Can Evolutionary Theory Explain Human Consciousness?

[8ball]

Human beings have no access to non-cultural or prelinguistic experience. Human beings do not have access to the world as it really is.

The two are not the same. Wasn't sure whether you meant to imply they were, but just in case . .

 

[phildwyer]

I have never seen Hegel argue against materialism, reductionism (unidirectional or otherwise), monocausalism or anything else like that.

He uses phrenology as the paradigm of these. Using neuroscience to explain human behaviour is just phrenology with microscopes.

 

[phildwyer]

The two are not the same. Wasn't sure whether you meant to imply they were, but just in case . .

No I didn't. But I did mean that any experience mediated through culture and language is obviously not experience of the world as it really is, because such experience will vary according to which culture and language it is mediated through. And all human experience is mediated through culture and language.

 

[8ball]

No I didn't. But I did mean that any experience mediated through culture and language is obviously not experience of the world as it really is, because such experience will vary according to which culture and language it is mediated through. And all human experience is mediated through culture and language.

I think I vaguely see where you're coming from.

As for:

Using neuroscience to explain human behaviour is just phrenology with microscopes.

Do you mean that in a 'using semi-conductor physics to explain why Windows XP is rubbish is like using the bumps on people's heads to explain personality differences' kinda way, or in another way entirely?

 

[phildwyer]

Do you mean that in a 'using semi-conductor physics to explain why Windows XP is rubbish is like using the bumps on people's heads to explain personality differences' kinda way, or in another way entirely?

Another way entirely. I mean that attempting to explain human behaviour by analyzing the material processes of the brain betrays the same ideological error as trying to explain human behaviour by analyzing the shape of the skull.

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

No I didn't. But I did mean that any experience mediated through culture and language is obviously not experience of the world as it really is, because such experience will vary according to which culture and language it is mediated through. And all human experience is mediated through culture and language.

Isn't that a circular argument? Correct me if i misunderstand but you're saying that "Experience via culture/language does not equal real experience of the "world" (whatever that may be). Yet experience varies through the "world" because it comes via culture and language." - in that case, what by your definition is a "real" experience of the "world"?

 

[phildwyer]

Isn't that a circular argument? Correct me if i misunderstand but you're saying that "Experience via culture/language does not equal real experience of the "world" (whatever that may be). Yet experience varies through the "world" because it comes via culture and language." - in that case, what by your definition is a "real" experience of the "world"?

All human experience is real, but it is not experience of reality. I am alluding to Kant's distinction between noumena and phenomena: we do not know the world (or whatever) 'in itself,' we only know the world as it is 'for us.'

 

[gorski]

what by your definition is a "real" experience of the "world"?

Your experience or mine - they are both "real"! For us, individually, that is. Do they automatically carry with it some kind of enrichment of Humanity? Hardly.

But you seem to be asking what is a "direct", as opposed to "indirect", i.e. "mediated" experience of "our" world? Well, such an experience would NOT have been mediated through/by:

being a Human Being [and not an animal or God, methodically speaking - we stand in between, as it were]

being a member of a group [civilisation, culture, class, profession etc. etc.]

being who you are individually, i.e. personally different to any other Human Being [from individual experiences to individual capacities and so on].

So, we are limited by our finite, corporeal nature.

We are limited by languages we speak, cultures we are acquainted with or come from, schools of thought we are informed of or belong to, values we hold or oppose, temperament that reigns us, our physical and psychological capacities, our leanings, interests, our position in the world, economically, socially or politically...

Etc. etc. etc.

Those telling you "I know what Reality is" [and by default their opponents have no idea as to the "real world, as if they have just landed from Mars; so arrogant are those "connoisseurs of 'true' Reality", as if one can't possibly have a different view and theirs is the only possible view...] are akin to those stating they "know God's mind"... Blasphemy!!!!!

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

All human experience is real, but it is not experience of reality. I am alluding to Kant's distinction between noumena and phenomena: we do not know the world (or whatever) 'in itself,' we only know the world as it is 'for us.'

Then what, ultimately, is the "real" world? I've read and thought about notions that "the world is what you make it", essentially, but how does what you're describing in terms of Kant's distinction pan out into collective experience or conciousness then? Can there be an overlap between my world and yours, or are the 2 mutually exclusive? If the latter, then how come we can share a bus in the morning? Or a similar thought?

 

[gorski]

It has to be "worked on", so one does "make it" - via one's labour/effort!

Overlap, therefore, is possible but the opposite is also a possibility.

How - see above...

