tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12258450693351975962024-03-26T23:38:02.739-07:00in consciousness we trustblog of cognitive neuroscientist hakwan lau
https://www.psych.ucla.edu/faculty/page/hakwanHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-17862150310811121052020-08-09T12:09:00.008-07:002020-08-09T18:30:53.966-07:00on being taken seriously<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">yesterday i posted <a href="https://twitter.com/hakwanlau/status/1292182065358635008?s=20" target="_blank">this on twitter</a>. didn't think of doing it here coz it's a rather simple point. basically i think some panpsychists have been making claims that i find less than intellectually honest, and i have made a complaint to SEP like i said i would. SEP responded promptly and made the author(s) change the text, so that's that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">the claim concerns whether panpsychism is taken seriously by neuroscientists these days. to my mind the obvious answer is no. but there is a tricky sense in which if you can find a couple of neuroscientists who support the view, the positive claim is logically satisfied</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">this was exactly what Dave Chalmers said on FB, when i brought up the issue in public first. yesterday i referred to the exchange as 'low rhetorics'. but i was promptly told that Dave was actually also part of the editorial process that lead to the change of the text. so he probably didn't intend for it to be a very serious or strong defense. i made a note of clarification and apologies on twitter then.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">that said, i didn't know it back then. the point was something said in public. and others e.g. Neil Levy joined in to defend it. together with the lack of response from the author (Philip Goff; turns out he was busy; maybe i should have waited longer), i went ahead and shot SEP the email. just as expected, there wasn't much argument about the case.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">so there's little to be surly about. but there's a small part of the argument that is perhaps interesting. so Dave's point was if X is taken seriously by a few members of Y, it is *logically* fine to say X is taken seriously by Ys. but many things are logical to say, yet silly, e.g. 'if 2+2=9, then I am a better philosopher than Dave Chalmers'</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">. certainly for a place like SEP, we'd want the content to be not just logical but also non-silly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">in particular i suggested that it may make sense for one to at least restrict the statement to cases when X is taken seriously by 50% of members of Y or more. Dave and others suggested maybe that's too high a cutoff. perhaps 20% would pass the mark for non-silliness (or something like that).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">but i'm not sure. let's say 20% of members of Y take X seriously. so we say 'X is taken seriously by Y'. but it also means 80% of Ys do NOT take X seriously. so certainly, it is just as logical to say 'X is not taken seriously by Y'. so we should allow people to say 'X is taken seriously by Y, and X is also not taken seriously by Y'. or we can say that 'X is taken seriously by Y; the negation of this statement is also true'. or: 'it is both true and untrue that X is taken seriously by Y'.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">that's just ..... silly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">but anyway, silliness aside, i don't really feel so strongly about it; mostly just brought up the above for fun. in large part becoz i think it is already a lost cause. some authors will find other rhetorics to promote the view, as they already do. an easy way would be so say the view is endorsed by some 'leading neuroscientist'. again, leading is a pretty subjective thing. there is a sense in which e.g. Christof Koch is a 'leading' neuroscientist, just as Christof likes to unilaterally profess that his preferred theory is 'dominant', 'leading', etc. there's not much to do about it other than to shrug. i too think those old Crick and Koch papers are important and positively influential. but i am not sure many of us think that Christof these days still represents the field we're in. so the situation may be a bit like citing Eccles to say that some of the most accomplished neuroscientists (Nobel laureate no less) were dualists.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">yes, yes, you can say that. there are only so many complaint emails i would care to write, and not all editors are reasonable. but why would you want to do that? </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">if you have to cheat this much to promote your view it probably just isn't worth promoting or having, is it?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">ok enough about sociology. i may eventually write a post about other problems of panpsychism too. most of us don't like it for scientific reasons, but over the past months i did dig into the philosophy a bit. but i must say, there i'm not so impressed either.....</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">ps - someone suggested that there may be a difference in standards between science and philo re: what count as being taken seriously. i think that's right, philosophers are meant to consider far-fetched ideas more carefully; that's part of their job. i ran some twitter polls which seem to confirm that too. but if that's so, they should still be careful in saying that certain *scientific* discipline takes their ideas seriously. that's not how it works for us. if we feel misrepresented, it will just get harder for us scientists to take them seriously. and this may be hurting not just panpsychism but philosophy the discipline as a whole.</span></p>Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-43999069478515470342020-08-08T14:09:00.002-07:002020-08-09T03:16:58.890-07:00zombies<p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Zombies are hypothetical creatures which are functionally identical to us, but they lack qualia altogether. If they are possible, functionalism can’t be right. If such possibilities are conceivable, perhaps it means that functionalism is at least conceivably wrong.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are a few senses in which zombies can be functionally identical to us. Suppose we merely mean they can refer to and act on the same objects in the world like we do. Then sure some robot-like creatures can interact with objects in the world without being conscious. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But if we mean that they are functionally fully identical to us, as in the whole mental algorithm is consistent with what we have, then we should recognize that they can’t be coherently conceived to be nonconscious. Such ‘zombies’ will know what it is </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">like</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to have certain experiences. They can tell you scarlet is a bit like crimson, not much like pink or purple, etc, from a subjective point of view. This means, if you ask them if there is something it is like to see colors, they will truthfully say yes, for the same reasons we do. On the other hand, if you ask them what it is like to experience some subthreshold firing of neurons in the visual cortex, it should draw a blank. And this would not be merely because they don’t know enough about neuroscience. Even if you actually stimulate their visual cortices that way, they still wouldn’t know what you were talking about. In this sense, they are just like us.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, the anti-functionalist can say that they only </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">behave</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> talk </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as if they consciously see. But how else do you know if anyone is conscious, besides their expressing that they think so and your lack of reason to doubt that they are lying or deluded? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s say we have some Martians, who truthfully agree with us that there is something it is like to see red and other colors. And yet, when asked what it is like to smell, it draws a blank. If odors could nevertheless influence their behavior, we probably would think that they have olfactory processing. In that case, what else apart from consciousness can account for the difference between their vision and olfaction? According to them, in one modality, there is something it is like, and in the other, there isn’t. If they aren’t lying or crazy, what else is the difference?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is to say, <i>if</i> a creature is </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">capable</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of thinking meaningfully whether there is something it is like to have a certain experience, then whether the creature is inclined to truthfully think so </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the truth of the matter</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. As such</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">zombies in a fully functional sense are simply not coherently conceivable. Either they truthfully think there is something it is like to have some experiences, in which case they aren’t zombies; or they do not think so, in which case they are not functionally like us at all.</span></p><p>[this literature is vast and mine will never be the last words, of coz. hence this is a blogpost not a paper. my goal is just to hopefully convince some of my scientist colleagues that some functionalist defense is possible, and it needn't be overly complicated.]</p>Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-35229642259399351532020-08-03T14:25:00.019-07:002020-09-02T15:25:35.628-07:00Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness Trainee Recruitment Conference<div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Hi everyone,</span></div><div><br /></div><div><font face="verdana">In a <a href="https://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2020/06/how-not-to-apply-to-phd-program-in.html" target="_blank">previous post</a> I discussed the tricky business of finding a suitable lab for grad school in this field. After some discussion with lab members and colleagues we are now organizing the following event:</font></div><div><br /></div><div><i><font face="verdana">- What is it about? </font></i></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><font face="verdana">The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness Trainee Recruitment Conference 2020 (link to registration <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeTQaVn1O89UPjkbbHIn9plLcsUnEzwxR-LnNn-URkT3sLDyA/viewform?usp=sf_link" target="_blank">here</a>) will feature 12 PIs in the field. Most of them will have short videos uploaded in the coming few weeks, to showcase some current projects in their labs. There will then be 3 panel sessions where registered attendees can ask questions and discuss with the PIs about the presented projects, working in their labs, career advice, grad school applications, etc.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><i style="font-family: verdana;">- When are the meetings? Who are the PIs?</i></div><div><font face="verdana"><i><br /></i></font></div><div><font face="verdana">They are <strike>tentatively</strike> scheduled as follows:</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><font face="verdana">Aug 26 Wed 11am (PST) will feature <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wiaB6LZPxs" target="_blank">Rachel Denison</a> (Boston University), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mv7dR5F5T4&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Tony Ro</a> (City University of New York), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3swiuTfKks" target="_blank">Jason Samaha</a> (UC Santa Cruz), & <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxvG6Mk1ukw&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Emily Ward</a> (U Wisconsin-Madison)</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><font face="verdana">Sep 1 Tues 11am (PST) will feature Eve Isham (U Arizona), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTH05N5lBB4&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Brian Odegaard</a> (U Florida), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgOJIpbnoVY&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Giancarlo Vanini</a> (U Michigan), Caroline Robertson (Dartmouth) </font></div><div><font face="verdana"><i>-- Update: Profs Isham & Robertson will not be putting up videos; please check their websites for their researc</i></font><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>h: </i></span></div><div><a href="http://cat.lab.arizona.edu/">http://cat.lab.arizona.edu/</a><br /><a href="https://pbs.dartmouth.edu/people/caroline-robertson">https://pbs.dartmouth.edu/people/caroline-robertson</a></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><font face="verdana">Sep 3 Thur 11am (PST) will feature <a href="https://youtu.be/9AI0ZGsWQDU" target="_blank">Ruth Rosenholtz</a> (MIT), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eCIGrIfz6M" target="_blank">Megan Peters</a> (UC Irvine), Michael Cohen (Amherst), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=797aDn5Nofw&t=2s" target="_blank">Phil Corlett</a> (Yale)</font></div><div><font face="verdana">-- <i>Update: Prof Cohen won't be putting up a video; please check his research website @ </i></font><a href="http://www.michaelacohen.net/">http://www.michaelacohen.net/</a></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">We expect each meeting to last for about an hour.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><font face="verdana">- <i>Where will the meetings take place?</i></font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><font face="verdana">These will be virtual meetings online. We plan to use Zoom.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><i><font face="verdana">- Who can attend?</font></i></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><font face="verdana">The meetings are primarily for trainees, broadly defined to include prospective grad students, research assistants, and postdocs. But others are welcome too. All you need to do is to <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeTQaVn1O89UPjkbbHIn9plLcsUnEzwxR-LnNn-URkT3sLDyA/viewform" target="_blank">register here</a> with a correct email address so as to receive further information for the Zoom meetings.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><font face="verdana">But please be reminded that the meetings will take a semi-synchronous format, that is we will not show the videos at the meeting. You should watch them prior to the meeting, during which we'll go straight to Q&A.</font></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">- </span><i style="font-family: verdana;">Where do I find the videos?</i></div><div><font face="verdana"><i><br /></i></font></div><div><font face="verdana">Watch this space. Links to the videos / background materials will be added gradually in the coming weeks, as hyperlinks associated with the names of the PIs listed in the schedule above. For example, you can click on Ruth Rosenholtz's name for her video.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><i style="font-family: verdana;">- Do I have to pay?</i></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><font face="verdana">No, although you have to register to attend the meeting, it is free.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">- </span><i style="font-family: verdana;">Who are the organizers?</i></div><div><font face="verdana"><i><br /></i></font></div><div><font face="verdana">All the work has been done by Cody Cushing and Taylor Webb from my lab, together with our frequent collaborator Matthias Michel.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><i style="font-family: verdana;">- Why are all the labs featured based in the US?</i></div><div><font face="verdana"><br /></font></div><div><font face="verdana">Sorry but this is the purpose and current scope of the meeting. The field faces unique challenges in US, due to various factors including funding structure and popular media misrepresentation. Perhaps in the future others will set up similar meetings for other regions too. For now, please forgive our limited logistical bandwidth.</font></div><div><font face="verdana"><i><br /></i></font></div><div><i style="font-family: verdana;">- I have a question not covered above ....</i></div><div><font face="verdana"><i><br /></i></font></div><div><font face="verdana">The ideal place may be to <a href="https://twitter.com/hakwanlau/status/1290400033112694785?s=20" target="_blank">ask me on twitter</a>, so others can see the question and my response to it too.</font></div>Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-91726461785650276972020-07-23T00:00:00.000-07:002020-07-23T00:00:13.142-07:00Mary & Maru<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In Jackson’s knowledge argument, Mary is a talented color scientist, who was prevented from seeing color since birth. Despite that deprivation, she has studied all there is to know about color processing. When she finally sees something red for the first time, will she learn something new? The argument goes that she probably will, and it means that there is something to having a conscious experience that outstrips representational knowledge, and perhaps also functionalism as a result. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Empirically, we know that sensory deprivation of this kind can severely limit normal brain development. After years of such deprivation, chances are her ability to see color may be permanently gone, or drastically changed somehow. To assume that she can see red exactly like we do is to force our imagination through some plausibly incoherent assumptions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So instead, why don’t we consider a more realistic example that would serve the same purpose: Maru is a young child who has never tasted natto before. Genetically, she is a supertaster. Like many young children in her culture, she can cook simple meals for herself. She is deeply interested in food and culinary art. But her own parents dislike natto, which is not so uncommon in her culture. So she has never tried it. She heard that it has such a distinctive flavor that either she will love it or hate it. She has been told that natto is basically a kind of fermented soybean. So it is in a way like miso, although the flavor driven by the fementedness is a lot more intense. It is not necessarily as salty, but it is even funkier than old cheese, or Chinese fermented bean curd. In fact, it is on the level of Taiwanese stinky tofu, although for natto the intensity is more on the palette than on the nose. It has a gooey texture, like it is mixed with raw egg white or something. It’s basically </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ineffable</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> what it is like, she’s been told. She has to try it to find out herself</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The inquisitive and imaginative Maru-chan</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> asks a lot of questions about this curious food. She regularly thinks about what it would taste like. One morning, after a slumber party at her best friend’s, they have natto and rice for breakfast. So she finally gets to try it for the first time. Does she learn anything new?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Obviously, that depends on how Maru-chan’s ‘research’ has gone. But one possibility is, she may say:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> this is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">exactly</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> how I always imagined it to be!</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Based on the other experiences that are familiar to her, with some remarkable level of imagination, she might have actually figured out what it would taste like. On reflection, hasn’t that also happened to us sometimes, for other stimuli? Experiencing something for the first time doesn’t always feel so surprising. So it is possible that she will learn nothing fundamentally new. Tasting natto just confirms what she already knows without first-hand conscious experience. In that case, conscious experiences don’t necessarily</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">outstrip representational knowledge</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alternatively, it could be that Maru does learn something significantly new. Natto isn’t quite like what she’s imagined it to be. From here, perhaps she gains the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ability</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to imagine it correctly. She also learns some new self-knowledge: this is what natto tastes like </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to her</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. At a subpersonal level, some mechanisms in her brain acquire the new information that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is what the relevant sensory vehicle is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">like</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, for natto - it is a bit like the vehicles for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> other taste, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> other taste, nothing like the vehicles for the tastes of ikura, karaage, etc. This is not the sort of stuff one can learn by reading books. Even if one learns the information as a person, it doesn't mean the relevant mechanisms in the brain will get it too.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So in either case there’s no challenge to functionalism. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">P.S. </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> This story is inspired by my experience of once dining with an ardent anti-functionalist in a Japanese restaurant in downtown Manhattan. I tried to convince the adventurous philosopher not to order the natto dish, but I failed.</span></span></div>
