Professor John Searle : Consciousness as a Problem in Philosophy and Neurobiology
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Channel: CRASSH Cambridge
Views: 49,826
Rating: 4.8557377 out of 5
Keywords: John Searle (Philosopher), Neuroscience (School/tradition)
Id: 6nTQnvGxEXw
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Length: 52min 57sec (3177 seconds)
Published: Fri May 23 2014
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I don't know about this. I don't find it great. I'm yelling at the screen at how bad his reasoning an explanations are. I find Searle's attacks on "mistakes" trivial and often miss the point, though ultimately I agree with some of his points.
For example, he attacks the idea of consciousness of being an illusion by stating is simply can't be because to be aware of it means it is real, and then describes that even if doctors tell him they've monitored his brain and determined he isn't conscious, the fact that he experiences it means that he is conscious, and he describes it as irreducible.
This seems like an amateur error. He confuses the determination of a binary state of being conscious or not conscious with the illusion of the state itself. Consciousness isn't an illusion, it is the illusion, meaning it is an emergent property of a complex system. It actually can scale from zero to, say, self-actualization (or whatever standard you want to use) in the same way that it scales from a zygote to an adult human being. It isn't there or not, it actually emerges as an organic property of the complex system. The illusion part of it is that there is some high level, unified operation when in fact that high level is an abstract representation that emerges from lower level operation, similar to the way that a flock of starlings appears to have a macro deformable shape and behaviour even though there is no entity with that goal or intention; the patterns are simply emergent properties of each starling acting on simple rules of relative motion.
Heck, he even goes on to say you can be mistaken about a specific state, like being in love. But wait, then by his own argument, what is the difference between feeling that you are in love and actually being in love. How would you go about demonstration somebody is or isn't in love despite what they believe and/or feel about it.
As another example, at 11:10 he's talking about the philosophers who describe the physical world being causally closed and so consciousness can't affect the physical world, and he demonstrates this by lifting his arm (~11:15). But this is a strawman; every step along the way from "forming the intention" (his words) to carrying out the action are all the result of simply physical cause and effect operating in a complex system that aggregates into the higher level. He hasn't disproven anything. In fact, his later discussion about it (~16 mins) is simply reiterating the points that he is trying to disprove, that it is all just simple physical cause and effect, and consciousness is the emergent property of that happening in a complex system that includes models of those operations at a higher level.
He does it again around 25 mins when talking about software program versions of consciousness, and uses responding in Chinese via look-up tables or instructions, and then describes how he still doesn't actually understand Chinese. This is poor reasoning. He's only demonstrated that the ability to respond in Chinese doesn't guarantee that he understands Chinese, not that understanding can't possibly operate in a way similar to a computer program. To understand can still be a lookup except the table here is internal and it moves from conscious to subconscious memory access in much the same way that any physical skill like dancing moves from intentional action to subscious action as the neural pathways (the software/wiring) representing the action become reinforced.
He's affirming the consequent, a common error. It's like suggesting his demo of arm raising can't be intentional because, say, wind could raise your arm and give the same result, hence intention can't work as an explanation. Of course it can, and of course consciousness could operate in ways similar to software or wiring, though very complex. That other things can also give similar results in some/many cases does not negate this.
Yet I agree with his general points, that the issue is multi-level descriptions, the (long-term) problem of behaviourism and embarrassment at how influential it was (and still is).
searle's conscious field is defined in part by direct contact with his immediate past and immediate future
i am interested in this view in particular - does anyone have any particular thoughts or reasoning on either side of this argument?
I've always found consciousness to be THE greatest mystery. More specifically, what makes subjective experience and qualia even remotely possible in the first place at the lowest level? How am I able to experience what pain feels like, or what red is like?
Does a rock feel what it's like to be that rock? Can you prove that it doesn't? What if it were that simple? The state of a physical system has an associated "raw feeling" experienced by it. The conscious experience that you feel would be due to the exact physical state that your brain or part of your brain is in. Would that mean that a perfectly simulated brain wouldn't feel? I dunno. I don't necessarily think this is reality, it's just interesting to think about.
Ultimately I think that while we will eventually figure out what parts of the brain give rise to consciousness, I don't believe it's even possible for humans or anything else in this universe to understand how subjective experience and qualia work, let alone what they even are outside of our own individual minds.
I'd like to think of consciousness as a result of evolutionary biology. I think consciousness is the phenomenon of a mind/brain experiences and the functionality of the mind gets shaped by those experiences. Of course, a baby is born with innate biological and hereditary functionality (ability to store memories, basic motor functions that allows you to move your body parts, automated body functions like heart beating, etc.). A consciousness belongs to one brain. Before there was life, there wouldn't be consciousness. A brain is made up of neurons, so the consciousness is associated with the systematic functions of those neurons. Concepts like illusion, consciousness, etc. these are just things/pattern that the brain after growing up recognizes. Consciousness is something that nobody really understands so we don't have a concrete definition of it like we have for a tree or whatever. Ceci n'est pas une pipe. is a good example of how we use these identifiers to learn about the world through seeing, experiencing, feeling, etc.
Great video. I don't agree with him on all points, but I agree more with him than anyone else.
Man he is really putting on the years.