" thing isn't convincing either.

[Anonymous No.17853866]

>>17853848
>The whole "consciousness is like a radio signal" thing isn't convincing either.

how is this relevant? nobody cares what you do or don't find convincing.

[Anonymous No.17853875]

>>17853866
I put that there to stop retards like you from replying to me. Guess it didn't work.

[Anonymous No.17854091]

>>17853673
>literally prove it retard. why cant thought be physical? Why can’t it be our interpretation of neurons and synapses firing off and shit? I don’t even agree, but you have a bugman argument
Because it is so obvious when you just honestly examine the differences between mental experiences and physical brain states.
If I set you up in a room listening to a Beethoven symphony, I might be able to study your brain and find various neurological signals, but I will NEVER be able to find your mental experience of listening to Beethoven. This is something available only to you through your own consciousness. Even if I could somehow study the complete ins-and-outs of your brain, I would NEVER find your experience. True: I might be able to INFER what your experience is like by studying the brain signals and correlating them to the experience, but I will never be able to find the experience itself. Why? Because mental phenomena, mental experiences, mental properties, are not physical; they are of a completely different, non-physical nature. Mind/soul are NOT physical.
Thought experiment:
Imagine you were locked in a black and white room since birth. Now imagine you learn everything there is to know about the physical side of visual perception. There is no proposition concerning the physical side of visual perception that you do not know; from the moment the light-waves hit your retinas, to the moment the neurological signals arrive in your brain and your brain interprets them. Now imagine you were let out one day. You run down the street and see the colour red for the first time in your life. Do you learn something new? If yes, then mental properties are not physical, since you already knew everything there is to know about the physical side and still learned something new when you had a conscious experience.

Only NPCs deny this.

[Anonymous No.17854100]

>refutes reductionism with a simple thought experiment about bats
how did he do it?
>" "An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism – something that it is like for the organism."

[Anonymous No.17854123]

>>17854100
>how did he do it?
Probably because it's the easiest debate in existence. The enemy is literally denying simple facts about the world due either to their ideological bias or the fact that they're unconscious zombies.

[Anonymous No.17854172]

If all the mind is, is matter and electricity, then sufficiently complex things of nature like clouds, mountains etc, are as intelligent as human beings because they have electrons within them.

If that's the case, then there is sentience in the inanimate matter.

This means the entire universe is alive and sentient.

This is a case for a universal mind/God explained materially, and also other phenomena like spirits and ghosts.
'Hurrdurr if the air/floor/walls is sentient why wouldn't a ghost be able to transfer into it, it's just an electrical signature'
These people don't think their materialist contrarian fedora atheism through properly.
The same people who think everything is simple matter also believe in unproven meme theories like simulation theory and multiverse theory which are ways of describing unseen, unproven spirit realms by another name.
They also think Teleportation is real, and time travel, because they saw it in their geek stories like star trek growing up.
There is zero consistency in the modern bugman pop science narrative.
Unless someone is a scientist or works in a lab they have no interest in science, documentary watchers, YouTube memers, and mainstream science journalism is pure cancer.

[Anonymous No.17854195]

>>17853760
>If this were true, why aren't we neuroscientifically omniscient?
Why would we have to be “neuroscientifically” omniscient if consciousness was a physical phenomenon?

[Anonymous No.17854196]

>>17853775
>https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2020/09/guest-essay-daniel-dennets-brain.html?m=1
>deluded or deceptive
clearly deceptive, he implicitly claims to be a magician

[Anonymous No.17854280]

>>17854091
yay I will live forever, and I have a guardian angel and I can cast psi balls after all!

[Anonymous No.17854330]

>leave consciousness to me

[Anonymous No.17854379]

>>17854091
>posts Mary's Room
>doesn't know about the Know-That vs Know-How objection

The fact that mental states are so ineffable, so hard to describe, so hard to pin down is precisely why we should be skeptical of their veracity and ontological status, dumbass. All that people like you and Chalmers and Nagel can gesture at is a vague "what-its-likeness", which is so abstract and undefined it's laughable. Dualism is for cucks

[Anonymous No.17854405]

>>17853760
This is actually the stupidest post in this thread holy fuck, as if a neuron activating could tell you a full causal explanation for why it's doing so. I wouldn't expect a clock to be able to tell me what all the gears inside it do. The difference is that humans can ACQUIRE an understanding of what our neurons do, but the simple fact of having them doesn't grant some a priori knowledge of their functions. Holy fuck

[Anonymous No.17854415]

>>17853760
I don't see anything absurd in the idea that all matter has some very limited form of "consciousness" that express itself only when very particularly arranged like in a human brain

[Anonymous No.17854439]

>>17854100
his though expiriment has always seemed a bit shallow, if somebody could fully understand the mechanism of a bat brain, he could make a sufficiant enough mental model of a bat to simulate what it feels like, it's just that the idea of completely understanding a bat brain is impossible

[Anonymous No.17854451]

>>17854379
I know all of the objections because I had to study this shit. That one is by far the weakest. Seeing the colour red is not the same as ability knowledge like knowing how to ride a bike. Rather, it is ACQUAINTANCE KNOWLEDGE, meaning 'knowing of', rather than 'knowing that' or 'knowing how'. Acquaintance knowledge is a form of epistemology based entirely upon the existence of qualia and subjective conscious experience.
>All that people like you and Chalmers and Nagel can gesture at is a vague "what-its-likeness", which is so abstract and undefined it's laughable.
Are you conscious anon? Anybody who is conscious knows that qualia are not in the least "abstract" or "vague", but have a real, immediate, and indeed fundamental existence. I am a person who believes in free speech, but in the case of people like you I would not care if the government murdered you and distributed your riches to people who actually possessed souls. If you are not conscious, you are not worth moral consideration, so be glad that society is gracious enough to assume that you're either lying or stupid.

