Re: PSYCHE 16(1) ... essay results
John Mikes wrote: Congrats, Colin, very interesting ideas. Some time ago I learned from you a principle that forms an intensive part of my 'worldview': the 'mini-solipsism' i.e. the individual views everybody has about the world - differently, as formulated for himself from fragments received from 'reality and indiviually colored to one's personal background and mental-built. Now I have some remarks - not argumentative mostly (except for the 'Science of Quale') on that beautifully crafted (short!) writing that reaped the award. Here it goes: Colin Hales was named a 'winner' in the contest for 5 best and published his 1500-word max. contest-text - Psyche, Volume 16, number 1 (see pdf). Here are some responses - as far as I could understand his ideas (?). (C.H. text: full line, JMresp.: indented and Italics) -- --Qualia are the qualities of experience.-- Footnote: 2 --See (Tye, 2008). The word can be used when generally drawing attention to subjective qualities of visual experience, olfactory experience, gustatory experience, auditory experience, touch experience (including haptic/pressure, temperature and so forth), motion proprioception, situational emotions, primordial emotions (thirst, hunger, etc., associated with homeostasis (Denton, 2005)), plus imagined and pathologically originated versions of all of these. A popular phrase is that “it is like something” to be in receipt of qualia (Chalmers, 1996). Coined by (Lewis, 1929), there has been a semantic battle for decades over the word, which is falling into disuse when technical specificity is an issue. - / Looks to me as a R.Rosen's 'modeling relation'-al simulacron/. Q1: “What kind of experiences are qualia?” The experiences are -qualities- encountered from a first person perspective. There is nothing else to a first person perspective. This we attribute to the action of our brain: A century of physiology tells us that all experience is - g e n e r a t e d - in the cranial central nervous system (CNS). /(???)Is there some mechanism proposed, or is it only 'attribution'?/ Yes.. i even said that at the start of the essay! This is knowledge of the kind... /whatever it is, it is generated in and delivered by the action of what we observe to be 'brain material' in very localised places based on the specifics of the modality/. The context of this knowledge is one of the complete brain embedded in an environment (embedded in the universe) and embodied. That is as far as you go in 'discovering a correlate'... you say... whatever it is, it is highly correlated with that stuff' doing 'that behaviour' and when you stop it behaving that way, it stops. It becomes 'attributed' in the sense that we are in a unique evidentiary circumstance...the boundary condition in the essay... where we encounter the only place in science where hearsay is accepted as scientific evidence. / / It is interesting to realize the brain is in excess of 99.99% space, depending on how you compute spatial occupancy by electrons and nucleons. In essence, there is nothing left to describe in a brain except the space it inhabits. The dominant feature of the brain's operation is therefore actually the spatially expressed electric and magnetic fields, not the particulate components (atoms). Pointing out brain chemistry therefore almost completely misses the brain! /That can be translated into: we don't know _A LOT_ about the functional (vs: tissue) brain, i.e. mentality, how to describe it its functions and the 'mental' in general. My formulation instead of '(brain)-GENERATED': a '(brain)-HANDLED / / (as in a tool in 'procedure' we did not discover so far). Also missing: an explanatory explanation about those mystical spatially expressed(?) electric and magnetic fields (names?) - WHAT they are and how do they work in such mind-generational mood? -- / / As Homunculi, or just Deus Ex Machina? (in Physics?) / / *_Then there is Quale Science?_* As said above (C.H.),/ *'qualia are experiences', nothing more.*/ / / --- However... An experience is a personal adaptation of SOMETHING(?) (- part of the 'reality' which we cannot describe in our 'human' terms). We get it from the unlimited 'reality' (as assumed) into our limited capabilities as far as our human mind did interpret, adapt, formulate - as much as it could (of it) - into our personalised solipsism (C.H.), i.e. everybody's personalised worldview - restsricted to our individual genetic build-up, personal capabilities and past experience-infested (individual) memory-load - and who knows (today) what else does play in./ /Accordingly I find it futile at best, to speak about 'science' of qualia. Individually different items are hard to combine into 'a' scientific paradigm. / John M I don't share your pessimism in
Re: PSYCHE 16(1) ... essay results
