I think there is also a dilemma here. Either 1. Qualia are a part of brain activity and contribute to the decision making process which evolution could then exert selection pressures on (or prevent life from evolving at all if the “PH Laws” are constant/universal and not “harmonious”). Or 2. Qualia are not a part of the brain activity and do not contribute to decision making in which case you have an even stronger problem of evil because experiences like pain serve no purpose. By holding to the view that "PH Laws" are baked into the universe it seems Squared has to fall on horn 2.
This is where you’ve lost me. Gonna sit on these ideas for a while and rewatch the video. I’ll rewatch the whole playlist at the end too. But I’m confused about why evolution cannot create psychophysical harmony.
think of human as a dead robot which follows what the programming selected by evolution, it doesn't matter what the mental state is, as long you have any experience(pleasure, pain or strawberry flavour)produce by your brain, and your body produce appropriate action(move away or run)that helps you survive, that's all there is. It's the action that helps you survive, not how you feel.
Evolution CAN create psychophysical harmony via epigenetics but the presenter seems to have an outdated understanding of evolution. The Weismann barrier isn't real and it never had any proof, it was just assumed to be real. Meaning: sentient life has a tiny degree of agency in the process of evolution
Evolution happens within the existing physical laws, but only a subset of physical processess happen in living organism (all lifeforms we know are largely based on water and carbon, for example). Because only a subset of all possible physical processes are useful for survival and reproduction. It stands to reason that if qualia influence physical events, the same would be true for psychophysical laws: Evolution happens within the existing psychophysical laws, but only a subset of psychophysical events possible within the existing psychophysical laws happen in living organism. A chaotic subjective experience would not be useful for survival and reproduction. For the psychopyhsical argument to survive evolution you would need to show that there are possible subjective experiences that are just as useful for survival and reproduction (which means that they would need to be non-chaotic, varied, and tied in predictable patterns to physical events), but nonetheless disharmonious. For the example mentioned in this videos you would need to answer the following questions with "yes": 1) Could you switch the sensation of pain with the sensation of pleasure in all instances while keeping everything else the same (meaning we would dislike pleasure and try to avoid it)? 2) If you answer (1) with yes, would such an experience be disharmonious? So far I do not know what the answer to either question is, so I consider it possible the psychophysical argument can work, but I am not convinced for now.
Ah, I was waiting for the more controversial claim. The fact that a priori one can't predict what brain states will correspond with certain mental states does not show that evolution isn't likely to favor certain physical states (i.e. injuring one's self) that result in certain mental states (i.e. pain) because of the survival benefit. To deny this is to affirm epiphenomenalism where mental states have zero power over physical states. Since epiphenomenalism is false it is quite obvious that pain does result in better survival behaviors after being injured than no pain or pleasure. We have actual evidence of this from people who suffer from conditions where they won't notice seriousl injuries because they won't feel pain from them.
Great video, with this whole psychophysical harmony thing I’m just stuck on how are we to know that we are not in psychophysical chaos right now? And what defines what is harmonious versus chaotic?
But those mental things are physical (even if this can't be known a priori). Evolution only cares about physical stuff... and qualia are included there. Evolution isn't a priori knowledge, so it's not clear why we're only allowed to use a priori knowledge to get its predictions.
Even if mental things are physical, this would only entail that they are not *metaphysically* probabilistically independently. However, they are nonetheless a priori epistemically probabilistically independent (hereafter “APEPI” because MAN that’s a long modifier). Now, the reason we’re talking about evolution here is because the best theory of how to get organisms given naturalism (or “the hypothesis of indifference” more broadly) is going to be unguided evolution. So, what unguided evolution predicts about organisms is what naturalism/indifference predicts about organisms.
@@ApologeticsSquared What is? The physical from the physical? you're comparing the same category and saying it's different, by definition it isn't unless you are specific and you can't afford to do that lol.
@@ApologeticsSquared maybe u should make a longer video (like 30 mins) that addresses questions about ur assumption or maybe some sort of abridge compolation
@@ApologeticsSquared Okay, but even if they are independent a priori, they're not independent a posteriori. So evolution can be used to explain mental stuff, you just need to bring in the a posteriori conclusion that the mental is physical.
@@Nickesponja Hi nice to see you here. Remember me? Let me quote our last discussion: // In any case, Squared will surely make a video on evolution as part of this series, and there will be more discussion there. What do you say, was that video what you hoped for?
If you felt pleasure from h&rt/ng your body then everyone would damage themselves to the point of unfitness. And any other creature that was the opposite would avoid hurting themselves and would therefore would be more fit and would dominate and diversify.
