MD
qualiaphile
You're giving me a physical example. Give me a mental example.
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Artificial Intelligence
- Thread starter 1137
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You're giving me a physical example. Give me a mental example.
MD
qualiaphile
How does the brain convert air waves into sound?
How do electrical signals from particles result in feelings?
MD
qualiaphile
And btw homo sapiens are not completely novel entities. They are made up of particles which can be broken down to their bare constituents. A novel entity would be having the emergence of all particles create something completely alien to the universe.
You mean like your idea of qualia, which have no explanation and cannot be tested yet create subjective experience out of nowhere with no explanation?
MD
qualiaphile
It's not my idea...
And yes it has no explanation, but it exists. It is the essence of human existence.
I realize you think that. However, saying that consciousness exists for no reason and creates subjective experience out of nowhere is exactly what you are against believing: that completely novel things pop into the universe for no reason. You are arguing against accepting what you accept.
MD
qualiaphile
It's really not. It's an idea shared by many philosophers and neuroscietntists. You're right, my theory states that a sort of magic exists in this universe. But I have provided a strong argument as to why this magic exists. And I could be wrong but atleast in the universe I suggest exists there's a reason why such novel phenomenon exist.
Perhaps you could try to give me a physicalist mechanism through which completely novel phenomenon appear? Because while both of our beliefs (and they are beliefs because qualia within a physical universe is impossible) suggest a sort of magic, my magic is contained within my universe while yours is outside of it.
Also would you call electricity magic? Because it seems like it is magic. Or how about light? Or how about quantum entaglement? Or wave particle dualities of electrons? Or the fact that particles exist in a set of limitless probabilities and only through the act of decoherence do we achieve one possibility?
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That's my point, nothing really comes out of nowhere IMO. That is the point. Subjective experience has an explanation, so does consciousness. We may not fully get it, but it is all part of the same mechanical system. I do not see it as magic at all. Complex, sure. But magic is unexplainable.
No. We can test them, observe, make scientific theories around them. Things like the double slit experiment, we can test and observe that. We can understand that or at least know that there must be ways to explain it. None of that is magical, IMO, not like something that exists for no apparent reason with no apparent cause that is not observable or testable.
MD
qualiaphile
Then give me your hypothesis of how something completely novel arises in a single physical universe? So far all you have done is criticize my side. So let's hear it from you.
How do you get color from waves?
First I feel compeled to remind you it's not my field. I don't know the science behind it, I learned it in a physics class. Cones in the eyes, light waves, color is explainable by science to my knowledge. People like Idav have already explained it scientifically to you. I do not believe things just randomly came about. Something caused the big bang, everything else has come from that event. Light included. Color we see is the light that is reflected off of an object that the eye takes in. It is not novel, it does not just come from nowhere. Everything has a cause, it can be traced and explained. For example, love is subjective and does not just come out of nowhere, it is chemical reactions in the brain. We haven't known that for long. Eventually we will fully, and I mean fully understand the brain and how it works.
MD
qualiaphile
Just when I think you understand qualia, you prove that you don't! And Idav did not explain how color exists at all. You haven't explained anything to me at all.
Light is a subjective experience of waves.
Color is a subjective experience of light.
Love is a subjective experience of chemicals? Chemicals are particles!
Just when I think you understand qualia, you prove that you don't! And Idav did not explain how color exists at all. You haven't explained anything to me at all.
Light is a subjective experience of waves.
Color is a subjective experience of light.
Love is a subjective experience of chemicals? Chemicals are particles!
No, light is light, color is color, and love still has a physical cause. Even these being subjective changes nothing, it in no way suggests the cause is not physical. Light objectively exists, color can be explained scientifically and if not fully, that doesn't imply it never fully will be. Love is chemical reactions, that's just true and a physical cause.
Can you explain why we even have a brain if it has no purpose? Everything is subjective to us, we even experience the objective subjectively. Our whole experience is subjective. Why are we not just pure consciousness?
otokage007
Well-Known Member
Well, it does it all the time. Evolution is all about creating new species isn't it? :/
But back to the topic. This has nothing to do with the metaphysical, you are pointing in the wrong direction. You do realize that to "sense" something, it is needed that your receptors just give some kind of signal to your brain saying "hey, here it is what u were looking for"?. Of course this signal only exists within your body, because it is something your body invented. Evolution invents new things all the time, and if you consider that magic, then u have simply failed to grasp Darwin's theory.
