Intent

[Tayla]

Do you see a difference in the chemical reactions that result from a volcanic eruption versus those that occur to sustain a living cell apart from simple categorical distinctions? In other words, is there ever a justification for ascribing 'intent' to the cell?

Intent requires consciousness, or at least a mind of some sort. Machines, whether biological or not, merely function as designed.

 

[durangodawood]

...Machines, whether biological or not, merely function as designed.

Yes.... so far.

 

[zippy2006]

Sorry, I missed responding to this first time around...

No problem, my CF pace has been slowing so the delay is okay with me.

There are some who think that emergence can be special and mysterious, but I'm not sure what grounds they have for that.

The idea of the qualitative difference implies some level of mystery. Some qualitative differences are easy to explain and some are not, and the latter draw near the idea of the mysterious.

I'm not sure what you mean about analogies and how emergence works; it seems pretty straight-forward - simple interactions between many elements can produce complex behaviours of, or patterns in, the bulk.

I guess the simplest way to state my point is that some things are emergence and some things might be; some things are agreed to be emergence and some things are arguable. One way to look at the two sets is the level to which the qualitative difference obtains. Birds flocking produce a much weaker qualitative difference than consciousness. This is because we can easily see how individual flight mechanics result in the "emergent" group dynamics, but we cannot easily see how objective facts result in subjective life.

Consciousness was just meant to be one example, but it raises qualitative questions not just of subjectivity, but also of things like intent and organic substances (the latter of which I linked to here).

The way I see it is that the interactions of the neurons in the brain give rise to complex patterns of activity from which the majority of our observable behaviours are demonstrably emergent. The issue with consciousness is the complication of the subjective vs objective dichotomy. The objective correlates of consciousness suggest that consciousness is just another behaviour produced by the interactions of the neurons in the brain, e.g. messing with those interactions in specific ways affects reported consciousness and its observable correlates in correspondingly specific and repeatable ways.

It seems to me that the subjective viewpoint, where consciousness means that there is something it is like to be that individual when the brain is in that mode of activity, is not directly explicable - an explanation is an objective description that details causes, context, consequences, etc., so ultimately it can only tell us that when the system with these features is active in this specific way (and I can see the specific requirements for consciousness eventually being established in considerable detail) it will have subjective experience, i.e. there will be something it is like to be that system.

I think the crux that organic substances get at is primacy. Supposing you want to talk about the objective/subjective qualitative distinction, which is primary? If I understand correctly, emergentists believe that the objective is primary, i.e., the substrate is more primary than the thing which emerges from it. That is an opinion that has shifted over the centuries and does not have clear logical soundness.

Although I am wondering why you believe explanation is inherently objective and thus cannot handle subjectivity, it is worth noting that your statement here confirms my opinion about explicability (and therefore mystery). If subjectivity isn't directly explicable in terms of the substrate then this case of emergence is inherently mysterious and inexplicable.

We already have some understanding of how some aspects of everyday consciousness are constructed, (...) but I don't see how we can do more than give a detailed functional description of the objective contributions that result in a system having subjective experience.

As a materialist, why do you believe that a direct explanation is impossible? Why the limitation?

Going back to my two sets, the case of flocking birds initially looks like a bizarre and incomprehensible qualitative difference. Yet upon closer inspection it is fully explicable. Why is consciousness different? Why is it not "directly explicable," why can we do no more "than give a detailed functional description"?

As Hume put it, 'constant conjunction'. I think we'll find that subjective experience is associated with systems that have specific functional features that interact in specific ways.

I guess my question would again relate to primacy and distinguishing correlation from causation.

The situation appears to be that we have a complex system that gives rise to many demonstrably emergent behaviours, and a particular subset of those behaviours appears to have a feature or property that is inherently inaccessible to the objective viewpoint. Is it likely that this feature or property is emergent, as its objective correlates appear to be?

