@shredftw That may be the case--though I doubt it on both count--but it does not strike me as apparent from the video; the interview is as cogent as can be in reporting the controversies regarding consciousness. In fact, as I call it, Minksy is the only one in this video who can be said to make some statements that appear to miss the point. (Don't get me wrong; I respect Minsky greatly).
Thought exercise: Grab a sheet of paper. Contemplate the concept of "one". Not just the number, but put on that sheet of paper every single thing you can conceptualize as being related to "one". You may quickly find, for instance, that you need a need an extra sheet of paper because "a blank sheet of paper" is a concept that you may associate with "one". So there is no single concept of "one", instead there are many related ideas or processes out of which we synthesize an understanding.
waw, minsky is fantastic, but the interviewer is really not doing a good job. does the guy actually listens to minsky? in only three questions, the interviewer shows that (i) he doesn't know about the topic and (ii) he wants to get a particular answer from minsky, which minsky is not providing because he doesn't believe in it...
@MrBtorb I don't agree at all; I think the interviewer's points are clear, well-expressed, and central to the mind-body problem. If only all interviewers were this cogent. Minsky's points approach but, to me, do not really answer satisfyingly the challenges of the hard problem of consciousness. (Of course, he only has a few minutes to try). It's a good attempt on both men's parts.
Consciousness is a direct result of fallibility. From there it took on greater meaning with 'luminous moments.' There probably won't ever be a conscious machine because that would entail programming it inefficiently and that would have no practical value. You can thank existentialism for entwining consciousness with atheism, they're not related at all. If God is hiding its probably somewhere near the Planck Length. Subjectivity doesn't exist, how can it ever go beyond ego.
His argument is cyclical. He says that that our minds are the result of computation and one day AI will become conscious similarly, but he fails to realize that this wont happen without the interference a "qualia" in the first place. The result of computation doesn't have meaning. "Meaning" can only be applied after the fact with a codex. We see without codex. Plus he doesn't explain how we'll be able to tell when an AI becomes conscious when we can only assume other humans are.
Minsky is apparently a devout behaviorist. He avoided the topic of qualia altogether, and seems to think that subjectivity either doesn't exist or is reducible to objectivity. *bangs head on desk*
Hahaha. Well the argument for Qualia I read on Wiki just now seems like a terribly long-winded way of explaining what is in essence a cognitive abstraction; 'sensing' types can be quite ingenious, yet their tendency to define abstracts in terms of concretes requires an abundance of patience from the intuitive crowd ;).
@ElasticGiraffe He's not a behaviorist, he is closer to what is called nativist (a kind of Kantian approach to the mind as an entity with a priori knowledge of the world). Do you really understand what behaviorism is?
I remember when I first heard about "qualia" and, what was it, the "hard problem of conciousness".
My only thought was "what muddled garbage are these people talking about".
After looking it up and reading about it my opinion hasn't changed in the least, I have no clue why people think there is something special about consciousness.
Just another intuitive mistake people have I guess, not that it is intuitive at all to me lol
Quantum Physics is the continuing culmination of a lot of scientific work, based on evidence.
Things like qualia and the hard problem of consciousness are just examples of the ways people try to argue for their entirely unsupported intuitions.
When I said it was muddled garbage I wasn't implying that I didn't understand the meaning of the arguments, I was just shocked that such seemingly intelligent people would argue or support something so obviously false, or even worse, unfalsifiable.
Do you not realise the limitations of falsifiability? The 'explanatory gap' of mind and matter is necessarily immune to falsifiability as it concerns the metaphysical. Read up on Popper's falsifiability epistemology.
Moreover, the whole point is that consciousness is not 3rd-person verifiable - so your implication that the theory is not verifiable, of verifiably false is the height of stupidity.
Well first of all I would argue that it is in fact falsifiable, we would just need to create an artificial intelligence that has consciousness. To do that we would need to understand the mechanisms that lead to such consciousness in us, proving consciousness to be an entirely mechanical process.
Perhaps you could explain where this "explanatory gap" is precisely.
What I'm really interested in is why you want to believe in these theories, what is it in you that wants them to be true?
I could ask you why you want materially-reducible theories to be true. I should point out that I am an atheist. The psychological motives go both ways.
The explanatory gap is how consciousness can emerge from purely physical activity (brain activity). E.g. how can billions, even trillions, of molecules and electrons interacting create 'hope'. You cannot 'zoom into' the brain to find hope, like you can zoom into a cloud to find water molecules.
So it seems that consciousness is either a different property or substance to matter. Look up Brentano for a thorough differentiation.
Of course the brain is correlated to consciousness (e.g. pain corresponds to c-fibres firing), but correlation does not mean identity, the cause is not the effect.
We cannot verify that other people have consciousness as a result. We only presume it from analogy to ourselves. Hence we could not verify an AI to have consciousness either.
I don't see why we couldn't verify that an AI has consciousness, the reason we can't in other people is because we don't know what other people are thinking, but we could have a direct link to the thoughts of the AI. Besides we both know the solipsism argument is rather weak, its silly to think that despite all your experiences with other people that somehow you are the only one with consciousness.
As far as my reasons well since everything else ever seen is explained by physical means.. (cont)
...there is no reason to assume that consciousness is any different or in any way special.
As far as how billions even trillions of molecules and electrons interacting not being able to produce "hope", that's just a failure of imagination on your part.
Looking at the huge stream of ones and zeros that produced this webpage, indeed everything on youtube, side by side with the site itself, it would be just as difficult to imagine that one produced the other, but we know it did and does.
You there commit the fallacy of generalising from the particular, an error Hume identifies as the problem of induction: you have perceived physical means explain things before, therefore assume all things are in that way explainable. But you have not perceived that the unexplained resembles the explained.
What you accuse as failure of imagination on my part, is in fact failure of conceptualisation on your part. The webpage is not conscious! Terrible analogy.
