Re: Qualia Question

On 02 Jul 2005 08:33:48 GMT, curt@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) in
comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

>"angola" <spamaddress@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Curt Welch wrote:
>
>> Including the teleological function suggests the kind of internal world
>> mapping (a virtual testing ground for potential behavioural responses)
>> that Dennet talks about. Is this the kind of model you are proposing?
>
>I have no clue. I don't now what "teleological function" is and I've not
>read Dennet so I have no idea what he talks about.
>
>> I think both models might usefully describe ways in which the
>> physiological constituents of pain can be used to determine adaptaive
>> behaviour, but what neither of them do is account for (nor do they
>> require) the sensation of pain that I feel. These systems should be
>> just as happy functioning on the purely physiological aspects of pain.
>> They raise the curious question of: Why should pain be unpleasant?
>> Animal behaviour is affected by thousands negative input controls that
>> don't involve pain (or any conscious sensation at all) - why is pain
>> not like that?
>
>You have no way to support the idea that animal behavior does not involve
>conscious sensations. How can you even think for a second you know that to
>be true? It's impossible for you to know.

Just as it's impossible for you to know animal behavior does involve
consciousness. That's why you indulge in the speculative philosophy
of behaviorism instead concerning yourself about proving anything.

>In fact, everything we do know points in exactly the opposite direction.
>We work like animals, we have conscious sensation, so they probably do as
>well.

I don't know what you mean by "conscious sensation". If you mean
consciousness then everything we know doesn't point in that direction
at all. "Probably" this and "maybe" that isn't science it's guesswork.

>> > We are not directly conscious of the changes the learning hardware is
>> > making to our system. But if you simply give sensory inputs which
>> > monitor pain sensors, we become conscious of it.
>>
>> Well if you give the sensory inputs to consciousness, yes we feel pain.
>> I just don't see consciousness described anywhere in the system you
>> propose.
>
>That's because you are making false assumptions about what consciousness
>is.

Curt believes everything is conscious; so, anything he does is
conscious by definition. But then Curt just assumes everything so he
doesn't have to prove anything and then accuses others of making false
assumptions.

> You, and many people, have been conditioned to believe that conscious
>sensation is something only a limited set of objects on this earth have the
>power to experience (many seem to think it's limited to humans). How can
>anyone know that rocks don't have some level of conscious senstations? How
>did it become a "fact" that rocks don't have conscious senstaions? Where
>is the data to support this fact?

Where is the data to support any conclusions regarding consciousness.
You don't even know what it is yet you just assume everything has it.

>> > Hook the signal to an input, and
>> > we become conscious of it.
>>
>> It would be nice if it were that easy, no?
>
>It is that easy. The only reason people think it's not that easy is
>because they have been brainwashed by conditioning to think it's hard.
>They have been brainwashed to believe rocks don't have conscious sensations
>even though there is zero evidence to support that "fact".
>
>All we know about rocks is that they don't act like humans. They act like
>rocks. We know nothing about their subjective conscious experiences. And
>since they don't speak our language, they can't talk to us about it. But
>that doesn't mean they don't have some type of conscious experience. Same
>thing for all objects on earth.
>
>I'm not trying to imply that rocks spend all day thinking about the meaning
>of life. I'm just saying that the evidence we have available to us
>suggests that conscious sensation is not an absolute which some things like
>humans have, and others do not have. All objects must be conscious to a
>different degree. This is the easy answer. Why chose the "hard" answer
>which explains nothing when we have an easy answer that fits all the data?
>
>> > We react to pain in the ways we do because of the fact we are a
>> > learning machine motivated by pain. The way it "feels" to us is a
>> > result of how we learn to react to it.
>>
>> I'd agree. But I don't think you've got anywhere near explaining why we
>> feel this as 'pain' rather than the learning system simply taking its
>> cues form the physiological data available to it. Why does pain hurt?
>
>Only because you say it "hurts". You have been conditioned to say "pain
>hurts" and "grass is green".
>
>People can be conditioned to like pain with the help of a strong positive
>reinforcer like sex. It doesn't "hurt" them like it hurts most of us.
>What does that mean?
>
>When we sense pain (like pinching ourselves), we can sense that it is
>happening. We can sense that it's a different sensation from vision, or
>hearing, or normal touch, or taste. The fact that you call this sensation
>"hurting" is just something you have been conditioned to say.
>
>But what else happens when we receive pain vs. say, sound? Try it and see
>for yourself. I for example notice things happening to my entire body. I
>notice that my leg might start to shake - that muscles tend to tense up. I
>notice my attention gets focused on the pain and it's hard to think about
>other subjects as long as the pain sensation persists. The body responds
>to pain in ways which are uniquely different than how we respond to a song
>playing on a radio. Some of that response is no doubt hard-wired
>physiological effects which help us survive. But at our conscious level,
>not only are we sensing the pain directly, but we are also sensing how our
>body is reacting to it. Our conscious experience of pain is not just the
>pain itself, but it's how we sense ourselves reacting to it. We recognize
>it as "pain" as much by what it makes us do, as what it is itself. We
>recognize it as being special by how it makes us react more so than how it
>directly "feels".
>
>Pain also creates a very "loud"/strong signal for even a minor pain so it's
>hard to ignore simply because it's so strong.
>
>On top of this, our learning hardware is conditioned to make us avoid pain
>- so when we receive pain, the body is trying to stop it - so how we tend
>to respond to pain is very different from how we will respond to sensations
>that are not painful. When I feel pain, I'm conditioned to react to it
>very quickly to stop it. If I feel something like a pinch or bee-sting I
>immediately stop everything I'm doing and turn all my attention to
>discovering the source of the pain and finding a way to stop it. We sense
>ourselves reacting like this after the fact, and all this becomes what
>"pain feels like" to us. When I pinch myself, I have to fight the urge to
>stop pinching myself. My instinct is to stop causing myself pain, and I
>have to mentally focus in order to keep hurting myself. This is all
>because we have been conditioned to avoid pain.
>
>These I think are the type of things we end up sensing and identifying with
>the "special nature" of "feeling pain". i.e, nothing more than a lot of
>physiological reactions throughout our body.
>
>> Why is pain not sufficiently described by the neronal activity that
>> goes with it?
>
>I think it is. Why do you think it's not? What evidence can you put forth
>to support the idea that pain is not sufficiently described by the way the
>body reacts to it?
>
>--
>Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
>curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/


Regards - Lester
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: AI and cognitive psychology rant (getting more and more OT - tell me if I should shut up)
    ... fragmented consciousness, and it is one of the few that has backing ... basically extreme social anxiety resulting from a childhood of total ... anxiety is not fear. ... Pain is another thing that is odd in autism. ...
    (comp.lang.python)
  • Re: Qualia Question
    ... > That's because you are making false assumptions about what consciousness ... > sensation is something only a limited set of objects on this earth have the ... > because they have been brainwashed by conditioning to think it's hard. ... >> feel this as 'pain' rather than the learning system simply taking its ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: Antonio Damacio
    ... > Damasio naturally discusses how feelings arise, ... and claims that consciousness appears to be a monitoring of the ... > testable questions, eg, it implies that pain, for example, should appear ...
    (sci.cognitive)
  • Re: Qualia Question
    ... > require) the sensation of pain that I feel. ... > Well if you give the sensory inputs to consciousness, ... because they have been brainwashed by conditioning to think it's hard. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: Antonio Damacio
    ... feelings are the root of consciousness -- that consciousness is in fact ... a feeling - "a feeling of what happens." ... Damasio naturally discusses how feelings arise, ... testable questions, eg, it implies that pain, for example, should appear ...
    (sci.cognitive)