zoon wrote:

Krull wrote:Zoon, you've just been reading this book, haven't you?

I hadn’t come across it, thanks for the link, it seems to be illustrating the idea I was floating that even imagining direct access to each other’s minds is usually avoided because it is assumed that the result would be horrible. I hope, if mindreading ever does become commonplace, that people will have found some way to avoid that scenario.

The reason we materialists don't imagine/discuss direct access to each other's minds is that, as our current understanding goes, it is technologically unfeasible for the forseeable future, and may in fact be physically impossible.

There may be billions of synapses firing in an orderly coordinated manner all through the brain to manifest a single thought. And those firings are, according to Edelman (et al) redundant, degenerate, and re-entrant. A functionally similar thought a few seconds later may take a wildly different path, perhaps sharing some, or perhaps none at all with the original (there would have to be shared "ancestry" between the paths, but that information is not necessarily preserved anywhere). Untangling this skein is unlikely to happen tomorrow.

AND many of those synapses are physically so close and sensitive that they "fire" on receipt of as few as five transmitter molecules ... migrating by way of brownian motion (pure quantum chaos) across the gaps. It may well impossible to read large numbers of such without interfering in the thoughts being formulated. Some ultimate technology may be able to read one such synapse with minimal interference, but billions ? I suspect that the cumulative observational interference. even if there were ways to plant the electrodes across trillions to perhaps a quadrillion synapses (to intercept the billion or so for one thought), would seriously compromise the integrity any answer to any question being asked (who's thought is it, and would he have had that thought without the wires?)

-- TWZ

zoon wrote:

Chrisw wrote:

zoon wrote:The snag is that when we imagine the possibility of predicting or controlling brain mechanisms directly, human cooperation seems to disappear from the picture. I can imagine controlling someone else (fine), and I can imagine someone else controlling me (anathema), but how could we continue as equals?

I don't know what you mean by 'controlling' here. You mean like evil scientists putting implants in my brain? Of course all our usual assumptions about autonomy and cooperation go out of the window then but this doesn't have any implications for normal situations (does it?)

I was suggesting that it has implications for thinking about consciousness rather than for everyday life. One thing that is repeatedly asserted about consciousness is that it is essentially private, that one person’s consciousness is inaccessible to anyone else. It seems to me that if, as most people on this thread agree, thoughts are entirely the product of brain machinery, then they are not in fact essentially private, they could in principle be accessed in detail by another person.

I'm not sure I agree with that. At least I'm not sure I know what you mean by "accessing". If your conscious experiences supervene on your brain (let's say) why would I think I could have your experiences unless I had your brain? Experiences are still private in that sense even if they are entirely grounded in the physical.

Krull wrote:It's not so much that the scientist is evil - it's more like, if we buy into his philosophy, we can no longer judge his actions as good or bad. His crimes are all "intuition pumps" intended to convert his friend (and by extension, the reader) to his brand of nihilism. It is basically an attack on Dennett's distinction between intentional, design and physical stances, by encouraging us to permanently adopt a lower level stance towards each other. The worry isn't so much that people could be manipulated, but that ordinary folk psychological rules like our emotional regard for each other will be suspended, due to people no longer valuing their own feelings, and technology subsequently turning personality traits into commodities.

I think, as someone posted on another thread, we are in violent agreement here. As you say, behaviour which from the lower level stance is neutral, is portrayed in the book as horrifying from the intentional, Theory of Mind stance. The fictional scientist may be trying to convert his friend to his nihilism, but the author is making a very strong emotional plea to the reader that whatever the intellectual strength of the case for nihilism, the social and emotional results of adopting it would be disastrous. This fits well with the suggestion I was making above, that taking the lower level, physical stance to other people cuts out the systems for cooperation which evolved along with Theory of Mind, and so attempts to consider how we might manage without the concept of consciousness are felt to be not just difficult and confusing, but actively repellent. This is, as I see it, a major reason why it is so difficult to think clearly about consciousness, as seen on this forum. When materialists try to think round it, the rest of the brain is screaming warnings: here be dragons – or not even bothering with warnings, just pulling us firmly back into the intentional stance in ways we don’t expect.

the PC apeman wrote:

zoon wrote:Attributing consciousness to others, I think, is part of what Theory of Mind does, and I don’t think ToM is superfluous,

Fine but that's a different context than the one I originally responded to:

zoon wrote:On what basis is it possible to make any moral or social claims, such as that people should be treated with respect?

