Chip with simple program for Toy

[Allan C Cybulskie]

On Apr 8, 9:22 pm, stevendaryl3...@yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:

Allan C Cybulskie says...



stevendaryl3...@yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:
I think that pain is the same sort of thing as an alarm.
Physical damage to the body triggers a certain response
pattern in the nervous system. This in turn triggers
certain behavior (or at modulates existing behavior).
There is nothing particularly "painlike" about the
response pattern. What makes it "pain" is the role
it plays in the scenario: Body is damaged, pain is
registered, body responds.

Now, if you include the neural states, then you can be making an
interesting claim: pain is just the neural state produced by an event
that then causes certain reactions. Fine and dandy. But then we
still have room to say that we can determine this neural state without
examining the neurons from inside the subject by how pain FEELS. In
addition, this view causes problems for AI since AI doesn't have
neurons to play with.

That was the point about using a bell, or a flare gun, or
whatever else as a substitute for a fire alarm. The importance
is not the specific details of the alarm, but the role it plays.
Neurons are the tools that we have available to store and process
information, so of course "pain" for us is a neural state. But
what makes it "pain" (as opposed to pleasure) is the role that
the state plays in our behavior, *not* the details of neural
structure.

And you've ignored my other comments on this: basically, that calling
911 is ALSO a fire alarm by that definition, as well as the fire
department getting a "feeling" and going there, and any number of
other things that could make the fire department show up there. And
this is meaningless: a behavioural (though perhaps not neural) zombie
is still totally possible who acts on pain and yet never actually
feels it as a phenomenal experience. Meaning that your view will in
no way help in explaining phenomenal experiences.

This is what my objection is: Pain can't just be the behaviour
normally produced by pain because that behaviour can be produced in
cases where pain was not experienced. So pain is something more than
that, and you cannot simply claim -- at a minimum -- that if something
acts as if it is in pain it really is. It may not be.

Calling it "something more" is a misleading way of saying
things. Is a fire alarm "something more" than a way of summoning
the fire department? Not really. That's its only significance.

Um, be careful. In most cases, the ACTUAL purpose of the fire alarm
is to warn people inside the building to leave before they perish in
the fire [grin]. The fire department is tangential. But I see your
point.

My point, however, is that pain and the fire alarm are both SPECIFIC
ways to produce a certain behaviour, and that they are identifiable
and have good and bad points. That's what I mean by "something more";
they aren't just ways just like any other way to produce behaviour,
but they are ONE way to do that but there's more to them than just
that.

Okay, I agree with that. What we have to work with in processing
information is neurons, and the physical properties of neurons
end up affecting the way that we respond to things. In a certain
sense, they are just "implementation details", but details matter.
The fact that aspirin relieves our headaches or LSD makes us
act weird are details of the way that our brains are implemented.
The details certainly are important in understanding the brain.

Okay, so a question here: Is my phenomenal experience of pain just
something that neurons do WHILE they produce behaviour?

 

[Allan C Cybulskie]

On Apr 8, 10:31 pm, Joe Durnavich <j...@earthlink.net> wrote:

Daryl McCullough writes:
Allan C Cybulskie says...
I'm simply asking someone that I think HAS these experiences

You can't *talk* about "having these experiences" without
generalizing beyond your introspection. Your introspection
shows you what things are like for *you*. To talk about
someone *else* having "feelings and experiences" means
that you are generalizing from your own case.

He has a good point, Allan. The way you guys set this up, "these
experiences" are "your experiences". Some other person can't have your
experiences. That is like saying that he has your headache.

Yes, and this is usually one of the main arguments in FAVOUR of our
position. So what's the point here? Since someone can't have my
experiences, and since having a particular experience seems -- from
the inside -- to be critically involved in pain, pain can't simply be
the behaviour produced by the feeling.

 

[Allan C Cybulskie]

On Apr 7, 3:13 pm, "Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemo...@yahoo.com> wrote:

"Allan C Cybulskie" <allan_c_cybuls...@yahoo.ca> wrote in messagenews:1175860787.953601.141120@y66g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
The verbal response is irrelevant: I can produce that verbal statement
without pain being anywhere near present. In fact, I just did it now,
while typing. And again.

And that would require a different explanation than the one in which
someone
is actually "reporting pain."

But from the outside, it's the same verbal response.

No it isn't. You think it is because you don't understand the definition of
an operant response class. If responses are affected differently by
independent variables they are, in general, different response classes.

Okay, and what's that independent variable that it's affected by
here? Oh, yeah, right ... it's the internal experience. Not
detectable from the outside. You can try to appeal to the fact that I
had a "reason" for giving the verbal response in the case I mentioned
that I don't have in the "normal" cases of pain, but then doesn't that
again just devolve to the fact that in the second case I have an
internal event happening of a specific type?

It's only if you
turn to the inside and introspection that you note that you need a
different explanation and get an inkling of what that explanation
might be. Thus, the verbal response is irrelevant.

No, what is not of interest is responses that resemble the one in question
topographically, but not functionally. My position, which could b summed up
as:

When we introspect "pain" we are observing our own responses to stimuli that
would be called "painful" or "pain-producing" from a third-person
perspective (as in reflexive hand withdrawal, grimaces, responding which
escapes a stimulus - especially if accompanied by species-typical grimaces,
squeaks, etc. and even, ironically, verbal reports).

Absolutely untrue. I can feel pain due to "stimuli" that can't even
be SEEN third-person, let alone would be painful due to it. And I can
feel pain even if I don't report on that.

Further, some aspects
of the kinds of behavior produced by interaction with the "painful stimuli"
(i.e., the responses we may come to report) may be unobservable to others.
Those behavioral aspects (both public and private) are, potentially,
"discriminative stimuli" that can control the response "I am in pain," and
any that do control that verbal response, do so because the person (or
non-human animal) has been exposed to the appropriate contingencies.

So, you are also saying that either we detect that we are acting as if
we are in pain, or we have some sort of private event that indicates
pain? Why not just take the private event roles AS pain? Especially
since you like to claim that you don't ignore them ...

They are meaningful only if one assigns behavior to categories based, not on
how it is altered as a function of independent variables, but on its
superficial appearance.

Glen, please stop criticizing other people's research projects. Hint:
that "superficial appearance" is also the "phenomenal experience" ...
and that's a critical component of consciousness and mind. Thus, for
people interested in consciousness, it's a very important thing. You
may not care about it, but that does not make any of us wrong FOR
caring about, and it means that YOU will never explain consciousness
in an acceptable way.

It does not change the view that when we are
trained to "report pain" we are made "conscious of it."

Actually, the reverse argument is more reasonable: that we are
constantly conscious of feeling pain and that that experience is used
to train reporting pain. In short, people look at the situations we
are in, conclude that they are likely to produce pain, and then train
children to express it as pain.

That is not "the reverse argument." Most of it is, in fact consistent with
my thesis except for your insistence that "they were always conscious of
it." Since consciousness must, in the third person, be determined (or
guessed at) by observations of behavior, there is no way to say whether the
contingencies that we arrange to "train the reporting response" merely train
the person (or non-human animal) to report that of which they are already
aware, or if training the reporting response is how the awareness itself
comes to be (which is, as I understand it, the radical behaviorist
position). You are free to take the alternative position but not, I think,
free to assert that it is the "more reasonable" view.

It is the more reasonable view because you cannot EVER tell what
someone is experiencing from the third person view, and so the
concerns of THAT perspective are not particularly important ... but in
order for someone to associate an experience with an action,
behaviour, or reaction they have to have at least a RAW form of that
experience to assign to the reaction. In short, you couldn't train
them to associate a feeling of pain with saying "Ouch" if they didn't
have a feeling of pain to link with that behaviour in the first place.

This potentially causes confusions if
the child isn't really feeling pain and thus associates it with some
other feeling.

This is a sort of corollary of Skinner's view. The accuracy of reporting a
private stimulus depends on how well correlated it is with what the verbal
community uses to train the response.

Which means, by implication, that I can have an experience and report
the wrong one. This means that I have an experience before being
trained to report it.

Now, you COULD be talking about "consciousness of consciousness",
where we are consciously introspecting our pain experiences to
determine the qualities we have. THIS might follow your model since
we'd have to understand that it's important before wanting to examine
it, especially for pain.

The issue is not really what it is called, since people simply choose
definitions for "awareness" and "consciousness." The issue is whether or not
my position is relevant to what philosophers, who are interested in
"qualia," are talking about. I assert, at minimum, that we would not "have
qualia" if we were not exposed to contingencies that make our own responses
function as discriminative stimuli for verbal operants.

And again you provide no reason for asserting that even in light of
the fact that it seems like you can't associate qualia to a behaviour
without first having the qualia to assign it to, and it is clear that
we cannot describe our qualia well enough to simply train someone to
produce or imagine that qualia from the training.

That is, our own
response to "painful stimuli" would not discriminatively control any
behavior if the contingencies that generate such discriminative behavior
were not arranged.

