StephenH

Your last post said Substitute "sensation" with "reason" - better ? and that was it. What explanation did I miss in that single short question? How does this address the point being put to you? Possibly my language in threads like this can be a little harsh, and make people defensive -- I know possibly I need to dial it back, it's true. But you've now taken defensiveness to the next level: so many attempts to avoid the point, culminating in now claiming you can't continue because the discussion has become religious, when no-one has mentioned religion but you...wow.

No, that would be a completely different argument from the one you've given, and would be off-topic for this thread anyway. Also it would still be false for basically the same reason. What I'm waiting for is: "OK, my argument about 'good evolutionary reasons' implying they must have inner sensations doesn't work" or "No Stephen, the reason the autonomic system, reflexes, proprioception etc don't refute my point is _________"

The point is simply this: you reasoned that if an organism has some evolutionary reason for detecting some stimulus then it must have an inner sensation of that stimulus. And from context, and the topic of this thread, by "inner sensation" both you and I surely agree that we're talking about qualia: subjective, first-person phenomena like pain, colors, smells etc. The problem is, this line of reasoning is demonstrably false, because we can give examples of stimuli that humans detect, and respond to, and have good evolutionary reason for doing so, and yet would all agree are not associated with any qualia. The autonomic system, for example, is by definition part of the brain that processes stimuli without associated subjective states. The "within its own level of perception" thing is meaningless. It's essentially saying: They have as much inner experience as they have. Obviously I'd agree with that tautology. However I don't see any grounds for assuming that that amount of inner experience is any greater than that of a digital camera, or my autonomic system, or a rock i.e. none whatsoever. I'm not saying they don't have inner experiences, only that you have not given any reason to suppose they do, since your argument doesn't work.

Great post Delta1212, really helps clarify the discussion. The thing being refuted in post #38 is the line of yours that I quoted verbatim, and gave a special label (Molecule's Conjecture) in bold, and that I explicitly say I'm refuting. And your reading comprehension would have to be pretty appalling to think I was saying humans cannot sense oxygen levels in their blood. Post #38 was not even the first (or last) time in this thread that I've explained the problem with that argument. So quit playing dumb and actually try to respond to it.

This is a thread discussing inner experiences of color. You yourself have used phrases like "inner sensation", which is appropriate because that's the topic. So if by "color perception" what you now mean is just "animals can see colors" then yes, very obviously they can. They have eyes. Their eyes have color cones. This is very clear and not disputed at all. But it's also not what we were talking about. If you're saying that they have an inner experience of color, color qualia, AKA what we were talking about, then my response is that I see no reason to presuppose that is true. Your attempt to prove that it logically follows is flawed, as I have explained in detail such as in post #38. If you think you've found an error in that argument, then please point it out. Genuinely I'd love to hear that and learn something. Otherwise just concede the point so we can advance the discussion. See my previous post. The fact that bees can see colors is a readily-demonstrable fact disputed by no-one.

Yes I know that's what you're asserting, I even gave it the special label Molecule's Conjecture before demonstrating why it doesn't work with example after example. Either the statement is outright false, or "within its own perception capabilities" necessarily includes includes no perception whatsoever. There is clearly no correlation between consciousness and color perception in primitive organisms because primitive organisms are incapable of conscious thought. The point is: we don't even know if primitive organisms have color perception, period. The human autonomic system is far more complex that a bee's brain, for example. And detects, and responds to, various stimuli. It does not result in any kind of "perception" however. The fact that a bee responds to EM stimuli doesn't in itself tell us anything about whether it experiences color qualia.

Let's focus on one point at a time. Do you now agree that detection of some stimulus does not necessarily correlate with an internal sensation? That some stimuli are processed by the autonomic system in humans, or reflexes, or just don't have obvious internal qualia separate to other senses (e.g. proprioception)?