...which strikes me as concerning ethical theory, not theory of mind.

It’s meant to be about both; a suggestion I’m making in this thread is that one of the reasons theory of mind is confusing to think about is that attempts to think objectively and dispassionately about consciousness run up against very deep-rooted ethical intuitions – so deep-rooted that our minds don’t even notice the problem is ethical. Science may be telling me that consciousness is unreal, but I still feel strongly, as something I just know, that other people are as conscious as I am. I can’t seriously imagine otherwise. It feels logical, or a direct perception of the way the world is, but I suspect that the driver of this powerful anti-scientific intuition is not logical but ethical. We need to cooperate, and uncooperative thoughts, such as consciousness not being real, are thoroughly dangerous for the individuals harbouring them. Natural selection selected out such antisocial thinkers.

ColonelZen wrote:The reason we materialists don't imagine/discuss direct access to each other's minds is that, as our current understanding goes, it is technologically unfeasible for the forseeable future, and may in fact be physically impossible.

The same is true of travel to distant stars, but in that case there’s no question that the problem is a physical one. Nobody says that stars are of a different nature, such that travel is not just difficult but inherently unthinkable, but this sort of thing is often said about consciousness. A materialist may say, without being regarded as wildly eccentric, that one person’s thoughts are by their nature inaccessible to anyone else.

Chrisw wrote:

zoon wrote:

Chrisw wrote:

zoon wrote:The snag is that when we imagine the possibility of predicting or controlling brain mechanisms directly, human cooperation seems to disappear from the picture. I can imagine controlling someone else (fine), and I can imagine someone else controlling me (anathema), but how could we continue as equals?

I don't know what you mean by 'controlling' here. You mean like evil scientists putting implants in my brain? Of course all our usual assumptions about autonomy and cooperation go out of the window then but this doesn't have any implications for normal situations (does it?)

I was suggesting that it has implications for thinking about consciousness rather than for everyday life. One thing that is repeatedly asserted about consciousness is that it is essentially private, that one person’s consciousness is inaccessible to anyone else. It seems to me that if, as most people on this thread agree, thoughts are entirely the product of brain machinery, then they are not in fact essentially private, they could in principle be accessed in detail by another person.

I'm not sure I agree with that. At least I'm not sure I know what you mean by "accessing". If your conscious experiences supervene on your brain (let's say) why would I think I could have your experiences unless I had your brain? Experiences are still private in that sense even if they are entirely grounded in the physical.

Would that matter, if you knew everything you needed to know about what was going on in my head? Including, for example, everything I am going to say about my thoughts? Does the internalist knowledge add anything to the instrumental knowledge?

My main complaint in regards to this topic is the inclusion, within the title, of the word 'if'. A better title would have been 'Humans are evolved "machinery"'. A denial of this is only worthy of mockery, so long as the term 'machinery' is properly scare-quoted, and stating the title in this form makes it clearer that the question is not whether humans evolved (they did), but whether, and in what sense, they are machinery.

My secondary 'point' would be in regards to the, pretty much, opening paragraph:

there is general (though not complete) agreement that consciousness doesn’t actually do anything.

You can consider me in the 'not complete' group. Despite the arguments to the contrary (Mr Samsa being the main contributor to arguments for this view in these parts) I believe that, in order to account for its pervasiveness within the human species, consciousness must have some evolutionary utility. It seems an inefficient nature that duplicates in an interactive model all the things I do, with the additional sense that I choose to make them, inside such an incredbly expensive and ostentatious theatre.

This is painting the lily and gilding refined gold considering that all that is required is that I survive to a reproductive age. Even the citizenry of 18th century France baulked at aimless ostentatious expenditure which was the lesser of this. As such, I declare the claim that consciousness must be allowed to do some work to be common sense. Vive la différence!

