Brain Physiology, Cognition and Consciousness group: topic
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Discussing "What is conciousness?"
Hans Ricke
Tuesday, 07 July 2009 04:53 UTC
Serge started discussing our article in the JCS newsgroup.The abstract can be found here
There have been a few remarks and comments here and there, maybe these can be repeated in this thread. Unfortunately I am very busy, so I will just try my best to help with this discussion.
As an incentive thre quotes from our article: we suggested to reconceptualize the term “quale”:
Our earlier argument implies both that the term ‘qualia’ is useful
and that its meaning should follow from more general properties of
subjective experiences: 1. they occur in the present only, 2. they are
complex, 3. they are not repeatable and also 4. they are not fully
retrievable.
Also: In this theoretical framework, the human individual does not seem to have an unchangeable ‘Self’ or center. On the contrary: Human beings seem to be changing constantly.
And: Human consciousness has to be understood as a product of a long
process of evolution in which it has been shaped by cycles that include
action, perception, memory, cognition, interpretation, etc.
Happy discussion
Hans
Dear All,
thank you for your input, the discussion of the article is by now closed.
Yours friendly
Hans
Updated 09 September 2009 07:29 UTC
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Hans,
I read your paper ‘What is Consciousness? Towards a Preliminary Definition’. It is clear you are dutiful, diligent and earnest. If I trusted that anyone could cobble together a definition from the box of parts we have before us I would certainly trust you and Alfredo to do it. No question. You have the faith, orthodoxy and methodological clarity of excellent scientists. Among your beliefs (one I do not share) is that all the pieces are already in the box or will be found just around the next corner with additional reductively reasoned research or an averaged-out consensus. In the box are the full gamut of folk psychology terms, the full gamut of consciousness referents overtly expressed or not, all the well-accepted scientific and philosophical theories, and an ever expanding plethora of information on brain mechanisms. What’s oddly missing is the very thing that consciousness is in one sense responsible for providing – an explanatory context to make sense of it all. It is not something that can be found by the ordinary methods of scientific reduction. If it was it would be in the box already. Another belief I do not share is that the missing part, the explanatory component, is an inherent aspect of the situation, is simply out there waiting to be plucked whole from the tree of knowledge. Explanatory matrices are creative acts. We make them up and then project them onto the world to inform our activities and feed ourselves meaning. We’ve been doing this with the most rudimentary explanatory tools – matter and spirit concepts. It is time to creatively rethink this bigger picture. The issue of consciousness, because it does not conform to our dualistic enterprise of measurability and mystery, provides us the opportunity, impetus and symbolic metaphors to expand our explanatory matrix. I invite you and Alfredo and any other persons reading here to employ your considerable talents thuswise. In a sense you already are as (whether you admit it or not) all cobbling is creative. Your referential nucleus concept is surprisingly hearty considering the milieu of confusion and disagreement out of which it was ostensibly averaged. As a small note I ask you to consider including the full spectrum of awareness in nature (human and non-human) as an informative aspect of this nucleus concept and to alert yourselves to the anthropocentric impulses misinforming the general cobbling activities.
Thank you for inviting me to read and comment and thank you for your well-thought-out work.
Best,
CH -
Dear Christopher, many thanks for your kind comments. I have been thinking about what kind of explanatory framework is missing in our field, but my conclusion is that nothing is really missing, the problem is that the necessary knowledge is spread in several scientific disciplines and nobody has been able to solve the big picture puzzle. This paper was not intended to provide any explanation, but to offer a preliminary definition based on a kind of sociological survey (how people use the term), leading to the idea of a ’referential nucleus". If there is basic agreement about this nucleus, the phenomenon to be explained becomes more clear to everybody – and then, we will be more able to recognize a good explanation when it appears!
Best
Alfredo -
Otmar, I will answer any question you have about our paper, if you contextualize it properly.
Best
Alfredo -
Otmar, I applaud your putting the cards on the table in your “finding common ground” Forum. There you explictly state that you consider the conscious subject to be a Soul. If you would like to discuss in that context, the “What is Consciousness” paper is not adequate, in spite of you finding that we have some partial agreements.
If you would like to discuss the paper in the context that it was published, you should not pick a part of a sentence (without even indicating the page whare it is located) and make dozens of interrogations about it, without minimally summarizing the section of the paper from which it was drawn, and the argument that was being developed in that section. Otherwise, you continue to give me the impression that you did not read the paper, since many of the answers you ask for are explictly or implictly given there.
Alfredo -
Dear Christopher,
you wrote: “Among your beliefs (one I do not share) is that all the pieces are already in the box or will be found just around the next corner with additional reductively reasoned research or an averaged-out consensus.”
I do not believe this and also Alfredo does not. Where did you find that in our paper?
How about you comment on something we actually stated?
