Philosophy Discussion Forums

Steve -

Several people have been over this over 5 years. RJG won't budge and thinks people disagree with the obviousness where what they disagree with tends to be his unfounded conclusion that consciousness does nothing. He seems to think that because "stuff" takes time nothing actually happens - that is essentially what his "argument" boils down to.

Basically it's and Achille's and rabbit problem. If Achille's at some point in time reduces the distance between himself and the rabbit in a race and continues to do so, he'll never actually pass the rabbit, because the quicker he halves the distance he has to infinitely half the remaining distance again and again and so no matter how fast he runs he cannot pass the rabbit.

I am sure you're familiar with this line of reasoning, it just appears RJG is not.

BG: Yes, I take you point. But with each new poster that comes along hope springs eternal! I'd like to keep it simple and focus on one thing at a time. Experience has suggested to me that if we try to say too much in one go our interlocutor just has more places to hide. So I'd like RJG to just stick to the simple and (I think) obvious 5 steps that I listed in my previous post.

-- Updated Wed Nov 15, 2017 8:51 am to add the following --

(It's for this reason that I slightly regret the moon landing analogy that I introduced. An analogy like that provides lots of opportunities to bring up irrelevances to what is a very, very simple situation.)

RJG wrote: Not so. “Zeno’s Paradox” is a sleight-of-hand “parlor trick”. It is not real or “actual”.

It illustrates that the way you describe change does not make sense.

Logic is our ‘innate’ means of “making sense”. Without it, 'nothing' makes sense.

Logic only concerns the relationship between propositions. It does not tell us what is or isn't the case, that sort of knowledge is empirical.

And yet again I note that you make no attempt to respond to what I wrote about the topic, so I'll leave it at that.

Steve3007 wrote: 1. Event in the world: Ball approaches my hand
Delay
2. Event in my brain: I perceive the ball
Delay
3. Event in my brain: I issue a command to my hand to catch the ball
Delay
4. Event in the world: My hand catches the ball
Delay
5. Event in my brain: I perceive my hand catching the ball

Steve, you fail to account for CTD in this timeline. For instance, at the time of step 1, you give the event happening in the world, but are missing the event happening in the (conscious) brain. Each step is missing the corresponding CTD. The "delay" that you show is just the delay between sequential events, not the delay associated to CTD.

Let's assume a CTD of 250 milliseconds, and take a closer (and more accurate) look at catching a ball:

@ t = 0
Event in the world: You throw the ball, ball leaves your hand
Event in my brain: I perceive you still holding the ball

@ t = 250 ms
Event in the world: Ball is in the air halfway to me, my hand initiates movement towards ball
Event in my brain: I perceive you throwing the ball, just now leaving your hand

@ t = 500 ms
Event in the world: Ball has reached me, my hand catches ball
Event in my brain: I perceive the ball halfway to me, I perceive my hand initiating movement

@ t = 750 ms
Event in the world: I spit on the ground
Event in my brain: I perceive my hand catching the ball

@ t = 1 sec
Event in the world: I throw the ball back towards you
Event in my brain: I perceive myself spitting on the ground

As you can see, 'conscious causation' is impossible.

If CTD exists, then a 'time lag' exists, and if a time lag exists, then ‘everything’ one is conscious of, has ALREADY HAPPENED. If it has already happened, then it has already been caused. If it has already been caused, then it is too late to ‘cause’ it.

... agreed?

RJG:

In my timeline I added an event in the brain called " I issue a command to my hand to catch the ball". You have no such event in your timeline. You only have perception events. Why?

RJG wrote:If CTD exists, then a 'time lag' exists, and if a time lag exists, then ‘everything’ one is conscious of, has ALREADY HAPPENED. If it has already happened, then it has already been caused. If it has already been caused, then it is too late to ‘cause’ it.
... agreed?

RJG can you run through how these issues apply in this scenario?

* a person wakes up, gets out of bed, and writes a diary entry about what it's like to be alive, muses about consciousness, etc

In other words, what - if anything - is evidenced by an individual's reports of consciousness? Is the fact of consciousness somehow affecting what is written? Is the fact of consciousness itself somehow causing or influencing the content of the report?

Steve3007 wrote:In my timeline I added an event in the brain called " I issue a command to my hand to catch the ball". You have no such event in your timeline. You only have perception events. Why?

Steve, if you truly believe that you issued this command, then we can add it to the timeline (see revised timeline below). But, if we add it, then we will need to add the corresponding CTD component.

In other words, if you were "conscious" of giving this command, this means, according to CTD, that the 'real' event (the command) actually happened 250 ms 'prior' to your consciousness of it. And if this is so, then you didn't consciously command it, you were only conscious of the command. There is nothing that we can cause (or command) that hasn't already been caused. There is nothing that we can (consciously) "do", that hasn't already been "done".

Revised timeline:

@ t = 0
Event in the world: You throw the ball, ball leaves your hand
Event in my brain: I perceive you still holding the ball

@ t = 250 ms
Event in the world: Ball is in the air halfway to me, my body commands my hand to move towards the ball
Event in my brain: I perceive you throwing the ball, just now leaving your hand

@ t = 500 ms
Event in the world: Ball has reached me, my hand catches ball
Event in my brain: I perceive the ball halfway to me, I perceive my body commanding my hand to move towards the ball.

