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This is for my Science class. I was hoping for some completely impartial feedback. I know it's a bit of a wall of text, but I'd really appreciate you guys giving it a read. It's interesting enough I hope 
The Biological Basis of Consciousness (Cycle 2) [802 Words]
This Paper, will be on the biological basis of consciousness, I am quite a philosophically an psychologically aware person, and I think about these things a lot, and also in a quite metacognitive person, so this might be a bit long… and also I may ramble seemingly irrelevantly for a while, and for that I apologise. To start off, we must, in my usual style, define everything. Let’s start with consciousness.
Consciousness is one of the hardest things to understand that people have ever encountered. Consciousness is a name; firstly we have to acknowledge that. It is a name for something, it is the name we give the relatively indescribable awareness that humans have, although many people consider consciousness to be individual, that you have your consciousness and I have mine if you will. In many ways many humans have varying strength of their “consciousness”. Strength probably isn’t the right word, but the degree to which they exercise it. Many humans are simply reactive, and focus on emotion and instinct, however many more are metacognitive, easily defined as knowing that they are knowing. I am personally very much like this. Almost as if they are standing from an outside point of view watching themselves develop and feel emotions, except they are still fully experiencing these emotions and this process of development. In short, the consciousness is what you use to know this said knowing. It is our tool of thinking, in a way our mind in itself. The consciousness is of course an abstract concept in science today, but that’s exactly what I plan to talk about.
Is it really an abstract concept when it comes down to it? Science is in itself all about finding the answers, and the literal basis of things, so let’s look at consciousness this way. I’ll quickly define the rest of the question, when it says biological, I would assume it means literally physical; the actual chemical reactions in the brain caused by evolution that gave us our “consciousness”, this tool that we use to think. A lot of research has been done in regards to this field by many different very intelligent people; namely Sigmund Freud. This man defines our mind as a cognitive iceberg, and that most of our thoughts are below the waterline. He came up with the idea of the subconscious mind. Let’s look at memories, they are always there, but we must retrieve them. This is done through a biological process triggered by recognition. The thing is, we cannot specify a trigger for the process of becoming conscious or aware of a situation. Have you ever looked at your watch, looked away, and realize you didn’t look at the time and had to look again? This is what I’m talking about; that our mind does not ever have a trigger for becoming conscious, for properly thinking, it happens randomly. I often find myself not thinking, but I don’t know what it’s like because I became spasmodically aware in a way that I wasn’t before. I became metacognitive.
This is the reason that scientists have been unable to actually track the biological basis of consciousness at all. Of course they want to, but they specifically want to know why. That’s all of science really, just why. What selection pressure led to this development, and how many of our fellow creatures have it? When I say “it” I mean this actual process of thoughts and of thinking.
Having used the word thought flippantly I must now go into depth as to why it is appropriate to use to describe the situation. A thought has never really been defined; hence I find that I personally think about thoughts a lot. What is a thought? Let’s elaborate. The noun form of the word thought is considered a fraction of thinking. If we have a train of thought, a thought is a carriage. No, it’s more like a stop. A place that our train wanders into every now and then, it’s always there, but it’s certainly not always easy to find. The train might get lost, or so may the stop.
The reason we can’t find a biological basis for consciousness is because we cannot see thoughts. It is because we cannot build them in a test tube, and most interestingly, we cannot read them. The thoughts of people that are not our own of course. Technically, we cannot prove that the consciousness or thoughts exist at all, especially considering our very hazy definitions of what these are.
In short, my answer is that there isn’t one. That isn’t enough however, so I have given you the best answer as to why we can’t find one that I could. And about the closest we have come.
By Patrick Cooney.
+ Show Spoiler +I'm 15. Please don't take that into account while reading it.
+ Show Spoiler ++ Show Spoiler +
 
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not a bad effort, not bad at all. I mean, if a first year uni student submitted this to me I'd gag a little, but god knows I couldn't put down as clean an effort as that at your age  . Most of your problems are in confidence and clarity. When you say something, be confident about it, preferably because you have a lot of good reasons you can be confident for. With that will come clarity, but you should re-check your work and read segments aloud to yourself to make sure they actually make sense. Don't put in words you don't need. Keep your sentences clear, to the point and avoid any kind of unnecessary adjectives. Academic writing is sort of like mathematics- the less there is, the more true it is. proving pythagoras' theorem in three steps is far more eloquent than doing it in twenty five.
1) I would be careful about including repeated mentions of yourself. Stating why you are interested in the topic is good, as it gives the reader a frame of reference for looking at your arguments, but beyond that you should try and use 'objective' sources for why something is worth talking about, or at least statements like 'based on my examination of X historical debate, I believe that Y topic is important to discuss'
2) Double check your phrasing. One bit in particular:
A lot of research has been done in regards to this field by many different very intelligent people; namely Sigmund Freud
Last time I checked, old Siggy is only one intelligent person. If you're going to make a call (lots of people have researched this), make sure that your follow up supports that call accurately (give lots of research references- I'm sure there are entire journals dedicated to consciousness which you could find). NEVER EVER justify something halfheartedly. If you make a claim, either don't justify it at all (generally if your claim is self-evident) or make damn sure your justification covers what you claim- in this case providing examples of many people who are also demonstrably 'very intelligent' doing research into this topic
3) Avoid talking to your reader if possible. for example instead of
Have you ever looked at your watch, looked away, and realize you didn’t look at the time and had to look again? This is what I’m talking about; that our mind does not ever have a trigger for becoming conscious, for properly thinking, it happens randomly
might be better phrased
The mind does not have a trigger for becoming conscious. The process is random: a person might look to their watch unconsciously, look away and only then realise they didn't look at the time.
4) If you have to say 'when I say X I mean Y', you're writing clumsily. Ensure your terms are clear from the outset. Don't be afraid of making claims, particularly if you have backing. Simply state your assumption. (eg: Red is a colour) If this is in any way contentious, you should say either 'let us assume X is so' (which requires the reader to follow your logic train, but also exposes you to them attempting to destroy your argument by showing that X is not so) or 'Source Y says X is so', which takes the responsibility of proof off you and puts it on source Y.
