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• Alfredo Pereira Jr

  24 August 2007 | 07:46

  Here is a message I recently sent to the Karl Jaspers Forum
  It is a commentary to Target Article 95, written by Gregory Nixon : THE CONTINUUM OF EXPERIENCE: NON-CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE (1/7 July 2007)
  Best Regards,
  Alfredo

  ---

  
  KARL JASPERS FORUM
  TA 95 (Nixon)

  Commentary 10

  THE DIFFERENCE OF UNCONSCIOUS AND CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE: A
  PHYSICALIST PERSPECTIVE
  by Alfredo Pereira Jr.
  16 August 2007, posted 25 August 2007

  I am in general agreement with Greg Nixon’s proposal and also
  consider his paper important for the conceptual foundations of the
  science of mind and consciousness.

  My commentary is aimed at introducing a physicalist version of
  Nixon’s distinction of unconscious and conscious experience.

  In a physicalist framework, “pure” (unconscious) experience would
  refer to complex processes of interaction of one semi-closed system
  with its environment (composed of several other systems). These
  processes are very hard to be described mathematically (as a
  consequence, they have been practically banned from deterministic
  physics). Two classical approaches are Poincaré’s discussion of the
  Many(Three)-Body Problem and Cournot’s theory of chance, a property
  of nature that results from the meeting of independent causal lines.

  Pure experience involves: a) the system transcending its own
  previous boundaries, “going out of itself” to meet other systems in
  the world; b) the system being affected by other systems, and c) a
  process of self-organization that combines both movements in a
  process by which the system constructs its dynamical identity.

  Consciousness is more than pure experience. I have defined
  consciousness as “content-full subjective experience”. Besides the
  experience, consciousness requires content and a subject to
  experience the content.

  The content is composed of information patterns that combine to form
  conscious episodes. The series of conscious episodes compose the
  “inner world” (the “Umwelt” discussed by Jacob von Uexkull).
  Evidence is that such information patterns are embodied in the
  brain. They possibly correspond to coherent states in
  neuro-astroglial assemblies.

  The subject – according to Merleau-Ponty – is the living body. This
  concept can be generalized. Any system that satisfies the conditions
  of acting like living bodies can be considered as a subject. Among
  these conditions we find: a) the capacity of paying attention to
  something (selecting “themes”); b) the capacity of performing
  reversible operations, according to the meanings of the term
  advanced by Merleau-Ponty or Piaget; c) the capacity of
  “reafference”, i.e. completing action-perception cycles.

  Therefore, in a physicalist framework the difference between
  unconscious and conscious experience lies in the quality of the
  experience: in the case of conscious experience, there is a content
  experienced by a subject, while in the case of unconscious
  experience there may be a subject without a content, a content
  without a subject, or pure experience without a subject and a
  content.

  ---

  Alfredo Pereira Jr.
  São Paulo State University (UNESP)
  Brasil e-mail

• Glen Sizemore

  26 August 2007 | 12:20

  Let me begin to elucidate my position on “mind, cognition, and consciousness” by utilizing part of something you posted elsewhere on this site:

  [Edelman DB, Baars BJ, Seth AK.
  The Neurosciences Institute, 10640 John Jay Hopkins Drive, San Diego, CA 92121,
  USA. dedelman@nsi.edu
  Most early studies of consciousness have focused on human subjects. This is
  understandable, given that humans are capable of reporting accurately the events
  they experience through language or by way of other kinds of voluntary response.
  As researchers turn their attention to other animals, “accurate report”
  methodologies become increasingly difficult to apply.]

  The problem with statements like this stem from the unexamined assumptions it entails, which in turn stem from a complex set of cultural factors, among them the institutionalized misrepresentation and denigration of the behaviorist position. The behaviorist position has stated quite clearly what “consciousness” (at least in the sense of “self-aware”) means (along with elucidating the “meaning of meaning”), and how it might be studied in non-human animals. It is true that studying it in non-human animals is difficult because the special histories needed to produce it must be arranged by the experimenter whereas, in the human case, the behavioral phenomena said to “show self-awareness” has already been acquired. But there is no question that self-awareness in non-human animals can be unequivocally demonstrated, and the techniques to do so have been around for decades. Indeed, procedures that “engender awareness” of drug-induced or drug-altered behavior are so taken for granted that their use is widespread in behavioral pharmacology, even when the questions are primarily pharmacological (rather than behavioral). The procedure is called (by the misnomer) “drug-discrimination” (DD). In DD, an animal is injected with either drug or saline. The animal is then placed in an operant chamber containing at least two levers. If drug was injected, then pressing, say, the left lever produces food delivery. If saline was injected, pressing the right lever results in food delivery. Exposure to such contingencies of reinforcement produces enormously accurate, dose-dependent responding. The only thing that the animal can be responding to is drug-induced changes in its behavior, either publicly-observable or not.