Jef wrote:

there is general (though not complete) agreement that consciousness doesn’t actually do anything.

You can consider me in the 'not complete' group. Despite the arguments to the contrary (Mr Samsa being the main contributor to arguments for this view in these parts) I believe that, in order to account for its pervasiveness within the human species, consciousness must have some evolutionary utility.

The problem is, given that we are "machinery", all of our actons can be completely explained by just the physical facts. That's what it means to call ourselves machines, there is no extra non-mechanical, vitalist force that affects our actions.

So mental causation seems redundant. When I move my finger I might say that it is because I chose to do so, but the mechanical view of humans says that we can perfectly explain this act (and all my acts) without recourse to any mental concepts.

The classic example is the p-zombie argument. Nature could have produced a world of zombie creatures, none of whom had any consciousness. Such a world would be outwardly indistinguishable from the world we live in. Now it may be that we think zombies are impossible, that something that acted in every way like a human would necessarily be conscious. But even then onsciousness would be a non-functional byproduct of our physical form.

It seems an inefficient nature that duplicates in an interactive model all the things I do, with the additional sense that I choose to make them, inside such an incredbly expensive and ostentatious theatre.

It doesn't. This is the Cartesian Theater Myth. If our brain maintains models of the world it is to better cope with that world. As to the idea that it is "you" who chooses your actions, well who else could it be? This is just another way of saying that no one else controls the inner workings of your brain.

Jef wrote:My main complaint in regards to this topic is the inclusion, within the title, of the word 'if'. A better title would have been 'Humans are evolved "machinery"'. A denial of this is only worthy of mockery, so long as the term 'machinery' is properly scare-quoted, and stating the title in this form makes it clearer that the question is not whether humans evolved (they did), but whether, and in what sense, they are machinery.

My secondary 'point' would be in regards to the, pretty much, opening paragraph:

there is general (though not complete) agreement that consciousness doesn’t actually do anything.

You can consider me in the 'not complete' group. Despite the arguments to the contrary (Mr Samsa being the main contributor to arguments for this view in these parts) I believe that, in order to account for its pervasiveness within the human species, consciousness must have some evolutionary utility. It seems an inefficient nature that duplicates in an interactive model all the things I do, with the additional sense that I choose to make them, inside such an incredbly expensive and ostentatious theatre.

This is painting the lily and gilding refined gold considering that all that is required is that I survive to a reproductive age. Even the citizenry of 18th century France baulked at aimless ostentatious expenditure which was the lesser of this. As such, I declare the claim that consciousness must be allowed to do some work to be common sense. Vive la différence!

Perhaps the title could have been better chosen; I wasn’t intending to question that humans are evolved machinery, I was wondering what follows for our view of the world.

When I wrote: “consciousness doesn’t actually do anything”, I meant in the sense of doing anything contrary to the laws of physics and chemistry which are followed by inorganic matter. I suspect, from what you say, that you may be one of the people agreeing with that claim.

If human brains are following the same laws as those of inorganic matter, then there is no scientific reason to see people as other than machinery. This is a modern development. Until the rise of modern science, it was simply assumed that objects like cannonballs followed one set of rules, and creatures like humans followed a totally different set of rules involving things like desire and morality which were organised by the conscious spirit. It seems to be extraordinarily difficult to shake off these pre-scientific assumptions even in imagination, and it’s not clear why.

I think that we see other people as conscious because we have evolved a system in the brain, Theory of Mind, by which we set up models of what is going on in other people’s brains by imagining ourselves in their situation, then use our own brain processes to predict the other person. (These predictions are probably at a high level involving values, e.g. is the person likely to choose one option over another, rather than predicting at a detailed level exactly what they will do.) Theory of Mind is a very powerful and useful basis for interacting with other people, and this would explain why we see other people as centres of shadow imagined worlds (i.e. as conscious), and also why we see other people as centres of value. I think our sense of ourselves as conscious is secondary to our Theory of Mind belief that other people are conscious. I also think that we have a Hard Problem of consciousness because the Theory of Mind system gives us a view of other people which is fundamentally incompatible with our view of inanimate things – evolution does not always deliver logical consistency in brain processes.