I'm actually pretty interested in the inferences that would allow one to answer that question affirmatively. Constant conjunction strikes me as underdetermined. There must needs be some basis for postulating the objective as more primary and taking that as our starting point. Identifying correlates and trying to objectively assess their primacy in relation to their counterpart seems fraught with the danger of selective bias. I certainly see why mechanistic materialists are attracted to emergence; I don't see why the premise that leads them to mechanistic materialism is justified.

When I use it, all I mean is that the emergent behaviour bears no obvious relation to the behaviour of the contributing elements; i.e. it's not just quantitatively different, it's not 'more of the same'.

Okay, thanks.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I guess the simplest way to state my point is that some things are emergence and some things might be; some things are agreed to be emergence and some things are arguable. One way to look at the two sets is the level to which the qualitative difference obtains. Birds flocking produce a much weaker qualitative difference than consciousness. This is because we can easily see how individual flight mechanics result in the "emergent" group dynamics, but we cannot easily see how objective facts result in subjective life.

I think the subjective viewpoint is a special - unique - situation because it refers to our individual experience. When certain patterns of neural activity are present, the system becomes an observer, but we have no direct access to what the system experiences (what it is like to be that system).

Consciousness was just meant to be one example, but it raises qualitative questions not just of subjectivity, but also of things like intent and organic substances (the latter of which I linked to here).

The question of intent seems to me semantic - what, precisely, do we mean by it, i.e. what subset of behaviours does it usefully distinguish? That there seem to be two distinct meanings, as you outlined in your link, confuses the issue when people conflate or equivocate them. Organic substances are the compounds of carbon chemistry - if you're referring to life, chemically it's a complex form of controlled combustion.

Supposing you want to talk about the objective/subjective qualitative distinction, which is primary? If I understand correctly, emergentists believe that the objective is primary, i.e., the substrate is more primary than the thing which emerges from it. That is an opinion that has shifted over the centuries and does not have clear logical soundness.

I guess the substrate is 'primary' in respect of causality, but if you're studying the emergent property, it will be primary in the sense that it's your main focus of interest; it seems to me that primacy is context dependent.

Although I am wondering why you believe explanation is inherently objective and thus cannot handle subjectivity, it is worth noting that your statement here confirms my opinion about explicability (and therefore mystery). If subjectivity isn't directly explicable in terms of the substrate then this case of emergence is inherently mysterious and inexplicable.

An explanation is a clarifying description. As such it is communication. Communications consist of references to shared objective phenomena with an assumption of, or appeal to, common subjective experience. In other words, you must translate your subjective experience into objective references and the recipient must, in turn, interpret those references in terms of her own subjective experience of them. The hope for the sender is that the recipient's subjective experience of those objective referents is similar enough to his own to have the intended meaning.

As a materialist, why do you believe that a direct explanation is impossible? Why the limitation?
... the case of flocking birds initially looks like a bizarre and incomprehensible qualitative difference. Yet upon closer inspection it is fully explicable. Why is consciousness different? Why is it not "directly explicable," why can we do no more "than give a detailed functional description"?

Consciousness is different because it's uniquely inaccessible; it's a different, 'inside', view of the same phenomena (certain patterns of neural activity), it's what it's like to be a system in which those phenomena are occurring.

Explanations necessarily involve objective referents; so we can, in principle, get an objective explanation in terms of a structural and functional description of the system and its contributing parts, and how each function maps to some reported aspect of subjective experience; but I don't see that there's anything more to say than that. A system that has these processes interacting in those ways has subjective experience. Why does it have subjective experience? because it has these processes interacting in those ways. There may well be, as Douglas Hofstadter suggests, a single key requirement, such as some sort of recursive self-monitoring process (a 'strange loop') without which subjectivity is absent, but that's just another objective description. If I understand correctly, it won't satisfy everyone as an explanation; people will continue to ask, "but why does X produce consciousness?"

I guess my question would again relate to primacy and distinguishing correlation from causation.