[Anonymous No.17854467]

>>17852358
>How is it possible for "people" to deny things as fundamentally obvious as qualia, the mind,
>and subjective mental experience? How is it even possible to be an eliminative materialist/physicalist when it is so obvious that mental phenomena are distinct from physical things?
Probably by actually thinking critically and realizing that psychology is not the treatment, but the cause of mental illness.

[Anonymous No.17854491]

>>17854405
there's an interesting paper titled "can a neuroscientist understand a processor" where they attempt to map a cpu with neuroscience techniques and come to the conclusion that inputs and outputs can't be accurately matched with the neuroscientific model

[Anonymous No.17854494]

>>17854091
>measurements made by rudimentary lab tools of our own making aren't able to find or determine subjective values (yet)
>therefore subjective values must have an origin point outside of the physical organic structure

[Anonymous No.17854520]

>>17854494
What values? I’m talking about experiences. Are you conscious?

[Anonymous No.17854525]

>>17854520
I'm using "subjective values" as a shorthand to lump in everything from an opinion to your personal feelings about the color red within certain contexts.

[Anonymous No.17854527]

>>17854494
Also dualism doesn’t claim that the mind doesn’t originate from the brain. Rather that the mind is non physical unlike the brain. The brain could still be the cause of the mind and many dualists believe that.

[Anonymous No.17854551]

>>17854467
Looks like someone misunderstood Szasz.

[Anonymous No.17854566]

>>17852358
>How is it possible for "people" to deny things as fundamentally obvious as qualia, the mind,
>and subjective mental experience?
They think that believing in those things means that God does, or at least, might exist, and since they're Atheist that can't be true.

[Anonymous No.17854643]

>>17854527
How would a non-physical substance originate from a physical substance? I could only see this being a possibility if we took the physical and non-physical to be polarities on a spectrum, something that is neither physical nor non-physical.

[Anonymous No.17854659]

>>17854566
you're telling me atheists have been the ones shoving god in gaps all along?

[Anonymous No.17855070]

I think qualia is an illusion of relativity. I don't think it exists, your brain just orders the inputs of the world relative to each other and the outcome is qualia by necessity. This is why you can't describe qualia, because it doesn't exist in a solid sense, it's an emergent illusion of assorting sensual data relative to each other. There's evidence for this in the fact that your thoughts can change the way qualia is presented, if you're gay men will look attractive and if you're not gay they will look repulsive, and yes you can train yourself to be gay/bi and the qualia of a man will change despite nothing physical actually changing, you can probably train your brain to see red as cold and blue as hot. If I'm right then I'm interested in what a person would see if they grew up in a white room with no colors in it and someone presented them with a red object, if the qualia is based on relativity as I suspect then there's no way it would appear red to them since there is no reference point of the other colors.

[Anonymous No.17855081]

>>17854491
that’s crazy that artificial and organic computers operate differently

[Anonymous No.17855099]

>>17855070
> if you're gay men will look attractive and if you're not gay they will look repulsive, and yes you can train yourself to be gay/bi and the qualia of a man will change despite nothing physical actually changing, you can probably train your brain to see red as cold and blue as hot.
where does the pivot happen?

[Anonymous No.17855112]

>>17855099
How information is stored in your brain, equivalent to 1s and 0s in a computer, the raw data in the brain, made of neurons, electricity, chemicals etc I don't know exactly how a brain works but you get the gist.

So your brain changes how it relates to other information and the outcome is a new qualia.

[Anonymous No.17855123]

the hard problem was independentally solved by bergson (pbuh) and chris langan
watch this yt series too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OANm6DtFc8&list=PLddMtGCRIuvDCetfcgPQp4w3ifHSMX-ST
>>17854439
>to simulate what it feels like
??? how does this answer fucking anything. even if you simulate it on a computer, it doesn't mean YOU know what it feels like unless you experience it which would mean retoolment

[Anonymous No.17855128]

>qualia are just our interpretation
>qualia are just an illusion
>qualia are just a way of thinking
All proves the existence and insistence of qualia. To have an illusion, to interpret, or to think, are all descriptions of the experience of particular qualia that, illusory interpretive or relative, are by that merit qualia. For to even posit the possibility of being deceived, interpreting, acting, or thinking, is to grant the existence of qualia even if it is no more nor less than illusion, interpretation, action, etc.

[Anonymous No.17855135]

>>17854659
look up promissory materialism

[Anonymous No.17855138]

>>17854451
Imagine being so btfo'd you have to resort to death threats.