My point was not that it was conscious but that it was complex and it is difficult to imagine that complexity being reduced to its simple form, despite the fact we know it is.
I don't think it is generalizing from the particular since it is not a particular but rather EVERYTHING, sorry for the caps but really , everything that has ever been observed has a physical explanation.
You are assuming it is not a physical explanation, or agreeing with those who do, based on nothing but intuition.
@Ontologistics -concrete thinking is fraught with tautologies; this is because the very process of cognition is abstract in nature. Although Marvin could and probably would argue the contrary (that we are a composite of senses from which the complex function of abstract cognition is derived), however, we cannot prove any of that at all without first admitting that the very basis for our attempt to prove or disprove something is entirely dependent upon the abstractions of the conscious mind.
@LennyBound i saw the closer to truth reference in the video and went there. i already watched some videos there and bookmarked it so, the point is, the website is getting traffic through youtube so imo it would be wise for them to let the vids stay up.
john searle has the best position: consciousness is causally reducible to the brain but not ontologically reducible to the brain..... this does not imply property dualism or any other supernaturalism with regard to consciousness - it merely acknowledges the extraordinarily unique 1st person phenomenon of consciousness which is nonetheless reducible to higher order brain functioning..
It doesn't matter how much we know about the relationship between brain activity and what a person reports as an experience it still doesn't explain what a conscious experience is.
I always found the phenomenon of "confabulation" in people whose corpus callosum has been cut very revealing. To me it suggests that our first-person conscious experience isn't nearly as coherent as we subjectively feel it to be (words fail me in this subject matter).
@simplic10 V.S. Ramachandran in his wonderful book, "A Brief Tour of Human Conciousness" discusses the severed corpus callosum phenomenon in depth. In one case he cites an individual who gave different answers to the question of belief in God depending on which half of the brain was asked the question. The left hemisphere tends not to believe in God while the right tends to say it does believe in God.
(2) Clearly the "self" living with such a dichotomy is far from the coherent identity that we have long thought it to be. To me it looks like terms like "I", "me", "mind", "self" and so on are artificial concepts, implying a separation from the physical brain for which we have no evidence. Put another way, doesn't current evidence indicate that these terms are nothing more than feelings created by the interaction between different regions of the brain?
(3) I know of no research that shows the existence of a "mind" or "self" independent of the brain but I am new to this area of study. Are the terms "mind" and "self" anymore meaningful than terms like "soul" and "spirit"?
Thanks for the recommendation; I've heard lectures by Ramachandran in which he speaks about these phenomena, but I'll look into the book.
It seems to me that our "first-person experience," because it affects behaviour, should be expected to be directly subject to natural selection. That being the case, there's no real reason for that experience to be fractured, even if the underlying brain activity is. It might be adaptive to present a "united front" to the world.
hmmm...just on the opening argument of Martin Minsky's claim that atheists are in some way expressing that there "is more to the world than the physical world" can be quite misleading and not very thoughtful. Though, any person can enable/evoke their imagination, Martin Minsky may wish to be mindful to denote the differences between an atheist who is communicating science and of an atheist who has simply engaged their imagination as a way to express a thought and/or idea.
@thedeelicious: There is a recent tendency in the United States of America (and almost nowhere else in the world) to assume that all discussions about philosophical or scientific topics must ultimately be about Theism and Atheism: The one big, all-embracing divide which is the only intellectual issue under the sun that really matters. It is understandable that Americans think that way since they have is a strong current of fundamentalism there. But hey, isn't that a little far-fetched here?
you are right on the notion that people do place a very atheist/theist view on discussions and debates that are centred around science and philosophy. Certainly, we do need to lessen this, so that debates can happen at all levels of communication. Yet, I was trying to respond to Mr. Minsky's possible muddling up the concepts between atheists' critical scientific exploration and that of evoking one's imagination. I sometimes am not as clear as I would love to be. Forgive me.
From comments here and what I have read the term "qualia" seems to be used to describe a gap in understanding of what if any difference their is between "mind" and "brain". If the only hard physical evidence we have is for the brain, should the burden of proof be on those claiming the existence of some non-physical phenomena/qualia? Are arguments for "qualia" like the "god of the gaps" argument used by theists to "prove" the existence of "god"? No offense intended. Just curious. Help me learn.
I don't know if the parallel with the "God of the Gaps" argument is completely justified, however (much like in atheist/theist debates) the issue of who has the burden of proof is constantly shifted.
The "qualophiles" (i.e. qualia believers) will argue that we know of the existence of qualia more immediately than knowledge of the external world, while the "qualophobes" (i.e. non-believers) will argue that the concept is incoherent and contrary to everything science tells us about the world.
(1) The term qualia is simply supposed to refer to the way it feels like to be in a certain mental state. When, for instance, you see a red tomato, light of a wave length of 680 nm strikes your retina, and this causes certain cells in the occipital lobe of your brain to fire. At the same time, you have an experience of Red, which feels quite different from, say, the experience of Blue.
(2) In the above story, it would appear that not only do we have a correlation between the wave length and the firing, but also a second corelation between the firing and the subjective experience. This second correlation, though, seems to be something we cannot account for if we confine ourselves to the physics of what is going on. Why? Well, simply because neither the wave-length, nor the brain state, have anything reddish about them.
(3) If a scientist wanted to grasp this peculiar property (this quale) of Redness at all, he would have no other choice than to experience Redness for himself. Thus, this quality is something that is present only from what in the video they call the first-person perspective. It can be found, as it were, only inside the mind, not outside the mind: neither in wave lengths, nor brain states.
(4) Along such lines, people are indeed tempted to argue that there is some explanatory gap between brain states and subjective experiences. The association with the God of the gaps is unfounded, though. Theists and Atheists argue about whether some explanatory gap, percieved or real, can be bridged by natural causes, or by supernatural causes only. In the case of Qualia, on the other hand, the debate is about whether or not there is any gap to begin with.