Distinguishing correlation from causation is the perennial problem of inference. Again, I think it ultimately comes down to the semantics of causation - what classes of constant conjunction should we class as causative and on what grounds?

Constant conjunction strikes me as underdetermined.

Quite, see above.

There must needs be some basis for postulating the objective as more primary and taking that as our starting point.

Isn't it a question of utility? We can only share and agree on objective criteria.

Identifying correlates and trying to objectively assess their primacy in relation to their counterpart seems fraught with the danger of selective bias.

What alternatives are there to identifying and mapping correlations? i.e. when the system has these processes interacting in those ways, it displays certain observable behaviours, one of which is it reports subjective experience. If those observables broadly correlate with those of other conscious actors, we assume they do represent consciousness, just as we do for those other conscious actors - but we are only ever certain of our own personal subjective experience - all else is inference; nevertheless, we're happy to accept that other people are not philosophical zombies.

 

[zippy2006]

I guess the substrate is 'primary' in respect of causality, but if you're studying the emergent property, it will be primary in the sense that it's your main focus of interest; it seems to me that primacy is context dependent.

Good. I think this question of causal primacy is fundamental to our conversation. You think that the substrate causes the emergent property; that the objective, measurable realities cause subjectivity; that the parts cause the whole; that the mechanistic material causes the organism. This is precisely the inference that I see as unjustified.

I do want to at least point out that there is a battle of terms going on underneath this, for no one denies that substrates are more causally primary than that which emerges from them. Yet this terminology is based on a modern understanding. Aristotle would not have used the terms that way. He would have seen the substance as more primary than the material cause in an ontological sense. That is to say that the material plays only a small role in the causal explanation of the entity. Ergo: contrary claims will will identify things like the substrate differently.

I think the subjective viewpoint is a special - unique - situation because it refers to our individual experience. When certain patterns of neural activity are present, the system becomes an observer, but we have no direct access to what the system experiences (what it is like to be that system).

I will save the idea that the subjective is uniquely private for below where you elaborate. NB: your "When ... becomes" sentence contains the causal premise noted above.

The question of intent seems to me semantic - what, precisely, do we mean by it, i.e. what subset of behaviours does it usefully distinguish? That there seem to be two distinct meanings, as you outlined in your link, confuses the issue when people conflate or equivocate them. Organic substances are the compounds of carbon chemistry - if you're referring to life, chemically it's a complex form of controlled combustion.

Intent in the context of our conversation about consciousness seems to rest on the idea of intentionality and active directedness. When I write a letter I actively direct the muscles in my arm and hand to control the pen in such a way that it produces visible English words. Intentionality is inevitably present in this act. This aspect of intent may become important in the context of our conversation about consciousness, objectivity, and subjectivity because it gets at the active/passive distinction. I think that is perhaps the core problem with the qualitative difference between objectivity and subjectivity: passivity and activity.

An explanation is a clarifying description. As such it is communication. Communications consist of references to shared objective phenomena with an assumption of, or appeal to, common subjective experience. In other words, you must translate your subjective experience into objective references and the recipient must, in turn, interpret those references in terms of her own subjective experience of them. The hope for the sender is that the recipient's subjective experience of those objective referents is similar enough to his own to have the intended meaning.

Broadly speaking, sure, but isn't this just to say that there is an important phenomenological way in which subjectivity is more primary than objectivity? In your chain of communication the very first thing is subjective experience. That doesn't directly contradict the claim that objective realities such as neurons cause subjectivity, but it complicates it considerably.

Consciousness is different because it's uniquely inaccessible; it's a different, 'inside', view of the same phenomena (certain patterns of neural activity), it's what it's like to be a system in which those phenomena are occurring.

I agree there is a correlation between patterns of neural activity and consciousness. Whether they are two sides of the same phenomenon, I do not know.

