Mental imagery as non-physical perception pt. 2

[AgnosticBoy]

Critics of scientific realism ask how the inner perception of mental images actually occurs. This is sometimes called the "homunculus problem" (see also the mind's eye). The problem is similar to asking how the images you see on a computer screen exist in the memory of the computer. To scientific materialism, mental images and the perception of them must be brain-states. According to critics, scientific realists cannot explain where the images and their perceiver exist in the brain. To use the analogy of the computer screen, these critics argue that cognitive science and psychology have been unsuccessful in identifying either the component in the brain (i.e., "hardware") or the mental processes that store these images (i.e. "software").

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_image

I presented this argument a few months ago on this forum. I will play more of an information-seeking role here because I was left unsatisfied in the last thread. So again, I pose this challenge to materialists to use empirically-verifiable evidence to explain how or why mental images are physical when we DO NOT perceive them with our senses (hallucinations, dreams, etc).

Here's an easier way to put it:
1. Why aren't scientists able to observe our mental images (our hallucinations, dreams, etc) if they are physical?

2. Since perception involves our senses, then how am I able to perceive mental images without my senses?

I want scientifically verifiable peer-reviewed evidence-based answers to my questions. If you don't know, then just admit it. Don't simply tell me that scientists will figure it out - that's FAITH ... not scientific EVIDENCE.

[AgnosticBoy]

Yes, of course our consciousness is affected. We both agree that consciousness expresses itself through the body/brain.

Great! So why are you arguing for something independent from the brain?

Just because consciousness expresses itself in the brain, doesn’t mean it can’t also be expressed through other means or mediums.

I can also challenge you to show that the brain is the only place for consciousness to exist and express itself. As it stands, your view amounts to being an empty claim when we don’t have a verifiable explanation for how consciousness is caused (i.e. the hard problem) and we don't even know its function.

Consciousness is ONLY observed to take place in the brains of animals and has never been observed to function outside of brains.

Observation does not equal explanation. Even if the brain was the only place that we’ve observed consciousness, you would still need to show that the brain causes consciousness as opposed to correlating with it. So far, there's no evidence to justify the traditional materialist claim, and there's even a line of reason and evidence against it.

Anesthesia awareness is not a valid explanation because even if she was aware she still would not be able to see and hear. The eyes were taped shut and her ears were plugged up with ear buds that were generating sound.

I hear you. Please explain how she saw and heard what you claim she saw and heard, while in this state where her brain was greatly affected, which we both happen to agree is where consciousness expresses.

I don't know the how and why, but the evidence I presented shows that we can experience sound and sight without the brain and our senses. I should also reiterate that not knowing the how and why does not mean it did not happen. Just because it conflicts with current scientific understanding does not mean that it can not happen.

Then please explain to us as to why this doesn't happen frequently as I would find this answer to be very important.

I would argue that OBEs and NDEs do happen a lot. The challenging issue is that they mostly happen unexpectedly (not by choice). You'd almost have to be lucky to have an NDE or OBE occur in a controlled setting where there are controls and trained staff that document their steps along the way. Then of course, there's also the issue of the patient being able to be brought back in a good enough condition to remember everything.

There are many other reported NDEs of course, but I chose one of the best because it happened to be well documented and with very good controls in place.

There is evidence that consciousness is not physical like the brain.

Please point me to one person here, just one, that argues that consciousness is physical. One please.

Here's a much easier way to answer that... How many materialists do you know that believe in the existence of the non-physical?

I've also presented evidence showing that some awareness persists even when brain and senses are impaired.

Please point me to one person here, just one, that argues that awareness cannot persist in some form when the brain and senses are impaired. One please.

Based on some of your views and how you dismissed my claims early on (without even asking what my evidence was) gives me the impression that you are not open to consciousness existing outside of the brain. Here's one comment, "Damage the brain, or affect it with drugs or get it to a point of being near death and guess what, our consciousness is affected. This in fact does not show consciousness going beyond just the brain." (your post, #66).