Yours friendly
Hans -
Hi Alfredo,
I appreciate and respect your logic and purpose. My concern is that there have now been 15 yrs of international conferences in which multiple fields of knowledge have come together to share information on the issues surrounding consciousness and still we’ve not come to a working explanation. The information and knowledge are readily available to all and sundry. If nothing is missing, whither the explanation? I’ve attended a number of these conferences and it is clear to me that each field of endeavor is speaking to the subject of consciousness from within the beliefs and purposes unique to their respective fields of interest. Neuroscientists are talking about it as something happening in neurons; psychologists are focusing on the integration of the human psyche into the soup of social norms; spiritual practitioners are focusing on the internal subjective experience of well-being; philosophers are polishing their matter/mind conundrums; etc. You’ve done a yeoman job of averaging out some of the common content but this correlative approach cannot provide the larger umbrella of insight needed to cover the disparity of beliefs and interests. The explanation, given this inherent disparity, requires an extremely broad and fundamental reinterpretation — something large enough and broad enough for each area of interest to find their purpose accommodated and accounted for – and yet meaningful enough to be explanatory – to indicate something of the purpose and origin of a conscious condition (not just what it feels like in humans, not just what is happening in neurons, not just behaviors and languages, not just in relation to concepts about mind and matter). The necessary explanatory device is not in the box and can’t be cobbled from those parts (it’s not that kind of puzzle) – the parts merely indicate something of the scale of what is needed, of what is missing.
If I understand it correctly your intent is to provide the referential nucleus or common ground from which an explanation can then be attained. You are breaking it down into averageable parts in the common way of good science. An explanatory umbrella is very very very very very different thing. It is not averageable. It is not measurable. It is not the result of reductions. I think you can build a mildly serviceable kind of common ground with your nucleus concept (and that would be a big and great thing given what I’ve seen) but I do not see how others can use it to attain the missing explanation since most of their beliefs and concerns are reduced out of the nucleus by the averaging process. A good explanation would provide not only the common ground but a large enough matrix to accommodate what is not common to all parties – the interesting bits.
I don’t want to be misunderstood here as dissuading you from forming common ground; I just see your larger purpose and intent more expediently and economically achieved by aiming your considerable powers directly at the missing explanation—-something that is hard to convey to you if you believe the explanation is already out there in the parts (the unspoken assumption in your paper that I am responding to here). An explanation does not just suddenly appear. It takes minds like yours, that see and understand the full spectrum of disparities inherent in the subject, to get the explanation going. By saying it’s already out there in the parts box and waiting for it to emerge on it’s own is to permanently stall this already long long road ‘toward’ a science of consciousness. It appears to me as if no one actually wants to get there. Perhaps it’s just that no one is willing to think in the way it takes to formulate a useable explanation or to accept the thinking of others that do. I am inviting you to shift your beliefs just enought to allow that an explanation is doable and necessary and I am inviting you to participate in its formulation.
Best,
CH -
Dear Christopher,
many words, little said. What are you after with explanation?
It is a different task, go for it! We were not after a definition that explains.
Consciousness needs in the first place a proper definition in the sense that (almost) all researchers talk about the same “thing”. This is far from being the case.
Consciousness needs to be properly described by properties that actually exist.
Explanation can happen thereafter. Moreover understanding precedes explanation, a rule every school teacher knows and tries to follow. We have got to understand first and say explicitly what we claim to understand.
Yours friendly
Hans -
Hi Hans,
I’m glad you don’t believe that all the parts are in the box — we are on the same page; though you are clearly out of sync with Alfredo and your own paper. Given that you personally know there are parts missing how can you expect the average you derive from the box of parts (your referential nucleus) to be significantly meaningful? The field of consciousness studies is in confusion for a lack of an explanation of the subject matter. Isn’t an average of confusion still confusion? I am exagerating my point here to give rise. Seems like fun. I do in fact think there can be good uses for the referential nucleus I just don’t think those uses lead to an explanation, which seems to be your intent; at least that’s what Alfredo says.
Best,
CH -
Dear Christopher,
the referential nucleus is not “ours”. It is an approach developed by Alfredo to find implicit definitions and explicate them. The one we have been referring to as an example is the one most commonly present in Cognitive Neuroscience (CN).
That should not be understood that we adopt the referential nucleus we have found there.Much of the paper tries to demonstrate that this approach (CN) is valuable but limited.
In the qualia section we point explicitly to those limitations and difficulties, thus trying to establish four relevant properties of conscious experience.Yours friendly
Hans -
Hi Hans,
I read the paper and gleaned your (at least Alfredo’s) intent and am saying not much different from what you yourself state above
-that the approach is valuable but limited. I am pointing out one of the ways it is limited that is not covered within the text. There are others. The exclusion of non-human conscious properties is a serious omission as it excludes the evolutionary origins of our own conscious properties. The referential nucleus idea risks permanently excluding important areas of future research that would ultimately better contextualize human consciousness and provide a broader and more useful explanation of the conscious condition. This is something I would like to hear Alfredo address if he has the time and inclination.I would like to hear you address your own statement that: “Consciousness needs to be properly described by properties that actually exist.” What are those properties and in what sense do they exist? And try not to be rude in your response. Comments like “many words, little said” can only make me lose respect for you. Keep in mind that you yourself invited me to post and comment here and that I took the time and care to do so; and also note that your rudeness was in response to comments I had addressed to Alfredo. Mind your manners. Thanks.
Best,
CH
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