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Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-79881045742193040172020-06-24T10:09:00.012-07:002020-06-25T09:55:13.411-07:00how (not) to apply to a phD program in psychology / neuroscience (to work on consciousness)?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
it’s that time of the year again. students are starting to think about applying for grad school. over the years i find myself giving some of the same advice to people, and thought i might as well write them down for open sharing. this is mostly from a US perspective, but some of these apply elsewhere too<br /><br /><b>(why) should one go to grad school?</b><br /><br />it shouldn’t be like this, and it is on people like me to fix the system asap … BUT the current reality is grad school pays people very little (~US$30k a year, varies from places to places), and does not offer very good career opportunities after. in the old days, if you’re in a good phD program, chances are you’ll become a professor one day, if you work hard towards that goal. professors aren’t paid super well either, but pay isn’t everything. we have extremely rewarding and meaningful jobs; tenure is a nice guarantee of security & freedom, and an undeniable privilege.<br /><br />but the old days are gone. you should look up the phD -to-tenure-track (faculty position) ratio yourself. it doesn’t look so good. they say with a phD there are also non-academic career opportunities. that’s correct. but many people also have doubts about whether the years of training are really worth it. again, it is on people like myself to make sure we equip trainees with more transferable skills. but one thing to consider is the sheer opportunity cost of being in grad school for a good half a decade. it can be fun, but it can also be stressful. but above all, you will not be getting the industry training and wages during those years. you get to have your phD, but in sense, you’ll also be missing a head start, if industry is ultimately your destiny. a few years’ head start during the prime of your years is a lot.<div>
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the issue is complicated and i don’t draw any firm conclusions here. you have to figure it out yourself. i’m only suggesting you think this through carefully. ask people for advice, but understand too that there may be a bias: if they are already successful in academia there may be a sampling bias re: how good their experiences have been. or even if they aren’t having such a good time, there’s a psychological factor that people tend to avoid being too discouraging and negative. especially if they feel it is their jobs to defend and to promote their discipline, rather than to badmouth it. this kind of sense of loyalty to one’s discipline is understandably common. so, one needs to give it some thoughts re: how to get the hard facts. ask the questions more directly, if you’re unsure. that tends to help.</div>
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<br />despite these caveats, i think there is at least one very good reason to apply to grad school: if this is your calling, perhaps you just have to. sometimes in life we choose to do things knowing full well it is hard. maybe the odds are stacked against us. we know we may not be compensated generously, or even fairly. but we just can’t see ourselves doing anything else. or better still - we thought through the other options, and even if they pay better, are more secure, etc, they just aren’t nearly as appealing. that, to me, is one good reason to go ahead and take the plunge. of course, you may or may not agree with this. the above is more like life advice rather than professional advice.</div>
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what i said here will probably be misunderstood by some. perhaps it can’t be helped, but let me re-emphasize: i am not trying to normalize the situation, to say that people should be prepared to sacrifice. i totally believe that the system should be kinder to them. just like jazz musicians shouldn’t be expected to starve in order to play great music. i agree, and i am fully aware it is on people like myself to fix this problem for academia. but i also feel that, meanwhile, it’s my responsibility to tell people the truth re: what to expect for now.</div>
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<b>how to choose a suitable school & PI?</b></div>
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the first thing is: start thinking about this early. like, ideally, a year or months before your application. ask your academic mentors for advice. multiple of them. cold call people if necessary - many people are actually willing to give free advice to people in your position. they understand this can be a confusing stage to be at. they’ve been there.</div>
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the reason why you really need to absolutely think this through, re: whom to work with, is that it will matter <u>a lot</u> for your grad school experience <u>and</u> also your career prospects after. often this factor (PI, i.e. your primary advisor / head of the lab) is much more important than the general prestige of the school / program. unfortunately, some PIs aren’t as on top of things as others. some may be better at placing their students in desirable jobs than others. some may give you more freedom. some may give you so much freedom that there isn’t enough guidance for you - so it sometimes is a matter of style and match too. <i>however,</i> very unfortunately, unprofessional, exploitative PIs do exist, <i>even in the best phD programs.</i> the tenure system means it is not so easy to get rid of them….<br /><br />... which leads to the interesting consideration of the trade-off between working with someone junior or senior. senior people have a proven track record, and sometimes can offer you better career and research opportunities. junior (i.e. pre-tenured) PIs may lack such experience. but they may be ‘hungrier’. they need to succeed themselves, and thereby they also need you to succeed somewhat. if things don’t go well, it hurts their careers too.<br /><br />but if the above analysis is right, of course the worst scenario would be a senior PI who isn’t so great to work with. they have tenure, and little to lose. they may have decades of experience dishing out not-so-great experiences to students. and if they made it this far, they gotta be good at (hiding) it. you probably wouldn’t stand a chance against them. (sorry to have to put it in such a scary way!)<br /><br />so write to the PI. meet and talk with them if they are willing. talk to others about the PI’s reputation. how is their work received by their peers (who will in turn evaluate your own work in the future)? talk to their alumni. what was it like to work with the PI? sometimes people are more willing to tell you things truthfully on the phone rather than through emails. this may sound surprising if not utterly messed up: but people are often worried about retaliation for whistleblowing. of coz, don’t take any one-sided gossips at face value - but when you talk to enough people you should get the overall picture. this can take some work. so do all this well before the interview. i mean, well before you even apply. start now!! just email some people already.<br /><br />i cannot stress enough how important this is. getting into the wrong lab can be a really, really nasty experience. you can usually get out of the lab (with some considerable hassle), coz the program should protect you. this is one way where it matters who else is on the faculty in the program. so you aren’t choosing just the lab, unless you can be 100% sure you will stay with that lab. (but mind you, great PIs sometimes get job offers and move to different institutions too. sometimes it can happen during your phD. moving along with them can be a slightly tricky business.) but in most cases, if you join a suitable lab in the first instance, you’d be fine. it tends to work out that way.<br /><br /><b>how to choose a good lab for consciousness?</b><br /><br />this is the insanely tricky part. the first thing to realize is, in the US, consciousness remains a ‘taboo’ topic - <i>in a very specific sense:</i> mainstream federal funding for this kind of research is generally lacking. this means you will see a lot of promotion of this type of work in popular books, mass media, internet, etc., maybe even some high profile journals, some theoretical review papers. probably <i>way</i> too much. but actually, there are not really that many well-funded labs doing empirical work on the topic that is respected or taken so seriously by other scientists (see e.g. <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02134/full">this</a>, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0531-8">this</a>, or <a href="https://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2020/05/open-letter-to-nih-on-neuroethics.html">this</a>). and when you do a phD in cog neuro, typically it’s the empirical work that matters. for some solid 'good' labs, even if their research looks somewhat relevant, when you tell them you want to do a phD on consciousness with them, they may think you're being silly</div><div><br /></div><div>private funding ensures that some of this work continues to be done somehow, but from the top-tier research universities’ administrative perspective, this kind of money is not nearly as good as federal funding (e.g. via NIH / NSF). there’s the prestige factor, but there are also economic reasons. accordingly, there are fewer jobs created in these places for consciousness.<br /><br />there are two consequences. the first is that you should know what you’re getting into. in terms of intellectual stimulation and challenge, this may be the most fun topic out there. but in terms of career prospects, this may mean there are extra hurdles still. the long and short is, it can be done. many people including myself work on this and manage to not get fired somehow~ if you get in, we’ll share with you our experiences and help you out. but i feel i need to warn you about the reality early on.<br /><br />another issue is how to choose a lab to start with. lack of mainstream federal funds for this kind of work also means the work becomes relatively unconstrained by the conventional peer review mechanisms. with private funding, sometimes anything goes. together with various <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/ut8zq/">socio-historical factors</a>, things can go pretty wild, and at times unhealthily sectarian. so, in addition to all the caveats mentioned in the last section, there is an additional factor for consciousness: if you inadvertently joined a lab where the work is not considered so favorably by other academic colleagues… it may be a situation rather difficult to get out of. depending on the PIs’ style, it may not be in your interest to aggressively challenge their views too much. good PIs should value critics, but, unfortunately some are better than others at this. and if you don’t confront them as much, you may end up doing what they want you to do - then others may see you as being hopelessly indoctrinated into something rather unscientific, due to your own lack of critical thinking, etc. and these people could include your potential future employers too. so this can truly be a career disaster...<br /><br />so, all i can say is, when it comes to consciousness, handle it with care, seriously. doing a phD, even if it isn’t a sacrifice, is a major life decision. the advice in the last section applies. but for consciousness, don’t just read pop sci / news articles and go with what they say. this is true for most fields, but for our field specifically, <i>the correlation between media prominence and actual scientific quality is often strangely <u>negative</u>.</i> so by all means, do your own research early on. ask as many active researchers in the field as you can. get a diverse set of opinions. we are here to help.<br /><br />hope you don’t get too discouraged by what i say. if done right, doing a phD in consciousness can be the most wonderful experience too. i say this from my own experience, with all my heart. best of luck!<br /><br /><a href="https://www.psych.ucla.edu/faculty/page/hakwan">Hakwan Lau</a><br /><br />June 24, 2020<br /><br /><br />ps - since writing this my lab has decided to do something to help prospective grad applicants to find a suitable lab to work on consciousness in the US. follow me on twitter @hakwanlau. we’ll have something to announce in a few weeks.<br /><br /></div>
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Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-28452500394716378762020-05-28T21:36:00.001-07:002020-05-28T21:36:16.853-07:00Open letter to NIH on Neuroethics Roadmap (BRAIN initiative) 2019<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
a while back we sent the below letter. some people ask if they could refer to it. so i thought i could paste it here, so they can link to it. it was an open letter anyway<br /><br />***<br /><br />May 14, 2019<br /><br />Dear colleagues,<br /><br />Re: Neuroethics needs a balance between theory development and rigorous experimental research on consciousness<br /><br />We write in response to the <a href="https://www.braininitiative.nih.gov/strategic-planning/acd-working-group/neuroethics-roadmap">call for comments on the Neuroethics Roadmap</a>, which is part of the NIH BRAIN Initiative. We are pleased to see that research on consciousness is receiving recognition. As a group of active researchers in the relevant fields, we hope to point out some potential caveats.<br /><br />The Roadmap emphasizes the need for theoretical and mathematical models of consciousness. However, current theories are tentative and limited. To make progress, we need experiments designed to identify the neural mechanisms distinguishing conscious from unconscious processes in humans, in whom consciousness can be assessed via subjective reports. <br /><br />We believe that active research into the neural signatures of consciousness in these relatively clear cases is crucial for building and testing models of awareness in non-human primates and simpler animals, or other <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6362/486">more controversial cases</a>. For this reason, for example, it is too early to view the <a href="http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf">Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, which states that some non-human animals without a neocortex </a>are conscious, as reflecting a scientific consensus.<br /><br />Relatedly, the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness features prominently in the references cited in the Neuroethics Moonshot section of the Roadmap. While there is support for the association between consciousness and the complexity of active brain networks in humans, some have taken this relationship to generalize lawfully to all physical systems. We do not consider this interpretation to be scientifically established or testable at the moment. We note that alternative theoretical approaches are already referenced indirectly in the Moonshot section (Reference 8); <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-neuroscience/">other useful reviews are also available</a>.<br /><br />Unfortunately, despite their clear relevance to various areas of brain and mental health research, empirical projects focusing on the brain mechanisms distinguishing between conscious and unconscious processes in awake individuals currently do not receive <a href="http://rahnevlab.gatech.edu/documents/papers/Michel_etal(2019)NHB.pdf">adequate funding</a>. To test theories, we need the relevant data. As many as 58 authors in the field have recently expressed related concerns in <a href="http://rahnevlab.gatech.edu/documents/papers/Michel_etal(2019)NHB.pdf">a peer-reviewed statement. </a><br /><br />Finally, we emphasize that many potential stakeholders could contribute to the Subgroup’s discussions. For example, the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (<a href="https://theassc.org/">ASSC</a>) is an open academic society specifically dedicated to scientific research on consciousness. It could have an important dialogue with the Subgroup, and with others interested in the topic.<br /><br />Thank you for your attention. We have elected to make this letter open, as others may benefit from these clarifications on the current state of research in this area.<br /><br />Best regards,<br /><br />(in alphabetical order)<br /><br />Michele A. Basso, UCLA<br />Diane M. Beck, University of Illinois<br />James Bisley, UCLA<br />Ned Block, NYU<br />Richard Brown, Laguardia College New York<br />Denise Cai, Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine<br />David Carmel, Victoria University of Wellington<br />Axel Cleeremans, Université Libre de Bruxelles<br />Stanislas Dehaene, College de France<br />Stephen Fleming, University College London<br />Chris Frith, University College London<br />Simon van Gaal, University of Amsterdam<br />Michael E. Goldberg, Columbia University<br />Mel Goodale, Western University<br />Patrick Haggard, University College London<br />Biyu He, NYU<br />Sid Kouider, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris<br />Robert T. Knight, UC Berkeley<br />Konrad Kording, UPenn<br />Hakwan Lau, UCLA<br />Dominique Lamy, Tel Aviv University<br />Joseph LeDoux, NYU<br />Stephen Macknik, SUNY Downstate Medical Center<br />Susana Martinez-Conde, SUNY Downstate Medical Center<br />Matthias Michel, Sorbonne University<br />Lisa Miracchi, University of Pennsylvania<br />Earl K. Miller, MIT<br />Lionel Naccache, Sorbonne University, ICM<br />Adrian M. Owen, Western University<br />Richard E. Passingham, University of Oxford<br />Elizabeth Phelps, Harvard University<br />Megan A. K. Peters, UC Riverside<br />Dario Ringach, UCLA<br />Tony Ro, Graduate Center, City University of New York<br />David Rosenthal, City University of New York<br />Jérôme Sackur, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales<br />Yuka Sasaki, Brown University<br />Claire Sergent, Université de Paris<br />Anil Seth, University of Sussex<br />Michael Shadlen, Columbia University<br />Jacobo Diego Sitt, INSERM-ICM<br />Catherine Tallon-Baudry, INSERM, PSL Research University<br />Frank Tong, Vanderbilt University<br />Peter Ulric Tse, Dartmouth<br />Takeo Watanabe, Brown University<br />Thalia Wheatley, Dartmouth</div>