I think you'll need to translate this into non-behaviouristic English,
since one translation of this is that if we didn't have pain events,
we'd never learn how to react to them, and that's so obviously true
that it can't be what you mean (no one disputes that).

No, that is not what I am saying. A non-human animal, or a human not
suitably trained, could show all sorts of behavior that we take as "showing
the animal is in pain" but it would not have "qualia." This is because the
animal may show reflexive behavior, or operant escape and avoidance, without
acquiring a response to these responses. A (true) report of pain is not a
reflex, and it is not reinforced by the elimination or reduction of some
condition as in escape and avoidance; it is an operant that is under
stimulus control of aspects of those kinds of responses. Things that we call
"pain-generating" produce reflexes, their reduction or elimination
reinforces responses (escape and avoidance), but they do not automatically
produce "qualia" or, at least, what it appears philosophers are talking
about when they use the word "qualia." Now, of course, you may define qualia
as something that, for example, must be there in order for escape and
avoidance to occur, but that is simply giving qualia an attribute that, by
definition, renders my position "wrong" a priori.

You don't seem to know what "qualia" is as philosophers talk about.
Qualia is nothing more than the specific experience of a phenomenal
event, and the qualities that THAT has. Your explanation in no way
addresses qualia, even with the redefinition that you claimed I might
want to do. Which I wouldn't, since it wouldn't make it qualia
[grin].

Basically, qualia has a causal role but is NOT just its causal role,
which makes it so interesting and so disturbing.

The fact that it's a verbal response ain't very interesting unless you
say what it's a response TO. And it's a response to a feeling of
pain. And that's what the problem here is, and that's what's not
accounted for.

No, it is a response to other responses.

Irrelevant. If the feeling of pain is a response, it still doesn't
mean that it isn't a specific response -- ie a feeling

So, you are saying that "a feeling" is really a response to a "specific
response." Hmmm, somehow that sounds mysteriously like what I have been
saying, except my definition of "specific response" would be functional
rather than topographical.

Glen, do you not remember that my basic arguments against you are now:
Either you're wrong or you're saying the exact same thing I am, so why
are you criticizing me [grin]?

But this isn't quite right. What I'm saying is that, in your model, I
think that the "feeling" would BE a specific response, which we can
then react to. This means that I can examine the specific response of
the "feeling" and look at its qualities ... and examing THAT is the
problem of qualia and what is the key problem for "consciousness".

 

[Meat Plow]

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:26:54 -0700, MassiveProng wrote:

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 14:47:21 -0400, Meat Plow <meat@meatplow.local
Gave us:

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:41:49 -0500, John Fields wrote:

--
In what way?
---

Now, try again.

---
Well, let's clear the other thing up first...

I have an honest question that is off topic for this current pissing match
you're in.
Why do you separate your reply and sentences with dashes?
You're the first person I've seen do so.


You're a fucking retarded CRAPPY HEADED HO, how could you be
expected to understand that not everyone posts or formats their
responses the same way you lazy, retarded bastards do?

Is there a time of day where you're not angry at the world?
--
#1 Offishul Ruiner of Usenet, March 2007
#1 Usenet Asshole, March 2007
#1 Bartlo Pset, March 13-24 2007
#10 Most hated Usenetizen of all time
Pierre Salinger Memorial Hook, Line & Sinker, June 2004
COOSN-266-06-25794

 

[Glen M. Sizemore]

"Allan C Cybulskie" <allan_c_cybulskie@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:1176564758.722792.138510@o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...

On Apr 7, 3:13 pm, "Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemo...@yahoo.com> wrote:

"Allan C Cybulskie" <allan_c_cybuls...@yahoo.ca> wrote in
messagenews:1175860787.953601.141120@y66g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
The verbal response is irrelevant: I can produce that verbal
statement
without pain being anywhere near present. In fact, I just did it
now,
while typing. And again.

And that would require a different explanation than the one in which
someone
is actually "reporting pain."

But from the outside, it's the same verbal response.

No it isn't. You think it is because you don't understand the definition
of
an operant response class. If responses are affected differently by
independent variables they are, in general, different response classes.

Okay, and what's that independent variable that it's affected by
here? Oh, yeah, right ... it's the internal experience. Not
detectable from the outside. You can try to appeal to the fact that I
had a "reason" for giving the verbal response in the case I mentioned
that I don't have in the "normal" cases of pain, but then doesn't that
again just devolve to the fact that in the second case I have an
internal event happening of a specific type?

It is the same issue as a child pointing to water and saying "water" and a
person reading the word "water" and, thus, saying it. They are different
response classes. As far as an "internal event" goes, I don't use the term -
there is(are) some private behavioral event(s) occurring. But, other than
that, the answer is yes. When we "report pain" we are, according to my view,
reporting our own behavior.

It's only if you
turn to the inside and introspection that you note that you need a
different explanation and get an inkling of what that explanation
might be. Thus, the verbal response is irrelevant.

That is nonsense. The conditions that generate the "verbal event" are what
generate the awareness. At least, that is my view. The fact that we may be
tricked, or other kinds of episodes may LOOK the same, but are not, is
irrelevant. Your logic is something like this: A woman claims to have killed
an attacker in self-defense but it was really premeditated murder.
Therefore, no woman ever kills an attacker in self-defense.

No, what is not of interest is responses that resemble the one in
question
topographically, but not functionally. My position, which could b summed
up
as:

When we introspect "pain" we are observing our own responses to stimuli
that
would be called "painful" or "pain-producing" from a third-person
perspective (as in reflexive hand withdrawal, grimaces, responding which
escapes a stimulus - especially if accompanied by species-typical
grimaces,
squeaks, etc. and even, ironically, verbal reports).

Absolutely untrue. I can feel pain due to "stimuli" that can't even
be SEEN third-person, let alone would be painful due to it. And I can
feel pain even if I don't report on that.

I was a bit careless (I'd rather be careless than stupid, though). The
"pain-producing" stimuli need not be observable from the third person - they
just frequently are.

Further, some aspects
of the kinds of behavior produced by interaction with the "painful
stimuli"
(i.e., the responses we may come to report) may be unobservable to
others.
Those behavioral aspects (both public and private) are, potentially,
"discriminative stimuli" that can control the response "I am in pain,"
and
any that do control that verbal response, do so because the person (or
non-human animal) has been exposed to the appropriate contingencies.

So, you are also saying that either we detect that we are acting as if
we are in pain, or we have some sort of private event that indicates
pain? Why not just take the private event roles AS pain? Especially
since you like to claim that you don't ignore them ...

Because we call other things pain. In the laboratory it is something like
"tail-flick" or "limb withdrawal" or more complicated behavior under more
complicated arrangements like escape and avoidance. But none of this means
that the person or animal is "aware of the private event." How many times do
I have to tell you that? True, most non-behavioristic researchers will think
that the responses that I mentioned are only possible if the animal "is
conscious of the private event," but I do not hold that view.

They are meaningful only if one assigns behavior to categories based, not
on
how it is altered as a function of independent variables, but on its
superficial appearance.

Glen, please stop criticizing other people's research projects. Hint:
that "superficial appearance" is also the "phenomenal experience" ...
and that's a critical component of consciousness and mind. Thus, for
people interested in consciousness, it's a very important thing. You
may not care about it, but that does not make any of us wrong FOR
caring about, and it means that YOU will never explain consciousness
in an acceptable way.

The above statements do not appear to even be about what was under
discussion. You claimed that a person acting emitted the same responses -
i.e., that the responses of a person acting were the SAME as the responses
of a person reporting the private event. My reply is that those "acting
responses" only seem relevant to those that do not understand the importance
of functional distinctions. The fact that someone may say they are in pain
and not be, has no bearing on the fact that sometimes a person is not acting
and they are responding to a private event.

It does not change the view that when we are
trained to "report pain" we are made "conscious of it."

Actually, the reverse argument is more reasonable: that we are
constantly conscious of feeling pain and that that experience is used
to train reporting pain. In short, people look at the situations we
are in, conclude that they are likely to produce pain, and then train
children to express it as pain.

That is not "the reverse argument." Most of it is, in fact consistent
with
my thesis except for your insistence that "they were always conscious of
it." Since consciousness must, in the third person, be determined (or
guessed at) by observations of behavior, there is no way to say whether
the
contingencies that we arrange to "train the reporting response" merely
train
the person (or non-human animal) to report that of which they are already
aware, or if training the reporting response is how the awareness itself
comes to be (which is, as I understand it, the radical behaviorist
position). You are free to take the alternative position but not, I
think,
free to assert that it is the "more reasonable" view.

It is the more reasonable view because you cannot EVER tell what
someone is experiencing from the third person view,

Nevertheless, we manage to train people to "use pain language" accurately.
Or a least somewhat accurately.







and so the

concerns of THAT perspective are not particularly important ... but in
order for someone to associate an experience with an action,
behaviour, or reaction they have to have at least a RAW form of that
experience to assign to the reaction.

