The Problems of Conciousness, part 1

Conciousness. Probably the most intimate and direct thing that we can know of, yet still somewhat strange and elusive.

I've started some background reading from the Blackwell Companion to Conciousness, and I'm having an interesting time reading Michael Tye's 'Philosophical Problems of Conciousness'. I'm not quite getting some of the problems, and I'm not sure whether this is due to a failure to fully appreciate the problems or if I'm a hardline materialist/physicalist.

What follows will be a very brief synopsis of some of the problems, and my initial thoughts in response. The subject of this blog entry is:

Tye, M. (2007) 'Philosophical Problems of Conciousness'. In Velmans, M., and Schneider, S. (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Conciousness. Blackwell Publishing.

The Problem of Ownership

The problem of ownership is explaining how the mental objects of conciousness (feelings etc.) can be physical "given they are necessarily owned and necessarily private to their owners" (Tye 2007). The idea here seems to be that the mental objects and experiences are private in the sense that nobody else can have them, and nobody else can have access to them. I own my pen, and I can give it away to someone else so that they can own it.

I'm not sure the concept of ownership contained in this idea is correct. I own my pen, yes. I wouldn't own my child, nor would I own my favourite colour, or my boss. Do I own my arm? Yes. Not in the sense that I own my pen, but I still sorta own my arm. I could say my arm is part of me, but I think it would be more accurate to say it was part of my body.

Do I own my mental objects and experiences? I don't think it would be right for people to have unfettered access to these things without my consent. So perhaps I am asserting some sort of ownership over them. I can go further and say that I think that these mental objects are me. They might not be the whole of me, I have a store of memories for example, but they are a key component of me. Feelings and experiences as they occur are me being me. Without that I (as a mental entity) am not there. I don't own me, I am me. Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" taken a step or two further.

Are my thoughts and feelings private? Well, yes. In one sense I don't think they necessarily are so. In the future could we rig up some sort of machine to record feelings and play them back in someone else's head? Maybe. This doesn't quite work because fully fledged persons may not have the exact same experience or thought even though they undergo the same 'Playback'. Thoughts and feelings surely don't exist in isolation, they will draw on past thoughts and emotions. That pang of loss will have shades of different sorrows for each of us. But, what are we saying here? If we ran a bit of software, or set of data, in a bunch of different computers we'd expect to get the same result. But only if we ran it in computers that were functionally the same, and shared the same relevant state. If we ran our data on multiple computers, which had other software running, or other data in memory accessible and relevant to our data, then we'd expect different outcomes or at least different machine states. Why expect something different from human brains?

I don't think we own our mental objects in the sense of owning property, and I'm not sure that they're private in the sense intended by Tye.

The Problem of Perspectival Subjectivity

This problem is that there is something that physicalism doesn't account for in conciousness. It is possible to understand something, but for that understanding to be incomplete until you have experienced it. "Phenomenally concious states are perspectival in that fully comprehending them requires adopting a certain experiential point of view. But physical states are not perspectival in this way" (Tye 2007).

Tye gives the following example:

"A man who is blind and deaf cannot experience lightning by sight or hearing at all, but he can understand fully just what it is, namely a certain sort of electrical discharge between clouds".

This man understands lightning, but cannot experience it. There is some sort of gap. I agree. I'm not sure quite what the problem for physicalism is though. (I should probably make a quick aside to say that I really do get that there seems to be some sort of fantastical jump that is hard to grasp or accept arises from the machinery of the brain...).

The brain process things. Our concious experience is the result of a number of sub-systems processing various inputs, such as sense data and memory retrieval. Imagine there is a little black box labelled 'Experience Machine' in our brains. Various inputs going into the black box, and out pops our concious experience. Understanding all that there is to know about lightning is not the same thing as experiencing it. In considering it, different inputs are going into the little black box. The inputs are thought objects about lightning. They are not going to be stored and represented in the brain the same as a direct past or current experience of being in the vicinity of lighting, and they will not be accompanied by visual and auditory sense data. What is going into the little black box when thinking about lightning is not the same as when experiencing it externally. So we should expect different things to arrive in our conciousness.

On this account, we would only expect a full understanding to be like actually experiencing it if we were able to simulate the little black box in our heads and were able to marshal appropriate inputs. If we could feed into the little black box all of the inputs that would go in when directly experiencing lightning, then we would expect to have the concious experience of it.

I have not given an account for the little black box labelled conciousness, but I think I have sketched out why we should expect a complete 'understanding' to be lacking the sense gained from having a concious experience of it.

Believing Bullshit, by Stephen Law

A couple of highlights from my read through of Stephen Law's Believing Bullshit.

"Any given set of observations can be explained by a number of theories. To use the jargon of the philosophy of science: theories are underdetermined by the evidence."

