Zoltan Jakab Debate

This is my email debate with Zoltan Jakab, currently a research fellow at Rutgers, author of Phenomenal Projection, a paper that proposes that conscious experience is projected out of the brain to be superimposed back out on the world.

As with all debates on this issue, Zoltan Jakab ultimately had no answers to my objections, and consequently simply abandoned the debate, without any further comment, convinced that he is right! This is what really DRIVES ME CRAZY about this issue—the naive realists simply state their case like a religious belief, in blissful ignorance (in the sense of ignore-ance) of all rational debate.

Naive realism is RELIGION, not science!

Hi Zoltan,

I just saw the announcement for your paper on Phenomenal Projection on Psyche. If you want to hear why projection theory is untenable, take a look at my paper (coming out in Behavioral & Brain Sciences very soon)

Gestalt Isomorphism and the Primacy of the Subjective Conscious Experience: A Gestalt bubble model
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/bubw3/bubw3.html

and read section 2.3 Spirituality, Supervenience, and Other Nomological Danglers.
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/bubw3/bubw3.html#DANGLERS

If you have an answer to that, I would be very interested to hear it.

Steve Lehar

Hi Steve,

Thanks very much for your note! I took a quick look at the passage in your paper that you suggested. I don't think my views fall under any of the theories you dubbed incredible there. I think phenomenal characters may well be identical with neurosci states (I'm simplifying here), and projection is simply illusion generation based on those properties. I give more detail in the paper that you may want to check out. I don't believe in sense data (BTW, nor does intentional inexistence commit anyone to believe in them, as you seem to tacitly suggest - sorry if I misunderstoond you on this). Perceptual illusions exist, phenomenal characters exist (pace Dennett), and identity is the most austere account of phenomenal character. It seems to me that your critique does not touch the line of thought that I am proposing in the paper. If you think otherwise, let me know!

Thanks again,
Best wishes,
Zoltan

>>
It seems to me that your critique does not touch the line of thought that I am proposing in the paper. If you think otherwise, let me know!
<<

I do indeed think otherwise. My critique touches exactly on the line of thought that you propose.

In the first place, wherever you use the term "supervenes", i.e. that some phenomenal character supervenes on the brain mechanism by which it is instantiated, that is at best meaningless, and at worst outright misleading and self-contradictory. Supervenience is a term Davidson invented to try to separate mind from brain, but he never did explain exactly what this means, or how mind can be causally dependent on brain without being causally connected with it in the same way as any other causal dependency observed in the physical world. Did you read the section I pointed out to you last time?

http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/bubw3/bubw3.html#DANGLERS

Third paragraph down I discuss Davidson and his 'anomalous monist' thesis:

"Kim (1998) points out however that this is a negative thesis, for it tells us only how the mental is not related to the physical, it says nothing about how they are related. As such this is more an article of faith rather than a real theory of any sort ... This kind of physicalism has been appropriately dubbed `token physicalism', for it is indeed a token admission of the undeniable link between mind and the physical brain, without admitting to any of its very significant implications."

