From press@U.Arizona.EDU Sun Oct 10 15:49:01 1999 Return-Path: Received: from Arizona.EDU (Hopey.Telcom.Arizona.EDU [128.196.128.234]) by paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA10311 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 15:49:01 -0700 Received: from DIRECTORY-DAEMON by Telcom.Arizona.EDU (PMDF V5.2-31 #39830) id <01JGZ3U7PSK09AMIDF@Telcom.Arizona.EDU> for chalmers@paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (ORCPT rfc822;chalmers@arizona.edu); Sun, 10 Oct 1999 15:49:10 MST Received: from paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu by Telcom.Arizona.EDU (PMDF V5.2-31 #39830) with ESMTP id <01JGZ3U75YN49AMIDE@Telcom.Arizona.EDU> for chalmers@Arizona.EDU; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 15:49:10 -0700 (MST) Received: from f1n3.u.arizona.edu (IDENT:press@f1n3.U.Arizona.EDU [128.196.137.103]) by paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA10306 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 15:48:54 -0700 Received: from localhost (press@localhost) by f1n3.u.arizona.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA35230 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 15:49:03 -0700 Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 15:49:03 -0700 (MST) From: Joel K Press Subject: Causal Relativism To: scicon@paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: RO All, At the end of our last session, we only briefly touched on Velmans' (rather bizarre) claim that phenomenal consciousness plays a causal role in the production of behavior on a first person description, but not on a third person description. Even so, we probably gave it as much consideration as it really deserves. The consensus of the class at least seemed to be that "causal relativism" doesn't make sense. I certainly agree, but I think that Velmans' point is a bit more sophisticated than our brief discussion of it let on. The relevant paragraph reads as follows: "Of course, the question of whether it is actually a given brain state or a given experience that determines a particular behaviour remains - and, on this point, I suggest, no choice is necessary. These are events viewed from different perspectives. Events viewed from an external observer's perspective (via exteroceptors) appear different from the same events experienced by the subject (via interoceptors) because the methods of observation are different. However, each perspective is legitimate." The emphasis here seems to be on regarding introspection as a type of perception. If introspection is similar to the other modes of perception, then it seems reasonable to say that we should not give any more or less weight to this particular mode of perception. If the data (about the very same event) collected from different sensory modalities conflicts, we may find ourselves with two very different models of the world based on those different sets of data. So he seems to be thinking that the difference between first and third person accounts of the causal role of consciousness (or lack thereof) is like a situation in which two of our other senses conflict. For example, consider the case of a person confronted with a cup sitting on a transparent glass tabletop. If the tabletop is invisible to our subject (suppose it's really clean, no light glinting off it, etc.), the cup might look like it is levitating in thin air. However, if the subject is allowed to touch the tabletop, he will believe that the cup is resting on it. Now, if there were no way to cross-check the data gathered by these two different senses, we might be forced to accept both descriptions as equally valid, even though they were inconsistent. However, it generally seems to be the case that we can cross-check. Our table-observing subject can probably move to a different observational angle, shine a bright light on the table, or whatever. Or, if cross-checking is impossible, we can at least explain why one sense modality fails to detect some fact (or appears to detect an inconsistent one.) Even if our tabletop were made out of some sort of exotically invisible material (maybe a Star Trek type force field or something) we ought to be able to use data gathered from our other senses and/or other visual data to explain why our eyes can't detect it. Velmans seems to think that this will not be possible with consciousness. Both the first and third person perspectives are, he says, incomplete. Neither is adequate to explain the other. Though I disagree with this position, it does not seem entirely unreasonable to me. Since none of our means of perception, including introspection, can, by itself, give us a complete description of the world, we should perhaps not expect the various descriptions they provide to always be consistent. Perhaps first and third person descriptions are accurately describing different aspects of the same thing, but both fail to include the data that would link them. Even so, I am not about to grant Velmans his conclusion, because he is too quick to dismiss the possibility that an improved first or third person account will be able to account for the alternate set of perceptions. Even if there is good evidence that the two accounts are incompatible (and this does not seem clear either) I think most of us would be extremely reluctant to give up on the attempt at a unified explanation. Our third person description of the brain and its functioning is obviously incomplete, and as many