The noun form of the word thought is considered a fraction of thinking. If we have a train of thought, a thought is a carriage. No, it’s more like a stop. A place that our train wanders into every now and then, it’s always there, but it’s certainly not always easy to find. The train might get lost, or so may the stop.
Who considers the noun 'thought' to mean a fraction of thinking?:
The X dictionary defines thought as a 'fraction of thinking'. For XYZ reasons, I disagree: instead it is better to define thought as 'ABC'
I realise that this is university level criticism, but I hope you take it to heart. The most important thing when making an argument is that you be clear what you are taking for granted and what you are not. At uni, we use disciplines for this. Certain disciplines take things for granted (a biological text will generally, for example, assume that the origin of consciousness is biological, while an ontological one might not). Obviously in a high school essay you're not stuck in a discipline, but it's worth thinking about. Whose perspective are you talking from? are you fascinated about this as a biologist, as a philosopher, as a mathematician?
I would also encourage you, if you're interested in this, to check out a book called anathem. It's a heck of a read for someone your age, but if you really are interested in this area, it's an amazing starting block to get you looking at the topic further. Just have wiki nearby while you read . It goes over the boundaries of science and metascience, quantum theory of consciousness, theory of knowledge, history of scientific thought and so forth. All in a really cool science fiction thriller
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This is from a philosophical perspective mostly. Thanks a lot :DDDD That's mostly the feedback I get in all of my writing. I write my thoughts on paper, and that I have to clean it up a lot more. This is really helpful, thanks a lot :D
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The number one thing I didn't like...you come off as horribly egotistical throughout the paper, mostly in the first paragraph. Cut that out. You're not trying to tell your reader why you think about these things, or why your opinion on the matter may be a good one. Interest them with good writing, and convince them with sound argumentation, not by telling them you're an authority.
Aside from that, Thereisnosaurus's feedback is all great.
You should spend much more time defining your terms and concepts. Most papers and books in philosophy are 50-75% defining terms and concepts. It is EXTREMELY important that you sit down and think through every bit of what you're trying to prove and argue. After you "publish" the paper, you want discussion of what you're arguing to focus on the conclusions you're trying to draw. It's frustrating to get caught on poorly sketched out concepts and definitions that force the discussion back a step.
To go a bit more specifically, "consciousness" is a very loose term. In everyday English, it's generally used to refer to self-awareness of one kind or another, be it what separates humans from animals, or whether a guy's out cold or not. It's a very nonspecific and nontechnical word. If you want to discuss it in something beyond that mundane use of the word, you need to figure out exactly why you're doing so.
You seem to be trying to set up an adversarial scenario between consciousness and science. Your paper then seems to end. You should focus on what exactly consciousness is, and flesh that out much more strongly. I did not have a strong grasp of what exactly you meant by consciousness. You also need to flesh out exactly what you mean by biology. You seem to be trying to show the difficulty in reconciling the two, but your reader is not going to be convinced if they're not sure exactly what you mean by the two.
The topic of consciousness vs physicalism, or mind/body philosophy actually was the focus of my university studies (I have a BA in Philosophy). As you seem interested in this topic, I'll include links to a couple papers on the topic I really like.
In these papers, consciousness is largely defined as a special mental/cognitive phenomenon somehow related to the mind that is inseparable from the individual. It's something purely subjective that cannot be fully understood by others. Nagel does a terrific job in going into this in his paper linked below. If you really think about it that way, the debate largely boils down to whether special consciousness exists at all, I suppose.
Physical reductionism, or physicalism, or whatever they refer to it as, is largely the camp that sees the advances science has made, appreciates the momentum, and likes where it's going. Science can be thought of as the "objectification of the universe", or the breaking down of everything into predictable and knowable parts. Physicalists believe that everything that exists in any way shape or form is ultimately objective, or that science will ultimately be able to explain, well, everything. Again, read the Nagel article closely. He delves into this very well.
http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/nagel_nice.html
Thomas Nagel's "What is it Like to be a Bat". This paper actually directly deals with the questions you're asking, though while trying to tackle a different problem. He's directly attacking the "reductionist euphoria" that would argue we're all purely physical beings. He ultimately boils down the problem to the subjective vs the objective, and how physical reductionism being true means subjectivity is a relative phenomenon that doesn't exist in the bigger picture, which is something so beyond us that he feels people really are jumping the gun about the whole thing.
http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/epiphenomenal_qualia.html
Frank Jackson's "Epiphenomenal Qualia". In particular, focus on the section about the Knowledge Argument. He refers to a thought experiment he developed known as Mary's Room. It's a brilliant argument (though it has since been polished from his version) that weakens the reductionist standpoint. His whole thing about Qualia was ultimately beaten down pretty hard to the point Jackson himself abandoned the special consciousness side. But even if he's given up the stance, the Mary's Room thought experiment remains a compelling argument today.
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And from the darkness, the philosophers emerge...
PH, you gotta bear in mind he's presumably only got 800 words for this. That's like a paragraph in a thesis. You don't have the space to set up and reference all your terms and still get something useful done, and I don't think many teachers will expect flawless academic rigour at that level anyway . Unless he's doing prep for an IB extended essay or something.
