--- In
Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@..
.> wrote:
>
> SWM wrote:
>
> >Joseph Polanik wrote:
>
> >>to put this point in terms of the duality of measurable and
> >>experiencable phenomena: a measurable phenomenon can not be identical
> >>to an experiencable phenomenon that it causes.
>
> >Here we have ambiguities with regard to "measurable"
. We certainly can
> >measure responses in conscious organisms and, if Dehaene is right, we
> >will even be able to measure the occurrence of mental images in brains
> >-- even without the reporting of the organism that has the brain.
>
> >It seems to me you are collapsing "measureable" into observable but
> >even on that basis what I have described is, indeed, observable.
>
> I'm not collapsing measurable into observable. I am distinguishing
> measurable from experiencable.
>
> you are creating an ambiguity here by using 'observable' as a synonym
> for two words which have meanings that are different from each other,
> 'measurable' and 'experiencable'
.
My point is "experienceable" and "measureable" are not mutually exclusive as you want to say. We measure via experience and we can measure indicators OF experience. There is a distinction, of course, but it is between subjective (what can only be encountered by a subject through experience) and objective (what can be encountered experientially, by observation in its various forms, by multiple subjects IN A PUBLIC WAY).
By creating a measureable-
experienceable dichotomy you actually mix categories. That's the mistake. I understand why you feel a need to do that but it doesn't make things any clearer. It merely adds another layer of obfuscation to the puzzle. Better to go directly to the core of the difficulty, that subjective and objective are different standpoints co-existing in our experience. The effort here is to explain how we get both in the same world.
>
> someone might measure REM sleep signals and infer that the subject is
> dreaming. that doesn't count as observing the dream. that only counts as
> measuring a psychophysical correlate of dreaming.
>
Yes. We don't get access to others' subjective points of view except via imagination, metaphor, analogy and so forth. That's what it means to be a subject. But note that measuring is something we do with phenomena via standards against which to gauge changes. As Wittgenstein noted, the reason language is inherently public rather than private is because it depends on standards external to the speaker for correct usage of the terms within it. The same applies to measuring.
Of course, we can measure the time we are experiencing something in private but the only way that can be done is by identifying stop and start times using external factors (a clock, a bell, etc.). Could we measure something in our experience without such an external reference? Well it can be argued that even our external references are in our experience. But that misses the point because such experiences of external references are all we mean by external references. Thus it doesn't matter if that it is also part of experience because it's the right part for the measuring game.
You want to convert the subject-object dichotomy to a measureable-
experienceable one. But why do that? How are things made clearer by such a conversion? How do we gain in terms of explaining the occurrence of subjectness? Doesn't this just add confusion?
If you think you can show why this makes things clearer, I am willing to consider it but, so far, all I see is that you have added an extra layer in the descriptive process.
<snip>
. . . neither the brain nor the
> >processes themselves are the consciousness (the subjectness)
. THAT is
> >an aspect, on a certain level of observation, of the functions being
> >performed. On such a view, any processes on any platform that can do
> >the same things (perform the same functions) could generate
> >subjectness. But it doesn't follow that any two instances of
> >subjectness (of consciousness) would be interchangeable except insofar
> >as they are capable of the same functionalities (of accomplishing the
> >same tasks).
>
> here is the ambiguity in operation. the coin doesn't represent real
> identity or even causality. the only scientific fact it could possibly
> represent is the correlation between measurable phenomena and
> experiencable phenomena.
>
First it's a metaphor, not intended to be an exact model of how this works but only to show that this is a legitimate (accepted) way of speaking, that is, of describing certain things.
Second, the identity I have in mind (as should be clear from at least one of my proposed names for it) is that each aspect (each side of the coin) is part of the same phenomenon.
The brain processes (what the brain does) are like the coin in that sense.
What are the brain processes and coin then? They are the physical phenomena which have certain features. The coin is a piece of physical matter, usually metal in our society, that is organized in a certain way. If you melt it down you have the same matter but no coin. So it is the way the matter is organized that makes it a coin.
The brain is similarly matter organized in a certain way. Part of THAT organization is what it does, i.e., it runs various physical processes in certain ways.
Unlike the coin, which is inert in its coin form and does nothing (though others do things to and with it), the brain performs various operations via certain physical processes that are a part of its organization. An inert brain is still a brain but it is not going to be conscious. What is needed is the organization that comes with an operating brain. So just as the coin can be said to have two sides (a head and a tail), the brain operations have two sides (the observable physical events of the actual brain processes and the occurrence of subjective experience -- which latter is observable from the outside in terms of behaviors and internally by the subject alone just by "being there").
> philosophers can't prove that they are identical based on scientific
> research because scientists are committed to looking for causal
> relations between measurable phenomena and experiencable phenomena.
> whatever evidence of causality they find is evidence of non-identity.
It is not the job of philosophers to "prove that they are identical". Proofs of phenomenal events and outcomes belong in the province of science. (Recall that Dehaene and Dennett both think that eventually we will be able to achieve shared access with other minds though I am agnostic on that one and don't believe it's essential for a physicalist account of brains to turn out to be true.)
Philosophers can examine the concepts, the ideas, involved and clarify and sort them in ways that enable them to be more comprehensible and useful to us (or to researchers)
. But philosophers don't prove things except maybe silly stuff like tautologies.
One argument against the identity thesis (which you seem to be latching onto above) is that it cannot be shown that consciousness is one and the same with ("indiscernible" from) certain brain events.
But note that that is NOT the identity claim I have made which is why I have insisted on the distinction between logical identity and other uses. My argument is that consciousness can be reasonably described as physical processes in brains if we consider it in the same way we think about the sides of a coin. The coin's head is NOT the same as its tail yet each, insofar as they are aspects of that coin, are just another side of that coin. They are part of the same phenomenon, though distinct as features of that phenomenon. No one would expect to think that the coin's head is the same as its tail (excluding trick coins here!) but we would all agree that they are both part of the same coin.
This type of identity is what I have in mind when I suggest that consciousness is one aspect (a feature) of certain brain activities, the other being the physically observable phenomena of those processes (discerned either directly, if a skull is opened, or indirectly using imaging equipment). Note that, on this view, it is not the brain per se that is the coin but, rather the operating brain, the brain in action.
The argument that one needs to "prove" that brain events ARE instances of consciousness in some logical way is mistaken because logical identity is not being invoked. However, it is conceivable that scientists will be able to empirically show (a form of proof accepted in science and ordinary life) that there are sufficiently tight correlations between particular events and particular reports or behavioral observations such that event A is established as the essential factor in the occurrence in a subject of Experience A'. It may even be feasible for researchers, at some point, to "decode", as Dehaene puts it, certain brain events in order to recognize the representation in the subject's mind that they coincide with.
If this last is possible, reading minds will be feasible though it may not look like what we imagine, i.e., entering into another subject's experience in a way that makes it indistinguishable from our own.
>
> yes, you could reject the definition of identity in favor of a
> definition that means 'identity and/or non-identity' but that doesn't
> make the coin metaphor mean something contrary to scientific research.
>
> Joe
>
>
See above.
SWM
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