Do creatures take actions depending upon the qualia experience? Because if qualia exist and causes no physical affects such as memory or behavioral response then it probably doesn't exist. What empirical evidence is there for the shape of relationship between qualia and the physical u believe in?
@@ApologeticsSquared Okay, what about walking across a room of legos for a penny? I was trying to come up with a scenario where there is no lasting physical harm but that the pain would outweigh the benefit.
If it took me ten seconds to walk across a room for a penny, that would work out to a salary of $3.60/hour. So, no; that wouldn’t even be paying me minimum wage!
@@ApologeticsSquared, what I was trying to get at is whether or not you think qualia, like pain, influence decision making and behavior at all? I guess my questions weren't very good at leading into that.
The physical stimulus and the mental sensation may be probabilistically independent but so what? The outcome, i.e. the behavioral response, clearly isn't probabilistically independent of the stimulus, since an avoidance reaction to a harmful stimulus would obviously be favored by natural selection. I don't think these psychophysical laws are actually laws in any meaningful sense. Just like there's nothing special about a winning lottery number, there's also nothing special about the combination of stimuli and sensations that we see - it's just the combination that evolution happened to come up with. I don't see why we couldn't have completely different combinations as long as the resulting behavioral response helps us survive. If you believe that the psychophysical laws have some innate quality of goodness that is independent of our biology, then what metric for goodness are you using? If the goodness has nothing to do with enhancing our chances of survival then how do you determine that a particular sensation in reaction to a stimulus is good?
Also in what does this pyscho-phiscal-harmony exist or to put another way how does it work because researchers have prove that there are consistent ways in which we view reality is false Vsauce has a lot of videos about that
Squared i would like to continue our conversation here since it seems fitting. You already agreed that a variety of different and harmonious sensations/quales would increase survivalbillity in agents that are dependant on those sensations to make decisions on how to act. Thus evolution would (if it could) select for psychophysyical harmony. The only thing we disagree on is if the psychophysical laws are something universal that is baked into the universe or if they are our observed generalisations of quale-combinations and can change. I think there is pretty good evidence that something like universal psychophysical laws do not exist. If i stub my toe, the sensation i experience will be different to somebody else doing the exact same thing. There will be people who wouldn't even call this experience as "pain". The inner worlds of all people seems to be highly individualized, with only some general corollaries and nothing close to resembling a set of universal laws.
I think the black/blue, white/gold dress illusion is a brilliant example of how we definitely perceive the world differently. Perceptual illusions are also a great demonstration of how our qualia are a product of evolution, tuned to aid in survival rather than some harmonious law baked into the fabric of the universe by an omnipotent being.
Synesthesia is another great example that I would love to get Squared's thoughts on. If psychophysical laws are constant/universal, how do you explain synesthesia?
I'll copy/past from another reply: I think we may be using the term "psychophysical laws" differently. I use the term to be an exhaustive description of how the physical world correlates to the mental. If Alice has brain state B1 and mental state M1, and Bob has brain state B2 and mental state M2, it's not like Alice has her own psychophysical laws {B1 -> M1} and Bob has his own psychophysical laws {B2 -> M2}. I would say that there's only one set of psychophysical laws: {B1 -> M1, B2 -> M2}. Now, one point I want to clarify is in regards to your point that // Some people are pain-insensitive and do not have any quale in response to the firing of c-fibers at all. // I think an analogy with physics would be helpful. Imagine you're learning physics and you're told that objects fall at a rate of 9.8 meters per second squared, denoted y = y0-9.8t^2. Well, this isn't true. If you drop a piece of paper and a metal ball, the paper would fall slower because of air resistance. But the physics equation y = y0-9.8t^2 gets super complicated if you factor in air resistance. Notice, there aren't different laws of physics for the piece of paper and the metal ball. They follow the same laws of physics. And those laws of physics lead to the result that, usually, y = y0-9.8t^2 is a good approximation of what path objects will follow. But it's precisely that the paper does follow those laws that it doesn't fall according to the equation y = y0-9.8t^2. Now, when I say, "c-fibers are connected to pain," I mean this in an analogous sense to y = y0-9.8t^2. Okay, the actual laws are way way more complicated. Those actual laws are going to lead to some people experiencing pain when their c-fibers fire, and with other people will experience nothing when their c-fibers fire. But, generally, "c-fibers are connected to pain" are an approximate idealization. So what are the actual psychophysical laws? Well, just as studying physics improves our incomplete understanding of the physical laws, studying neuroscience will increase our incomplete understanding of the psychophysical laws. Hope that helps!