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-72153610732303578242020-05-14T17:04:00.011-07:002020-05-15T15:06:20.580-07:00why i am not a biopsychistmy l<a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">ast blogpost</a> was really meant to be just for fun. but i do mean it for some of the ideas defended, specifically that there are only qualia as relationally understood, wrt to other experiences a person can have. this is to say, there are really no qualia as intrinsic properties. essentially, this means i’ll take something close to what is called a Frege-Schlick view, but will extend and defend it to make it less restrictive. so under some circumstances we can compare experiences across people after all, with the caveat that we can never be completely certain about such comparisons. this will allow us to resist a whole array of challenges to functionalism, e.g. inverted spectrum, zombies, etc. expect a more serious post / draft-y paper in about a month…. <br /><br /> *** <br /><br /> meanwhile, let’s talk about a different issue, re: how an important debate within the field is taking shape. it was one of those rare moments that something useful philosophically has come out of twitter of all places… <br /> <br />in a tweet i pointed out that panpsychism isn’t really taken seriously by scientists, as some may get that illusion by reading online stuff these days. Victor Lamme challenged me to do a poll. that led to some discussions. turns out, Victor isn’t a panpsychist. surprise, surprise. and in fact, i’m not sure who really is, within the scientific community…. apart from a few *really* far out folks. <br /> <br />but Victor isn’t a functionalist like i am either. by functionalist i don’t restrict myself to specific versions of it; i definitely do NOT think consciousness supervenes on ‘long-arm’ functional properties only. basically, i include for consciousness anything that can be done using software / algorithms. so any computational, representational properties may be relevant. i just don’t think the specific substrate for implementing the software is ultimately that crucial / irreplaceable. <br /> <br />so Victor decided to call himself a biopsychist, i.e. he believes that for a creature to be conscious, the relevant substrate needs to be biological. in fact, he thinks that most if not all living organisms are conscious! <br /> <br />i thought it’s a new name, biopsychism. but very quickly i stood corrected. as Evan Thompson pointed out, the term at least traces back to Ernst Haeckl in 1892. <br /> <br />i really like this way of setting up the debate: biopsychism vs functionalism (broadly construed, as i described above). this really gets at the heart of the issue, a sensible divide within the field, with very legit people on both sides. none of that far out / strawman stuff. <br /> <br />happily Ned Block seems to approve of the term. of coz he’s a biopsychist *of some sort*. he has long argued against functionalism and representationalism. something about the substrate is what really enables conscious experiences. does he think all biological organisms are conscious? probably not. so we should distinguish between some different versions of biopsychism. below i’ll do so, and also highlights some problems i see, even with rather weak versions of biopychism. despite these misgivings, unlike my stance on panpsychism as a scientist, i think biopsychism a position worth taking seriously. <br /> <br />*** <br /> <br />the way Evan Thompson defines it, biopsychism states that all and only all living organisms are conscious. that is pretty strong. we can call this strong biopsychism or something. i think it’s quite unlikely to be true. (Evan gave a paper at PSA a couple of years ago, you can email him to ask for a copy; Peter Godfrey-Smith has also written on something related <a href="https://petergodfreysmith.com/metazoan.net/Mind_Matter_Metabolism_PGS_2015_preprint.htm">here</a>) <br /> <br />the reason is, i think it’s pretty clear that even simple perceptual experiences involve<a href="https://www.blogger.com/#"> fairly complicated computational processes</a> that may critically depend on areas of the brain that are matured late in development and evolution, e.g. areas in the prefrontal cortex. a very simple living organism is not gonna have that. <br /> <br />but my take on the empirical matter aside, there is also a pretty damning conceptual problem. so let’s say you’re seeing two different images, a cat and a monkey, in binocular rivalry. when you are consciously seeing a cat, your cat-representing neurons fire. your monkey-representing neurons fire relatively little, as you are not conscious of the image of the monkey. but now, aren’t these monkey-representing neurons biological and alive? <br /> <br />this is related to what is called the 'combination problem', which is something that panpsychists also have to deal with. ultimately, a strong biopsychist will have to say something like, ok, so when you are not consciously seeing the monkey image, the monkey-representing neurons are not signaling consciousness for you. but they are themselves conscious. you just don’t feel their consciousness even though they are in your head. <br /> <br />this leads a rather hilarious way to make Ian Philips happy, i guess: there really is no unconscious perception, as Ian has argued. unconscious perceptual processes are conscious after all, but only becoz everything in the brain is conscious, with or without you~ this is a scenario rather different from the one Ian has argued for, of coz. he’s a reasonable guy. this, on the other hand, seems….. rather weird. <br /> <br />*** <br /> <br />so some may hold a weaker version of biopsychism, and say, not all biological organisms are conscious. but if a creature is conscious, it must be biological. the relevant substrate can’t be replaced by something non-biological and yet functionally similar. if you replace it, the subjective experience will be gone, even if the subject behaves somewhat similarly. Ned is likely a biopsychist of this sort. <br /> <br />i am not sure about even this weaker version. because in biology, we look for mechanisms. not magical substrates. let’s say people found that consciousness requires a certain pattern of activity, involving some particular type of neuron, with certain transmitter receptors. then the scientific question to ask is what does it *do*. to the extent we figure out what does it do, why can’t we write down the computational algorithm that would mimic exactly what it does? then we should be able to replace it with something exactly functionally equivalent. if it does the same thing, exactly, and yet consciousness is missing... this just sounds like magic. and how are you ever gonna know? <br /> <br />but Bryce Heubner and Evan convinced me that there may be something to it. the idea is, yeah sure you can try to artificially mimic a biological mechanism. but the mechanism may be so inherently biological, that it involves implementing it in the right bio-habitat, letting it ‘survive’ on its own, do its metabolic work, etc. in that sense, yes, you may try to mimic it, but by the time you succeed…. maybe it isn’t so crazy to say that the artificial replacement is basically just as alive and biological. <br /><br />i’m still not totally sure, but it’s true that in the old days, we talked about multiple realizability as if it is commonplace. given the same function, we can implement it any way we want. but increasingly, i think people do recognize that multiple realizability is not as common as we thought. often a mechanism can really only be implemented exactly and most efficiently in just one way. <br /><br />*** <br /><br />so i’m still not sold, but i think it would make an interesting debate. and this may help the field move away from all those distractions we’ve seen in recent years too! <br /><br />thinking ahead…. i imagine what kind of biopsychic i would become, if i were to eventually come round to it. i suspect the requirement for higher ‘cognitive‘ functions, e.g. those in the prefrontal cortex, is unlikely to give. if this turns out to be empirically wrong, that’s that. but i’m fairly sure for now. if anything, i may come to accept that: if we are to implement those higher functions as the way they work exactly, in conscious creatures like ourselves, yeah, maybe you’d end up having to do something kinda biological. perhaps we can call a person holding such a position a <i>high functioning biopsychist</i>. i’m not one yet, but i got the feeling that my good friend and co-author Richard Brown may be one!
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-26224989654404519022020-04-24T13:11:00.003-07:002020-04-25T12:26:18.385-07:00mental imagery & the intuitive appeal of qualia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">since i expressed my sympathy for illusionism on twitter (@hakwanlau) a couple of months ago, friends have questioned my loyalty to sanity, and asked if i have become </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>**one of those philosophically-ignorant scientists**</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> who deny that consciousness is a real phenomenon, without ever bothering to understand what such denial even means. i have very much enjoyed the exchanges. :-)</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2020/02/on-illusionishm.html">in a previous post </a>i've explained a bit why exactly i see some promise in illuionishm. to me it's all about whether you can have a somewhat plausible positive story about how the illusion comes about. so here it is, as promised. it's a bit long (for a blogpost). i recommend you pair this with a glass of red wine. maybe Pinot Noir. or some cheap Merlot would do too.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">if you’re lucky like i am, who speaks a non-Indo-European language as a first language, you might have found it hard to explain to people what we mean when we say we study consciousness. worse still are concepts like phenomenal consciousness or qualia. even for native English-speaking folks, these concepts aren’t immediately obvious and intuitive at all. so when people say certain views on consciousness are part of our unshakable intuitions, it is worth asking - </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">whose</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> intuitions? if it takes formal definitions to even introduce these basic concepts, perhaps the relevant ‘intuitions’ are just a direct result of our loading the dice in our definitions. so we need a better, more neutral way to get at this.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for English-speaking common folks, Nagel’s famous phrase often connects. this much i’ve learned from teaching undergrads who aren’t philosophy majors, especially those who have no inclination to ever become so. you can explain to them: you know,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> there is something it is like</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to have certain brain processes going on. like when you taste soy sauce, your brain doesn’t just recognize what it is, there is </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">something it is like</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for you to have that experience. but for some other brain processes, it just goes on without your noticing it. there is nothing it is like to have those brain processes going on in your head.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in my experience, with some patience, most English-speaking students can get this. but what exactly does the phrase really mean </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to them</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? that may be less clear. does it mean there really *is something* it is like to taste soy sauce - like, it is a *thing*? and what is a *thing* anyway? is money a thing? are Wednesdays a thing? certainly we don’t want to say there aren’t ever Wednesdays. but can we define Wednesdays in purely physical terms?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">we can get ourselves into all sorts of trouble when we engage in this kind of thinking. instead, i find it more useful to think through what plausibly could actually go through their minds, when my students are asked to think about what it’s like to have certain experiences.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">thinking about what it’s like</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">when we think about what it’s like to taste soy sauce, i take it that we just </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">imagine</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> having that experience. if we succeed in such imagination, we say: yeah there is something it is like to taste soy sauce. if i press you further: so what’s it like? you may say… well, it’s a bit salty, like sea water, but more viscous, with some taste of umami (if you know what it is), a bit almost like seafood, or mushrooms, but not quite. or anyway, it is tastier than sea water. it has more flavor.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that is to say, you compare it with other experiences you summon into your imagination. perhaps this makes sense, becoz, why else would you want to think about your experiences anyway. i suppose our brains aren’t designed for doing philosophy in the first place. usually, when you perceive something and you focus on it, you just end up thinking about things you perceive. you don’t really think about the experience itself. not often anyway. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">unless, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you try to compare it with other experiences: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hm… do i like the *taste* of this steamed fish with soy sauce? or would it have been better still if i added more ginger and scallion? how about cilantro?</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> now, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is something worth thinking about. we should all have the brains to do that.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">also, it would be a bit weird for people to say: yes there is something it is like to have a certain experience, and </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">yet</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> they can’t say anything at all what it is like in comparison with some other experiences. that experience would have to be </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">really</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> unique. and by pointing out there’s nothing like it, we also get a sense of how strange it must be anyway. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">perhaps this is the whole point in thinking about experiences. we put them in the space of imagination so as to compare them, concurrent experiences and summoned memories alike.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so when we try to get our undergrad students into the topic of consciousness, and ask them to think about whether there is something it is like to have a certain experience, i take it that this is all they do. they imagine having that experience, in the way they usually do when they compare these experiences in their imagination.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">knowing what it is like</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in philosophy, of course, we also speak of whether one </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">knows </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what it is like to have certain experiences. but again, what does it mean? is there really </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">something</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to know, like a piece of knowledge, like someone’s birthday?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">again, why not consider concrete everyday examples. when my senior students are asked: do you know what it is like to stay up drinking all night? the answer is either yes or no. for most people who say yes, some know because they have done it. but some others who haven’t done it may tentatively say, i think i know. that is, maybe they have tried drinking a lot over a long time, maybe during the day. (not that i recommend any of it). and, they may also have stayed up all night before. so they think, well, it’s just both of these experiences added together, no?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but are they correct in thinking that they may know? well, the proof will be in the pudding, like they say. so they may finally try it, and say: ah, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">exactly</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> what i always thought it would be. or they may say: i was so wrong, this is much worse than i thought.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that is, if one is imaginative enough, and if one has experience with some related or similar experiences, one can certainly know what it is like to go through some experience without actually ever having it; David Hume was right when he talked about that ‘</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Missing_Shade_of_Blue" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">missing shade of blue</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’. to *know* what it is like to have certain experience is just to be able to anticipate having that experience, such that when you have it there will be no surprises. you can also compare that anticipated experience with other experiences in your imagination. at least that’s what we usually mean. and it is a very useful ability to have - for otherwise how else do we know whether we should accept invitations to stay up drinking all night? we’d better be able to anticipate what it would be like.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">intrinsic qualia</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">if the above is more or less correct about how my undergrads think when they are introduced to these concepts…. and assuming there’s a chance some of them may become philosophy professors one day too (!) …. well, then, i get why certain technical theoretical posits related to consciousness may seem plausible to some, so much so that some people say certain things are ‘intuitive’ in the literature.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">we can call one such posit intrinsic qualia, which are the private, ineffable, intrinsic properties of experience that are immediately apprehensible. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">so consciousness is the general phenomenon that there is something it is like to be in some mental states. some people call it phenomenal consciousness these days, though that term can also refer to some specific theoretical notion rather than just the general phenomenon. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">assuming we get the general notion through all of these talks of “what it is like”. why would we accept such a specific </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">theoretical posit</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as intrinsic qualia? well, that’s becoz, given the way we think about what it is like, these qualia may seem harmless enough.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">first, of course, some properties of our experience are private. makes total sense. if it is all about my own imagination, how are you ever gonna know mine? </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the important point here is i’m not saying your conscious experience *is* your imagination of that experience. but when you </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">think about</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> your conscious experience, when </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you think about what it is like</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to have that experience, perhaps all you do is to imagine having that experience. from there, one may - mistakenly or not - find it *intuitive* to think of properties of imagination as properties of the experience itself.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">and then, of course, the content of one’s imagination may seem ineffable too. our language may just not have that fineness of grain. a lot can be going on. it outstrips our limited vocabulary.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">and of course, one’s imagination is naturally immediately apprehensible. that’s why we imagine it in the first place. it’s all for our own appreciation. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">the trickiest - and also most critical - is whether some properties of our experience are intrinsic. and what does it even mean? not all philosophers agree on this usage, and in fact some disallow it, but some use the term intrinsic to mean that these properties are not relational, that they cannot be defined in more simple terms. they are what they are. they can’t be characterized fully in terms of something else.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">perhaps the following is what people find plausible: since my imagination of experiencing soy sauce is certainly private, mine isn’t necessarily the same as yours. we can’t point to the same bottle of soy sauce and say: hey it’s the same stuff we’re tasting. my imagination of how it tastes like is up in my head, not yours. there must be something unique <i>up there</i> that isn’t necessarily gonna be anything like yours.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but of course, at the end of the day, you two are tasting the same soy sauce. you two are possibly just having the same experience </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the same thing. that may be all there is.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">but all the same, becoz we think of it in terms of our own imagination, we may well find it plausible that something intrinsic is involved. it’s not just about the soy sauce itself. it’s not the taste buds either. you can do the imagination without either of them being there at the moment. so it must be it’s something more abstract, something special, unique to oneself, up there in the mind itself.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">so from there, we may find this notion of intrinsic qualia somewhat plausible. intuitive even, perhaps.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">and of course, once we accept qualia as such, all sorts of metaphysical problems arise. if qualia are intrinsic, by definition no functional analysis of it will be possible. we can’t just talk about what our perceptual system represents, coz there is something inside that ultimately matters, in ways that can’t be understood from the outside. a piece of computer software will never have such magical stuff as qualia. something will always be missing.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">phenomenal concepts</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but what if - just what </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">if</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - our minds are actually nothing but a piece of software, running on a biologically instantiated computer? a very special piece of software, mind you. so special that we are capable of imagining having certain experiences at will. that is, we can drive our perceptual programs in a purely top-down fashion, even though they are originally meant for bottom-up sensing of external information. but still, it’s really just a piece of software, implemented </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">somehow </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">using some organic stuff. so, there are really no intrinsic qualia as such. but we mistakenly think there are, becoz we can’t really think deeply about our experiences, other than imagining having them. that is, when we are asked to refer to the experience in our thought, we typically just simulate the whole thing, and mistake some properties of the simulation as the properties of the experience itself.