"Davidson introduces the peculiar notion of supervenience, a one-way asymmetrical relation between mind and brain that makes mind dependent on the brain, but that forever closes the possibility of phenomenological observation of brain states. As in the case of Cartesian dualism, there are two key objections to this argument. In the first place the disconnection between the experiential mind and the physical brain is itself merely a hypothesis, whose truth remains to be demostrated. It is at least equally likely prima facie that the mind does not supervene on the brain, but that mind is identically equal to the functioning of the physical brain. In fact, this is by far the more parsimonious explanation, because it invokes a single explanans, the physical brain, to account for the properties of both mind and brain. After all, physical damage to the brain can result in profound changes in the mind-not just the information content of the mind, nor just observed behavior, but brain damage can produce profound changes in the experiential, or "what it is like" aspect of conscious experience. The simplest explanation therefore is that consciousness is a physical process taking place in the physical brain, which is why it is altered by physical changes to the physical brain. But the problem of supervenience is more serious than just the argument of parsimony. For if the properties of mind were indeed disconnected from the properties of the physical brain, this would leave the mental domain completely disconnected from the world of reality known to science, what Feigl (1958) has called a "nomological dangler." For if the properties of mind are not determined by the properties of the physical brain, what is it that determines the properties of the mind? For example phenomenal color experience has been shown to be reducible to the three dimensions of hue, intensity, and saturation. Physical light is not restricted to these three dimensions; the spectrum of a typical sample of colored light contains a separate and distinct magnitude for every spectral frequency of the light, an essentially infinite-dimensional space that is immeasurably greater in information content than the three dimensions of phenomenal color experience. In answer to Koffka's (1935) classical question-"Why do things look as they do?" the answer is clearly not "Because they are what they are." That answer that is clearly false in the case of color perception, as well as in the case of visual illusions, not to mention dreams and hallucinations. We now know that the dimensionality of color experience relates directly to the physiology of color vision, i.e. it relates to the fact that there are three different cone types in the human retina, and to the opponent color process representation in the visual cortex. The dimensions of color experience therefore are not totally disconnected from the properties of the physical brain as suggested by Davidson, but in fact phenomenal color experience tells us something very specific about the properties of the representation of color in the physical brain. And the same argument holds for spatial vision, for there are a number of prominent distortions of phenomenal space that clearly indicate that phenomenal space is ontologically distinct from the physical space known to science, as will be discussed later."

And later on in the paper I discuss emergence, and how it is this property which is what motivated Davidson's supervenience in the first place.

http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/bubw3/bubw3.html#EMERGENCE

"Emergence is actually the issue that inspired Davidson's (1970) theory of anomalous monism. Davidson argues (p. 247) that mental events resist capture in the nomological net of physical theory. For mentalistic propositions do not display the lawlike character of physical ones: Davidson asserts, (p. 248) "there are no strict deterministic laws on the basis of which mental events can be predicted and explained," and this is the principle of the anomalism of the mental. But Wolfgang Köhler (1924) showed that in fact there is no magic in emergence, emergence is a common property of certain kinds of physical systems, such as the soap bubble taking on its spherical shape, or water seeking its own level in a vessel, or of global weather patterns which cannot be lawfully predicted from their present state. To insist that mind supervenes on the brain in some mysterious way, is like saying that the soap bubble supervenes on soapy water, or that the water level supervenes on the body of water in a vessel, or that global weather patterns supervene on the earth's physical atmosphere. But this is no different than saying that these are emergent processes that are already the simplest model of themselves. Emergence in perception does not imply that the mind supervenes on the brain, but rather it indicates that the neurophysiological processes involved in perception exhibit the kind of holistic emergence seen in the soap bubble, where a multitude of tiny forces act together simultaneously to produce a final perceptual state by way of a process which cannot be reduced to simple laws."

So when you say phenomenal experience supervenes on the brain, that means no more than that the experience is produced by the brain, just as a TV image is produced by the electron beam scanning of the TV monitor. To suggest that it is possible to have a phenomenal experience which however "does not exist" is a complete 180 degree reversal of the true epistemological situation, which is that phenomenal experience is the first and primary object that we know to exist, whether it is a veridical or a hallucinatory experience, the experience itself is more certain to exist than anything else we can possibly know.

You say you take an "adverbial acccount" as opposed to a sense datum theory. You say: "On the adverbial theory, sense impressions are ways or modes of perceiving, or ways of being appeared to. They are not in any sense objects of perception. ... In my view, the only objects of perception are external physical objects."

This can only possibly make sense from a naive realist perspective, whereby you assume that we have direct perceptual access to the external world, unmediated by an internal representation of that world in our brain. But as I argue in my paper, this naive realist view is just plain magic. We cannot possibly see the world except by our mental representations of it. How could an artificial intelligence or robot possibly be endowed with this kind of external perception? What would you have to put in its electronic brain to make it see beyond the sensory surface of its video photosensor array, and become aware of the spatial structure of the world directly without an internal structural replica of it? How is that done? Awareness has two aspects, the experiential or subjective aspect, and the information-content aspect. We can never know whether a computer can ever have a phenomenal experience. But in order for it to navigate about it the world avoiding obstacles in the world as we do, it must at least have full three-dimensional information about the structural configuration of that world, just as we do. And in a computer, that means that structural information must be expressed inside its physical "brain" if it is to be accessible to the robot to control its behavior. You talk as if we can have a spatially structured experience without any kind of spatial structure being involved in the brain. But if you can't explain *how* this could possibly be done either in a brain or in a computer, then this is more of a wish (an impossible one at that) rather than a theory of any sort.

