scholarly journals How experimental neuroscientists can fix the hard problem of consciousness

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Klein ◽  
Andrew B Barron
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Experimental Project ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Abstract For the materialist, the hard problem is fundamentally an explanatory problem. Solving it requires explaining why the relationship between brain and experience is the way it is and not some other way. We use the tools of the interventionist theory of explanation to show how a systematic experimental project could help move beyond the hard problem. Key to this project is the development of second-order interventions and invariant generalizations. Such interventions played a crucial scientific role in untangling other scientific mysteries, and we suggest that the same will be true of consciousness. We further suggest that the capacity for safe and reliable self-intervention will play a key role in overcoming both the hard and meta-problems of consciousness. Finally, we evaluate current strategies for intervention, with an eye to how they might be improved.

Contemporary Echoes of the World Soul

2021 ◽  
pp. 320-342
Author(s):  
Valia Allori
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Quantum Theories ◽  
The World ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way

Quantum mechanics is a groundbreaking theory: it not only is extraordinarily empirically adequate but also is claimed to having shattered the classical paradigm of understanding the observer-observed distinction as well as the part-whole relation. This, together with other quantum features, has been taken to suggest that quantum theory can help one understand the mind-body relation in a unique way, in particular to solve the hard problem of consciousness along the lines of panpsychism. In this chapter, after having briefly presented panpsychism, Valia Allori discusses the main features of quantum theories and the way in which the main quantum theories of consciousness use them to account for conscious experience.

Imagining the Sounds Themselves

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-77
Author(s):  
Malcolm Riddoch
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
The World ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective ◽  
Neurological Processes ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Relationship

Malcolm Riddoch investigates the relationship between the auditory imagination and our perception of sound. He states that, from a physical perspective, both imaginary and externally stimulated sound would seem to be the product of neurological processes. From a phenomenological perspective, however, phenomenal sound is fundamentally something that is heard. This apparent paradox leads Riddoch, via the “hard problem of consciousness,” to present and discuss a number of different forms and understandings of “sound” and to eventually posit that the sounds themselves—imagined or externally stimulated—are “nonphysical phenomena disclosed in the lived experience of hearkening to the meaningful sounds one hears in the world.”

Continuity: Kinks Not Breaks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel D. Hutto ◽  
Erik Myin
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Scientific Naturalism ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Hard Problem Of Content ◽  
The Way

Chapter 6 sets out to show REC can allow for content-involving cognition in nature without itself falling foul of the Hard Problem of Content and without introducing unbridgeable evolutionary discontinuity or gaps in nature. Thus it crucially defuses critical concerns about REC’s NOC program in order to establish that it is a tenable way of explaining the how content-involving cognition arose and arises naturally, and where content can be found in nature. It then lays out the broad outlines of REC’s proposed explanation for the Natural Origins of Content – its NOC program that draws on Neo-Pragmatist resources and advocates the adoption of a Relaxed as opposed to Strict Scientific Naturalism. It advances a multi-storey explanation, involving kinks not breaks. This explains how content-involving cognition could have arisen through the mastery of special socio-cultural practices, providing new resources but without changing the fundamental character of cognition. Its basic sketch of how the NOC program might be pursued paves the way for further research.

INCOMPLETE NATURE AND SELF - BODY PROBLEM: EMERGENTIST TRANSCENDENCE OF THE DUALISM OF SPIRIT AND MATTER

METOD ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 77-90
Author(s):  
Ivan Fomin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Dynamic Coupling ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Material Information ◽  
The Way

The article presents an overview of the key arguments of Terrence Deacon's theory of how mind emerged from matter. Deacon’s emergentism is analyzed as a way of refocusing the «hard problem» of consciousness. He suggests considering the phenomenon of consciousness as a dynamic coupling of mutually constraining processes. Such coupling is the defining feature of the subjective self and other teleodynamic phenomena. So self cannot be found as something embodied in existing material substrates. Consciousness is not present in such substrates themselves, but in the way different processes unfolding in these substrates constrain each other. Deacon shows that even looking at the simplest forms of life (autogens) one can observe that in them each part, interacting with other parts, creates the whole, and the whole as a synergetic complex makes possible the reproduction of its parts. The same principle underlies the organization of subjective consciousness, as subjective consciousness is hierarchically entangled with other levels of sentience. Thus, Deacon's emergentism is an attempt to take seriously the problem of the interrelation of spirit and matter by not simply to disregarding explanations that refer to the spiritual substance, but by offering the models of consciousness, sentience and purposiveness that could convincingly solve fundamental questions about the nature of consciousness in an alternative way. It is also an attempt to avoid the «naturalistic dualism» of David Chalmers, which involves splitting material information into physical and phenomenal aspects. According to Deacon, in explaining subjective self, one can do without both Cartesian spiritual substance and Chalmers' phenomenal information, but then what is necessary is to acknowledge the significance of absential phenomena (the phenomena that are intrinsically existing in relation to something missing, separate or nonexistent).