 

[kyser_soze]

He uses phrenology as the paradigm of these. Using neuroscience to explain human behaviour is just phrenology with microscopes.

What a ridiculous assertion. There's a world apart from the mapping of the brain and the way it physically works from assessing someone's personality on the basis of the bumps on there head. The principle may well be argued to be the same, but the method, and the collection and interpretation of the data, is a very different proposition.

Those telling you "I know what Reality is" [and by default their opponents have no idea as to the "real world, as if they have just landed from Mars; so arrogant are those "connoisseurs of 'true' Reality", as if one can't possibly have a different view and theirs is the only possible view...] are akin to those stating they "know God's mind"... Blasphemy!!!!!

But I did mean that any experience mediated through culture and language is obviously not experience of the world as it really is,

Yo ho ho

 

[phildwyer]

Then what, ultimately, is the "real" world? I've read and thought about notions that "the world is what you make it", essentially, but how does what you're describing in terms of Kant's distinction pan out into collective experience or conciousness then? Can there be an overlap between my world and yours, or are the 2 mutually exclusive? If the latter, then how come we can share a bus in the morning? Or a similar thought?

Well Kant's argument in the Critique of Pure Reason is that human experience of the world is contingent on the nature of the human mind, and that the human mind inherently contains certain fundamental categories or concepts that determine the way human beings view the world. So we inevitably see the world from a human point of view, and experience it as "phenomena," or as it is "for us."

But there is no reason to suppose that the way the universe appears to us would be replicated in a creature with a different kind of mind. It seems clear for instance that animals experience the world very differently from ourselves. This world, which we can never experience, although we can deduce that it exists, Kant calls the "noumena" or the "in itself."

Furthermore, it seems to be a charactieristic of the human mind that its perception of the world is not only contingent but also changing, and also subjective. It seems clear that a twenty-first century American has a different experience of the world from a fourth-century Greek, and also from a contemporary Congolese. Men arguably have a different experience to women, and one could even argue that each individual's experience is uniquely subjective.

So human experience is mediated by (a) certain concepts that are inherent in the human mind (I would say "hard-wired," but that implies a material manifestation), and (b) cultural and historical location, and arguably (c) individual subject-position. Human consciousness arises out of mediation with non-biological factors.

Attempts to explain human consciousness by biology, to identify the mind with the brain, to see human beings as merely carnal entities, form part of the historical process known as the "objectification of the subject." Essentially this means the reduction of human beings to animals, or things. Its most salient characterstic might be called the death of the soul. There are clear and demonstrable affinities between such thought and capitalist economics. Capital for example is objectified human activity, or "labour-power."

 

[phildwyer]

What a ridiculous assertion. There's a world apart from the mapping of the brain and the way it physically works from assessing someone's personality on the basis of the bumps on there head. The principle may well be argued to be the same, but the method, and the collection and interpretation of the data, is a very different proposition.

Obviously. The point is that the principle is the same: human consciousness can be explained by physical factors.

 

[phildwyer]

This is my problem though - to me feelings cannot be removed from "what it's like to have feelings" - they are inherently and absolutely teleological and inseperable from what it's like to have them. The whole point of sadness, for example, is that it's unpleasant and that it prompts the organism to seek ways to escape it. Sadness without the subjective unpleasantness is not sadness.

Tautology. We see on a daily basis that many people actively seek out and desire sadness and pain. By your definition this would mean that their sadness is not real sadness, their pain not really painful, because sadness and pain are by definition undesirable. And so sadness and pain are defiined as that which is undesirable, which is tautological.

Furthermore, in this definition sadness and pain become completely subjective. One person's pain is another's pleasure. What is subjective is not objective, and not physical. What is subjective is historical, and variable. Sadness and pain are subjective and historically variable phenomena, and as such they cannot be studied in isolation from culture and history as your methodololgy wrongly supposes.

Note that your error arises from your refusal to distinguish between the experience of feelings and the feelings themselves. You refuse to allow a conceptual element to the determination of feelings, you do not admit the ontological existence of concepts. Your tautology and confusion of subject with object spring inexorably frm this original mistake. That is where reductive materialism gets you.

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

Well Kant's argument in the Critique of Pure Reason is that human experience of the world is contingent on the nature of the human mind, and that the human mind inherently contains certain fundamental categories or concepts that determine the way human beings view the world. So we inevitably see the world from a human point of view, and experience it as "phenomena," or as it is "for us."

But there is no reason to suppose that the way the universe appears to us would be replicated in a creature with a different kind of mind. It seems clear for instance that animals experience the world very differently from ourselves. This world, which we can never experience, although we can deduce that it exists, Kant calls the "noumena" or the "in itself."