  This raises an important question that is utterly neglected by mainstream psychology and the fields it has corrupted: in training DD, do we train the animal to “report that of which it is already aware”? Or do we “establish the awareness”? There is no reason to assume that it is the former, but yet this is the widely-held (nearly ubiquitously-held) position. There is plenty of evidence that we must learn to perceive, and the position that perception is behavior has been advanced by behaviorists for decades (for nearly a century if we include Pavlov’s declaration that perception is a conditioned response) and has recently been advanced from those claiming to be “cognitivists” (e.g., O’Regan and Noe).

  Edelman and Baars continue:

  [Alternative strategies for
  amassing evidence for consciousness in non-human species include searching for
  evolutionary homologies in anatomical substrates and measurement of physiological
  correlates of conscious states. In addition, creative means must be developed for
  eliciting behaviors consistent with consciousness.]

  Once again, this statement hinges on the dubious, unexamined “assumptions” that pervade this piece (as well as the others Alfredo has posted). An animal before and after DD training has the same “anatomical substrates” (though, undoubtedly, something has changed) but it could be that the animal is “self-aware” only after exposure to the training regimen. The notion that “eliciting behaviors consistent with consciousness” is an alternative strategy obviously concludes, a priori, that for which they are trying to argue. For example, most readers will say that an animal that presses a lever to turn off an electric shock does so because it “feels pain” [Behavior expresses “subjectivity,” right Alfredo?], but we may just as easily claim that escaping certain stimuli is one thing that is called “feeling pain” but that this is not the same as what is going on when a human says “I am in pain.” I will leave it to the reader to draw the connection between DD and “reports of pain,” but I will reiterate that the animal that turns off electric shock is not “reporting pain,” it is simply escaping a noxious stimulus. We must learn to perceive, and this means we must learn to perceive pain, but an escape response is perception of a stimulus, not perception of our response to that stimulus, and it is perception of our responses that constitute “self-awareness.”

  Cordially,
  Glen

• Alfredo Pereira Jr

  27 August 2007 | 01:01

  Dear Glen:

  Many thanks for the continuation of the discussion. Please check my replies below:

  Glen: ...there is no question that self-awareness in non-human animals can be unequivocally demonstrated, and the techniques to do so have been around for decades.

  Alfredo: By Donald Griffin?

  Glen: Indeed, procedures that “engender awareness” of drug-induced or drug-altered behavior are so taken for granted that their use is widespread in behavioral pharmacology, even when the questions are primarily pharmacological (rather than behavioral). The procedure is called (by the misnomer) “drug-discrimination” (DD). In DD, an animal is injected with either drug or saline. The animal is then placed in an operant chamber containing at least two levers. If drug was injected, then pressing, say, the left lever produces food delivery. If saline was injected, pressing the right lever results in food delivery. Exposure to such contingencies of reinforcement produces enormously accurate, dose-dependent responding. The only thing that the animal can be responding to is drug-induced changes in its behavior, either publicly-observable or not.
  This raises an important question that is utterly neglected by mainstream psychology and the fields it has corrupted: in training DD, do we train the animal to “report that of which it is already aware”? Or do we “establish the awareness”?

  Alfredo: Even in the case that awareness is induced, it is awareness. This may be a problem for Ethology, not for consciousness research. Do you think that the noxious drug can elicit the kind of behavior that feeling pain elicits, without the animal actually feeling pain?

  Glen: There is plenty of evidence that we must learn to perceive, and the position that perception is behavior has been advanced by behaviorists for decades (for nearly a century if we include Pavlov’s declaration that perception is a conditioned response) and has recently been advanced from those claiming to be “cognitivists” (e.g., O’Regan and Noe).

  Alfredo: While we are learning, we consciously perceive what we are doing. While learning to ride a bycycle, we perceive our movements before falling down. In human educational contexts (school), consciousness is usually required for efficient learning. It is after learning is consolidated that some of the routines become unconscious (procedural memory).

  Glen: ...The notion that “eliciting behaviors consistent with consciousness” is an alternative strategy obviously concludes, a priori, that for which they are trying to argue. For example, most readers will say that an animal that presses a lever to turn off an electric shock does so because it “feels pain” [Behavior expresses “subjectivity,” right Alfredo?], but we may just as easily claim that escaping certain stimuli is one thing that is called “feeling pain” but that this is not the same as what is going on when a human says “I am in pain.” I will leave it to the reader to draw the connection between DD and “reports of pain,” but I will reiterate that the animal that turns off electric shock is not “reporting pain,” it is simply escaping a noxious stimulus. We must learn to perceive, and this means we must learn to perceive pain, but an escape response is perception of a stimulus, not perception of our response to that stimulus, and it is perception of our responses that constitute “self-awareness.”

  Alfredo: I agree with you about self-awareness.
  But the hypothesis that an animal responds to a noxious stimulus without feeling pain is not biologically plausible. It falls in the “Zombie” chapter of Philosophy of Mind, a chapter that systematically ignores how real brains work.

  Best,

  Alfredo

• Glen Sizemore

  27 August 2007 | 02:03

  Dear Glen:
  Many thanks for the continuation of the discussion. Please check my replies below:

  GS: My (Glen) new replies are preceded by “GS”

  Glen: ...there is no question that self-awareness in non-human animals can be unequivocally demonstrated, and the techniques to do so have been around for decades.

  Alfredo: By Donald Griffin?