Really, almost every atheist and materialist that I've brought this topic to resort to saying that the consciousness can not exist without the brain. If you were more agnostic in your approach, then it would be clearer that you aren't in that category.

Edit: You did become more agnostic towards the end of your last post and I bring that up later on in this post.

Although I also claim that consciousness can exist even without a physical medium as well

I know, but you wont tell me where it can exist (outside of our brains where we do become aware). Consciousness seems to emerge from our functioning brains. You reject this while not offering an alternative explanation even though I continue to ask.

I have been clear from the start that I don't have a theory, but since you keep asking, I'll try to give you your money's worth. I can tell you what some of the leading thinkers on the alternative view have proposed. None of those are proven of course, but I do agree with how philosopher David Chalmers explains the general framework of the options we have.

Two likely paths for explaining consciousness. The first one is basically reductive materialism which has been the standard practice of scientists. This first option explains consciousness as being derived from some property or type of matter, like the brain (refer to the green font below). The second option, especially if the first option fails, is to explain it as being a fundamental property (refer to the red font) and the implications of that is consciousness exists as part of everything.

So here's the mapping from this circuit to this state of consciousness. But underneath that is always going be the question, why and how does the brain give you consciousness in the first place?

Right now, nobody knows the answers to those questions. So we may need one or two ideas that initially seem crazy before we can come to grips with consciousness, scientifically. The first crazy idea is that consciousness is fundamental. Physicists sometimes take some aspects of the universe as fundamental building blocks - space and time and mass - and you build up the world from there. Well, I think that's the situation we're in. If you can't explain consciousness in terms of the existing fundamentals - space, time - the natural thing to do is to postulate consciousness itself as something fundamental - a fundamental building block of nature. The second crazy idea is that consciousness might be universal. This view is sometimes called panpsychism - pan, for all - psych, for mind. Every system is conscious. Not just humans, dogs, mice, flies, but even microbes. Even a photon has some degree of consciousness. The idea is not that photons are intelligent or thinking. You know, it's not that a photon is wracked with angst because it's thinking, oh, I'm always buzzing around near the speed of light. I never get to slow down and smell the roses. No, not like that. But the thought is, maybe photons might have some element of raw subjective feeling, some primitive precursor to consciousness.

Source:

The only thing I would add is that the lowest expression of consciousness might just be some sense of awareness (ie. most basic unit of conscious experience). As matter scales up in complexity, then consciousness can also become more complex or its experience can expand. The brain and body are just one example of increased complexity, and it's one that uniquely allows consciousness to be expressed in many different ways, including being able to tell others about our inner and outer experience or about consciousness itself!

My point is that the same can't be said for things or even living people (patient's in coma) who aren't able to respond in any way.

Who here is arguing that patients that are in coma are conscious! They are not.
co·ma1
/ˈkōmə/
noun
a state of deep unconsciousness that lasts for a prolonged or indefinite period, caused especially by severe injury or illness.

My example is still valid. There are living people who we can't tell if they are conscious or not. "Coma" may've been the wrong word, but then there are people in a vegetative state. There's also 'locked-in syndrome'.

Being expressed in another medium is something researchers are looking for in Ai, and seeing if it could ever get to a point where it has some sense of self and be able to express it.

This is not interesting because computers are not conscious. I acknowledge that you speculate that it could happen some day, but that is off topic for today.

I'd rather say we don't have evidence for their consciousness, but it is reasonable to think that they could be. The challenge is finding a way for it to express consciousness to us in a way that we'd understand and be able to measure. This is why I like Ai, because it is able to interact with us in a similar way that we interact with ourselves and others. Ai can essentially "think" and report things back to us. The issue is that the type of things that it can report back to us is only stuff that we feed it and under a very restricted logic. If it can adapt or create its own logic and start feeding itself information without restrictions, look out!