(1)Thank your for your well thought out reply. I believe that I was in error for bringing in the whole atheism vs theism issue. I agree that the issue with Qualia, as I understand the term, is about "whether or nor there is any gap to begin with". Is there any physically verifiable evidence for a gap? Isn't the real question whether or not there is a case for a dualistic view of the world?
(2) I am not aware of any physical justification for asserting that there is such a thing as "redness" or a "subjective experience". From what little I know both ideas, phenomena are based purely on self-reported "feelings" that can be recreated physically in the laboratory by stimulating different portions of the brain. "Feelings" such as "I" and redness may seem very real to the one having them but do they exist separately from the physical brain?
Put another way what is the physical evidence for the "mind"? Is the "mind" any different from the "heart", that is, is it anything more than a word to describe a physical reaction in the brain? In effect, is the term Qualia anything more than an admission that we do not know the answer to such questions rather than a verifiable, falsifiable concept subject to scientific investigation?
(1) I think the example of redness could be used nicely to show how the dualists talk about „Qualia", even though it is not strictly grounded in physical evidence, is really nothing but an outgrowth of the scientific world view. Ever since Galileo, physicists have assured us that the so-called secondary qualities - such as colors, tastes and smells - do not, strictly speaking, exist in the material objects we perceive.
(2) They are merely „subjective" features of our perceptions. We cannot expect physics to give us any account of them, as they are not really „out there". Now, the dualist wholeheartedly embraces this view and feels that he is entitled, even compelled, to appropriate those homeless properties, which have been banned from the material world, into his alleged world of the mind.
(3) This might seem like a pretty lame trick, on the face of it, and the most natural (and plausible) reaction is the one you gave: "Feelings such as redness may seem very real to the one having them but do they exist separately from the physical brain?"
(4) However, if this is just supposed to suggest that redness is not really out there in material objects, it wont count as an objection yet, since this was the very idea that the dualist got so enthusiastic about. The real point of the objection, of course, is the perfectly sensible remark that color experience is a brain state.
(5) And it is precisely at this point that Nagel, Jackson and others have given a new twist to the mind-body problem - the twist that motivates their use of the new terminology of „Qualia" (in place of the old term „secondary qualities"). They grant that the color experience is a brain state, and ask: So what exactly is it about that brain state that makes it an experience „of redness"?
(6) The brain state itself, to be sure, is not red at all. And we agreed that the light rays which caused it are, strictly speaking, not red either. Nor are the objects that those light rays were reflected from. Therefore, we have to conclude, a physiologist who assembled all the physical information available about the brain state could never arrive at the fact in question: namely, the fact that the brain state is an experience „of redness".
(7) How then could he possibly arrive at this knowledge? The answer is obvious: He himself would have to BE in that state. Only then would he know what it is like to see red. If he were color blind, he would never know - even though he could still be perfectly omniscient about the physical facts of vision. From these reflections, dualists say, something like the following picture emerges.
(8) The brain state were talking about can be viewed from two perspectives. From a third-person perspective, you can establish objective facts about it such as the fact that it is caused by light of a wave length of 680 nm. And from a first-person perspective (i.e., when you are in that brain state yourself) you are aware of subjective facts about it, such as the fact that it is an experience of redness.
(9) It is important to note that this philosophical view is dualistic only in an extremely weak sense. According to the view, there is no such thing as a mysterious mental state that exists over and above the brain state. There is only the brain state, and nothing more. However, not all of the facts about the brain state are physical facts - since not all the facts about the state can be established from a third-person perspective.
(10) Sometimes this specific brand of dualism is called „aspect dualism" - since it invites us to imagine the brain state as something akin to a circular arc, which appears convex (=objective) when seen from the outside, and concave (=subjective) when seen from the inside. This double aspect theory is roughly the view of Thomas Nagel. I dont know enough about what the other two champions of Qualia, Frank Jackson and David Chalmers, really think.
(11) Anyway, sorry for these embarrassingly long ramblings. Im just surprised how defensible this position looks when one tries to explain it. Maybe this is just the kind of funny philosophical theory that no hard physical data could confirm or refute. In that respect, its a bit like the view that there is no external world. But I guess this is not a recommendation.
(1) Thank you again for your thoughtful response. Unfortunately I have little talent for philosophy (i.e. imagining convex and concave arcs to represent the dualistic concepts of objective and subjective states) and only limited capacity for understanding physical evidence.
(2) I guess I will have to await stronger physical evidence for deciding on the existence or non-existence of Qualia. Until that time I will place Qualia in the same category as other theories that as you put it "no hard physical data could confirm or refute". Peace. And once again, thank you for your patience.
Fascinating, and the best summary of the question that I've yet seen in this series of videos.
It strikes me that we do not merely experience "red" or "blue" in response to discrete wavelengths of light, but we also experience the colour spectrum as a continuous gradation of colour. So, even though our mapping does not necessarily represent the out-there quality of the wavelengths, our multi-stage process is tuned to experience the underlying "logic" of those wavelengths.
I know the guy is a brilliant scientist, but his understanding of the philosophical literature seems a bit dated. It's fair enough I guess, he has other things on his mind, but he should probably be a bit less strident. The qualia problem is a real problem, and one I would guess is particularly annoying to scientists. Perhapse it can be figured out, but it can't just be wished away!
Ha ha, I'm not sure what other response I was expecting by leaving a comment like that on one of your videos.
Vitalists always get it in the neck; I guess that's what happens to the losing side. It wasn't a bad theory though, and some of the stick it gets as a metaphysical and unfalsifiable fudge is a bit unfair and probably rests on a mistaken view of science and scientific theories. Inferring the reducibility of consciousness from the reducibility of "vitality" is unwarranted, imo.
