[Serious Phil] Rejecting the Hypothesis of Phenomenal Information

[Peter D]

--- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <Philscimind at ...> wrote:
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> --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "Peter D" <Philscimind@> wrote:
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> > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <Philscimind@> wrote:
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> > > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "Peter D" <Philscimind@> wrote:
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> > > > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <Philscimind@> wrote:
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> > > > > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "Peter D" <Philscimind@> wrote:
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> > > > > > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <Philscimind@> wrote:
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> > > > > > > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "Peter D" <Philscimind@> wrote:
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> > > > > > > > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <Philscimind@> wrote:
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> > > > > > > > > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "Peter D" <Philscimind@> wrote:
> > > > > > > > >  
> > > > > > > > > > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <Philscimind@> wrote:
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> > > > > > > > > > > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "Peter D" <Philscimind@> wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > >  
> > > > > > > > > > > > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <Philscimind@> wrote:
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> > > > > > > > > > > > > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "truthhunter55" <Philscimind@> wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ...Which is why we cannot fully describe states of consciousness by reference to physics alone. 
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > What would you call that which must be added to physics to "fully describe the states of consciousness"?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > > > > I don't think we have to add anything to physics because consciousness, however grounded on physical reality it is, and I think it is, is not deductible to the language of physics.
> > > > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > > > If consc. is not explanatorilly "deductible" (reductible?) to the language of physics, what JUSTIFIES the claim that no extra ingeredients are needed?
> > > > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > > > are needed?
> > > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > >  
> > > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > > Should have been "reducible" -- that damned tablet auto-corrected again without my catching it!
> > > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > > No extra ingredients are needed because we can explain all the features that we take, in the aggregate, to be what we mean by "consciousness," 
> > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > Why doesn't that count as a reductive explanation?
> > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > Of course it counts as a reductive explanation.
> > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > Then why can't you, absent convenience, substitutue a
> > > > > > > > description of the reduction base for a description
> > > > > > > > of the phenomenon reduced, AS WE CAN IN EVERY OTHER
> > > > > > > > REDUCTIVE EXPLANATION. ("Which is why we cannot fully describe states of consciousness by reference to physics alone"--your words).
> > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > Explaining a black hole is not the same as being one
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Give me stength...
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > "substitutue a
> > > > > > description of the reduction base for a description
> > > > > > of the phenomenon reduced,"
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > "substitutue a
> > > > > > DESCRIPTION of the reduction base for a DESCRIPTION
> > > > > > of the phenomenon reduced,"
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > "substitutue a
> > > > > > DESCRIPTION [..] for a DESCRIPTION ,"
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > "[..] DESCRIPTION [..] DESCRIPTION [..]"
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Geddit? 
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > Seeing red (including what a see-er of red can describe upon seeing it) is NEVER the same as describing what it takes for some entity to see red 
> > > > 
> > > > That is equivalent to saying  there can be no reductive explanation
> > > > of experience.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Maybe this will help you. Think of it this way:
> > > 
> > > A black hole is to subjectivity
> > > 
> > > as 
> > > 
> > > An explanation of a black hole is to an explanation of subjectivity.
> > > 
> > > Each explanation serves to provide an account of WHAT the thing it explains is in terms of how one may bring it about (IF one has the capacity to do those things which implement it).
> > > 
> > > Note that the explanation works the same way in both cases.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > The problem occurs when one confuses the explanation qua a description of X (as in WHAT IT TAKES TO IMPLEMENT THAT X) with the explanation that X (if it is a subject rather than something purely objective like a black hole) may give insofar as it is a subject.
> > 
> > 
> > Who's doing that? I don't think subjects can describe qualia
> > at all. 
> 
> 
> You think we (subjects) should be able to, in order to produce an explanation, and thus you take the fact that we can't as evidence (proof?) that experience is unexplainable!


No. I think that a reductive explanation of Q to P needs to be able
to state Q. That is patently a claim about explanations.

> BUT THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE OR EXPECT THAT WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN WHAT YOU CALL "QUALIA" IN THAT WAY IN ORDER TO EXPLAIN WHAT IT AMOUNTS TO!

That is two claims.
1) We cannot state Q=qualia...
2) ...but we don't need to in order to explain qualia, because..

I agree with 1. I disagree with 2, as above, You need to 
justify (2).

> You are confusing an explanation of what a phenomenon is with an explanation that amounts to the phenomenon being explained.

How can there be a difference between a thing and what amounts
to it? A gun IS a lock stock and barrel.
The confusion is surely yours.