@@ApologeticsSquared But what evidence do you have that there is a universal mapping of {B1->M1, B2->M2, ...}? I remember in high school when my physics teacher demonstrated that feathers and lead balls fall at the same rate if you neglect air resistance by putting them in a vacuum. How can you demonstrate that if you put someone in the same brain state B1 they will experience the same mental state M1? Now I also can't demonstrate that two people who have the same brain state B1 won't have two different mental states until we can overcome the hard problem of consciousness. But it seems like The Dress illusion comes awfully close and is a very unexpected result if in fact there is a universal PH law.
This whole argument seems to rest heavily on the premise that qualia, as mere outgrowths of complex brain activity, do not, BY DEFAULT, affect the physical, & that it’s even possible to have evolved qualia that do not match the experience. I know some people may claim this, but it’s just silly. Mental states clearly affect the physical or else our physical bodies would not be able to speak or write about them! It seems that most of the information fed to our brain affects qualia, & that our mental deliberations affect the movements of our physical bodies & consequently other objects. I’m taking the physicalist role here: if the faculty of qualia evolved parallel to other faculties, then creatures with best matched experiences would have a clear survival edge. I would point out that some people like being spanked during sex. How’s that for harmony?
(1/2) Squared doesn't understand Evolution: 0:09 "Can we evolve towards psychophysical harmony?" Yes. Although evolution doesn't use terms like "psychophysical harmony" because it is too vague of terminology and too heavily defined by relation to a subjective preconceived model . 0:17 "Evolution makes the physical world *look* a certain way" Tricky wording. It makes the biological process *function* a certain way, but Squared doesn't want to say that because it destroys his entire argument. 0:45 "it's impossible for evolution to increased/decrease the probability of psychophysical harmony." It is very possible, psychophysical harmony relies on the physical body, which evolution influences. 0:59 "Evolution can't control the psychophysical laws." Yes it can, all of our senses are dictated through evolution, therefore it will influence and change how "harmonious" an animal is or is not. If an animal is nearly blind (the rhino) it will experience high levels of disharmony, but something with enhanced vision (a hawk) will experience greater harmony. And this is just sight, you can apply this to animals with greater or lesser sensory abilities in any area. Dogs can smell several times what humans can and certain animals barely have the ability to smell if at all. 1:30 "Evolution wouldn't behave any differently." Tricky wording. Evolution behaves the same either way, but the species and the after effect would dictate that one would be much more likely to survive than the other. Which IS a physical difference in the world. 1:40 "Evolution doesn't tell us how they violate the laws of physics" Violating physics isn't technically possible under evolution, it would just be using a non-understood physics understanding used by the organism, so this was a bad/terrible point to make by Squared. 2:23 "Evolution can only influence the physical world" Which is 1/2 of psychophysical harmony under dualism and 100% of psychophysical harmony under identity theory. 2:40 "No matter how evolution pans out you can always find tons of apriori epistemically possible psychophysical laws." Yeah but "i can imagine it different" doesn't give us predictive power and doesn't mean anything for an argument.
Yea it Can you at least agree that the vast majority of epistemically possible worlds have psychophysical disharmony? And evolution only works if it is even possible to have these psychophysical laws. Most worlds would not connect C fibers to pain
@blankspace2891 In an imaginary hypothetical it doesn't matter if there are more disharmony potentials that you can imagine, evolution is going to use natural selection for increased harmony as long as it increases survival rate. If there are X disharmony for c fibers and Y harmony, eventually that number will be more favorable to Y to the point that X might not exist anymore due to the genetic selection pool. Also Squared doesn't want to admit it, but this stuff can apply to microbiology and then his whole red herring of dualism / identity theory goes out the window and he's plain wrong.
@blankspace2891 The vast majority of physical worlds with disharmony do not result in species that continue to survive and reproduce with said disharmony.
(2/2) Weird claims by Squared that are wrong: 0:35 "The physical and mental are apriori probabilistically independent." Not for identity theory. 1:05 " Unless we say that qualia violate the laws of physics" What does this even mean? What law of physics is being violated and how? 1:20 "The physical behavior would be the same" Nope, under identity theory or dualism this is just not true. Identity theory states that pleasure is a byproduct of certain hormones like dopamine releasing, which would generate a different behavioral pattern and is a different physical pattern altogether, much less not from C-Fibers firing either. Dualism would state that the person is able to experience either one but would take actions from the qualia dependent on that qualia. 1:35 "If we do say that qualia violate the laws of physics" again, what about qualia would be violating the laws of physics in any way? 2:30" You need specific psychophysical laws." No you don't. Psychophysical laws are (INTENTIONALLY) not specific and so is psychophysical "harmony" and "disharmony", these are relational terms meant to convey a general "mind / body connection" but Squared has not given ONE specific psychophysical law that is not easily pointed out to be inconsistent (not a law) or vague.