Visual experience takes the form of a spatial structure. But we know for a fact that that structure is not the world itself, *at least* in the case of dreams and hallucinations, and in visual illusions, so *in those cases at least* there exists a spatial structure which is our experience, and that structure does not exist out in the objective external world. To reduce this to the adverbial "I am having an experience of a spatial structure" and therby wishing the structure itself into non-existence is to fly in the face of the most fundamental epistemological truth we can possibly know, which is that there exists a spatial structure which is my experience. That fact is epistemologically primary to any hypothesis, even of the existence of a real world beyond my experience.

Take a look at my illustrated Cartoon Epistemology:

http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/pub/slehar/cartoonepist/cartoonepist.html

I think you will find your own viewpoint expressed and rebutted therein.

Steve Lehar

Hi Steve,

>>
I do indeed think otherwise. My critique touches exactly on the line of thought that you propose.

In the first place, wherever you use the term "supervenes", i.e. that some phenomenal character supervenes on the brain mechanism by which it is instantiated, that is at best meaningless, and at worst outright misleading and self-contradictory. Supervenience is a term Davidson invented to try to separate mind from brain, but he never did explain exactly what this means, or how mind can be causally dependent on brain without being causally connected with it in the same way as any other causal dependency observed in the physical world. Did you read the section I pointed out to you last time?
<<

I did. Moreover, I would be happy with a neurosci identity theory of phenomnal character. I say that in one of the foornotes. I do use 'supervenience' in my text, but only as an alternative, not as a notion necessary for anything I say.

>>
So when you say phenomenal experience supervenes on the brain, that means no more than that the experience is produced by the brain, just as a TV image is produced by the electron beam scanning of the TV monitor. To suggest that it is possible to have a phenomenal experience which however "does not exist" is a complete 180 degree reversal of the true epistemological situation,
<<

A phenomenal experience that does not exist? *I* don't say that anywhere in my paper!

>>
You say you take an "adverbial acccount" as opposed to a sense datum theory. You say: "On the adverbial theory, sense impressions are ways or modes of perceiving, or ways of being appeared to. They are not in any sense objects of perception. ... In my view, the only objects of perception are external physical objects."

This can only possibly make sense from a naive realist perspective, whereby you assume that we have direct perceptual access to the external world, unmediated by an internal representation of that world in our brain. But as I argue in my paper, this naive realist view is just plain magic. We cannot possibly see the world except by our mental representations of it.
<<

I don't think the adverbial theory needs to assume that we have unmediated access to the world. It assumes only that what mediate (i.e., existing brain states) are not objects of perception but something else. The mediating brain states aren't themselves objects, and I don't assume sense data or anything like that, so, very parsimonously, the only objects that remain are what cause our experience to occur - physical objects in the environment. By this I need not assume that perception has unmediated access to physical objects, and I do indeed not assume that.

>>
How could an artificial intelligence or robot possibly be endowed with this kind of external perception? What would you have to put in its electronic brain to make it see beyond the sensory surface of its video photosensor array, and become aware of the spatial structure of the world directly without an internal structural replica of it? How is that done? Awareness has two aspects, the experiential or subjective aspect, and the information-content aspect. We can never know whether a computer can ever have a phenomenal experience. But in order for it to navigate about it the world avoiding obstacles in the world as we do, it must at least have full three-dimensional information about the structural configuration of that world, just as we do. And in a computer, that means that structural information must be expressed inside its physical "brain" if it is to be accessible to the robot to control its behavior. You talk as if we can have a spatially structured experience without any kind of spatial structure being involved in the brain. But if you can't explain *how* this could possibly be done either in a brain or in a computer, then this is more of a wish (an impossible one at that) rather than a theory of any sort.
<<

Well I can't repeat whole books about computational theories of vision, but at least I cited some of them. Still I think I gave more details than can be found about such issues in many philosophy papers. We have spatially structured experience because we have structures in our brains whose spatiality is irrelevant, but whose abstract computational (data-) structure is interpreted by the processes that operate on them as spatial structure. This is cog sci's "official" viewpoint in a nutshell. Not that everyone agrees and is satisfied, but so far no one has come up with an account that is more satisfactory for the majority of cognitivists (including me).