Explanations necessarily involve objective referents; so we can, in principle, get an objective explanation in terms of a structural and functional description of the system and its contributing parts, and how each function maps to some reported aspect of subjective experience; but I don't see that there's anything more to say than that. A system that has these processes interacting in those ways has subjective experience. Why does it have subjective experience? because it has these processes interacting in those ways. There may well be, as Douglas Hofstadter suggests, a single key requirement, such as some sort of recursive self-monitoring process (a 'strange loop') without which subjectivity is absent, but that's just another objective description. If I understand correctly, it won't satisfy everyone as an explanation; people will continue to ask, "but why does X produce consciousness?"

Or they might ask, "Does X produce consciousness?" I'm honestly not even sure how rigorous the scientific approach is in this case. The human being is so complicated... Suppose the scientist identifies 1,000 correlates to consciousness (which are always present when the subject is reportedly conscious). What relation do those 1,000 correlates have to consciousness? Is it causal? A sufficient condition? If the scientist identifies these 1,000 correlates in a comatose patient has he demonstrated consciousness? Are these 1,000 correlates the entirety of the ontological correlates to consciousness? A tenth? A hundredth? A millionth?

Distinguishing correlation from causation is the perennial problem of inference. Again, I think it ultimately comes down to the semantics of causation - what classes of constant conjunction should we class as causative and on what grounds?

Sure. I think the active/passive distinction in intent is important here. If consciousness is fully caused by objective, "passive" entities, then intent is emergent and ultimately reducible to these objective correlates (or, in this case, causes). But then the active is reducible to the passive, and this in turn means that a human action such as intending is reproducible by forces outside the agent, denying the idea that the agent is the locus of his action. There ends up being really no difference between the things I do and the things that are done to me.

(Apparently this is spiraling into the determinism/agency question, which often implicates free will. Avoid it if you can. )

Isn't it a question of utility? We can only share and agree on objective criteria.

Actually I don't see utility, agreement, and discourse as primary here. I would rather see reality and understanding as primary. I would rather you yourself come to a complete and incommunicable understanding of reality than limit yourself for the sake of utility and communication.

And yet there may be some deeper reason why someone sees the objective as primary. Earlier you implicated causality (and ontology) in that claim, which goes beyond utility. I doubt the average emergentist would be content to rest their system on utility. Of course, there may also be deeper reasons why someone sees the subjective as primary.

What alternatives are there to identifying and mapping correlations? i.e. when the system has these processes interacting in those ways, it displays certain observable behaviours, one of which is it reports subjective experience. If those observables broadly correlate with those of other conscious actors, we assume they do represent consciousness, just as we do for those other conscious actors - but we are only ever certain of our own personal subjective experience - all else is inference; nevertheless, we're happy to accept that other people are not philosophical zombies.

I will defer your first sentence due to depth and space. In one sense I agree: we always begin with correlational observations. Yet I am wary of the jump to causality especially at this level of depth. When ancient peoples theorized about the movements of the stars and planetary bodies they made use of correlation but vastly underestimated the complexity of the system. I would venture that the human being is magnitudes more complicated than the observable solar system. Supposing the mythological was not a sufficient tool to measure the stars, is the modern scientist's computer a sufficient tool to measure consciousness?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I think this question of causal primacy is fundamental to our conversation. You think that the substrate causes the emergent property; that the objective, measurable realities cause subjectivity; that the parts cause the whole; that the mechanistic material causes the organism. This is precisely the inference that I see as unjustified.

Emergence is described as, "...the condition of an entity having properties its parts do not have, due to interactions among the parts." Wikipedia (my italics). It's the interactions of the parts that is causal; without the parts, there are no interactions and so, no emergence.

I do want to at least point out that there is a battle of terms going on underneath this, for no one denies that substrates are more causally primary than that which emerges from them. Yet this terminology is based on a modern understanding. Aristotle would not have used the terms that way. He would have seen the substance as more primary than the material cause in an ontological sense. That is to say that the material plays only a small role in the causal explanation of the entity. Ergo: contrary claims will will identify things like the substrate differently.