That said, @Trufflez, It's important, very important, to learn to come up with ideas on your own and test them against your own understanding of the world, instead of relying on others to do all your deducing for you. But it's equally important to realise that even if you figure something out, chances are not only will someone else have figured it out before you, but twenty other people will have written 100+ thousand word papers pointing out the many kinks in that thought. This sort of combined audaciousness/confidence in one's own ability to discover mingled with the humility of going out and beating your beautiful idea to shreds because that is the only way we truly gain really new knowledge is at the core of 'advanced' learning- the sort that real scientists and philosophers go about day to day. Keeping that in mind as you write will probably help you sound less arrogant, as PH accused you of. When we write papers, we are trying very hard to destroy our own ideas, not support them (well, if you follow mr Popper anyhow). We're not preaching holy truths, we're assuming we're ignorant fuckers and only when we've spent a thesis or so failing to demonstrate that we're wrong do we feel confident enough to make those great big statements like 'I believe that X is, for a previously given value of true, true' 
As PH shows, philosophy is not one discipline, far from it. So you can begin to ask yourself more questions: whose camp am I in in this discussion? It's good to climb many of the hills alone, but at your level, working with those who have gone before will give you better results in the short term, if you're looking to nail an essay and get some good marks. Just remember that what teachers look for is your ability to argue logically. Just citing sources will not show them that. Using sources to support YOUR argument will.
Also, if you'd like criticism and support in the future, throw me a PM or something. It takes balls to put up this sort of work online, especially on a place like TL. I love seeing people get into these sorts of topics at a young age, and I don't think our culture or curriculum does a great job of supporting those interests, so if I can help I will.
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Maybe cut out at the start the stuff about ranting, and that it'll be long.
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Cut out the whole intro, or re-write it having to do with something about the paper IMO then do everything the first guy said.
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On April 03 2012 21:12 Thereisnosaurus wrote:PH, you gotta bear in mind he's presumably only got 800 words for this. That's like a paragraph in a thesis. You don't have the space to set up and reference all your terms and still get something useful done, and I don't think many teachers will expect flawless academic rigour at that level anyway . Unless he's doing prep for an IB extended essay or something.
You're right. I really hope I didn't come off as too harsh or condescending...
800 words is definitely too little to make it worth citing things and trying for anything groundbreaking, but either way, something cohesion and clarity shouldn't be compromised as a result. I hope my criticism seemed to be in that vein before I started rambling about my college days.
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For the love of god, delete that entire first "intro" paragraph. You don't need it, and every sentence in it is awful -- just start off with what you have as your second paragraph, and the whole thing will sound much better.
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I hope you don't mind me asking a tangential question here
On April 03 2012 20:26 PH wrote:
Frank Jackson's "Epiphenomenal Qualia". In particular, focus on the section about the Knowledge Argument. He refers to a thought experiment he developed known as Mary's Room. It's a brilliant argument (though it has since been polished from his version) that weakens the reductionist standpoint. His whole thing about Qualia was ultimately beaten down pretty hard to the point Jackson himself abandoned the special consciousness side. But even if he's given up the stance, the Mary's Room thought experiment remains a compelling argument today.
Presumably I'm missing something important, because Mary's Room doesn't strike me as compelling at all. Even as I was reading it, there seemed to be an obvious flaw: the implication that Mary's store of information is atomic and the channels through which it is fed, functionally interchangeable. This is tantamount to assuming the conclusion.
To elaborate: it is physically impossible for Mary's brain to store (and thus recall or associate) the information about the colour 'red' in the way it would become stored upon sensing it with her eyes, without using her eyes and the associated ganglia to channel that information. So upon leaving the room or being given a colour television, she is simply filing information she already had, differently. The fact that she is able to respond in new ways after seeing colours than she can after learning about them is - to me - no more philosophically significant than the difference between putting fuel in my car's tank or in the glove compartment. There's nothing special or 'extra' about the fuel that goes in the tank.
EDIT:
I thought of a different way to arrange my objection.
Suppose we equip Mary with a medical device able to manipulate individual neurons and the connections between them. Armed with this device, and her presupposed knowledge of every physical detail about how other people detect and store colour information, she could manipulate her own brain into a state of 'having seen' red. No information beyond the physical was ever transmitted into the room, and thus we can appreciate that it is where and how information is stored, which is itself information about the physical, which conveys qualia.
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LOL. My exam on the 16th has me studying for the physiology of consciousness.
There is a lotta very clear cut material out there in Medical Lit. If you want PM me for references...
But then Im sure its wayyy out of high school level in terms of depth...
Neurology certainly is interesting though!
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I just read the first paragraph, here are some immediate problems I see.
This Paper, will be on the biological basis of consciousness, I am quite a philosophically an psychologically aware person, and I think about these things a lot, and also in a quite metacognitive person, so this might be a bit long… and also I may ramble seemingly irrelevantly for a while, and for that I apologise. To start off, we must, in my usual style, define everything. Let’s start with consciousness.
- I was taught to never ever start a paper with stuff like "This paper will be about..." You don't need to tell the reader about what the paper will be about, just start writing and they should figure it out with the thesis statement.
- You start talking about yourself. It is irrelevant and seems like you're trying to make yourself credible. You should show credibility by the content your ideas (or if you're doing research, with your research).
- I would take out the "Let's start with consciousness." It doesn't belong in the paragraph, and you should avoid talking to your reader anyway.
The other posters pointed out other problems, so I'll just end with those three points.
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On April 03 2012 22:24 Umpteen wrote:I hope you don't mind me asking a tangential question here Show nested quote +On April 03 2012 20:26 PH wrote:
Frank Jackson's "Epiphenomenal Qualia". In particular, focus on the section about the Knowledge Argument. He refers to a thought experiment he developed known as Mary's Room. It's a brilliant argument (though it has since been polished from his version) that weakens the reductionist standpoint. His whole thing about Qualia was ultimately beaten down pretty hard to the point Jackson himself abandoned the special consciousness side. But even if he's given up the stance, the Mary's Room thought experiment remains a compelling argument today. Presumably I'm missing something important, because Mary's Room doesn't strike me as compelling at all. Even as I was reading it, there seemed to be an obvious flaw: the implication that Mary's store of information is atomic and the channels through which it is fed, functionally interchangeable. This is tantamount to assuming the conclusion. To elaborate: it is physically impossible for Mary's brain to store (and thus recall or associate) the information about the colour 'red' in the way it would become stored upon sensing it with her eyes, without using her eyes and the associated ganglia to channel that information. So upon leaving the room or being given a colour television, she is simply filing information she already had, differently. The fact that she is able to respond in new ways after seeing colours than she can after learning about them is - to me - no more philosophically significant than the difference between putting fuel in my car's tank or in the glove compartment. There's nothing special or 'extra' about the fuel that goes in the tank. EDIT: I thought of a different way to arrange my objection. Suppose we equip Mary with a medical device able to manipulate individual neurons and the connections between them. Armed with this device, and her presupposed knowledge of every physical detail about how other people detect and store colour information, she could manipulate her own brain into a state of 'having seen' red. No information beyond the physical was ever transmitted into the room, and thus we can appreciate that it is where and how information is stored, which is itself information about the physical, which conveys qualia.