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">that would be somewhat congruent with two major / popular strategies for addressing some ‘classic’ philosophical problems of consciousness, e.g. the explanatory gap, the so-called Hard Problem, the Knowledge Argument etc. the idea is there may be an epistemic gap, but it doesn’t mean there is a metaphysical one. in other words, we only *think* that there is a problem because of the way we think about consciousness. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">on one such strategy, so some philosophers say this is because when we think about consciousness we deploy phenomenal concepts. these concepts refer to the perceptual states that are actually just physical representations; no magic involved. but when we use these concepts to think about the physical perceptual states, we think about them in terms of subjective experience. from there, we are </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">somehow </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">blocked from seeing that these perceptual states just </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the same representations as they are described in physical terms.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">many people aren’t sure if we really have these phenomenal concepts, or how they are supposed to work. sure one can think about the same stuff with different concepts. i can think of myself as my parents’ naughtiest child (true), or the author of these words (also true). these are different concepts, which refer to the same thing - me. and sure enough, if i think about myself in terms of my authorship here, i may not realize it is the same person as my parents’ naughtiest child; i may mistakenly think that my sister was the naughtier one. but the thing is, once we are explained in no uncertain terms how the two notions are related, we no longer have trouble connecting them. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">but when it comes to phenomenal concepts, for them to work as they should, they need to be stubbornly opaque. even when we are told that, actually, that red experience is really just these neurons firing, we can never cross that bridge and get to genuinely appreciate that they are the same thing. that part remains somewhat magical.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">so perhaps, thinking about this in terms of imagination may help to flesh out what these phenomenal concepts really are. when we think about the experience of tasting soy sauce, we simulate that experience in our imagination. that’s how the so-called phenomenal concepts are deployed. perhaps then it makes sense that simulating having the experience is gonna feel rather different from describing the experience in mechanistic terms. for a start, simulating it actually is an experience in itself. it feels like something. describing it doesn’t feel quite the same.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">mental quality in imagery</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this may seem to get us into a bit of a funny chicken and egg problem. so thinking about an experience is an experience in itself. but, we were hoping to say that having an experience is no magic - specifically, by magic we mean something intrinsic that can’t be explained in purely functional / software terms. but now, maybe in </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">thinking</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> about an experience, because it feels like something, there is magic after all? </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">the answer is no. so let’s focus on vision for a moment. the story i’ve been trying to tell is: when we think about the experience of seeing a cat, we typically create the mental image of a cat. now then, of course there is something it is like to have the mental image of a cat. there need not be magic. one way to go about this may be to say: well, there is something it is like to have experience X just when we can think of what it is like. maybe all that is, like what i said earlier, is that you succeed at imagining having that experience. so i certainly can imagine having the mental image of a cat. when i do so…. i sort of just end up having that mental image again. i can refer to it, compare it with other experiences, etc., so maybe that’s all there is.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">another thing is that imagery and conscious perception share common / similar </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mental qualities</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. so these qualities may be defined roughly in terms of how a certain stimulus can be distinguished perceptually by the subject against other perceptible stimulus (cf Rosenthal on ‘</span><a href="https://www.davidrosenthal.org/DR-Think-MQs.pdf" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mental quality space</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’). so a cat looks the way it does, because it looks more like a small tiger than a squirrel. more like a dog than a piece of rock. more like a human than a tree, and more like a tree than a giant blue triangle, etc. etc. etc. etc. (until you exhaust the whole list of all the things you can possibly see). now then, imagery has a similar quality too. an imagined cat likewise looks more like some of these same imagined things and less like some others. so mental imagery may share a similar structure of mental qualities too. and having these qualities maybe the crux of all this talks of ‘what it is like’ - it’s really about whether you can compare it with other things you see. there’s just no absolute, pure conscious sensation that can’t be compared against anything else.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">so we already accepted that there is something it is like to see something, and there’s no magic. well, imagery shares some similar mental qualities. and in both cases, you can think about what it is like to have them, by imagining having them. so perhaps there’s no magic there in either case. mental imagery is likewise just generated by some software implemented in the brain.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">one problem is: mental imagery and actual perception are only somewhat similar. but they are also somewhat different in terms of how they feel. they certainly aren’t exactly the same. the question is, how so? my answer has two parts. first of all, when you actually see something you see it as being out there, present in the world. when you imagine seeing it, you don’t. it lacks this sense of presence, or assertoric force, as philosophers sometimes say. i </span><a href="https://psyarxiv.com/ckbyf/" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">have previously argued</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that this is part of the phenomenology of seeing. and to account for that difference all you need is software.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in fact, i’d go so far to say when you consciously see a cat you are basically interpreting that mental quality (i.e. the thing that looks more like a small lion than a squirrel, etc. etc.) as reflecting the present state of the world, *meaning* that it does not just reflect your own imagination. when you enjoy the mental imagery, on the other hand, you take that very similar mental quality to reflect your own imagination, *meaning* that it does not reflect the present state of the world. it’s all part of the phenomenology itself. and it may be why we need the phenomenology at all - the two modes of representations <i>need</i> to <i>feel</i> immediately different somehow, for otherwise the confusion would be dire. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the implicit linkage between these two modes of representation may be what causes much of the confusion: perception may seem magical because we tend to think of it in terms of imagery, and imagery may in turn seem magical, coz it’s </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">almost</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as if</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you’re seeing something consciously. but really it’s just the other side of the same coin. in both cases they just represent the perceptual object. there's no internal magic going on.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">there is, of course, another difference between imagery and actual perception. people have suggested that imagery is less vivid, somewhat faint. i think that’s right. but other people have also argued that the notion of vividness isn’t so easy to define. i don’t find it so problematic. we can perhaps define it as how similar it looks with respect to not seeing anything. so a less vivid image of a cat is just more similar to nothing than a more vivid image of a cat. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this way, we account for why imagery has a lower fineness of grain too. that is, in imagery it seems to be less detailed. when one thinks of a cat, it doesn’t seem to be quite so specific about its color, compared to seeing a real cat. if the cat looks stripey, there’s also the famous observation that we can’t ever really count the number of stripes on the imagined cat. but if the imagined cat is less vivid in the sense that it is more similar to nothing, than a more vivid image of a cat is…. well, then, by rather simple psychophysical principles we can understand why it is not so distinguishable from other images of cats in imagery space. the idea is simple: take two gabor patches or slightly different orientations. as the luminance contrast decreases, they become less distinguishable. so vividness may be a bit </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">like </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">contrast, in that it reflects how strong the signal is, and there is a clear point of zero which refers to the absence of any stimulus. when the signal is tiny, as in imagery, you can’t distinguish things very well. but it still roughly has the same content, just less clear.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">illusionism</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so we addressed why there is something it is like to engage in mental imagery. there need not be any magic involved, just like there need not be magic involved in normal perception either. and there may be some shared qualities between imagery and actual perception. but does it mean that imagery (or more generally, imagination in any other sensory modality) is the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">correct</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> way to think </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">about </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the experience?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">earlier i mentioned that there are two major / popular strategies for dealing with those ‘classic’ philosophical problems of consciousness. one is the phenomenal concept strategy. the other is illusionism. the two strategies are often seen as mutually exclusive, or in competition somehow. but i don’t really think that way. they are different, but the difference may be rather subtle.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so on illusionism, when we think about our experiences, we are actually somewhat </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mistaken</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. how bad that mistake is … depends on the version of the theory. one version is ultra-strong illusionism, which nobody really believes. it’s just set up as a strawman by its opponents. according to this version, we only think we are conscious, but we never really are. not in any way. but nobody really believes that version of illusionism, not really. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">on weak illusionism, which even some people who openly hate illusionism endorse, we are only mistaken in thinking that there is qualia. but we aren’t wrong in thinking that we are conscious </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">somewhat</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so, obviously, the question is how we are conscious </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">somewhat, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">exactly. so we’ve agreed that there’s something it is like to be in some mental states, e.g. seeing a cat. it is so, in the sense that the question of - </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so what is it like?</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - make sense. there is something to be said about it. on the other hand, if i ask you: so what is it like to have some of your V1 neurons firing at 10hz, below perceptual threshold? it should draw a blank. there is nothing it is like. not just becoz of </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the way </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">i </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">posit the question, assuming you know some neuroscience. if i actually stimulate your brain that way, you also wouldn’t be able to tell me what it is like. there is just nothing it is like to be stimulated that way. so, some states are conscious, some aren’t. that’s a meaningful distinction worth keeping.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but the question is, when we </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">think </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">about what it is like to see the cat, are we thinking about the experience itself, really? or are we just engaging in a different activity altogether, i.e. summoning a mental imagery, which shares some aspects but not all aspects with the experience itself? if imagery is a valid way of thinking a</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bout </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the experience, then the phenomenal concept strategy is ok. but if imagery is just a way to think about something close enough to the experience, thereby allowing us to do some thinking about the experience, </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">approximately</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">… well, then, this may be good enough for evolutionary purposes, but you aren’t really thinking about the experience itself. not exactly.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this is not at all to say you are mistaken in thinking that you’re conscious. you think you are and i respect that. who am i to say otherwise. you say there is something it is like to see a cat, and i believe you. there probably is indeed something it is like, as opposed to nothing, as in the case of subthreshold brain stimulation mentioned above. but when you think about what it is like, perhaps you aren’t really just thinking about the experience of seeing a cat - not exactly. you also invoke something else. you’re simulating it, rather than just thinking about it. maybe that’s becoz there’s just no other way for you to think about *it*, other than to simulate it. even when you are seeing the cat right now, if you focus on it you just think about the cat. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to think about the experience itself is an awkward thing</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and perhaps it can really only be done via something like imagery. but a mental simulation is a complex process. it maybe somewhat similar to the experience itself, but also somewhat different. so you may very well be mistaken about some aspects of it. like all those qualia stuff, which ultimately lead to all of those age-old problems of consciousness.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this is a bit like saying, there’s no way for me to think about the pandemic without getting deeply emotional about it. this is especially the case when i think about the various politicians’ reactions to it, including those who exploit the ‘opportunity’ as a moral free-for-all. but my feeling emotional may have nothing to do with the pandemic itself. it’s just me. but i can’t help thinking about it this way, and this may </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">color</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> my thinking </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">about </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the pandemic. if i ended up finding it intuitive that there’s something emotional about the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">virus itself</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> though, i would be very much mistaken.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">aphantasia</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so we now know why we may be somewhat mistaken in thinking about consciousness - something i called ‘illusionishm’ </span><a href="https://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2020/02/on-illusionishm.html" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in a previous blogpost</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - coz exactly how mistaken we are is…. well it is what it is. it does not deny that there is something it is like to have certain brain processes going on in your head. but it denies qualia. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">and i have given an account of why we may be so mistaken to think there are such things as qualia too, which give us all the troubles. ah well, maybe an account is a bit of an exaggeration. it’s more like a just-so story. but a story is better than no story.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">it has not escaped my imagination that the foregoing implies some predictions about aphantasia, the condition where some people may not have any visual imagery. if a theoretical view makes no new predictions, it is somewhat worthless (to me). so take this as a ‘pre-registration’ of the most informal kind: we expect that aphantasics may not have the same intuitions about qualia, specifically in the sensory modality in which they show aphantasia. we are on it. we are the empirical folks after all.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">stay tuned.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">***</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">i w</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ill try to r</span>eply to comments and questions on twitter - https://twitter.com/hakwanlau/status/1253779189527834624?s=20</span></div>
</div>
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-4859431996451914332020-03-14T12:01:00.001-07:002020-03-14T12:02:41.666-07:00free videos for online teaching<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
been strangely 'enjoying' the coronavirus lockdown. i guess i've traveled too much in recent years. being home isn't so bad.<br />
<br />
but i also understand that those with kids may feel a little different, now that schools are also cancelled. and many are worried about the logistics involved in moving classes online.<br />
<br />
so i was involved in making these awhile ago. in solidarity, they are made freely shareable now<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJYRsbTsAfaoXNHCyoPbEQM-phunY7AtJ">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJYRsbTsAfaoXNHCyoPbEQM-phunY7AtJ</a><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLJYRsbTsAfaoXNHCyoPbEQM-phunY7AtJ" width="425"></iframe></div>
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-11453816922360966502020-02-09T13:19:00.000-08:002020-02-09T13:38:34.949-08:00on illusionishm<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
friends & readers of this blog will understand that i'm terrible at catching my own typos. but the title here isn't one of those. this post really is about illusionism (without the 'h'). someone asked me in person recently to clarify whether i have become one of those folks. so i feel i should write this...<br />
<br />
illusionism - without the 'h' - is the idea that consciousness is an illusion - our conscious experiences aren't what they seem like to us.<br />
<br />
of course, philosophers argue over different versions of illusionism.<br />
<br />
on some extremely strong version that i don't think anyone endorses, consciousness doesn't really ever happen. it's an illusion in the sense that it is non-existent in reality. we only mistakenly think we are conscious. but we are never really conscious at all.<br />
<br />
on what is more standardly called strong illusionism, phenomenal consciousness is not real. but consciousness happens. it just doesn't involve phenomenal conscious experiences as such.<br />
<br />
on weak illusionism, consciousness just isn't *exactly* what we think it is. it may not involve things like 'qualia', but phenomenal, conscious experiences are real.<br />
<br />
now, many of my non-philosopher friends may be surprised: isn't 'qualia' the same thing as conscious experience? no they aren't quite the same. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrk5TfwiY-s">this</a> may be a good 20 minutes video intro to this. well worth your time.<br />
<br />
from there, you see the problem gets hairy. what exactly is phenomenal consciousness? can you deny the existence of that, and yet hold that there is something it is like for you to have conscious experiences? yada yada......<br />