[Anonymous No.17855155]

>>17855138
t. spare organs
typing to inanimate objects is a waste of time desu

[Anonymous No.17855160]

>>17855128
Sure it exists, but it's not magic it's just an illusion crafted by relative positioning of raw information in the brain. Language works much the same way, it's just a bunch of information "pointers"

[Anonymous No.17855168]

>>17855123
saying that because you don't understand how the bat feels it isn't physical is dumb.
A CD is 100% material, yet you can't see a movie just by looking at a dvd.
I'm saying that if you truly understood everything about the bat brain you would know how it feels because you could think off an accurate simulation of it

[Anonymous No.17855178]

>>17855160
>illusion
>crafted
>relative positioning
>information
All are vague and failed attempts to describe qualia without letting it come across as what it is: qualia. Start with explaining what "relative positioning" means if not some kind of qualia.

[Anonymous No.17855182]

>>17854451
>Anybody who is conscious knows that qualia are not in the least "abstract" or "vague", but have a real, immediate, and indeed fundamental existence.

> noooooooo, you can't say my feels aren't reals

[Anonymous No.17855211]

>>17854091
>If yes, then mental properties are not physical, since you already knew everything there is to know about the physical side and still learned something new when you had a conscious experience.
It just means not all information can be compressed into verbal code the human brain can read. You can't learn everything about "how it feels to see red" from just a description of it because you can't package everything about the experience into any number of sentences. Wether the description uses materialist terms or spiritual terms makes no difference, it can never convey 100%. But that isn't why language evolved anyway, it just needs to convey the stuff you need to survive long enough to teach language to your kids.

[Anonymous No.17855212]

>>17855160

This is actually my intutive interpretation of what consciousness is. It's nice to see someone else come to see the same conclusion. It would be nice if we were able to selectively vanish part of a person's brain and see how their consciousness was affected. Of course, can't really do that.

>>17855178

I'm not sure what part of the post makes you think that that person was trying to make it so that qualia didn't come across as qualia? It was simply an attempt to describe it more concretely.

[Anonymous No.17855214]

>>17855168
>saying that because you don't understand how the bat feels it isn't physical is dumb.
this is absolutely not what Nagel is saying. He even says that physicalism is possible. He's just saying that reducing the mind is impossible.

[Anonymous No.17855218]

>>17855128
Qualia is a fiction just like math or the "I" is.

[Anonymous No.17855223]

>>17855178
Qualia is explainable, it's just relative information assorted in the brain as I said. What isn't explainable here is what that information is shown to, namely, consciousness, that's the real mystery here.

[Anonymous No.17855242]

Since this is lit,here's a short story.
>Finally! I've created a robot that is indistinguishable from a human! But... Unfortunately, it still doesn't have a consciousness.
>Well, does it look like a human?
>Yes.
>Does it act like a human.
>Yes.
>Does it think like a human?
>Yes, yes, yes! It is indistinguishable, like I've said.
>So why doesn't it have a consciousness?
>Leans in real close.
>Whispers
>"We're special."
>Kiss

[Anonymous No.17855258]

>>17855182
>i have feelings
>thats just a feeling so u dont
>damn so if i cant have feels then i can only have reals. so qualia is reals?

[Anonymous No.17855281]

>>17855168
>you would know how it feels because you could think off an accurate simulation of it
Do you know what it feels like to be blind? To be deaf? More specifically, you do not have the ability to experience some other entity's subjective experience since your own experience is limiting your knowledge of what it is like to be from that point of view. Yes we could explain how they use echolocation or how they are blind or and use their wings, but at the same time there is no way to understand that experience in its totality. Since full knowledge of this experience is only found if you are actually in that specific point of view, that is, from the bat's point of view. Instead, you are actually only working from our own subjective point of view, from a human, in particular, your individual self. Therefore, there would be nothing objective about it even if we did manage to explain their mind in a physical way.

[Anonymous No.17855284]

>>17855242
*blocks your path with the Chinese Room Argument and semantics-syntax distinction*

[Anonymous No.17855293]

>>17855212
>This is actually my intutive interpretation of what consciousness is

I wasn't even talking about consciousness, if qualia is the information it still needs to be projected onto/into something otherwise it's like a monitor that's turned off. Though I suspect consciousness itself works much the same way, some kind of recursion function in the brain, the brain knows that it knows and it knows that it knows that it knows and that it knows that it knows that it knows ad infinitum. It may simply be the direct result of this kind of system, which would mean that consciousness would emerge in A.I naturally as soon as it develops this function.

[Anonymous No.17855343]

>>17855293
>which would mean that consciousness would emerge in A.I
uh... that was refuted by the Chinese Room Argument...

[Anonymous No.17855380]

>>17852358
Dennett doesn't deny the existence of subjective experience. When will you retards get this through your thick skulls?

[Anonymous No.17855383]

>>17854405
>The difference is that humans can ACQUIRE an understanding of what our neurons do, but the simple fact of having them doesn't grant some a priori knowledge of their functions.
Yet we do have a priori knowledge with regards to qualia. You don't need to ACQUIRE the knowledge of what the color blue looks like through years of research. All you have to do is look at something that's blue.

>>17854195
For 2 things to be "identical", they must have exactly the same properties. As such, the 2 things can be used interchangeably. Type A Physicalists assert that qualia and neurological processes are identical. Qualia has the property of self-evidence/direct observability. Therefore, if qualia and neurons are identical, neurons must also have the properties of direct observability and a priori self-evidence. Yet neurological processes are not self-evident. This seems to contradict Type A Physicalism.