  GS: No. Griffin represents everything that is wrong with “animal cognition” (which is a lame term to begin with).

  Glen: Indeed, procedures that “engender awareness” of drug-induced or drug-altered behavior are so taken for granted that their use is widespread in behavioral pharmacology, even when the questions are primarily pharmacological (rather than behavioral). The procedure is called (by the misnomer) “drug-discrimination” (DD). In DD, an animal is injected with either drug or saline. The animal is then placed in an operant chamber containing at least two levers. If drug was injected, then pressing, say, the left lever produces food delivery. If saline was injected, pressing the right lever results in food delivery. Exposure to such contingencies of reinforcement produces enormously accurate, dose-dependent responding. The only thing that the animal can be responding to is drug-induced changes in its behavior, either publicly-observable or not.
  This raises an important question that is utterly neglected by mainstream psychology and the fields it has corrupted: in training DD, do we train the animal to “report that of which it is already aware”? Or do we “establish the awareness”?

  Alfredo: Even in the case that awareness is induced, it is awareness.

  GS: This misses the point. First, “awareness” is name for, not a cause of, behavior in context. My point was that all “self-awareness” is induced. It is discriminative control of operant behavior where the discriminative stimulus is the animal’s own behavior. Some “kinds of awareness” are not of this sort as when a rat moves its tail off of a hot light bulb. But the rat does not do this “because it is aware.” Rather, we say “it is aware” because it moves its tail. The evolution of the reflex, and the placing of the tail on the light bulb, “explains the behavior.” Awareness is simply an explanatory fiction.

  Alfredo (cont.) This may be a problem for Ethology, not for consciousness research. Do you think that the noxious drug can elicit the kind of behavior that feeling pain elicits, without the animal actually feeling pain?

  GS: I didn’t say anything about a “noxious drug.” As far as, say, a rat that removes its tail from a hot light bulb (as in so-called “tail flick”) I said that “feels pain” is a NAME for the behavioral observation. To say that it is a cause is erroneous. Further, I argued that the elicited behavior is FUNCTIONALLY different than the response “I feel pain.”

  Glen: There is plenty of evidence that we must learn to perceive, and the position that perception is behavior has been advanced by behaviorists for decades (for nearly a century if we include Pavlov’s declaration that perception is a conditioned response) and has recently been advanced from those claiming to be “cognitivists” (e.g., O’Regan and Noe).

  Alfredo: While we are learning, we consciously perceive what we are doing. While learning to ride a bycycle, we perceive our movements before falling down. In human educational contexts (school), consciousness is usually required for efficient learning. It is after learning is consolidated that some of the routines become unconscious (procedural memory).

  GS: A human learning to ride a bicycle is usually conscious of its own behavior (in the sense of self-aware), but this plays almost no role in learning to ride a bicycle. Such behavior is largely “procedural” from start to finish. No child or adult can describe what they do when they ride a bicycle, but they can certainly tell you that they are riding a bicycle.

  Glen: ...The notion that “eliciting behaviors consistent with consciousness” is an alternative strategy obviously concludes, a priori, that for which they are trying to argue. For example, most readers will say that an animal that presses a lever to turn off an electric shock does so because it “feels pain” [Behavior expresses “subjectivity,” right Alfredo?], but we may just as easily claim that escaping certain stimuli is one thing that is called “feeling pain” but that this is not the same as what is going on when a human says “I am in pain.” I will leave it to the reader to draw the connection between DD and “reports of pain,” but I will reiterate that the animal that turns off electric shock is not “reporting pain,” it is simply escaping a noxious stimulus. We must learn to perceive, and this means we must learn to perceive pain, but an escape response is perception of a stimulus, not perception of our response to that stimulus, and it is perception of our responses that constitute “self-awareness.”

  Alfredo: I agree with you about self-awareness.
  But the hypothesis that an animal responds to a noxious stimulus without feeling pain is not biologically plausible. It falls in the “Zombie” chapter of Philosophy of Mind, a chapter that systematically ignores how real brains work.

  GS: Needless to say, I disagree. As I said, certain sorts of “responding to noxious stimuli” are called “feeling pain,” but it does not follow that the response “I feel pain” or “that hurts” is the same functional response class. The “Zombie argument” is full of unanalyzed “assumptions.” Nonetheless, I sort of like the issue because it raises exactly the point I am trying to make; non-human animals are largely Zombies in the philosophical sense. This is not because they are “incapable of feeling pain” in the sense of “being aware of their own pain responses,” but they have not learned to discriminate their own pain responses. A rat can move its tail off of a hot light bulb (a reflex) and they can be trained to engage in “voluntary responses” (i.e., operant behavior) that terminate noxious stimuli, but they do not “feel pain” in the sense of “self-aware” until they are trained to do so. The fact that we call all three “feeling pain” is beside the point. And needless to say, I think that your statement that this “ignores how real brains work” is a matter of assuming what you are trying to argue.