I'll quickly reiterate the thought experiment as I see it. It may differ slightly from the Jackson version.
1. Mary has complete physical knowledge of color. There is no knowledge that exists concerning color that she does not possess.
2. Upon leaving her colorless room, she gains new knowledge upon experiencing color.
3. Her complete physical knowledge was not all knowledge, therefore physicalism is incomplete.
The jump between one and two focuses on the experiential factor of experiencing things. Think of it as the difference between one person smelling garlic, then having his mouth water in anticipation, and another crinkling his nose in disgust. Even if they're responding to an identical stimulus, they both react in completely different ways.
The Mary's Room argument invokes the intuition that it's impossible to really know what seeing a color is like without actually seeing it. When we see things like colors, there's a contextual aspect to the experience that's beyond the scientific, or physical, knowledge of it. Red makes people hungry, excited, it represents anger; blue is calmer, represents sadness, etc.
If Mary were to be able to manipulate her brain with some device to exactly mimic her brain-state into what it would be like upon seeing red, then, at least I, feel like that would sort of nullify the point of her colorless room. If I were a supporter of the knowledge argument, I don't think I would really argue that there are things magical or things fantastically and intrinsically present, hidden in the world beyond science. It's really just that physically conveying the individual experiential factor of sensory stimuli from just purely objective facts intuits a modicum of doubt.
I hope I more or less addressed the objection you have. As far as I know, this topic in actual academia is stuck and people really haven't been discussing it for a while (those papers I linked are decades old now). Philosophy tends to discuss things that are interesting until they reach an impasse where the differing sides slow down in coming up with new arguments. Then they kind of stop talking about it and move on to something else, lol.
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You think the brainalizer is cheating? Hmm.
To me, the seeming contradiction between p1 and p2 is an artifact of treating Mary as an atomic, abstract entity rather than a complex physical system - in effect assuming the conclusion. The assumption is that there must be something missing from the information gleaned via the TV, overlooking the fact that in or out of the room the SAME information is being entered in a different format through different channels and thus changing the physical Mary in different ways. We don't need to appeal beyond the physical realm because the details of Mary's physiology are sufficient in themselves.
The brainalizer overcomes this by effectively reducing Mary to the abstract repository of information she is assumed to be in the thought experiment. Lo and behold, there is no longer any obstacle to Mary truly knowing absolutely everything about colour without ever experiencing it.
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State your conclusion succinctly in the beginning rather than at the end. I would really like to see you comment more on things you've read in this field... you mentioned Freud and used his ideas to generate a discussion, that is good. Maybe find 2 or 3 other thinkers who've investigated the phenomenon of consciousness, state their arguments, and give your interpretation/reaction. As it is, it seems like you're just stating generalizations and speculation and trying to bend it to fit a shaky argument.
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There are other versions of mary's room that are quite a bit more potent, although I'm not really convinced you've overcome Mary's room. One is the irreducibility of animal consciousness. Suppose there is an octopus. Despite the vast amount of physical and neural information we can obtain about the octopus through various brain scans, we can never have a full knowledge of what being an octopus is like. The experience of an octopus fundamentally escapes scientific observation.
What is missing is a subjective report. The subjective report allows us to make correlative statements about brain and mind, which is how we are able to identify experiencing the color red with a corresponding brain state. But if there is no subjective report, this becomes problematic. And even if the octopus could give us a report, it would unintelligible, as its differing brain structure indicates that octopus neural experience is alien to humans (3/4ths of its brains are in its tentacles). Science cannot give us a full account of octopus consciousness (if it has any - the problem being is that we can't determine it for sure, even though we can draw inferences that it probably does not) nor what the experience of being an octopus is like.
Also, a useful book on the subject that gives a variety of accounts of physicalism and the problems it faces: http://www.amazon.com/Materialism-Mind-Body-Problem-2nd-Ed/dp/0872204782
edit: As far as your objection to Mary's room, it doesn't make any sense to talk about a "having seen a color" brain state and claim that it is not also an experience of the color.
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On April 04 2012 08:09 Umpteen wrote:
You think the brainalizer is cheating? Hmm.
To me, the seeming contradiction between p1 and p2 is an artifact of treating Mary as an atomic, abstract entity rather than a complex physical system - in effect assuming the conclusion. The assumption is that there must be something missing from the information gleaned via the TV, overlooking the fact that in or out of the room the SAME information is being entered in a different format through different channels and thus changing the physical Mary in different ways. We don't need to appeal beyond the physical realm because the details of Mary's physiology are sufficient in themselves.
The brainalizer overcomes this by effectively reducing Mary to the abstract repository of information she is assumed to be in the thought experiment. Lo and behold, there is no longer any obstacle to Mary truly knowing absolutely everything about colour without ever experiencing it.
Ah, I understand what you mean better now.
That's just a debate over the first proposition in the argument, then. The debate would have to shift over to there. I do remember Dennett making that same objection. The issue with that, though, is that you have to first prove that color experience is, in fact, entirely objective and reducible.
The strength and resilience of this thought experiment is that so many people intuited that she learns something new even if she had complete physical knowledge, as we understand it. You clearly had a different intuitive response. Your objection is a more basic and fundamental one, with respect to the thought experiment.