From your post, I think you are in agreement with this approach to the problem of consciousness, if not necessarily with the details. In this approach, consciousness is indeed useful, it’s an aspect of the ToM system which allows us to gain the benefits of cooperating with other people by equalising values. Surviving to reproductive age at a competitive level which allows actual reproduction requires fantastic quantities of functioning machinery for animals from bacteria to humans.

My trouble is that I still don’t feel I’ve cracked the Hard Problem of consciousness. I think I’ve got a plausible hypothesis about where it comes from, but at a subjective level I still can’t seem to get away from the conviction that I’m conscious and other people are conscious and this makes us totally, fundamentally, different from cannonballs. It’s in this sense that I was saying consciousness doesn’t actually do anything, and it’s why I think materialists still have a problem in coming to terms with being evolved machinery.

Chrisw wrote:As to the idea that it is "you" who chooses your actions, well who else could it be? This is just another way of saying that no one else controls the inner workings of your brain.

If we are machinery, there is another possibility: that another person is controlling my thoughts in detail, and I’m unaware of it (as in the various evil scientist science fiction scenarios). If consciousness is safely protected from interference by being inherently and by its nature inaccessible, then, indeed, no one else could control the inner workings of my mind. If we are machinery, it could be someone else. I think this is the crux of what we shy away from.

Chrisw wrote:So mental causation seems redundant. When I move my finger I might say that it is because I chose to do so, but the mechanical view of humans says that we can perfectly explain this act (and all my acts) without recourse to any mental concepts.

And that in turn would be incompatible with evolution theory:

..evolution implies that C has causal power. Why? Well if C had no causal powers, no evolutionary mechanism (natural selection) would force it to present us a realistic image of the physical world. We might aswell experience 24/7 of being in disneyland, while our physical surroundings are full of tigers and steep cliffs. Our bodies would avoid the tigers and cliffs anyway, whether we are conscious of them or not. Natural selection would not force our mental world to correspond with the physical world, since we do not die more often when there is a mismatch. This is clearly false.
philosophy/evolution-is-incompatible-with-materialism-t2663.html

Not only is epiphenomenal consciousness incompatible with evolution theory, it also undermines materialism itself. A consciousness that doesnt influence matter, also cannot be influenced by matter. The moment such a consciousness exists, it would forever exist (since no matter can influence it and cause it to end) in a realm disconnected from the material world. The term platonic dualism springs to mind.

Turtle thoughts controlled by turtle thoughts controlled by ...

pl0bs wrote:

..evolution implies that C has causal power. Why? Well if C had no causal powers, no evolutionary mechanism (natural selection) would force it to present us a realistic image of the physical world. We might aswell experience 24/7 of being in disneyland, while our physical surroundings are full of tigers and steep cliffs. Our bodies would avoid the tigers and cliffs anyway, whether we are conscious of them or not. Natural selection would not force our mental world to correspond with the physical world, since we do not die more often when there is a mismatch. This is clearly false.
philosophy/evolution-is-incompatible-with-materialism-t2663.html

That actually happens
http://www.physorg.com/news149180564.html

zoon wrote:

Chrisw wrote:As to the idea that it is "you" who chooses your actions, well who else could it be? This is just another way of saying that no one else controls the inner workings of your brain.

If we are machinery, there is another possibility: that another person is controlling my thoughts in detail, and I’m unaware of it (as in the various evil scientist science fiction scenarios). If consciousness is safely protected from interference by being inherently and by its nature inaccessible, then, indeed, no one else could control the inner workings of my mind. If we are machinery, it could be someone else. I think this is the crux of what we shy away from.

I'm afraid I've still no idea what you are getting at with this. If my brain was the sort of machine that was externally controllable it would be a quite different sort of machine. Just as you can't smuggle a little video camera into my Cartesian Theater and see what I see you can't implant a device in my Cartesian Control Center and take charge of all my actions. For the very good reason that neither of these two places exist. To control my brain in such detail (as opposed to just crudely nudging my choices in various directions) you would have to basically replace my brain completely with something more suited to the job of driving a remote controlled robot.