[Anonymous No.17855399]

>>17855343
does the collection of neurons in your brain understand english?

[Anonymous No.17855411]

>>17855399
Not sure how this relates at all.

[Anonymous No.17855420]

>>17855411
they, working together, seem to produce your understanding of english but do they themselves possess an understanding or not?

[Anonymous No.17855432]

>>17855420
Unironically a great argument.

We "believe" that we understand language when in reality we're stringing together bits of understanding from individual neurons (or groups of neurons that are responsible for different parts of language comprehension I guess, but the point still stands.) Great point. Humans btfo.

[Anonymous No.17855434]

>>17855420
No they do not. There is no evidence of a casual link between mental states and physical states. See Leibniz' Mill.

[Anonymous No.17855450]

>>17855432
Where is the evidence for this then? Surely you scientists would have a sufficient explanation that explains how multiple physical states in the brain can compile itself into one abstract or apparent abstract idea? ....No? Oh ok then.

[Anonymous No.17855452]

>>17855434
so... chinese room argument debunked? you could say that the room possesses a functional understanding of chinese (if you are comfortable with such a statement), but whether the parts that make it function do or do not isn't relevant.

[Anonymous No.17855465]

>>17855450
The evidence is just people. Either stupid neurons comes together to make intelligent person, or there is some secret sauce. (Qualia, soul, whatever you want to pull out of you ass) Occam's razor, secret sauce is out, and Q.E.D.

[Anonymous No.17855477]

>>17855465
Replying to myself here. I'm sure there's counter arguments, and counter arguments to those, and we're all probably just retreading ground that has been tread thousands of times before. so I'm not as self assured as I might sound.

[Anonymous No.17855487]

>>17855452
I think you are misunderstanding what the argument actually is. It's saying that even if a robot or any AI would be able to answer questions it would only be acting based on what it is being told to do. Just as an English speaking human would answer questions answered in Chinese, he wouldn't actually understand what he is saying at all. The same is for the robot, it doesn't actually understand anything. It's only acting based on instructions. No evidence for the idea of understanding would exist in it. This is different from a human which we have clear evidence for a distinction in understand and not understanding. An English speaking human understands the meaning of "The dog is walking" when it is said in English but has no understanding of it when it is said in Chinese. If it was told to relay this message in Chinese characters the English speaking human would appear to be Chinese to the test runners but in actuality the human does not have understanding of the meaning of the sentence at all. The same for the robot or AI.

[Anonymous No.17855494]

>>17855432
>we're stringing together bits of understanding from individual neurons
Not quite, since there is no "I" doing anything, it's just our perception imagining such a thing. There are no bodies, they're just aggregates as Leibniz calls them. Further, there is no "doer" from which there can be "doing." We perceive all of this, that is, we simplify and translate the flux into something we can impress our will onto and receive stimulating feedback on, which is why we perceive "bodies" that "do" things.

[Anonymous No.17855513]

>>17855494
Well, yes, I guess I was just speaking figuratively. I agree with all of that.

[Anonymous No.17855524]

>>17855487
don't you see the point here? you talk of "understanding" as if it is a fundamentally real property, but the only way you have of distinguishing it from "fake" understanding is by seeing how it functions. Sure, the way a human would reach the state of having a response to the prompt would be different than an AI (well, assuming that the instructions followed aren't isomorphic to the neurological process a human would go through somehow in which case I feel you really have no argument at all) but if the outcome is the same from what can you decide real understanding from fake? you are taking a functional abstraction and giving it an undue ontological status because of how we are used to thinking of things. many such cases

[Anonymous No.17855528]

>>17855343
I just looked up the chinese room argument, it seems faulty to me, it's saying that because we can't know if a computer possesses understanding that means it doesn't? But I don't know if YOU possess understanding, does that mean you don't?

[Anonymous No.17855530]

>>17855432
>we're stringing together bits of understanding from individual neurons
What part in the brain does this though? Oh wait there isn't any. This is called "The Binding Problem" and neuroscience has been unable to explain it.

[Anonymous No.17855539]

>>17855530
Neuroscience hasn't been unable to explain it yet!
I assume it's like this Vsauce video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA5qnZUXcqo
Just on a greater scale. For example, that video pretty much binds the neurons to number identification. If that can be done, it doesn't seem to crazy to suggest that neurons can pull off greater things like logical thinking.

[Anonymous No.17855565]

>>17855284
Everyone but me is a Chinese room.

Can't refute this.

[Anonymous No.17855585]

>>17855524
>>17855528
The Chinese Room Argument was made in response to Turing who said that understanding was based on whether or not an entity was able to respond to questions and answer them accurately. He said that if a robot was able to answer questions, then the robot would have understanding. But is understanding really that simple? We have clear knowledge that the idea of understanding is different from simply functioning towards a specific goal. Yes we would need to see how it functions but this in no way detracts from the main point of the argument which is that understanding is not merely found based on outcome, but in the inner experience and state of the mind. In other words it's clear that there is a fundamental difference between simply relaying information and actually understanding that information.