I think it's easier to explain with tastes. You do realize that the brain has to discriminate what he can eat and what he can not?. This comes from ancient bacteria, and ancient bacteria, are just a complex representation of basic biochemistry: enzyme and substrate, proteins that would only interact with one type of stimuli. As soon as that existed, evolution would grant that bacteria the capacity of realizing that it is interacting with that substrate (call it becterial-taste, if u may). In fact, this "taste" always existed since life appeared in our planet, because the very first bacteria wasn't isolated within her, it had to interact with the enviroment to survive, and to interact with the enviroment, it must had receptors to sense the enviroment. Having taste means a massive advantage to compete with other species, so since millions of years ago, it has been evolving to the complexity we humans have. Evolution is not logical, it does not work according to your mind, for u it might be "weird" that brains trick themselves inventing things out of nothing that didn't even exist, but if that is advantageous, then evolution will go that way.
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MD
qualiaphile
They have a physical basis in objective reality. We create subjective interpretations of them. Subjective interpretations cannot appear out of nothing. You really should read up on neurology to understand the ontological gap. I'm tired of explaining myself over and over again. This is called the 'hard problem of consciousness'. Nobel prize winners agree with me that this is a problem. Very few scientists and philosophers just brush it off. I cannot explain it to you anymore because you fail to grasp it. I'm not trying to be mean but you really must read up on it before defending a position with an incomplete perspective.
MD
qualiaphile
Wrong. Evolution is all about adaption due to different effects of an environmet. You could have the same species with different traits.
Lol the level of arrogance you posess is astounding considering how your own knowledge is incomplete and flawed. First of all evolution doesn't just 'invent' something. There are random mutations all the time. Depending on natural selection some mutations are picked over others. Now these mutations result in new proteins which are more adaptive. How these proteins create completely novel phenomenon extrinsic to the universe is impossible to explain. If you think they 'create' signals which invent these novel phenomenon then YOU do not understand evolution. Evolution does not just 'invent' mental phenomenon. And even IF it did, that still does not explain what these mental perceptions are! Trying to sound arrogant about it doesn't really help your case and actually shows how little you know about what I'm talking about.
No.
Stop trying to show that you're logical because you're not. Even if bacteria evolved into preferring one biochemical aspect from another it still does not explain how the subjective experience of taste exists. I probably know more biology than you do, stop trying to teach me things that I already know.
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I only know the basics to get my point across but I googled the subject for you. The sound waves hit our ears and the tiny bones vibrate giving off a vibration that we are able to detect as a sound. Purely physical process especially once the brain gets a hold of it as electro-chemical signal.
http://www.physicsclassroom.com/mmedia/waves/edl.cfm
Feelings are the brains reaction to certain chemicals. Feelings are just senses just like our five major senses.
You are sensing your environment that is what all of experience is based on. Every particle that interacts with other particles, every chemical reaction in your body will be sensed by other cells and the signals are passed along for you to be consciously aware of. The awareness is where the feelings come from.
MD
qualiaphile
I know this. Everyone in neuroscience knows this. How do the brain signals create sound? Or the brain signals create feelings? Feelings are perceptions, not senses.
Okay for everyone here. From Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does." - David Chalmers
"T.H. Huxley remarked:
how it is that any thing so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.[10]"
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I don't really see an issue. You can't really separate the sensing from the perception of it, at least you don't really need to. The how is explained through the physical processes, what other 'how' are you looking for? You want it to be something other than a physical process but there is no evidence for such other than in philosophical speculation.
That Huxley quote just hides in the gaps of knowledge. It does seem remarkable but the more neuroscience learns the more these things become accounted for. It is pretty remarkable but knowledge is attainable even for something like god.
MD
qualiaphile
Just because you don't understand the issue doesn't mean that I want it to be something. You are missing the point of the hard problem of consciousnss. There is no explanation for how the physical process creates the mental.
Saying it's just neural impulses --> sound is like saying engine combustion --> space god. There's a gap there. And both physical processes are creating a completely novel entity.
The gap cannot be filled by physical knowledge because sound and taste are not physical phenomenon. They have no basis in physical reality. They are mental phenomenon. There is a correlation to physical phenomenon no doubt. But they are not 'physical' because they only exist in our minds.
There are two kinds of emergence, strong and weak.
Strong Emergence --> Something completely novel arises from the bare constitutents.
Weak Emergence --> Something arises from the bare constitutents but it is reducible.
If you had a supercomputer that had the data of all the particles in the universe then the supercomputer would be able to tell you examples of weak emergence just by studying the particles. Weak emergence is something like a wave of water. It looks pretty and it's hard to imagine how such pretty waves come about, but if you go deep enough you can see that the waves themselves are comprised of smaller and smaller waves, until you reach a point where the waves are simply particles.
However if the supercomputer had all the data it still wouldn't be able to give you a prediction of strong emergence because strong emergence is a completely novel creation of its bare constituents. The only example of strong emergence is consciousness. Now to state that strong emergence is true is an incorrect statement because that implies that the bare constituents of a system can create something not only completely different from the system itself, but from the universe.