  Cordially,
  Glen

• marvin kirsh

  27 August 2007 | 02:52

  I wanted to comment that differences orientation in language, perspective and concept, I believe, in relecting different knacks, different particulars, do not meet at the ends, and should not be forced. The difficulty resides in the physical sciences and theory that not testable as it projects beyond the first person.(Even Einstein does this to some extent when he compares two moving parties and a third stationary party)..the problem, I believe of the form “it decided to rain” at a time appearing deliberate..is embedded in human language(subtilly that, if one had a hard to use with no practical use 360 degree logic for natural truth, an incorrect one exists). I read Soosaar comment recent in cog prints(references), found it(though not at first perception)really to be the same track.

  An Apple A Day or An Aspirin Every Four Hours

  Marvin E. Kirsh
  Kirsh2152000@yahoo.com

  Abstract
  With regards to public health, education and welfare, though research and theory in the basic physical sciences, frustratingly incomplete, is voted for in a linearly reasoned fashioned, to father inquiry in the life sciences, it is argued here, though appearing so, but not for preconceived humanistic reasons, to have a failing orientation, both for itself and for the life sciences. Discussion One expects to be able to learn, to enhance, at least acquire survival, if not wellbeing, happiness success. A healthy internal psychological environment, which most likely is perceived as a personal asset of highest priority in this regards, falls beyond self control in states of illness, as well as the probability of a state of illness . One does not have control over his own life with regards to potential states of illness. For the more intelligent the world must be ordered so that at least the mechanism of change to a disease state can be logically understood-i.e. that an ontology of disease exists with an order to it to be extracted from life experience- nature. An important difference, that is mutually exclusive with respect to ontology-epistemology, exists between these two situations ‘I became ill’ and ‘the wind blew in a disease and I became ill’. In the case of one seeking his health, the contrast of these situations can shape his existence, as it provides a total (logical/scientific)structuring of the world to explain survival. This device also, if the world is structurable this way, not being orientated with respect to mathematical/physical understanding for the purpose of learning only, is not plagued with problems related to completeness-does not drift off into directions of mathematical extrapolation and ensuing deletion of meaning, a lack of valid lingual correspondances, the initial meaning of personal and individual survival would be rarely forgotten or exceeded. A better, more meaningful ontology, depth of knowledge with respect to the common endeavor, common word, self survival, resides apparently at the crossroad to progress. I, myself, in my personal experiences, had become ill at a very young age and know firsthand of the very great life modulation ability, both physically and hence psychologically, of the state of one’s health and the imposed frustrations upon a wholesome conscious and continuous life experience. That this (physical health and disease) can be a universal phenomenon to the life sciences, physical sciences, human sociology, philosophy provides a very different, self and humanistically oriented slant to guide pursuits.. One intellectually first perceives and pursues, in his intellectual life, the more perfect and rarely considers disturbance itself as universal, his mind lended towards the more perfect mathematical and scientific normals of the healthy state; disease, states of disease, the practice of medicine not given a proper titled position of authority in the definition verses maintenance of balance, technological verses experience, valid theoretical construction that includes both the self and nature. There is a valid truth to consider/know at the outset of research, upon which a positive footing/advance verses negative acting exploitation of resources occurs, depends.

  “Soosaar, Andres (2007) Concept of disease as an ontological device to shape human existence,:”http://cogprints.org/5650/
  “Kirsh. M.E., Uniqueness and Self Belonging in Nature (in review), 2007,:”http://www.marvinekirsh.com/presentations.aspx
  “Kirsh, M.E., Form Generates Form: Time as a Second Order Function from Indecision Between Heisenberg Uncertainty and Einstein Legality,(in review), 2007,:”
  http://www.marvinekirsh.com/presentations.aspx
  “Kirsh, M.E., Incompleteness and the Romance With Science, (in review), 2007,:”http://cogprints.org/5611/
  “Kirsh, M.E., Motion, (in review) 2007,:”http://www.marvinekirsh.com/presentations.aspx

• Alfredo Pereira Jr

  27 August 2007 | 13:58

  Thanks Marvin for your interesting comment, the Soosaar reference will be useful for me.

  New replies to Glen:

  GS: ...First, “awareness” is name for, not a cause of, behavior in context.

  Alfredo: “Awareness” is not used with this meaning by the scientific community. Do you have a reference for your usage of “awareness”?

  GS: My point was that all “self-awareness” is induced. It is discriminative control of operant behavior where the discriminative stimulus is the animal’s own behavior. Some “kinds of awareness” are not of this sort as when a rat moves its tail off of a hot light bulb. But the rat does not do this “because it is aware.” Rather, we say “it is aware” because it moves its tail. The evolution of the reflex, and the placing of the tail on the light bulb, “explains the behavior.” Awareness is simply an explanatory fiction.

  Alfredo: Is your awareness of the world an explanatory fiction? If not, why the animal’s awareness would be different?

  GS: As far as, say, a rat that removes its tail from a hot light bulb (as in so-called “tail flick”) I said that “feels pain” is a NAME for the behavioral observation.

  Alfredo: In the scientific literature, it is a name for a conscious mental state that correlates well with the behavioral observation.

  GS: To say that it is a cause is erroneous.

