BenAlbahari comments on Being Wrong about Your Own Subjective Experience - Less Wrong

37 Post author: lukeprog 24 April 2011 08:24PM

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Comment author: Psychohistorian 25 April 2011 04:05:35AM *  16 points [-]

I may simply be unclear on what it means to be "wrong about the subjective quality of your own conscious experience," but it seems to me that this post is completely irrelevant to that question. All of the evidence shows flaws in our predictive ability, our memory, and our language. I don't see any contradictions or wrongness; indeed, I'm still unsure what such would look like. I'll go through it step by step.

Someone predicted that people couldn't experience echolocation. He was wrong. No evidence was offered that he could experience echolocation. Moreover, comparing the ability of the untrained to notice the difference between a T-shirt and a mixing bowl, and the ability of a bat or dolphin to render rich detail is disingenuous. But disputing the detail is besides the point: his mistake was about his abilities, not his actual experience. It's not like he experienced echolocation and didn't know it, or failed to and thought he did.

Does a coin look circular? This seems to be purely semantic and, if anything, a product of language. No one is disputing my ability to see a coin or predict or understand its properties. The problem is mostly whether we're describing the image on our retina or the translation our brain maps onto it. We see an elliptical image which we almost inseverably perceive as round because of the operations our brain does. I don't see anyone making a mistake about what coins look like, or having some erroneous experience.

When you're asked to imagine something, your brain does one thing. When you're asked to reflect on your imagination, or recall your brain has trouble doing so. This doesn't seem like someone being wrong about conscious experience so much as (at most) having difficulty consciously remembering a prior experience. Where's the error?

Dreaming in color - I don't even see where you're going with this. Some people do, some don't. It changes over time. Where's the error? Are there people who think they dream in color but don't, or vice versa? How is this relevant?

[ETA: Further discussion suggests the argument: there isn't a real change in frequency of color in dreams, but there is one in reporting, therefore, people are making mistakes. To that, I think there are two responses:

  1. This evidence is very weak. It's entirely possible that there has been a change in dream color. Since we have no idea what causes it, it's rather hasty to say, "More (or fewer) people must be making mistakes than did before." It's not impossible, it's just weak evidence where we have no understanding of the mechanism.

  2. This is likely a language error. For many people, dreams are unlike the waking world. This is rather like the circular/elliptical coin. It's not information about the dreams. It's not a problem with us experiencing our dreams.]

There are things that occur below our consciousness - this seems principally an issue of memory. Our brain doesn't register (and certainly doesn't record) certain things. There's no error here. It's not that I feel I have no feet when I do, or that I feel I am not driving when I am.

It's possible I've simply misinterpreted the claim you're making. But if it's:

you can be wrong about the subjective quality of your own conscious experience.

I really fail to see a single shred of evidence in everything you cite. You show that there are errors in our memory and our ability to predict, but you do not offer a single example of someone being wrong about the subjective quality of their own experience - it doesn't even seem like you suggest what such error would look like.

Even if I am missing something, it still seems like your point is that "What constitutes your subjective experience is unclear" not "X is a subjective experience that is wrong."

Comment author: BenAlbahari 25 April 2011 05:04:19AM 4 points [-]

Perhaps the post could be improved if it laid out the types of errors our intuitions can make (e.g. memory errors, language errors, etc.). Each type of error could then be analyzed in terms of how seriously it impacts prevalent theories of cognition (or common assumptions in mainstream philosophy). As it stands, the post seems like a rather random (though interesting!) sampling of cognitive errors that serve to support the somewhat unremarkable conclusion that yes, our seemingly infallible intuitions have glitches.