>>
Visual experience takes the form of a spatial structure. But we know for a fact that that structure is not the world itself, *at least* in the case of dreams and hallucinations, and in visual illusions, so *in those cases at least* there exists a spatial structure which is our experience, and that structure does not exist out in the objective external world. To reduce this to the adverbial "I am having an experience of a spatial structure" and therby wishing the structure itself into non-existence is to fly in the face of the most fundamental epistemological truth we can possibly know, which is that there exists a spatial structure which is my experience. That fact is epistemologically primary to any hypothesis, even of the existence of a real world beyond my experience.
<<

You might be fighting with a strawman. I don't say anything like what you attribute to me here.

Best,
Zoltan

>>>>
To suggest that it is possible to have a phenomenal experience which however "does not exist" is a complete 180 degree reversal of the true epistemological situation
<<<<
>>
A phenomenal experience that does not exist? *I* don't say that anywhere in my paper!
<<

Section 2. third paragraph:

"In general, projection is systematic misattribution: taking the world to have a property that is really an illusory, ***non-existent*** property generated by some real properties of our brain states. Sensory projection is a perception-generated form of intentional ***inexistence***. The illusory properties created in sensory projection are not identical with sensory experience (or its phenomenal character), just as Santa Claus is not identical with mental representations of Santa Claus. For the ***illusory properties are by definition nonexistent,*** whereas the experiences that generate them exist. Still, the systematically illusory properties supervene on (are generated by) phenomenal color character."

As I understand your argument, when we view an illusory figure, for example a Kanizsa square, the square-shaped region of brightness that we observe as a spatial structure in experience does not exist anywhere in the brain as a spatial structure, but as some non-square non-pictorial pattern of activation. The square, as a square, exists nowhere, because it is not on the page of the printed stimulus (only four pac-man figures are actually printed on the page) and it is not in the brain, at least as a square. Am I mis-characterizing your position?

>>
I don't think the adverbial theory needs to assume that we have unmediated access to the world. It assumes only that what mediate (i.e., existing brain states) are not objects of perception but something else. The mediating brain states aren't themselves objects, and I don't assume sense data or anything like that, so, very parsimonously, the only objects that remain are what cause our experience to occur - physical objects in the environment.
<<

So when I look at a table, and have a table-shaped experience that appears to me as a spatial structure, either that structure is the table itself directly perceived out in the world where the real table lies, or it is a table-shaped pattern of activation in my physical brain, or it does not exist as a spatial structure anywhere, it only *seems* to exist to me as a spatial structure while I am performing some non-spatial "act" of perceiving (I am perceiving "table-ishly"). Which is it? Which of these three alternatives do you endorse?

>>
We have spatially structured experience because we have structures in our brains whose spatiality is irrelevant, but whose abstract computational (data-) structure is interpreted by the processes that operate on them as spatial structure. This is cog sci's "official" viewpoint in a nutshell. Not that everyone agrees and is satisfied, but so far no one has come up with an account that is more satisfactory for the majority of cognitivists (including me).
<<

Yes indeed, and Cog Sci's "official" viewpoint happens to be fundamentally flawed, as I point out in my paper, although the majority of cognitivists (including yourself) have not yet realized it. The fundamental flaw has to do with *information content* in an information-theoretic sense. You suggest that we can have a spatially structured experience, as of a table, in the absence of any table-shaped pattern of activation in our brain. But the table-shaped experience is a data structure with specific information content. It is a "relational structure" in the sense that every point of the spatial experience bears a specific spatial relation to every other point in the experience in three dimensions, i.e. the spatial experience has the same *information content* as a 3-D spatial model of the perceived table. You talk as if the table-shaped experience can be had by way of the activation of a bunch of neurons in the brain which are not in any kind of table-shaped configuration. But unless the neural activation has at least the same information content as the spatial percept that it represents, you have information floating around in experience which is not explicitly represented in the brain.