I don't understand the constant emphasis on primacy - there are various relationships between the entities we're considering which can be viewed in different ways in different contexts.

Intent in the context of our conversation about consciousness seems to rest on the idea of intentionality and active directedness. When I write a letter I actively direct the muscles in my arm and hand to control the pen in such a way that it produces visible English words. Intentionality is inevitably present in this act. This aspect of intent may become important in the context of our conversation about consciousness, objectivity, and subjectivity because it gets at the active/passive distinction. I think that is perhaps the core problem with the qualitative difference between objectivity and subjectivity: passivity and activity.

Intent isn't necessarily active; you can have the intent to do something but not do it. Intent is, effectively, a minimal plan to make an attempt (which may involve planning) to achieve a goal. I don't really see how passivity and activity is particularly relevant to objectivity and subjectivity - perhaps you could elaborate or give some examples.

... isn't this just to say that there is an important phenomenological way in which subjectivity is more primary than objectivity?

Sure, in as much as phenomenology is, broadly, the study of the contents of consciousness & subjective experience; one might also say that phenomenology is the appropriate way to study the interacting patterns of neural activity in the brain from the subjective viewpoint

In your chain of communication the very first thing is subjective experience. That doesn't directly contradict the claim that objective realities such as neurons cause subjectivity, but it complicates it considerably.

The idea was to emphasise the fundamental dichotomy between the subjective and objective views and the inaccessibility of the subjective to the objective, not the relevant causality. If we can only communicate in terms of shared objective experiences, it is equally possible to suggest that the objective experience (whether interoceptive or exteroceptive) 'comes first'.

I agree there is a correlation between patterns of neural activity and consciousness. Whether they are two sides of the same phenomenon, I do not know.

The evidence from neuroscience suggests that they are. As far as we can tell, consciousness develops in infants as their brains become competent, fragments in old age as dementias destroy the brain, divides when the corpus callosum is divided, and every observable and reportable aspect of it that I know of can be modified by interference with specific areas of the brain in specific ways. It appears to have evolved where a high level of behavioural flexibility has a selective advantage, but is built on and dependent on the relatively inflexible modular heuristics of earlier evolutionary times.

Or they might ask, "Does X produce consciousness?" I'm honestly not even sure how rigorous the scientific approach is in this case. The human being is so complicated... Suppose the scientist identifies 1,000 correlates to consciousness (which are always present when the subject is reportedly conscious). What relation do those 1,000 correlates have to consciousness? Is it causal? A sufficient condition? If the scientist identifies these 1,000 correlates in a comatose patient has he demonstrated consciousness? Are these 1,000 correlates the entirety of the ontological correlates to consciousness? A tenth? A hundredth? A millionth?

We use the behavioural correlates of consciousness to judge our fellow man conscious every day. In fact, consciousness has been identified in some patients thought to be in a persistent vegetative state, by measuring their brain activity - first discovered when one such patient was scanned and showed high levels of cortical activity in the areas involved with semantic processing and sentence analysis in response to speech. Consciousness was confirmed by asking the patient to visualise either playing tennis or walking around her home as 'yes' and 'no' indicators. Subsequent questions consistently produced two distinct patterns of activity which corresponded to correct yes/no answers about the patient's life, etc. This procedure has been repeated for a number of patients previously thought to be vegetative.

If consciousness is fully caused by objective, "passive" entities, then intent is emergent and ultimately reducible to these objective correlates (or, in this case, causes). But then the active is reducible to the passive, and this in turn means that a human action such as intending is reproducible by forces outside the agent, denying the idea that the agent is the locus of his action. There ends up being really no difference between the things I do and the things that are done to me.

I don't agree - if I understand your point - the emergent phenomenon, human agency & its intent, are emergent from the interactions of neurons in the brain that are not passive and not 'outside' the agent, any more than the birds in a large swooping and twisting flock are passive and outside the flock entity.