of the issues we have been discussing lately show, introspection may not provide as detailed a description as we might have thought. (For example, if a blindsight patient cannot tell whether his own behavior was accompanied by no qualia, very faint qualia, "weird" qualia, or neglected qualia, I for one start to wonder how complete our introspective accounts of our mental lives really are.) Surely Velmans is premature in his declaration that no future improvement of one of these descriptions could ever explain the seemingly inconsistent perceptions of the other. Joel From bradt@U.Arizona.EDU Sun Oct 10 17:56:15 1999 Return-Path: Received: from Arizona.EDU (Penny.Telcom.Arizona.EDU [128.196.128.217]) by paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA10660 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 17:56:15 -0700 Received: from DIRECTORY-DAEMON by Telcom.Arizona.EDU (PMDF V5.2-31 #39830) id <01JGZ8AVWYDS9BVD4X@Telcom.Arizona.EDU> for chalmers@paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (ORCPT rfc822;chalmers@arizona.edu); Sun, 10 Oct 1999 17:56:22 MST Received: from paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu by Telcom.Arizona.EDU (PMDF V5.2-31 #39830) with ESMTP id <01JGZ8AUBD5S9ED96K@Telcom.Arizona.EDU> for chalmers@Arizona.EDU; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 17:56:20 -0700 (MST) Received: from orion.U.Arizona.EDU (orion.U.Arizona.EDU [128.196.137.206]) by paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA10654 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 17:55:55 -0700 Received: from localhost (bradt@localhost) by orion.U.Arizona.EDU (8.8.6 (PHNE_17190)/8.8.6) with ESMTP id RAA14175; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 17:56:04 -0700 (MST) Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 17:56:04 -0700 (MST) From: Brad J Thompson Subject: Re: Causal Relativism In-reply-to: To: Joel K Press Cc: scicon@paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: RO I think Joel is right to suggest that Velman's proposal concerning the complementarity of first and third-person perspectives regarding their causal status deserves a second-glance. I gave it a second-glance after reading Joel's post, and am now prepared to defend it completely! In fact, Velman's view speaks directly to the issue we've discussed off-and-on regarding the possible causal role of P-consciousness (perhaps as a "gateway" to access--Lis mentions this idea again in her post, and Block seemed to be attracted to it). The big problem with the idea that P-consciousness serves as the means of an event or state's becoming A-conscious is that the metaphysics is difficult to make sense of. My zombie twin has all the same A-conscious states but no P-conscious states. This suggests that P-consciousness isn't doing any real causal work. Another way to the same point is simply to note that the availability of a state for global control (etc.) could be understood entirely from the third-person point of view even if the observer did not know which states were P-conscious or not. Even if P-conscious states are identical to neural states, if those states are what "give rise" to A-consciousness it is not in virtue of their being P-conscious. The above point is entirely compatible with what Velman's suggestion. The third-person point of view leaves out phenomenal consciousness, and doesn't need to posit P-consciousness as a variable which plays a role in human information processing. But consciousnesss certainly *seems* to play a causal role in our behavior. Velman saves us from epiphenomenalism by arguing that the two perspectives are compatible. I would read his view (at least in the passages Joel cites) as a type of identity theorist, where perhaps we are directly acquainted with the intrinsic nature of neural states from the first-person perspective. But Dave suggested in class that Velman's was some type of idealist, so perhaps Velman's has developed these views in a different direction. ---------------------- Brad J Thompson bradt@U.Arizona.EDU From serobert@U.Arizona.EDU Sun Oct 10 21:37:05 1999 Return-Path: Received: from Arizona.EDU (Maggie.Telcom.Arizona.EDU [128.196.128.233]) by paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA11013 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 21:37:05 -0700 Received: from DIRECTORY-DAEMON by Telcom.Arizona.EDU (PMDF V5.2-31 #39830) id <01JGZG0QFI8W9D4DHI@Telcom.Arizona.EDU> for chalmers@paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (ORCPT rfc822;chalmers@arizona.edu); Sun, 10 Oct 1999 21:37:15 MST Received: from paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu by Telcom.Arizona.EDU (PMDF V5.2-31 #39830) with ESMTP id <01JGZG0Q2O289ED9HR@Telcom.Arizona.EDU> for chalmers@Arizona.EDU; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 21:37:14 -0700 (MST) Received: from f1n2.u.arizona.edu (IDENT:serobert@f1n2.U.Arizona.EDU [128.196.137.102]) by paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA11008 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 21:36:54 -0700 Received: from localhost (serobert@localhost) by f1n2.u.arizona.