You know, it's funny: it turns out that we *do* live in a world where the mental qualia and our reactions are out of sync. We just think they're in sync because they happen to cause the right reactions.
@@tomoldaker1268 They seem to be in sync. We think they're in sync because we've been told they're in sync. But the actual state internally is that pain is positive. But since he causes us to recoil anyway, we don't know any better.
It seems like here you've said either dualism is true or qualia break the laws of physics, which seems like a false dichotomy to me. I would argue that qualia are in fact physical or that there is no such thing as the mental. Obviously rejecting dualism means I would need to tackle the hard problem of consciousness but that's an entirely separate argument.
It can be the case that x is identical to y without our conceptualization of x being the same as our conceptualization of y. For example, the concept of water includes something like {substance that is drinkable, substance that is clear, substance that is found in our oceans, what raindrops are made of, ...}. The concept of H2O includes something like {substance whose molecules contain 1 oxygen atom, substance whose molecules contain 2 hydrogen atoms, ...}. Now, water is identical to H2O. But we did not always know this. We did experiments, like splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, to learn that water is H2O. We humans couldn't discover water = H2O a priori, because there wasn't anything within the concept of H2O that allowed us to discover that it was water. Now, if the quale of pain is identical to something like a c-fiber firing, there are still two conceptualizations of this quale. The concept of the quale of pain is something like, {hurts, what you feel when you stub your toe, ...}. The concept of a c-fiber firing is something like {neuron with ion channels opening, ...}. When I say that qualia don't violate the laws of physics, I mean that nothing within the concept of the quale of pain includes violating the laws of physics.
@@ApologeticsSquared Okay. So are you still saying this argument is agnostic with regards to dualism? And do you agree that *if* dualism is false then qualia influencing decision making and the behavior of organisms is plausible?
Yes, this argument is agnostic towards dualism. And we need to be careful here: if c-fibers firing is identical to pain, then the fact that c-fibers firing causes me to wince straightforwardly entails that pain causes me to wince. However, the conceptualization of c-fibers is going to do all the heavy lifting in terms of what predictions we make about the physical world, since the conceptualization of pain won’t include anything about the quale’s physical structure. This means that even though we know a posteriori that pain and c-fibers are identical, and even though we could maybe even make a priori predictions about how c-fibers effect the physical world, we can nonetheless make no a priori predictions about how pain effects the physical world.
@@ApologeticsSquared If c-fibers firing causes brain state B1 and B1 leads to avoidance behavior in one organism and c-fibers firing causes brain state B2 and B2 leads to pursuance behavior than evolution can select for the B1 organism. And then we just happen to label B1 as pain and B2 as pleasure. There is no extra prediction to make about how pain effects the physical world, pain simply is B1. I know this probably doesn't change what you're trying to say but I would say c-fibers are the stimulus and are not identical to pain. I would say that pain is a brain state and like what you would see in an fMRI. Furthermore, if evolution is selecting for how stimuli get mapped to brain states and brain states get mapped to responses, we should expect all sorts of perceptual illusions and quirks. If I assume theism is true, I would be surprised to learn that there are perceptual illusions.
// And then we just happen to label B1 as pain and B2 as pleasure. // I would disagree. I think that there is a first-person experience of feeling/conceptualizing pain, and this feeling is inherently bad [footnote 1] no matter how we label it. In an a priori epistemically possible world where B1 felt like pleasure (i.e. what it's like to experience B1 in this world is what it's like to experience B2 in the actual world), there would be disharmony, because an inherently good mental state experienced whenever something bad happens to the body. [1] Okay, so saying pain is inherently bad is a metaphysically charged claim that lots of people will disagree with. But, there's some way that atheists can run the Problem of Evil, right? How does that work? Well, maybe we can say that, "Conditional on theism, pain is inherently bad." Or something. The specific method isn't important. What is important is that whatever method the Problem of Evil proponent uses to say theism predicts no pain would exist, I'm going to use that method to predict that pain would be felt when something bad happens to one's body, given theism.
I think there is also a dilemma here. Either
1. Qualia are a part of brain activity and contribute to the decision making process which evolution could then exert selection pressures on (or prevent life from evolving at all if the “PH Laws” are constant/universal and not “harmonious”).
Or
2. Qualia are not a part of the brain activity and do not contribute to decision making in which case you have an even stronger problem of evil because experiences like pain serve no purpose.