Your argument sounds like that of the little fat guy in my Cartoon Epistemology
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/pub/slehar/cartoonepist/cartoonepist23.html

Steve

>>>>>>
To suggest that it is possible to have a phenomenal experience which however "does not exist" is a complete 180 degree reversal of the true epistemological situation
<<<<<<
>>>>
A phenomenal experience that does not exist? *I* don't say that anywhere in my paper!
<<<<
>>
Section 2. third paragraph:
"In general, projection is systematic misattribution: taking the world to have a property that is really an illusory, ***non-existent*** property generated by some real properties of our brain states. Sensory projection is a perception-generated form of intentional ***inexistence***. The illusory properties created in sensory projection are not identical with sensory experience (or its phenomenal character), just as Santa Claus is not identical with mental representations of Santa Claus. For the ***illusory properties are by definition nonexistent,*** whereas the experiences that generate them exist. Still, the systematically illusory properties supervene on (are generated by) phenomenal color character."
<<

None of this is about phenomenal experience. Is Santa Claus an experience or representation? No. Does Santa exist? No. Do representations (experiences) as of Santa exist? Yes. (Same about illusory properties in perception.) So what's your problem with intentional inexistence?

>>
As I understand your argument, when we view an illusory figure, for example a Kanizsa square, the square-shaped region of brightness that we observe as a spatial structure in experience does not exist anywhere in the brain as a spatial structure, but as some non-square non-pictorial pattern of activation. The square, as a square, exists nowhere, because it is not on the page of the printed stimulus (only four pac-man figures are actually printed on the page) and it is not in the brain, at least as a square. Am I mis-characterizing your position?
<<

No, but there is at least the representation of a square in the brain. It need not be square-shaped though.

>>
So when I look at a table, and have a table-shaped experience that appears to me as a spatial structure, either that structure is the table itself directly perceived out in the world where the real table lies, or it is a table-shaped pattern of activation in my physical brain, or it does not exist as a spatial structure anywhere, it only *seems* to exist to me as a spatial structure while I am performing some non-spatial "act" of perceiving (I am perceiving "table-ishly"). Which is it? Which of these three alternatives do you endorse?
<<

This is it. [highlighted bold above]

>>
You suggest that we can have a spatially structured experience, as of a table, in the absence of any table-shaped pattern of activation in our brain.
<<

Yes I do. What would it explain if we assumed that here is a table-shaped activation pattern in the brain? Why should that pattern result in the experience as of a table-shaped thing?

>>
But the table-shaped experience is a data structure with specific information content. It is a "relational structure" in the sense that every point of the spatial experience bears a specific spatial relation
<<

No, not (necessarily) spatial relation. It can be some other relation that is interpreted as spatial by the rest of the brain, processing, etc, and it is this latter point is that is crucial.

>>
i.e. the spatial experience has the same *information content* as a 3-D spatial model of the perceived table.
<<

Perhaps. Kosslyn suggested something like this, but not everyone agrees. Shape could be coded in other ways as well.

>>
You talk as if the table-shaped experience can be had by way of the activation of a bunch of neurons in the brain which are not in any kind of table-shaped configuration.
<<

What would the table-shape of the neural firing pattern explain about experience? Nothing, I think.

>>
But unless the neural activation has at least the same information content as the spatial percept that it represents, ...
<<

The neural activation represents a spatial percept? Not a shape, instead? I'm not following you. Other than that, why can't the percept have (convey) informational content that the real scene has? No unmediated access is needed for this - mediated access is perfectly fine.

>>
...you have information floating around in experience which is not explicitly represented in the brain.
<<

I don't get this, nor do I think anything like this follows from my argument.

>>
Your argument sounds like that of the little fat guy in my Cartoon Epistemology
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/pub/slehar/cartoonepist/cartoonepist23.html
<<

[MISREPRESENTED BY S.L.]