(Apparently this is spiraling into the determinism/agency question, which often implicates free will. Avoid it if you can. )

I have a simple description of free will that I currently find satisfactory - unsurprisingly, it involves the dichotomy between the subjective and objective viewpoints

Actually I don't see utility, agreement, and discourse as primary here. I would rather see reality and understanding as primary. I would rather you yourself come to a complete and incommunicable understanding of reality than limit yourself for the sake of utility and communication.

OK.

And yet there may be some deeper reason why someone sees the objective as primary. Earlier you implicated causality (and ontology) in that claim, which goes beyond utility. I doubt the average emergentist would be content to rest their system on utility. Of course, there may also be deeper reasons why someone sees the subjective as primary.

As I said before, the idea of primacy is contextual - I'm suggesting that when considering the objective and subjective views, people tend to start with the objective and what it means for the subjective view because it's our common language, it's all we can agree on. As Wittgenstein said, there's no private language.

In terms of causality, it seems to me that the substrate is primary as explained above. At the emergent level, the patterns of interactions of the substrate elements have their own causal relationships and behavioural rules, but they're ultimately dependent on substrate element activity.

I suspect part of the problem is the common implicit reification of consciousness as if it is an entity in its own right. As I see it, consciousness is a process; it starts and stops and can be interrupted and interfered with; being informational, it has more in common ontologically with Conway's Game of Life than it has with flocks, swarms, and shoals, yet even a trivially simple substrate like CGOL is capable of supporting universal computation and potentially, given suitable inputs and effectors, physical influence.

I would venture that the human being is magnitudes more complicated than the observable solar system.

I assume that's a rhetorical assertion - the Earth alone, even absent humans, contains ecosystems with more organisms than there are cells in the human body.

Supposing the mythological was not a sufficient tool to measure the stars, is the modern scientist's computer a sufficient tool to measure consciousness?

If brains function as they appear to, i.e. the biological interactions of brain cells - without exotic quantum or mystical influences, then I see no reason, in principle, why not. We're not technically anywhere close yet, but brain simulation projects like The Human Brain Project and the Blue Brain Project are aiming to eventually simulate the human brain, and although they're not aiming to produce consciousness, it seems likely that it will eventually be within their compass - they are considering the ethical implications.

 

[zippy2006]

Picking up some pieces from an old thread... not sure how well I remember the entire context.

Emergence is described as, "...the condition of an entity having properties its parts do not have, due to interactions among the parts." Wikipedia (my italics). It's the interactions of the parts that is causal; without the parts, there are no interactions and so, no emergence.

Right. That confirms the causal primacy I was talking about.

I don't understand the constant emphasis on primacy - there are various relationships between the entities we're considering which can be viewed in different ways in different contexts.

The direction of causal primacy is a very significant disagreement, and it leads to further implications regarding the active/passive distinction. More below.

Intent isn't necessarily active; you can have the intent to do something but not do it. Intent is, effectively, a minimal plan to make an attempt (which may involve planning) to achieve a goal.

The act of intent is still always active, even if a formed plan is not carried out. Intent is always a verb predicated of some subject. It is something he does. It is not something that is done to him.

The idea was to emphasise the fundamental dichotomy between the subjective and objective views and the inaccessibility of the subjective to the objective, not the relevant causality. If we can only communicate in terms of shared objective experiences, it is equally possible to suggest that the objective experience (whether interoceptive or exteroceptive) 'comes first'.

I would say that experience is always subjective. Some subjective experiences are communicable. Language requires an objective referent, but the objective referent presupposes a subjective experience which precedes the objective referent chronologically.

The evidence from neuroscience suggests that they are. As far as we can tell, consciousness develops in infants as their brains become competent, fragments in old age as dementias destroy the brain, divides when the corpus callosum is divided, and every observable and reportable aspect of it that I know of can be modified by interference with specific areas of the brain in specific ways. It appears to have evolved where a high level of behavioural flexibility has a selective advantage, but is built on and dependent on the relatively inflexible modular heuristics of earlier evolutionary times.