There are so many assumptions tied up in this it is difficult to even say
that it rises to the level of being wrong. Your position simply assumes that
awareness is "automatic."







In short, you couldn't train

them to associate a feeling of pain with saying "Ouch" if they didn't
have a feeling of pain to link with that behaviour in the first place.

Again, you are merely asserting that awareness is automatic.

This potentially causes confusions if
the child isn't really feeling pain and thus associates it with some
other feeling.

This is a sort of corollary of Skinner's view. The accuracy of reporting
a
private stimulus depends on how well correlated it is with what the
verbal
community uses to train the response.

Which means, by implication, that I can have an experience and report
the wrong one. This means that I have an experience before being
trained to report it.

No, that is not what it means.

Now, you COULD be talking about "consciousness of consciousness",
where we are consciously introspecting our pain experiences to
determine the qualities we have. THIS might follow your model since
we'd have to understand that it's important before wanting to examine
it, especially for pain.

The issue is not really what it is called, since people simply choose
definitions for "awareness" and "consciousness." The issue is whether or
not
my position is relevant to what philosophers, who are interested in
"qualia," are talking about. I assert, at minimum, that we would not
"have
qualia" if we were not exposed to contingencies that make our own
responses
function as discriminative stimuli for verbal operants.

And again you provide no reason for asserting that even in light of
the fact that it seems like you can't associate qualia to a behaviour
without first having the qualia to assign it to, and it is clear that
we cannot describe our qualia well enough to simply train someone to
produce or imagine that qualia from the training.

Huh?

That is, our own
response to "painful stimuli" would not discriminatively control any
behavior if the contingencies that generate such discriminative
behavior
were not arranged.

I think you'll need to translate this into non-behaviouristic English,
since one translation of this is that if we didn't have pain events,
we'd never learn how to react to them, and that's so obviously true
that it can't be what you mean (no one disputes that).

No, that is not what I am saying. A non-human animal, or a human not
suitably trained, could show all sorts of behavior that we take as
"showing
the animal is in pain" but it would not have "qualia." This is because
the
animal may show reflexive behavior, or operant escape and avoidance,
without
acquiring a response to these responses. A (true) report of pain is not a
reflex, and it is not reinforced by the elimination or reduction of some
condition as in escape and avoidance; it is an operant that is under
stimulus control of aspects of those kinds of responses. Things that we
call
"pain-generating" produce reflexes, their reduction or elimination
reinforces responses (escape and avoidance), but they do not
automatically
produce "qualia" or, at least, what it appears philosophers are talking
about when they use the word "qualia." Now, of course, you may define
qualia
as something that, for example, must be there in order for escape and
avoidance to occur, but that is simply giving qualia an attribute that,
by
definition, renders my position "wrong" a priori.

You don't seem to know what "qualia" is as philosophers talk about.
Qualia is nothing more than the specific experience of a phenomenal
event, and the qualities that THAT has. Your explanation in no way
addresses qualia, even with the redefinition that you claimed I might
want to do. Which I wouldn't, since it wouldn't make it qualia\\

Your description of qualia is exactly what I am talking about.

.

Basically, qualia has a causal role but is NOT just its causal role,
which makes it so interesting and so disturbing.




The fact that it's a verbal response ain't very interesting unless
you
say what it's a response TO. And it's a response to a feeling of
pain. And that's what the problem here is, and that's what's not
accounted for.

No, it is a response to other responses.

Irrelevant. If the feeling of pain is a response, it still doesn't
mean that it isn't a specific response -- ie a feeling

So, you are saying that "a feeling" is really a response to a "specific
response." Hmmm, somehow that sounds mysteriously like what I have been
saying, except my definition of "specific response" would be functional
rather than topographical.

Glen, do you not remember that my basic arguments against you are now:
Either you're wrong or you're saying the exact same thing I am, so why
are you criticizing me [grin]?

Sorry, I don't know what you are driving at. I have always said, and said
again above, that we may respond in many ways to "painful stimuli"
reflexively, operant escape and avoidance, but this does not mean that we
are aware of those responses.

But this isn't quite right. What I'm saying is that, in your model, I
think that the "feeling" would BE a specific response, which we can
then react to. This means that I can examine the specific response of
the "feeling" and look at its qualities ... and examing THAT is the
problem of qualia and what is the key problem for "consciousness".

Then I have solved it.

 

[Fleetie]

<qiman13@hotmail.com> wrote in message

Bob Teal discussion forum about Electric Motor Secrets:
http://www.energeticforum.com/renewable-energy/

"Water as a burnable fuel"... HHO being produced from H2O and
yet somehow different and burnable? I've never read so much
shit in my entire life. (No, wait, I have, but that was in
church.) Amazing that people will go on record in writing on the net
and admit to believing this crap.

Check out that link; some of the stuff there is just amazing. -ly ridiculous.

Martin
--
M.A.Poyser Tel.: 07967 110890
Manchester, U.K. http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=fleetie

 

[Daryl McCullough]

Allan C Cybulskie says...

On Apr 8, 10:31 pm, Joe Durnavich <j...@earthlink.net> wrote:
Daryl McCullough writes:
Allan C Cybulskie says...
I'm simply asking someone that I think HAS these experiences

You can't *talk* about "having these experiences" without
generalizing beyond your introspection. Your introspection
shows you what things are like for *you*. To talk about
someone *else* having "feelings and experiences" means
that you are generalizing from your own case.

He has a good point, Allan. The way you guys set this up, "these
experiences" are "your experiences". Some other person can't have your
experiences. That is like saying that he has your headache.

Yes, and this is usually one of the main arguments in FAVOUR of our
position. So what's the point here? Since someone can't have my
experiences, and since having a particular experience seems -- from
the inside -- to be critically involved in pain, pain can't simply be
the behaviour produced by the feeling.

How does that follow? The fact that you experience the pain does
*not* give you any infallible knowledge about what it's nature is.
You have presumably privileged knowledge about questions of the
form "Am I in pain right now?" but not "What is critically involved
in my pain?".

--
Daryl McCullough
Ithaca, NY

 

[Daryl McCullough]

Allan C Cybulskie says...

On Apr 8, 9:22 pm, stevendaryl3...@yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:

That was the point about using a bell, or a flare gun, or
whatever else as a substitute for a fire alarm. The importance
is not the specific details of the alarm, but the role it plays.
Neurons are the tools that we have available to store and process
information, so of course "pain" for us is a neural state. But
what makes it "pain" (as opposed to pleasure) is the role that
the state plays in our behavior, *not* the details of neural
structure.

And you've ignored my other comments on this: basically, that calling
911 is ALSO a fire alarm by that definition, as well as the fire
department getting a "feeling" and going there, and any number of
other things that could make the fire department show up there.

Yes, that's true. The functional roles of all those cases
are slightly different, but they fall in the same broad
category of "alarm".

And this is meaningless: a behavioural (though perhaps not neural) zombie
is still totally possible who acts on pain and yet never actually
feels it as a phenomenal experience.

I don't believe that makes any sense. I don't think that
"phenomenal experience" means anything other than the functional
role.

Meaning that your view will in
no way help in explaining phenomenal experiences.

You have to say what you would mean by "explaining".
In most other fields, for a scientific theory to
explain something means to account for the observations
such that for every observation there is a *corresponding*
phenomenon described by the theory. It's a matter of
coming up with a 1-1 mapping between the observations
and the theory.

Saying "pain hurts" is *not* an observation that
could possibly be "explained" in the scientific
sense. You can explain why pain makes it hard
to think. You can explain why pain causes you
to cry, or why it causes your eyes to water.
You can explain why animals tend to avoid
things that cause pain. But "pain hurts" is
a meaningless observation, as far as science
is concerned. There is nothing to explain there.

Scientific explanation is about explaining
*causal relationships* between things. The
things themselves are not really accessible
to science, just the relationships.

Okay, I agree with that. What we have to work with in processing
information is neurons, and the physical properties of neurons
end up affecting the way that we respond to things. In a certain
sense, they are just "implementation details", but details matter.
The fact that aspirin relieves our headaches or LSD makes us
act weird are details of the way that our brains are implemented.
The details certainly are important in understanding the brain.

Okay, so a question here: Is my phenomenal experience of pain just
something that neurons do WHILE they produce behaviour?

Crudely speaking, the pain is like a message board. Some neurons
notice something wrong with the body (your hand is on fire, or
a knife is sticking into your back) and posts a message to the
board (in not much detail). Other neurons are constantly checking
the board and responding to what they find there. The "phenomenal
experience of pain" I believe is just the way that the conscious
brain summarizes all this activity. When we reflect on "What's
going on inside me?" pain is the way we describe it.