I think your central point that if we are machines then our consiousness is no longer private is just untrue. Materialism implies no such thing. I can't experience your thoughts without being you. If you just mean prediction then there is nothing new here. We have been trying to predict each others' actions for thousands of years and we are all quite good at it. I don't see how new technology changes this. I think I might notice if someone stuck lots of wires in my head and connected me up to a machine, I think I might figure that this could give them an unfair advantage over me, say if we were negotiating or playing poker. What's the philosophical significance of this possibility?

pl0bs wrote:Not only is epiphenomenal consciousness incompatible with evolution theory, it also undermines materialism itself.

Just as well I'm not arguing for epiphenomenalism then.

zoon wrote:
It’s meant to be about both; a suggestion I’m making in this thread is that one of the reasons theory of mind is confusing to think about is that attempts to think objectively and dispassionately about consciousness run up against very deep-rooted ethical intuitions – so deep-rooted that our minds don’t even notice the problem is ethical. Science may be telling me that consciousness is unreal, but I still feel strongly, as something I just know, that other people are as conscious as I am. I can’t seriously imagine otherwise. It feels logical, or a direct perception of the way the world is, but I suspect that the driver of this powerful anti-scientific intuition is not logical but ethical. We need to cooperate, and uncooperative thoughts, such as consciousness not being real, are thoroughly dangerous for the individuals harbouring them. Natural selection selected out such antisocial thinkers.

I think you are hinting at this anyway but the problem may be even deeper. Our strong feeling about our own subjective 'feels like a bat or something' may be hopelessly tied up in and even derived from our feelings about the minds of others.

In fact if you use just a tiny bit of reason you can see that a baby doesn't pop out fully conscious and then later gets a strong feeling about others being just like baby. The two things quite obviously develop in lock-step.

Jef wrote:

there is general (though not complete) agreement that consciousness doesn’t actually do anything.

You can consider me in the 'not complete' group. Despite the arguments to the contrary (Mr Samsa being the main contributor to arguments for this view in these parts) I believe that, in order to account for its pervasiveness within the human species, consciousness must have some evolutionary utility. It seems an inefficient nature that duplicates in an interactive model all the things I do, with the additional sense that I choose to make them, inside such an incredbly expensive and ostentatious theatre.

philosophy/definiton-of-consciousness-and-reductions-intent-t10866-40.html#p390262

That's what C is for. Denying it's function by saying there is something else that is not necessary to these functions is already far down the Cartesian rabbit-hole.

Chrisw wrote:
The classic example is the p-zombie argument. Nature could have produced a world of zombie creatures, none of whom had any consciousness. Such a world would be outwardly indistinguishable from the world we live in. Now it may be that we think zombies are impossible, that something that acted in every way like a human would necessarily be conscious. But even then onsciousness would be a non-functional byproduct of our physical form.

It seems an inefficient nature that duplicates in an interactive model all the things I do, with the additional sense that I choose to make them, inside such an incredbly expensive and ostentatious theatre.

It doesn't. This is the Cartesian Theater Myth. If our brain maintains models of the world it is to better cope with that world. As to the idea that it is "you" who chooses your actions, well who else could it be? This is just another way of saying that no one else controls the inner workings of your brain.

This is you going down the Cartesian rabbit-hole. Yes nature could produce an organism that just moves it's finger without the massive machine of consciousness. It in fact has produced a few zombies. Mold comes to mind.

But it can't produce an organism that can learn to dial a cell phone without C.

SpeedOfSound wrote:But it can't produce an organism that can learn to dial a cell phone without C.

So is dialing a cell phone something more than just matter behaving according to the laws of physics?

pl0bs wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:But it can't produce an organism that can learn to dial a cell phone without C.

So is dialing a cell phone something more than just matter behaving according to the laws of physics?

Is your cell phone something more than just matter behaving according to the laws of physics?