As for the latter question, the evidence for that is having awareness while brain and senses are impaired which is what happened in Pam Reynold's case. Even while not being brain dead at one point, but how did her brain receive outside sensory information if her senses were impaired?

I don't know, please inform us. If you haven't done so already, please explain while this Pam Reynold case doesn't happen to anyone, other than Pam Reynold as we should see examples of something like this on the daily, but we don't.

The number of times something happens doesn't negate the fact that it can and has happened. I explained earlier that the experience probably happens daily (even to children), but the issue is that corroborating such experiences is very difficult for various reasons that we would also expect. And of course, the many people we aren't able to bring back can't tell us anything in any regular measurable way.

I am not denying that an experience took place by the way, just skeptical that it leads to the conclusion that consciousness exists independent of the brains of animals.

There is no "leading" or inferring a conclusion. This is observation-based. Eyes taped shut and ears plugged and yet she still experienced external environment.

I was referring to subjective experiences of our mind, like the stuff we see, hear, and touch in our minds (in a dream for instance). We have neural correlation for that in the brain via neural activity, but I can't say that the experience is actually in the brain if we can't observe it. As an alternative, we can even say it occurs in the brain, but that doesn't mean it can't also occur in another medium or without a medium.

I am open to being shown this other medium you like to bring up. Please inform me about everything you know about this other medium.

I don't know about other mediums that consciousness has been observed in other than being without any apparent medium as in Pam Reynold's case. I've provided some reasonable theories that are close to actual observations, but I won't go beyond that as I don't want to get into things that are "woo".. way off from what's known.

Yes, there is certainly interaction between the two.

Well... that's telling.

It tells me that you weren't understanding my view fully. Interacting through brain doesn't mean it can't interact through something else or without brain.

That doesn't mean that consciousness is caused by or restricted to brain

Correct, it doesn't mean that, but it does remain the best explanation currently.

Here goes your agnostic side showing! That is different than one of your views that I quoted earlier in this post.

There is no "theory" for the materialistic view that consciousness is a product of the brain.

Scientists have landed on two leading theories to explain how consciousness emerges: integrated information theory, or IIT, and global neuronal workspace theory, or GNWT.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... d-to-head/

Are they verified theories or just theory in a non-scientific sense? Any one of them claim to solve the 'hard problem' or deal with actual subjective experience?

Scientific theory defined:
1. "A scientific theory is a synthesis of well-tested and verified hypotheses about some aspect of he world around us."
- https://aether.lbl.gov/www/classes/p10/theory.html

2. A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can be or that has been repeatedly tested and has corroborating evidence in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory

From my research, the two theories you bring up are not scientific in the proper sense because they are not built entirely on empirically verified data. They are really hypotheses mixed in with some evidence. For instance, the testing of these theories have showed results that don't support them.

The goal was to set up a series of ‘adversarial’ experiments to test various hypotheses of consciousness by getting rival researchers to collaborate on the studies’ design. “If their predictions didn’t come true, this would be a serious challenge for their theories,” Chalmers says.

The findings from one of the experiments — which involved several researchers, including Koch and Chalmers — were revealed on Friday at the ASSC meeting. It tested two of the leading hypotheses: Integrated information theory (IIT) and global network workspace theory (GNWT).

Six independent laboratories conducted the adversarial experiment, following a pre-registered protocol and using various complementary methods to measure brain activity. The results — which haven’t yet been peer-reviewed — didn’t perfectly match either of the theories.

“This tells us that both theories need to be revised,” says Lucia Melloni, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, and one of the researchers involved.

“With respect to IIT, what we observed is that, indeed, areas in the posterior cortex do contain information in a sustained manner,” Melloni says, adding that the finding seems to suggest that the ‘structure’ postulated by the theory is being observed. But the researchers didn’t find evidence of sustained synchronization between different areas of the brain, as had been predicted.

In terms of GNWT, the researchers found that some aspects of consciousness, but not all of them, could be identified in the prefrontal cortex. Additionally, the experiments found evidence of the broadcasting postulated by advocates of the theory, but only at the beginning of an experience — not also at the end, as had been predicted.