--
Daryl McCullough
Ithaca, NY

 

[martin griffith]

On 15 Apr 2007 09:24:25 -0700, in comp.arch.embedded "anjolina"
<sexyhot123@gmail.com> wrote:

http://sexyhot123.googlepages.com/


http://psyco.site.googlepages.com/

like this
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v442/iftk/05/1176375013_84184_92132.jpg
or this?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v442/iftk/05/1176375048_84184_92137.jpg


martin

 

[Jon Slaughter]

"martin griffith" <mart_in_medina@ya___.es> wrote in message
news:g7o423ti69302pjnipehvq909s7g0ijvbl@4ax.com...

On 15 Apr 2007 09:24:25 -0700, in comp.arch.embedded "anjolina"
sexyhot123@gmail.com> wrote:

http://sexyhot123.googlepages.com/


http://psyco.site.googlepages.com/

like this
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v442/iftk/05/1176375013_84184_92132.jpg
or this?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v442/iftk/05/1176375048_84184_92137.jpg

Is that last one the new model? Looks like its packed inside full of the
latest and greatest.

 

[Joe Durnavich]

Allan C Cybulskie writes:

On Apr 8, 11:06 am, Joe Durnavich <j...@earthlink.net> wrote:
Allan C Cybulskie writes:

You need to be careful of the indirect argument, which pervades these types
of discussions. It is common to hear something of the form, "It is not out
there, so by process of elimination, it must be somewhere inside of me."
Such deduction hold only when you can demonstrate that there are only two
alternatives.

Well, first, certainly nothing in what I said above implies that.

Second, the onus is ALSO on the person denying that to provide the
additional alternative, should they think one exists.

My view, by the way, dismisses either alternative as nonsensical. I am
suggesting that the inner/outer distinction is just metaphor.

Third, phenomenal experience seems at least mainly subjective, and
that implies some sort of "inside of me" notion. If it was external,
other people could see it. So asking me to be careful here seems odd
since you haven't given any reason to think that dividing it up that
way causes any problems.

I never really understand what people mean by "phenomenal experience".
Saying that it implies some sort of "inside of me" notion suggests that you
hold that phenomenal experience is the type of entity that has a location.

If it was external, other people could see it.

And this suggests that pain is something that you see (or perceive, or
stand in a particular relation to).

So asking me to be careful here seems odd
since you haven't given any reason to think that dividing it up that
way causes any problems.

It is true that we don't say that others can feel my pain. But it doesn't
have to be case, then, that pain must be a "something", a something hidden
inside of me that others cannot see or access. I contend that is just a
popular metaphor--the inner/outer metaphor--we sometimes use to talk about
pain and sometimes use to offer pseudo-explanations.

It also makes no sense to say that I see or perceive my pains. I don't say
that I investigated and discovered that I had a toothache in me. Here we
see the inner/outer distinction for what it is: just a metaphor that breaks
down as most all metaphors do.

I think elsewhere you suggest colors and pain are phenomenal experiences.
If so, I am contending that it makes no sense to ascribe locations to
either of these. Let me run through an example with color to sketch a way
to think color without it having to be a thing with a location.

Color is a property. Let's say there is a blue cup on the table and two
philosophers are arguing over where the blue is. One argues it is in the
cup, the other argues that it is in the mind. Both views are nonsensical,
so there is no point in deciding one over the other. Treating properties
like that is to suggest that the cup is made up of 1 unit of cylinderness,
3.5 units of hardness, 6 ounces of weight, and 1 teaspoonful of blue. In
fact, the cup is made up clay, paint, and glaze.

What we deal with in life are things. Color is not one of those things. We
learn our color words by being shown objects. Putting is simply here, we
may be shown cherries, apples and fire trucks as the reference for red. To
say an object is red, then, is to say that we cannot easily tell it apart
from the reference objects for red. In this fashion, we can talk about
"red" without it having to a distinct thing in objects or in us. There is
no one thing you can point to that is "red", which is why it seems to be
elusive, as though it was hidden from direct view. But you don't see a
color red. You see things, some of which you learned to categorize as red.

When it comes to terms like "pain", it doesn't have to be the case that
pain is like a thing that has a home--be it in inner experience or in outer
behavior. It may be that people just use the term as though they were
referencing a distinct something. So, pain doesn't have to be out there or
in here. You have to open up to the possibility that language functions in
more complex ways than you may at first realize.

But my analysis isn't based on language, but on my experiences OF
pain. I'm not relying on -- generally -- how people TALK about it,
nor using lingusitic analysis to argue for it being internal or not.

By "language" I don't mean just talking about it, that is just making
noise. I mean as an aspect of us living, doing, and accomplishing.

Basically, I see little benefit to following the standard naturalistic
approach and claiming that how we talk about things really does
indicate how things are. I'm not going to accept defining pain on the
basis of the best aggregation of all the ways that people talk about
pain.

Keep in mind that my view is that the question "What is pain?" doesn't make
much sense. I contend that it doesn't make sense to define pain as though
pain was a distinct something--including an aggregate of all the ways
people talk about pain.

It can be helpful to look at how pain language functions in daily life.
Let's say you step on my foot and I angrily shout, "Oww! That hurts!" The
purpose of such talk is not to report an inner experience to you. It is to
get you to move off of my foot. We might say that my angry exclamations
are part of me being in pain.

You move off my foot and say, "I'm sorry. That was careless of me. I hope
you feel better, Joe." Notice that you console me, Joe Durnavich, the
entire person. You don't try to comfort some sort of "pain experience"
that may be hidden in me somewhere. If pain is an aspect or property of
me, then it is a property of the entire individual.

So, from neither your nor my perspective is pain considered some sort of
distinct "experience" or whatever inside the individual.

I inevitably get this response in these types of discussions. People
accuse me of totally missing the key thing, the important thing, and then
claim that what I say does not explain pain or whatever. Fine. But when I
press for details on their view, which is supposed to offer an explanation,
they balk and say it is still an open question. In other words, I get a
"Trust me. The experience will explain it. I'll get back to you when
science has the details worked out."

Um, I'm a dualist; I'm not convinced science CAN get the details
worked out on this issue.

The reason why you get this response, I'd wager, is because you
constantly attempt to subsume the actual phenomenal experiences under
some form of physical theory ... that doesn't account for them.

Actually, I tend to suspect that people who talk about "phenomenal
experiences" aren't talking about anything that is even somewhat clearly
defined. There is no need to subsume such vague notions under physical
theory.

So
when we ask what causes the phenomenal experience, you have nothing to
point to except "It's in the brain, somewhere", ignoring all the
potential problems with that.

No, I never would locate a "phenomenal experience" in the brain. Others
may, but I am of the opinion that not every word or phrase we use has to
refer to a distinct something. Sometimes we borrow that form of language
for convenience.

And it seems clear that if you are
going to explain consciousness, you are going to have to explain
phenomenal experience ... and handwaving simply will not do, since
it's a critical component of it.

You are overlooking a key alternative: Scientists may need to only explain
why people sometimes say that they have "phenomenal experiences" inside
them. You don't always have to explain the demons that some subject claims
are hidden inside him.

Could I be trained to act as if I was in pain even if I felt, say,
pleasure at all painful things? Certainly. This is one of the
reasons that most people claim that it's the specific TYPE of
experience itself that matters, and not how you react to it. How one
would tell the difference in these cases is still an open question,
but its possibility precludes "how you act" as being the litmus test
for pain.

Notice that you could not answer my question directly and had to rely on an
indirect (and circular at that) argument. You suggest that the type of
experience itself is the important thing, but you try to demonstrate it by
merely beating up on a behaviorist position.

No, you are misinterpreting my argument. My argument is that it is
indeed quite possible that everyone is reacting to a different
specific sort of experience when we react to "pain". How you feel
pain and how I feel pain may not be the same. However, we expect that
if you and I are both indeed feeling pain that there will be at least
some similiarities in how we experience them.

It makes no sense to talk about pain this way. You are talking about it as
though a pain was some sort of substance hidden inside you, and you wonder
if the same substance might be hidden in other people too.

Consider this: Alice tells Bob that her foot has been hurting. It hurts
on the bottom of the foot, just forward of the heel. It hurts more when
she stands and applies pressure. It feels better when she does stretching
exercises. Bob says, "I have the same pain! I have to stretch my foot and
leg muscles each morning, or else I cannot stand long throughout the day.

Here there seems to be something the same between Alice and Bob. But
nowhere are they literally talking about an "inner experience" being the
same. The talk is about feet, legs, standing, and stretching. It is in
such contexts where the notion of "pain sameness" applies. And note that
there doesn't necessarily have to be a specific something that is the same
between them. We can and do adapt that form of language to such novel
circumstances.

Basically, how you feel
pain will not be how I feel pleasure. Or, at least, that's the hope.
And since we know that people can indeed have the opposite experiences
and be trained incorrectly on them, this is not an unreasonable
argument.

Trained incorrectly? The teacher has no means to assess the student's
performance. By your account, the student's pain is not accessible to the
teacher for evaluation.

This is what proves that the "behaviourist position" can't be true.

