Immanuel Can wrote: What you've given me here is a bit routine, isn't it? You've said, "Well, we know something about physiology." Yes, yes we do: but what's that got to do with how consciousness appears from non-conscious materials? You're still only saying, "We know something about materials."
You've said nothing about how those materials become conscious.
We know a lot about what makes materials become conscious. We know it has to do with the brain and not the hand or heart for instance. We know if we make a baby it will become conscious. We don't know exactly when. I am saying something about how materials become conscious. Specifically I am saying that you will not be able to describe how materials become conscious without additional posits about matter. That matter organized in some way will become conscious in some way. Now please don't say we know nothing about it. We know a lot about the visual processing in the brain. But we have more to learn. When we do we will have statements that say if you organize matter is such and such a way you will produce conscious experiencing of such and such a type.
I am not sure why you are not seeing what I have said. Clearly, I did not just say we know something of materials as you said I did. I said that what we know of materials allows us to predict some things like what will happen if you give an anesthesia. But I am also saying that- the standard physical theories - will not be able to explain consciousness without further posits. Just as the current understandings - all of them - associate some physical reality with some conscious experience - hearing for example with the side of our brain - so too further posits will be needed.
Immanuel Can wrote: Then you've issued a promissory note that science will one day be able to do it. Really?
How did you become possessed of this confidence?
Basically by looking at the anatomy of the brain and the history of science and the tools becoming available. There does not seem to me to be any obstacles to eventually understanding how brains are organized. It will take creative science but I think we can get there. They are complex but we have a lot understood on the way neurons communicate for example. We know what an action potential is. We know that firings are digital we know something about the electrochemistry of the synapse.
Look just take memory. We know that long term memory is created when different connections are created between neurons and that short term memory is created based on the synapse biochemistry. Just take that one point. It is something we know isn't it? Not sure why you don't see it?
Immanuel Can wrote: Is it your assumption that science will eventually "do everything"?
No. And I never made a claim remotely like that. It does not do everything. Science has many limitations. "Science does not think" was what Heidegger said and if you understand how he meant - or if you understand what I think he meant - then it I think he is right. (Obviously scientists have to think in another sense about their work. But their job is not to say what the implications are metaphysically. As Einstein said scientists usually make bad philosophers. You can see that in Hawkings.)
Immanuel Can wrote: But in the same moment, you are accidentally admitting what we all know, namely that it HASN'T done so yet. So what imparts to you this amazing power of prophecy about what science "will do" when it's finished "developing"?
Why be shocked?! We make those decisions all the time! It doesn't take prophecy to see whether a scientific investigation has a chance of succeeding. Look at Cern. Billions of Euros invested all because of some prophecy that it might find the Higgs boson. And it did! Walla! People are funding brain research right now. Are they wild eyed "prophets" or just practical predictors guessing that progress can be made?
I'd be willing to wager if you want. I will bet I can find at least some fact associating a conscious state with some aspect of the physics of the brain that is discovered or clarified in the next 5 years. Want to take it? You can put your money where your keyboard is. :grinning and rubbing my hands:
Immanuel Can wrote:... your response above consists only of a truism plus a promissory note.
The ensuing analogy (the Newtonian analogy) isn't any more helpful; it's just another kind of promissory note, one all the weaker for being framed as an analogy. For all analogies are questionable for as to their aptness, and we have no way of knowing if this one has any real bearing on the case at all: I suspect it doesn't, and would have to be shown that it does.
Ok. I can give that to you right here. I can show you right here. There is a way of knowing. You must know a little of quantum mechanics. Basically the current physics represents the properties of matter as a kind of state vector in Hilbert space. The theory says that those state vectors evolve according to the time dependent Schrodinger equation to different state vectors. That theory, plus the facts of the standard model that describe various interactions allows one to predict the future states of matter from the previous states statistically. This is what we mean when we say "physical" or "That is a material device" that it is operating according to this physics. Now if you make the device more complicated you just add dimensions to its state vector. And all of those dimensions represent the current types of physical measurements - position, momentum, energy etc. You do nothing else. It is still a collection of state vectors. And the physics then does nothing more than predict how it will evolve to future states. It does not predict any sensory experience occurring. That is why the situation is like Newton's and why the analogy is apt. Just as Gravity could not be derived from the equations of motion but required an additional posit - so experiencing cannot be derived from the equations of quantum mechanics no matter how complicated the initial state of the device or how it is arranged or how long you wait.
That is why it does have bearing and is an apt metaphor.
Immanuel Can wrote: What we really need is proof -- some actual reason, not just a hopeful analogy, to buoy our confidence that all that stands between us and an answer to the riddle of emergent consciousness is the passage of a few years. Let's see some actual progression the question itself: HOW does unthinking matter become conscious entities? What's the scientific mechanism there?
You don't need proof to see my point. Just look at the physics and a description of any conscious experience and try to derive the latter from the former. You can see not only that you can't but why you can't. Its that why that is important. Its not because you are not smart enough or don't have enough time. You can show it cannot be done. Of course we will need proof that any of the things we do posit are true. You put a flashlight to your eye and turn it on. Its a simple experiment and it associates seeing with the optic pathway. Do the same with a flashlight to the ear. Doesn't work. That is the kind of proof we already have. That is why we do the science - to get that kind of proof. We already can prove a lot. We already know that it is in the brain that it is happening - not the heart for example. We know that if we have children they will become conscious. We know that anesthesia prevents consciousness. We know that alcohol will make you drunk and LSD will make you trip. We can associate certain areas of the brain with hearing - others with sight. V1,V2, V3, V4 etc. We know about synesthesia and have proposed mechanisms for it. I don't think it is credible to say we know nothing. we know a lot. ALL of these describe very physical actions that can be described completely by the physics under material science. All of these actions affect brains. All of these also describe an event that cannot be described in physical terms: Conciousness, drunk, trip, synesthesia, seeing.
Perhaps to flip it around - if you believe that there ever will be a physical description of any kind, where by physical I mean described solely by the current physical science, and you believe that that description will allow you to predict using the current physics alone that consciousness will occur, you are wrong. On the contrary the current physical science itself can be used to show it cannot predict or explain consciousness. But that does not mean that we will not find more information on how certain assemblies produce certain conscious experiences. And we can use that knowledge to posit novel properties of material arrangements and then - then!- using those new posits - predict whether matter will become conscious and if so of what. It is exactly like gravity and the laws of motion in Newtonian mechanics. Additional posits are used. We have many already - when a hand is amputated we throw it away and save the rest. Why? Because we posit that our brains are what generates are consciousness and interfering with it will cause us to loose consciousness while our hands do not. Look at what would happen - will happen - when we get brain transplant's mastered. Do you think it will be like a heart tansplant? Who will be dead and who alive? Which house will the patient return to? Who's wife (husband)? Who exactly is the patient? We already know something of what matter does and we already use that knowledge in things like brain surgery. But we do not have a precise description of exactly what neural states produce exactly what experiences yet. Nor how endocrinology affects the brain. But it is realistic to believe that neurology/endocrinology will eventually get there.
Here is a simple prediction based on what we already know: Point a flashlight directly right up close to your eye and turn it on you will see something very different than if you turn it off. Try it. Then point it in your ear and see the difference. Perhaps then you will realize how much you already know! And realize that pointing that flashlight and throwing the switch is just a physical act. But seeing? No it cannot be described by the current physics.
I don't know where your idea that we know nothing comes from nor do I understand where your pessimism about our ability to proceed further on a course that has already born much fruit.
