He raises the question in the New York Times Sunday Review:
I believe a major change in our perspective on consciousness may be necessary, a shift from a credulous and egocentric viewpoint to a skeptical and slightly disconcerting one: namely, that we don’t actually have inner feelings in the way most of us think we do…
How does the brain go beyond processing information to become subjectively aware of information? The answer is: It doesn’t. The brain has arrived at a conclusion that is not correct. When we introspect and seem to find that ghostly thing — awareness, consciousness, the way green looks or pain feels — our cognitive machinery is accessing internal models and those models are providing information that is wrong…
You might object that this is a paradox. If awareness is an erroneous impression, isn’t it still an impression? And isn’t an impression a form of awareness?
But the argument here is that there is no subjective impression; there is only information in a data-processing device. When we look at a red apple, the brain computes information about color. It also computes information about the self and about a (physically incoherent) property of subjective experience. The brain’s cognitive machinery accesses that interlinked information and derives several conclusions: There is a self, a me; there is a red thing nearby; there is such a thing as subjective experience; and I have an experience of that red thing. Cognition is captive to those internal models. Such a brain would inescapably conclude it has subjective experience.
I agree that our intuitions about consciousness are likely to be faulty, but I don’t think that Graziano has resolved the paradox he mentions. My brain models other people as having subjective experiences, but this obviously has no bearing on whether they really do, or don’t, have those experiences. Given that, why should the fact that my brain models me as having subjective experiences suddenly become magically relevant to the question of whether I really do, or don’t, have those experiences?
I should say the book is more about growing old and dealing with physical and mental deterioration in oneself and in someone else in one’s family. The theme is: “we want autonomy for ourselves but safety for others in our family”. Can those two conflicting needs by reconciled somehow?
Here is a recent podcast from Philosophy Bites which seems a propos:
The Hard Problem and the Illusion of Qualia
Its about 15 minutes (10 minutes at 1.5 speed!).
I agree with the overall ideas of the speaker as I understand them, in particular how he uses the word “illusion”. But I am not going to discuss what I think they are!
Bruce:
Well, I suppose that zombies might be metaphysically possible in some worlds, but if so, I don’t see that it would necessarily threaten physicalism in this world.
Yes. I addressed that earlier in the thread:
petrushka,
Why?
I do say that I don’t know how it works, but that’s orthogonal to the parsimony question, which applies to theories, not declarations of ignorance.
Epiphenomenalism is my best candidate at the moment, but I’m not satisfied with it, as I explained above.
If you are a reductionist, a complete theory of physics must account for consciousness and awareness. The problem can be put aside as unsolvable, but that would be an admission of incompleteness.
Keith:
I think the usual argument is that if zombies are metaphysically possible when the physical state is held constant, then qualia might include non-physical elements.
Whether they do in this world could then become a scientific issue, depending on whether you take that argument or some kind of physicalism to have priority in your worldview.
Rather than fight that battle, I think it is better to find ways to deny zombies as even a metaphysical possibility.
BTW, I don’t say epiphenomenonalism by itself makes the zombie argument possible; one can always insist (as I suspect you do) that even if qualia are epiphenomenal, they still must supervene solely on physical states.
I am just saying that by having separate side paths, you have more things to justify and explain..
The expression “metaphysically possible in some worlds” is a contradiction in terms. It’s nonsense.
petrushka,
Right, but my question is why you think that
Are you perhaps misinterpeting “off to the side” as “not addressed by the theory”? That isn’t what I meant at all. Here’s my statement:
In other words, the physical substrate determines the subjective experience, but the subjective experience itself has no causal power. That’s what it means to say that subjective experience is epiphenomenal.
Bruce,
The scientific evidence seems pretty clear: subjective experience either is physical or else is determined by the physical (as in Chalmers’s property dualism). The latter is far closer to physicalism than it is to traditional substance dualism with its gods and souls.
It’s really just a question of what gets included in the bubble labeled “the physical”. If matter has an undiscovered property that brings about subjective awareness, as Chalmers thinks, should we consider that a physical property? I honestly don’t see that it makes much of a difference, as long as we’re clear about what we mean.
I don’t see how that’s possible, but another way to avoid the battle is to accept that we are all zombies, as Dennett and Graziano do.
Yes, that’s my position.
Right. Hence the dilemma I expressed earlier:
I really don’t see any usefulness or explanatory power in ideas called zombies or qualia. Can someone explain, as if to a six-year-old, why they think either are meaningful?
This from SEP may help, but probably not a six year old:
The zombie world descriptions try to encourage you to answer “yes” to the question Kripke posed. If zombies could exist, then God could have created a world of zombies without changing anything physical, therefore qualia might/must add something non-physical.
I don’t buy Graziano’s argument. When I accept that I have a brain (which is required for Graziano’s argument to work), it’s already presupposed that I am conscious to be able to perceive the brain and accept its existence. Any way you look at it, consciousness seems primary and the brain secondary.
