Abstract
As today’s neuroscientists suppose, if consciousness is a neural process that is inside the head and separate from the physical world it perceives, the phenomenal experience is a hard problem.
However, if phenomenological characteristics of co-occurring brain activity with consciousness mental states and things out there are one and the same, consciousness is neither a hard neither an easy problem, just explain how each of your experiences is in the outer world, is the outer world. There is no experience separate from the physical world you perceive.
Section 1 (the #2 post) introduced Nagel's idea that mental states like sensations and experiences (and mental states like the phenomenological elements of attitudes), in contrast with cognitive mental states (the so-called propositional attitudes), have a tripartite essence - phenomenological, physical and functional.
Section 2 (the #3 and #4 posts) exemplify a test to empirical research on the brain. If concepts like the concepts of "cognitive" and "cognition", "binding" and "attention", "semantic", “encode”, "processing" and "information" are replaced by “something”, the related empirical results (that allegedly use these concepts) will be statistically the same or not? If the related empirical results (allegedly related to what we are supposed to refer to through these concepts) are statistically the same, the empirical research on the brain will be “allegedly empirical research on the brain” and these concepts are as idiomatic as Nagel`s “know what it is like to be a bat” (1974) erroneously perceptually imagine (instead of empathetically imagine).
I conclude (the #5 post) that a physicalist reduction of sensations may turn out to be superable and that phenomenological characteristics of co-occurring brain activity with consciousness mental states and things out there are one and the same.
Introduction
The so-called hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers 1995) is that nerve cells configurations co-occurring with mental states like feeling some pain, taste some chocolate or see a certain blue car are physical, chemical and functional characteristics of pain, tasting a chocolate or a blue car vision but not phenomenological characteristics of pain, tasting a chocolate or a blue car vision.
Related to physical, chemical and functional characteristics of co-occurring brain activity with consciousness mental states, brain empirical research leave behind more questions than answers. Brain imaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have a resolution that is still far from being really useful. Currently, this is in the range of cube millimeters. The working of the brain, however, is far too complex to be based on working unit of that magnitude. Two neuron activity patterns, which are functionally different, do not necessarily give different activity at resolution of cube millimeters. Because a volume of few cube millimeters contains large number of neurons (roughly 630 thousand neurons and roughly 4 times as many glial cells in typical 3D volumetric pixels or voxel), changes in the pattern of activity inside it probably have small probability of showing as a change in the total activity of the whole volume. Hence, most of the activity and changes in activity in the brain cannot be detected by fMRI. Arthurs and Boniface (2002), Poldrack (2006), Logothetis (2008), Herculano-Houzel (2009), Lent et al. (2011) and Sejnowski and Movshon, J. A. (2014).
Concepts like the concepts of "cognitive" and "cognition", "binding" and "attention", "semantic", “encode”, "processing" and "information" has not been nothing other than umbrella concepts (or concepts basket of trinkets), i. e., can be typically eliminated from the empirical research (that allegedly use these concepts) that the empirical results (allegedly related to what we are supposed to refer to through these concepts) are not affected.
If, related to physical, chemical and functional characteristics of co-occurring brain activity with consciousness mental states, brain empirical research leave behind more questions than answers, it is not surprising that phenomenological characteristics of co-occurring brain activity with consciousness mental states remain to be cerebrally characterized.
The good news is that mental states like feeling some pain, taste some chocolate or see a certain blue car are not ineffable facts deeply ignored by us.
If there are such facts then we clearly can’t give an example of them, but we can. We can’t coherently say that the fact that…is ineffable for us.
Once we think about it, we should expect that there are ineffable facts. Even though we can’t give examples of facts that are ineffable for us, we can give examples of facts that are ineffable for other creatures, ones that have lesser representational powers. A squirrel can’t represent the fact that there is an economic crisis in Portugal, but we can.
Related to phenomenological characteristics of co-occurring brain activity with consciousness mental states:
i) if we are non-physical Cartesian res cogitans, we have immaterial souls, or just selves if you like, separate from the physical world we experience and even, ultimately, from our bodies, any question it’s a non-starter since it’s based on the notion that the phenomenological characteristics cannot be an object of scientific enquiry;
ii) if we are physical, as today’s neuroscientists suppose, place in the physical world, namely the brain, and hence made consciousness a neural process that is inside the head and separate from the physical world it perceives, any question it’s a non-starter since all available empirical findings have shown that the properties of neurons are nothing like phenomenological characteristics, the properties of our sensations and experiences (and mental states like the phenomenological elements of attitudes), this show every sign of being another dead end;
iii) if we and the world that we experience become identical (identical the same way that Bruce Wayne and Batman are identical. Bruce Wayne is Batman), the same thing, but both in a completely non-physical world, as Bishop Berkeley and Leibniz in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries suppose, any question it’s a non-starter since they depend on a non-substance which no one can track down or verify. You can’t even begin to prove them wrong.