Furthermore, it seems to be a charactieristic of the human mind that its perception of the world is not only contingent but also changing, and also subjective. It seems clear that a twenty-first century American has a different experience of the world from a fourth-century Greek, and also from a contemporary Congolese. Men arguably have a different experience to women, and one could even argue that each individual's experience is uniquely subjective.

So human experience is mediated by (a) certain concepts that are inherent in the human mind (I would say "hard-wired," but that implies a material manifestation), and (b) cultural and historical location, and arguably (c) individual subject-position. Human consciousness arises out of mediation with non-biological factors.

Attempts to explain human consciousness by biology, to identify the mind with the brain, to see human beings as merely carnal entities, form part of the historical process known as the "objectification of the subject." Essentially this means the reduction of human beings to animals, or things. Its most salient characterstic might be called the death of the soul. There are clear and demonstrable affinities between such thought and capitalist economics. Capital for example is objectified human activity, or "labour-power."

Hmm, interesting stuff, i'll go away and think about this some more. It appears to me on a first reading that this is saying that what sets humans apart from all other sentient beings is consciousness, of self, of others, of the world that surrounds, but almost importantly, of some undefinable aspect that only humankind possesses? Could we have quantum minds, whereby the "accepted" rules of science, chemistry, physics don't seem to quite work properly, but definite predictable outcomes can arise from seemingly indefinite (or possibly ill-defined) causes?

 

[Knotted]

I know. All I was saying was that I have no doubt that when we experience 'qualia', there is something that happens at the same time that we can 'put our finger on' in a scientific sense, but that thing itself is not the same as the feeling experienced.

My point was that the explanatory gap lies between the correlated physical event and the subjective 'feeling'. Anything evolutionary theory can come up with to 'explain' consciousness that I've seen so far is to do with the possible benefits of having a model of 'self' within the model of 'world', or of having multiple models that are similar to the model of 'self' where inputs are manipulated to emulate the likely responses of conspecific organisms. All of this, however, can be achieved by the purely physical flow of information - there is no requirement for 'qualia', and if they are a 'side-effect', then we need another paradigm aside from normal evolutionary thinking in order to properly explain it.

Hope that makes some kind of sense - I'm a scientist, not a philosopher, plus I've had a few beers.

What you say makes sense and a few beers probably helps!

 

[8ball]

What you say makes sense and a few beers probably helps!

In which case I'm completely lost as to where you were going with your 'there is nothing to explain' argument.

 

[8ball]

I mean that attempting to explain human behaviour by analyzing the material processes of the brain betrays the same ideological error as trying to explain human behaviour by analyzing the shape of the skull.

I can see how this might be a technical error but I'm not sure about 'ideological'. I'm not sure what you think human beings are when you place them in a different category from other animals.

 

[kyser_soze]

'Special' seems to be the general term, if not the absolute refusal to say we're animals, on the basis that it causes issues about how we treat other humans...of course, carry on down that avenue and you end up with ideological vegetarianism OR the classical Humans/all other biological entities are inferior to us split, neither of which I find especially satisfying as positions to take.

 

[8ball]

'Special' seems to be the general term . . .

A loaded term if ever there was one, but curiously appropriate.

The refusal to categorise us as animals would seem to imply a very different understanding of what an 'animal' is to the general definition.

Most counter-arguments I've heard seem to come down to thicky Creationism or the Giraffe defense ('we can't be animals - look how long our necks are . . .').

 

[Fruitloop]

I've never understood why this argument is considered persuasive.

We need to understand what we mean when we talk about something being red. If, following Wittgenstein we seek the meaning of a word in the use of the word rather than the ostensive definition of the word, then there is no problem.

When, in everyday life, we talk about a red thing then we are talking about redness as we experience it, we use the word in a way which other people can understand. If we are scientists examining the properties of light and we give red light a precise scientific definition then 'red' has a different meaning ie. we use it in a different way. Of course we necessarily talk about the same object being red using both meanings but we use the meanings in a different way.

So I don't see the problem. There are at least two different meanings of the word 'red' and it is possible to understand one of them, both of them or neither.

The question of qualia is unintersting to me. Its not a tangible problem. Its not clear what the explanatory gap is that we are trying to explain. We perhaps feel that there is one, but what can we say about it? The problem is not a behavioural one, the robot could behave in exactly in the same way as a human and talk about seeing a red something in a convincing way and we would not know whether it is 'really experiencing red'.