Quid actually wrote a good response to that idea here.

We use the behavioural correlates of consciousness to judge our fellow man conscious every day. In fact, consciousness has been identified in some patients thought to be in a persistent vegetative state, by measuring their brain activity - first discovered when one such patient was scanned and showed high levels of cortical activity in the areas involved with semantic processing and sentence analysis in response to speech. Consciousness was confirmed by asking the patient to visualise either playing tennis or walking around her home as 'yes' and 'no' indicators. Subsequent questions consistently produced two distinct patterns of activity which corresponded to correct yes/no answers about the patient's life, etc. This procedure has been repeated for a number of patients previously thought to be vegetative.

The key aspect you miss in all of your explanations is that they are founded on an inquiry/response model. In no case have you shown an objective set of conditions that suffices for consciousness. It's always some form of asking the subject whether they are conscious. Thus it doesn't help us adjudicate such questions as primacy or activity/passivity.

I don't agree - if I understand your point - the emergent phenomenon, human agency & its intent, are emergent from the interactions of neurons in the brain that are not passive and not 'outside' the agent, any more than the birds in a large swooping and twisting flock are passive and outside the flock entity.

This may be a significant point of disagreement. If the agency and intent is caused by the firing of neurons, then they are passive in just the way I described. Your response--your claim that they are 'inside' the agent--amounts to the theory that agency causes the firing of neurons which causes agency. This is a vicious regress that won't do. If agency is caused by neurons then it isn't caused by the agent. If agency is determined by a set of material conditions then it isn't active, it is passive (in the relevant sense).

Similarly with the birds, the flock patterns are passive and determined while the individual patterns are active and determining. My use of inside/outside is only metaphorically spatial. If a bullet tears through my brain I am passive with respect to the activity of the bullet. Even when it is inside my body it is still a force outside my agency. An action is something I do. A passion is something that is done to me. The causal primacy for the emergentist seems to entail the passivity of intent, agency, and will. ...At least on your conception as opposed to the more mysterious conceptions.

I have a simple description of free will that I currently find satisfactory - unsurprisingly, it involves the dichotomy between the subjective and objective viewpoints

Imagine that.

As I said before, the idea of primacy is contextual - I'm suggesting that when considering the objective and subjective views, people tend to start with the objective and what it means for the subjective view because it's our common language, it's all we can agree on. As Wittgenstein said, there's no private language.

Without going into this, a problem arises when utility determines causality and ontology.

In terms of causality, it seems to me that the substrate is primary as explained above. At the emergent level, the patterns of interactions of the substrate elements have their own causal relationships and behavioural rules, but they're ultimately dependent on substrate element activity.

We may need to mete out exactly what is meant by "causality"... It is interesting, though, that although you ascribe causal primacy to the substrate, your mode of investigation is exactly the opposite. The mode of investigation is inquiry/response with respect to the emergent property, not the substrate (even though you have attempted to explain it in terms of the substrate). Some of this may be a problem of utility, but it likely goes deeper than that.

Relatedly: your view of emergentism is a subset of determinism, is it not?

If brains function as they appear to, i.e. the biological interactions of brain cells - without exotic quantum or mystical influences, then I see no reason, in principle, why not.

Why should biology be reducible to computation?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Picking up some pieces from an old thread... not sure how well I remember the entire context.

Me neither... I'm going to skip the bits I don't recognise.

The act of intent is still always active, even if a formed plan is not carried out. Intent is always a verb predicated of some subject. It is something he does. It is not something that is done to him.

It seems to me that an intent or intention is a plan or goal; one may actively form an intent, so that one then has an intent or purpose, but it's not an act per se. If one is asked if one has the intent to do something, one is being asked if doing that something is one's goal. An act of intent would then be an act in pursuit of the intent/goal/purpose.