As it turned out, when we were done with all the measuring and theorising there was just no place left for the "vital spirit". It is hard to see how the same will come of the "first person qualitative." It doesn't seem (to me at least) to be a matter of complexity, as it was for the vitalist, but a fundamental differance between first and third person.
So the brain state underlying visual experience is complex -- why does that show that the experience doesn't have a qualitative character?
There can be isolated lesions in the brain, impairing different perceptual capacities -- why does that show that there is not such a thing as a person who's having the experience?
Finally: Minsky makes it clear that he has "no respect" for philosophers talking about qualia -- what does this lack of respect have to do with anything?
Firstly, Minsky doesn't say that experiences don't have qualitative character.
Secondly, Minsky is merely arguing that we are much less unified than we commonly believe. If we are defining a "person" or a "self" as consisting of a singular unity entity, then (as Minsky states) cognitive science is showing that that pre-scientific notion is non-referential.
And lastly, I imagine what he really meant when he said that he has "no respect" for those philosophers was that he had "no respect" for their ideas and arguments.
@Lenny. §1 Yeah, you are right. He doesn't say explicitly that experiences don't have qualitative character. But what he says in the very first part of video is hard to understand if that is not what he means. When talking about "the eight stages" of the processing of vidual stimuli he is merely suggesting that philosophers are sloppy about the details about physiology and prefer to concentrate on an inner realm of phenomena when, really, the physiology gives us the whole story.
@Lenny §2 With the other point you raise, you are right as well. His argument against the existence of persons or selves in the second part of the video is quite independent of what he had to say about qualia before. Rather, it rests on a denial of the unity of the mental, in two different senses: First, the electrochemical activity in the brain doesnt show any spatial convergence in a Cartesian center, ready to be seen by a Mental Eye.
@Lenny §3 Second, there is no unity in that there is a multitude of different conceptions of a person or self: the self as subject of sense-experience, self as bearer of moral responsibility, self as the unity of consciousness, self as a connected stream of memory, and so on. He claims that he can enumerate 20 of such conceptions. Now, neither of these two points seems to undermine the existence of persons in any way.
@Lenny §4 Regarding the first point, the Cartesian idea that persons (if there is such a thing) are not located in space is, after all, rather extravagant. If THAT is all hes arguing against, hell have a great time. Regarding the second point, the fact that the term person is ambiguous seems to be no evidence whatsoever that there is no such thing as a person.
@ Lenny §5 It is as if you wanted to say "I have found out that there are no banks - since, according to my research, the word 'bank' has two meanings". That's silly, isnt it? Actually, Minsky would STILL be right about the concept of a person if the people employing this term used it as what philosophers following Putnam and Lewis call a "theoretical term".
@ Lenny §6 In that latter case, what they really meant with the word „person" would be something like: "Whatever in the world it is that satisfies Minskys conditions 1-20". I bet there is no single thing in the world that satisfies all those conditions. But then there is also no philosopher - or ordinary man - in the world who held such a straw man view, or used the word in that sense. "Person" is an ambiguous term, thats true. But what is the big deal about that?
@ Lenny §7 Finally, you say that what Minsky means by "I have no respect for philosophers ..." really means sth like "I don't have respect for their arguments". That, again, might be true. But it doesn't matter. What remains is: He expresses disrespect. And that's quite a powerful thing to do if you are a professor who founds a school of thought and appears Online. Although you'll have a lot of disciples, it also means that their views will in part be based on attitude, rather than arguments.
lots of gesticulating
riemanngalois 1 month ago
Can he just stop moving his hands?
thomaskurian89 1 month ago
@tnafguy
You are a Creationist. I am so happy that people like you dislike me, it just improves my credibility.
Ontologistics 3 months ago
is he signing while he talks
lookatmepleasesir 5 months ago
qualia dont exist
the brain is physical
conciousness is physical
get over it you pathetic supernatural freaks
matchbox555 5 months ago
Beautiful.
Forkroute 6 months ago
Minsky's Intelligence level is so far above the interviewer you can tell he feels like he's talking to a monkey
shredftw 8 months ago
@shredftw That may be the case--though I doubt it on both count--but it does not strike me as apparent from the video; the interview is as cogent as can be in reporting the controversies regarding consciousness. In fact, as I call it, Minksy is the only one in this video who can be said to make some statements that appear to miss the point. (Don't get me wrong; I respect Minsky greatly).
badger500 4 months ago
Thought exercise: Grab a sheet of paper. Contemplate the concept of "one". Not just the number, but put on that sheet of paper every single thing you can conceptualize as being related to "one". You may quickly find, for instance, that you need a need an extra sheet of paper because "a blank sheet of paper" is a concept that you may associate with "one". So there is no single concept of "one", instead there are many related ideas or processes out of which we synthesize an understanding.
7j8i9m 8 months ago
well that was just another example of someone saying alot,,,and telling you nothing,,,,he might as well be a politition
ZanyIntellect 1 year ago
waw, minsky is fantastic, but the interviewer is really not doing a good job. does the guy actually listens to minsky? in only three questions, the interviewer shows that (i) he doesn't know about the topic and (ii) he wants to get a particular answer from minsky, which minsky is not providing because he doesn't believe in it...
MrBtorb 1 year ago
@MrBtorb I don't agree at all; I think the interviewer's points are clear, well-expressed, and central to the mind-body problem. If only all interviewers were this cogent. Minsky's points approach but, to me, do not really answer satisfyingly the challenges of the hard problem of consciousness. (Of course, he only has a few minutes to try). It's a good attempt on both men's parts.
badger500 4 months ago
Consciousness is a direct result of fallibility. From there it took on greater meaning with 'luminous moments.' There probably won't ever be a conscious machine because that would entail programming it inefficiently and that would have no practical value. You can thank existentialism for entwining consciousness with atheism, they're not related at all. If God is hiding its probably somewhere near the Planck Length. Subjectivity doesn't exist, how can it ever go beyond ego.
wiredboy27 1 year ago
It's disappointing to watch such a brilliant man engaging in straw man arguments.
scuzzmang 1 year ago 2
His argument is cyclical. He says that that our minds are the result of computation and one day AI will become conscious similarly, but he fails to realize that this wont happen without the interference a "qualia" in the first place. The result of computation doesn't have meaning. "Meaning" can only be applied after the fact with a codex. We see without codex. Plus he doesn't explain how we'll be able to tell when an AI becomes conscious when we can only assume other humans are.