However, iv) if we and the world that we experience become identical (identical the same way that Bruce Wayne and Batman are identical. Bruce Wayne is Batman), the same thing, but both in a physical world, any question it’s a starter, can be an object of scientific enquiry, shows every sign of being another life start and they depend on a substance which one can track down or verify or begin to prove wrong.
All that we know about what goes on in the brain, all the correlations between neural activity and specific kinds of perception, all the physics of photons and sound waves, all the chemistry of retina and taste buds, all the mechanics of the ear and the nose, remain absolutely in place. Everything is physical, verifiable. We just have this one, admittedly enormous, conceptual shift (Nagel 1998): instead of supposing that the senses receive “input” and somehow create a second, inner mental world reflecting the outer world, we say that your experience is in the outer world: it is not separate from the physical world you perceive, it is the world.
The pain, tasting a chocolate or a blue car vision conjured up by this opportunity that is your body, the pain that you feels, the chocolate that you tastes or the car that you sees — it’s not a pain, a tasting chocolate or a blue car vision in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. The pain, tasting a chocolate or a blue car vision that you experience is simply a selection, or subset, of the many other things going on out there in the world; it is the selection that your body—your brain plus your sense organs—allow for.
Your pain, tasting a chocolate or a blue car vision is not a snail’s sensation and experience. Or a bat’s. Your pain, tasting a chocolate or a blue car vision is made of those and only those phenomenological characteristics (the phenomenological, physical and chemical characteristics imply one another) that cause effects (the functional characteristics implied by the phenomenological, physical and chemical characteristics) thanks to your sensory organs, your particular body.
The very idea of consciousness explain how you could experience a pain, tasting a chocolate or a blue car vision when there is no pain, tasting a chocolate or a blue car vision separate from the physical world you perceive. So we have to have this consciousness pain, tasting a chocolate or blue car vision. However, if experience and things out there are one and the same, there is no longer any need to talk of a consciousness separate from the physical world you perceive. You, your pain, a chocolate or a car is more than enough.
In the remaining I proceed pointing out why ii) will be the case, why will be the case that, as today’s neuroscientists suppose, if consciousness is a neural process that is inside the head and separate from the physical world it perceives, any question it’s a non-starter and all allegedly empirical research on the brain shown every sign of being a dead end.
I conclude by pointing out why iv) will be the case, why will be the case that phenomenological characteristics of co-occurring brain activity with consciousness mental states are in the outer world, are not separate from the physical world you perceive, it is the world. Phenomenological characteristics of co-occurring brain activity with consciousness mental states and things out there are one and the same.
Nagel (1998) idea of tripartite essence may exemplify, for the sake of exposition, a philosophical idea that can be useful to the allegedly empirical research on the brain.
Nagel's idea is that mental states like sensations and experiences (and mental states like the phenomenological elements of attitudes) have a tripartite essence (Nagel 1998) - phenomenological, physical and functional - but cognitive mental states like beliefs (about chocolate or cars), desires (of chocolate or cars) and intentions (to eat a chocolate or to drive a car) - the so-called propositional attitudes - does not have a tripartite essence.
Related to the allegedly empirical research on the brain, I will present it in a way that illustrates one of central discussions in statistics research: the statistical discussion between the so-called frequentists and bayesians.
The result I hope to achieve, in the allegedly empirical research on the brain, is to suggest the advantage of analyzing the allegedly empirical data about the brain in both ways in the same study, i.e. using the battery of statistical tests available to both the so-called frequentists and the so-called bayesians (for example, Bayesian factors for ANOVA models and related effect sizes and their confidence intervals). Why?
Because, as Mayo post on 2017, April 1, “I could have told them that the degree of accordance enabling the ASA’s “6 principles” on p-values (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00031305.2016.1154108) was unlikely to be replicated when it came to most of the “other approaches” with which some would supplement or replace significance tests– notably Bayesian updating, Bayes factors, or likelihood ratios (confidence intervals are dual to hypotheses tests)”. Because, in a nutshell, semantics is not in the head, is out there (more below, p. 25).
Namely, as Donald Berry declared, in a preliminary survey of leaders in statistics, many from the original p-value group, aired striking disagreements on best and worst practices with respect to these other approaches, that “standard Bayesian data-analytic measures have the same fundamental limitation as p-values” for capturing background information, adding that: “subjective Bayesian approaches have some hope, but exhibiting a full likelihood function for non-quantifiable data [regarding context] may be difficult or impossible” (see Mayo 2017, April 1 blog post for other leaders responses to the survey).
Thank you very much for reading, I hope to publish the remaining posts on the sixth day after the previous post (one post every sixth day, more or less).