@ t = 750 ms
Event in the world: I spit on the ground
Event in my brain: I perceive my hand catching the ball

@ t = 1 sec
Event in the world: I throw the ball back towards you
Event in my brain: I perceive myself spitting on the ground

This stage:

@ t = 250 ms
Event in the world: Ball is in the air halfway to me, my hand initiates movement towards ball
Event in my brain: I perceive you throwing the ball, just now leaving your hand

should read:

@ t = 250 ms
Event in the world: Ball is in the air halfway to me, my hand initiates movement towards ball
Event in my brain: I perceive you throwing the ball, just now leaving your hand. I send a command from my brain to my hand telling it to move as a result of this perception.

In other words, as I said in relation to the baseball viewing analogy, I'm not just a passive observer. Events in my brain as a result of sensory neurones cause events in motor neurones.

Steve3007 wrote:should read:

@ t = 250 ms
Event in the world: Ball is in the air halfway to me, my hand initiates movement towards ball
Event in my brain: I perceive you throwing the ball, just now leaving your hand. I send a command from my brain to my hand telling it to move as a result of this perception.

The important question is -- were you 'conscious' of "sending this command"?

If so, then don't forget to add the corresponding missing CTD component; the event happening in 'real-time'; that happened 250 ms 'prior' to this 'conscious-time' event.

If not, and assuming you were ultimately conscious of this, then don't forget to add the corresponding missing CTD component; the event happening in 'conscious-time'; that happened 250 ms 'after' this 'real-time' event.

Here's a version of my original timeline again, showing both events outside and inside my brain, and broken down into a little more detail.

1.
Events in the world: Ball is 3 metres from my hand.
Events in my brain: Nothing relevant. I haven't seen the ball moving yet.
Delay

2.
Events in the world: Ball is 2 metres from my hand.
Events in my brain: I perceive the ball 3 metres from my hand.
Delay

3.
Events in the world: Ball is 1 metre from my hand.
Events in my brain: I perceive the ball 2 metres from my hand. I issue a command to my hand telling it to catch the ball. It sets off down my nervous system towards my hand.
Delay

4.
Events in the world: The command reaches my hand as the ball reaches my hand. My hand closes around it.
Events in my brain: I perceive the ball 1 metre from my hand.
Delay

5.
Events in the world: My hand is holding the ball.
Events in my brain: I perceive my hand catching the ball.

6.
Events in the world: My hand is holding the ball.
Events in my brain: I perceive my hand holding the ball.


It could be broken down into more detail if required. For example, the time taken for the sensory nerve impulses to go from my eyes to my brain is (I presume) shorter than the time taken for the motor nerve impulses to go from my brain to my hand. Because my hands are further away from my brain than my eyes are. But hopefully that's not necessary and you get the idea.

So I issued the conscious command to catch the ball at step 3. I did this even though my perception tells me that the ball is not in the right position yet. But, due to years of practice living inside this body, I know this and I know how to compensate for it. Just as Mission Control knows that when they say "Jump Buzz!" they shouldn't expect to see Buzz Aldrin jumping for some time. That doesn't alter the fact that they consciously commanded him to jump.

You can throw a ball at someone in a completely vegetative state and they can still catch a ball. There is such a thing as PROCEDURAL MEMORY.

I can also make you wear glasses that make things appear to be more to your left than they are and you'll reach out into empty space trying to grasp at it. After a few minutes you'll adjust to the change, and then when I remove your glasses so that what you see is "how things are", you'll then grasp to the right of the item because you have to realign again.

Yes. You can also wear glasses to make everything upside down. And you adjust to that too. We learn the mapping between the world and our perceptions by experience. That's why we spend the first several months of our lives lying on our backs waving our arms and legs around constantly and observing the effect. We're creating a map.

Steve3007 wrote:Yes. You can also wear glasses to make everything upside down. And you adjust to that too. We learn the mapping between the world and our perceptions by experience. That's why we spend the first several months of our lives lying on our backs waving our arms and legs around constantly and observing the effect. We're creating a map.

This is what blows my mind more than anything.

Yes, I suppose so. The idea that the mapping between reality and perception is created by experience and is therefore flexible is maybe surprising at first?

In the context of this topic, what it means is that any delay between an event happening in the world and our perception of that event can be automatically built into the map by experience. To put in software terminology nothing has to be "hard-coded". As infants, when we're lying on the floor wiggling around we're automatically programming ourselves to know what the delay is for our particular body. We learn by experience the length of time between a motor signal leaving our brain saying "move left leg" and the sensations that result - the feeling of the leg moving and the associated view of the leg moving.

As we grow, presumably the nerve lengths grow so the time delay presumably increases. So it seems natural that this process of map making must continue throughout our lives. We're always capable of re-configuring the map if new sensations suggest that it's useful to do so. And we then extend the process outside our bodies. When we learn to drive a car, the car becomes like an extension of our bodies.

It's really no different from the way that science creates patterns/maps in our observations. Science is just a formal continuation of this natural pattern/map forming process.

I learn how to co-ordinate hand and eye so that I can throw and catch things - as a reflex action.

I see a moving ball in my vicinity. Without thinking what I am doing, I catch it.

Followed by event in brain: 'Oh! A ball! I wonder where it came from'. I look around. I see some people playing a game. I decide to throw it back.

After a few moments I throw it back without thinking how I am doing it, again using learned reflexes.