0Fear 1 year ago 5
Ayahuasca allows you to see beyond this realm.
FeelOfFriction 1 year ago
so does this guy know sign language?
ahbc92 2 years ago
Minsky is apparently a devout behaviorist. He avoided the topic of qualia altogether, and seems to think that subjectivity either doesn't exist or is reducible to objectivity. *bangs head on desk*
ElasticGiraffe 2 years ago 3
Hahaha. Well the argument for Qualia I read on Wiki just now seems like a terribly long-winded way of explaining what is in essence a cognitive abstraction; 'sensing' types can be quite ingenious, yet their tendency to define abstracts in terms of concretes requires an abundance of patience from the intuitive crowd ;).
boradicus 2 years ago
He down't say qualia, but when speaking about color and personal experience of one's own self, he means qualia.
ihatekhomeini 1 year ago
@ElasticGiraffe He's not a behaviorist, he is closer to what is called nativist (a kind of Kantian approach to the mind as an entity with a priori knowledge of the world). Do you really understand what behaviorism is?
astroboomboy 3 months ago
Comment removed
otakurocklee 2 years ago
Minsky cannot even recognise the problem conceptually, from his answers here. What a fool.
Ontologistics 2 years ago
I remember when I first heard about "qualia" and, what was it, the "hard problem of conciousness".
My only thought was "what muddled garbage are these people talking about".
After looking it up and reading about it my opinion hasn't changed in the least, I have no clue why people think there is something special about consciousness.
Just another intuitive mistake people have I guess, not that it is intuitive at all to me lol
DSBrekus 2 years ago
@DSBrekus
It's 'muddled garbage' to you as you seem to not understand it at all. Quantum Physics would seem 'muddled garbage' to an eskimo.
Ontologistics 2 years ago
Quantum Physics is the continuing culmination of a lot of scientific work, based on evidence.
Things like qualia and the hard problem of consciousness are just examples of the ways people try to argue for their entirely unsupported intuitions.
When I said it was muddled garbage I wasn't implying that I didn't understand the meaning of the arguments, I was just shocked that such seemingly intelligent people would argue or support something so obviously false, or even worse, unfalsifiable.
DSBrekus 2 years ago
@DSBrekus
Do you not realise the limitations of falsifiability? The 'explanatory gap' of mind and matter is necessarily immune to falsifiability as it concerns the metaphysical. Read up on Popper's falsifiability epistemology.
Moreover, the whole point is that consciousness is not 3rd-person verifiable - so your implication that the theory is not verifiable, of verifiably false is the height of stupidity.
Ontologistics 2 years ago
Well first of all I would argue that it is in fact falsifiable, we would just need to create an artificial intelligence that has consciousness. To do that we would need to understand the mechanisms that lead to such consciousness in us, proving consciousness to be an entirely mechanical process.
Perhaps you could explain where this "explanatory gap" is precisely.
What I'm really interested in is why you want to believe in these theories, what is it in you that wants them to be true?
DSBrekus 2 years ago
@DSBrekus
I could ask you why you want materially-reducible theories to be true. I should point out that I am an atheist. The psychological motives go both ways.
The explanatory gap is how consciousness can emerge from purely physical activity (brain activity). E.g. how can billions, even trillions, of molecules and electrons interacting create 'hope'. You cannot 'zoom into' the brain to find hope, like you can zoom into a cloud to find water molecules.
[cont.]
Ontologistics 2 years ago
@DSBrekus
[cont.]
So it seems that consciousness is either a different property or substance to matter. Look up Brentano for a thorough differentiation.
Of course the brain is correlated to consciousness (e.g. pain corresponds to c-fibres firing), but correlation does not mean identity, the cause is not the effect.
We cannot verify that other people have consciousness as a result. We only presume it from analogy to ourselves. Hence we could not verify an AI to have consciousness either.
Ontologistics 2 years ago
I don't see why we couldn't verify that an AI has consciousness, the reason we can't in other people is because we don't know what other people are thinking, but we could have a direct link to the thoughts of the AI. Besides we both know the solipsism argument is rather weak, its silly to think that despite all your experiences with other people that somehow you are the only one with consciousness.
As far as my reasons well since everything else ever seen is explained by physical means.. (cont)
DSBrekus 2 years ago
(cont)
...there is no reason to assume that consciousness is any different or in any way special.
As far as how billions even trillions of molecules and electrons interacting not being able to produce "hope", that's just a failure of imagination on your part.
Looking at the huge stream of ones and zeros that produced this webpage, indeed everything on youtube, side by side with the site itself, it would be just as difficult to imagine that one produced the other, but we know it did and does.
DSBrekus 2 years ago
@DSBrekus
You there commit the fallacy of generalising from the particular, an error Hume identifies as the problem of induction: you have perceived physical means explain things before, therefore assume all things are in that way explainable. But you have not perceived that the unexplained resembles the explained.
What you accuse as failure of imagination on my part, is in fact failure of conceptualisation on your part. The webpage is not conscious! Terrible analogy.
Ontologistics 2 years ago
My point was not that it was conscious but that it was complex and it is difficult to imagine that complexity being reduced to its simple form, despite the fact we know it is.
I don't think it is generalizing from the particular since it is not a particular but rather EVERYTHING, sorry for the caps but really , everything that has ever been observed has a physical explanation.
