Can subjective experience be explained by science?

[Furrowed Brow]

In the debate Robot v Humans I got myself into a tricky area. That debate became largley about Free Will. However I find myself also wanting to talk about subjective experience. Philosophers sometimes use the word qualia.

Qualia = The intrinsic phenomenal features of subjective consciousness, or sense data. Thus, qualia include what it is like to see green grass, to taste salt, to hear birds sing, to have a headache, to feel pain, etc.

To be clear about the problem I am trying to address. I am not asking about how you know the pain you feel is like the pain someone elses feels, or that when you see a red billboard everyone else sees the red as you. And I am also not asking about how we become self conscious.

My question is I think both simple and yet probably the most difficult philosophical question of all.

Q1:How does that bunch of jangling molecules or forces become not just that particular experience, but an experience at all?

I believe it is a matter of logic that a material/scientific explanation will always systematically fail to explain why and how there is subjective experience. Bugmaster on the other hand is more hopeful.

I can grant you that we currently do not know the mechanism by which subjective experiences operate (especially, subjective experiences other than yourself), but that doesn't mean that we can't know that mechanism, in principle.

Q2: So can we in principle know how jangling atoms/physical forces turn into subjective experience?

[McCulloch]

Just how much intelligence is needed to have a 'mind'? do cuttle fish have 'minds'? How about other mammals?

The term mind is, I believe, too ambiguous for our purposes.
It could mean consciousness, self-awareness, mental processes conscious and unconscious, ability to reasoning, think, feel, will, perceive and judge, intellect or understanding, intellectual power or ability or reason.
I also do not think that mind is a binary attribute, as in cuttle fish do not have minds but rodents do. It is a matter of degree. As far as we know, humans have more developed minds than any other species.

[Furrowed Brow]

"Feelings" do not exist outside of our minds. They are mental constructs we use, probably as a by-product of our predilection to think dualistically (mind/body.)

The first problem as your post suggest is that we have ingrained habits of thought to think about things in a certain way; and I also think the language we use to explain ourselves can be mercurial; moreover dualists completely underplay the social and slippery nature of the language they are using to form their dualism.

For example, I am cautious about the word exist as used in the above quote. Tables and chairs exist. Economic inflation exists. Tooth ache exists. Pi exists. Exist is a word with multiple uses and settings; and if we use it, it does not necessarily commit us to a specific usage or ontology. I might say the mind exists or feelings exist but I really do not ever mean to imply a dualistic ontology.

I can easily agree feeling/experiences that go along with stuff like pain, sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, all exist. Feelings like love, hate, jealousy, aims, hopes, intentions etc are words whose sense and meaning are of a social nature. These are social constructs. So I am not talking about these kinds of feelings. For for the purposes of this thread I’m going to say they do not exist.

Ok the word mind. Another slippery customer. Much of what people mean when they talk about mind is stuff like love, hate, jealous, intentions, desires etc. So I’d say the feely stuff I am thinking of does exist outside of the mind, if one is thinking of the socially constructed stuff.

The term mental constructs. Now we’re cooking on dualism. I know what a physical construction is, but I am not sure I know what a mental construction is. If we are really avoiding dualism, which I think we have too, should we even be talking in terms of mental constructs? I am quite convinced there are physical platforms for our experience of seeing red, so I don’t think we need to introduce a further category of mental construction. The problem for me is how the physical turns into the feely.

Experiences, physical interactions, engenders feelings inside of us because that's the way we've been "programmed" over millions of years of evolution.

Ok. So the question is how does the programme we are running turns into a feel? My point is that the physical explanations don’t capture the feely aspect. I also think that physical explanation can't. But we've got some more teasing out of the problem to do here I think.

[Furrowed Brow]

A nice little micro-controller-based project like the one you describe would never be far from responding directly to its inputs. Sure it might have some other conditionals to take into consideration (e.g. my batteries are running low and to get to the underwater recharger I ought to risk getting too hot otherwise I'll come to a certain end!). If we see an accumulation of many such conditionals (perhaps in their billions) then what gives us the rights to say "ah well, when it was only one or two it was obviously mind dead SO just adding a few more (even if its billions) won't make it any less mind dead". I don't actually accept that as a valid argument as it rules out emergent phenomena.

I also do not think that mind is a binary attribute, as in cuttle fish do not have minds but rodents do. It is a matter of degree. As far as we know, humans have more developed minds than any other species.

(Ok I’m going to use the word stuff but I’m going to say straight out this does not imply feeling are things.)

Both QED and McC are circling around and closing in on where the problem is at.

DEGREE: If Feely stuff is a matter of degree. Do rocks have feely stuff, but only feel very very slowly and very very simply? Conversely If the physical platform is more complex, then we could say the experience/feel will have a more complex structure. So Goldfish who have a more sophisticated eye for seeing colours than humans may well have a more sophisticated experience of colour than we do. As a Gold fish has a nervous system it feels and sees at a faster and more complex degree than a rock; whilst we are further down the slope of degree than the Goldfish when it comes to seeing colour.