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA35708; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 21:37:03 -0700 Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 21:37:02 -0700 (MST) From: Simon E Roberts-Thomson Subject: Re: Causal Relativism In-reply-to: To: Brad J Thompson Cc: Joel K Press , scicon@paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: RO I would just like to make a few points in response to Joel and Brad. As Joel pointed out, we seemed to have decided in class that Velmans was committed to some sort of causal relativism, and hence we pretty much ignored what he had to say. Both Joel and Brad, however, seem to contend that Velmans has something worthwhile to say. As Brad says: > human information processing. But consciousnesss certainly *seems* to > play a causal role in our behavior. Velman saves us from epiphenomenalism > by arguing that the two perspectives are compatible. I would read his > view (at least in the passages Joel cites) as a type of identity theorist, > where perhaps we are directly acquainted with the intrinsic nature of > neural states from the first-person perspective. But Dave suggested in Whilst I agree that this particular passage may be read as suggesting that Velmans is some sort of identity theorist, this is incompatible with what he says elsewhere. In 9.2 he says: "It should be apparent that the dissociation of awareness from cerebral functioning poses problems for reductionist theories of consciousness. It is inconsistent with the functionalist view that consciousness simply is (ontologically identical to) a mode of functioning of the brain. Nor is it consistent with physicalism ... The exclusion of consciousness from cerebral functioning is equally inconsistent with emergent interactionism ... and with the interactionist forms of dualism" It is difficult to say exactly what sort of theory he advocates, but it does not seem to be an identity theory. Velmans goes on to say that the psychological evidence seems "to support epiphenomenalsim", but that "From a first person perspective ... epiphenomenalism appears false". From this he concludes that these two perspectives are "complementary, [but] mutually irreducible". Needless to say, this conclusion is inadequate. It seems to me that the reasonable conclusion to draw from the evidence is not that epiphenomenalism is both true and false, depending on the viewpoint adopted, but that one of these viewpoints must be mistaken. Velmans does seem to be arguing for some sort of relativism, and this view cannot be sustained by the evidence that he puts forward. We should either be arguing that the information processing models that he adopts are incomplete, in so far as they do not account for our first person accounts of the causal efficacy of consciousnesss, or we should argue that our first person accounts are mistaken. Thus I think that the conclusions that Velmans draws are disputable at best, and just plain wrong at worst. We should not accept that epiphenomenalism is both true and false, depending on your point of view, unless there is absolutely no other conclusion that we can draw. In the case above, I think that there are many other more plausible conclusions that can be drawn, and hence we should reject Velmans' conclusions. Simon. From franzen@U.Arizona.EDU Sun Oct 3 09:41:09 1999 Return-Path: Received: from Arizona.EDU (Penny.Telcom.arizona.edu [128.196.128.217]) by paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA02337 for ; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 09:41:09 -0700 Received: from DIRECTORY-DAEMON by Telcom.Arizona.EDU (PMDF V5.1-12 #24137) id <01JGPDNIIVJ4B8XAL3@Telcom.Arizona.EDU> for chalmers@paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 16:42:11 MST Received: from paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu by Telcom.Arizona.EDU (PMDF V5.1-12 #24137) with ESMTP id <01JGPDNH5TKWB8SZFD@Telcom.Arizona.EDU> for chalmers@Arizona.EDU; Sun, 03 Oct 1999 16:42:09 -0700 (MST) Received: from f1n3.u.arizona.edu (IDENT:franzen@f1n3.U.Arizona.EDU [128.196.137.103]) by paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA02332 for ; Sun, 03 Oct 1999 09:40:56 -0700 Received: from localhost (franzen@localhost) by f1n3.u.arizona.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA49014 for ; Sun, 03 Oct 1999 16:41:59 -0700 Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 16:41:59 -0700 (MST) From: Peter L Franzen To: scicon@paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: RO On the issue of fleeting awareness in unconscious perception: If you are exposed to something briefly, or while in a "less-concscious" state such as sleep or under anesthesia, what does this say about the experience? For example, healthy normal sleepers have, on average, 4-5 dreams per night. Many people do not recall this many, as you need to have a brief awakening at the end of the REM sequence in order to have any free recall of the dream. So, if you have a dream, but don't remember it, did you have a phenomenal experience? I would say yes, although it is not remembered. If an experience is not remembered, or falls away immediately (from memory), the experience could still be access-consciousness (such as in priming). Just because you don't remember a particular dream during the night does not mean that this experience will not have an affect on you the following day (through some kind of primining or perhaps a deja vu experience). This seems to relate to the experiments where the 3 x 3 grid of letters are flashed, and the subject can report on any of the lines, but not all of them. This suggests that the person is phenomenally aware of all of the stimuli (for some time afterward), but only access conscious of one line. From lnielsen@azstarnet.com