In Advaita Philosophy propounded by Adi Sankara and others in India (similar to Panpsychism, but not exactly same), there is a beautiful example of passenger sitting in a boat and moving down a river. While the boat is moving forward, the passenger may apparently experience that the bank (the land) is moving backward. The passenger has to think and look around to contextulize using other perceptive data points to know that she is actually moving forward and the banks are not moving backward. In this example, what Adi Sankara goes further and explains that the perception (P) is an "outward in" activity, presented by our senses. The passenger knows that she is sitting in a boat and it is moving forward. But in a slow moving boat, the body's perception of movement may not be strong enough for the experience to trigger that she is moving. So in a situation where the outside stimulus is less (as in a slow moving boat), the experience takes upper hand in interpreting the state. Here the experience confides to the stationary state, causing the perception of the banks moving backward. This means, our experience is a projection. On the other hand, the experience (Qualia) is an inside out activity. No matter what is seen outside the world, our projected understanding give us the "experience or Qualia". This also means that the experience can influence our perception too. That is what, if other data points are not available, we may be under the illusion that the banks are moving backward. Now if we think about lack of enough data points presented by our own senses, what would we do to go beyond our experience and understand the actual truth? This is also discussed by J. Krishnamurthi, who apparently had several talks with Dr. David Bohm. (Sorry for the long explanation). But wonderful explanation of the problem. Thank you.
Agree or not (and I do), this is philosophy at its purest sense, the kind the ancient Greeks practiced. Not concerned with history for history's sake but with what we can say about the world, given what we (think) we know about it today.
As always, Elitzur's rationale is ingenious and impeccable. Is it any wonder that Chalmers goes quiet about it? In Elitzur's example, since Chalmers can think of a robot without feelings but the robot can't think of a robot that doesn't see toys, by definition, this means their confusions are different. If I had a paycheck and a following like Chalmers, I too would pretend I didn't hear this argument. Great job, Elitzur.
I have been trying to explain this idea of perception of colors for years and have not found a single person seeming to understand what I am trying to explain. Wow, think you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We know from shared NDEs and the curious "telepathy" the people undergo while in clinical death, as well as the cases of blind people seeing while out of their body, that qualia are the same for everyone and are interpreted exactly the same by every mind. In fact I personally experienced that sharing of subjective experiences, during an NDE at age 11, in which I had the thoughts, feelings and inner states of mind of three other persons present for me "on the outside" - this is how I knew that one of them was a woman and another was a man, even though I had no visual or auditory perception of them.
@@astrophage381 Search for the documentary ‘rethinking death’ that presents results of the last decades of resuscitation research, in it one of the doctors reports that a patient in cardiac arrest was able to read his mind (I think that was cardiologist Michael Sabom). For blind people seeing while dead, the best known case is Vicki Noratuk, and there’s a study of a dozen more published somewhere IIRC. All put together + my own direct experience of this common feature of NDEs (the ‘telepathic communication’ often reported by survivors) is consistent across the board.
Conciousness is biochemical recording of information in a single direction, for the most part anyway, where because we are made of matter and not antimatter, we record information in one direction in a fluid, bidiretional space-time continuum. We are the ones that, because of our chemistry, are bound to perceive time in one direction . Time itself could care less. Now, there are indications of possible particle interactions backwards in time, with phantom and multiple real possible quantum outcomes possible backwards in time as much as forwards in time. But this does not change our perceived reality if information is not transmitted from the "future" to the "past". Again, time could care less which direction a particle is going or how "inormation" flows--but your own atoms do care, and simply marrily tootle along in time in one direction, recording information only in that direction.
Mr Elitzur, I think I might have come a bit further in this problem, as answer to Leibniz. Bergson said experience is time related. The problem is, everything experiences the same time according to newton (and Einstein similarly, says everything has a proper time, a fourth dimension of time), no matter a rock, a bird or a man. This is where panpsychism etc comes from: simultaneity, and the fact we have consciousness as humans (according to Descartes). My solution is to redefine time. If time is intimately related to consciousness, and you say things that don't experience time cannot be conscious, you are one step further to a future benchmark for consciousness. It happens to be I found a way to redefine time: adiabatic systems don't experience time, because they are cyclical, and isothermic objects experience time. And therefore, the conclusion is or must be, that only isothermic objects can have consciousness. I did not say *all*, but at least it's an objective minimum requirement, that separates the wheat from the chaff. Regards
Whether we say qualitative or quantitative which is a subcategory of qualitative or quale; both are quale describing the massive collection of quale we call consciousness. Whether its circularity of reason or circulation of consciousness itself; its still circularity.