scholarly journals Not All Structure and Dynamics Are Equal

Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 1226
Author(s):  
Garrett Mindt
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Phenomenal Experience ◽  
Intrinsic Structure ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Structure And Dynamics ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Relationship

The hard problem of consciousness has been a perennially vexing issue for the study of consciousness, particularly in giving a scientific and naturalized account of phenomenal experience. At the heart of the hard problem is an often-overlooked argument, which is at the core of the hard problem, and that is the structure and dynamics (S&D) argument. In this essay, I will argue that we have good reason to suspect that the S&D argument given by David Chalmers rests on a limited conception of S&D properties, what in this essay I’m calling extrinsic structure and dynamics. I argue that if we take recent insights from the complexity sciences and from recent developments in Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of Consciousness, that we get a more nuanced picture of S&D, specifically, a class of properties I’m calling intrinsic structure and dynamics. This I think opens the door to a broader class of properties with which we might naturally and scientifically explain phenomenal experience, as well as the relationship between syntactic, semantic, and intrinsic notions of information. I argue that Chalmers’ characterization of structure and dynamics in his S&D argument paints them with too broad a brush and fails to account for important nuances, especially when considering accounting for a system’s intrinsic properties. Ultimately, my hope is to vindicate a certain species of explanation from the S&D argument, and by extension dissolve the hard problem of consciousness at its core, by showing that not all structure and dynamics are equal.

scholarly journals Narratives of trust: sharing knowledge as a second-order emotion

Human Affairs ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Belli ◽  
Fernando Broncano
Keyword(s):  
Second Order ◽  
First Order ◽  
Epistemic Trust ◽  
The Third ◽  
Relationship Construction ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

AbstractOur aim is to examine why trust can be considered a second-order emotion and how the way in which trust plays out differently in aesthetic and ordinary contexts can provide another mode of investigating second-order emotions. Our thesis is developed in three sections and a conclusion.In the first section, we perform an example analysis to show why narratives are important for our emotions. In the second section, we examine how trust can be considered a second-order emotion and establish criteria for identifying it as a second-order emotion. In the third section, we present one of the aims of trust, i.e. sharing knowledge between agents, when a testimony-giver shares knowledge in an epistemic trust process with others. We show how the relationship construction between persons thanks to trust, a second-order emotion that represents emotional ties between agents to achieve a first-order emotion.

scholarly journals Process Metaphysics of Consciousness

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Prentner
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Causal Relation ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Process Metaphysics ◽  
Insurmountable Obstacle ◽  
Philosophical Project ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract In this article, we look at the hard problem of consciousness from the perspective of process metaphysics. We thereby identify three problematic premises of the problem that pertain to the constitution of consciousness and its causal relation to the world. We argue for the necessity of re-thinking the corresponding phenomena in terms of internally-structured processes. The hard problem would then cease to be an insurmountable obstacle to a science of consciousness. Furthermore, this line of reasoning is shown to be continuous with philosophical projects from the early 20th century that preceded the contemporary philosophy of mind. Specifically, we investigate the relationship of parts and wholes, and translate metaphysical problems of consciousness into mereological language. Despite this being a philosophical project, we frequently note and discuss links to the empirical sciences, in particular those of quantum mechanics, systems theory and the embodied cognition framework.

The Type of Temperament, Mood, and Strategies of Categorization

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 227-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agata Wytykowska
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Negative Mood ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Processing Capacity ◽  
Affective Value ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

In Strelau’s theory of temperament (RTT), there are four types of temperament, differentiated according to low vs. high stimulation processing capacity and to the level of their internal harmonization. The type of temperament is considered harmonized when the constellation of all temperamental traits is internally matched to the need for stimulation, which is related to effectiveness of stimulation processing. In nonharmonized temperamental structure, an internal mismatch is observed which is linked to ineffectiveness of stimulation processing. The three studies presented here investigated the relationship between temperamental structures and the strategies of categorization. Results revealed that subjects with harmonized structures efficiently control the level of stimulation stemming from the cognitive activity, independent of the affective value of situation. The pattern of results attained for subjects with nonharmonized structures was more ambiguous: They were as good as subjects with harmonized structures at adjusting the way of information processing to their stimulation processing capacities, but they also proved to be more responsive to the affective character of stimulation (positive or negative mood).

Understanding prescription in language. A corpus-based approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-81
Author(s):  
Douglas A. Kibbee ◽  
Alan Craig
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
French Tradition ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

We define prescription as any intervention in the way another person speaks. Long excluded from linguistics as unscientific, prescription is in fact a natural part of linguistic behavior. We seek to understand the logic and method of prescriptivism through the study of usage manuals: their authors, sources and audience; their social context; the categories of “errors” targeted; the justification for correction; the phrasing of prescription; the relationship between demonstrated usage and the usage prescribed; the effect of the prescription. Our corpus is a collection of about 30 usage manuals in the French tradition. Eventually we hope to create a database permitting easy comparison of these features.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document