  Alfredo: No, because when the animal (or the human subject, if you prefer)does not feel the pain he does not display the behavior, even with the noxious stimulation being given. This is the case of anesthetized animals, and/or when the communication of the peripheral noxious sensor with the CNS is disrupted.

  GS: Further, I argued that the elicited behavior is FUNCTIONALLY different than the response “I feel pain.”

  Alfredo: Of course it is. But both express the same kind of mental state.

  GS: A human learning to ride a bicycle is usually conscious of its own behavior (in the sense of self-aware), but this plays almost no role in learning to ride a bicycle. Such behavior is largely “procedural” from start to finish.

  Alfredo: Try to learn to ride a bicycle without conscious vision, hearing and touch. Procedural memory refers only to the consolidation process (involving the strenghtning of synapses at the motor system), not to the original experience.

  GS: As I said, certain sorts of “responding to noxious stimuli” are called “feeling pain,” but it does not follow that the response “I feel pain” or “that hurts” is the same functional response class.

  Alfredo: They may not be in the same class of behavioral functions, but they refer to the same class of mental functions: the class of painful experiences.

  GS: The “Zombie argument” is full of unanalyzed “assumptions.” Nonetheless, I sort of like the issue because it raises exactly the point I am trying to make; non-human animals are largely Zombies in the philosophical sense. This is not because they are “incapable of feeling pain” in the sense of “being aware of their own pain responses,” but they have not learned to discriminate their own pain responses. A rat can move its tail off of a hot light bulb (a reflex) and they can be trained to engage in “voluntary responses” (i.e., operant behavior) that terminate noxious stimuli, but they do not “feel pain” in the sense of “self-aware” until they are trained to do so.

  Alfredo: OK, but our discussion is not about self-awareness (or at least I thought it was not). I agree with you about self-awareness of animals.

  GS: And needless to say, I think that your statement that this “ignores how real brains work” is a matter of assuming what you are trying to argue.

  Alfredo: No, there are good evidences (e.g. Joseph LeDoux research on the role of the amygdala in emotional responses) that the voluntary motor response that triggers observable behavior, in most cases relevant to our discussion (as in the case of a behavioral manifestation of feeling pain), occurs after the conscious processing of the stimulus.
  The E. Morsella’s model of the function of phenomenal consciousness (called “Supramodular Integration Theory”) is – in my opinion – an excellent illustration of how the brain really works. You can check it at his page (see my notice about his new Lab in this site). According to his model, it is the conscious response that determines the behavior.
  Of course, there are cases when the response to a stimulus bypasses consciousness (and in some cases – basic reflexes – it also bypasses the brain!), but in most important cases for animal survival the participation of consciousness is necessary to generate adaptive behavior.
  This is a long discussion, I am just putting my cards on the table…

  Thanks again!

  Best Regards,

  Alfredo

• Glen Sizemore

  27 August 2007 | 16:20

  Thanks Marvin for your interesting comment, the Soosaar reference will be useful for me.

  Alfredo: New replies to Glen:

  Glen: I will designate my new replies by “Glen.”

  GS: ...First, “awareness” is name for, not a cause of, behavior in context.

  Alfredo: “Awareness” is not used with this meaning by the scientific community. Do you have a reference for your usage of “awareness”?

  Glen: I don’t need one because I argue against the gratuitous creation of meanings for ordinary terms. When one does that, one is imposing one’s preconceptions on a subject matter, rather than investigating a subject matter. The fact is that we say “the dog is aware of the cat” when we observe certain sorts of behavior in the dog in a particular context. It is no different than saying “chair” when we see a chair. This is how ordinary language works. Later we learn to say things like “we infer awareness” and “awareness causes the behavior in question” but these are different sorts of responses that are, umm, encouraged by academia within a particular philosophical framework. Indeed, terms that are today understood as descriptive of “mental” phenomena all once referred ,in a quite straightforward way, to behavior and its context. And, by the way, I consider myself “part of the scientific community” and I do not use the term in the fashion that you do. True, people like me are in the minority of scientists and philosophers, but we are not nonexistent.

  GS: My point was that all “self-awareness” is induced. It is discriminative control of operant behavior where the discriminative stimulus is the animal’s own behavior. Some “kinds of awareness” are not of this sort as when a rat moves its tail off of a hot light bulb. But the rat does not do this “because it is aware.” Rather, we say “it is aware” because it moves its tail. The evolution of the reflex, and the placing of the tail on the light bulb, “explains the behavior.” Awareness is simply an explanatory fiction.
  Alfredo: Is your awareness of the world an explanatory fiction?

  Glen: Yes, it is. Or, rather, as I said, it is either a NAME for certain phenomena (which is its correct meaning) or it is used as a cause of the behavior that it really just names. People do not behave in certain ways “because they are aware” anymore than they do intelligent things because they are “intelligent.”

  Alfredo: If not, why the animal’s awareness would be different?

  Glen: Now you know the answer.

  GS: As far as, say, a rat that removes its tail from a hot light bulb (as in so-called “tail flick”) I said that “feels pain” is a NAME for the behavioral observation.

  Alfredo: In the scientific literature, it is a name for a conscious mental state that correlates well with the behavioral observation.

  Glen: So much the worse for the “scientific” literature.