You can't just make stuff up and say some other contrary position is false
because it doesn't accord with it. You haven't demonstrated that people
have "experiences", that they react to these experiences, and that these
may be the same or different in different people. You have only told us
how it would be if such a thing were the case.

Since it is quite possible and known that we can act the same way in
most if not all ways to completely different phenomenal experiences --
see colour-blindness -- we know that simply pointing to a behaviour in
no way indicates what phenomenal experience the person is having. And
explaining phenomenal experience is critical for explaining
consciousness.

You must define what a "phenomenal experiences" are and show that people
have these. You can't just assume them and then shoot down the behaviorist
position because it doesn't address them.

For your argument to work here, you need to demonstrate a real difference
between behavior-with-pain and behavior-without-pain.

This will depend on the definition of pain that you are willing to
accept. The actor is a good example of ONE case, though. If an actor
could act as if he had a broken arm well enough that it would be
similar to what people would do in that case, most of the time, then
you MUST have a difference. And you cannot include the arm being
broken in the behaviour you are trying to justify.

Notice again that you did not identify a real difference. You merely
insisted that there must be one.

I can suggest some differences that may be found. The actor might be in a
play. We know that people pretend in plays. And the actor is back the
next night for another performance. There can be all sorts of differences
in contexts.

By the way, you cannot always mimic pain behavior. I had back spasms once
where my body was making sure I didn't move around by seizing up my lower
back muscles when I tried to move. I don't think you could fake such
intense muscle contractions.

But why would you think that those muscle contradictions are in any
way part of "pain behaviour"? You cannot include the damage and
reflexive bodily reactions in the pain behaviour

Such contractions were part and parcel of the pain behavior. It is not a
case where my muscles contracted and then I put on a public display to
express such contractions. I don't have an extra set of back muscles for
such a display, of course. Nor did I feel a sharp pain and then contract
my muscles in response to it.

and expect to say
anything interesting about consciousness;

How about how organisms evolved the functionality at all? That involves
considering the entire organism and its environment. Perhaps somewhere
along the way, science can explain why you want to talk about consciousness
as though it were a thing.

those things can happen
while the person is unconscious.

True, but the issue here was consciously mimicking pain behavior. What
evolved was reflexive actions for escape and avoidance. Sometimes, to be
in pain is to have your muscles seemingly doing their own thing. It is one
thing for you to consciously contract a muscle. Perhaps it is another for
some other process to do it.

Once you consider the wider context, you appreciate the amazing complexity
of the ways we get along in the world. If consciousness is about anything,
it more about this rich interaction than it is about an inner experience
you have while standing alone inside a dark closet.


And why is that? I've considered the wider and the inner and my view
is that for consciousness the inner is paramount because THAT'S WHAT
IT MEANS TO BE CONSCIOUS. I am as conscious in the dark closet as I
am in the "wider context".

Above, you mentioned a person being unconscious. What makes the person
unconscious is the lack of interaction with the environment. By your
reasoning, however, the such a person is in the ultimate dark closet and
must then be considered conscious.

--
Joe Durnavich

 

[Lionel]

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:18:20 -0500, John Fields
<jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote:

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 07:21:48 GMT, MassiveDrongo
MassiveProng@tinydickinthebaratheendoftheuniverse.com> wrote:

Thus spake Lionel:
On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:21:30 GMT, MassiveDrongo wrote:
Thus spake John Fields:
On Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:37:24 +1000, Lionel wrote:
On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 07:27:17 -0500, John Fields wrote:
On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:56:04 +1000, Lionel wrote:

---
There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip...

Clealy, Sir, for you, tyop-lames are the pinnacle of wit.

---
If that were true you'd have me in stiches.

Really? When did I last typo-lame you, Swirly?

---
Never, but why would you? I don't make trypos. ---

Well, in that case, what's a trypo?

So, these fantasies of yours about getting back at the bullies who
gave you swirlies - did they actually make you feel better about
sitting in class with toilet water in your hair?

---
Geez, the god of incomprehension raises her veil again...

What did you miss about that we didn't do, or get, swirlies?

Oh, I heard you loud & clear, I just don't believe your little
fantasy about being in a posse of geeks that beat up on
weight-lifting school bullies.

---
LOL! So everything written here is supposed to be true???

Good to see you admitting that your revenge fantasies about the bullies
that gave you swirlies at school are just that.

---
Just as true as your swirly fantasies? ---

Oh, very lame.

Must have been fun for you though, preying on and ridiculing the
kids who might have had a positive influence on the world had you
not shut them down.

Nice job of projection there, Swirly-Boy.

---
IKYABWAI?

Must be, 'cause a shrink you ain't!

No, just a keen observer of human nature.

---
Ah. So you know when to sit, roll over, fetch, and do the rest of your
routine just by watching facial expressions and body language?

Good boy!

Should someone get you your cane?

I think Prongo la Drongo 'borrowed' it when he couldn't find an NYPD
broomstick.

Gah! I didn't need to think of that so soon after eating, thanks.

---
Feces on top of a stomach full of sperm _does_ sound rather
revolting.

Then perhaps you should give it up, John? - It couldn't possibly be
good for your health

--
W "Some people are alive only because it is illegal to kill them."
. | ,. w ,
\|/ \|/ Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Henry Schmidt]

Lionel wrote:

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 14:45:13 GMT, MassiveDrongo
MassiveProng@tinydickinthebaratheendoftheuniverse.com> wrote:

Thus spake MassiveProng:
On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:08:23 GMT, The Secretary of HomIntern Gave us:

Lionel == Kadaitcha man. They're the same tard. loonel == k-woman.
---
Funny, the kad-i-atcha turd/tard hasn't responded since he/she/it
told us all about being dickless, and the Lionel/tard/turd came back
claiming I made a gay slur.

How rich...

Hit 'em where it counts, I say!

Tehran needs a teaspoon of the sun released on it, just as that nuke
fuck that gave Pakistan, Iran, S. Korea, and Libya the bomb /and / or bomb
parts is there with their pres., and they are all out in the streets
hollering death to someone. That would be an excellent time for the black
horse to ride on their asses! Then N. Korea, then Libya, and THEN point a
firm finger toward Pakistan, and make them give theirs up, and have
democratic elections!
Wouldn't it be simpler to just go out and conquer the world? Oh wait,
that's exactly what you're suggesting...

Of course, they'll have to figure out how to conquer Iraq &
Afghanistan first.

Why don't you and Gayton get a room and bung in private, ya Looney b1tch

 

[John Fields]

On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 01:39:43 +1000, Lionel <usenet@imagenoir.com>
wrote:

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:18:20 -0500, John Fields
jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote:

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 07:21:48 GMT, MassiveDrongo
MassiveProng@tinydickinthebaratheendoftheuniverse.com> wrote:

Thus spake Lionel:
On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:21:30 GMT, MassiveDrongo wrote:
Thus spake John Fields:
On Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:37:24 +1000, Lionel wrote:
On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 07:27:17 -0500, John Fields wrote:
On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:56:04 +1000, Lionel wrote:

---
There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip...

Clealy, Sir, for you, tyop-lames are the pinnacle of wit.

---
If that were true you'd have me in stiches.

Really? When did I last typo-lame you, Swirly?

---
Never, but why would you? I don't make trypos. ---

Well, in that case, what's a trypo?

So, these fantasies of yours about getting back at the bullies who
gave you swirlies - did they actually make you feel better about
sitting in class with toilet water in your hair?

---
Geez, the god of incomprehension raises her veil again...

What did you miss about that we didn't do, or get, swirlies?

Oh, I heard you loud & clear, I just don't believe your little
fantasy about being in a posse of geeks that beat up on
weight-lifting school bullies.

---
LOL! So everything written here is supposed to be true???

Good to see you admitting that your revenge fantasies about the bullies
that gave you swirlies at school are just that.

---
Just as true as your swirly fantasies? ---

Oh, very lame.

Must have been fun for you though, preying on and ridiculing the
kids who might have had a positive influence on the world had you
not shut them down.

Nice job of projection there, Swirly-Boy.

---
IKYABWAI?

Must be, 'cause a shrink you ain't!

No, just a keen observer of human nature.

---
Ah. So you know when to sit, roll over, fetch, and do the rest of your
routine just by watching facial expressions and body language?

Good boy!

Should someone get you your cane?

I think Prongo la Drongo 'borrowed' it when he couldn't find an NYPD
broomstick.

Gah! I didn't need to think of that so soon after eating, thanks.

---
Feces on top of a stomach full of sperm _does_ sound rather
revolting.

Then perhaps you should give it up, John? - It couldn't possibly be
good for your health

---
You have first-hand knowledge on which to base that claim, I'm sure.


--
JF

 

[android]

"market" <email2market@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1176766903.415863.194110@q75g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...

Find information on RFID companies, RFID equipment, and the medical
advantages of RFID technology. Learn about RFID equipment produced by
the leading RFID ...

