StephenH

Try reading my last post again Stephen. Maybe someone else will be able to explain to you that the autonomic system and reflexes cannot be used to refute my argument. I tried and failed. I'm withdrawing from this debate because the crux of our disagreement is ethical and not really resolvable. Sensation has clearly different meaning to me and you. You are obviously inteligent and Im sure you are more knowledgeable on neuroscience than I am so the fact that you are incapable of parsing my argument: "sensation within their own perception capabilities" has to have some moral and/or religious ground - and I choose to not talk religion.

Your last post said Substitute "sensation" with "reason" - better ? and that was it.

What explanation did I miss in that single short question? How does this address the point being put to you?

Possibly my language in threads like this can be a little harsh, and make people defensive -- I know possibly I need to dial it back, it's true.

But you've now taken defensiveness to the next level: so many attempts to avoid the point, culminating in now claiming you can't continue because the discussion has become religious, when no-one has mentioned religion but you...wow.

Substitute "sensation" with "reason" - better ?

Obviously we disagree on a fundamental level and were only a thread or so away from a full on flame war on ethics and religion so I will leave it here.

No, that would be a completely different argument from the one you've given, and would be off-topic for this thread anyway. Also it would still be false for basically the same reason.

What I'm waiting for is: "OK, my argument about 'good evolutionary reasons' implying they must have inner sensations doesn't work" or "No Stephen, the reason the autonomic system, reflexes, proprioception etc don't refute my point is _________"

 

I still don't understand what problem you are having with my reasoning. Is it the word "sensation" ?

I assume you agree that organisms do things for evolutionary reasons ?

You can plugin as many stimuli to your thought experiments as you like and still the only problem I see that you might be having is the word "sensation" which I addressed in my original post with "within its own level of perception"

 

As for what you said about me playing dumb, I genuinely don't know what your stance is hence I asked. You are refuting my post #18 based on the word "sensation" which we can't seem to agree might mean different things for different species. I don't think that insults are of any help here. More respect would be advisable.

 

The point is simply this: you reasoned that if an organism has some evolutionary reason for detecting some stimulus then it must have an inner sensation of that stimulus. And from context, and the topic of this thread, by "inner sensation" both you and I surely agree that we're talking about qualia: subjective, first-person phenomena like pain, colors, smells etc. The problem is, this line of reasoning is demonstrably false, because we can give examples of stimuli that humans detect, and respond to, and have good evolutionary reason for doing so, and yet would all agree are not associated with any qualia.

The autonomic system, for example, is by definition part of the brain that processes stimuli without associated subjective states.

The "within its own level of perception" thing is meaningless. It's essentially saying: They have as much inner experience as they have. Obviously I'd agree with that tautology. However I don't see any grounds for assuming that that amount of inner experience is any greater than that of a digital camera, or my autonomic system, or a rock i.e. none whatsoever.

I'm not saying they don't have inner experiences, only that you have not given any reason to suppose they do, since your argument doesn't work.

Great post Delta1212, really helps clarify the discussion.

In your post #38 you attempt to prove (please tell me what you are actually trying to prove) that because humans have no ability to sense oxygen levels in their blood that somehow correlates to this discussion about color perception. I'm not sure what you want me to concede, please enlighten me.

The thing being refuted in post #38 is the line of yours that I quoted verbatim, and gave a special label (Molecule's Conjecture) in bold, and that I explicitly say I'm refuting.
And your reading comprehension would have to be pretty appalling to think I was saying humans cannot sense oxygen levels in their blood.

Post #38 was not even the first (or last) time in this thread that I've explained the problem with that argument. So quit playing dumb and actually try to respond to it.

Yes we do. Most of living organisms have color perception (within their own capabilities)

This is a thread discussing inner experiences of color. You yourself have used phrases like "inner sensation", which is appropriate because that's the topic.

So if by "color perception" what you now mean is just "animals can see colors" then yes, very obviously they can. They have eyes. Their eyes have color cones. This is very clear and not disputed at all. But it's also not what we were talking about.

If you're saying that they have an inner experience of color, color qualia, AKA what we were talking about, then my response is that I see no reason to presuppose that is true. Your attempt to prove that it logically follows is flawed, as I have explained in detail such as in post #38.

If you think you've found an error in that argument, then please point it out. Genuinely I'd love to hear that and learn something. Otherwise just concede the point so we can advance the discussion.

 

From: http://currentaffairs.gktoday.in/bees-choose-flowers-landing-color-petals-07201414231.html

 

As per a scientific study, Bumblebees select most nutritious flowers for providing best food for their young simply by looking at the colour of the petals even before landing on the flower. As bees do not ingest pollen unlike nectar while foraging on flowers, it has been unclear whether they are able to form associative relationships between what a flower looks like and the quality of its pollen. The study used bumblebee foragers housed under controlled conditions to test whether they do learn about flowers during pollen collection.