  GS: To say that it is a cause is erroneous.
  Alfredo: No, because when the animal (or the human subject, if you prefer)does not feel the pain he does not display the behavior,[]

  Glen: But you have no independent way to observe the feeling, so what you say is in no way inconsistent with my view. When we apply a stimulus, and we do not see the response, we do not invoke “feels pain.” And if the stimulus used to invoke the sort of response we call “feeling pain,” and it no longer does so (perhaps because we have made some pharmacological or surgical manipulation), we say “the animal no longer feels the pain.” This is, as I said, perfectly consistent with “feels pain” as a name for a behavioral observation.

  Alfredo: []even with the noxious stimulation being given. This is the case of anesthetized animals, and/or when the communication of the peripheral noxious sensor with the CNS is disrupted.

  Glen: Yes, some sort of manipulation has eliminated the response and so we say “the animal no longer feels pain.”

  GS: Further, I argued that the elicited behavior is FUNCTIONALLY different than the response “I feel pain.”

  Alfredo: Of course it is. But both express the same kind of mental state.

  Glen: Needless to say, I disagree, for reasons that I have pointed out. You cannot show that behavior is caused by a “mental state” and this is not an hypothesis or theory – it is a philosophical assumption, and it is, in my opinion, a bad one. There are, however, some empirical questions that follow from my perspective. Typically, “pain” is studied in non-humans by observing reflexes and operant escape responses. In addition, “pain” could be studied by training animals to report pain using a procedure resembling drug discrimination (though this last one has never been done). My guess is that various pharmacological and physiological manipulations would impact these responses differently. Indeed, though we never published the data, a friend and I eliminated operant escape responding (escape from electric shock) by putting DAMGO in the amygdala, but reflexive responses were left intact. No doubt one could make arguments that the different classes of response all “express” some common state, but this would merely be a way to salvage one’s philosophical perspective. I think that the reason no one has trained “pain discrimination” in animals is a direct result of the common flawed perspective. There are many logistical hurdles to such an ambitious project, but the payoff would be a way to directly compare humans and non-humans since a lot of the human pain literature involves humans “reporting” their pain.

  GS: A human learning to ride a bicycle is usually conscious of its own behavior (in the sense of self-aware), but this plays almost no role in learning to ride a bicycle. Such behavior is largely “procedural” from start to finish.
  Alfredo: Try to learn to ride a bicycle without conscious vision, hearing and touch. Procedural memory refers only to the consolidation process (involving the strenghtning of synapses at the motor system), not to the original experience.

  Glen: I’m afraid this is incorrect and, again, simply a reflection of a philosophical perspective. A circus bear can be trained to ride a bicycle but it is not conscious in the sense of self-aware as I said. Yes, the bear would be conscious of vision and proprioception, but that meaning of “conscious” here is simply “responds to stimuli.” Now it is my turn to argue that your meaning is not the one used by the “scientific community.” Explicit and implicit memory etc. can be studied with no observation of the nervous system and these terms come from psychology, not physiology.

  GS: As I said, certain sorts of “responding to noxious stimuli” are called “feeling pain,” but it does not follow that the response “I feel pain” or “that hurts” is the same functional response class.

  Alfredo: They may not be in the same class of behavioral functions, but they refer to the same class of mental functions: the class of painful experiences.

  Glen: Again, this is not an hypothesis or theory, it is an assumption. I, too, have my assumptions, but I do not mistake them for hypotheses and theories. By the way, the term “experience” once meant “things that happen to a person.” It is only recently that the term began to refer to “subjective events.”

  GS: The “Zombie argument” is full of unanalyzed “assumptions.” Nonetheless, I sort of like the issue because it raises exactly the point I am trying to make; non-human animals are largely Zombies in the philosophical sense. This is not because they are “incapable of feeling pain” in the sense of “being aware of their own pain responses,” but they have not learned to discriminate their own pain responses. A rat can move its tail off of a hot light bulb (a reflex) and they can be trained to engage in “voluntary responses” (i.e., operant behavior) that terminate noxious stimuli, but they do not “feel pain” in the sense of “self-aware” until they are trained to do so.

  Alfredo: OK, but our discussion is not about self-awareness (or at least I thought it was not). I agree with you about self-awareness of animals.

  Glen: But this seems to contradict what you said above, and it also seems to contradict the mainstream philosophical view that you seem to be expressing. The common notion, it seems to me, is that the animal “feels pain” and because it “feels pain” it presses the lever to turn off the electric shock. In lay terms the notion is something like “If an animal in an escape procedure could talk, it would say ‘that hurts’ as well as pressing the lever to turn off the shock.” That is, you want to ague that the subjective experience of a rat in an escape procedure, and a human saying “I am in pain” all stem from a common sort of “mental state.” I disagree. The issue is complicated, and you have never heard an argument like mine, though I have hear your argument before – countless times.

  GS: And needless to say, I think that your statement that this “ignores how real brains work” is a matter of assuming what you are trying to argue.

