tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post116151836143453060..comments2023-11-03T06:36:27.305-04:00Comments on Phronesisaical: Consciousness Is Backhelmuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09069600766378586919noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post-1161985785490632512006-10-27T17:49:00.000-04:002006-10-27T17:49:00.000-04:00I know my own consciousness is subjective, but I d...I know my own consciousness is subjective, but I don't believe philosophy has proved that yours is. It seems like Descartes' proved to himself that he had subjectivity, but what do I know? Maybe the mistake is to accept that consciousness can be substantially represented in the abstract, as for many purposed we conventionally accept a blueprint as a full representation of the Empire State building. But you can't have a wedding reception at a blueprint, so I might regard buildings as posing just as profound a puzzle as consciousness. If I identified with buildings like I identify with people, I probably would. Similarly we don't fault scientists for being unable to turn back time. We credit a high-energy physicist with creating a muon and capturing its exact behavior in equations, even though she can't go back and create literally "the same" muon doing the same loop-de-loop again. Their understanding of muons is none the weaker because of this inability. "Vantage" and "perspective" in fact are as elusive as "consciousness." We just assume that all that matters to a vantage is vision, and that all our eyes and visual processing systems work the same. Neither is true. Just as a computer game maker could capture everything about the light and topography of a perspective, a neuroscientist someday may be able to represent the state and relationship of all the neurons in Hank Aaron's brain when he hit his record-setting home run; and thanks to cryogenics and future hardware, she might be able to tweak Hank Aaron's brain in a vat to thinks it's Hank Aaron and having the that very experience (for the first time naturally). In so doing I'd say she demonstrated an understanding of "what it was to be Hank Aaron." If at the same time she knew in detail what aspects of Hank Aaron's brain activity corresponded to his subjective experience, I'd credit her with solving the problem of Hank Aaron's consciousness for the historic period in question. Should I note that she is not herself Hank Aaron and never even played baseball, and therefore credit her with neither? In a romantic mood, sure I will. In a novel I might do well to do so. But I think for philosophy the temptation is a trap.MThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02341704109256270557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post-1161961311862821482006-10-27T11:01:00.000-04:002006-10-27T11:01:00.000-04:00Consciousness is the new black, just like black is...Consciousness is the new black, just like black is the new black.<BR/><BR/>This all sounds reasonable to me, MT. But even if it's inaccurate to say that consciousness can be physically located in the packaged, segmented sense, the problem doesn't seem overcome by consciousness as a "moving target." That's another way of describing consciousness as a physical occurrence. <BR/><BR/>I have no doubt that there is some correlation between processes of the brain and mental states. That's not the issue. There's simply a lot lost in either m=b or m causes b. We can see neuronal sparking. We can't "see" consciousness, unless we a priori equate those physical processes with not only consciousness but the self-awareness of consciousness. Of course, maybe what's lost is simply philosophical perplexity. But I still have the sense that that extra ingredient of consciousness of significantly, rather than trivially, perplexing for discerning the relations between the physical brain and mental states or consciousness.helmuthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09069600766378586919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post-1161585181437975122006-10-23T02:33:00.000-04:002006-10-23T02:33:00.000-04:00Maybe the study of consciousness never disappeared...Maybe the study of consciousness never disappeared but has been the whole time in a Chinese room that speaks more than one dialect?<BR/><BR/>I'd vote NCC if I thought Searle's representation of others' arguments in defense of his own deserved my trust, but I don't. I'll agree that he does make m=b sound dumb in that excerpt. That said, I could believe that it didn't exclude an understanding of consciousness as a moving target within the brain though. In fact, if that's it's assumption, it becomes easier for me to imagine an m=b type point that adds to Searle's NCC and doesn't conflict with it. Perhaps if we could see the moving target that is consciousness, then in cross-section it would be something like the visualizations that my Windows Media Player churns out to music-- superimposed on a CT or MRI cross-section of the brain. Those whorls and spirals bear some mathematical relationship to whatever music I'm playing, I suppose. Perhaps that's like the equation we're supposed to search for. And so maybe the point of it is to steer the discussion of consciousness away from a traditional neuroanatomical view of brains having discrete regions that do different mental tasks and don't move around, which maybe predisposes us to expect the NCC will be a clump of neurons here, here and here doing this, this and this. Maybe the young turk sees Searle as over-emphasizing the chip, and neglecting that engineers have equations for how the concatenation of all its subcircuits will behave before they ever build the chip. "Be more of an engineer," he might be advising. I suppose that wouldn't be inconsistent with Searle's seeming contention that there's no philosophical breakthrough there.MThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02341704109256270557noreply@blogger.com