The findings showed that bumblebees can individually evaluate pollen samples and differentiate between them during collection, quickly forming preferences for a particular type of pollen. They are able to detect differences in pollen, even before landing, which means they may be able to discriminate, just from the colour of the petals, which flowers are richer in nutritious content.

 

See my previous post.

The fact that bees can see colors is a readily-demonstrable fact disputed by no-one.

Im asserting that an organism which detects color has an evolutionary reason for that detection thus it experiences a "sensation" of that color within its own perception capabilities.

Yes I know that's what you're asserting, I even gave it the special label Molecule's Conjecture before demonstrating why it doesn't work with example after example.

Either the statement is outright false, or "within its own perception capabilities" necessarily includes includes no perception whatsoever.

The point is: we don't even know if primitive organisms have color perception, period. The human autonomic system is far more complex that a bee's brain, for example. And detects, and responds to, various stimuli. It does not result in any kind of "perception" however.

The fact that a bee responds to EM stimuli doesn't in itself tell us anything about whether it experiences color qualia.

We also have no sensation of breathing (most of the time) and dozen other functions of the human body but I fail to see how this correlates to my assertion which is that color perception in living organisms does not require conscious though. If narrowing the question down to humans - its impossible to answer because there is no clear definition of what consciousness is.

Let's focus on one point at a time.

Do you now agree that detection of some stimulus does not necessarily correlate with an internal sensation? That some stimuli are processed by the autonomic system in humans, or reflexes, or just don't have obvious internal qualia separate to other senses (e.g. proprioception)?

What kind of maniac would say color is a reflex? That was never my argument.

I'll go through it step-by-step as you've misparsed what I've said completely.

You said: ""If an organism has the ability to see a particular color then it surely must have an evolutionary reason to do so. Which leads to believe that this organism must have an internal sensation of that color within it's own level of perception" .

From this, we can extract the underlying reasoning to formalize it as Molecule's Conjecture: If an organism has the ability to sense some stimuli then it surely has an evolutionary reason to do so. Which leads us to believe that it must have an internal sensation of that stimulus.
Agreed?

But then we can plug in other kinds of stimulus and trivially see the Conjecture doesn't work. For example:

If a human has the ability to sense oxygen levels in the blood (part of chemoreception) then we must have an internal sensation of that stimulus. However we do not. It's one of the things processed by the autonomic system. (before you say it, oxygen levels in the blood are not responsible for feelings of suffocation; that's CO2).

What is straw man about it? What part of "If an organism has the ability to see a particular color then it surely must have an evolutionary reason to do so. Which leads to believe that this organism must have an internal sensation of that color within it's own level of perception." have I misunderstood? You are reasoning that if an organism has a good evolutionary reason for detecting some stimulus then it must have an internal sensation of that input.

Why do reflexes not refute this argument?

And that's twice now you've just used a label like "straw man!" or "moving the goalposts!" as an excuse to ignore an argument being put to you. If you really want to discuss this topic in good faith, perhaps next time you at least show why you think the argument is affirming the consequent or whatever.

Color perception is not a reflex. You're moving goal posts.

Of course color perception is not a reflex.

The simple point is this: you said that color detection exists for good evolutionary reasons (true). And therefore that organisms must have an internal perception of color (false).

I demonstrated that this logic is flawed by giving an example of a response to stimuli that also exists for good evolutionary reasons: reflexes. These do not have an internal perception. Therefore they refute your argument.

No. Most had, as a secondary definition, something like: n. When you are awake and aware of your surroundings.

Can you give a single cite? I'm sure that being awake is one of the definitions of consciousness. It's clearly not the definition that is used in this context, in a philosophy forum discussion.

And I'm dubious that any dictionary would only put that first definition and omit the latter.

This is all a handwave anyway: instead of engaging with what I was saying, certain posters wanted to play a trump card of "Consciousness isn't defined!". But the handwave fails because in this case I can simply call your bluff and ask you to look up the word in a dictionary.

What is your cite for that? I doubt that that was the only text.

 

No what? What are you disagreeing with me on? Consciousness suddenly became inner experience - what is the point that you're trying to make because it seems to be shifting or at least is not clear to me. By consciousness being moot I meant that its definition is not clear.

What you wrote is clear to me and I agree with it although I remember a time when a knee jerk launched a series of very serious life and death thoughts in my mind. I think both me and Manticore stated clearly that conciousness and color perception does not have to be correlated, at least in insects. Im also sceptical about the outcome of this debate as at the very root of it we have an undefined term - "conciousness"

 

 

 

The "no" was WRT the point you had just made, that if an organism sees a colour then it must have an evolutionary reason for doing so, and therefore it must have an internal perception of color.