On April 04 2012 08:56 shinosai wrote:There are other versions of mary's room that are quite a bit more potent, although I'm not really convinced you've overcome Mary's room. One is the irreducibility of animal consciousness. Suppose there is an octopus. Despite the vast amount of physical and neural information we can obtain about the octopus through various brain scans, we can never have a full knowledge of what being an octopus is like. The experience of an octopus fundamentally escapes scientific observation. What is missing is a subjective report. The subjective report allows us to make correlative statements about brain and mind, which is how we are able to identify experiencing the color red with a corresponding brain state. But if there is no subjective report, this becomes problematic. And even if the octopus could give us a report, it would unintelligible, as its differing brain structure indicates that octopus neural experience is alien to humans (3/4ths of its brains are in its tentacles). Science cannot give us a full account of octopus consciousness (if it has any - the problem being is that we can't determine it for sure, even though we can draw inferences that it probably does not) nor what the experience of being an octopus is like. Also, a useful book on the subject that gives a variety of accounts of physicalism and the problems it faces: http://www.amazon.com/Materialism-Mind-Body-Problem-2nd-Ed/dp/0872204782edit: As far as your objection to Mary's room, it doesn't make any sense to talk about a "having seen a color" brain state and claim that it is not also an experience of the color.
shinosai just recounted the Nagel paper I linked earlier very well. It's not a complete or direct attack on physicalism, but it does promote caution with regards to what physicalism entails.
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On April 04 2012 08:56 shinosai wrote:
There are other versions of mary's room that are quite a bit more potent, although I'm not really convinced you've overcome Mary's room. One is the irreducibility of animal consciousness. Suppose there is an octopus. Despite the vast amount of physical and neural information we can obtain about the octopus through various brain scans, we can never have a full knowledge of what being an octopus is like. The experience of an octopus fundamentally escapes scientific observation.
See, this is where I disagree. You're making the same implicit assumption as in Mary's room: that 'we' are abstract repositories of information, and thus the reason we can't know what it's like to be an octopus is that there is something missing from the information we can obtain from the octopus by scanning it etc.
I would contend that there is nothing (necessarily) missing from the information. The discrepancy arises because the physical channels we have for inputting information (eyes, ears etc) are not wired up in such a way as to replicate that information in its original form.
Imagine we made an atom-for-atom physical duplicate of the octopus. If the clone behaves identically we have no reason to suppose anything about the functionality or the past experiences of the creature has been lost.
Imagine we simulate the octopus on a computer at the atomic level. If the simulation behaves identically, again we have no reason to suppose anything has been lost in translation.
Obviously these tests would have to actually be performed to validate physicalism, but that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm just showing that Mary's room isn't intractable from a physical perspective.
What is missing is a subjective report. The subjective report allows us to make correlative statements about brain and mind, which is how we are able to identify experiencing the color red with a corresponding brain state. But if there is no subjective report, this becomes problematic. And even if the octopus could give us a report, it would unintelligible, as its differing brain structure indicates that octopus neural experience is alien to humans (3/4ths of its brains are in its tentacles). Science cannot give us a full account of octopus consciousness (if it has any - the problem being is that we can't determine it for sure, even though we can draw inferences that it probably does not) nor what the experience of being an octopus is like.
Again, I disagree with this leap to the conclusion that something is missing from the information obtained. The physiology of the 'knower' is an integral part of the process of 'knowing', and this may well be enough to plug the perceived gap.
edit: As far as your objection to Mary's room, it doesn't make any sense to talk about a "having seen a color" brain state and claim that it is not also an experience of the color.
That's pretty much the point I'm trying to make Modified-Mary never did see colour. It never actually happened. A robot repositioned neurons and connections in her brain - and in doing so conveyed all the scientifically-obtained knowledge about colour, including qualia. From her perspective, she has experienced colour - even though as far as everyone else is concerned it never happened. And isn't the core argument against physicalism that subjective experience cannot be transferred?
If you don't like the brainalizer, imagine instead the Geneticizer: a machine that modifies Mary in such a way that when she sees diagrams of neural connections, her brain implements those connections. Now she can know what it's like to see colour - or have any other experience - simply by looking at the brain scans of other people.
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On April 04 2012 12:56 PH wrote:
That's just a debate over the first proposition in the argument, then. The debate would have to shift over to there. I do remember Dennett making that same objection. The issue with that, though, is that you have to first prove that color experience is, in fact, entirely objective and reducible.
To prove physicalism, sure. Something along the lines of molecular-level cloning of Mary, using the Brainalizer on one and showing the other the colour, then putting them in identical worlds and observing their subsequent behaviour - or something equally impractical.
But I'm not trying to prove it. I'm just showing that the argument against it is not intractable.
The strength and resilience of this thought experiment is that so many people intuited that she learns something new even if she had complete physical knowledge, as we understand it. You clearly had a different intuitive response. Your objection is a more basic and fundamental one, with respect to the thought experiment.
To be fair, people are intuitively wrong about all kinds of things. While that does explain the resilience of wrong ideas, it doesn't make them right
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On April 04 2012 17:48 Umpteen wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 12:56 PH wrote:
That's just a debate over the first proposition in the argument, then. The debate would have to shift over to there. I do remember Dennett making that same objection. The issue with that, though, is that you have to first prove that color experience is, in fact, entirely objective and reducible. To prove physicalism, sure. Something along the lines of molecular-level cloning of Mary, using the Brainalizer on one and showing the other the colour, then putting them in identical worlds and observing their subsequent behaviour - or something equally impractical. But I'm not trying to prove it. I'm just showing that the argument against it is not intractable. Show nested quote +The strength and resilience of this thought experiment is that so many people intuited that she learns something new even if she had complete physical knowledge, as we understand it. You clearly had a different intuitive response. Your objection is a more basic and fundamental one, with respect to the thought experiment. To be fair, people are intuitively wrong about all kinds of things. While that does explain the resilience of wrong ideas, it doesn't make them right
Philosophy is entirely based around intuitive responses, though.