If you inform a robot to perform 2 plus 2 and it answers the question correctly as 4, then great, it got the question right. But does the robot actually have any idea of what "2 plus 2" actually means? Does it understand the idea of numbers and what addition is? If I said "plux" instead of "plus" to the robot it wouldn't be able to solve the problem. But if I said "plux" instead of "plus" to the human, it would understand the general abstract idea of addition and solve the problem assuming it was a typo. You say that I'm assuming that understanding has an ontological status but I'm simply saying that the idea of understanding is evidently something different than regurgitating syntax. The point of this argument is to show that there is a distinction to be made between syntax and semantics and that a robot playing this test would be different from a human playing it.

[Anonymous No.17855610]

>>17855585
Well then, I think understanding is simply complexity and a system of recursion, the mind/A.I processes its own processes and then processes the fact that it processed itself again and again recursively.

[Anonymous No.17855620]

>>17855585
I mean, at the very least, you have to come up with a better example. If you tell a human plux instead of plus you're introducing a whole variety of adjacent language processing systems that have nothing to do with math.

The question of understanding vs working towards a certain goal is interesting, but from my point, understanding is simply being able to take a solution and being able to broaden it to related to problems.

For example, if a computer told me 2+2=4, I would not think it understood addition. But, if a computer accurately told me correctly and consistently that x+y=(x+y), then I would say that yes, it does understand addition.

Honestly, it seems to me that people tie themselves in knots trying to avoid a reductionist approach, when a reductionist approach is more often than not a useful tool which leads to useful conclusions.

Humans are just biological computers that like to have sex. Reductionist? Yes. Wrong? Maybe. But you have to agree that it's more attractive than constantly seeking a magic "separator" that makes us better. That is honestly exhausting.

[Anonymous No.17855629]

>>17855585
this seems like a lot of words to say that we just KNOW something, just because I say so. we just KNOW that a bunch of flowing water is a river, so does that mean there's a true essence of riverness belonging to that water or does it mean that that's what we call a large stream of flowing water? I'm claiming that it's a similar story here, that understanding is an abstraction that, unless it produces some tangible consequences, has no meaning relative to the example.

Again consider the case of a neural simulation that is identical in structure and function to the human brain. can it understand or not? if so, AI can in theory possess understanding; if not, what differentiates it from human understanding?

[Anonymous No.17855635]

>>17855539
I admit I didn't watch the whole video but from the gist of it, it's not really applicable in the same way as the visual binding problem is. The point is, where does the brain unify all this information into one unified perception? In the video it shows them raising their flags or something but where does the brain come to the conclusion of a unified answer from all the information it was presented? That one boy said "i think it was a 3." (~17:50) Ok where does the brain make this decision? The boy obviously isn't a specific place in the brain so the experiment isn't the same as a real brain.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3538094/
>What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003).

[Anonymous No.17855640]

This isn't a fucking literature thread. I can't believe mods banned me for 3 days before for that stupid shit but let this slide

[Anonymous No.17855645]

>>17855640
mods work in mysterious ways

[Anonymous No.17855668]

>>17855635
What makes you think there is a single unified perception? Couldn't there just as well be many flows of perception that interact and form an apparent unity from their interactions and building of information over time and result in certain actions? I don't know much about neurology so this is a genuine question, but it doesn't seem inconceivable to me that it may be like that. In fact, thinking about my own conscious experience it would explain a lot about how thoughts and perceptions jump around.

[Anonymous No.17855674]

>>17855635
>>17855668
btw I'm not the anon you were responding to

[Anonymous No.17855679]

>>17853770
There is a God, but he is not looking out for any of us. We are like ants.

[Anonymous No.17855684]

>>17855620
I think "understanding" is this:

A processor that can output a huge amount of information about something and all its relations, so it can output that a ball is "round, bouncy, soft, hard, can be thrown, can be hit" etc but then to gain understanding it processes the fact that it just processed all those facets of the ball, then it processes the fact that it just processed that it processed all the facets of the ball, then you can imagine this going on in a pattern to the nth degree of processing its own processings. Basically a conscious brain is just one that knows a shit ton of things and it knows that it knows a shit ton of things. I think our A.I just isn't complex enough but I personally think consciousness is possible in an artificial system.

[Anonymous No.17855696]

>>17855629
I'm not just assuming a specific example of someone JUST knowing it. I'm saying that there are clear and obvious distinctions to be made between people understanding the semantics of a question as opposed to simply regurgitating syntax. In other words, semantics do not reduce to syntax.

[Anonymous No.17855697]

>>17855635
The answer is I don't know, but looking at neural nets, they can take images and look at certain parts of the images, certain curves in certain places and make decisions as to whether the picture is of a cat or something. My best guess is that a similar process happens in the brain.

The sentence
>What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003).

Just means to me that there is no singular place or clump of neurons that encode the whole scene. Basically, it's just saying that this is more complex than we thought.

We do know for sure that the brain can memorize or hold an image, though it struggles to do this. (I think this is an important clue for neuroscientists, that we can experience with incredible fidelity an image but we have extreme trouble mentally forming images with any semblance of fidelity.)

That is to say, the visual binding problem is not one of philosophy, but on of neurology. I think with time we'll figure it out.
In other words, an absence of evidence [of binding] is not evidence of absence [of binding]

>>17855640
Mfw

[Anonymous No.17855707]

>>17855610
>>17855620
>>17855629
Look reductionism and mind body problem aside, the scope of the Chinese Room Argument is simply to refute the idea that Turing's conception of a machine having "understanding" based on function is flawed.