<br />
that's where the issues seem a bit too much verbal for me to get really interested. i'm not a real philosopher after all. but i can say, i think qualia, defined in the traditional, technical sense, don't exist. but it makes sense to ask people what it is like to have certain experiences. they can compare it with other experiences they've had. so tasting wasabi is a little bit like tasting hot pepper, at least more so than like tasting wine. tasting horseradish is a bit more like tasting wasabi (they aren't the same!) than tasting hot pepper. hearing a cat meow is a totally different experience altogether, etc.<br />
<br />
and then for some brain processes, there is nothing it is like to have them going on in our brains. asking people what it is like to have them would draw a blank. most often we don't even know they take place.<br />
<br />
but does it mean that this 'what-it's-likeness' implies phenomenal consciousness? well, that depends on how you define phenomenal consciousness i guess. and i feel i'm out of breath already....<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
so without knowing which notion of phenomenal consciousness one adopts, i don't know if one should consider me a strong illusionist. one may point to a citation for a definition, but just because there's a reference doesn't mean the notion is entirely coherent and stable. so i'm not sure.<br />
<br />
but like others have pointed out, weak illusionism sounds too weak. and it's more than just a matter of how it sounds, i worry that it misleads.<br />
<br />
to my very own mind, the real <i>'strength'</i> of illusionism, like any view or doctrine, has something more to do with what it can *<i>do*</i>, rather than just what it denies as real. as soon as we said that qualia isn't real,<i> it may make sense for us to develop a positive, detailed, and plausible story of why so many great thinkers have thought that qualia existed.</i> what in our cognitive machinery has lead to such systematic bias? *that*, to me is why illusionism is interesting and powerful.<br />
<br />
contrast this with the other popular way of dealing with the apparently weird properties of consciousness within a physicalist framework, phenomenal concept strategy. there, things get rather geeky pretty quick. and i still ain't so sure what scientific good can come out of it.<br />
<br />
and by scientific good, i mean, we need to be able to do some work within the vocabulary of cognitive neuroscience, to make things seem less weird, more understandable. it's no good saying that consciousness just *is* so and so physical stuff. if we can't give a functionalist / cognitive explanation of consciousness, that is to admit that cognitive neuroscience would fail as a complete science of the mind. and let's face it, you aren't gonna declare its failure with something as nebulous as your introspective intuitions. this is like calling for a revolution with a fan club of one, and no weapons. the philosophy gods can decide whether you should be made a saint in an afterlife, but what's certain is that you'll never make it <i>in this world</i>. science will go on the way it does with or without you.<br />
<br />
so functionalism *has* to be the working hypothesis, to those of us who like 'working' at least.<br />
<br />
but just because we can give a functionalist account of something doesn't mean we accept the thing as entirely real as it seems to be either. first there is a sense in which that a heart is real and an algorithm isn't quite as real, even though both can be functionally defined. second, even if an algorithm is real it may not be exactly as it seems. it may have properties that are mistakenly construed by the agent running the algorithm itself.<br />
<br />
so, it's complicated. which is why i advocate not getting so hung up about what exactly do we deny in illusionism for now. it may suffice to say: if consciousness is exactly as it seems to some people, then there may be metaphysically challenging stuff like qualia. but consciousness may not turn out to be *exactly* as it seems. it may be *somewhat* an illusion, at least in part. it's <i>illusion-ish</i>. so things may not turn out to be so challenging after all.<br />
<br />
but what exactly do we mean it is illusion-ish? do we mean phenomenal consciousness isn't real?<br />
<br />
my point is, i don't know. let's find out. i'm tempted to say i don't care but let me just say i don't know for now, coz i do care in the long run. but let's work out the positive story first, re: how we may explain in cognitive terms, why we may be mistaken about the exact nature of our own conscious experiences. let's focus first on things that we can all agree may be unreal, like qualia as defined in the traditional, technical sense. from there, it may be easier to work out what we are entitled to deny, to explain away as illusory. <i>without that positive cognitive story in concrete terms, we can't assess the *strength* of that story, and as such i just don't see much point digging our heels deeper on any position.</i><br />
<br />
so that's the crux as i see it. but as to what that positive cognitive story may be, i fear it has to wait till the next time i blog again.....<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
so have i become an illusionist? on twitter, yes. in reality, i like illusionishm better. which is perhaps to say, philosophy is often above my pay grade.</div>
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-17651575137218642732019-12-16T02:04:00.001-08:002019-12-16T02:10:38.201-08:00the stroboscobe & my banishment from science<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
i can't quite remember what really got me on the wrong foot with Mr. Bruce Lee, the physics teacher i mentioned in <a href="https://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2019/12/memoir-of-useless-neuroscientist.html">the last post</a>. i guess i just wasn't a very good student then. and he believed in hard discipline, like the good old Chinese teacher. not that he could get away with physical punishment, even back then, but he did look quite formbidable and scary. and as i was playing my class clown thing there was no way he could let me get away with it. and because i wasn't really <i>that bad</i> of a student, in terms of intellectual curiosity and stuff, i felt i was picked on for silly reasons. so i couldn't really get along with the guy.<br />
<br />
there was one incident though, that i remember quite clearly. i was doing my usual thing, joking around with friends instead of doing class assignments (always hated those). and then Mr. Bruce Lee barked my name and asked: <i>so, how do you measure the distance between the peaks of the wavefront!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
in a rare moment of sharpness i looked up the blackboard & felt i more or less understood the problem to which i should have been paying attention but hadn't. so if you throw a pebble into a pond you create a ripple. the ripple have a certain spatial frequency. but because it is moving, how do we measure the thing? if you put a ruler next to it to measure it, you need to move along with the wave which is pretty hard.<br />
<br />
so i said: <i>er... yes, sir. you can put a ruler next to it, and then take a picture with a camera. then in the picture you can see the static wavefont at a given moment, together with the ruler which gives you the spatial scale, we can....</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Mr Bruce Lee said: <i>no! that would take too long for the photograph to be developed. we need a solution to give us an answer now!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>well, you can take a Polariod, sir. </i>i must say i felt rather pleased with myself, for not being too slow on that day.<br />
<br />
but he said: <i>no! that's *incorrect*! the *correct* answer is that you use a *stroboscobe*. now, who can tell me how to spell the word stroboscobe.....</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
to those who want to find out WTF is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroboscope">stroboscobe</a>, you can look it up yourself. it's an ancient, clumsy device that could also do the job. it may do other cool things too, i don't know. but for this specific problem, today i'll just use the camera on the phone.<br />
<br />
thinking about it now, i see that my teacher was no real Bruce Lee. this poor guy didn't deserve the right to call people "useless" coz he didn't really understand what it means to be useful and practical ....<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
physics was actually my favorite subject back then. but i lost interests after having been taught by Mr Bruce Lee for 2 years. in hindsight, really, it wasn't his fault. he's a good guy. just an ordinary teacher - not any more mediocre than i myself am - trying to do what he could. the system itself was kind of dull & rigid. spelling stroboscobe correctly was the correct way to do well in the exam.<br />
<br />
but as you see from the HK protests, the kids still turn out alright. they are anything but dull. somehow, people learn to be 'useful' after all, in this city, under essentially the same system. it would be a pity for us to not to try to understand why.<br />
<br />
i got a B in physics in the open exam in the end. that was my best grade. i got C in average. D in chemistry - which was why i was so pleased to have gotten <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-019-0520-3">a paper published </a>in the journal *Molecular* Psychiatry recently (which wasn't really about anyting molecular, but still).<br />
<br />
because i did so badly in the sciences i wasn't allowed to continue to study these subjects in the same school. from there i studied economics and other stuff in a different school for a couple of years, and made it to university. but then because i lacked the science background, i wasn't allowed to study the hard sciences anymore. which was how i got into psychology & philosophy.<br />
<br />
ah well. maybe i should thank Mr Bruce Lee after all.<br />
<i><br /></i>
</div>
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-45273361643115761392018-06-09T14:22:00.001-07:002018-06-09T15:34:17.796-07:00Tucson article / Bourdain / Weiskrantz memorial<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
it's been a rather emotional couple of days. it was Larry Weiskrantz's memorial. and then my favorite living author Anthony Bourdain died. strangely these have been helpful in putting things into perspective, for something i've struggled with for a while.<br />
<br />
people often think of Bourdain as a TV celebrity. i enjoyed watching those shows too. but <i>Kitchen Confidential </i>was something else. in a better world that would have been how i like my book on consciousness to read like. but too bad i'm not as good a writer, nor do i think the world is quite ready to accept a scientist to write in that kind of tone exactly.<br />
<br />
but i have to say that sense of mourning paled in comparison when i watched Larry's memorial online (https://livestream.com/oxuni/weiskrantz). unlike my relationship with Bourdain, i knew Larry in person. in <a href="https://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2018/06/i-remember-larry-weiskrantz.html">the last post</a> i also hinted at some interesting kind of academic lineage. but above all, Larry's work defined my adult life. <i>one could sum up all my work on consciousness to date as nothing more than some footnotes to help people understand what blindsight really means. </i>i only got to have work to do at all thanks to people who continue to miss the point entirely (e.g. <a href="https://puredhamma.net/wp-content/uploads/Neural-correlates-of-consciousness-Koch-et-al-2016.pdf">this</a>; search for the word "judiciously").<br />
<br />
it is in this sentimental context that i respond to <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/Is-This-the-World-s-Most/243599?cid=wsinglestory_hp_1">this piece</a> on the Tucson conference, which just came out. on a different day maybe i would have been more bothered by how lunatic some of my soundbites appeared, when they are somewhat taken out of context. but i guess these are just the nature of soundbites.<br />
<br />
i did write to Dave Chalmers to clarify and had a nice exchange of a few emails. thanks Dave for ever having a heart so big to not take offense.<br />
<br />
i may write more to clarify later. but for now... <i>whatever </i>is really all i can come up with. i'm sorry. just as Bourdain was important but not nearly as important as Weiskrantz, whatever happens to the Tucson conference is just not that important to me anymore. if you are bothered or intrigued by the article and wanted to talk more, i can only recommend two things.<br />
<br />
first is to go to the <a href="http://theassc.org/">other conference</a> which is actually run by a professional society. without doing that one really should not be judging the field, making funding decisions for or about it etc.<br />
<br />
second is to watch the stream from Larry's memorial (https://livestream.com/oxuni/weiskrantz), and ponder in that context what they mean when people say the modern study of consciousness was revived / reorganized in the 1990s.<br />
<br />
to those who know the history - as a field we have made a Faustian pact of sort, and borrowed something we don't deserve via sheer black magic. we should be aware that we will probably have to repay that debt one day. sometimes debts are better settled sooner rather than later, for the interests may well rake up.</div>
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-22602345305888752082018-06-07T01:58:00.001-07:002022-01-09T14:13:32.881-08:00i remember Larry Weiskrantz<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
it's been a long time since i last posted. it's been some funny few months, more than just busy. i'll explain in another post.<br />
<br />
today i have to finish a piece that is almost overdue.<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
when i tell people i went to Oxford for graduate school, and i study consciousness, people often ask if i have worked with Larry Weiskrantz. short answer is: <i>no, not really. he only taught me how to tickle myself.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
there is a longer version of the story, but i'm sorry that it is no less corny.<br />
<i><br /></i>
when i was a graduate student in Dick Passingham's lab, it was clear from the beginning that i had no idea what i was doing. with inexplicable kindness, Dick trained me from scratch; i literally didn't even know where the central sulcus was.<br />
<br />
my general scientific ignorance, together with being a foreign student, mean that often i found it easier to sit by my office and read, rather than to socialize at work. Larry would call in now and then, check on how i was doing. in the beginning he would just crack some random jokes, perhaps to cheer me up as i probably looked miserable and overworked. i wasn't expecting the retired former head of department to be quite so friendly. at one point he realized my real interest was to study consciousness, he seemed ever the more amused. <i>consciousness? with Dick? and a philosophical bent! really!?! oh how wonderful!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
we would bump into each other in the corridor, at talks, at conferences, but most often he would call in - sometimes looking for another colleague who worked in the same office - and casually take a peek at what i've been reading. from there we would often talk a little, especially if i were (caught) reading something 'conceptual'. sometimes these 'tutorials' were short, in the form of a pun - sometimes at the expense of the relevant author - followed by a jolly smile. but sometimes they could be more elaborate, with interesting historical references too.<br />
<br />
once i was reading a paper by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Daniel Wolpert, and Chris Frith, an fMRI study on why we can't tickle ourselves. with some pride Larry told me he had done a similar behavioral study decades earlier, and one of the authors was my advisor Dick's wife, Clare! <i>what a small world!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
i told him i'd read the paper and come back to chat with him more about it. but he said unfortunately he had to have back surgery and may not see me for a while. before goodbye, he said: <i>maybe next time i see you i can tickle myself~</i><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
i did see Larry in a few weeks, and the surgery went ok. i was glad to be able to hear more stories.<br />
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but he never told me that in this small world, Dick was also once a postdoc in his lab. had he done so, maybe i would not have been so completely puzzled when Dick told me i could study whatever topic i wanted, when i stayed on to do a postdoc with him after my PhD. i asked Dick: <i>really? i can study visual awareness in your lab even though you told me many times you have little interest in perception? but why?</i><br />
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i have never gotten an answer to that, just as Larry never told me why he had a young postdoc working on action and the prefrontal cortex in his lab, funded by a grant on visual awareness.<br />
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they say there are two kinds of scientists: the creative and the careful. Larry was certainly well known for being enormously imaginative, but i think it would be wrong to think he didn't value careful experimentation just as much. you can tell by how he chose his colleagues and collaborators. just as he was quick to crack irreverent jokes, i vividly remembered how stern he looked, with disapproval, when i once described someone else's decade-old study with the details mixed up. from Larry, i've learned that you can be funny and serious at the same time. to do good science, you have to be.<br />
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another time we were discussing with another professor how long it may take for one to read a doctoral thesis, and Larry said he would spend at least one day just to check all the references. i don't think that was a joke.<br />
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the power of puns and jokes is, they can stay on even if people don't fully get what they mean. i think Larry understood that. w<span style="background-color: white;">hat does blindsight <i>really </i>mean? everyone says they know what is it, but do they truly get how <i>deep</i> the implications are? i guess it is our jobs to see to it they do. </span>Larry had done enough for us.<br />
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every now and then, as i read papers i thought of how serious Larry was about getting things exactly right, especially regarding knowing the literature. i would recall his stern look of disapproval and feel we all still have a lot of shaping up to do. but as though he would also remind us: <i>don't forget to tickle yourself now and then to see what happens too!</i><br />
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thank you Larry, those puns meant a lot to an awkward graduate student, once trying too hard to impress</div>
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-27800643776720866312018-02-12T12:21:00.002-08:002018-02-15T04:32:52.948-08:00between the vanilla & the metaphysical<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
on social media, the last week has been an interesting one for consciousness. from <a href="https://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2018/02/is-use-of-torture-gaining-academic.html">Anil Seth's pushback againat panpsychism</a>, we see some interesting discussion coming out of it re: the legitimacy of consciousness research. and independently there's also been <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yoshua.bengio/posts/1310241565747447">some relevant discussion by serious AI researchers too</a>.<br />
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to recap, a certain pop media article claimed that panpsychism i.e. roughly the idea that simple creatures / plants may be conscious to some degree, is gaining academic credibility. i thought my response was a bit harsh, but one notable 'tweet' may be <a href="https://twitter.com/Comadork/status/959563323204288517">Adrian Owen's, which openly called panpsychism 'nonsense'</a>. <i>hurray, Adrian~</i><br />
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in truth, much as i agree, i do worry a bit that this may become a war between the disciplines. whereas in neuroscience panpsychism is generally written off, in philosophy some seriously people do take it seriously. some have now expressed the worry that they may get caught in the cross-fire.<br />
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that's a point that i think some scientists without my unhealthy level of philosophical bent may not appreciate initially. why would anyone be so crazy to think consciousness is everywhere? in a way, it all goes back to the issue of the hard problem. when it comes to <i>qualia</i>, i.e. the subjective, ineffable, qualitative, phenomenological aspects of conscious experiences, e.g. the redness of red when you see red.... that sort of thing is just not easy to model with an usual reverse engineering approach. when we write programs to do things like humans, we look through the lines of codes, where does it ever say that red has to look a certain qualitative way? why does it have to <i>feel</i> anything at all? it's not clear if there is <i>something it is like</i> to be the program. why isn't color just a wavelength, that is just different from the others? why does it have to feel this very <i>specific way? </i>if there is such a thing as subjective experiences for a program, to be represented by some numbers, the program will work just fine if we had swapped these numbers for red vs green. so long as such 'labels' are consitent, the program will work just fine. but our subjective experiences don't seem to work that way. and because it is so hard to pin down what may be the mechanisms / basis, some radical solutions like panpsychism are considered live possibilities by serious philosophers - maybe qualia is a fundamental property of physical stuff so we can't explain it in simpler mechanistic terms.<br />