Whenever an issue for discussion comes up in Philosophy, the first thing one does is measure their gut reaction, or the most basic instinctual response. You then take that response and try to figure out why you had it. It's based on that initial reaction that hours upon hours are spent coming up with thought experiments, analogies, and arguments.
However, others may have differing intuitive responses to a given topic, or new research may clash with it. Then the topic is reexamined with that new information in light.
Simply dismissing an intuition as wrong that doesn't agree with yours is very closed-minded. There's simply no such thing as an incorrect intuition until it has been worked through and decisively proven to be false. It would be safe to say that intuition is the foundation of modern philosophy.
The basis of your objection is one that would require the other side to agree to an assumption they really wouldn't. You simply disagree that there are facts that aren't physical, or rather, that there can exist something that can't be explained via physical facts.
While I can understand that you don't find Mary's Room compelling, based on your last response to shinosai, I don't think you entirely understand what the other side is arguing.
The idea of the subjective report is that there's something beyond the information that appears on a computer screen. In order to fully understand the existence of another individual, you need to not only know everything there is to know about them, but you also need to know what it is like to be that person as that person. The idea is that there is a "what it is like" to be you as an individual. Even if I had access to your physical state down to the most basic subatomic particle, I would still be examining the information from my own perspective. It would still be me looking over at you.
Something is objective when it can be understood by all at an equal and identical level. When no matter the circumstance and no matter the time, it will always be understood to the purest and most complete extent. Something is subjective when there is exactly one individual who will understand the information, and no others possibly can while they are not that one. Something is more objective the more individuals can identically understand the information, and something is more subjective the fewer who can. The pleasure of being frightened by horror films, for instance, is something I do not understand. It is not something I share with the many out there who do. The enjoyment of horror films is subjective to that degree, and I am on the outside in that regard. I enjoy eating spicy foods to the degree I enjoy the feeling of sweating and the burning feeling on my tongue. That feeling is a pleasurable one to me. However, I know there are those who have the opposite reaction to that feeling and feel nothing but disinclination to the point of dislike.
Even if we, as individuals, aren't ultimately atomic, as you say, we effectively are. We function day to day considering ourselves as a singular entity surrounded by other entities. When we see other individuals, we consider them just that, individuals. They are themselves as opposed to me, who I can immediately separate from anyone else.
This is what those supporting special consciousness have issue with. How do you extract something subjective from objective information? The "what is it like" seems like something fundamentally subjective.
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First, just a few stylistic tips. Your paper overly verbose for the amount of content you have.
For example:
Consciousness is a name; firstly we have to acknowledge that. It is a name for something, it is the name we give the relatively indescribable awareness that humans have, although many people consider consciousness to be individual, that you have your consciousness and I have mine if you will. In many ways many humans have varying strength of their “consciousness”. Strength probably isn’t the right word, but the degree to which they exercise it
Can be rewritten more succinctly:
First one should acknowledge that consciousness is a name for the relatively indescribable awareness that humans have. Many people believe consciousness to be individualized, that each person has ownership of their distinct consciousness. People exercise their "consciousness" to varying degrees.
It can be tempting to throw out big words or use certain phrases to make your paper seem more voluminous than it actually is, but you want to avoid doing so if possible.
I am personally very much like this. Almost as if they are standing from an outside point of view watching themselves develop and feel emotions, except they are still fully experiencing these emotions and this process of development.
Don't switch between first and third person like this. If you can, don't use first person at all in formal papers, especially in scientific papers.
Let's discuss the content of your paper. Don't rely on Freud to adequately discuss the biological foundation of consciousness. I'm no psychologist, but the iceberg analogy has no implications for the biological nature of consciousness. There's a lot of legitimate research into what parts of the brain are active during tasks requiring critical thinking, long term memory, etc.. These would be more appropriate discussion for a science paper.
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On April 05 2012 03:58 PH wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2012 17:48 Umpteen wrote:On April 04 2012 12:56 PH wrote:
That's just a debate over the first proposition in the argument, then. The debate would have to shift over to there. I do remember Dennett making that same objection. The issue with that, though, is that you have to first prove that color experience is, in fact, entirely objective and reducible. To prove physicalism, sure. Something along the lines of molecular-level cloning of Mary, using the Brainalizer on one and showing the other the colour, then putting them in identical worlds and observing their subsequent behaviour - or something equally impractical. But I'm not trying to prove it. I'm just showing that the argument against it is not intractable. The strength and resilience of this thought experiment is that so many people intuited that she learns something new even if she had complete physical knowledge, as we understand it. You clearly had a different intuitive response. Your objection is a more basic and fundamental one, with respect to the thought experiment. To be fair, people are intuitively wrong about all kinds of things. While that does explain the resilience of wrong ideas, it doesn't make them right Philosophy is entirely based around intuitive responses, though. Simply dismissing an intuition as wrong that doesn't agree with yours is very closed-minded. There's simply no such thing as an incorrect intuition until it has been worked through and decisively proven to be false. It would be safe to say that intuition is the foundation of modern philosophy.
Having never studied philosophy, I'll defer to your expertise in that respect. However, I wasn't dismissing the intuition that 'Mary is missing something until she actually sees colour'. I was disagreeing with the argument:
P1: Mary knows everything physical about seeing colour
P2: Mary learns something new when she sees it for herself
C: Not all knowledge about colour is physical in nature
In my opinion C does not follow from P1 and P2, because it neglects the possibility that Mary's physiology is entirely responsible for the discrepancy. She does have all the information, but her physiology causes her to store it differently from the persons she is observing.
The basis of your objection is one that would require the other side to agree to an assumption they really wouldn't. You simply disagree that there are facts that aren't physical, or rather, that there can exist something that can't be explained via physical facts.
Oh no, not at all. I'm absolutely not arguing that there can't be non-physical facts. I'm arguing that Mary's Room does not show that there are.