However if feely stuff is just a matter of degree then we have not removed the basic problem. How does anything physical, regardless of the degree have feely stuff. In fact that makes the problem even deeper because the implication is that feeliness goes all the way down. Do atoms have very simple and basic feels. Ok feels that would not mean too much to us, or the atom. But all the same, the process of feel is already there, built into the fabric of the universe.

Or…

EMERGENCE: Feely stuff is emergent, but only after some critical mass of complexity has been reached.

That I don’t think is the answer. Because piling up of complexity puts a veil over the problem. We need to locate what part of that complex story is the relevant part.

So lets say there are a half dozen complex physical interactions that science eventually is able to say....Eureka!! That’s it. That’s where it is going on. You take away any one of those processes and feely experience stops, and then you only get automata.

If in some optimum science we reach that point then we still have not touched the problem of how those process turn on the lights. We know they turn the lights on, but the how and the why of it is of a whole different category of question. Or is it?

[Goat]

Just how much intelligence is needed to have a 'mind'? do cuttle fish have 'minds'? How about other mammals?

The term mind is, I believe, too ambiguous for our purposes.
It could mean consciousness, self-awareness, mental processes conscious and unconscious, ability to reasoning, think, feel, will, perceive and judge, intellect or understanding, intellectual power or ability or reason.
I also do not think that mind is a binary attribute, as in cuttle fish do not have minds but rodents do. It is a matter of degree. As far as we know, humans have more developed minds than any other species.

According to the animal psychologists, cuttle fish are as intelligent as dogs.

As for 'more developed minds', there are indications that dolphins and elphants have minds that are 'as developed' in many respects as man ... or maybe as developed, but in just a different manner.

[McCulloch]

Just how much intelligence is needed to have a 'mind'? do cuttle fish have 'minds'? How about other mammals?

The term mind is, I believe, too ambiguous for our purposes.
It could mean consciousness, self-awareness, mental processes conscious and unconscious, ability to reasoning, think, feel, will, perceive and judge, intellect or understanding, intellectual power or ability or reason.
I also do not think that mind is a binary attribute, as in cuttle fish do not have minds but rodents do. It is a matter of degree. As far as we know, humans have more developed minds than any other species.

According to the animal psychologists, cuttle fish are as intelligent as dogs.

As for 'more developed minds', there are indications that dolphins and elphants have minds that are 'as developed' in many respects as man ... or maybe as developed, but in just a different manner.

Not terribly relevant to the point, but let me rephrase.

I also do not think that mind is a binary attribute, as in [strike]cuttle [/strike]starfish do not have minds but primates do. It is a matter of degree. As far as we know, humans have more developed minds than [strike]any other species[/strike] invertebrates.

[QED]

DEGREE: If Feely stuff is a matter of degree. Do rocks have feely stuff, but only feel very very slowly and very very simply?

...

Do atoms have very simple and basic feels. Ok feels that would not mean too much to us, or the atom. But all the same, the process of feel is already there, built into the fabric of the universe.

Or…

EMERGENCE: Feely stuff is emergent, but only after some critical mass of complexity has been reached.

...

If in some optimum science we reach that point then we still have not touched the problem of how those process turn on the lights. We know they turn the lights on, but the how and the why of it is of a whole different category of question. Or is it?

Aren't these the same thing though? I'm compelled to say that "this is how it feels" to be a large collection of atoms in a human configuration. From this it follows that there is a certain "feeling" to being anything -- even a cruise-missile! But in such simple configurations the absence of our wealth of interconnected conditions and states confines the "feeling" to levels that wouldn't even register in ourselves.

I think the problem is in thinking that there is such a thing as dead-matter and then thinking that if there isn't, then everything must be alive!

[Furrowed Brow]

DEGREE: If Feely stuff is a matter of degree. Do rocks have feely stuff, but only feel very very slowly and very very simply?

...

Do atoms have very simple and basic feels. Ok feels that would not mean too much to us, or the atom. But all the same, the process of feel is already there, built into the fabric of the universe.

Or…

EMERGENCE: Feely stuff is emergent, but only after some critical mass of complexity has been reached.

...

If in some optimum science we reach that point then we still have not touched the problem of how those process turn on the lights. We know they turn the lights on, but the how and the why of it is of a whole different category of question. Or is it?

Aren't these the same thing though? I'm compelled to say that "this is how it feels" to be a large collection of atoms in a human configuration. From this it follows that there is a certain "feeling" to being anything -- even a cruise-missile! But in such simple configurations the absence of our wealth of interconnected conditions and states confines the "feeling" to levels that wouldn't even register in ourselves.

I think the problem is in thinking that there is such a thing as dead-matter and then thinking that if there isn't, then everything must be alive!

I'm in agreement I think. However I think we then have to separate a concept like "being conscious of experience", and "experience without consciousness". By the latter I do not mean "unconscious".

I think "consciousness of" is emergent, and needs to be explained, but prior to this there has to be some elemental process by which anything can have a feel - the "experience without consciousness" - which then has to be an aspect of the fundamental fabric of the universe.

Again I come back to the basic observation that once one begins to contemplate the hows and the whys of it, it becomes self evident that science will not have the answer to those kinds of questions. Or rather if and when an answer arrives it is going to require science to adjust its logic and some ingrained habits of though about causality and determinism.