Brain and soul : seperate or the same?

I am consciously aware of contrast, that's for sure!

Ifen The tests work on the ability to detect a number in a colordot circle so if the person is colorblind and cannot see the number "outside" the brain then the color must somehow directly affect the nerve tissues in ways that are dependent on wavelengths of light.If the person was seeing a different wavelength of light then we could also test for this.This message has been edited by sidelined, 11-24-2004 10:41 PM

Yes, but a color blind person lacks receptors IIRC. They have even done a similar pattern recognition test to demonstrate that synesthesia exists using black and white patterns of letters or numbers that is hard for a normal to distinguish but a person with synesthesia sees them in color and quickly sees the pattern.I've no problem with this. I know we experience the world and can measure the world. Nerves are obviously involved as well as the brain. I can even grasp the sensory motor functions. What still perplexrs me is that I/We experience the world consciously with the different qualia. One set of nerves when stimulated results in me tasting something sweet and other nerves result in seeing Red, or feeling warm, cold etc. I don't dispute this I just don't know how these qualities come about. Does a computer "feel" hot when it over heats? Does it feel anything is it's voltage drops?lfen

IfenPerhaps the problem lies in the fact that we do not have a comparison set of parameters that we could compare what we do feel with some other possibility.That we do feel or see or hear in the way we do is because this is the only way in which the chemicals in our body and the nerves they move along produce sensation.They are what they are.
In synaethetes the signals get conjoined and the signals become a mixture of two different sensory perceptions but they do not produce a wholly new type of sensation to which we cannot relate.This indictes that if cells can only operate in some definite means of identification in order to differentiate different areas of our experiences that we need to know in order to compete and survive then it is logical that the evolution of these cells would follow strict physical and chemical rules{though these are of course not yet worked out} in order to allow the same capabilities to be passed from generation to generation.We know that the loss of physical parts of the vision drastically alter the perception of sight.The same holds true for other senses.If there is brain damage we also find corresponding alterations in perception.So there will likely be interactions of specialized chemicals in the part

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"Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."
--Don Hirschberg

I don't have the source on synesthesia I read but I'll tell you my impression of the findings. Nerve signals were activating the area that they normally do but somehow where spilling over into another area such as color or taste. There was an example of someone laughing at pain that had a similiar dual activation. This sounds to me like certain area of the brain create different sensations.There is also the phenomena of blind sight. One visual path way is consicous and there is another visual path that isn't connected to the conscious areas so a person with damage to the first aren't aware of seeing anything but if they are encourage to point to something or grasp it they can because of the second path.I'm going to try a reformulation and state this problem of qualia as the outside/inside problem. I or any one is awarely looking at data or the external world, a brain, whatever. We see matter and energy. We may have a sense that there are strong similiarities in the way we experience the world. If I see a beautiful sunset I'll point it out to them and I can't recall anyone ever going "eweeee that is disgusting" though I suppose it's possible.The question is where does the inside experience come from. From nerves and brains but if I watch nerves and brain I don't see them tasting sweet vanilla, or seeing bright red. Liquid emerges when hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water. But that combination is externally analysable. My question is where does the insideness come from that so that we experience wetness?Is this insideness something that matter and energy has along with mass, type of energy, charge, etc? Or does a sufficiently complex neural net suddenly manifest insideness in the same way hydrogen gas and oxygen gas can be combined to form water which suddenly exhibits liquidness. How is it I'm inside my consciousness aware of qualia instead of aware of a neural count of impulses.lfen

I think you might be wrong here. There are specific areas of the brain that are doing the color processing (also vertical lines, horizontal lines, and so on). Damage to these affects what is able to be seen.I think, but not sure, that it is possible to watch these areas processing the visual signels. Seeing is really something the brain does not the eyes. The eyes send a stream of electrical pulses to the brain. There these are turned into an interpretation that we call "seeing".I do know we can watch thinking happen, memory being formed and recalled.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 11-25-2004 01:27 AM

I didn't mean we can't observe brain activity and even single neuron activations. But those observations aren't how we experience our own brains. That is what I mean by outside. Using MRI, and all the other advanced tools we have we can study the externals, the outsides.What I mean by "inside" is our subjective personal experience. We can correlate it with brain function as an individual can report their exerience while it's being monitored, recorded, observed. Yet there is still our self conscious awareness of our self/experience as qualities, that is what I mean by bright red, the actual experience of bright redness, not the observation of the color area of a brain processing an input.Actually, this is why I called it impenetrable. Maybe it's just I can't even find words to make a distinction that anyone else knows what I'm talking about. Inside is not inside the skull, or inside the brain. By inside I mean our subjective experience of the world.I can measure the salinity of sea water for example. I can monitor a brain of a person drinking the sea water. But if I drink it it tastes salty. Where does the salty taste come from? Well, the brain, but how does it create or find that sensation of saltiness, how does that come into being. That for me is the problem I'm trying to unravel enough to begin to think about it's implications for what consciousness is.lfen