Sun Oct 10 16:19:56 1999 Return-Path: Received: from Arizona.EDU (Penny.Telcom.Arizona.EDU [128.196.128.217]) by paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA10481 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 16:19:56 -0700 Received: from DIRECTORY-DAEMON by Telcom.Arizona.EDU (PMDF V5.2-31 #39830) id <01JGZ4XHG2Q89BVCPK@Telcom.Arizona.EDU> for chalmers@paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (ORCPT rfc822;chalmers@arizona.edu); Sun, 10 Oct 1999 16:20:04 MST Received: from paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu ([128.196.44.83]) by Telcom.Arizona.EDU (PMDF V5.2-31 #39830) with ESMTP id <01JGZ4XFZ7C09ED8YW@Telcom.Arizona.EDU> for chalmers@Arizona.EDU; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 16:20:01 -0700 (MST) Received: from cepheus.azstarnet.com (cepheus.azstarnet.com [169.197.56.195]) by paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA10477 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 16:19:38 -0700 Received: from zippo (dialup10ip097.tus.azstarnet.com [169.197.34.225]) by cepheus.azstarnet.com (8.9.3+blt.Beta0/8.9.3) with SMTP id QAA18037 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 16:19:42 -0700 (MST) Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 16:25:31 -0700 From: Lis Nielsen Subject: How limited is the unconscious? To: Scicon Reply-to: lnielsen@u.arizona.edu Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Importance: Normal X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-priority: Normal X-Sent-via: StarNet http://www.azstarnet.com/ Status: RO Re the limitations of the unconscious: As Dave pointed out, there seems to be a tension between Greenwald's claims that "attentionless unconscious cognition is generally quite limited in the sophistication of analyses it can perform," and Velmans' claims to the effect that much complex cognition can occur outside of consciousness. As I said in class, I don't think that the two claims made here are incompatible. Greenwald and Velmans are both concerned with how information comes to play a function in complex cognition and under what conditions this is possible. Both argue that attention is key to these functions, and that manipulations that disrupt attention leave behind only very low level influences of the presented information on subsequent processing. The critical issue concerns whether such information can become access-conscious, to use Block's term (either in the sense of poised for direct, voluntary control of action, etc., or in the sense of cerebral celebrity, which I take to mean currently being in such control). From Greenwald's review, it seems that information must be P-conscious in order to be available for complex cognition. Velmans argues that it is focal attention rather than P-consciousness that enables access. The various manipulations in unconscious perception studies degrade P-consciousness sufficiently to limit the access of the information to global processing. In the absence of high-grade P-consciousness, the information that gets into the system can only play a passive role, via processes like the spreading of activation in semantic networks or the priming of motor, affective or other responses. The passivity of these processes lies in their purely data-driven nature; spreading of activation or priming cannot lead to interpretation or evaluation of the information at the conscious level nor, perhaps, does it allow its active integration as premises in 'unconscious reasoning', i.e., unconscious processes like addition that are set in motion by conscious presentation of inputs. However, if a context for interpretation or response is provided (say one is looking for an answer to a difficult problem or one is required to give a word stem completion in an experimental task) then the information can have effects on these outputs. These effects appear in multiple ways - as sudden insights or intuitions, as response biases or shortened response latencies, without the subject having explicit awareness of how these effects came about. The processing of information that is presented under conditions where subjects cannot report consciousness of the information has this kind of passive characteristic. The passive, data-driven processing set in motion by unconsciously perceived information stands in contrast to the active, theory-driven processing of information that is consciously perceived. For example, what we consciously perceive sets up expectations for what we might see next; it enables us to organize complex behaviors in response to the information. That many aspects of these subsequent cognitive functions will proceed unconsciously seems to be Velmans' main point in the first half of his article. This sophistication of the unconscious under normal stimulus conditions is widely accepted, though Velmans wants to make the further point that it is not due to P-consciousness that this kind of information processing takes place, rather that focal attention (A-consciousness) is all that is required. I don't think Greenwald would challenge Velmans' claims about the sophistication of the unconscious under normal conditions. He might, however, take issue with the claim that focal attention alone has the function of making information widely available. Focal attention is present in unconscious perception experiments, it simply doesn't have the right kinds of inputs to operate on. Greenwald wants to emphasize is