[Anonymous No.17855717]

>>17855696
obviously I don't disagree that a chinese room setup is very different in many ways than a human who speaks chinese, but if there is no functional difference between a semantic understanding and a syntactic understanding then they are functionally the same. are they fundamentally, structurally the same? no, but neither are the sky and a lake that are yet both blue because they reflect blue light and give us the perception of blue. the problem may lie with your specific definition of "understanding" which is necessarily abstract, but also somewhat arbitrary and, I will claim again, meaningless here.

[Anonymous No.17855718]

Watching scientists try to tackle philosophical problems is probably one of the most irritating things.

[Anonymous No.17855730]

>>17855707
Frankly I think the Chinese Room argument is kinda silly. Here is a page with several replies to it I find much more compelling.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/
>>17855718
In my opinion, all philosophers are scientists. Not all scientists are philosophers.

[Anonymous No.17855738]

>>17855717
>obviously I don't disagree that a chinese room setup is very different in many ways than a human who speaks chinese,
Ok then that was the main point of the argument.

[Anonymous No.17855742]

>>17855730
>In my opinion, all philosophers are scientists. Not all scientists are philosophers.
Stating and then restating a premise in different terms does not hold up for philosophical explanations. The scientists who attempt philosophy are quite literally still lagging behind Parmenides and Heraclitus in actual understanding. They have over 2500 years of catching up to do.

[Anonymous No.17855747]

>>17855730
Here is his response to the system theory, which is one of the most common objections to his argument.

>My response to the systems theory is quite simple: let the individual internalize all of these elements of the system. He memorizes the rules in the ledger and the data banks of Chinese symbols, and he does all the calculations in his head. The individual then incorporates the entire system. There isn't anything at all to the system that he does not encompass. We can even get rid of the room and suppose he works outdoors. All the same, he understands nothing of the Chinese, and a fortiori neither does the system, because there isn't anything in the system that isn't in him. If he doesn't understand, then there is no way the system could understand because the system is just a part of him.

[Anonymous No.17855809]

>>17853744
>>17853673
>Are there tests verifying otherwise?
if you open up a brain, you cant see someones experience of red, only whatever process that creates that experience, but not the experience itself. this is the problem
>>17855223
that information is transformed into qualia which we dont know what its made of. it is experience. both the experience and the experiencer are mysteries

[Anonymous No.17855865]

>>17855809
>if you open up a brain, you cant see someones experience of red
Why should you be able to? If you pull out your computer's CPU, you're not going to see anything about what it experiences or does either.

[Anonymous No.17855887]

>>17855865
>or does either.
Yes, you are. As for "experiences", a computer does not experience anything.

[Anonymous No.17855888]

>>17855865
Not him but I'm guessing you could pin point the electrical signals and how they display things to the monitor. The same could not be said for neurons and qualia.

[Anonymous No.17855910]

>>17855888
This is because the monitor was specifically designed to display that "qualia" however.
In this Vsauce video (lol) they actually reconstruct images from the brain. So actually we can display qualia in a manner. Of course its rudimentary but its only a manner of time before we get to see what red looks like to someone.
Go to 15:55

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgbeGFYluEA

[Anonymous No.17855927]

>>17855910
>Of course its rudimentary but its only a manner of time before we get to see what red looks like to someone.
Oh come on man can we not go down this path again? We just talked about Nagel.

[Anonymous No.17855928]

>>17855742
Reading comprehension man. I literally said all philosophers are scientists, not all scientists are philosophers.

[Anonymous No.17855938]

>>17855910
>they actually reconstruct images from the brain
And how do they do that? By already knowing what the image is (as qualia) before it goes into the brain. All they do is correlate qualia (subjective) with physical mechanisms (objective). What happens then is that the physical mechanisms are mapped to a particular format which produces that same or similar subjective (qualitative/qualia) experience for the scientists. There is no philosophical conclusion here, it is just a mapping between qualia and matter, not an actual (ontological) correspondence.

[Anonymous No.17855944]

>>17855927
Isn't this kinda against Nagel though.Sorry I'm honestly not up to date with the literature.

[Anonymous No.17855949]

>>17855585
>Turing who said that understanding was based on whether or not an entity was able to respond to questions and answer them accurately.
Turing never said that, Searle never said he was responding to Turing. I'll grant some people have taken the Turing Test to mean things it doesn't and the Chinese Room indeed refutes that interpretation but it fails at refuting the possibility of hard AI but sleight-of-handing some special attribution to human consciousness that it (and none of Searle's work) never adequately defines.

[Anonymous No.17855963]

>>17855938
Qualia (subjective) is interpreted by objective neurons. Therefore the qualia is objective in the individual's frame of references. In the same manner as I can say something is objectively red to my senses, completely ignoring whether it is truly red or not.

Honestly I can see we're talking in circles here so I'm going to call it a night.

[Anonymous No.17855972]

>>17855963
Neurons are gay.

[Anonymous No.17855974]

>>17853770
Read about the dust theory, and live without fear, I see you on the other side, brother.