Nice job. My only complaint involves the use of the term “qualia.” A number of philosophers countenance experience, subjectivity, etc., but eschew qualia. Whether or not that can be done without loss is controversial, but I think it’s important to distinguish the question “Is there consciousness?” (which, as I’ve said, seems really silly to me) from the question “Are there qualia?”
Right;
So the only point of imagining a “philosophical zombie” is to argue for a dualistic explanation for consciousness. It seems a religious argument. We are far from grasping the physical aspects of consciousness (or awareness) so why on Earth do we need to bring in unentailed, imaginary concepts?
I agree that it is silly for anyone to suggest humans and other animals are not aware (or conscious). Are you agreeing that “qualia” are concepts without content?
I’m just saying that it’s possible to take the position that there is consciousness without countenancing “qualia.” For example, one could hold that experiences don’t have an objects that have all the qualities that qualia are often claimed to have–including (but not limited to) transience, incorrigibility, ineffability. Some people claim that when we experience red things, we are experiencing (correctly or incorrectly) properties of physical objects in the world. So there are “seeming reds” without there being any “quality of experience” that is red* (where “red*” denotes some kind of a transient characteristic of experience that is exemplified, not in the physical world, but in the world of consciousness).
Forgetting about the details, my point is that the existence of qualia is controversial, the existence of consciousness is not.
Is it a contradiction or just redundant? More specifically, my understanding is this:
1. logically possible: no logical contradiction in the concept
2. metaphysically possible: exists in some possible world.
3. nomologically possible: exists in possible worlds with same scientific laws as ours.
4. possible in our world.
Is that close?
There seems to be a lot of discussion about whether these four are distinct and which implies which.
Often the issue of a priori versus a posteriori physicalism gets thrown in, which I have to go back and try to re-understand every time it comes up in something else I am trying to work through. But leave that issue out for now.
There are less extreme definitions of qualia; for those who prefer to avoid clicking, here are the relevant paragraphs:
From Wiki on qualia
Is this a fair summary of Dennett?
Am I conscious when I am asleep and dreaming. I certainly “think” I am.
Most dream stuff disappears within a few minutes of waking up, but I have some fairly vivid and persistent visual memories of dream stuff.
And Rationalwiki on p-zombies:
Is it fair to suggest p-zombies only make sense to dualists?
There are, indeed, a ton of definitions. It’s a veritable industry. Without a definition, it’s nearly impossible to figure out what people are talking about when they use the term. And even then….
Dennett has been accused of using it many ways in adjacent paragraphs.
BruceS,
But that seems to prove my point: that there are perfectly good ways to talk about consciousness, awareness and perception without introducing a term that has no consensual definition.
Cross-posted with Walto. Violent agreement!!!
I don’t think Dennett denies subjective consciousness (else why would he argue so strongly against “the zombie hunch”).
I think he says that anything you call qualia must be subject to scientific study. It can use first person reports, but only as raw data. He calls this his heterophenomelogical approach, but admits this is just a fancy name for how science is done today.
At one point he says should work in this order (paraphrased from IP p. 344)
1. utterances of some sort that can be interpreted to express verbal judgements (most raw data)
2. those verbal judgements
3. beliefs about conscious experiences
4. the conscious experiences themselves (least raw)
He says we should be careful about saying much about 4 until we have a scientific theory.
Yes, I agree that is Dennett’s point. You can ignore qualia, but you’ll have trouble if you want to engage with the philosophical literature. Most philosophers seem to ignore Dennett, not qualia.
walto,
I don’t know what your( 4) meansm the rest seems fine. It doesn’t make sense to talk of something being metaphysically possible in SOME worlds, if that is supposed to suggest NOT ALL. It doesn’t even maka ton of sense to say that something is metaphysically possible in ALL worlds. It just suggests confusion.
As long as you include property dualist, not just substance dualist.
And you could also say garden variety physicalism (ie excluding panpsychism) only makes sense if p-zombies don’t make sense (ie cannot exist one of the ways in my previous most on conceptual/metaphysical/nomological/this world, with controversy about which matter and which don’t).
Sorry 4 was wrongly worded. I was trying to say simply “exists in our actual world.” The “possible” key on my keyboard got stuck, possibly.
I see I used “metaphysically possible” at one point, although I am not sure if I added the phrase “in some worlds” in some other comment. In any event, thanks for the feedback.
BruceS,
Graziano writes:
Make sense?
I think the more interesting arguments revolve around these (separate issues):
1. Is just a living, uninjured, awake physical brain enough? Or do I need:
2 . a body as well as 1
3. engagement for the world by perceiving and acting as well as 1 and 2.
4. Are 1-3 sufficient, even if not all are necessary? Or is something non-physical involved as well.
Which came first, the brain or the consciousness to describe it, seems to be better addressed to chickens and their eggs. It depends on how primitive some grouping of neurons has to be before they quality as a brain, I suspect.