Zoltan

>>>>
As I understand your argument, when we view an illusory figure, for example a Kanizsa square, the square-shaped region of brightness that we observe as a spatial structure in experience does not exist anywhere in the brain as a spatial structure, but as some non-square non-pictorial pattern of activation. The square, as a square, exists nowhere
<<<<
>>
No, but there is at least the representation of a square in the brain. It need not be square-shaped though.
<<

But if it is not square-shaped in the brain, and it is not square-shaped on the page, then what is it that makes it square-shaped in experience? What is the mapping between the shape of the patterns of activations in the brain and the spatial structure that we experience? What is the "algorithm" that transforms the non-spatial pattern in the brain into the spatial pattern we experience? Why is our experience not exactly the shape of the neural substrate of that experience rather than of the experience itself?

How could you ever make an artificial brain for which a voltage in a particular register or memory cell in the machine resulted in the machine experiencing a spatial structure that was not explicitly present in that brain?

I think I know what you are thinking. Like Davidson, you imagine the spatial structure of experience as existing in some other disconnected space, which bears no physical relation to the physical space known to science, and therefore it will never be found in the brain. But if it does not exist in the space known to science, then it doesn't really exist in a scientific sense at all, which is what you ultimately believe about experience. But a theory of brain which explains everything about the brain *except* how it produces spatial experience is a theory that explains *nothing*, because it is only that spatially structured experience that makes the brain interesting in the first place!

>>
So when I look at a table, and have a table-shaped experience that appears to me as a spatial structure, ... [your choice:] it only *seems* to exist to me as a spatial structure while I am performing some non-spatial "act" of perceiving (I am perceiving "table-ishly").
<<

This is an explanation that explains nothing. How could we build an artificial intelligence which can perceive "table-ishly"? If you cannot demonstrate the *principle* behind "perceiving table-ishly" for a simple artificial brain, then that explanation says absolutely nothing! It is just word-salad! Now in your opinion, nothing is required, because the experience does not exist as a spatial structure, so a simple robot with a light bulb in it's head labeled "table" can experience "table-ishly" by simply turning on the light bulb. There is no need for any table image anywhere, because the image is pure experience, which has no physical manifestation in the machine. But that is an explanation that explains everything except the most important thing to be explained, which is how come I get to see an image in experience when my brain has no images in it?

>>
What would it explain if we assumed that there is a table-shaped activation pattern in the brain? Why should that pattern result in the experience as of a table-shaped thing?
<<

Well for one thing it would explain the one thing that your theory cannot explain, and that is the spatial structure of experience. Now it leaves other profound questions un-answered, such as how that image becomes conscious of its own structure. That is a whole nother issue which requires a whole nother explanation (which I provide in my paper). But to deny that a spatial structure is required to account for the spatial structure of experience is to deny the most obvious fact of conscious experience. A theory of consciousness that explains the structure of experience by claiming that no such structure exists in the physical world known to science, is a theory that explains nothing!

>>>>
you have information floating around in experience which is not explicitly represented in the brain.
<<<<
>>
I don't get this, nor do I think anything like this follows from my argument.
<<

The information content of a spatial percept, for example of a block resting on a table, is identically equal to the information content of a 3-D painted cardboard model of a block resting on a table. In other words, perceptual experience appears in the form of solid volumes, bounded by colored surfaces, embedded in a spatial void. Every point on every visible surface appears at a separate and distinct three-dimensional location, and the experience of the volume of space around the block is also perceived as a volumetric void, every point of which is experienced simultaneously and in parallel. The information content of this scene therefore is equivalent to that of a volumetric "voxel" (volume-pixel) image array of X x Y x Z pixels, like the ones used in medical imaging like an MRI scan, every point of which encodes the experience of either empty space or solid matter. An adequate model of the experience must at least encode all of that spatial information explicitly. You are probably imagining some kind of abstracted symbolic code that supposedly encodes all that structure in a much compressed and abbreviated form. But if that were the case, then our experience itself would appear in a much compressed and abbreviated form (like our experience of remembered scenes, or cognitive concepts). But our experience has the information content of an explicit volumetric scene, and therefore an adequate model of that experience must encode that same spatial information.

See Section 5 of my paper for a more complete, illustrated discussion of this point.
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/bubw3/bubw3.html#NEWSEC5

Steve