You are assuming it is not a physical explanation, or agreeing with those who do, based on nothing but intuition.
DSBrekus 2 years ago
@Ontologistics -concrete thinking is fraught with tautologies; this is because the very process of cognition is abstract in nature. Although Marvin could and probably would argue the contrary (that we are a composite of senses from which the complex function of abstract cognition is derived), however, we cannot prove any of that at all without first admitting that the very basis for our attempt to prove or disprove something is entirely dependent upon the abstractions of the conscious mind.
boradicus 2 years ago
Comment removed
otakurocklee 2 years ago
excellent video! thanks lenny.. love the closer to truth website - i'll be surprised if they let you keep this up very long though!
JAYDUBYAH29 2 years ago 3
All of the others are still up, so we'll see what happens.
*crosses fingers*
LennyBound 2 years ago
@LennyBound i saw the closer to truth reference in the video and went there. i already watched some videos there and bookmarked it so, the point is, the website is getting traffic through youtube so imo it would be wise for them to let the vids stay up.
RRRRussia 1 year ago
john searle has the best position: consciousness is causally reducible to the brain but not ontologically reducible to the brain..... this does not imply property dualism or any other supernaturalism with regard to consciousness - it merely acknowledges the extraordinarily unique 1st person phenomenon of consciousness which is nonetheless reducible to higher order brain functioning..
JAYDUBYAH29 2 years ago
It doesn't matter how much we know about the relationship between brain activity and what a person reports as an experience it still doesn't explain what a conscious experience is.
havermeister 2 years ago
What a disappointing interview. Minsky is clueless.
anrchyvk 2 years ago 3
heyschnur bin so einsam und gelangweilt will sanft gekrault werden hab auch bilder
Bonnierectify 2 years ago
I always found the phenomenon of "confabulation" in people whose corpus callosum has been cut very revealing. To me it suggests that our first-person conscious experience isn't nearly as coherent as we subjectively feel it to be (words fail me in this subject matter).
Cool video, thanks.
simplic10 2 years ago 9
@simplic10 V.S. Ramachandran in his wonderful book, "A Brief Tour of Human Conciousness" discusses the severed corpus callosum phenomenon in depth. In one case he cites an individual who gave different answers to the question of belief in God depending on which half of the brain was asked the question. The left hemisphere tends not to believe in God while the right tends to say it does believe in God.
daleshankins 2 years ago
@simplic10
(2) Clearly the "self" living with such a dichotomy is far from the coherent identity that we have long thought it to be. To me it looks like terms like "I", "me", "mind", "self" and so on are artificial concepts, implying a separation from the physical brain for which we have no evidence. Put another way, doesn't current evidence indicate that these terms are nothing more than feelings created by the interaction between different regions of the brain?
daleshankins 2 years ago
@simplic10
(3) I know of no research that shows the existence of a "mind" or "self" independent of the brain but I am new to this area of study. Are the terms "mind" and "self" anymore meaningful than terms like "soul" and "spirit"?
daleshankins 2 years ago
@Dale
Thanks for the recommendation; I've heard lectures by Ramachandran in which he speaks about these phenomena, but I'll look into the book.
It seems to me that our "first-person experience," because it affects behaviour, should be expected to be directly subject to natural selection. That being the case, there's no real reason for that experience to be fractured, even if the underlying brain activity is. It might be adaptive to present a "united front" to the world.
simplic10 2 years ago
hmmm...just on the opening argument of Martin Minsky's claim that atheists are in some way expressing that there "is more to the world than the physical world" can be quite misleading and not very thoughtful. Though, any person can enable/evoke their imagination, Martin Minsky may wish to be mindful to denote the differences between an atheist who is communicating science and of an atheist who has simply engaged their imagination as a way to express a thought and/or idea.
thedeeliciousplum 2 years ago
@thedeelicious: There is a recent tendency in the United States of America (and almost nowhere else in the world) to assume that all discussions about philosophical or scientific topics must ultimately be about Theism and Atheism: The one big, all-embracing divide which is the only intellectual issue under the sun that really matters. It is understandable that Americans think that way since they have is a strong current of fundamentalism there. But hey, isn't that a little far-fetched here?
langengro 2 years ago
you are right on the notion that people do place a very atheist/theist view on discussions and debates that are centred around science and philosophy. Certainly, we do need to lessen this, so that debates can happen at all levels of communication. Yet, I was trying to respond to Mr. Minsky's possible muddling up the concepts between atheists' critical scientific exploration and that of evoking one's imagination. I sometimes am not as clear as I would love to be. Forgive me.
thedeeliciousplum 2 years ago
From comments here and what I have read the term "qualia" seems to be used to describe a gap in understanding of what if any difference their is between "mind" and "brain". If the only hard physical evidence we have is for the brain, should the burden of proof be on those claiming the existence of some non-physical phenomena/qualia? Are arguments for "qualia" like the "god of the gaps" argument used by theists to "prove" the existence of "god"? No offense intended. Just curious. Help me learn.
daleshankins 2 years ago
I don't know if the parallel with the "God of the Gaps" argument is completely justified, however (much like in atheist/theist debates) the issue of who has the burden of proof is constantly shifted.
The "qualophiles" (i.e. qualia believers) will argue that we know of the existence of qualia more immediately than knowledge of the external world, while the "qualophobes" (i.e. non-believers) will argue that the concept is incoherent and contrary to everything science tells us about the world.