The idea of the subjective report is that there's something beyond the information that appears on a computer screen. In order to fully understand the existence of another individual, you need to not only know everything there is to know about them, but you also need to know what it is like to be that person as that person. The idea is that there is a "what it is like" to be you as an individual. Even if I had access to your physical state down to the most basic subatomic particle, I would still be examining the information from my own perspective. It would still be me looking over at you.
I appreciate that, and I don't disagree. I only disagree about what that is held to imply.
Something is objective when it can be understood by all at an equal and identical level. When no matter the circumstance and no matter the time, it will always be understood to the purest and most complete extent. Something is subjective when there is exactly one individual who will understand the information, and no others possibly can while they are not that one. Something is more objective the more individuals can identically understand the information, and something is more subjective the fewer who can.
Again, fully understood.
Even if we, as individuals, aren't ultimately atomic, as you say, we effectively are. We function day to day considering ourselves as a singular entity surrounded by other entities. When we see other individuals, we consider them just that, individuals. They are themselves as opposed to me, who I can immediately separate from anyone else.
No, we are effectively distinct - and not always that (empathy). By 'atomic store of knowledge' I was attempting to describe an indivisible, undifferentiated 'blank slate' into which knowledge can simply be put. We aren't. Information gets stored differently depending upon how it is input.
That to me is interesting in itself: is that the source of subjectivity? If information were stored in our brains in exactly the same way no matter how it was apprehended, what then? Is subjectivity a necessary part of being an individual, or just a quality we happen to enjoy?
This is what those supporting special consciousness have issue with. How do you extract something subjective from objective information? The "what is it like" seems like something fundamentally subjective.
I quite agree: the physiology of the 'knower' is integral to the 'knowing'. Only the number 2 can know what it's like to have 5 added and become 7, as it were But to me that implies nothing about the existence of non-physical facts. There remains the possibility that all the components of the fact are physical - but some are supplied by the knower and some by the knowledge.
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The objection comes off as very strange to me. Let me see if I can explain my problem.
If someone had the "brain state of having seen red" but they actually hadn't seen red, and then they saw red, you argue that they did not obtain additional knowledge. Such a person could have knowledge of red without actually seeing red. But I think this is impossible. If someone has the "brain state of having seen red" then knowledge of the experience of seeing red is already in your brain. Altering the brain in order to have that brain state has just given you access to the experience of seeing redness. So by altering the brain state, you give them knowledge of redness. The mistake is assuming that one can have a brain state of having seen red without having the experience of redness. I object.
If in fact having the the "brain state of having seen red" was not the same as actually experiencing red, then when Mary saw the color red she would not be able to recognize that she already had this knowledge.
I do not deny that Mary's argument does not prove physicalism false. In fact, nothing we can do can prove physicalism false. Or idealism true. But it can certainly lead us in certain directions.
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On April 05 2012 09:52 shinosai wrote: The mistake is assuming that one can have a brain state of having seen red without having the experience of redness. I object.
I'm not assuming that. My argument is that the exact opposite could be true: that the brain state is indistinguishable from the experience, and that howsoever that brain state is induced the end result is the same. Could be true, mind you - I'm not trying to prove it is.
Assuming for the sake of argument that physicalism is true, what I'm saying is that by studying another person, Mary can possess all the information about what seeing red is like. She knows that seeing red 'is like' having certain neural connections in the brain. The problem is, because of the peculiarities of her physiology, that knowledge is stored in her brain in a different form, using different neurons and different connections. The brainalizer is an attempt to overcome that.
Now, obviously there are ever-decreasing circles here. The brainalizer allows Mary to know what it's like for her to see red, thus reducing what she learns when the door to her room is opened to zero. Still, she can't know precisely what it was like for the person she scanned to see red, because the neural connections were constructed in a different context. So while Mary's Room (I think) fails in that respect, the subjective/objective distinction is not eliminated. She might like red; the person she scanned might not - as PH pointed out with scary movies and spicy foods.
Here's a question, though: is there anyone who doesn't like endorphins?
Immediately we can say 'yes' by imagining a creature to whom those chemicals are toxic or fatal, which begs the next question:
Is there anyone who doesn't like positive reinforcement?
Now the answer has to be 'no'. It's logically impossible for positive reinforcement to be anything other than it is, which makes (so far as I can see) postive and negative reinforcement the only truly objective experiences.
I haven't put any further thought into that yet, but it does throw up an interesting parallel with a discussion I had a while back with an advocate of intelligent design in nature. I'm going to ramble on a bit here, so feel free to stop reading
His thesis (shorn of fancy language) was that functionality cannot be selected for without a pre-assigned goal at the decision-node: an intelligent filter, in effect.
I postulated an iterative system in which the entities were permuted, and those with the best quality 'R' were preferentially kept by this intelligent filter and formed the basis of the next generation, and asked him if that would meet his criteria for improvement. He agreed. I pointed out that self-replication - uniquely - inherently performs the filtering process without the need for an assigned goal. He argued that I was assuming the existence of the functionality before it was selected for, and I responded that self-replication need not be a binary quality. Should an entity have the remotest chance of accurate self-replication it will ultimately dominate a world of non-replicators, and that it's not beyond the realms of possibility for a really, really bad self-replicator to arise through undirected permutation.
This got me thinking about the idea of objective 'right' and 'wrong', and I came to the (tentative) conclusion that self-replication (which is itself an objective truth - something either makes a copy of itself or it doesn't) in turn defines objective right and wrong, in that if a thing's behaviour inhibits self-replication, it must be wrong (since in the long run it will be supplanted by behaviour that promotes it). That creates tension when systems of replication overlap, eg. people and ideas (belief systems that spread themselves in part by promoting martyrdom etc), but it's still possible to state that no matter what we're talking about, be it an idea or an organism, more successful replication is always better than less. It's a shared truth, in that if you disagree, and act upon that disagreement, your opinion will sooner or later cease to exist. "Cake or death?" really does only have one answer.