Congrats, Colin, very interesting ideas. Some time ago I learned from you a principle that forms an intensive part of my 'worldview': the 'mini-solipsism' i.e. the individual views everybody has about the world - differently, as formulated for himself from fragments received from 'reality and indiviually colored to one's personal background and mental-built. Now I have some remarks - not argumentative mostly (except for the 'Science of Quale') on that beautifully crafted (short!) writing that reaped the award. Here it goes: Colin Hales was named a 'winner' in the contest for 5 best and published his 1500-word max. contest-text - Psyche, Volume 16, number 1 (see pdf). Here are some responses - as far as I could understand his ideas (?). (C.H. text: full line, JMresp.: indented and Italics) -- --Qualia are the qualities of experience.-- Footnote: 2 --See (Tye, 2008). The word can be used when generally drawing attention to subjective qualities of visual experience, olfactory experience, gustatory experience, auditory experience, touch experience (including haptic/pressure, temperature and so forth), motion proprioception, situational emotions, primordial emotions (thirst, hunger, etc., associated with homeostasis (Denton, 2005)), plus imagined and pathologically originated versions of all of these. A popular phrase is that “it is like something” to be in receipt of qualia (Chalmers, 1996). Coined by (Lewis, 1929), there has been a semantic battle for decades over the word, which is falling into disuse when technical specificity is an issue. - * Looks to me as a R.Rosen's 'modeling relation'-al simulacron*. Q1: “What kind of experiences are qualia?” The experiences are -qualities- encountered from a first person perspective. There is nothing else to a first person perspective. This we attribute to the action of our brain: A century of physiology tells us that all experience is - g e n e r a t e d - in the cranial central nervous system (CNS). *(???)Is there some mechanism proposed, or is it only 'attribution'? * It is interesting to realize the brain is in excess of 99.99% space, depending on how you compute spatial occupancy by electrons and nucleons. In essence, there is nothing left to describe in a brain except the space it inhabits. The dominant feature of the brain's operation is therefore actually the spatially expressed electric and magnetic fields, not the particulate components (atoms). Pointing out brain chemistry therefore almost completely misses the brain! *That can be translated into: we don't know A LOT about the functional (vs: tissue) brain, i.e. mentality, how to describe it its functions and the 'mental' in general. My formulation instead of '(brain)-GENERATED': a '(brain)-HANDLED * * (as in a tool in 'procedure' we did not discover so far). Also missing: an explanatory explanation about those mystical spatially expressed(?) electric and magnetic fields (names?) - WHAT they are and how do they work in such mind-generational mood? -- * * As Homunculi, or just Deus Ex Machina? (in Physics?) * * Then there is Quale Science? As said above (C.H.),* *'qualia are experiences', nothing more.** * * --- However... An experience is a personal adaptation of SOMETHING(?) (- part of the 'reality' which we cannot describe in our 'human' terms). We get it from the unlimited 'reality' (as assumed) into our limited capabilities as far as our human mind did interpret, adapt, formulate - as much as it could (of it) - into our personalised solipsism (C.H.), i.e. everybody's personalised worldview - restsricted to our individual genetic build-up, personal capabilities and past experience-infested (individual) memory-load - and who knows (today) what else does play in.* *Accordingly I find it futile at best, to speak about 'science' of qualia. Individually different items are hard to combine into 'a' scientific paradigm. * John M On 6/9/10, ColinHales col.ha...@gmail.com wrote: Recently there was a student essay contest run by the ASSC (Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness) The five winners are published in the ASSC journal PSYCHE. One of them was mine. They have finally got around to publishing them. Hales C. 2010. The scientific evidence of qualia meets the qualia that are scientific evidence. PSYCHE 16(1):24-29. (http://www.theassc.org/journal_psyche/archive/vol_16_no_1_2010) I am trying hard to get my ideas about science into the awareness of as many folks as I can. I thought some of you may be interested.The essays are mercifully short (1500 words!) Enjoy. Colin Hales -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
PSYCHE 16(1) ... essay results
Recently there was a student essay contest run by the ASSC (Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness) The five winners are published in the ASSC journal PSYCHE. One of them was mine. They have finally got around to publishing them. Hales C. 2010. The scientific evidence of qualia meets the qualia that are scientific evidence. PSYCHE 16(1):24-29. (http://www.theassc.org/journal_psyche/archive/vol_16_no_1_2010) I am trying hard to get my ideas about science into the awareness of as many folks as I can. I thought some of you may be interested.The essays are mercifully short (1500 words!) Enjoy. Colin Hales -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