  Alfredo: No, there are good evidences (e.g. Joseph LeDoux research on the role of the amygdala in emotional responses) that the voluntary motor response that triggers observable behavior, in most cases relevant to our discussion (as in the case of a behavioral manifestation of feeling pain), occurs after the conscious processing of the stimulus.
  The E. Morsella’s model of the function of phenomenal consciousness (called “Supramodular Integration Theory”) is – in my opinion – an excellent illustration of how the brain really works. You can check it at his page (see my notice about his new Lab in this site). According to his model, it is the conscious response that determines the behavior.
  Of course, there are cases when the response to a stimulus bypasses consciousness (and in some cases – basic reflexes – it also bypasses the brain!), but in most important cases for animal survival the participation of consciousness is necessary to generate adaptive behavior.
  This is a long discussion, I am just putting my cards on the table.

  Glen: But the above discussion is simply the superposition of a philosophical interpretation on data. I have already argued (or at least implied) that “consciousness,” “awareness” etc. are so muddled and so full of conceptual trash as to be nearly meaningless. To me “conscious processing” is a bunch of gibberish. Tell me exactly what was done and what was measured in these experiments and I may be able to comment in more detail. One often cannot tell from the abstracts (and often, unfortunately, from the Procedure sections of such papers) what was done because terms for the unobserved entities are often used instead of the measurements that are supposed to be the so-called “operational definitions” of them.

  Alfredo: Thanks again!

  Glen: Thanks to you, as well.

  Cordially,
  Glen

• marvin kirsh

  28 August 2007 | 02:58

  This is very reminescent of the Bertrand Russell notions on free will, and inherited learning/knowledge. If one thinks very simply(which is about as far as all of this goes I think)..all we do know(first), I know, you know, is shape, size, back, front and differences ..I think in corresponding analogy to the way the we see- ambient verses proximal (focused) light..a wold of differences/contrasts, that are at the basic root just distances with something shifted(a distance) that creates a world(collage) of distances from something passed forwards. From DNA to what ever I think this is true..and also true that most discussion, discussion of all types, refers to a beginning and end, chicken and egg..we all have beginning memories/self beginning..but in nature one cannot be established, but that we live in a world of beginnings and ends. Even when we say chicken and egg, it is implied that the chicken developed from the egg-is older. We tend to keep going with our questions, though we need always only to state it observation at some point…egg-chicken…egg-chicken..egg-chicken…viola…oscillation/time..andwe can begin to sort out hoards of excess mental labors(though labourous…but viola). A dogs world (though a valid question as to whether we might say world with respect to dog) does not and cannot extend past the dog, your world past you, and with respect to animals worlds overlap. The vibration of a dogs bark can be made to say anything with a mechanical aparatus,without it (a mechanical apparatus) we still hear something without language used-we hear something that can become consistent as unmistakeable communication(100 percent of the time there is no other interpretation)... the dog knows you ..you know the dog…from being ona similiar “wavelength”, that obviously involves the tangeable world. Is still perplexing “can the dog think?” etc…”what makes him different?” still a difference when one seeks medically to determine the difference-as a dog does not have this facility itself (like comparing air with a vacuum-they are not miscible interchangeable-air remains air and vacuum, vacuum-neither defineable in terms of the other but presence or absense) so medical comparisons are about people only and not dogs as no answer is extractable in this endeavor..but as far as our reflexes maybe concerned to the tangeable because our means of locomotion are related. A dog could not question human cognition..what passes his nose that might from your point of view potentially surface question..is in the vacuum area in the dog. The question reduces to one of statment. (i.e stating oscillation rather than exploration of which came first ..chicken or egg-one could say the egg(which births all chickens),came from the big bang…but if one follows through with this line of question (where did the big bang come from ..energy..where did the energy come from to make a big bang..distances/differences ..passing forwards…the big bang is now the egg… i.e no beginning or end..but transmissions and a world Shakespears Pucks..those macro things(of what we see) in the middle reflecting from one place to another. If all the pucks things are given one name (i.e. the name of a set) they dropout of the equation as everywhere as simply as a real vacuum does not exist and cannot be part of a real equation,,but the difference of i.e. “Puck” is everywhere (a “value”). I do not wish to get into anatomy (my training is in biochemistry though that is superfulous to my point also)but that if one wishes to discuss “consciousness” and refer to non human animals..though even I believing better..can see how scientifically one might be drawn to seek answers in anatomy and neuroscience ..I do not think a science will evolve by the same argument above concerning the dog his world and the human -his world from physcial(yet in motion) anatomical structures and some of the common knowing(e.g of pain etc) we share with animals. I am not sure that one might even argue about complexity this way as some very simple species seem to have more complex genomes than the more complex. There is no foundation for such comparisons… DNA which appears as a valid code that is transmitted, cannot be much more than something related via two(3-D) and not one dimension(a string)in forwards manner creating new sets of distances in a new environment. In what ever manner the conflict always reduces to fact/value problems (see Hillary Putnam..-..Fact-Value Dichotomy”) things of two in nature and no three..we tend, with our best insights to put the name on the whole set in the same group with the set..nature is unique, built of uniquenesses, but it is not a member of something else that includes itself

• marvin kirsh

  28 August 2007 | 13:50

  I had one other comment related to a statement related in Alfredo’s introduction…

  ..Pure experience involves:

  a) the system transcending its own
  previous boundaries, “going out of itself” to meet other systems in
  the world

  b) the system being affected by other systems, and

  c) a process of self-organization that combines both movements in a
  process by which the system constructs its dynamical identity.