" as we'll see later in “But It Fits!” any theory, no matter how nuts, can be made to “fit”—be consistent with—the evidence, given sufficient ingenuity. It doesn't follow that all theories are equally reasonable, or that we can never fairly conclusively settle the question of which among competing theories are true on the basis of observational evidence."

"Many belief systems often start with a mystery—they offer to explain what might otherwise seem rather baffling."

"Putting these various points together, we can sum up by saying that, in order for a theory to be strongly confirmed, that theory has to stick its neck out with respect to the evidence. It has to be bold, to risk being proved wrong. If a theory either fails to make any predictions, or if it makes only vague and woolly predictions, or else if it predicts things that are not particularly unexpected anyway—if, in short, it takes no significant risks with the evidence—then not only is it not strongly confirmed, it can't be."

"amazing coincidences are inevitable. There are billions of people living on this planet, each experiencing thousands of events each day. Inevitably, some of them are going to experience some really remarkable coincidences." 

Believing Bullshit is all about the 'dirty tricks' people can play in presenting their theories and ideas to you, and how to spot these tricks and respond to them. If this sounds vaguely interesting it is well worth a read.

You may also be interested in Law's blog.

Reinitialising...

Well lookee here. I still have a blog. Maybe it is time to do something with it again.

On gated communities

"Living in a gated community and employing hired muscle to keep you comfy does not mean that you live in a little utopia. It means you live in a dystopia and happen to be one of the privileged"

- Iain M. Banks (2012). The Hydrogen Sonata, p619

More Informed Choices Around Tax Avoidance

How about....

The tax authorities (i.e. HMRC) compiles and publishes data for every company which shows the revenue received by a company and the proportion of tax paid on that revenue. This could be supplemented by legislation whereby at every transaction point a company is required by law to show the published 'tax ratio'. This could even be presented as a handy infographic that shows a target point for what should be typical corporation tax. There could be a very limited number of additional information points, such as whether the company is a charity. The tax indicator on the infographic could potentially have top ups for things like charitable given.

It would also be handy if the infographic showed the ratio of salaries (well, total reward..) within the company (including holding/owning companies/all companies within a group) between the top earners versus the bottom earners.

Though perhaps overly heavy handed the infographic could display some helpful stats to help understand the implications of the numbers, e.g. what the impact is on school funding etc. Where applicable government procurement might stipulate a minimum percentage of taxation paid by a company. Individuals might choose to opt into a system whereby their payment cards will not accept an authorisation with a company that pays tax below a certain threshold.

This system would help everyone in society to make a more informed choice in how they direct their money. If people are content or supportive of a companies taxation level, or perhaps think that the product or service on offer is so superior that the lower rate of taxation paid is a worthwhile trade-off  Alternatively, people may choose to take their custom to another business on the basis that the transaction will be more supportive of public programmes such as infrastructure building, education, etc.

The market is often considered by many to be 'right', and should that it should be left unguided in order to produce better outcomes. Two problems with market forces however, and I don't mean to imply there are only two, is that an aggregate of individual choices does not represent the collective will, and that a lack of information distorts market activity. Providing consumers with greater information will allow them to make more informed choices with regards to how they wish to direct the flow of capital.

Of Drones, ethics, and remote working

A recent topic of ethical debate relates to the use of military drones. As well as the current issues we should consider what the future might have in store for us, and I have outlined below a couple of potential ethical issues relating to the remote operation of drones.

Blurring Training and Operations
We are nearing a point where the experience of a training simulation will be more or less indistinguishable to an actual operation. Because operation of a drone is mediated via a software interface it should soon be possible to have the fidelity of the training software to match that of an effective operational human-drone interface. This could be achieved by increases in the fidelity of the training simulation to match the operational experience, or via lowering the fidelity of the operational experience to match the training experience. 'Real life' fidelity and information feeds are not required to effectively pilot a drone, and indeed abstracted interface elements may even be beneficial. At this point, due to the remote nature of operating drones, it may be possible to insert real operations into a series of training runs without the operator even knowing. As far as the operator is concerned they could be practicing a scenario, and not realise they have been swapped over to the real thing.

Outsourced Warriors
Once the scenario outlined above becomes possible, we could potentially see outsourced warfighting to gamers. I mean this in two senses. The first that suitable games available to the general public could be used to train relevant warfighting skills into to the general populace. In the second sense actual operations could be outsourced into gaming networks, such that players are usually playing a simulated game but every so often (knowingly or unknowingly) they are performing actual missions.

Redundancy
By the time we get to the point where the scenarios outlined above could be reality it may be a moot point anyway; the machines might be better off executing missions without us.

Products that I want #5: my train detector

An app that works out what train you are on and tells you its ETA for each stop.

This of course highlights an item of information poverty related to train journeys.