LennyBound 2 years ago
@LennyBound
at any rate minsky has not really addressed qualia here. I wish he would have
is he like dennett when it comes to qualia?
thirdbar 1 year ago
@daleshankins
(1) The term qualia is simply supposed to refer to the way it feels like to be in a certain mental state. When, for instance, you see a red tomato, light of a wave length of 680 nm strikes your retina, and this causes certain cells in the occipital lobe of your brain to fire. At the same time, you have an experience of Red, which feels quite different from, say, the experience of Blue.
langengro 2 years ago 2
(2) In the above story, it would appear that not only do we have a correlation between the wave length and the firing, but also a second corelation between the firing and the subjective experience. This second correlation, though, seems to be something we cannot account for if we confine ourselves to the physics of what is going on. Why? Well, simply because neither the wave-length, nor the brain state, have anything reddish about them.
langengro 2 years ago 2
(3) If a scientist wanted to grasp this peculiar property (this quale) of Redness at all, he would have no other choice than to experience Redness for himself. Thus, this quality is something that is present only from what in the video they call the first-person perspective. It can be found, as it were, only inside the mind, not outside the mind: neither in wave lengths, nor brain states.
langengro 2 years ago 2
(4) Along such lines, people are indeed tempted to argue that there is some explanatory gap between brain states and subjective experiences. The association with the God of the gaps is unfounded, though. Theists and Atheists argue about whether some explanatory gap, percieved or real, can be bridged by natural causes, or by supernatural causes only. In the case of Qualia, on the other hand, the debate is about whether or not there is any gap to begin with.
langengro 2 years ago 2
@Iangengro
(1)Thank your for your well thought out reply. I believe that I was in error for bringing in the whole atheism vs theism issue. I agree that the issue with Qualia, as I understand the term, is about "whether or nor there is any gap to begin with". Is there any physically verifiable evidence for a gap? Isn't the real question whether or not there is a case for a dualistic view of the world?
daleshankins 2 years ago
(2) I am not aware of any physical justification for asserting that there is such a thing as "redness" or a "subjective experience". From what little I know both ideas, phenomena are based purely on self-reported "feelings" that can be recreated physically in the laboratory by stimulating different portions of the brain. "Feelings" such as "I" and redness may seem very real to the one having them but do they exist separately from the physical brain?
daleshankins 2 years ago
Put another way what is the physical evidence for the "mind"? Is the "mind" any different from the "heart", that is, is it anything more than a word to describe a physical reaction in the brain? In effect, is the term Qualia anything more than an admission that we do not know the answer to such questions rather than a verifiable, falsifiable concept subject to scientific investigation?
daleshankins 2 years ago
@daleshankins
(1) I think the example of redness could be used nicely to show how the dualists talk about „Qualia", even though it is not strictly grounded in physical evidence, is really nothing but an outgrowth of the scientific world view. Ever since Galileo, physicists have assured us that the so-called secondary qualities - such as colors, tastes and smells - do not, strictly speaking, exist in the material objects we perceive.
langengro 2 years ago
(2) They are merely „subjective" features of our perceptions. We cannot expect physics to give us any account of them, as they are not really „out there". Now, the dualist wholeheartedly embraces this view and feels that he is entitled, even compelled, to appropriate those homeless properties, which have been banned from the material world, into his alleged world of the mind.
langengro 2 years ago
(3) This might seem like a pretty lame trick, on the face of it, and the most natural (and plausible) reaction is the one you gave: "Feelings such as redness may seem very real to the one having them but do they exist separately from the physical brain?"
langengro 2 years ago
(4) However, if this is just supposed to suggest that redness is not really out there in material objects, it wont count as an objection yet, since this was the very idea that the dualist got so enthusiastic about. The real point of the objection, of course, is the perfectly sensible remark that color experience is a brain state.
langengro 2 years ago
(5) And it is precisely at this point that Nagel, Jackson and others have given a new twist to the mind-body problem - the twist that motivates their use of the new terminology of „Qualia" (in place of the old term „secondary qualities"). They grant that the color experience is a brain state, and ask: So what exactly is it about that brain state that makes it an experience „of redness"?
langengro 2 years ago
(6) The brain state itself, to be sure, is not red at all. And we agreed that the light rays which caused it are, strictly speaking, not red either. Nor are the objects that those light rays were reflected from. Therefore, we have to conclude, a physiologist who assembled all the physical information available about the brain state could never arrive at the fact in question: namely, the fact that the brain state is an experience „of redness".
langengro 2 years ago
(7) How then could he possibly arrive at this knowledge? The answer is obvious: He himself would have to BE in that state. Only then would he know what it is like to see red. If he were color blind, he would never know - even though he could still be perfectly omniscient about the physical facts of vision. From these reflections, dualists say, something like the following picture emerges.
langengro 2 years ago
(8) The brain state were talking about can be viewed from two perspectives. From a third-person perspective, you can establish objective facts about it such as the fact that it is caused by light of a wave length of 680 nm. And from a first-person perspective (i.e., when you are in that brain state yourself) you are aware of subjective facts about it, such as the fact that it is an experience of redness.
langengro 2 years ago
(9) It is important to note that this philosophical view is dualistic only in an extremely weak sense. According to the view, there is no such thing as a mysterious mental state that exists over and above the brain state. There is only the brain state, and nothing more. However, not all of the facts about the brain state are physical facts - since not all the facts about the state can be established from a third-person perspective.
langengro 2 years ago
(10) Sometimes this specific brand of dualism is called „aspect dualism" - since it invites us to imagine the brain state as something akin to a circular arc, which appears convex (=objective) when seen from the outside, and concave (=subjective) when seen from the inside. This double aspect theory is roughly the view of Thomas Nagel. I dont know enough about what the other two champions of Qualia, Frank Jackson and David Chalmers, really think.
langengro 2 years ago
(11) Anyway, sorry for these embarrassingly long ramblings. Im just surprised how defensible this position looks when one tries to explain it. Maybe this is just the kind of funny philosophical theory that no hard physical data could confirm or refute. In that respect, its a bit like the view that there is no external world. But I guess this is not a recommendation.
langengro 2 years ago
@langengro
(1) Thank you again for your thoughtful response. Unfortunately I have little talent for philosophy (i.e. imagining convex and concave arcs to represent the dualistic concepts of objective and subjective states) and only limited capacity for understanding physical evidence.
daleshankins 2 years ago
@langengro
(2) I guess I will have to await stronger physical evidence for deciding on the existence or non-existence of Qualia. Until that time I will place Qualia in the same category as other theories that as you put it "no hard physical data could confirm or refute". Peace. And once again, thank you for your patience.
daleshankins 2 years ago
Fascinating, and the best summary of the question that I've yet seen in this series of videos.