> But tha is not a possibility in ANY case (see black holes) 

You mean I a confusign a description of Q with an instance
of Q? No. See above. Nowhere do I require or demand
and instance of qualia.

>so why expect it to be possible in this one (explaining subjectivity)?
> 
>  
> 
> > That's the whole problem. In a reductive explanation,
> > you have clauses of the form:
> > "Phenomenon Q is really phenomeneon P",
> 
> Experiencing X is really the workings of system S.

Subsituting X and S for Q and P isn;'t getting you
anywhere. The point is about substituting actual
descriptions for the variables.

> > but whereas you can fill out P for  a physical
> > brain state, as required, you can;t substitute anything
> > useful for Q, a quale, whether a subjective report
> > or anything else.
> > 
> 
> 
> Experience is what you get when an entity reacts to stimuli in a certain way so it is determinable by observing behaviors

Ambiguous. If you mean "what you get" in the sense of behaviour,
the it is trivially deterinable by observation...and  not what
I mean by experience.

If "what you get" means experience, OTOH, then it is only very
partially and unreliably  inferrable from observation. I can't
tell how avocados taste to avocado lovers by watching theme
at one. 


> (as it is in EVERY other case where we discern the presence of experience in other entities).


Big deal. We often fail to do so. There aren;t that any cases.N

> > > In the case of a black hole the answer just seems obvious, i.e., no explanation is what it explains (describes).
> > > 
> > > But you become confused when we substitute "subjectivity" for "black hole" because subjectivity involves the capacity to explain and describe. So you think that to explain a subject through a description must somehow include the explanations/descriptions a subject can give as a subject.
> > 
> > 
> > Absolutely not. I do not hold anything of a kind. 
> > 
> 
> 
> Whenever you say that a failure to "explain salty" in terms that reproduce the knowledge of what it's like to taste salt that an experiencer has through experiencing (tasting) it in the listener or reader, you do. 


No. I have never met a subject who could describe "salty",so I am 
not asking for such a non existent description.

> > > Take the famous "seeing red". What does THAT involve?
> > > 
> > > It's a matter of having experience which includes, in the case of creatures like us anyway, also being able to say things like 'I am having such and such experience' and 'this is what it is like to see red', etc. Being a subject thus differs from being a black hole or from being any other object of reference in that it includes the power to explain/describe. But just as an explanation of a black hole is not taken to be a black hole, we have no reason to take an explanation of subjectivity to also be subjectivity, i.e., to involve securing and conveying the same information a subject has.
> > > 
> > > There is a Chinese Wall (to borrow a financial metaphor) between being an explanation and being the thing explained and this is as much the case when explaining objects lacking in subjectivity as it is in explaining subjects.  
> > > 
> > > 
> > > > 
> > > > And only  a reductive explanation of experience can exclude
> > > > Extra Ingredients.
> > > > 
> > > > QED, RIP.
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > A reductive explanation of experience is aimed at explaining what experience amounts to, not at what experiencers experience. 

Same difference. 
What experience amounts to is experience.
What experiencers experiences is ..experience.
Same difference.

> > What would an experience experience but experience?
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> The "what" of experience, that is experienced by an experiencer, is not relevant to explaining how experiencers experiencing experiences are produced in the world.


Yes it is. You need to explain how and why different brain activity matches
up to different experiences.

> An explanation of subjectivity, like an explanation of black holes and locomotives, etc., only address what a thing consists of and how what it consists of works to produce that thing.
> 
> That in one case, the case of subjects, the thing being explained happens to also have experiences,

The thing being explained IS experience. The only kind of subjectivity
I am interested in is the ineffability of experience.

> including those attendant on explaining and describing, does not imply that an explanation of subjectivity (subjectness, as in being a subject) must do more than every other explanation of every other possible thing.


I am not requiring it to do more, I am requiring it to
do the same: a succesful reduction of Q to P states
what Q is in every other case.

> There is no evidence and no reason to believe that an explanation of X (whether black holes or subjects) must also replicate X.


Irrelevant. I never said anything of the kind.

> Being a black hole is to be a certain kind of object in the universe. Being a subject, when viewed by another subject, is also to be a certain kind of object in the universe. Explaining what that object consists of does not require replicating that object.

Ditto.

> It only requires describing what it amounts to

Describing what experience amounts to is describing experience.

> and what, if we had the power, it would take to produce it in the universe.

The latter is not reductive explanation, and not enough
to render dualism unnecessary.

> Therefore there is no explanatory loss when we compare cases of explaining black holes with cases of explaining experience (subjectivity). 

Yes there is. Where you can;t state Q, you can;'t reduce Q to P.