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to some people, this problem about subjective <i>qualia </i>is a nonsensical problem. it's not even the kind of problem that scientists should be concerned with. to a certain extent, i sympathize. but at the same time, i think it is a legitimate thing - and maybe even important thing - for philosophers to ponder about. to some extent, their jobs are different in nature from ours. it's just good to keep the two businesses separate (in terms of evaluating what's right within each field).<br />
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but when philosophers working on these issues start to pretend that certain scientific theories support their worldview (e.g. panpsychism), then we get into trouble. as it turns out, the science itself doesn't support their views. it's just that some <i>scientists</i> endorse their views. but there's a world of difference between an empirically supported scientific theory, vs a theory endorsed by empirical scientists - the latter does not need to be a scientific theory at all. when philosophers cite such poor evidence as supporting their view, i fear it cheapens their philosophy, and they are asking for the backfiring.<br />
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so, all good. no need to worry about zombies for now (i.e. roughly creatures who functionally behave like us but have no subjective qualitative experiences). let's assume they don't exists - which is my tentative stance in <a href="https://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2018/01/reflections-on-machine-consciousness.html">our recent Science paper</a> by the way, that qualia empirically correlates with certain neural computation in humans, so we should assume they do as such <i>for now</i>.<br />
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but there's another worry, from the opposite end. when we try to do this as a Hard Science, do we end up studying consciousness at all? or, are we just studying good old perception or attention, but we <i>call </i>it <i>conscious</i> perception just to sound sexy and cool?<br />
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this is the question brought up in a <a href="https://neurdiness.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/consciousness-revisited/">great post by @neurograce</a>, which i find really thoughtful and fair. in truth, that's <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/ptldq6dcd63dby1/08-Weiskrantz-Chap08.pdf?dl=0">something i worry about a lot</a> too. i thought i was to reply more directly onto @neurograce's blog, but i think the discussion on twitter more or less took care of it, with some useful input from Ken Miller too, and @neurograce kindly reflected it all on her blog - which i highly recommend.<br />
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in essence, the answer is: yes there is a meaningful work to be done, even if we aren't concerned with qualia and zombies and all that. it is just a basic neurobiological question why some processes in the brain are conscious, in the sense that we can talk/think about them, and why some processes are not. a science of the mind is incomplete if we can't say what makes the difference. however, the <i>danger </i>is that we need to make sure when we are talking about unconscious processes, we aren't just talking about feeble, weak, processes. for otherwise, we would just be equating consciousness with stregnth of perception. and in that case we can just talk about perception and do without the loaded c-word. there is something more to it than just strong perception though; there are very powerful forms of unconscious perception, as in the neurological phenomenon of blindsight. conscious perception just seems to be a different sort of process. mapping out the difference is meaningful work. we don't have a perfect solution as to how to do this yet. there's not yet a consensus; it's ongoing, so @neurograce's skepticism & critiques are very much welcome.<br />
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we can likewise frame this as a challenge to AI researchers: can we characterize different forms of processing, each of which somewhat similarly powerful, but some allows the system to reflect upon and report of them, and some are more opague to such introspection? like Yoshua Bengio (see <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.08568">this</a>), i do think we may be getting there.... <i>if we are careful not to confound it with other psychological phenomena such as attention, language, depth of processing etc. </i>that is, we really need to make sure we are honing in on the critical mechanisms truly necessary and sufficient to make the difference between the conscious vs unconscious.<br />
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as the work becomes more rigorous, the concepts become better defined in cognitive/computational terms, can we just bypass the historical baggage, and avoid the c-word altogether? i think we shoulnd't, because there are already theories of consciousness that are explicitly as such, and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27499929">some of them can be meaningfully arbitrated</a>. it is odd for those doing this work to pretend we are not studying consciousness per se.<br />
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but above all, i also feel we can't sidestep it & pretend there isn't such a problem in the first place. we owe it to the rest of the field to fix this mess. people are going to talk about consciouenss and related issues. as we see in this recent debate between experts of the fear circuit like <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29088929">Michael Fanselow</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29088936">Joe Ledoux</a> (click the links to see their respective arguments), these are genuine problems, with real clinical and practical implications. between worrying about the metaphysical, lofty <i>hard problems, vs </i>going vanilla to avoid being too controversial, i fear we have not really done our jobs. amid all the pop media noise, we made it look like there are no serious scientific answers to these basic questions. it is time to do our parts.</div>
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-86051857971619621972018-02-05T20:14:00.001-08:002018-02-09T11:38:16.730-08:00on combat, part 2; my argument with Stan Dehaene over 13 years ago<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
.... i was a young postdoc then. like, relatively young even for a postdoc. i was 25. and that's just after 3-4 years of living in an English-speaking country.<br />
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some uber-rich people / expats will tell u that Hong Kong people speak English. in reality if you are the average people, outside of the classroom, the most you ever hear are the occasional single English words inserted in Cantonese banters. my English was... ok. or maybe i could even dare say, good, by the standard of a local Hong Kong student. i could talk. but man, it was tiring to talk all day in English. so... that was what i was saying<a href="http://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2018/01/on-combat-part-1.html"> in a previous post</a>. when i figured that you can ask tough questions after talks, or just talk about science, it was a great relief. instead of not talking at all, to be point of having my office-mates thinking i was anti-social, finally i could interact with people in English! it was just way way way easier than talking about soap operas that i haven't seen, or jokes that i wouldn't ever get, in a pub. you could even read the stuff to prepare before hand~<br />
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so in 2005 i had already been living in England for 3-4 years, and was used to that way of talking - always arguing about science. i don't have much of other sorts of vocabulary, frankly. it was ASSC9 (the meetig of the only professional society for scientific studies of consciousness), in Caltech. it was my first time in LA, my current 'home', when i first met people like Christof Koch, Frank Tong, Nao Tsuchiya, Stan Dehaene, Alva Noe, Giulio Tononi, Bruno Breitmeyer etc<br />
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i won the James Prize, for a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14976320">paper</a> that really wasn't that good, in hindsight. i was to subsequently stop doing any of this 'Libet clock' stuff. but still, the paper remains my most cited to date. well at least i get to tell people that i published one of my least favorite papers in <i>Science~</i><br />
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Stan was the president, or president-elect, or something, of ASSC. so he gave a presidential address, talking about how his neuroscience experiments supported the global workspace view. some of you are too young too know, some just don't remember. but back then, this neuronal global workspace thing was huge. it's like, <i>the</i> shining light. it still is, to my mind.<br />
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straight away, after his presidential lecture, i gave my James talk. it wasn't exactly prepared or intended as such, but i ended up spending the whole hour criticizing Stan's work, occasionally using the very same figures he had just presented to illustrate what was wrong. the main arguments are summarized <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dropbox.com%2Fs%2Fptldq6dcd63dby1%2F08-Weiskrantz-Chap08.pdf%3Fdl%3D0&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFqI7cwOWJYLeTlfscZzcK8qUtVNQ">her</a>e. and then there is a bit of <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfs.semanticscholar.org%2Ffe0a%2F7eed297e134085824a453d9c814374e21eab.pdf&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNH1bpSzKdkO03gGkvfC_fBUmiy1rg">this</a>.<br />
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the written works linked above were, of coz, a lot more toned down. but with jetlag, and just winning a prize and everything, on stage it just went straight to my head. and i've always improvised too much in my talks.... i was sheer hostile. it was not really very professional.<br />
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i don't think i ever apologized to Stan per se. (<i>sorry, Stan!</i>). but to his credit, even right after the talk, he spent time discussing with me, taking my points seriously. and later on, when i was visiting Paris to do another project, he invited me to give a talk in his lab. he even cited my work, and talked about it positively, in his later papers as well as in his book.<br />
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i'd like to think my challenge to the global workspace view has made it stronger. that it could withstand challenges like that is a sign that something is right about it. i had really thought, when i controlled for those performance confounds i was obsessed with, all the prefrontal activations would go away! but they didn't.<i> i've been on the other side to know what the arguments are.</i><br />
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but in any case, above all i think the field's tolerance to my junenvile behavior is a reflection of its strength too. there is never ever a justification to talk so aggressively & dismissively to colleagues in the way i did. but on the whole, we deal with criticisms objectively, constructively. we take what is useful, and make the most out of it. we realize our limitations, and try to do better. we try our best to not take things personally, becoz there's just no point in doing so. <i>this is how we roll. always has been. </i><br />
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in fact, i still stand by some of my arguments then too. i still don't fully agree with the global workspace view. but -<br />
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thanks, Stan, for everything, and also for everything you've done for the field.<br />
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it is in this light that i think people should read <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29074769">Dehaene, Lau, Kouider</a> (2017) <i>Science</i>.</div>
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-88182546673057116452018-02-02T14:23:00.002-08:002018-02-03T01:39:57.497-08:00is the use of torture gaining academic credibility?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2018/01/reflections-on-machine-consciousness.html">in the last post </a>i said i would talk about a 13-year-old story, about my argument with Stan Dehaene. but something relevant and interesting happened on social media, which makes me feel i should write about this first<br />
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long story short: @david_colquhoun is a highly influential pharmacologist, a fellow of the royal society. he made a <a href="https://twitter.com/david_colquhoun/status/958755449783902214">few remarks on twitter</a>, that much of consciousness science is futile and unfalsifiable. that has gotten a couple of my colleagues worked up. since i work in the US, i have heard this kind of accusations often, and understand where they are coming from. not that i think they are fair, but i pointed out it is true that the popular media often portrait us in unflattering lights; works and ideas discussed there often represent the least rigorous of us. so it is understandable why an outsider may think we are all idiots.<br />
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this has gotten my friend Anil Seth to write <a href="https://neurobanter.com/2018/02/01/conscious-spoons-really-pushing-back-against-panpsychism/">this excellent piece</a>, to push back on a pop article titled "<a href="https://qz.com/1184574/the-idea-that-everything-from-spoons-to-stones-are-conscious-is-gaining-academic-credibility/">The idea that everything from spoons to stones are conscious is gaining academic credibility</a>". perhaps what is even more spectacular, however, is the 'meta-push back' on social media (as Dave Chalmers put it). </div>
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the discussion has gotten confusing, but the point as i see it is simple. you can 'define' academic credibility whichever way you like. but if we allow ourselves to cite a few 'prominent' scientists' metaphysical views as support to mean that certain views are gaining 'academic credibility', we will soon enough to be able to say all sorts of crazy stuff is gaining credibility, e.g. climate change denial, anti-semitism, homophobia, use of torture (there *are* psychologists who have done work on this, very prominent ones no less), etc. just because they are scientists doesn't mean everything they say is remotely warranted by the science they do. (i'm focusing on the use of quotes of scientists here; philosophers are a bit different - in some cases it is their jobs to consider far fetched stuff; when we quote scientists as such we are implying it is a scientifically informed opinion).</div>
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on top of that, there is this particular worry: in other fields 'prominence' is usually achieved via peer review. but our peer group in the field of consciousness is small. historical reasons mean that many senior scholars achieved their status <b><i>not</i></b> via work done directly in the area; their work on consciousness may not be particularly well liked /respected in the field at all. so citing a few 'prominent' scientists' opinion on consciousness is really dangerous business. when it is clear that the overall consensus of the field does not take a view seriously, to claim that it has gain 'credibility' via a few quotes from a few 'serious guys' is just wrong on so many levels. </div>
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all i can say is, this point has probably fallen on many deaf ears. i understand philosophers have different concerns. above all, they probably don't appreciate how this can reflect very badly on the field as a whole, affecting funding, job prospects for junior scientists. they may not care how a scientific giant like Colquhoun sees us. </div>
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e.g. in response Dave Chalmers insisted he didn't think the our image in the popular media affects our funding and jobs. as someone who has seen how things work first hand, and have to actually participate in these competitions, i can only beg to differ. jobs and funding opportunities are often created for a research topic. in the past decades i've seen many jobs and funding opportunities opened specifically for social neuroscience, neuroeconomics, etc. in the US at least, i don't see such openings for consciousness. and i'm not surprised. these decisions are made by senior colleagues who are often outside of the field, and i know how they think of us in general.</div>
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Dave rightly pointed out that if we are putting out a lot of good, rigorous work, we should do fine in the end. but our field remains small. so we're back to this problem - how do we grow, since we have to, if our popular image does not really reflect who we are, and is instead hurting our very capacity for growth? </div>
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Tobias Schlicht usefully suggseted this is all just a science politics game, making impact via media / popular influences. if some 'prominent' scholars didn't make that huge buzz back in the 90s, the field as we know it may well not have existed. that's exactly right. the modern reincarnation of our field was created out of sheer stardom. but as we mature as a science, should we still operate the same way? should there be a point where the consensus within our professional society matters more than the opinions of a few 'authorative' figures?<br />
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in honesty, i really think it is fine that people entertain far-fetched metaphysical views. they are totally entitled to do that. but the question is whether these subjective viewpoints should dominate our public image, making funding & policy decisions directly or indirectly on our behalf etc, via their 'prominent' status.</div>
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to some, maybe stardom & authority will always matter. i once asked an emminent philosopher a simple technical question, and his reply was essentially that: i don't know, but i recently went to a really fancy & exclusive boat trip sponsored by some wealthy tycoon, and many famous people there agreed with me.</div>
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in this age of open science, let this naive scientific millenial, a first-generation high school graduate no less, say this: we don't appreciate this arcane way of donig things anymore.<br />
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***<br />
ps - a friend pointed out that this piece could be mis-read. the arguments here are intended to target those who claim / give the impression that science increasingly supports panpsychism. i totally respect the philosophical panpsychists; as i've said elsewhere in this blog if not for Dave Chamlers i wouldn't be here doing what i'm doing in the first place. and these arguments are also not targetted at IIT and its proponents either. i have elsewhere argued against them, but that's that. here i'm talking <i>in</i> <i>general</i> about the danger of pretending something is supported by science when it is not. e.g. when i say certain senior scholars' work may not be respected in the field <i>of coz</i> i wasn't thinking of Christof or Giulio specifically. they are veterans <i>in</i> the field. .... guess i'll have to clarify it in a future blogpost further, probably <i>On Combat 3</i> or something</div>
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Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-12370047244719688212018-01-27T17:56:00.001-08:002018-01-27T18:16:38.196-08:00reflections on machine consciousness (recent Science paper with Dehaene & Kouider)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
when <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6362/486/tab-figures-data">that paper </a>came out, a good friend commented: "it didn't sound like you."<br />
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my reply was, ah well, i was just a middle co-author.... :-)<br />
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more to the point is, the main idea of writing about AI & consciousness did come from Stan first, and in many ways, i think overall his voice is more prominent in this collaborative effort than mine. Sid has worked with Stan before, so i assume they share many common views. my views are well known to be quite different from Stan's on many issues (will explain more in the next post). arguing over all of them would have been quite some work, but more than that, the trouble is space. the nature of this sort of general reviews is for a broad audience. so much details and intricate stuff are left out. of course there are many things i don't necessarily agree with Stan and Sid, and at times we feel it is more important we put aside our differences. in terms of this i think we have done quite well.<br />