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At first I was surprised
http://click.adultsingles.com/partner/click.asp?id=72473&site=ads&typ=click

Honestly I THINK it's wrong

 

[Joe Durnavich]

Allan C Cybulskie writes:

On Apr 8, 10:31 pm, Joe Durnavich <j...@earthlink.net> wrote:

He has a good point, Allan. The way you guys set this up, "these
experiences" are "your experiences". Some other person can't have your
experiences. That is like saying that he has your headache.

Yes, and this is usually one of the main arguments in FAVOUR of our
position. So what's the point here?

Let's explore.

You said earlier in the thread: "Why wouldn't we take the obvious answer
to this based on our introspection and say that people claim to be in pain
because they have a specific experience -- like the one _I_ have in those
cases -- of pain?"

Somebody says that Daryl and Allan are both suffering from a toothache and
that Daryl's toothache is like Allan's toothache. What could be meant by
this? Some possibilities:

(1) Daryl feels Allan's toothache.

It makes no sense to say that one person feels another's toothache.

(2) Both Daryl and Allan feel the same toothache.

This suggests that there is a single toothache, belonging to neither, that
both somehow tap into and feel.

(3) Daryl and Allan each have their own toothache, but they are nearly
identical in all characteristics.

This suggest that a toothache is like a dollar bill in a wallet. Both
Daryl and Allan could each have a dollar bill in his wallet that could
potentially be matched in characteristics if they chose to open their
wallets, pull out the bills, and compare them side-by-side.

Aren't pains supposed to be subjective and not objective? Or, is what
makes Allan's toothache his toothache simply the fact that he is in
possession of it?

--
Joe Durnavich

 

[Allan C Cybulskie]

On Apr 16, 9:18 pm, Joe Durnavich <j...@earthlink.net> wrote:

Allan C Cybulskie writes:
On Apr 8, 10:31 pm, Joe Durnavich <j...@earthlink.net> wrote:

He has a good point, Allan. The way you guys set this up, "these
experiences" are "your experiences". Some other person can't have your
experiences. That is like saying that he has your headache.

Yes, and this is usually one of the main arguments in FAVOUR of our
position. So what's the point here?

Let's explore.

You said earlier in the thread: "Why wouldn't we take the obvious answer
to this based on our introspection and say that people claim to be in pain
because they have a specific experience -- like the one _I_ have in those
cases -- of pain?"

Somebody says that Daryl and Allan are both suffering from a toothache and
that Daryl's toothache is like Allan's toothache. What could be meant by
this? Some possibilities:

(1) Daryl feels Allan's toothache.

It makes no sense to say that one person feels another's toothache.

This would, of course, be a rabid overinterpretation of the claim.
You are making an identity claim here, but hardly anyone would use the
"like the one _I_ have" to make an identity claim. I made no claim
that they were identical, either as the same object or even as having
the exact same qualities.

(2) Both Daryl and Allan feel the same toothache.

This suggests that there is a single toothache, belonging to neither, that
both somehow tap into and feel.

Again, a rabid overinterpretation of the sentence. Since I never
claimed that they had to even have exactly the same qualities, this
analysis falls away.

(3) Daryl and Allan each have their own toothache, but they are nearly
identical in all characteristics.

This suggest that a toothache is like a dollar bill in a wallet. Both
Daryl and Allan could each have a dollar bill in his wallet that could
potentially be matched in characteristics if they chose to open their
wallets, pull out the bills, and compare them side-by-side.

Aren't pains supposed to be subjective and not objective? Or, is what
makes Allan's toothache his toothache simply the fact that he is in
possession of it?

Here, you finally get to the right analysis ... but miss the meaning
of it. Yes, pains are like the dollar bill, and if I could pull out
my pain and Daryl could pull out his, we could compare side-by-side
and see what's the same and what's different. The problem is that
pains are, in fact, subjective ... and so we CAN'T pull them out and
compare them. The best we can do is something somewhat
intersubjective and try to compare them using words. But since the
words are standardized and we learn them by associating our pains with
those terms, that isn't helping us all that much, since if Daryl's
pain was completely unlike MY pain, we would likely have learned to
associate the same words to the same situations and so to the specific
experience that we are having ... or just to the external situation
itself and to no experience at all, if we didn't have one.

So I really fail to see what the issue is.

 

[Allan C Cybulskie]

On Apr 15, 10:38 pm, Joe Durnavich <j...@earthlink.net> wrote:

Allan C Cybulskie writes:
On Apr 8, 11:06 am, Joe Durnavich <j...@earthlink.net> wrote:
Allan C Cybulskie writes:

You need to be careful of the indirect argument, which pervades these types
of discussions. It is common to hear something of the form, "It is not out
there, so by process of elimination, it must be somewhere inside of me."
Such deduction hold only when you can demonstrate that there are only two
alternatives.

Well, first, certainly nothing in what I said above implies that.

Second, the onus is ALSO on the person denying that to provide the
additional alternative, should they think one exists.

My view, by the way, dismisses either alternative as nonsensical. I am
suggesting that the inner/outer distinction is just metaphor.

So you claim above that there may be more than two alternatives, but
your third alternative seems to be nothing more than a claim that all
of the problems aren't worth worrying about.

Third, phenomenal experience seems at least mainly subjective, and
that implies some sort of "inside of me" notion. If it was external,
other people could see it. So asking me to be careful here seems odd
since you haven't given any reason to think that dividing it up that
way causes any problems.

I never really understand what people mean by "phenomenal experience".

Introspect on the experience you have when you see something . That's
generally what I, at least, mean by that term.

Saying that it implies some sort of "inside of me" notion suggests that you
hold that phenomenal experience is the type of entity that has a location.

This assumes that "inside of me" is implying location as opposed to
the subjective/objective distinction. You will note the quotes around
that term, which I used to basically imply that it shouldn't be taken
literally.

If it was external, other people could see it.

And this suggests that pain is something that you see (or perceive, or
stand in a particular relation to).

Should I have put quotes around "see", too, or are you just going to
nitpick ANYTHING I say?

How about this: if it was external, other people could have access to
it. Other people do not have access to my pains.

So asking me to be careful here seems odd
since you haven't given any reason to think that dividing it up that
way causes any problems.

It is true that we don't say that others can feel my pain. But it doesn't
have to be case, then, that pain must be a "something", a something hidden
inside of me that others cannot see or access. I contend that is just a
popular metaphor--the inner/outer metaphor--we sometimes use to talk about
pain and sometimes use to offer pseudo-explanations.

Well ... if others can't feel my pain, then no one else can access it,
because accessing my pain is basically feeling it. Or, at least,
that's the case for DIRECT access. INDIRECT access may be able to be
done without feeling my pain but I can't think of any way to show that
anything we wanted to claim as an indirect access really was such a
way ...

It also makes no sense to say that I see or perceive my pains. I don't say
that I investigated and discovered that I had a toothache in me. Here we
see the inner/outer distinction for what it is: just a metaphor that breaks
down as most all metaphors do.

Ah, but the metaphor you are attacking is the "perceive" metaphor, not
the "inner/outer" distinction. Two completely different things.

When we really talk about "perceiving our pains", usually that's
consciousness of consciousness or introspection, and it's about the
qualities of those experiences. I don't argue that I examine a pain
to experience it, and never have.

I think elsewhere you suggest colors and pain are phenomenal experiences.
If so, I am contending that it makes no sense to ascribe locations to
either of these. Let me run through an example with color to sketch a way
to think color without it having to be a thing with a location.

I don't disagree that it doesn't make sense to claim that these things
have a location, but the inner/outer distinction is not about
location, so this is all irrelevant.

Color is a property. Let's say there is a blue cup on the table and two
philosophers are arguing over where the blue is. One argues it is in the
cup, the other argues that it is in the mind. Both views are nonsensical,
so there is no point in deciding one over the other. Treating properties
like that is to suggest that the cup is made up of 1 unit of cylinderness,
3.5 units of hardness, 6 ounces of weight, and 1 teaspoonful of blue. In
fact, the cup is made up clay, paint, and glaze.

Ah, but this isn't what the philosophers argue. What philosophers
argue is: what is responsible for that cup appearing blue? Is it
primarily a property of the cup, or primarily a property of the mind?
If it's a property of the cup, then how come different people may see
it as a different colour, like someone who has jaundice? If it's a
property of the mind, then why can't I see the cup as ANY colour? And
so on and so forth.

This actually has little to do with phenomenal experiences themsevles,
other than perhaps what causes them ...

What we deal with in life are things. Color is not one of those things. We
learn our color words by being shown objects. Putting is simply here, we
may be shown cherries, apples and fire trucks as the reference for red. To
say an object is red, then, is to say that we cannot easily tell it apart
from the reference objects for red. In this fashion, we can talk about
"red" without it having to a distinct thing in objects or in us. There is
no one thing you can point to that is "red", which is why it seems to be
elusive, as though it was hidden from direct view. But you don't see a
color red. You see things, some of which you learned to categorize as red.