It strikes me that we do not merely experience "red" or "blue" in response to discrete wavelengths of light, but we also experience the colour spectrum as a continuous gradation of colour. So, even though our mapping does not necessarily represent the out-there quality of the wavelengths, our multi-stage process is tuned to experience the underlying "logic" of those wavelengths.
musekiteer 2 years ago
I know the guy is a brilliant scientist, but his understanding of the philosophical literature seems a bit dated. It's fair enough I guess, he has other things on his mind, but he should probably be a bit less strident. The qualia problem is a real problem, and one I would guess is particularly annoying to scientists. Perhapse it can be figured out, but it can't just be wished away!
23discordians 2 years ago 3
I'm still waiting for biologists to solve the hard problem of the élan vital and bridge the explanatory gap between organic and inorganic matter.
LennyBound 2 years ago
Ha ha, I'm not sure what other response I was expecting by leaving a comment like that on one of your videos.
Vitalists always get it in the neck; I guess that's what happens to the losing side. It wasn't a bad theory though, and some of the stick it gets as a metaphysical and unfalsifiable fudge is a bit unfair and probably rests on a mistaken view of science and scientific theories. Inferring the reducibility of consciousness from the reducibility of "vitality" is unwarranted, imo.
23discordians 2 years ago
As it turned out, when we were done with all the measuring and theorising there was just no place left for the "vital spirit". It is hard to see how the same will come of the "first person qualitative." It doesn't seem (to me at least) to be a matter of complexity, as it was for the vitalist, but a fundamental differance between first and third person.
23discordians 2 years ago
So the brain state underlying visual experience is complex -- why does that show that the experience doesn't have a qualitative character?
There can be isolated lesions in the brain, impairing different perceptual capacities -- why does that show that there is not such a thing as a person who's having the experience?
Finally: Minsky makes it clear that he has "no respect" for philosophers talking about qualia -- what does this lack of respect have to do with anything?
langengro 2 years ago 12
Firstly, Minsky doesn't say that experiences don't have qualitative character.
Secondly, Minsky is merely arguing that we are much less unified than we commonly believe. If we are defining a "person" or a "self" as consisting of a singular unity entity, then (as Minsky states) cognitive science is showing that that pre-scientific notion is non-referential.
LennyBound 2 years ago
And lastly, I imagine what he really meant when he said that he has "no respect" for those philosophers was that he had "no respect" for their ideas and arguments.
LennyBound 2 years ago
@Lenny. §1 Yeah, you are right. He doesn't say explicitly that experiences don't have qualitative character. But what he says in the very first part of video is hard to understand if that is not what he means. When talking about "the eight stages" of the processing of vidual stimuli he is merely suggesting that philosophers are sloppy about the details about physiology and prefer to concentrate on an inner realm of phenomena when, really, the physiology gives us the whole story.
langengro 2 years ago
@Lenny §2 With the other point you raise, you are right as well. His argument against the existence of persons or selves in the second part of the video is quite independent of what he had to say about qualia before. Rather, it rests on a denial of the unity of the mental, in two different senses: First, the electrochemical activity in the brain doesnt show any spatial convergence in a Cartesian center, ready to be seen by a Mental Eye.
langengro 2 years ago
@Lenny §3 Second, there is no unity in that there is a multitude of different conceptions of a person or self: the self as subject of sense-experience, self as bearer of moral responsibility, self as the unity of consciousness, self as a connected stream of memory, and so on. He claims that he can enumerate 20 of such conceptions. Now, neither of these two points seems to undermine the existence of persons in any way.
langengro 2 years ago
@Lenny §4 Regarding the first point, the Cartesian idea that persons (if there is such a thing) are not located in space is, after all, rather extravagant. If THAT is all hes arguing against, hell have a great time. Regarding the second point, the fact that the term person is ambiguous seems to be no evidence whatsoever that there is no such thing as a person.
langengro 2 years ago
@ Lenny §5 It is as if you wanted to say "I have found out that there are no banks - since, according to my research, the word 'bank' has two meanings". That's silly, isnt it? Actually, Minsky would STILL be right about the concept of a person if the people employing this term used it as what philosophers following Putnam and Lewis call a "theoretical term".
langengro 2 years ago
@ Lenny §6 In that latter case, what they really meant with the word „person" would be something like: "Whatever in the world it is that satisfies Minskys conditions 1-20". I bet there is no single thing in the world that satisfies all those conditions. But then there is also no philosopher - or ordinary man - in the world who held such a straw man view, or used the word in that sense. "Person" is an ambiguous term, thats true. But what is the big deal about that?
langengro 2 years ago
@ Lenny §7 Finally, you say that what Minsky means by "I have no respect for philosophers ..." really means sth like "I don't have respect for their arguments". That, again, might be true. But it doesn't matter. What remains is: He expresses disrespect. And that's quite a powerful thing to do if you are a professor who founds a school of thought and appears Online. Although you'll have a lot of disciples, it also means that their views will in part be based on attitude, rather than arguments.
langengro 2 years ago
@langengro Maybe this guy doesn't have read consciousness! i.e. what if he's a philosophical zombie? :P
hasenj 4 months ago
interesting video, thanks for uploading it,
(personally, I think that without the medium there's no message, that is, without the body there's no mind)
almafarag 2 years ago
Thanks Lenny.
There aren't *nearly* enough videos of Minsky on Youtube.
polymath7 2 years ago 4