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there are still a lot of stuff i hate to have left out. for instance i say this elsewhere too: Victor Lamme's local recurrency view and Ned Block's interpretation / variant are definitely important forces to be reckoned with. but i think ultimately we left them out becoz these views have the core assumption that subjective experience is constitutively disconnected from cognition. in the context of thinking how one many build a machine that will be conscious, they aren't much useful. still i would have liked to have discussed this delicate point more clearly, if we had the space. just becoz the theory isn't <i>useful </i>here if one were to build a conscious machine, doesn't mean the theory isn't true. i independently think the theory is wrong (based on empirical reasons), but if it were true, the whole business of building conscious machines will get very tricky if not downright impossible.<br />
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but anyway, i tried to cite as much stuff i think are worth citing as possible. in the end, space limitations means i didn't cite much of my own work at all. in hindsight perhaps i really should have pushed to cite<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13669"> this piece </a>of using decoded neurofeedback to manipulate metacognition, for instance. but anyway, i truly believe that others' work are important too. e.g. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15471">this </a>i'm very happy to have cited. so you see, i'm torn, and i've tried. if you feel unfairly ignored, i'm sorry; i'm sure some of my own students and postdocs feel the same way too.<br />
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so overall, i wouldn't say i totally took the backseat in this exercise. there are specific ideas that i am happy to have brought to the table: the idea that perceptual reality monitoring may be a particularly important aspect of C2 processing; the relationship between that Generative Adversarial Networks, in particular how currently they don't address perceptual reality monitoring and this may well be crucial; the argument that empirically losing C1 & C2 does mean you lose subjective experience, for example.<br />
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naturally, others commented, and we had to respond. some of the ideas that i insisted on including (as listed above) became handy - apparently they just missed them on first reading. of coz just having some C1 and some C2 doesn't mean you are conscious - you have to have the right kind, implemented the right way, and that's exactly the point of the exercise in making the first step in mapping these out.<br />
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one anecdote is, in checking the copyedited proofs, i found that the tone of the piece was edited somewhat such that we sounded more confident than we had. i asked for it to be toned down a bit, but it may still be much....<br />
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overall, i think this may be most interesting point to some: are we really so <i>sure</i> as to say we already <i>know </i>how to build a conscious machine? no, not really. for me personally, may be not at all. you know i tend to emphasize on a more conservative, foot on the ground, empirical approach. that philosophy remains. but the issue here is that the question of machine consciousness will no doubt arise. currently, the so-called more mathematical theories are, to my mind, non-starters. it would be nice if we can agree on how to demonstrate consciousness, a Turing test of sort for qualia. would be nice .... but good luck. so all we are suggesting is, instead of going for some abstract theoretical proof or consensus that we'll never get, why don't we start with the brain? like, a good ol' empirical science approach - as an alternative, realistic solution to this pressing issue that is for sure going to arise sooner or later? if we understand enough about brain computations, and know which kinds are conscious which kinds are not, we can say meaningfully say how much an artificial cognitive architecture mimics human consciousness. ultimately, that may be the best we can do - just as how we may be able to say whether some animals are conscious. all of this means: the NCC project is not done. more empirical work is still needed. but we would do well to focus on this first rather than something else - something wilder.<br />
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in this sense, this doesn't sound like a very strong revelation. in fact, i would say it sounds almost boring / commonsense. then why take the trouble to write this? i guess the 3 of us all feel that, there is some urgency to this becoz in recent years the field might have shown signs of slipping off to a different direction. as i have expressed<a href="http://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2017/08/how-to-make-iit-and-other-theories-of.html"> here earlier</a>, such theoretically-indulgent direction may be extremely dangerous. to me, it is a problem of some urgency. we are at such crossroad, right here. i'd like to think this is what brought Stan and i together, which, i have to say, sappy it may sound, warms my heart. because as some of you know, Stan and i had once disagreed rather intensely ......<br />
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how much did we disagree exactly? why is the agreement of that both C1 and C2 are important and perhaps conceptually orthogonal aspects of consciousness such a remarkable progress? well, nearly 13 years ago, a foolish young man misbehaved ..... for this, we have to resume to the series On Combat....</div>
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-8952915687009372072018-01-07T03:27:00.000-08:002018-01-09T12:14:32.794-08:00on combat, part 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
(to those of you who just wanted to know why i asked the anatomy question the other day re: where to place the central sulcus, feel free to skip the first part and go straight to the apart below ***)<br />
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happy 2018~<br />
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before xmas i said i would talk about what it means to argue, sometimes rather intensely and heatedly, with close colleagues & friends. so here it is, a multi-part essay on the pros and cons of this sort of academic 'lifestyle', contra being a <i>civilian</i>, where does all this come from, and all that.<br />
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i use not to know how to call it. aggressive? critical? contentious? argumentative? play fighting? as is often the case about finding the right words, i think Ned Block has it - 'combative' is the word i borrow from him here.<br />
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although Ned is my grand-teacher (he taught Joe Lau, who taught me most of the philosophy i know), we hardly ever see each other eye to eye re: our own views on consciousness. but it is exactly through arguing with him over and over that i've learned so much. he is by far my favorite debate opponent. someone i can count on to catch the kitchen sink with a smile when you throw it at him as hard as you can - and then he'll give you a reply that got you thinking for weeks. no offence will ever be taken personally becoz we both know this is good for you - if you care about getting things right.<br />
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in a way, i'd like to think of it as a form of humility. given how <i>hard the problem </i>it is that we're dealing with, <i>how little data</i> we have (because we aren't really funded by the mainstream national agencies, at least in the US), the only way to know if our theory is any good is by testing it through harsh criticisms. we have to learn not to be annoyed by our critics, however nitpicky or destructive we feel they are. the devils are often in the details.<i> & if you can't stand this sort of arguments, are prone to take things personally, you just have no business in studying consciousness.</i><br />
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one funny thing is, if you do this kind of arguing often and for long enough, you also get to develop a certain kind of <i>taste</i>. you'll know when some views are just not solid enough, from the sheer smell of it. you know if you go poke it, it would just fall apart. no number of big equations can mask sheer nonsense, or superficial trivial rubbish. for this reason, i do enjoy chatting with Ned a lot about other people's work. there, we usually agree, ironically. seeing him in conferences provides much moral support - "yeah that stuff is BS... such a shame that it came out at a keynote." ... but meanwhile we still won't ever agree about our own views.<br />
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besides Ned & Joe, my doctoral father (and postdoc advisor) Dick Passingham has a great influence on me too, of coz. though he never fully approved of my philosophical bent, he himself studied philosophy as an undergrad. i'd like to think his style of argumentation often has the same flavor. we destroyed each other's views and ideas on a regular basis. there was not ever a tough question too 'nasty' to be asked - one thing i learned as a young grad student at Oxford was, so long as you ask it in a posh voice, and ask it at the end of the seminar talk rather than interrupting people in the middle, the tougher the question was, the better. it was a real disappointment to learn later on that such culture was not universal across departments and countries. as an awkward foreigner, doing that was at at some point somewhat easier and more enjoyable than chatting with people 'casually' in the pub, where the conversations can go into any directions, with cultural references that i didn't have clue about.....<br />
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***<br />
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i have mentioned previously that <a href="http://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2017/08/how-to-make-iit-and-other-theories-of.html">this commentary on IIT</a> was one of the more 'serious' (as in provocative) pieces of writing i've done last year. but actually, thinking more about it, i think <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28978696">this paper</a> with Brian Odegaard & Bob Knight was the real deal. maybe not just for 2017, but in recent years. funny though, the 'opponents' are the same people (who defends IIT, i.e. Koch, Tononi, Tsuchiya, Boly, etc).<br />
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we knew already for some time that if we don't ask people to press buttons to report, simple fMRI activity decreases in the PFC. that's not really new & it doesn't mean that the area isn't still doing something meaningfully re: conscious perception, as quite easily measurable by other methods (including just slightly more modern ways of doing fMRI, such as MVPA).<br />
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unfortunately, the confusion grew in the literature again in the past few years, in ways that i think are just getting out of hand. i have defended the role of PFC in consciousness previously, but am really not sure if it is so easy set the record straight this time. along with catchy phrases like 'no report paradigm', several claims that are empirically misleading/plain wrong (e.g. PFC activity does not reflect perceptual content) seem to have caught on, as they appeared in multiple high profile reviews.<br />
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i hope Brian's piece will do some good in clarifying the issues. it is by far one of my favorites of all papers coming out from my lab recently. tighly argued, concise, fair, thorough. i certainly couldn't have done a better job myself if i did it solo. it makes me happy & proud that Brian has taken our 'family' style of writing & argumentation and developed it into something better - something more mature. i hope Joe & Dick will both see their influences there too. (ok, enough self praise, please go <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28978696">read it</a> yourself).<br />
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and of course, i've been corresponding with Melanie (Boly) about this too. i'd like to think overall we have the better arguments. but as usual, the devils are in the details. one case study comes down to where we place (i.e. label) the central sulcus......<br />
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see below: which of the two ways of labeling the sulci strike you as more plausible?<br />
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<img alt="Inline image 1" height="400" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=bc2241afe0&view=fimg&th=15fa16674a593765&attid=0.1&disp=emb&realattid=ii_15fa15ff0cb318cd&attbid=ANGjdJ_4XQlVBxU9kOOHE21JkYQebwS2UTkoY0IOOD8NAf179_O_DNPMut3gFNQqYu7N1q8ZGu_5iEJACQ2lNRjs7dHF-U0xXdvvg7iuRRoOqY1baUMHj8QamnyNwcM&sz=w444-h664&ats=1515322748856&rm=15fa16674a593765&zw&atsh=1" width="267" /><br />
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... the above brain has gone through frontal lobectomy so we can't estimate where the central sulcus is from the front end; we don't know how much was cut. but from the parietal end we should be able to tell where it is more likely to be central sulcus. i recommend you make a choice between the two first, and then read <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28978696">Brian's paper, and focus especially on Boly et al's comments near the end of our piece</a>.<br />
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it does get hairy, doesn't it? and this is just about the sinlge case (reported by Brickner). such is the way of science. what worries me is: <i>if we as a field can't resolve such relatively straightforward empirical issues, what business do we have in talking about more slippery things like IIT?</i><br />
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the debate goes on...... & if you worry that this is getting a little intense, or that some of us may take this personally, you probably understimate us as a field..... (to be continued)</div>
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Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-23055525243919167822017-12-31T01:40:00.000-08:002017-12-31T01:47:16.586-08:00i remember Tom Schofield<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
2017 is coming to an end. it's been a good year. i've made some great new friends - you know who you are, though many of you 'civilians' probably won't be bothering to read this junk here. it's all good. it's been a productive year too. mostly becoz i work with some seriously amazing people in the lab. i'd like to think i myself have done a fair bit too, but there's one piece of writing i've been putting off till this very last day....<br />
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in year 2005, i went to London to do my postdoc. after years of being that awkward, lonely foreigner grad student in Oxford, by then i sort of knew how to socialize. but i was still all kinds of messed up - self-conscious, self-obsessed, competitive, junenvile. a lot of growing up was done in London. for this reason i sometimes call the city my spiritual home. and if a spiritual home came with a spiritual guide, that would be Tom. though he probably never would have approved of that title.<br />
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Tom was one of my best of best friends. we hung out all the time. we drank, we fought, we laughed, and had a lot of good times together.<br />
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when he left us in 2010, i just clammed up. i couldn't make it to the funeral. the emotions were too raw. they still are. but it's about time i have to write this. coz it's already 7 years overdue.<br />
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<i>sorry mate, i would buy you a pint if i saw you in Hell; i’m sure they wouldn’t do half-pints there.</i><br />
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***<br />
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months after Tom died, people wrote about what a great budding scientist & serious researcher he was. to be totally honest i'm not really sure how he would feel about it. he would probably brush it aside and shrug and whatever. i guess secretly he would be flattered too. but really, the image of a dedicated square of a scholar wasn't quite exactly the Tom i knew. of coz he was intellectually brilliant. but he was more interesting than that. and wiser too.<br />
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Tom was the know-it-all about the city, though he really specialized in one kind of most useful knowledge: where to find interesting places to drink. i don't wanna glorify alcoholism, but it was back in England where the standards were a bit... different. pubs closed at 11pm so there's always this sense of <i>urgency</i> there. eating would be wasting precious drinking time, so mostly we drank on empty stomachs, which also has the advantage of maximizing the effective potency of the drinks. official starting time should be 5pm, but now and then we had a little pre-game. once my boss saw us leaving the building early at around 3pm and we causally said we were going to the 'library' (i hope he's not reading this now).</div>
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there was one time we wrestled on the streets near Centre Point. i hesistate to tell you all how it started. it has something to do with my making fun of him after he dropped his jacket into a puddle of piss. he was a head taller than me and then some, but somehow i survived. thankfully nobody wins wrestling matches in that kind of state we were in. </div>
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we got ourselves into all kinds of troubles all the times. we got denied entry to clubs, almost getting kicked out from places. let's say, we were downright stupid given we were neurosicentists who should know better what binge drinking could do to our brains. </div>
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but binging wasn't the point. having fun and something outside of work to do was. there was a period of time i wasn't drinking and Tom would ask: "would you like to go to that posh hotel and drink an overpriced pot of tea?" so off we sneaked out from work early in the afternoon again.</div>
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another time i did a downright lousy presentation at work. Tom realized something was off and asked if i wanted to go play pool. so off we went. </div>
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soon it became obvious that he was saving me from going mental over work stuff. he was a few years older, and had worked in the 'real world' before he returned to academia. he had a more mature outlook to life. he had his frustration at work too - all the usual about being paid minimum wage as a grad student, etc. but mostly we talked about life, relationships, music (we both loved Suede), interesting places to go to - stuff that are no less important & good for a change.</div>
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it was on that one rare occasion that we talked about work stuff at all, that i told him i wanted to write a book. strangely, instead of telling me to have another drink, he was all supportive. it was at that point that i realized he was no less into science than i was. it's just that he saw through the meaninglessness of the cutthroat culture, the rat race of chasing after big journals, accolades, glory and all that stupid stuff. we do science becoz we care. we compete if we have to, but we should aim to do it on our own terms. <i>not taking ourselves too seriously at work doesn't mean we don't take work seriously. </i></div>
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thank you, older brother. we all miss you.</div>
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Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-49235625567736959922017-12-23T01:47:00.001-08:002017-12-31T02:05:28.217-08:00more on IIT, and ASSC (our annual conference) as Xmas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
been meaning to write this note for a while. sorry to my colleague Julia Crone @ UCLA for postponing it for so long. the last few months have really been brutal.<br />
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when i posted <a href="http://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2017/08/how-to-make-iit-and-other-theories-of.html">this piece on IIT</a>, i realize that the first-author of <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213158213001642">one of the papers i mentioned</a> is a colleague at UCLA, working in my good friend Martin Monti's lab. so i wrote to Julia to ask about her opinion, as to whether she thought her paper really supported IIT, as it may sound like in places.<br />