I dunno - I just feel there's a connection there, between objective right and wrong as defined by self-replication, and objective experience as defined by positive and negative reinforcement. One space-like, one time-like.
Or maybe I'm just addled.
Thanks for wading through all that, if you took the time
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Well, as long as we have a distinction between subject and object, I'm not going to quibble too much. Anyways.... as far as the idea of objective right and wrong... making normative conclusions based on description cannot be valid. One cannot base any ethical system on natural or monological causes as such, for it presupposes the connection between somethings 'naturalness' and its 'rightness'. An ethical system must be justified by something else.
Your descriptions may be correct, but insufficient to provide prescription. One cannot conclude, for example, that the successful replication of the human species is objectively a good thing. Perhaps it would be better if the human species died out - one might justify this by noting the drastic imbalance between suffering and pleasure in the world. Necessity does not logically lead to prescription - only to a description of such a necessity.
Philosophers over the centuries have used such descriptions in ethics in order to justify their beliefs.... Mill famously with his utilitarianism. Everyone obviously seeks pleasure (positive reinforcement). And Plato with his highest good. But the question always is - why is pleasure good? Why is the human species thriving a good thing? It's an assumption. And whether or not those who disagree die out has no bearing on the normative question at hand.
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Why is talking to the reader bad? Other than that you have been taught this way? That's to everyone who has mentioned it.
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On April 06 2012 07:18 shinosai wrote:
Well, as long as we have a distinction between subject and object, I'm not going to quibble too much. Anyways.... as far as the idea of objective right and wrong... making normative conclusions based on description cannot be valid. One cannot base any ethical system on natural or monological causes as such, for it presupposes the connection between somethings 'naturalness' and its 'rightness'. An ethical system must be justified by something else.
Doesn't that set up an infinite recursion? Ethical system X must be justified by Y, which is good because...?
You distinguish 'naturalness' from 'rightness'. I think replication sidesteps that because replication is independent of what happens to be 'natural'. Do what you will with the physics of the universe, replication is still replication, and certain opinions about it will always be inherently favoured.
Your descriptions may be correct, but insufficient to provide prescription. One cannot conclude, for example, that the successful replication of the human species is objectively a good thing.
I didn't say it was I even drew attention to tensions between overlapping systems of replication. My point is that the universe - all possible universes, so far as I can see - inherently favour the opinion that behaviour leading to more successful self-replication is better than behaviour leading to less. It's an 'arrow of ethics' that's been implicit since the dawn of time, and would be in all worlds.
Perhaps it would be better if the human species died out - one might justify this by noting the drastic imbalance between suffering and pleasure in the world.
You could make the same argument about all species. I might argue in return that humanity has the best chance of managing and mitigating future suffering.
Necessity does not logically lead to prescription - only to a description of such a necessity.
I think necessity that is non-contingent - that cannot be other than true - could be construed as prescription.
Philosophers over the centuries have used such descriptions in ethics in order to justify their beliefs.... Mill famously with his utilitarianism. Everyone obviously seeks pleasure (positive reinforcement). And Plato with his highest good. But the question always is - why is pleasure good?
Why is positive reinforcement good? Because it can't be considered otherwise: positive reinforcement is, tautologically, what we are bound to seek, and would be in all possible worlds.
Like I (sort of) said at the beginning: any ethical system must suffer an infinite recursion of justifications, or ultimately rest on something that can't not be true. And I think the inescapable 'arrow of ethics' defined by replication and positive reinforcement might be that foundation.
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On April 06 2012 16:45 Trufflez wrote:
Why is talking to the reader bad? Other than that you have been taught this way? That's to everyone who has mentioned it.
your goal is to make a formal and objective essay. First and Second person add intimacy and makes it sound informal
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I think necessity that is non-contingent - that cannot be other than true - could be construed as prescription.
If that's the case, then a prescription would not be necessary. It would be pointless to make normative claims about such things. I do not need to tell you that you ought to behave in such and such a way if you are in fact going to behave this way regardless of what I tell you. In this case prescription becomes superfluous.
Like I (sort of) said at the beginning: any ethical system must suffer an infinite recursion of justifications, or ultimately rest on something that can't not be true. And I think the inescapable 'arrow of ethics' defined by replication and positive reinforcement might be that foundation.
You might like to read Hegel's Philosophy of the Right, which deals with normative issues without appeal to monological or natural causes but also without an infinite recursion of justification.
You could make the same argument about all species. I might argue in return that humanity has the best chance of managing and mitigating future suffering.
No, humans are definitely capable of the highest levels of suffering. It gets worse the smarter you get.
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On April 08 2012 13:06 shinosai wrote:Show nested quote +I think necessity that is non-contingent - that cannot be other than true - could be construed as prescription. If that's the case, then a prescription would not be necessary. It would be pointless to make normative claims about such things. I do not need to tell you that you ought to behave in such and such a way if you are in fact going to behave this way regardless of what I tell you. In this case prescription becomes superfluous.
Hmm. Since I wasn't saying disagreement is impossible (just ultimately self-defeating), I don't see how that applies.
Like I (sort of) said at the beginning: any ethical system must suffer an infinite recursion of justifications, or ultimately rest on something that can't not be true. And I think the inescapable 'arrow of ethics' defined by replication and positive reinforcement might be that foundation.
You might like to read Hegel's Philosophy of the Right, which deals with normative issues without appeal to monological or natural causes but also without an infinite recursion of justification.
I'm chewing through it now. Some of it I like, some of it (binary distinction between human and animals, for instance) makes me frown.
Show nested quote +
You could make the same argument about all species. I might argue in return that humanity has the best chance of managing and mitigating future suffering.
No, humans are definitely capable of the highest levels of suffering. It gets worse the smarter you get.
But we are also (in principle) the most capable of averting suffering, since we have the greatest powers of foresight.
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When in a science class and discussing the BIOLOGICAL BASIS for consciousness I don't think Freud is really your best example for someone intelligent on the matter.
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EPT