that high-level unconscious information processing doesn't get going all on its own, even if focal attention is engaged. Sophisticated unconscious processing requires that information be the object of attention, and that it be so long enough to set up an enduring conscious representation of that information. One of the implications of the unconsicous perception experiments is that we are not vulnerable to unlimited, complex, subliminal manipulations that bias our behavior. In order for information to actively play a role in ongoing behavior and cognition, it needs to be P-conscious first, much along the lines of Block's current claim that P-consciousness is the means by which information becomes A-conscious. The effects of "unconsciously perceived" stimuli discovered so far do not meet the criteria for A-consciousness, which seems to line up well with this analysis. Now, given Block's reasonable suggestion on Friday that there is fleeting P-consciousness in the unconscious perception cases (without A- or R-consciousness), we would want to say that while P-consciousness might be necessary for A-consciousness, it is not sufficient for A-consciousness. Other conditions are required, involving contextual and temporal factors that may vary from situation to situation to set up the kind of representational stability suggested above. It would seem that our notion of P-consciousness will require some revision. Lis Nielsen Department of Psychology University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721-0068 USA lnielsen@u.arizona.edu From switanek@U.Arizona.EDU Tue Oct 12 14:43:36 1999 Return-Path: Received: from Arizona.EDU (Hopey.Telcom.Arizona.EDU [128.196.128.234]) by paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA15542 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:43:36 -0700 Received: from DIRECTORY-DAEMON by Telcom.Arizona.EDU (PMDF V5.2-31 #39830) id <01JH1U5TQR689D4QAT@Telcom.Arizona.EDU> for chalmers@paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu (ORCPT rfc822;chalmers@arizona.edu); Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:43:48 MST Received: from pavo.U.Arizona.EDU (pavo-2.U.Arizona.EDU) by Telcom.Arizona.EDU (PMDF V5.2-31 #39830) with ESMTP id <01JH1U5TDS409EDIO1@Telcom.Arizona.EDU> for chalmers@Arizona.EDU; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:43:47 -0700 (MST) Received: from localhost (switanek@localhost) by pavo.U.Arizona.EDU (8.8.6 (PHNE_17190)/8.8.6) with ESMTP id OAA06045; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:43:47 -0700 (MST) Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:43:47 -0700 (MST) From: Nicholas J Switanek Subject: attention and conscious perception In-reply-to: <199910050642.XAA06950@paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu> To: David Chalmers Cc: scicon@paradox.soc-sci.arizona.edu Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: RO Our discourse of last week and of this has as one of its foci the distinction between conscious and unconscious perception. Conscious perception has its distinguishing characteristics 1)a phenomenology that extends through time--it's not instantaneous--2)accessibility, in terms of availability for verbal report, and instantiation in memory. Unconscious perception is a trickier thing. It appears from the Mack and Rock experiments that visual percepts, at least those relatively near to point of visual attention, are encoded in some detail, although they are never made available for verbal report and never make it into memory. In fact, between the two, availability for verbal report and memory, memory is clearly the more fundamental. I don't think it makes much sense to talk about instantaneous conscious perception and I think it is memory that allows perceptions that might have been collected at discrete moments to extend through time. But I'm not sure that I could go as far as saying conscious perception is only unconscious perception plus memory of the percepts; actually, I'm sure I can't: necessary is some sort of organization and ordering of the memories. One way to think about unconscious perception might be to call it a variety of priming. When we are asked a question or by some other means instigate a search for something in our perceptual field, items that are already unconsciously encoded pop out or grab our attention. In a way it seems the brain is continually overprocessing, preparing information that mostly gets dumped, never makes it into consciousness, the stream of occurrent thought, or into memory. Encoded information about the visual field might be readied in case it needs being attended to, but since the higher-level powers that be deem the information of lower priority or irrelevant to the tasks at hand, never call the info over the threshold into consciousness. So what decides which primed pathways will be trodden by victorious electrical impulses into the Cartesian circus? Well, the individual has some explicit control over what searches it establishes, and once the search is on, an answer receptacle is prepared in memory. There might also be other searches that are continually and quietly going on. Searches for particular learned or instinctual icons might be such latent and implicit procedures that run constantly. Or if these searches don't run constantly, they run especially smoothly, for how else is a complex icon like one's own name recognized with rapidity far exceeding that for other percepts? nick