[Anonymous No.17855977]

>>17855944
Nagel would say that it's impossible to experience objectively through the lens of another point of view. Even if qualia could be reduced to physical states, our subjective experience acts as an epistemic gap preventing us from ever being able to experience or explain someone else's experience objectively.

Can you imagine what it is like to be blind? Can you really say for certain that you know if you don't have direct experience of being in that specific point of view?

[Anonymous No.17855978]

>>17855949
This special attribution to human consciousness is really something that I see over and over again, and from my interpretation is somebody's cry against the void that they mean something and that they can't be replaced by a heap of silicon. (Despite humans just being a heap of flesh and bones.)

[Anonymous No.17855995]

David Chalmers is right.

[Anonymous No.17856004]

>>17855977
Can I imagine what is it like to be blind? Kind of. Of course someone's experience will alter the way they experience something, and there is no easy way of replicating this short of cloning their brain and replacing my brain with theirs.

Experiencing something wholesale vs experience part of something is a false dichotomy however. For example, if I were to scoop my eyes with a spoon, then I would be experiencing the same blindness as a blind person. Then of course you would argue that how do I know that the blindness I'm experiencing is the same to which I'd reply it's close enough.

[Anonymous No.17856006]

>>17855963
>Therefore the qualia is objective in the individual's frame of references.
This is a meaningless sentence. "X is objective insofar as it is singularly subjective." This isn't wrong, but it arbitrarily ignores the fact that nothing is singularly subjective (because we are arguing about the objectivity of physical reality with respect to the subjectivity of qualia).
>In the same manner as I can say something is objectively red to my senses, completely ignoring whether it is truly red or not.
Sure, you can say anything you like, but that doesn't mean it isn't a lie. Are you trying to argue that lies exist? Because I agree with you on that point.

[Anonymous No.17856021]

>>17855949
>Turing never said that,

computing Machinery and Intelligence - I. The Imitation Game:
n, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a
statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a
definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is
expressed in relatively unambiguous words.
The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the
'imitation game."

>Searle never said he was responding to Turing
>The program enables the person in the room to pass the Turing Test for understanding Chinese but he does not understand a word of Chinese.

[Anonymous No.17856031]

>>17856004
>I'd reply it's close enough.
So, in other words, not the objectivity that reductionism or elimanitivism tries to espouse. There is clearly an epistemic gap here making it unable for you to be certain.

[Anonymous No.17856072]

>>17856006
Okay, imagine a function F which corresponds to the configuration of someone's brain. X is our sensory input. If we know F, and we know X, we can calculate F(x) = y, which is that person's "experience", or their qualia. We can do this for any person's brain F and any input x.

It is apparent that given the same input and a different person, we will have a different qualia. Given the same person but different input, we will of course have different qualia. We can quantify this qualia with a voltmeter, throw it on a monitor using some algorithm, whatever is best.

So, no, qualia isn't subjective. In fact, I hypothesize that given a person's brain and some sensory input, we can predict exactly what their qualia will be. (In the future.) Just like how if I know a function and an input I can give you the output.

[Anonymous No.17856080]

>>17855963
Btw, you seem to be under the false impression that qualia are somehow inherent to quanta (which is now my sleight-of-hand for "physical objects"). When you say
>"completely ignoring whether [[it]] is [[truly]] red or not."
This is stated under the implicit assumption that there is some "thing" or "it" (quantum) which possesses the "true quality" of red. As I've just established, qualia and quanta are entirely distinct, ergo there is no "true quality" of red as far as quanta are concerned. Red is red insofar as the quality of redness is perceived, regardless of the composite quanta which allow for that experience of the quality of redness.

So far as multiple humans are concerned, redness is only the shared acknowledgement through language of a common quality. There is no way to be sure that red is perceived as the same quality by both or any and all people, and in that sense there is no "true" red. Red is red so far as I perceive it as such, all words and definitions (including scientific) put aside.

[Anonymous No.17856103]

>>17856031
There will always be that epistemic gap until we find a way to quantify qualia, someone's "experience" of the world. Questioning if something is the "same" is a bit of moot point however. We can't even agree on if the same atomic configuration makes you the same person. (teletransportation paradox) so trying to equate different qualia as of right now is a bit of a gotcha.

To me, however, denying materialism is the equivalent of going "I quit! It must be some sort of magic!" Which I just can't accept.

[Anonymous No.17856110]

>>17856080
Yes, Yes, I realize all of this, I was honestly just trying to avoid opening that can of words. Perhaps I should have said a 700 nm electromagnetic wave.

[Anonymous No.17856128]

>>17855910
thats not qualia. the qualia is only qualia when its subjectively experienced. were not seeing his qualia. were seeing something physical which is translated to qualia only when we experience it

[Anonymous No.17856129]

>>17856072
You can still only know their qualia through subjective expression of the subject (the object of study). You have to rely on the person telling you what they are seeing or experiencing, otherwise it is all just inductive speculation. At best you could, as you stated previously, project their "mental image" onto a screen by a physical mapping process, thereby viewing it, again qualitatively, through your own eyes, which only begs the question.

[Anonymous No.17856132]

>>17856110
>Perhaps I should have said a 700 nm electromagnetic wave.
But that is false, because as you admitted before, it's possible to manipulate neurons into achieving the subjective experience of redness, ergo "red" is not a 700nm electromagnetic wave. Waves are still quanta.