By holding to the view that "PH Laws" are baked into the universe it seems Squared has to fall on horn 2.
This is where you’ve lost me. Gonna sit on these ideas for a while and rewatch the video. I’ll rewatch the whole playlist at the end too. But I’m confused about why evolution cannot create psychophysical harmony.
Same here I’m just confused
think of human as a dead robot which follows what the programming selected by evolution, it doesn't matter what the mental state is, as long you have any experience(pleasure, pain or strawberry flavour)produce by your brain, and your body produce appropriate action(move away or run)that helps you survive, that's all there is. It's the action that helps you survive, not how you feel.
Evolution CAN create psychophysical harmony via epigenetics but the presenter seems to have an outdated understanding of evolution. The Weismann barrier isn't real and it never had any proof, it was just assumed to be real. Meaning: sentient life has a tiny degree of agency in the process of evolution
Evolution happens within the existing physical laws, but only a subset of physical processess happen in living organism (all lifeforms we know are largely based on water and carbon, for example). Because only a subset of all possible physical processes are useful for survival and reproduction.
It stands to reason that if qualia influence physical events, the same would be true for psychophysical laws: Evolution happens within the existing psychophysical laws, but only a subset of psychophysical events possible within the existing psychophysical laws happen in living organism. A chaotic subjective experience would not be useful for survival and reproduction.
For the psychopyhsical argument to survive evolution you would need to show that there are possible subjective experiences that are just as useful for survival and reproduction (which means that they would need to be non-chaotic, varied, and tied in predictable patterns to physical events), but nonetheless disharmonious.
For the example mentioned in this videos you would need to answer the following questions with "yes":
1) Could you switch the sensation of pain with the sensation of pleasure in all instances while keeping everything else the same (meaning we would dislike pleasure and try to avoid it)?
2) If you answer (1) with yes, would such an experience be disharmonious?
So far I do not know what the answer to either question is, so I consider it possible the psychophysical argument can work, but I am not convinced for now.
Ah, I was waiting for the more controversial claim. The fact that a priori one can't predict what brain states will correspond with certain mental states does not show that evolution isn't likely to favor certain physical states (i.e. injuring one's self) that result in certain mental states (i.e. pain) because of the survival benefit. To deny this is to affirm epiphenomenalism where mental states have zero power over physical states. Since epiphenomenalism is false it is quite obvious that pain does result in better survival behaviors after being injured than no pain or pleasure. We have actual evidence of this from people who suffer from conditions where they won't notice seriousl injuries because they won't feel pain from them.
Great video, with this whole psychophysical harmony thing I’m just stuck on how are we to know that we are not in psychophysical chaos right now? And what defines what is harmonious versus chaotic?
Squared, do you think that psychophysical laws are identical for all individuals? Do they remain constant across generations?
I noticed your conversation with @Finfie and it appears that you do believe they are universal and unchanging. I'll address my concerns there.
But those mental things are physical (even if this can't be known a priori). Evolution only cares about physical stuff... and qualia are included there. Evolution isn't a priori knowledge, so it's not clear why we're only allowed to use a priori knowledge to get its predictions.
Even if mental things are physical, this would only entail that they are not *metaphysically* probabilistically independently. However, they are nonetheless a priori epistemically probabilistically independent (hereafter “APEPI” because MAN that’s a long modifier).
Now, the reason we’re talking about evolution here is because the best theory of how to get organisms given naturalism (or “the hypothesis of indifference” more broadly) is going to be unguided evolution. So, what unguided evolution predicts about organisms is what naturalism/indifference predicts about organisms.
@@ApologeticsSquared What is? The physical from the physical? you're comparing the same category and saying it's different, by definition it isn't unless you are specific and you can't afford to do that lol.
@@ApologeticsSquared maybe u should make a longer video (like 30 mins) that addresses questions about ur assumption or maybe some sort of abridge compolation
@@ApologeticsSquared Okay, but even if they are independent a priori, they're not independent a posteriori. So evolution can be used to explain mental stuff, you just need to bring in the a posteriori conclusion that the mental is physical.
@@Nickesponja Hi nice to see you here. Remember me? Let me quote our last discussion:
// In any case, Squared will surely make a video on evolution as part of this series, and there will be more discussion there.
What do you say, was that video what you hoped for?
Im willing to say qualia might exist (i don't care for the content of the qualia) but what is it relationship with the physical world
If you felt pleasure from h&rt/ng your body then everyone would damage themselves to the point of unfitness. And any other creature that was the opposite would avoid hurting themselves and would therefore would be more fit and would dominate and diversify.