Well, this is kind of a problem, since we know that people can indeed
categorize things as red even though they don't have an experience
that is actually red. Colour-blind people, for example. Many of them
are never aware that they don't see things the same way as everyone
else until they get the test that proves it. Without that test,
they'd have no idea.

Basically, if I don't see colours -- or any qualities, for that
matter, since that's a logical extension of your claim -- what does it
mean to "see"? And I don't learn the term red as applied to every
single object that might be red, so how do I apply it to new red
things unless I'm associating it with a specific experience that's of
a colour which I then use to claim that if I have that specific colour
experience the thing should be called red.

Take one of Dennett's thought experiments of Mary and the blue
banana. If I only learned to associate things with the colour they
are, why wouldn't I claim that a banana painted blue was yellow, since
I know that bananas are yellow?

Basically, I see little benefit to following the standard naturalistic
approach and claiming that how we talk about things really does
indicate how things are. I'm not going to accept defining pain on the
basis of the best aggregation of all the ways that people talk about
pain.

Keep in mind that my view is that the question "What is pain?" doesn't make
much sense. I contend that it doesn't make sense to define pain as though
pain was a distinct something--including an aggregate of all the ways
people talk about pain.

I claim that pain is an experience I have. That makes asking the
question "What is pain?" not only sensical, but answered. Thus you
need more than your view to make me even reconsider that.

It can be helpful to look at how pain language functions in daily life.
Let's say you step on my foot and I angrily shout, "Oww! That hurts!" The
purpose of such talk is not to report an inner experience to you. It is to
get you to move off of my foot. We might say that my angry exclamations
are part of me being in pain.

This is overinterpreting the example. Imagine that I step on your
foot, and you say that, but I have already moved my foot. Can you
really say that the purpose is to get me to move my foot, even though
it was a fleeting contact that passed before you even started to say
that sentence? In addition, how is it that you KNEW that you wanted
me to move my foot, if not by an inner experience of pain indicating
that there was something wrong in your foot area? And finally, since
pain need not be associated with angry responses, you cannot say that
ANY sort of angry response is "part of you being in pain", since you
don't always have anger and pain in the same place. It's certainly of
no use in saying what pain is; pain is not interestingly even
partially composed of anger, although you can REACT ANGRILY TO PAIN.

You move off my foot and say, "I'm sorry. That was careless of me. I hope
you feel better, Joe." Notice that you console me, Joe Durnavich, the
entire person. You don't try to comfort some sort of "pain experience"
that may be hidden in me somewhere. If pain is an aspect or property of
me, then it is a property of the entire individual.

Okay, I've asked Glen this, and so now I'll ask you: what's this
"entire individual" thing you keep talking about?

In addition, in the case you describe I'm not trying to stop the pain
experience, but am trying to address you indeed as a person and
apologize to you as a conscious individual. But if I offered you a
Tylenol, I'd be trying to stop the pain experience, not deal with you
as a fully conscious individual. Note that the main difference is
that I apologize because you might be offended, and THAT'S what I' m
trying to address, not the pain itself.

So, from neither your nor my perspective is pain considered some sort of
distinct "experience" or whatever inside the individual.

Oh, but it is. If I didn't think that you had felt pain when I
stepped on your foot, I wouldn't have apologized. And if you hadn't
felt the pain, you wouldn't have said that it hurt and even in your
view of your purpose have had any idea that you wanted me to remove
it. You certainly wouldn't have said it in the way you did.

Imagine this: You're wearing steel-toed boots, and I accidently step
on the two. You don't feel any pain, but you'd like to move. You say
"Would you kindly move your foot?". Where's the pain here? But isn't
the purported purpose -- to get me to move my foot -- the same?

I inevitably get this response in these types of discussions. People
accuse me of totally missing the key thing, the important thing, and then
claim that what I say does not explain pain or whatever. Fine. But when I
press for details on their view, which is supposed to offer an explanation,
they balk and say it is still an open question. In other words, I get a
"Trust me. The experience will explain it. I'll get back to you when
science has the details worked out."

Um, I'm a dualist; I'm not convinced science CAN get the details
worked out on this issue.

The reason why you get this response, I'd wager, is because you
constantly attempt to subsume the actual phenomenal experiences under
some form of physical theory ... that doesn't account for them.

Actually, I tend to suspect that people who talk about "phenomenal
experiences" aren't talking about anything that is even somewhat clearly
defined. There is no need to subsume such vague notions under physical
theory.

That would do it, too. You end up denying they exist which -- since I
experience them every time I'm conscious -- makes no sense.

And it seems clear that if you are
going to explain consciousness, you are going to have to explain
phenomenal experience ... and handwaving simply will not do, since
it's a critical component of it.

You are overlooking a key alternative: Scientists may need to only explain
why people sometimes say that they have "phenomenal experiences" inside
them. You don't always have to explain the demons that some subject claims
are hidden inside him.

But the issue then is: don't you experience them, too? Are you a
zombie, with no experiences?

Explaining why I talk about them by saying that I've learned to talk
about them but don't really have them is not going to satisfy anyone
who says "But I KNOW I experience them." Since they're subjective,
denials that they exist because you can't describe them at an
objective level are certain to be unconvincing; you can't deny they
exist on the basis of an assumption that you can't handle them so they
CAN'T exist.

No, you are misinterpreting my argument. My argument is that it is
indeed quite possible that everyone is reacting to a different
specific sort of experience when we react to "pain". How you feel
pain and how I feel pain may not be the same. However, we expect that
if you and I are both indeed feeling pain that there will be at least
some similiarities in how we experience them.

It makes no sense to talk about pain this way. You are talking about it as
though a pain was some sort of substance hidden inside you, and you wonder
if the same substance might be hidden in other people too.

Consider this: Alice tells Bob that her foot has been hurting. It hurts
on the bottom of the foot, just forward of the heel. It hurts more when
she stands and applies pressure. It feels better when she does stretching
exercises. Bob says, "I have the same pain! I have to stretch my foot and
leg muscles each morning, or else I cannot stand long throughout the day.

Here there seems to be something the same between Alice and Bob. But
nowhere are they literally talking about an "inner experience" being the
same. The talk is about feet, legs, standing, and stretching. It is in
such contexts where the notion of "pain sameness" applies. And note that
there doesn't necessarily have to be a specific something that is the same
between them. We can and do adapt that form of language to such novel
circumstances.

They ARE talking about an inner experience directly: the pain itself.
The other words are just about where it is and what to do to relieve
it. But think about what the above sentences would be like if Alice
said "I have a muscle tear in my foot", and Bob responded in kind.
There's no direct hint THERE that there was any pain, but that's a
situation perfectly compatible with your description.

Basically, you ain't said anything here [grin].

Basically, how you feel
pain will not be how I feel pleasure. Or, at least, that's the hope.
And since we know that people can indeed have the opposite experiences
and be trained incorrectly on them, this is not an unreasonable
argument.

Trained incorrectly? The teacher has no means to assess the student's
performance. By your account, the student's pain is not accessible to the
teacher for evaluation.

Take colour-blindness, particularly red-green inversion. We know that
some people can be trained to talk about green experiences as if they
were red, and it's only the test that proves otherwise. Thus,
training ain't what it means to see red.

This is what proves that the "behaviourist position" can't be true.

You can't just make stuff up and say some other contrary position is false
because it doesn't accord with it. You haven't demonstrated that people
have "experiences", that they react to these experiences, and that these
may be the same or different in different people. You have only told us
how it would be if such a thing were the case.

Look, this is getting ridiculous. Do you even KNOW about colour-blind
cases? Do you know about masochists, who enjoy pain? Do you have ANY
experiences of your own? What happens to you when you see something,
or you stub your toe?

Since it is quite possible and known that we can act the same way in
most if not all ways to completely different phenomenal experiences --
see colour-blindness -- we know that simply pointing to a behaviour in
no way indicates what phenomenal experience the person is having. And
explaining phenomenal experience is critical for explaining
consciousness.

You must define what a "phenomenal experiences" are and show that people
have these. You can't just assume them and then shoot down the behaviorist
position because it doesn't address them.

Look, see colour-blindness, where provably different experiences
result in the same behaviour. Or you deny that that condition exists
as well? Or how do you explain it?

YOU cannot simply define away real experiences and then demand that I
prove a basic component of ALL experiences and thus all proofs. What
can I appeal to to prove that the underlying layer of all of my
knowledge exists, if you don't have that primitive yourself?

For your argument to work here, you need to demonstrate a real difference
between behavior-with-pain and behavior-without-pain.

This will depend on the definition of pain that you are willing to
accept. The actor is a good example of ONE case, though. If an actor
could act as if he had a broken arm well enough that it would be
similar to what people would do in that case, most of the time, then
you MUST have a difference. And you cannot include the arm being
broken in the behaviour you are trying to justify.

