Tuesday, August 18, 2020

On Medium: The Limbo from the Labyrinth: Consciousness and the Brain

Read on for an explanation of how subjectivity or consciousness (qualia) arises from the objective, physical world.

10 comments:

  1. Fascinating article, Ben.

    Ultimately, I don't think we're ever going to satisfactorily explain qualia as a direct result, or the causal product of, some quanta magnitudes.

    When it comes to the very hard problem of consciousness, I think Schopenhauer explained it best, when he postulated that our mental states are, simply, toto genere different from our physical representations, and that the Subject of knowledge or 'consciousness' has access to two different 'realms', so to speak: the qualia (mental) and the quanta (physical).

    Notice that, for Schopenhauer, to explain some phenomenon in the quanta realm, we use the first class of the principle of sufficient reason, that is, in its physical, empirical, material sense. But when it comes to the qualia, we use it in a different manner, namely, in its fourth class, when we talk about mental states in relationship with motives.

    With that distinction in mind, I think we could say that the physical processes of the brain are the mind and its states when considered objectively, but they are not the cause of the mind, because a quanta can never causally produce a qualia.

    If the above is true, then that means that we simply can't causally explain consciousness, even if we can causally explain every brain function or process.

    I think this interpretation has the advantage of distinguishing these two 'realms' or orders of magnitudes, and so it gives us a better notion about what to expect from the type of explanation neuroscientists can give us about the so called origins of consciousness.

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    1. Thanks. I think the dual aspect theory of consciousness is found in Spinoza too. The problem I have with this theory is that the difference between physical and subjective things doesn't seem like a mere difference between vocabularies. Or if it is, that difference derives from one between conceptual schemes, which in turn derives from the difference between the phenomena, between the experience of physical and mental things. We talk differently about the brain and the mind because we experience them as being different. So this theory just sweeps the problem under the rug without addressing the nature of qualia, as far as I can tell.

      My account isn't meant to reduce consciousness to "quantitative magnitudes." I'm not saying only objective things are real. Alienated consciousness really does emerge from the brain and that alienation or qualia has causal consequences in the world; hence the evolutionary and civilizational side of my account.

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    2. I think the qualia are a kind of representations, as Schopenhauer says, of a different kind, certainly different from the quanta representations. I think this distinction is important, because whenever we say 'consciousness emerges from the brain' we're assuming that there's a causal link involved that explains the former through the latter. However, given that the brain is an organ, it is experienced and analyzed as a physical entity, and consciousness is no such thing, then we're not really authorized, as it were, to causally link the mind with the brain - the quanta with the qualia - because causality only works within the quanta realm.

      I think the 'solution' to the problem is to consider the brain as the 'quantification' of the mind, not as the cause or source of the mind. But then, you're right, we're not really explaining consciousness, at most we can explain how the brain works and how it came to be, however faulty these scientific explanations may be at the present time.

      That's because the true realm of explanations, if we understand by that word how a particular thing came to be, is the physical world, the quanta, the world of experience. And so, in itself, consciousness remains inexplicable or, as Kant put it, a precondition of experience, and so, of explanations themselves!

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    3. Well, I don't think I've fully explained qualia here, but the considerations I raise in the article seem to me to add to our understanding of how consciousness emerges from the brain. And it's a relation of emergence rather than causality. The property of wetness emerges from H2O molecules, but the molecules don't exactly cause that property in a linear way. A property can be more than the sum of the whole's parts. If you put enough neural signals together in an organized way, the brain starts to feel conscious; the limbo emerges from the labyrinth as a sense of lostness and alienation, of being a ghost in the machine.

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  2. Life is literally derived from reality, a mirror of it, so our subjectivity may reflect life's origins itself.

    I believe subjectivity is more about what we feel than what we perceive. What we feel is when we place ourselves in given fact: element, phenomenon or behavior instead neutralizing ourselves and perceive based on our sensorial and intelectual limitations "what is it". For example, a cockroach. If i see a cockroach and define it as repulsive it's not what a cockroach really is but my impression on it. My sensation is true but if i try to objectively define this element in my own way i'm not acting in rational manner.

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    1. Yes, disgust for cockroaches may be subjective in that sense of not being neutral about physical things. But the topic of qualia is more specific. Qualia are about the mystery of how cockroaches could strike your brain in such a way that you could feel anything at all about them, as opposed to having just neural signals being sent back and forth in your head. Qualia are about the subjective, first-personal aspect of consciousness.

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    2. Memory about some vague information that cockroaches can transmit diseases, about the cockroach typical behavior itself towards human beings (very intrusive) and cockroach visual aspects (strong colors, gelatinous or luminously sticky shell, the size..). About qualia i believe we are born with them, a basic evolutionary heritage. If you are capable to see the red color, it's means it is in you. The neurological details which could help my poor/thinking line, of course, i can't provide. But if you are born inside a cave and never see the sunlight, this potential is likely to be undeveloped. Because we are reflect of reality itself the Light spectrum is variably on us. Maybe there is some connection of our temperature sensation with visual color perception. Rampant speculations, just that.

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  3. The computer and mind metaphor is more about self (user) consciousness (machine) than consciousness itself. Self consciousness is more like eukariot cell, its nucleus (who we are) is "separated' from its periphery (what we are doing) while among nonhuman living beings consciousnesses is more like a procariot cells.

    I also believe consciousness is self projection of subject upon reality like "what i see it's who i'm". The separation of consciousness's nucleus result in individuality perception (who i'm). Then when i project myself on reality i project my individuality perception individualizing elements, phenomena and behaviors resulting in the capacity to abstract, to isolate or individualize.

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    1. Sure, the mind develops in something like that way. But I actually think qualia themselves appear precisely when we stop projecting ourselves onto the environment, when we stop perceiving the world in a naive, childlike way like that of the animists who socialized with the weather and treated everything as though it had a mind. Precisely when we stand emotionally and conceptually apart from the world, seemingly lost and alienated as though we were in a limbo, a ghost in the machine, we feel our mental states as most subjective, as being something contrary to the objective world.

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    2. We can't stop to project ourselves on reality, just minimize. And, in the of day, we don't just distort what we see or feel but also detect facts by themselves/by/senses. Subjectivity is not an absolute corruption of objective truth but a partial objectivity. Yes, for US, by our perspective and without any kind of illusion, life is a limbo.

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