[Anonymous No.17856181]

>>17855887
You cant know for certain. A computer may be experiencing the most rudimentary form of qualia (eg. 1/100000000000th of what humans experience).

What makes the most sense to me is that qualia is what arises from complexity, as a necessity of information processing. We think, want, or do first, only afterwards do we create an 'I' that executes these things.

This would mean that your various chemical systems could also have qualia to a degree. So your digestive system would sense when food enters it, and when it is hungry and would respond accordingly.

[Anonymous No.17856208]

>>17853760
You kind of just convinced me if the materialistic point by trying to straw man it so badly it actually made sense. It is just neuron arrangements.

[Anonymous No.17856239]

>>17856128
This sounds like "qualia" is merely a descriptor for a complex process rather than a thing that can be found somewhere, in which case its "existence" is the result of a grammatical custom at best.

[Anonymous No.17856278]

>>17852358
Neither Dennett nor anyone on this planet knows what consciousness is, if it's purely physical or what the fuck is going in inside our heads. It's all just theories and mental masturbation, but I welcome debate on the issue because I can't stomach the pseudomysticism and meaningless "quantum" bullshit that seems to be the default position on the issue for most.

[Anonymous No.17856460]

>>17853756
Well if scientists theorized it I guess it’s probably true

[Anonymous No.17856519]

>>17855809
>that information is transformed into qualia which we dont know what its made of

That's because it's made of nothing, it's an illusion as I was saying. The conscious observation of the information coming from our senses creates it, but it's not a "thing", it's the sensory information made consciously observed. It's an illusion it technically doesn't exist but due to the fact that consciousness is looking at it it has to appear as something. You cannot consciously observe something while having that thing also be nothing that's a paradox, so when you consciously observe the information coming from the senses it appears to us as what we call qualia. It's basically something and nothing in superposition.

[Anonymous No.17856527]

>>17856519
>You cannot consciously observe something while having that thing also be nothing that's a paradox, so when you consciously observe the information coming from the senses it appears to us as what we call qualia. It's basically something and nothing in superposition.
So this is the power of physicalism/materialism

[Anonymous No.17856589]

>>17856527
Yes I think qualia is basically just an emergent property, and I'd say consciousness probably is too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

[Anonymous No.17856642]

>>17852358
Maybe it’s just you giving it special significance because that’s what humans do. What makes the mental events so special as a biochemical process?

[Anonymous No.17857070]

>>17852358
I think it’s funny how people deny free will despite it being a priori. Like how are determinists real nigga make your arm move

[Anonymous No.17857358]

>>17852358
All is mind, perhaps, but you are still subjected to the laws of nature, which are not your mind, but the mind of God.

[Anonymous No.17857365]

>>17856278
>Neither Dennett nor anyone on this planet knows what consciousness is,
*blocks your path*

[Anonymous No.17857368]

>>17852358
>that quote
M'lady

[Anonymous No.17857370]

>>17852358
>qualia
Stopped reading there

[Anonymous No.17857374]

>>17855450
this is an incredibly weak argument
>bros we don't understand the extremely complex mechanism of our brain, that means it's impossible to do so

[Anynomous No.17857401]

>>17853721
Remote viewing was a hoax. You can find videos of speeches from the guys who perpetrated it, and they're is so wrapped in irony that it feels like a /pol/ trolling campaign. They basically trolled the CIA out of tax-payer dollars. Their experiments are ridiculous and flawed by design. It was an act of rebellion, or a prank, or both.

[Anonymous No.17857422]

>>17853756
>Scientists
whoa I KNEEL

[Anonymous No.17857569]

>>17853756
where did you get that?

[Anonymous No.17857736]

>>17855910
>Of course its rudimentary but its only a manner of time before we get to see what red looks like to someone.
We get to see what red looks like to someone from our point of view, that's not the same thing

[Anonymous No.17858421]

>>17855747
again, why isnt this more so an issue of generality? we just need to generalize to a wider array of use cases to see if a system understands chinese

[Anonymous No.17858523]

>>17853673
>>17852358
https://youtu.be/NVOi8cvEl5Y good summary

[Anonymous No.17858593]

>the thread is still going
ahem
>>17857365
this too is a part of the key

[Anonymous No.17858629]

>>17852358

You people are dense, he does not deny individuality etc etc

He simply denies the "magical ineffability" of consciousness and says we don't understand it yet because we're ignorant not because it is unknownable.

Fucking hell.

[Anonymous No.17858720]

>>17858593

[Anonymous No.17858739]

>>17858593
>the first causation is solved by appealing to metacausation
Already tried, already failed
You can't escape GOD

[Anonymous No.17858783]

Fuck it.

[Anonymous No.17858787]

>>17853644
Underrated post, I like this even if it is very long and I am not all the way through yet.

[Anonymous No.17858797]

>>17857374
No it's more like until you can prove or explain it, you shouldn't believe it. Get back to the lab anon and start working.

[Anonymous No.17859050]

> My brain isn't a brain, it's MAGICAL WONDERTISSUE

What a retarded thread. I hope when you get a surgery from your braintumor the surgeon doesn't accidentally slip and castrate your wondertissue from physical reality.