ETA: Err, in my haste to get the the joke about chickens and eggs, I seem to have left out something:
3.5 For whatever combination of 1-3 you think are necessary, what is the scientific explanation of how the structure and operations of these elements produces consciousness?
Is this a question.
Well, I don’t want to discuss what “makes sense” in Graziano because that involves interpreting Graziano, and in the end that was not constructive for me in this thread.
But I do note that the above involves Dennett’s definition of qualia, and I agree that definition is wrong for the scientifically-minded.
By the way, awareness would seem to be a blanket term covering seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, body position, taste, at least. But these are different subjective experiences, at least to me and I think most of us. One use of “qualia” is to recognize that type of difference.
Keith:
I’m not sure if you also had in mind this, so I’ll state explicitly: it is hard to see how epiphenomenal, physical implementations would survive evolution since they seem to involve metabolic cost with no positive impact on fitness (since they have no causal impact at all).
The “metaphysically possible in some worlds” was keiths’ mess, I think.
Bruce,
You’re right. It’s redundant, but not contradictory, and in any case you understood exactly what I meant.
Walto is in a pretty desperate search for errors on my part, whether relevant to the conversation or not.
Walto,
Here’s a hint: Look for places where I’ve incorrectly used the indicative instead of the subjunctive. Despite my mother’s best efforts to train her children properly, I still mess this up from time to time.
No, it doesn’t.
I’m particularly commenting on:
If the concept is incoherent, then talk about whether we can or cannot have them doesn’t actually make sense.
Alan,
Consciousness itself has no consensual definition, but we still talk (and talk, and talk) about it — and for good reason.
The term “quale” is important in discussions of consciousness for the same reason that the term “soul” is important in discussions of the mind/body problem. Both are intuitively appealing concepts that are widely accepted, so it is important to establish whether or not they are correct.
Neil, to Alan:
Sure it does. I don’t have a friend who is taller than Michael Jordan and shorter than Peter Dinklage.
Apparently not something that philosophy wants to deal with.
How do you discuss what appears to be complete conscious awareness that is divorced from perception?
From a philosopher’s perspective, how would you tell if you are in a dream?
I ponder my dreams pretty much every day, and I can’t recall ever thinking I’m in dream while I’m in dream.
It’s not actually redundant–it’s confused.
To say that some state of affairs P is metaphysically possible is to say (according to the “worlds” picture) that P obtains in at least one world. It doesn’t make sense to say that in some worlds there is a world in which P obtains.
That post is also is also confused: it’s entirely non-responsive to Neil’s point.
ETA: Just to add why I think that. I’m guessing that Neil would not say that being taller than Jordan and shorter than Dinklage is incoherent, though it may be impossible. That is, we know what it means–in fact, that’s how we know it’s impossible.
Bruce,
You’re assuming that an epiphenomenal implementation would incur an additional metabolic cost over a behaviorally identical “zombic” implementation, but that isn’t necessarily true. It might turn out that being a zombie is more expensive!
It’s also possible that epiphenomena inevitably accompany a physical implementation having the specified behavioral characteristics.
In the book, Graziano keeps returning to what he calls “Arrow B” — the arrow by which our awareness has causal effects. He is correct that epiphenomena are causally inert, and that arrow B therefore cannot emanate from them. What he overlooks is that Arrow B can still emanate from the physical substrate that gives rise to the epiphenomena.
BTW, you may be surprised to hear that no such search need be desparate. It’s a pretty easy gig, actually.
petrushka,
Then you need to try lucid dreaming. It’s really fun and interesting.
I’d say you are. Norman Malcolm, a Witt worshiper, once wrote a book according to which you aren’t. Don’t think he convinced more than a couple people though.
There’s a few moments while waking up that I may become aware that I am both awake and dreaming. That’s the point at which I begin to analyze the dream.
Alas, at my age, most of my morning dreams involve the urge to urinate, and the unavailability of working bathrooms.
But some are more interesting.
Most of my memories of dreams are visual, but i once wrote a song, including a melody. I recalled enough to write down some of it. Alas, after a few days it looked like rubbish.
petrushka,
With practice (and the assistance of technology), you can learn to have extended lucid dreams during the middle of the night.
🙁
Exactly right. Thank you.
petrushka,
Philosophy doesn’t shy away from dreams at all.
It’s not very difficult, actually. If consciousness is the result of brain states, why couldn’t those brain states occur during dreams? Why do you think they would be dependent on perception?
There are a couple of ways to interpret that question:
1. Do human dreams have characteristics that distinguish them from normal waking consciousness?
2. Could our normal waking consciousness itself be a dream in some higher-level reality?
The answer to #1 is yes, and you can exploit that fact to turn regular dreams into lucid ones. The classic method is to read a snippet of text on paper, look away, and then read the text again. If the text changes, you are dreaming.
The trick is to get yourself in the habit of performing the test while awake, so that you will also do it in your dreams.
The answer to #2 is also yes, and that’s the point of Descartes’ evil demon, the ‘brain in a vat’ discussions, and the Matrix movies.