Personally I think it’s silly as hell. Qualia is obviously a biological component of experience… Not some weird thing that science will never be able to put in to words.
I’ve been listening to a lot of psychology podcasts lately and for some reason people seem obsessed with the idea despite you needing to make the same logical leaps to believe it as any sort of mysticism… Maybe I am just tripping idk
Showing that brain “activity” seems to correspond with vague concepts around capability (auditory, creativity (the left brain right brain thing I’m pretty sure has been debunked, but that’s irrelevant) fight or flight, etc.) is one thing, but nobody knows what makes an experience, a thought, or a memory. Nobody can point to a biological structure or function and say “hey there’s a memory,” or “hey, there’s a thought in the scan!”
Anyway, maybe I’m not explaining what I mean well, but unless you do have research that shows what the biological basis of a thought is, then we’re both working on same level of unknowns.
My whole point is that we actually have exactly 0 understanding of what makes a feeling or a thought or a memory. Anything you think you know about is probably incorrectly popularized ideas of how the brain works from the 50s and 60s that have permeated into mainstream culture.
Looking at how specific fMRI excitement of a brain region “turns on/off” certain body functions does not provide us insight into what makes a thought or memory. Measuring re-learning after TBI doesn’t really give us knowledge into what it means to subjectively experience the world and how that relates to feelings, thoughts, or ideas. Does that make sense?
I don’t know if anyone has ever done this exact test, but I imagine if we plucked someones eyeballs out mid MRI scan they would quite literally have less brain activity than prior… or at least increased brain activity in different places due to the pain of plucking ones eyes out.
As far as I know, left and right brain activity has only increased in evidence. The idea that people are “left brained” or “right brained” is complete pseudo science, but the idea that certain tasks are assigned to certain halves of the brain is well founded. Both halves can perform the same tasks, but the left half is better at linguistic function (which can be tested by only presenting information to your left field of view (NOT just left eyeball, but left side of both eyeballs)) and the right is better at creative function. Heres a wikipedia article thatll probs lead you where you need to go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divided_visual_field_paradigm
Yes, it is pseudo science, which I said. We are getting away from the actual basis of the question which is that we don’t know what thinking or memory or the actual capability of even the only biological system we are vaguely familiar with (mammalian brain).
My whole point is that we don’t even know enough to say that consciousness exists in the brain (we can see capabilities, and activation of muscles, and “processing” over general regions whatever that means), or what thinking is or what is needed to think ---- in biological systems. How can we possibly know that it’s impossible in other, less familiar structures?
Okay I think I understand what you are saying now… how do we know that tiny brainlet doesn’t comprise a small brain instead of a small section of a brain… it likely contains the same physical matter (neurons)… thats a good point. I think that simply adds to the beauty of a brains neuro plasticity. A lot of the brain seems completely redundant, which doesn’t go against the idea of it being a biological strength.
I don’t think consciousness originates from a single part of the brain, I think consciousness is simply the experience of all parts of the brain at once. The brainlet would still not possess the ability to register dread or fear or anything (at least as we understand) so I would still be willing to state its not bad to being experimenting on it. I just dont know if enough diagnostic data is being processed to actually have introspection or just moment to moment realization.
Yeah and a part of what I’m saying is that we don’t know that threshold is. Like would a million cells be enough to form thoughts? A thousand? A billion? Two?
The question is simply what we consider a thought. A brain with 1000 cells is very likely capable of less foresight than a brain with a billion. We can’t explain the mechanisms as to how, but that doesn’t mean they’re non existent.
Thanks for discussing this with me. I guess what I mean by a thought is what the organism is experiencing. Electrical or chemical movements between cells is something that we can measure, but does the cells or objects doing that movement then experience the thought? What is the minimum threshold for electrical or chemical movements through any object or cells or group of cells to get a thought happening and experienced by the organism? Is all thought just emergent from the movement of electricity?
Is our electrical grid experiencing what is happening to it??
The electrical grid may be “experiencing” something but I feel like a lot of personifocation occurs when we attempt to imagine that feeling. The electrical grid has no means to introspect, so it’s moment to moment feeling would be completely raw and impossible to pin down as it is changing rapidly through time. No memory, no foresight, no sensory data, nothing… Very hard to imagine.
It wouldn’t ever feel alive because it would never possess the ability to self reflect.
It wouldn’t be agential nor would it be aiming to achieve homeostasis.
It’s like a single thread on your sweater. By itself it’s incredibly basic, it gets more complex as it interacts with other matter. You don’t “feel” thousands of individual threads though, when you wear a shirt. You reify it into a single experience.
Maybe this doesn’t make much sense I am hungover af
This is exactly what I’m thinking though, how do you know it has no means of inteospection, no memory, or no foresight?
Yes it has no tools for interacting with the world, but does that mean it has no emergent thinking? Personification is exactly what I am questioning – when is it appropriate? Brainlets, bees, humans, electrical grids, ecosystems, mycelium? Where does experience emerge from?