What kind of maniac would say color is a reflex? That was never my argument. I'll go through it step-by-step as you've misparsed what I've said completely. You said: ""If an organism has the ability to see a particular color then it surely must have an evolutionary reason to do so. Which leads to believe that this organism must have an internal sensation of that color within it's own level of perception" . From this, we can extract the underlying reasoning to formalize it as Molecule's Conjecture: If an organism has the ability to sense some stimuli then it surely has an evolutionary reason to do so. Which leads us to believe that it must have an internal sensation of that stimulus. Agreed? But then we can plug in other kinds of stimulus and trivially see the Conjecture doesn't work. For example: If a human has the ability to sense oxygen levels in the blood (part of chemoreception) then we must have an internal sensation of that stimulus. However we do not. It's one of the things processed by the autonomic system. (before you say it, oxygen levels in the blood are not responsible for feelings of suffocation; that's CO2).

What is straw man about it? What part of "If an organism has the ability to see a particular color then it surely must have an evolutionary reason to do so. Which leads to believe that this organism must have an internal sensation of that color within it's own level of perception." have I misunderstood? You are reasoning that if an organism has a good evolutionary reason for detecting some stimulus then it must have an internal sensation of that input. Why do reflexes not refute this argument? And that's twice now you've just used a label like "straw man!" or "moving the goalposts!" as an excuse to ignore an argument being put to you. If you really want to discuss this topic in good faith, perhaps next time you at least show why you think the argument is affirming the consequent or whatever.

Of course color perception is not a reflex. The simple point is this: you said that color detection exists for good evolutionary reasons (true). And therefore that organisms must have an internal perception of color (false). I demonstrated that this logic is flawed by giving an example of a response to stimuli that also exists for good evolutionary reasons: reflexes. These do not have an internal perception. Therefore they refute your argument. Can you give a single cite? I'm sure that being awake is one of the definitions of consciousness. It's clearly not the definition that is used in this context, in a philosophy forum discussion. And I'm dubious that any dictionary would only put that first definition and omit the latter. This is all a handwave anyway: instead of engaging with what I was saying, certain posters wanted to play a trump card of "Consciousness isn't defined!". But the handwave fails because in this case I can simply call your bluff and ask you to look up the word in a dictionary.

What is your cite for that? I doubt that that was the only text.

The "no" was WRT the point you had just made, that if an organism sees a colour then it must have an evolutionary reason for doing so, and therefore it must have an internal perception of color. This doesn't follow at all logically, and in fact is demonstrably false. For example, we have good evolutionary reasons for having reflexes yet none of them are connected to internal subjective sensations. You did add "...within its own level of perception" but that doesn't help. What does it actually mean for the light-sensitive circuit, or my reflexes? Is it advocating panpsychism? Also, it is not true that consciousness is undefined. It's a broad term, yes, and I already conceded that. But the dictionary definition for example is not "[please insert own definition here]".

No; the point is that just responding to some stimuli is not proof of an inner experience; otherwise the problem would be vastly simpler than it is. We know this because: 1. Not all stimuli humans react to include inner experience (for example our reflexes) and 2. We can make very simple machines that respond to stimuli of various kinds e.g. light-sensitive diodes. If they have inner experience, then everything has. And leading on from observation 1, a common idea now among cognitive- and neuro- scientists is that subjective perception is likely linked to choice. Knee-jerk responses don't need (and therefore likely don't have) inner subjective experiences. But where we need to make unique plans (for some common stimulus...obviously we can't evolve inner experiences for everything) it makes sense to have subjective phenomena as inputs. If that's the case, then we'd likely be happy to say most mammals have subjective experience of, say, color, and happy to say very simple lifeforms are like our light-sensitive diode. Inbetween, who knows? It's among the things we're trying to figure out.

Yeah and it's trivial to make a robot that will move away from fire, and play a scream noise while doing so. It doesn't tell us anything about the sensation of pain that you and I experience. Likewise of course there are organism and machines that respond to light stimuli, but we can be fairly sure have no internal sensation of "green", say.

The only way your brain receives any knowledge of colour from the outside world is via pulses of charge along the optic nerve. But instead of just being aware of the raw data of "light of 540nm wavelength excited a cone on the retina" the brain converts this data into a sensation: "green". If the problem were just figuring out whether different people see colour differently, and why, that's in principle a solvable question. But if the problem is figuring out how brains have sensations at all; how an arrangement of matter can feel pain, say, we have no model for this at this time. And it is wrong to say it has nothing to do with consciousness; how brains have sensations is perhaps the most fundamental part of understanding consciousness.