Do creatures take actions depending upon the qualia experience? Because if qualia exist and causes no physical affects such as memory or behavioral response then it probably doesn't exist. What empirical evidence is there for the shape of relationship between qualia and the physical u believe in?
Squared, would you step on a lego brick for a dollar?
This is not meant to be an insult btw. It’s a serious question getting at the connection between quale and behavior.
Yes. (Barring weird extraneous circumstances.)
@@ApologeticsSquared Okay, what about walking across a room of legos for a penny? I was trying to come up with a scenario where there is no lasting physical harm but that the pain would outweigh the benefit.
If it took me ten seconds to walk across a room for a penny, that would work out to a salary of $3.60/hour. So, no; that wouldn’t even be paying me minimum wage!
@@ApologeticsSquared, what I was trying to get at is whether or not you think qualia, like pain, influence decision making and behavior at all? I guess my questions weren't very good at leading into that.
The physical stimulus and the mental sensation may be probabilistically independent but so what? The outcome, i.e. the behavioral response, clearly isn't probabilistically independent of the stimulus, since an avoidance reaction to a harmful stimulus would obviously be favored by natural selection. I don't think these psychophysical laws are actually laws in any meaningful sense. Just like there's nothing special about a winning lottery number, there's also nothing special about the combination of stimuli and sensations that we see - it's just the combination that evolution happened to come up with. I don't see why we couldn't have completely different combinations as long as the resulting behavioral response helps us survive.
If you believe that the psychophysical laws have some innate quality of goodness that is independent of our biology, then what metric for goodness are you using? If the goodness has nothing to do with enhancing our chances of survival then how do you determine that a particular sensation in reaction to a stimulus is good?
Also in what does this pyscho-phiscal-harmony exist or to put another way how does it work because researchers have prove that there are consistent ways in which we view reality is false Vsauce has a lot of videos about that
Squared i would like to continue our conversation here since it seems fitting. You already agreed that a variety of different and harmonious sensations/quales would increase survivalbillity in agents that are dependant on those sensations to make decisions on how to act. Thus evolution would (if it could) select for psychophysyical harmony.
The only thing we disagree on is if the psychophysical laws are something universal that is baked into the universe or if they are our observed generalisations of quale-combinations and can change.
I think there is pretty good evidence that something like universal psychophysical laws do not exist. If i stub my toe, the sensation i experience will be different to somebody else doing the exact same thing. There will be people who wouldn't even call this experience as "pain". The inner worlds of all people seems to be highly individualized, with only some general corollaries and nothing close to resembling a set of universal laws.
I think the black/blue, white/gold dress illusion is a brilliant example of how we definitely perceive the world differently. Perceptual illusions are also a great demonstration of how our qualia are a product of evolution, tuned to aid in survival rather than some harmonious law baked into the fabric of the universe by an omnipotent being.
Synesthesia is another great example that I would love to get Squared's thoughts on. If psychophysical laws are constant/universal, how do you explain synesthesia?
@@johnfeusi9233 true that is also a good example. There are so many things that disprove his asertions....
I'll copy/past from another reply:
I think we may be using the term "psychophysical laws" differently. I use the term to be an exhaustive description of how the physical world correlates to the mental. If Alice has brain state B1 and mental state M1, and Bob has brain state B2 and mental state M2, it's not like Alice has her own psychophysical laws {B1 -> M1} and Bob has his own psychophysical laws {B2 -> M2}. I would say that there's only one set of psychophysical laws: {B1 -> M1, B2 -> M2}.
Now, one point I want to clarify is in regards to your point that // Some people are pain-insensitive and do not have any quale in response to the firing of c-fibers at all. //
I think an analogy with physics would be helpful. Imagine you're learning physics and you're told that objects fall at a rate of 9.8 meters per second squared, denoted y = y0-9.8t^2. Well, this isn't true. If you drop a piece of paper and a metal ball, the paper would fall slower because of air resistance. But the physics equation y = y0-9.8t^2 gets super complicated if you factor in air resistance. Notice, there aren't different laws of physics for the piece of paper and the metal ball. They follow the same laws of physics. And those laws of physics lead to the result that, usually, y = y0-9.8t^2 is a good approximation of what path objects will follow. But it's precisely that the paper does follow those laws that it doesn't fall according to the equation y = y0-9.8t^2.
Now, when I say, "c-fibers are connected to pain," I mean this in an analogous sense to y = y0-9.8t^2. Okay, the actual laws are way way more complicated. Those actual laws are going to lead to some people experiencing pain when their c-fibers fire, and with other people will experience nothing when their c-fibers fire. But, generally, "c-fibers are connected to pain" are an approximate idealization.