[quote]Yet there is still our self conscious awareness of our self/experience as qualities, that is what I mean by bright red, the actual experience of bright redness, not the observation of the color area of a brain processing an input.[.quote]What is the difference between the two?As it happens, I have temperature monitors on my PC, and when the temp of the chip exceed 70 degrees C it sets of an alarm. What would that "feel like" to the computer? Well, seeing as this alarm must override and interrupt all other processes so it can seize control of the hardware that actually makes the alarm sound, the computer probably expeirnces this as something like "panic" - where we to describe it as feeling anything at all.This whole issue does not exist. Your nervers tinngle: the signals are diofferentiated so that they are meaningful. If your optic nerves failed to distinguish between red and geen, your colour vision would be useless. It's probable that the signal associated wtih red is, say, at a a certain voltage or frequency itself, and the signal for green slightly different. Thats all there is to it. It's completely circular IMO to say that qualia are themselves anything significant at all, becuase they are in fact just symptoms of the actual cognition systems working as they are supposed to work, and have no importance in their owen right, and are arguably just a semantic trick.

I totally agree, I don't see qualia as anything more than a means to describe a certain current inability to describe certain phenomena in the neccesary mechanistic depth.But if one does accept the assumption then it doesn't follow from the fact that people suffering Protanopic or Deuteranopic colour blindness can be detected, from an organic basis that everyone who can descriminate colours normally experiences them subjectively in the same way. It is certainly a reasonable assumption based on the commonality of the underlying neural processes of vision, but it is still equally an assumption, albeit a more compelling one in my opinion.TTFN,WK

Wounded King When an underlying mechanism that we can measure affects the sujective experience of a phenomena is it not a wrong assumption that the subjective experience{in this case qualia} is somehow divorced fromthe physical phenomena? Since the underlying makeup of humans is the same where is the justification or logic behind assuming the phenomena of qualia is different from one person to the next.IMO this is the interjection of an assumption we cannot test and therefore need not test.This message has been edited by sidelined, 11-25-2004 07:47 AM

I strongly suspect that qualia aren't unique in individuals.Qualia is about subjective experience, not objective observation.
We can objectively measure wavelengths and intensity of light. We can study which retinal nerves respond to that wavelength and the pathway of that response in the brain. Nothing in this description will be my experience of "red".The problem with qualia is part of the problem of self conscious subjectivity. Of course if you choose to bracket that out and just deal with objective data the problem won't exist in your analysis.
But you are a subjective self conscious being doing this study. We can correlate our subjective experiences with objective observations, even though we make those observations from our subjective experience of the our self/world.Objective scientific approach yields a lot of useful information. Thus far the problem of subjective has been for me at least a very difficult problem to even define as the responses to my musing here demonstrate. I am unwilling to abandon it though simply because I've not yet found a way to begin to penetrate this fundamental daily mystery of who/what I am and what my existence is.lfen

Certainly that is a reasonable assumption, but it does not neccessarily mean that we understand all the details of how the physical phenomenon and subsequent neuronal activity relates to the subjective experience or that even if we were to have such a deep understanding we could then say that the colour we think of as red actually looks the same in our mind as that of another.TTFN,WK

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I strongly suspect that qualia aren't unique in individuals.

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On what basis?I mean, I'd reckon that the operating system code for our hardware has to be fairly similar from individual to individual, but then again there are enough weird psychological problems, such as synesthesia, which suggest that individuals might have differing versions.But this is total speculation; we can't test to see if qualia are different from person to person until qualia can be measured, and they allegedly cannot be measured becuase they are "subjective".

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Qualia is about subjective experience, not objective observation.

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Thats doesn't mean anything. It remains the case that everyone stops at red lights and goes at green lights. There is no reason to think there is a major distinction bewteen the "subjective" observation and obejctive facts of the matter.

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We can objectively measure wavelengths and intensity of light. We can study which retinal nerves respond to that wavelength and the pathway of that response in the brain. Nothing in this description will be my experience of "red".

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That will be precisely and exactly your experience of red. [quote] But you are a subjective self conscious being doing this study. We can correlate our subjective experiences with objective observations, even though we make those observations from our subjective experience of the our self/world.[/;quote]Yes exactly. Thats why we do not need to introduce the term "qualia" into our lexicon.

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I am unwilling to abandon it though simply because I've not yet found a way to begin to penetrate this fundamental daily mystery of who/what I am and what my existence is.

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You, I, we, are over-dressed plains-apes.

Ifen Yes but the objective observation affects the perception.Why would you imagine that the experience is different for you than for others? That is incorrect.If I were to introduce filters between your vision and the colors you percieve I can objectively determine how this will change your perception of the color you see. I can even predict the outcome of that change. If you cannot define the problem could it be there is no problem? Yo ucan stste that your experience is different, that you see a different red from anyone else but that is far less likely than the converse is it not?

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"Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."
--Don Hirschberg

It appears I'm unable to make a clear enough distinction between subjective/objective and so will set the questions about qualia aside for now.I have thought of another approach. Imagine that some time in the future humans build self replicating self improving robots. The can locate and mine raw materials and manufacture robots like themselves and can even "mutate" their software programming and evolve. I stipulate that they can do all this and are not conscious. We could send them to a planet of adequate environment and they could continue to self repair and replicate never once being conscious of what they were doing.Questions:Given you accept the premise of sufficiently advanced technology do you think it's possible for robots to emulate life without being self aware?Second does consciousness have a function for life then? Is it necessary or is it redundant?lfen