  What I see as the trouble with this, is a basic assumption in the words(ing?) the system transcending its own
  previous boundaries, “going out of itself”. One cannot assume that the system is independant of other systems at any time in its’ existance. Rigid, yet very simple logic demands witness to all events to define them; nature maybe either an assuming conundrum fan, or so naive that one may write any intention upon it ..that witness, itself, maybe all that exists. Neurons, in the description of events, witness eachother, etc, and all events inside or out are witness processes. So how does one say say so from a third party point of view and their still not be more to it. I like to think of this in terms of relation self relation and the skin of an onion; all relation depends(or does not exist) on actual relation of for example skin location A1 of A relating to skin location B of B1..mutual witness that occurs day and night, internally and externally, one cannot propose the relation A1-B2 if it did not ever happen. Our thoughts produce change to ourselves, as well as others we relate to. A baby after birth, might or might not have a prexisting natural ethic or knowledge, but it seems more plausable that his own perceptions of back front etc can integrate spontaneously with the external to produce a “knowing”, one might know the whole biological construction of a being, but its’ cry in the first moments of birth,its’ behavior and actions are not predicable from it. In the relations of animals to people, people to people, etc there is stopping point where our research is not only dissection, it is naturally unethical arising from linear addition that exceeds comprehension-firm philosophical footing is demanded in advance of question construction. A baseball might be hit much further with two batters, one swinging the other, but if the ball hits in the playing field, it damages the arm of number one batter, number two need not even be mentioned. It maybe that all(awareness) is born from observation/witness alone and not connected(able),as we would like, with the nuts and bolts of anatomy, but at the basic root factors of transmission and witness(of neurons electrical impulses etc ) as properties of everything.

• Sumeet Jindal

  15 September 2007 | 09:49

  My 2 cents on Consciousness.

  My concept of consciousness will be limited as compared to Alfredo’s ideas. I think there are two concepts in hand.

  1. Contents of consciousness.(What is conscious and what’s not)
  2. Role of consciousness in our reality/Biology

  I will attack only the first one.

  I agree with biologists that they judge the conscious states like ‘being in pain’ or ‘Orgasmic Pleasure’ from the behavior of organisms.

  More specifically it can be stated as. ’A certain kind of behavior’ => ‘Particular state of brain’

  i.e. ‘Crying’ => ‘painful state of brain/mind’
  (Note that saying that ‘Crying is pain’ is problematic for me; explained later)

  but this logic is not universally true. e.g. in movies people imitate various kind of behavior without actually having any ‘painful’ experiences. In theory you can train a Robot to imitate the whole human behavior without establishing any special states of ‘brain/mind’. The basic idea is that ‘Orgasmic Pleasure’ is something happening in the brain.

  This logic is applicable to biological organisms because they are also employing similar mechanism as the human brain. It’s an assumption/ approximation.

  I am particularly against the following statements. ’Consciousness is behavior’ ’Pain(Experience) is neural patterns in some part of the brain’

  Here we are mixing ”’Abstract Ideas’/Computations” with ‘Processes going on in the universe/brain’.

  Alfredo has also raised this point when he said

  ”It falls in the “Zombie” chapter of Philosophy of Mind, a chapter that systematically ignores how real brains work”

  I would like to comment on it.

  Some one makes the following claim:
  ”The voices coming out of the radio correlates with the some electrical signals in the circuit”

  Or in other words ”Voices of radio is due to some electrical patterns going inside the circuits.”

  Now my question is “If we model these circuits in the Computer will we get a ‘Radio’?”

  No, we don’t. Then what did we missed? EM waves?

  I am not saying that brain is receiving a ‘Stream of consciousness’ or ‘brain is like a radio’

  But if we are saying that ‘Pain(Experience) is neural patterns in some part of the brain’ it does not necessarily capture everything about ‘Painful experience’. By just simulating these patterns inside the computer we may miss something fundamental to universe’.

  Let me again clarify what a ‘process’ can do and an ‘Abstract computations’ cannot do.(In theory)

  Process:
  1. Create Big Bang in Laboratory.
  2. Tap into ‘Electromagnetic waves’
  3. Bend the space time to accelerate a space-craft more than speed of light.

  ‘Abstract Computations’:
  1. Create Realistic 3D scenes.
  2. Imitate human behavior.
  etc.

  ‘Abstract Computations’ cannot do anything mentioned above.

  Now, the question is:
  Why do certain neural patterns correspond to ‘painful experience’ and some correspond to ‘Orgasmic pleasure’?

  Saying that ‘Neural patterns’ create consciousness is a big problem for me.

  Because it will imply ‘Neural patterns’ are some sort of computation, and I don’t know how to separate ‘A conscious computation from a unconscious computations’.

  Are computers already doing some ‘Conscious Computations’ and not telling us?’

  Thanks
  Sumeet

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