Frankish is openly hazy about exactly what it is to represent a property as phenomenal, and about the specific mechanisms via which such representations give rise to the problematic intuitions in question — this, he thinks, is a matter for further investigation.
I think Graziano’s recent book picks up where Frankish left off. See my blog post:
I feel like I now have in my head a more-or-less complete account of the algorithmic chain of events in the brain that leads to a person declaring that they are conscious, and then writing essays about phenomenal consciousness. Didn’t help! I find consciousness as weird and unintuitive as ever. But your post is as helpful as anything else I’ve read. I’ll have to keep thinking about it :-D
Phenomenal properties, it turns out, are a flaw in the map
Map vs territory is a helpful framing I think. When we perceive a rock, we are open to the possibility that our perceptions are not reflective of the territory, for example maybe we’re hallucinating. When we “perceive” that we are conscious, we don’t intuitively have the same open-mindedness; we feel like it has to be in the territory. So yeah, how do we know we’re conscious, if not by some kind of perception, and if it’s some kind of perception, why can’t it be inaccurate as a description of the territory, just like all other perceptions can? (I’m not sure if this framing is deep or if I’m just playing tricks with the term “perception”.) Then the question would be: must ethics always be about territories, or can it be about maps sometimes? Hmm, I dunno.
Glad you found it helpful (or at least, as helpful as other work on the topic). So far in my engagement with Graziano (specifically, non-careful reads of his 2013 book and his 2019 “Toward a standard model of consciousness”), I don’t feel like I’ve taken away much more than the summary I gave above of Frankish’s view: namely, “introspective mechanisms … track the processes involved in access consciousness and represent them using a simplified model” — something pretty similar to what Chalmers also says here on p. 34. I know Graziano focuses on attention in particular, and he talks more about e.g. sociality and cites some empirical work, but at a shallow glance I’m not sure I yet see really substantive and empirically grounded increases in specificity, beyond what seems like the general line amongst a variety of folks that “there’s some kind of global workspace-y thing, there’s some kind of modeling of that, this modeling involves simplifications/distortions/opacity of various kinds, these somehow explain whatever problem intuitions/reports need explaining.” But I haven’t tried to look at Graziano closely. The “naive” vs. “sophisticated” descriptions in your blog post seem like a helpful way to frame his project.
Interesting post, thanks!!
I think Graziano’s recent book picks up where Frankish left off. See my blog post:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/biKchmLrkatdBbiH8/book-review-rethinking-consciousness
I feel like I now have in my head a more-or-less complete account of the algorithmic chain of events in the brain that leads to a person declaring that they are conscious, and then writing essays about phenomenal consciousness. Didn’t help! I find consciousness as weird and unintuitive as ever. But your post is as helpful as anything else I’ve read. I’ll have to keep thinking about it :-D
Map vs territory is a helpful framing I think. When we perceive a rock, we are open to the possibility that our perceptions are not reflective of the territory, for example maybe we’re hallucinating. When we “perceive” that we are conscious, we don’t intuitively have the same open-mindedness; we feel like it has to be in the territory. So yeah, how do we know we’re conscious, if not by some kind of perception, and if it’s some kind of perception, why can’t it be inaccurate as a description of the territory, just like all other perceptions can? (I’m not sure if this framing is deep or if I’m just playing tricks with the term “perception”.) Then the question would be: must ethics always be about territories, or can it be about maps sometimes? Hmm, I dunno.
Glad you found it helpful (or at least, as helpful as other work on the topic). So far in my engagement with Graziano (specifically, non-careful reads of his 2013 book and his 2019 “Toward a standard model of consciousness”), I don’t feel like I’ve taken away much more than the summary I gave above of Frankish’s view: namely, “introspective mechanisms … track the processes involved in access consciousness and represent them using a simplified model” — something pretty similar to what Chalmers also says here on p. 34. I know Graziano focuses on attention in particular, and he talks more about e.g. sociality and cites some empirical work, but at a shallow glance I’m not sure I yet see really substantive and empirically grounded increases in specificity, beyond what seems like the general line amongst a variety of folks that “there’s some kind of global workspace-y thing, there’s some kind of modeling of that, this modeling involves simplifications/distortions/opacity of various kinds, these somehow explain whatever problem intuitions/reports need explaining.” But I haven’t tried to look at Graziano closely. The “naive” vs. “sophisticated” descriptions in your blog post seem like a helpful way to frame his project.