I don't find Chalmers argument very convincing - as much as I would like to given I'm Australian and I should cheer our philosophers. It seems to me that the way a human is different to say a robot or a zombie is an inevitability, because humans would not be able to function as they do without qualia and consciousness. That we must have a mental abstraction of self in order to predict and manage this self through time. To manage our future we need an abstract idea of self so you can imagine possibilities and goals to direct your present action towards. As a computer engineer I know the importance of internal interfaces and abstraction within complex data systems. Consciousness to me, appears to be a solution to the problem of abstracting a conception of self, and representing sensory experience to internal abstractions, in a way that this conception of self can recognise itself as an object moving in time that needs to experience and interface/control events towards future priorities. If we were pure zombies we would be reacting to the present, and would be without such necessity for more sophisticated abstraction and internal interfaces, as these are a prerequisite to complicated and complete management of a being into the future.
this is just the same as the idea that we simply can’t define consciousness and of course if we cannot we also can’t really describe or assume any understanding of another’s experience of it except that they predict everything we we and do that relies on all the physical laws and so we assume it is “similar “…
I love the argument for the possible connection of consciousness and the rest, but Chalmers might also be right for one simple reason. Whatever is concivable within language can be produced even if by sheer playing on words. Contradictions aren't something that we observe, and we can't really imagine them, but we can speak about it and ponder the concept. Same goes here, this idea might get produced by zombie, just by brain playing with language. That being said i still think this argument is strong.
I find something lacking about Leibniz's example of going inside someone's brain and then saying that he himself will know less about his experience than "the windmill itself". Well you know some people that were blinded and went through an operation to restore their sight, have to relearn to interpret what their eyes see in a way that allows them to function. So I think there is very little doubt that in actuality all that exists are sense perceptions, be it physically neural impulses or something like that, and then on top of that there is an interpreting layer. So in exactly the same way Leibniz should have gone further and say, it would only take a bit more time to build the required apparatus that will be able to interpret all of the physical information inside of the windmill, and more importantly that no single interpretation is correct and valid. You know some people are masochist for example, so they interpret exactly the same common pain sensations in a very different way than most of us. We tend to re-interpret our past experiences all the time, so even after the fact what we call "experience" is not really a well defined thing. We only have memories and our interpretation of them change all through our lives...
@@ashplv663 You can question your experiences just as you can question what you see. Perhaps it's a mirage, when it comes to sight. Perhaps you remember your experience wrongly, or missed some important features that are pointed out to you later regarding events. I think we just invest emotion into our sense perceptions and call that experience. What is that emotional investment? Our need to ascribe meaning to the events of our lives, but we don't have to do that. The fact is, we don't do that all the time, we daydream and during that time our sense perceptions operate more or less without this more emotional interpreting layer...
My god :) I thought about this problem with color :) I like to think and it cam to me question do we actually see same tone of color or even same color? We learn to associate objects with words. Now I have better word to use quality not tone :)
3. How can you/ chalmers presume it to be q not p.. lines are blur .. bigger question for me is the difference between the known and the unknown.. the dimension of unknown is there for a reason.. God/quale himself is learning.. the theory that we will know will kill the unknown hence making the world incomplete ... Unknown is what makes reality complete..~a descendent of rama.
I said to my friends who studied computer science and also neuroscience aplied to computer science and I told him. We are robots, we are making robots but we are the robots. we are the more advance generation of robots that nature has built and we want to built other robots which does not go so advanced like us, and the best way to make robots are copying us and making us better, but think about us, think about all life form as robot. a very sofisticate biomechanical and engineering device. Nothing differences David the Prometheus android from his maker. there is not consiousness as spirit, just insteractions in our billions of brain neuron wave formsand the organ who take the roll of manage those interactions, priorize them, organize them, so why we cannot call to that consciousness, which in fact are just those interaction nothing else but lets call it consciousness because it is much more easy to mention to it. Languages take important roll to enpower it. language, math, music, give to this management organ with billions of neurons which take picture of those interactions, tools to label them, take actions, control, to organize them and the experience of that managements give us the feeling of the exitence of a Me, which it is a really poor me compared with what the body itself can do.
there is nothing unique about humans from machines when comparing to animals where we speak of the pituitary gland which is a communication interface between the brain ( hypothalamus )and body endocrine system and while descartes point is taken that we are all machines also animals are not lacking this difference he used . i don’t believe the professor is agreeing on this point
I see it could be interpreted that way, but also not as he says it kind of loops back to physicalism. More explicit version would be "matter is a product of mind or matter is in mind"
@@fandacy all things must be perceived/experienced in order to be quantified... Surely mentalism is true one way or another... Because of how the brain works... 🤔 But it seems that matter is independent of our perception of it - unless you factor in your complete and full experiences from birth to death as a creator and maintainer of reality, in partnership with "other." All things rational become absurd on the edge of death and beyond. Without the experience, all of our world is meaningless.
Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon. This is common in physics: macroscopic systems can acquire laws of physics that do not exist at the microscopic level.
But we make the distinction between fundamental laws and emergent laws... that is, we tend to think there is a set of fundamental laws that are absolute, and the emergent laws may or may not arise depending on the particular system. So I think the question is really, whether consciousness has any place at the fundamental level of nature. After all, this is a macroscopic system that is making the statement that the capability to refer to itself and say "I am an emergent phenomenon" is an emergent phenomenon :) So it's not clear whether this system is really in a position to make that statement with full confidence. It can never be free of this "emergence", if it really exists, and say for certain whether consciousness is there in a more fundamental level. I think that's why the ultimate solution to this problem will remain elusive forever...
Claiming that emergent phenomenon have laws that cannot be determined from the fundamental laws is not agreed upon, and I'd argue most physicists are reductionist and would argue against your claim. Plenty of good content on closer to truth exploring this.
this is just the same as the idea that we simply can’t define consciousness and of course if we cannot we also can’t really describe or assume any understanding of another’s experience of it except that they predict everything we we and do that relies on all the physical laws and so we assume it is “similar “…