I would say that experience is always subjective. Some subjective experiences are communicable. Language requires an objective referent, but the objective referent presupposes a subjective experience which precedes the objective referent chronologically.

What I meant by 'shared objective experiences' was the experiences we have when sharing the same objective events, as in "We both had the experience of driving the race car". We assume that the subjective experiences we have in the same or similar objective events give us a common basis for comparison - e.g. simile & metaphor. For example, "I feel queasy, like when you drive over a humpback bridge". We can never be certain we share similar feelings in similar situations, and sometimes the subjective experiences are clearly very different, but that's all we have to go on.

Quid actually wrote a good response to that idea here.

His descriptions don't match what I've seen of contemporary work in neuroscience; for example, at a recent lecture, I saw a description of experiments that show the formation of hypothalamic neural memory engrams in place and how they can be explicitly activated or suppressed with corresponding effects on behaviour. The circumstances were very specific and tightly controlled, as one would expect, so the claim is not that we can read and control all kinds of memories, but that we can study the nature of individual memories under specific circumstances. This gives the lie to Quid's claim to the contrary. It's true that the popular media hype the claims of the advances that have been made, but this doesn't mean advances are not being made.

The key aspect you miss in all of your explanations is that they are founded on an inquiry/response model. In no case have you shown an objective set of conditions that suffices for consciousness. It's always some form of asking the subject whether they are conscious. Thus it doesn't help us adjudicate such questions as primacy or activity/passivity.

Consciousness is, by definition, subjective experience. We have no access to subjective experience besides our own. I don't see an alternative to direct correlates of consciousness, i.e. self-reported, or indirect correlates, i.e. physical indications associated with self-reported consciousness. What do you suggest?

This may be a significant point of disagreement. If the agency and intent is caused by the firing of neurons, then they are passive in just the way I described. Your response--your claim that they are 'inside' the agent--amounts to the theory that agency causes the firing of neurons which causes agency. This is a vicious regress that won't do. If agency is caused by neurons then it isn't caused by the agent. If agency is determined by a set of material conditions then it isn't active, it is passive (in the relevant sense).

You misunderstood - by 'the agent', I simply meant the collection of elements that comprise the system, e.g. the brain as a collection of neurons, or the flock as a collection of birds. The elements, neurons or birds, are 'inside' the agent in as much as it is constituted of them. The agency is the combined sum of the individual interactions between the elements.

Similarly with the birds, the flock patterns are passive and determined while the individual patterns are active and determining.

I don't understand what you're saying here. What do you mean by the 'flock patterns' and the 'individual patterns'?

... It is interesting, though, that although you ascribe causal primacy to the substrate, your mode of investigation is exactly the opposite. The mode of investigation is inquiry/response with respect to the emergent property, not the substrate (even though you have attempted to explain it in terms of the substrate). Some of this may be a problem of utility, but it likely goes deeper than that.

I'm not ascribing causal primacy - that's your interpretation. The problem is that the emergent behaviour is not predictable from examination of the individual element properties or behaviours.

Consider a cellular automaton like Conway's Game of Life. The grid of binary cells and the simple rules that determine each cell's state are easy to grasp, but the results of iterating those rules over a random grid of cells are not predictable (unless you've already iterated the rules over cells laid out in the same patterns). The patterns are static unless the rules are iterated over the grid, but what happens when that is done depends on the starting state of the grid - different patterns behave and interact in different ways, while the grid rules are unchanging and the grid cell behaviour is unchanging. IOW, the system of rules & elements from which the patterns emerge is a computational substrate for the patterns.

your view of emergentism is a subset of determinism, is it not?

I'm talking about emergence in deterministic systems.

Why should biology be reducible to computation?

It seems to me that what the brain does is information processing, and that makes it, in principle, amenable to computational analysis & simulation. That we have emulated small parts of the brain's neural 'circuitry' and obtained substantially similar behaviour to the biological arrangement, suggests that it is a reasonable assumption. Time will tell.