So what are the actual psychophysical laws? Well, just as studying physics improves our incomplete understanding of the physical laws, studying neuroscience will increase our incomplete understanding of the psychophysical laws.
Hope that helps!
@@ApologeticsSquared But what evidence do you have that there is a universal mapping of {B1->M1, B2->M2, ...}? I remember in high school when my physics teacher demonstrated that feathers and lead balls fall at the same rate if you neglect air resistance by putting them in a vacuum. How can you demonstrate that if you put someone in the same brain state B1 they will experience the same mental state M1?
Now I also can't demonstrate that two people who have the same brain state B1 won't have two different mental states until we can overcome the hard problem of consciousness. But it seems like The Dress illusion comes awfully close and is a very unexpected result if in fact there is a universal PH law.
This whole argument seems to rest heavily on the premise that qualia, as mere outgrowths of complex brain activity, do not, BY DEFAULT, affect the physical, & that it’s even possible to have evolved qualia that do not match the experience. I know some people may claim this, but it’s just silly. Mental states clearly affect the physical or else our physical bodies would not be able to speak or write about them!
It seems that most of the information fed to our brain affects qualia, & that our mental deliberations affect the movements of our physical bodies & consequently other objects.
I’m taking the physicalist role here: if the faculty of qualia evolved parallel to other faculties, then creatures with best matched experiences would have a clear survival edge.
I would point out that some people like being spanked during sex. How’s that for harmony?
(1/2) Squared doesn't understand Evolution:
0:09 "Can we evolve towards psychophysical harmony?" Yes. Although evolution doesn't use terms like "psychophysical harmony" because it is too vague of terminology and too heavily defined by relation to a subjective preconceived model .
0:17 "Evolution makes the physical world *look* a certain way" Tricky wording. It makes the biological process *function* a certain way, but Squared doesn't want to say that because it destroys his entire argument.
0:45 "it's impossible for evolution to increased/decrease the probability of psychophysical harmony." It is very possible, psychophysical harmony relies on the physical body, which evolution influences.
0:59 "Evolution can't control the psychophysical laws." Yes it can, all of our senses are dictated through evolution, therefore it will influence and change how "harmonious" an animal is or is not. If an animal is nearly blind (the rhino) it will experience high levels of disharmony, but something with enhanced vision (a hawk) will experience greater harmony. And this is just sight, you can apply this to animals with greater or lesser sensory abilities in any area. Dogs can smell several times what humans can and certain animals barely have the ability to smell if at all.
1:30 "Evolution wouldn't behave any differently." Tricky wording. Evolution behaves the same either way, but the species and the after effect would dictate that one would be much more likely to survive than the other. Which IS a physical difference in the world.
1:40 "Evolution doesn't tell us how they violate the laws of physics" Violating physics isn't technically possible under evolution, it would just be using a non-understood physics understanding used by the organism, so this was a bad/terrible point to make by Squared.
2:23 "Evolution can only influence the physical world" Which is 1/2 of psychophysical harmony under dualism and 100% of psychophysical harmony under identity theory.
2:40 "No matter how evolution pans out you can always find tons of apriori epistemically possible psychophysical laws." Yeah but "i can imagine it different" doesn't give us predictive power and doesn't mean anything for an argument.
Yea it Can you at least agree that the vast majority of epistemically possible worlds have psychophysical disharmony? And evolution only works if it is even possible to have these psychophysical laws. Most worlds would not connect C fibers to pain
@blankspace2891 In an imaginary hypothetical it doesn't matter if there are more disharmony potentials that you can imagine, evolution is going to use natural selection for increased harmony as long as it increases survival rate.
If there are X disharmony for c fibers and Y harmony, eventually that number will be more favorable to Y to the point that X might not exist anymore due to the genetic selection pool.
Also Squared doesn't want to admit it, but this stuff can apply to microbiology and then his whole red herring of dualism / identity theory goes out the window and he's plain wrong.
@blankspace2891 The vast majority of physical worlds with disharmony do not result in species that continue to survive and reproduce with said disharmony.
(2/2) Weird claims by Squared that are wrong:
0:35 "The physical and mental are apriori probabilistically independent." Not for identity theory.
1:05 " Unless we say that qualia violate the laws of physics" What does this even mean? What law of physics is being violated and how?
1:20 "The physical behavior would be the same" Nope, under identity theory or dualism this is just not true.
Identity theory states that pleasure is a byproduct of certain hormones like dopamine releasing, which would generate a different behavioral pattern and is a different physical pattern altogether, much less not from C-Fibers firing either.
Dualism would state that the person is able to experience either one but would take actions from the qualia dependent on that qualia.