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as i suspected, the answer is no, she doesn't really think so. in her exact words: "I believe that theories of consciousness just as any other cognitive theory should be addressed with a straightforward <i><b>experimental design</b></i> that speak for or against the theory of question. In such a scenario, it is indeed possible to ask whether the results are supportive of IIT or not. However, using complex, data-driven approaches in a <b><i>messy patient population</i></b> with a whole bunch of primary and secondary processes that affect the BOLD signal does not allow to test a theory of consciousness. Moreover, the results most likely reflect <b><i>the level of cognition</i></b> in patients which may or may not lead to a total breakdown of consciousness." (all emphases mine)<br />
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obviously i find much to agree with Julia's very sensible reply. but if so, why did i quote her <i>as if</i> her study was intended to be in support of IIT? i didn't actually say so, not exactly. i just took a quote directly from her paper: "disturbances in [connectivity between certain brain regions] have severe impact on <i><b>information integration</b></i> and are reflected in deficits in cognitive functioning probably leading to a total breakdown of consciousness” (emphasis mine)<br />
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in correspondence Julia clarified that she referred to information integration as a general notion related to complexity of networks, not specifically related to IIT: "Please also keep in mind that graph theoretical metrics such as local efficiency (differentiating patients in this study) are measuring the degree of local information integration of specific central hubs but are <b><i>not equivalent</i></b> to the concept of Phi or other complexity measures which may be more suitable to address IIT" (emphasis mine). i think that makes perfect sense. so i feel i owe it to her to clarify that her position here: she isn't one of the 'believers' thinking that her study supported IIT (or falsified it, for that matter).<br />
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however, in meetings, i have also seen how this study as well as similar others have been cited as evidence in support of IIT. i guess sometimes that's what matters: how things are interpreted, perceived, discussed over coffee breaks, inspired new studies, impacted young people's career decisions, etc etc. in this case, it sounds like it just wasn't the authors' intention, but it might have been taken as such all the same.<br />
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like i said in the <a href="http://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2017/08/how-to-make-iit-and-other-theories-of.html">original post</a>, how to interpret that individual finding specifically is just a small part of the issue. we have more things to worry about IIT and the status of the field in general. that post is really about the frontline culture, our image in the media, how our colleagues see us, and ultimately how it all matters.<br />
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***<br />
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since this is end of the year.....looking back, <a href="http://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2017/08/how-to-make-iit-and-other-theories-of.html">that post on IIT</a> might have been one of the more serious pieces of writing i've done this year. 'serious' may sound funny coz it's not even published officially, in a peer-reviewed journal or something.<br />
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but as some of you have guessed, the materials there will become part of Chapter 1 of the book, in which i will justify why we should only focus on a few theories but not an extensive survey of everything that's been said about consciosuness; at the risk of sounding ruder than i intend.. much of it just isn't worth our trouble.<br />
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the post was for this reason also 'serious' in another sense. as i mentioned, i owe huge debts to both Christof and Giulio, intellectual and otherwise. many of the other more junior proponents of IIT (e.g. Ryota Kanai, Melanie Boly, Nao Tsuchiya) are also good friends - friends with whom we sort of grew up together, all the way from when we were starry eyed grad students trying to figure out what to do with ourselves.<br />
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i have often likened <a href="http://theassc.org/">ASSC</a> to xmas, time of the year when you have to see all your cousins, both the beloved and annoying ones alike, catching up on how well we've done lately, repair and renew old bonds as needed, introduce new members of the family to others, etc.<br />
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what does it mean to criticize each others' work so harshly when you actually see them as good friends or even families? this is a question i asked myself many many times, and perhaps more frequently this year than in previous years. in the next few post, i'll talk about this more.</div>
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-37758089669537613492017-12-22T14:36:00.000-08:002017-12-31T01:59:14.461-08:00new lab webpage<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Ned Block told me my lab web really needed updating. so here it is...<br />
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<a href="https://sites.google.com/view/hakwan-lau-lab">https://sites.google.com/view/hakwan-lau-lab</a><br />
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end of the year.... should have done this earlier for the grad admission cycle. but we aren't really in recruitment mode this year. rather nice to be able to take stock right before the holidays.<br />
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in the next few posts i'll post more updates and reflections on what we've done this year too.</div>
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-3569505515530276162017-11-26T00:04:00.000-08:002017-11-26T00:26:40.827-08:00November & the BioRxiv effect for mentorship / paper submission<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
just realize this is my first post of the month; November has been insanely hectic. perhaps as usual, this is the season when RAs need to apply to PhD programs, postdocs look for faculty jobs. besides the reference letters writing ***which is only a small part of it***, all of a sudden everyone wants to finish their manuscripts, get them submitted before their applications. as a co-author / senior author, of coz i mustn't be the weakest link holding them back...<br />
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i wonder if this means i've been taking on too much, biting off more than i could chew. throughout the year i'd like to think i generally keep myself not counter-productively busy. but maybe November is the best time to take stock. it's not a good estimate of how much one can do annually, if one cannot survive November. ah well, i'm still alive, just barely.<br />
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perhaps bioRxiv has changed things too, and i hadn't fully taken that into account. now applicants can get their papers submitted right before the application. and it wouldn't just be an empty claim that a paper is in review. people can actually click on the link to see the paper while it's going through the chimney. perhaps this means more people are rushing to finish manuscripts this time of the year now?<br />
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speaking of mentees and students, one of the fun things i've been doing since i've been back in HK is to be involved in the selection for Rhodes Scholars (there's one from the city every year, who get to be funded to study at Oxford). i'm happy to say this year we have a philosophy major winning it. i think it's the first time since 2001 (when i myself won it, with some inexplicable luck)<br />
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a truly exhausting month... still one more week to go & one more flight to take (for yet another conference in Japan). it may sound cliche but when i think of how well the young people will do, it makes it all the more bearable and worthwhile. increasingly, i realize they will be the target audience of my book too. the book will be about the future. winning them over is more important than convincing or impressing senior colleagues.<br />
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Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-38771856113676707492017-10-16T06:44:00.000-07:002017-10-16T07:16:47.835-07:00greetings from NYC; my philosophical roots<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
in the last post i said i would explain why we like arguing so much. in a way, many academics do. for me, it may be in part temperament. in part, it may have something to do with my upbringing at home. it may also have something to do with my graduate training. but New York, New York... is one big reason.<br />
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i went to New York city in 2007, a day before i taught my first class as a faculty member at Columbia, with just a suitcase. i remember on the flight from Heathrow to JFK, i kept thinking about a line from a movie i had just watched recently: "... and we all come to New York, to be forgiven." i was 27 years old.<br />
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living in Manhattan was fun. Columbia gave me good subsidized housing. work-wise, i was struggling, coz i didn't know how to get funding for my kind of work. i wasn't very well connected as i was trained in the UK. i spent a lot of time partying, drinking, and eating really well downtown.<br />
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but this is not to say i wasn't stimulated intellectually. ever since i left NYC for Los Angeles, people often ask if i missed the city. there are of course things i miss, but above all, it is philosophy that brings me back. back then i taught a seminar with Ned Block at NYU. i lived just a block away from David Rosenthal. New York, of course, was and still is the center of the philosophical universe - at least for the kind of philosophy that i care about. hanging out and arguing with these guys, together with many others (like my good friend, collaborator, and drummer Richard Brown) helped me get through the scientific/administrative chores, and kept me inspired.<br />
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i wrote my undergrad thesis in philosophy. in Hong Kong i was lucky to have Joe Lau as a professor and advisor. he went to MIT and worked with Ned Block and Bob Stalnaker for his PhD, and is a really wonderful teacher. as an undergrad i read all the good stuff - Michael Tye, Bill Lycan, Tyler Burge, Putnam, Fodor, etc etc - stuff that i still find useful at work today. ever i since i went to grad school and started doing human neuroscience, every now and then i would contemplate leaving science to go back to do philosophy. there are points where it was a close call. somehow... i stayed. but living in NY helped me scratch that constant itch.<br />
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scientists love to bash how useless philosophy is. often, those who know least about philosophy tend to be the most dismissive. i suppose that makes sense: as in most other fields, finding the good stuff to read isn't easy, and if you don't know your way around, it gets confusing. somehow, neuroscientists don't tend to pick up some random articles in economics journals and talk trash about them though.<br />
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to me, the value of philosophy is clear. at the very least, like chess playing it helps sharpen your thinking. with a good audience, one gets really useful critical feedback that you can't really get when you give a talk to a science crowd, becoz the whole purpose of giving a talk is different....<br />
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the past few days i've actually been in this city. gave a seminar at CUNY, chatted with friends about the paper i'm writing. it's been really really fun and rewarding. tonite is the final gig, at NYU, where i will have 10 mins max to present my paper. really, it's just to start the convo; people who haven't read the paper already wouldn't want to be there; they are there for the Q&A, which would take up the rest of the 2 hours. in philosophy, you give a talk to be grilled. the grilling is the best part.<br />
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to be honest with you, even though i've done this before, this is pretty frightenting. this is gonna be tough. all this arguing about statistics pale in comparison. but i suppose this is in the spirit of the project of the book - we have to do things right by industry standards. if the views we propose are philosophically relevant, we can't just moonlight it. we have to talk to the experts and to try to win their approval.<br />
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so, wish me luck. this is the paper which i mentioned in <a href="https://inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2017/08/ncc-unfinished-business.html">a post back in August</a>, where i promised we can talk about consciousness in robots and trees and whatnot too, by building a theory based on empirically plausible assumptions rather than some <i>axioms</i> based on one's own imagination. i will post it here after revising it based on the harsh criticisms i will no doubt face tonite.<br />
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Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-26278404630617778512017-10-12T04:31:00.003-07:002017-10-12T10:00:19.465-07:00you want 'good data', or you want to test your hypothesis correctly? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
the past week i've been rather active on FB. i used to enjoy arguing about stuff there, from the philosophical to the political. but haven't done it for a while (specifically, pretty much since the last US election). but we posted <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/10/04/198218">a paper on bioRxiv</a> recently, and it <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hakwan/posts/10155420109248387?comment_id=10155420781158387">attracted some comments</a><span id="goog_901153552"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_901153553"></span>.<br />
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long story short: one key finding related to consciousness and the PFC is that TMS to the latter can change visual metacognition. it was done by <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24168333">Rounis et al </a>(including yours truly) a long time ago. in fact that was when the psychophysical measure <i>meta-d'</i> was first introduced. meanwhile, multiple studies have firmly established the empirical link between PFC and visual metacognition. besides correlational observations, causal manipulations to PFC activity, e.g. lesions, neurofeedback, or chemical inactivations in monkeys, all changes metacognition. so we can take it to be a done deal; the details of the original study aren't so critical anymore.<br />
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but when Bor et al attempted to replicate it anyway, it didn't work. in a way, no surprises: the study was done long ago and perhaps wasn't set up in the most robust way possible (we didn't use Brainsight); we thought it was a long shot back then (Vincent Walsh, the expert on TMS and visual perception, told me it wouldn't ever work!) and didn't want to invest the time & resources. also, we all know in cog neuro we often lack power. so when things don't 'replicate', it may well just be a false negative. Bor et al specifically did it in a way that was not so powerful (they elected to use a between subject design).<br />
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but the funny thing is we think they actually replicated it, but just interpreted it wrong (i saw someone on twitter calling it a 'replication failure failure'): they found the effect but insisted that they needed to chuck away some subjects becoz their data were 'bad' - after which the effect was gone. so we did a simulation to see if excluding subjects is really good for you. we found that it isn't - surprisingly it doesn't really change the false positive rate re: testing the hypothesis. i.e. the validity of the stat is just as good whether you exclude subjects or not.<br />
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so a long discussion ensued, started with Bor saying that "obviously" they disagree. it really wasn't such an obvious issue to me: do you want to chuck away data just becoz they 'look bad', even when you already know that keeping them won't hurt the validity of your statistical tests? and knowing the validity wouldn't change part also wasn't trivial; took us some time to do the analysis to find out.<br />
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anyway, go see the <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/10/04/198218">paper</a> and the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hakwan/posts/10155420109248387?comment_id=10155420781158387">discussion</a> to decide for yourself.<br />
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i'm sure my co-authors are all amused by how much time i can spend on social media to argue about stuff; especially becoz in this case we already know the answer re: the role of PFC in visual metacognition, due to the many other studies. so is all this arguing back and forth really worth it? yeah, there's something strange about that. i'll explain in my next post.....</div>
Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1225845069335197596.post-42088977626288725422017-10-04T03:38:00.002-07:002017-10-04T18:55:25.384-07:00mid-autumn festival & misc. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
haven't posted for a while. the terrible news i reported in the last post still feels very raw. and it has been a month full of depressing news.<br />
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when i was a grad student at Oxford, there was a certain professor who famously misbehaved on all sorts of levels. thankfully, he's eventually ousted by the university, amid rather unusual circumstances. but the lesson i've learned then was that tenure is a system that makes me feel rather ambivalent. most of the times, it is a much appreciated privilege that i myself now enjoy. we have to give academics the freedom say what they wish to say, w/o repercussions such as losing their jobs. but every now and then, when certain colleagues abuse this system, it makes me feel sad and angry. especially when that's done against junior people e.g. grad students.<br />
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at these times, i find myself engaging in the pathological behavior of paying more attention to how messed up the world at large is in general. this somehow helps to normalize things. as we say in just 7 syllables in Cantonese: under Heavens, all crows are equally dark.<br />
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my thoughts are with the victims of the completely avoidable tragedy that just happened in Las Vegas<br />
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whenever i think of the last US presidential election, i feel that undeserved tenure is a relatively small imperfection of the world.<br />
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on a more positive note, it has been a good month in Hong Kong. i get to see my friends and my folks a lot. tonite is Mid-Autumn Festival aka the Moon Festival, where families gather and celebrate. it's never exactly clear to me what we are celebrating for. there are some fun folk legends about a beautiful woman who took some drugs and flew to the moon and stuff. but one story i liked was that when the Chinese was once ruled by the Mongols, they started a riot / revolution by hiding a secret message in the Moon Cakes, to synchronize their attacks on the same date.<br />
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my people are ever the practical and 'results-oriented'. despite our common love of seafood and tolerance for hot and humid summers, Hong Kongers aren't quite the same as the Catalans. as such, i have long assumed that Pro-Independence is a position not taken by many. but actually, today i learned that according to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junius_Ho">a certain politician and lawyer</a> (who himself is Pro-Beijing), there are over a million people in Hong Kong who are pro-independence. let's say, what an enlightening news. over a million!<br />
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those who know me will know that there's a lot i wish to say but don't feel i should say it all here. let me say that in general, i recommend people to never apply to work in labs before talking to those who have worked with the prospective PI. or at least ask about the PI's colleagues what the PI is like. in general i'm very happy to chat about such things. as to politics, as i've warned you i will talk about this here from time to time, but not too much.<br />
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but it doesn't mean these are irrelevant to the main theme of the blog: my book will ultimately be about standing up to things too. it's about starting a (small, scientific) revolution together. to do so we need to clean up our acts first, to generate enough <i>trust,</i> as ammunition. we don't start a revolution with an idea. we do so with a coalition, with <i>people,</i> who aren't feeling that they are being exploited in the process.<br />
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i promise my next post will be more coherent.</div>
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Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09168053864872046182noreply@blogger.com2