In a sense nobody experiences my qualia except me, qualia are not things. Does this make everybody else zombies relative to me? I cannot put myself into somebody else's shoes so to speak because 'I' is not an object.

How can we bat about this idea of qualia when qualia are neither ideas nor objects? Can we conclude anything here? Only that we should not dwell on philosophical questions. There are surely more fruitful lines of inquiry.

The main problem with the identity argument that gurrier is making about consciousness and neurology is that it makes the identity of the physical process and consciousness/qualia a 'brute fact' about the world - i.e. it is explanatorily primitive. This may be the case, but if true it is a very strange state of affairs since the only other brute facts are the fundamental physical laws. Gurrier is also wrong that a world that was physically identical to our own but lacked consciousness or qualia is inconceivable - because for that to be true physical facts and phenomenal facts would need to be necessarily related, and we know that they aren't (just ask a bat )

So the question of consciousness is not some philosophical word-game, it's an attempt to explain important phenomena in our experience of the world. Of course you can deny the existence of consciousness at all via a Churchland-style eliminativism, which says that once you have explained the functions of the brain and their integration there is nothing left to describe, but this doesn't really match up with most people's experience of what it is like, first hand, to be them.

To dwyers nonsense I will return presently.

 

[8ball]

Gurrier is also wrong that a world that was physically identical to our own but lacked consciousness or qualia is inconceivable - because for that to be true physical facts and phenomenal facts would need to be necessarily related, and we know that they aren't (just ask a bat )

Any chance of fleshing that out a bit for one unfamiliar with the terms - I think I know what you mean but could be misunderstanding.

 

[kyser_soze]

A loaded term if ever there was one, but curiously appropriate.

The refusal to categorise us as animals would seem to imply a very different understanding of what an 'animal' is to the general definition.

Most counter-arguments I've heard seem to come down to thicky Creationism or the Giraffe defense ('we can't be animals - look how long our necks are . . .').

I prefer 'more complex' or 'different' - still value judgements, but one less loaded, I think, than 'special'...

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Most counter-arguments I've heard seem to come down to thicky Creationism or the Giraffe defense ('we can't be animals - look how long our necks are . . .').

I like the Giraffe defence.

I think phildwyer desperately wants to believe that humans are special because a god made us so.

He has found himself a suitably wooly philosopher to back him up and constructs elaborate, intelligent-sounding arguments based on wholy false premises. Every now and then he lets slip that he really doesn't understand some pretty basic principles, such as evolution and the nature of thought.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I prefer 'more complex' or 'different' - still value judgements, but one less loaded, I think, than 'special'...

More complex is meaningless really. And the giraffe defence deals quite nicely with different, I think.

 

[Fruitloop]

Oh yeah?


That's you, that is.

The answer is Down's Syndrome you muppet. What was that I said about mistaking pop science for the real thing?

 

[kyser_soze]

More complex is meaningless really. And the giraffe defence deals quite nicely with different, I think.

Well yeah, ultimately I too see humans as another animal with certain behavioural characteristics, but this is for the phils who can't get away from the need of the premise that humans are special in comparison with other animals...

I mean ultimately, we're not even motes when compared to the universe, which must be galling...

 

[Knotted]

Not only did Hegel fit Newton into his philosophy, he *explained* Newton. As, in another medium, did Blake:

http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/newton_blake.jpg

Hegel could not draw Newtonian physics to a contradiction. He could only rubbish it. Hegel's philosophy crumbles at this point. I locate the problem as not being some ism or other of Hegel's or Newtons but because Hegel could only deal with conscious cognition. He could not deal with the simple but sublime.

Hegel's philosophy is the philosophy of the art critic who thinks he is more important than the artist. The only thing that is valued is the ponderous weighing up of ideas and locating them in relation to each other. Anything else is thought to be literally 'barbaric'. Thought for Hegel is conscious thought. This is not so much as an error as a massive oversight.

 

[8ball]

I got into an argument with a theologian mate of mine where he talked about "the objectification of the subject" - it's hard to tell at what point things are breaking down due to a lack of shared references or whether there was an element of getting lost in word games and mistaking connotations for inferences.

I remember agreeing with some of it but this was a long time ago so the details have faded.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Well yeah, ultimately I too see humans as another animal with certain behavioural characteristics, but this is for the phils who can't get away from the need of the premise that humans are special in comparison with other animals...

I mean ultimately, we're not even motes when compared to the universe, which must be galling...

It's odd how some folk seem to find their own insignificance galling. Inasmuch as I find it anything at all, it is quite reassuring to me.