1:35 "If we do say that qualia violate the laws of physics" again, what about qualia would be violating the laws of physics in any way?
2:30" You need specific psychophysical laws." No you don't. Psychophysical laws are (INTENTIONALLY) not specific and so is psychophysical "harmony" and "disharmony", these are relational terms meant to convey a general "mind / body connection" but Squared has not given ONE specific psychophysical law that is not easily pointed out to be inconsistent (not a law) or vague.
I thought u be here before me
You know, it's funny: it turns out that we *do* live in a world where the mental qualia and our reactions are out of sync. We just think they're in sync because they happen to cause the right reactions.
That means they are in sync?
@@blankspace2891 No. They're out of sync.
@@sthelenskungfu if they cause the right reactions then they're in sync silly
@@tomoldaker1268 They seem to be in sync. We think they're in sync because we've been told they're in sync. But the actual state internally is that pain is positive. But since he causes us to recoil anyway, we don't know any better.
It seems like here you've said either dualism is true or qualia break the laws of physics, which seems like a false dichotomy to me. I would argue that qualia are in fact physical or that there is no such thing as the mental. Obviously rejecting dualism means I would need to tackle the hard problem of consciousness but that's an entirely separate argument.
It can be the case that x is identical to y without our conceptualization of x being the same as our conceptualization of y. For example, the concept of water includes something like {substance that is drinkable, substance that is clear, substance that is found in our oceans, what raindrops are made of, ...}. The concept of H2O includes something like {substance whose molecules contain 1 oxygen atom, substance whose molecules contain 2 hydrogen atoms, ...}. Now, water is identical to H2O. But we did not always know this. We did experiments, like splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, to learn that water is H2O. We humans couldn't discover water = H2O a priori, because there wasn't anything within the concept of H2O that allowed us to discover that it was water.
Now, if the quale of pain is identical to something like a c-fiber firing, there are still two conceptualizations of this quale. The concept of the quale of pain is something like, {hurts, what you feel when you stub your toe, ...}. The concept of a c-fiber firing is something like {neuron with ion channels opening, ...}. When I say that qualia don't violate the laws of physics, I mean that nothing within the concept of the quale of pain includes violating the laws of physics.
@@ApologeticsSquared Okay. So are you still saying this argument is agnostic with regards to dualism? And do you agree that *if* dualism is false then qualia influencing decision making and the behavior of organisms is plausible?
Yes, this argument is agnostic towards dualism.
And we need to be careful here: if c-fibers firing is identical to pain, then the fact that c-fibers firing causes me to wince straightforwardly entails that pain causes me to wince. However, the conceptualization of c-fibers is going to do all the heavy lifting in terms of what predictions we make about the physical world, since the conceptualization of pain won’t include anything about the quale’s physical structure. This means that even though we know a posteriori that pain and c-fibers are identical, and even though we could maybe even make a priori predictions about how c-fibers effect the physical world, we can nonetheless make no a priori predictions about how pain effects the physical world.
@@ApologeticsSquared If c-fibers firing causes brain state B1 and B1 leads to avoidance behavior in one organism and c-fibers firing causes brain state B2 and B2 leads to pursuance behavior than evolution can select for the B1 organism. And then we just happen to label B1 as pain and B2 as pleasure. There is no extra prediction to make about how pain effects the physical world, pain simply is B1.
I know this probably doesn't change what you're trying to say but I would say c-fibers are the stimulus and are not identical to pain. I would say that pain is a brain state and like what you would see in an fMRI.
Furthermore, if evolution is selecting for how stimuli get mapped to brain states and brain states get mapped to responses, we should expect all sorts of perceptual illusions and quirks. If I assume theism is true, I would be surprised to learn that there are perceptual illusions.
// And then we just happen to label B1 as pain and B2 as pleasure. //
I would disagree. I think that there is a first-person experience of feeling/conceptualizing pain, and this feeling is inherently bad [footnote 1] no matter how we label it. In an a priori epistemically possible world where B1 felt like pleasure (i.e. what it's like to experience B1 in this world is what it's like to experience B2 in the actual world), there would be disharmony, because an inherently good mental state experienced whenever something bad happens to the body.
[1] Okay, so saying pain is inherently bad is a metaphysically charged claim that lots of people will disagree with. But, there's some way that atheists can run the Problem of Evil, right? How does that work? Well, maybe we can say that, "Conditional on theism, pain is inherently bad." Or something. The specific method isn't important. What is important is that whatever method the Problem of Evil proponent uses to say theism predicts no pain would exist, I'm going to use that method to predict that pain would be felt when something bad happens to one's body, given theism.