Consul wrote: ↑January 15th, 2019, 8:01 pm
Greta wrote: ↑January 14th, 2019, 11:30 pmYour elephant is a only a small plastic figurine. If the brain is the sole generator of consciousness then we can put aside the rest of the nervous system as a contributor, just a provider of inputs. Yet if we include the nervous system, do we include all of it, or just neurons? If we figure that glial cells and microtubules may also play a role then what of neuroendocrine cells like Chromaffin cells? Now we have the endocrine system included, and you can see where I'm heading.
Of course, the general statement that conscious events/states (and the qualia they contain) are generated by and in the brain doesn't give us any detailed information about those special brain structures and processes which are the immediate or proximate causes of conscious events/states. This question cannot be answered
a priori, because it's up to empirical neuroscience to identify, describe, and explain them.
Empirical neuroscience focuses largely on human consciousness, seldom never consciousness per se. That's where the funding dollars go. Neuroscience has nothing to say about qualia, and generally treats it as non-existent in much the same way as Skinner behaviouralists in psychology ignored the esoteric undercurrents for the sake of practicality, just recorded the cause and effects. So researchers no doubt will find brain structures causing all manner of events but not pertaining qualia as such. As things stand, it is generally framed as wakefulness or awareness, the practical side.
I can easily see the concept of qualia sliding from the public conversation as Dennettesque practicality is ever more seen as the only scientifically useful game in town. This echoes how Jung and the psychodynamic school of psychology fell out of favour as Skinner's behaviouralism became popular, until its superficiality and limits were considered further. Now it's not unusual qualia to be posited as a trivial side effect or perspective effect of processing.
Why would we treat that which is by far most important to us as if it's froth and bubble? It appears to stem from the notion that humans are inordinately self important and thus that we overstate the value of qualities associated with humans such as consciousness. So this great sense of being is thought to be largely an illusion, basically a hangover from overdoing the ego.
Yet, science must work for the many, and generally only works for the benefit of individuals if there is a utilitarian angle. Society as a whole clearly has no interest or stake in how its individuals feel within, only insofar as it impacts their functionality. So science necessarily provides much useful peripheral information about mental states but almost almost no answers at all pertaining to the nature of being and the self.
Trouble is, where do we find reliable information about the subjective? Buddhism does have a rich history of meditators recording their observations but I expect that parsing useful material from the vast amounts of guesswork and obvious superstition would not always be easy.
Consul wrote: ↑January 15th, 2019, 8:01 pmGreta wrote: ↑January 14th, 2019, 11:30 pmThe brain is obviously up to its ears (so to speak) in the phenomenon of consciousness but the handy divisions your "elephants" make are human creations designed to be practical. They do not properly describe the much more nuanced ontic situation, including subtle interactions that are probably essential to fine aspects of consciousness. I think of it in terms of fractals - the brain is the main player but surrounded by ever finer grained layers of influence from various body parts, especially the gut, lungs and heart.
It is true that the brain is influenced by extracerebral factors, and this is also true of the contents of my consciousness; but it simply doesn't follow that extracerebral parts of the organism are
co-manufacturers of qualia.
Influencing the manufacturing of qualia is not the same as manufacturing qualia. The transformation of neural signals into subjective sensations or emotions takes place somewhere in the brain and nowhere else in the organism. There aren't any extracerebral qualia.
I do not think we have much difference in physical conception, rather in definitions and perspectives. The more I think about this, the more I think the brain, along with all other organs, is essentially an appendage of the gut. The brain and nervous system is the part of the metabolism that provides assistance and protection for the gut, while other organs filter, absorb, augment, support, circulate and perform conversions.
The brain is like the board of a company, but the gut owns it. I do concede that a hostile takeover appears to be in train which already has us thinking about this in reverse, treating brains as the central aspect of an organism. Brains have long minimised the importance of the gut, and this is reflected in the ultimate dream of digitising minds to be independent of vulnerable wetware bodies.
Consul wrote: ↑January 15th, 2019, 8:01 pmGreta wrote: ↑January 14th, 2019, 11:30 pmThat only tells us that the claustrum is a consciousness on/off switch (one can also switch consciousness on and off with a cricket bat and smelling salts.). Again, switches and filters are not generators, they are shapers of that which feeds into it. My light switch doesn't generate power either.
So you think the brain is in effect only an
amplifier of consciousness, don't you? But, to ask the crucial question again, if that's true, where does the extracerebral production of qualia take place and what produces them? What is the qualia-producing organ of consciousness if not the brain?
Yes, an amplifier but mostly a shaper. There would be no one organ that produces qualia just as no one organ produces life.
Consul wrote: ↑January 15th, 2019, 8:01 pmGreta wrote: ↑January 14th, 2019, 11:30 pmAs I said, I see phenomenal consciousness (qualia) as akin to water and functional consciousness (processing) as being the flows of the water down a river with a network of streams, their paths and shape conditioned by past flows. Everything bar basic composition that we learn about the river is found within its flow and paths, but without the water there are only potential paths.
Qualia is not your mind, it's basically the noise produced by your body in an environment that the mind shapes into what we think of as consciousness. It's not that the reality produced by a brain to protect an overall organism is not real, just that parts are exaggerated and other parts de-emphasised.
There is an energy and information flow inside an organism, and also one between the organism and its environment. The informational input into the brain consists of physical or chemical signals, but none of them enter the brain
ready-made as phenomenal qualities, i.e. as subjective sensations or emotions. The transformation of non-/pre-experiential signals into experiential qualities takes place
only inside the brain.
The body translates information into the various chemical and electrical "dialects" of various body parts involved in passing along information.
Consul wrote: ↑January 15th, 2019, 8:01 pmGreta wrote: ↑January 14th, 2019, 11:30 pmC. elegans has no mind, but it has a tiny brain and thus would have some small measure of consciousness of its environment. Then consider the larval sea quirt, moving in the water using its 177 neurons like a tadpole until it finds a safe place to cling to. From there, it absorbs its tiny brain and basically lives its life as a sessile water filter. This tells us that the neurons were used for movement with preferences based on simple parameters, basically a reflex (and then were no longer needed for the adult lifestyle). I would argue that mindless reflexes are in themselves quales, raw sensations that we shape into what we think of as consciousness.
You're confusing mere sensory signals with subjective sense-qualities, and mere neural information with subjective sensations or emotions.
Reflex behavior isn't the same as and doesn't even entail (phenomenal) consciousness.
So you keep saying. However, our overarching consciousness did not come from nowhere. No, this kind of complex brainpower evolved from simpler kinds, and simpler ones before that, and so on.
The way I see it, the basic unit of consciousness is the reflex. Using the water analogy, reflexes are pools and consciousness are rivers, which could be thought of as a complex series of pools and, when there's enough of them then larger, riverlike dynamics come into play.
Emotions, for example, are huge evolved suites of reflexes that work in concert when a sufficiently-brained organism is presented with stimuli. They are, in essence, naturally selected subroutines, called under certain circumstances. Basic emotions like fear (fight or flight/startle) and pleasure/satiation are very common in nature, generally pertaining to equilibrium. More complex emotions will, of course, pertain to social living.
Emotions are just very complex reflex responses that intelligent machines, with their much faster processing speeds, will not need. A human faced with an attacker will go through all useful reflex responses - adrenaline, life in breathing, heart rate and blood pressure to force feed organs and muscles for quick response, plus tendency to fight or flee. In much less than the time needed for human bodies to prepare for such a problem, an intelligent machine would simply calculate the optimal moment and mode of attack or defence needed and execute it.