So GNWT fared a bit worse than IIT during the experiment. “But that doesn’t mean that IIT is true and GNWT isn’t,” Melloni says. What it means is that proponents need to rethink the mechanisms they proposed in light of the new evidence.

Published in Nature

Even the article you mentioned doesn't say the hard problem was solved and instead says this:

Scientists have landed on two leading theories to explain how consciousness emerges: integrated information theory, or IIT, and global neuronal workspace theory, or GNWT. These frameworks couldn’t be more different—they rest on different assumptions, draw from different fields of science and may even define consciousness in different ways, explains Anil K. Seth, a consciousness researcher at the University of Sussex.

The contenders in this face-off are, in some ways, direct inverses of each other. “The two theories are very different creatures,” says Christof Koch, a cognitive scientist at the Allen Institute in Seattle and a co-author of the Cogitate results.

The results challenge both theories because neither’s predictions were fully borne out by the data.

Source...https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... d-to-head/

Also, look up more on IIT, which is one of the two theories that's talked about in the article you posted. It actually supports the idea of nearly everything (not just brain) having the potential for consciousness.

Controversially, IIT implies a form of panpsychism, the idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, similar to space, time, and matter.

IIT posits that any system that generates a non-zero maximum of irreducible integrated information has some degree of consciousness. This would suggest that there may be many non-biological systems that possess consciousness.13 According to IIT, even simple systems can have some minimal form of consciousness, provided they have a certain degree of information integration: “Even circuits as simple as a ‘photodiode’ made up of a sensor and a memory element can have a modicum of experience."14

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... usness-iit

[William]

[Replying to AgnosticBoy in post #10]

Interesting topic.

I think the idea of a "screen" is that consciousness acts as this. Since there are no eyes in the brain, the experiences had (to do with apparent nonphysical vision) could be thought of as data from the physical object (brain) being projected onto consciousness and interpreted as/through imagery.

Why scientists cannot observe these visions is that the imagery is subject to the consciousness perceiving it and since we each are experiencing our own unique subjective reality independently from one another, that should answer the question.

I am unconvinced that such are completely nonphysical. Last night I dreamt that I was very thirsty and was unsuccessfully trying to drink water to quench. I awoke to find my mouth and throat were actually parched. I can conclude that my brain was signalling data about the physical state and I was consciously interpreting the data through imagery being built upon that information within what we call a "dream" and the combined imagery of the dream storyline eventually produced a small series of indicators (being unable to communicate verbally with the various characters due to dry throat) and unsuccessfully attempting to fill a leaking container with water and not being able to drink...sound also part of the dream sequence so not only is consciousness the screen but also the speakers) and eventually the trauma of thirst shifted my experience from the dream to the wake and (no surprise) I was actually parched and got up and quenched my thirst with real water.

What does that tell me about the brain? Nothing more than the likelihood that data was being sent to something which could receive said data and react to it. Consciousness was the receiver of the data and responded in the dream experience by trying to drink and correct the problem. The problem was eventually corrected not in the dream but in the wakening from the dream.

Essentially what we are perhaps talking about is that the mysterious consciousness that we each are packaged as it is in a physical container - in single physical containers - is that which has the experience - even of being in said physical containers...and consciousness is the screen in all cases as well as the sound system and ultimate interpreter of whatever is being experienced.

Where materialism argues that conscious experience is some bi product of the physical, others remain unconvinced - perhaps unwilling to delegate what is essentially the main aspect of their SELF as secondary to material reality, even that in all cases (or more to the point because in all cases) it is consciousness alone which serves to make sense of physical and dream experience whereas physical things (including brains) are mindless to that particular function - simply producing data but unable to correlate experience into sense without consciousnesses involvement in any intelligent meaningful manner.

As far as I can tell, anything acting recognisably intelligently has to have some type of consciousness involved, which means that not every case of intelligent action is only associated with brains.