This doesn't follow at all logically, and in fact is demonstrably false. For example, we have good evolutionary reasons for having reflexes yet none of them are connected to internal subjective sensations.

You did add "...within its own level of perception" but that doesn't help. What does it actually mean for the light-sensitive circuit, or my reflexes? Is it advocating panpsychism?

Also, it is not true that consciousness is undefined. It's a broad term, yes, and I already conceded that. But the dictionary definition for example is not "[please insert own definition here]".

 

If an organism has the ability to see a particular color then it surely must have an evolutionary reason to do so. Which leads to believe that this organism must have an internal sensation of that color within it's own level of perception. Saying (like you did) that a primitive organism being able to see a certain color but not being able to have a sensation of it because it doesn't have a conscious mind in a human sense is not only unjustly degrading to that organism but also plain false reasoning.

No; the point is that just responding to some stimuli is not proof of an inner experience; otherwise the problem would be vastly simpler than it is.

We know this because:

1. Not all stimuli humans react to include inner experience (for example our reflexes) and

2. We can make very simple machines that respond to stimuli of various kinds e.g. light-sensitive diodes. If they have inner experience, then everything has.

And leading on from observation 1, a common idea now among cognitive- and neuro- scientists is that subjective perception is likely linked to choice. Knee-jerk responses don't need (and therefore likely don't have) inner subjective experiences. But where we need to make unique plans (for some common stimulus...obviously we can't evolve inner experiences for everything) it makes sense to have subjective phenomena as inputs.

If that's the case, then we'd likely be happy to say most mammals have subjective experience of, say, color, and happy to say very simple lifeforms are like our light-sensitive diode. Inbetween, who knows? It's among the things we're trying to figure out.

Bees see in colour (not the same range as us - they can see into the ultra-violet but not the red end of our visible spectrum)and I can't really imagine an individual bee possesses consciousness (whatever that is).

Yeah and it's trivial to make a robot that will move away from fire, and play a scream noise while doing so. It doesn't tell us anything about the sensation of pain that you and I experience.

Likewise of course there are organism and machines that respond to light stimuli, but we can be fairly sure have no internal sensation of "green", say.

 

 

And this sensation is subjective to prior experiences of an individual concerning color perception. Hence my statement that color perception is a "personal thing"

Yes but that statement implies to me that the prior experiences is the critical factor. But if you had two individuals who were somehow perfectly identical and you could somehow deliver all the same sensory data for their entire lives...we would still have the phenomenon of brains making sensations, that we don't understand at this time.

IOW, IMO the issue of whether you and I see colours the same is of secondary importance.

 

I don't know what the problem is, this thread is borderline crackpot.

Agreed. I just joined in because I smelled a Daniel Dennett style handwave of conscious phenomena. If that's a misconception on my part then probably we don't have much of a disagreement.

 

Depends on the definition of consciousness which as far as I know is moot. I would imagine you could be incapable of conscious thought (accident, genetic dysfunction, etc) and still perceive colors. In this sense I asserted that color perception probably has nothing to do with consciousness which in my understanding and generally in these kinds of discussions is approached as "what are we? how we got here? why am I here?" type of things instead of "why does an orange smell like an orange" definition of consciousness. Ofcourse I agree with you that if the definition of consciousness is that its a combination of all senses, feelings and sensations than you're right.

We can be fairly sure that some insects are capable of perceiving colors and also we can be fairly sure that none of them are capable of conscious thought.

I'm not sure what "consciousness is moot" would mean, but it's not arbitrary.

And some of those "meaning of life"-style questions that you have listed are absolutely nothing to do with any normal definition of consciousness.

I agree it's a somewhat broad concept, because it's ended up being where we lump many aspects of brain function that we don't understand. But we don't get to make up our own definitions.

 

I will admit this though: me saying that qualia is a fundamental part of consciousness is somewhat controversial. To me it's centrally important because it's a whole different class of problem from the kind that we can normally scientifically examine: it seems intractable in terms of third-person descriptions.

But I grant you that some people may analyze the situation differently and may believe qualia are a side issue.

 

 

As for color; Color is perceived differently by individuals based on experience. Color perception is a personal thing and I guarantee that everyone in this thread sees colors differently. Does it have anything to do with conciousness? (whatever that is) - not really.

The only way your brain receives any knowledge of colour from the outside world is via pulses of charge along the optic nerve.

But instead of just being aware of the raw data of "light of 540nm wavelength excited a cone on the retina" the brain converts this data into a sensation: "green".

If the problem were just figuring out whether different people see colour differently, and why, that's in principle a solvable question.

But if the problem is figuring out how brains have sensations at all; how an arrangement of matter can feel pain, say, we have no model for this at this time.

And it is wrong to say it has nothing to do with consciousness; how brains have sensations is perhaps the most fundamental part of understanding consciousness.