Notice again that you did not identify a real difference. You merely
insisted that there must be one.

I guess you've never watched plays or movies, then. We KNOW that that
is the case, and that actors can convincingly act as if they have
pains that they don't have. So this "notice again" is utterly
irrelevant.

I can suggest some differences that may be found. The actor might be in a
play. We know that people pretend in plays.

Okay, so what if there is an accident and the actor REALLY breaks his
arm? Is he still just pretending to be in pain from a broken arm?

In short, this difference cannot be the difference that really
matters, since being in a play is insufficient to claim that he is
only pretending to be in pain.

And the actor is back the
next night for another performance.

Which would prove ... what, exactly? What if he had an accident and
THOUGHT that his arm was broken? Would his being back the next night
mean that he was pretending that his arm hurt that much, that he
thought it was broken?

There can be all sorts of differences
in contexts.

And this shows the main flaw in a lot of behaviouristic analyses:
instead of accepting that the difference is the internal experience,
they desperately search for something else that might have caused that
behaviour. Then, finding a candidate, they latch onto that as the
SOLE reason for that hoping that it won't get discredited ... even
though there is no reason or any proof that that difference matters.

This came up many times before in a discussion of free will where I
referenced children of alcoholics. It is insufficient to point to a
difference and claim that that is why someone's behaviour is different
unless you can show why that difference would have an impact on the
behaviour. One would expect that a "science of behaviour" could do
better than that.

One final word here: I do not need to prove to you in any way that _I_
have phenomenal experiences. I do, and I know it directly. So deny
all you want that I have phenomenal experiences; all that it will lead
me to conclude is that you are a phenomenal zombie.

But why would you think that those muscle contradictions are in any
way part of "pain behaviour"? You cannot include the damage and
reflexive bodily reactions in the pain behaviour

Such contractions were part and parcel of the pain behavior. It is not a
case where my muscles contracted and then I put on a public display to
express such contractions. I don't have an extra set of back muscles for
such a display, of course. Nor did I feel a sharp pain and then contract
my muscles in response to it.

Imagine that you are under a pain killer, and the muscles contract
anyway but you don't feel pain. How can that still be part of the
pain behaviour?

But then again, my point was that NO ONE claims that the muscles
contract in RESPONSE to the feeling of pain, so your comment is a
strawman.

Once you consider the wider context, you appreciate the amazing complexity
of the ways we get along in the world. If consciousness is about anything,
it more about this rich interaction than it is about an inner experience
you have while standing alone inside a dark closet.

And why is that? I've considered the wider and the inner and my view
is that for consciousness the inner is paramount because THAT'S WHAT
IT MEANS TO BE CONSCIOUS. I am as conscious in the dark closet as I
am in the "wider context".

Above, you mentioned a person being unconscious. What makes the person
unconscious is the lack of interaction with the environment. By your
reasoning, however, the such a person is in the ultimate dark closet and
must then be considered conscious.

Um, only by inserting your view that a lack of interaction with the
environment is what it means to be unconscious. Since I don't hold
that position, this is just another strawman.

 

[Allan C Cybulskie]

On Apr 15, 10:55 am, stevendaryl3...@yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough)
wrote:

Allan C Cybulskie says...

On Apr 8, 9:22 pm, stevendaryl3...@yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:
That was the point about using a bell, or a flare gun, or
whatever else as a substitute for a fire alarm. The importance
is not the specific details of the alarm, but the role it plays.
Neurons are the tools that we have available to store and process
information, so of course "pain" for us is a neural state. But
what makes it "pain" (as opposed to pleasure) is the role that
the state plays in our behavior, *not* the details of neural
structure.

And you've ignored my other comments on this: basically, that calling
911 is ALSO a fire alarm by that definition, as well as the fire
department getting a "feeling" and going there, and any number of
other things that could make the fire department show up there.

Yes, that's true. The functional roles of all those cases
are slightly different, but they fall in the same broad
category of "alarm".

But then do you think that there's no interesting differences between
all of those types of alarms, and so that the final result isn't the
only interesting thing in the definition?

I mean, a fire alarm and calling 911 are certainly not defined to be
the same thing, even though in at least this case we get the same
results.

And this is meaningless: a behavioural (though perhaps not neural) zombie
is still totally possible who acts on pain and yet never actually
feels it as a phenomenal experience.

I don't believe that makes any sense. I don't think that
"phenomenal experience" means anything other than the functional
role.

Yes, but what you "believe" doesn't amount to a hill of beans. When
people talk about phenomenal experience, that isn't what they mean.
So either deal with what they mean or accept and admit that you aren't
going to deal with what they are most interested in, for whatever
reason turns your crank.

Meaning that your view will in
no way help in explaining phenomenal experiences.

You have to say what you would mean by "explaining".
In most other fields, for a scientific theory to
explain something means to account for the observations
such that for every observation there is a *corresponding*
phenomenon described by the theory. It's a matter of
coming up with a 1-1 mapping between the observations
and the theory.

Saying "pain hurts" is *not* an observation that
could possibly be "explained" in the scientific
sense. You can explain why pain makes it hard
to think. You can explain why pain causes you
to cry, or why it causes your eyes to water.
You can explain why animals tend to avoid
things that cause pain. But "pain hurts" is
a meaningless observation, as far as science
is concerned. There is nothing to explain there.

We don't disagree here; I don't think that phenomenal experience is a
meaningful object for scientific study because it is subjective.
Where we disagree is that I do not accept that "not amenable to
scientific study" necessarily means "doesn't exist" or "shouldn't be
talked about by anyone in any way."

Scientific explanation is about explaining
*causal relationships* between things. The
things themselves are not really accessible
to science, just the relationships.

Now, one issue here is this: if the behavioural zombie is possible,
that 1-1 mapping you talk about isn't possible for phenomenal
experiences; something that doesn't have those experiences may indeed
act in the same way, so you haven't shown, for example, that those
experiences are there when that action occurs, nor how I can tell if
they ARE there in those situations. One would expect an explanation
to at least tell me how I can tell when it's there ...

To put it into the fire alarm example, to explain what it means to be
an actual pulled fire alarm versus a 911 call critically involves
explaining how I can tell which is the case in any particular
scenario. You aren't doing that for phenomenal experiences.

Okay, I agree with that. What we have to work with in processing
information is neurons, and the physical properties of neurons
end up affecting the way that we respond to things. In a certain
sense, they are just "implementation details", but details matter.
The fact that aspirin relieves our headaches or LSD makes us
act weird are details of the way that our brains are implemented.
The details certainly are important in understanding the brain.

Okay, so a question here: Is my phenomenal experience of pain just
something that neurons do WHILE they produce behaviour?

Crudely speaking, the pain is like a message board. Some neurons
notice something wrong with the body (your hand is on fire, or
a knife is sticking into your back) and posts a message to the
board (in not much detail). Other neurons are constantly checking
the board and responding to what they find there. The "phenomenal
experience of pain" I believe is just the way that the conscious
brain summarizes all this activity. When we reflect on "What's
going on inside me?" pain is the way we describe it.

Okay, and what is the message board? Is it a group of neurons? And
why does that message board appear to me the way it does -- with an
experience of pain -- as opposed to something else?

 

[Allan C Cybulskie]

On Apr 15, 10:10 am, stevendaryl3...@yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough)
wrote:

Allan C Cybulskie says...





On Apr 8, 10:31 pm, Joe Durnavich <j...@earthlink.net> wrote:
Daryl McCullough writes:
Allan C Cybulskie says...
I'm simply asking someone that I think HAS these experiences

You can't *talk* about "having these experiences" without
generalizing beyond your introspection. Your introspection
shows you what things are like for *you*. To talk about
someone *else* having "feelings and experiences" means
that you are generalizing from your own case.

He has a good point, Allan. The way you guys set this up, "these
experiences" are "your experiences". Some other person can't have your
experiences. That is like saying that he has your headache.

Yes, and this is usually one of the main arguments in FAVOUR of our
position. So what's the point here? Since someone can't have my
experiences, and since having a particular experience seems -- from
the inside -- to be critically involved in pain, pain can't simply be
the behaviour produced by the feeling.

How does that follow? The fact that you experience the pain does
*not* give you any infallible knowledge about what it's nature is.
You have presumably privileged knowledge about questions of the
form "Am I in pain right now?" but not "What is critically involved
in my pain?".

You miss the point. I have no privileged access to what it turns out
to be ... but I KNOW if I'm having it or not. Since the behaviour
produced by the feeling is more dubious than that, you can view my
behaviour but cannot validate if the experience is really there are
not. So it isn't just the behaviour; if the privately accessible
experience is not present, pain isn't present.

Or, to put it better: From the inside, I KNOW that I'm in pain; from
the outside, with you looking at the behaviour, you don't know that
I'm in pain. But if pain just was the behaviour, you WOULD know that
I was in pain. So being in pain is not just the behaviour produced by
pain experiences.