Re: test this idea

[William Flynn Wallace]

Many modern behavioral scientists think consciousness is an epiphenomenon - has no role other than noting what we do.  Passive observer.

But what if it's this:  our C observes what we do and acts to give the unconscious feedback as to the effectiveness of what it just did?  If we did good, then the response is strengthened; if bad, weakened (in a simple example).

What other mechanism can give the unconscious (in my thinking the sole reservoir of all potential actions of all kinds) the feedback it needs?  Not just observing, but reporting. Otherwise the unconscious doesn't know what it did in effect; only what was intended.    bill w

[Gadersd]

My view is that consciousness is merely a high-level control structure that can intervene at lower levels if needed. I like to think of corporate structure as a fitting analogy. The CEO is the head and the rest of the company can more or less run itself. However, the CEO has the power to step in and override any lesser control structure, such as the managers or even the individual low-level workers. Pyramidal control structures are the most effective in the economy and I think it is likewise with the brain.

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[William Flynn Wallace]

Nothing in your CEO model is contradictory to mine.  Both could be said to describe overseers. I would ask why you use the word 'merely' to describe the mechanism.  bill w

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[Gadersd]

Many people view consciousness as a magical phenomena that transcends our current understanding of physics. I reject this view, advocating that consciousness is “merely” a clever solution to the problem of high-level control in complex and uncertain environments.

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[William Flynn Wallace]

Looking back several hundred years and more at the mind/body problem, I find it fascinating that it has endured.  I am a materialist, so nothing literally metaphysical exists in my view.  I don't know why people want to hold on to a view where the main subject of interest has no physical existence and cannot be measured.  

How can one call himself a scientist when one is not a materialist?  Beats me.   bill w

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2023 at 12:56 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Looking back several hundred years and more at the mind/body problem, I find it fascinating that it has endured.  I am a materialist, so nothing literally metaphysical exists in my view.

I agree, but that's not the same as saying brute facts don't exist, after all an infinite sequence of "why did that happen?" questions either ends in a brute fact or the questions continue on forever like an onion that has an infinite number of layers. I think it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently; and after that there is simply nothing more that can be usefully said about consciousness.

 > I don't know why people want to hold on to a view where the main subject of interest has no physical existence and cannot be measured. 

Like it or not there is no way to directly detect consciousness in anything other than in ourselves, we can only deduce its existence indirectly by observing something that we can detect, like intelligent behavior. Natural Selection can't detect consciousness any better than we can but it can detect intelligent behavior because that helps an organism get its genes into the next generation. Evolution invented the brain not because it could produce consciousness but because it could produce intelligence, consciousness was just the inevitable byproduct of intelligence.  

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

I cannot think of a more fitting use for consciousness than the one I stated:  overseeing and providing feedback to our minds about the effectiveness of our actions.  This is most certainly a part of intelligence.

As to measuring it, we disagree:  we know when they are sleeping; we know when they are awake, and that's good enough for me.

bill w

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[Will Steinberg]

That's kinda nonsensical to me.  Qualia do reject our current model of physics.  They have absolutely nothing in common, it appears, with charge, spin, mass, etc.  They are a fundamentally different thing.

In fact all the evidence ever witnessed regarding those bosons or fermions or leptons or hadrons all came from consciousness.

I think the 'consciousness is an illusion' camp is cowardly.  It's clear there's something actually different there.   People need to stop ignoring it.  Deciding that it's some higher level process has no bearing on the hard problem of consciousness.   Even John, who calls it a 'brute fact' that consciousness is how data feels to be processed, seems reticent to include that with those other brute facts of the universe like the compositions and behaviors of space, time, energy, matter, etc.

No matter how much mathematical logic or neural circuits you figure out, an equation on paper will NEVER clearly represent the actual experience of some quale.  They are fundamentally different things.  Models of physics must be altered to accommodate qualia.  There are plenty of other things we don't understand right now--dark matter or energy, the beginning or end of the universe, even something like black holes.  Do we call them ILLUSIONS?  No.  

Rejection of the hard problem is a fear of understanding what the fuck life is.  Likely a fear of death in the end.  Look into the unknown and stop being in denial

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[Terren Suydam]

I agree with you Will, that physicalists sweep the hardness under the rug.  The "brute fact" that John refers to doesn't help us to understand, for example, why some data processing feels good, and other data processing feels bad. Data processing, in and of itself, is a neutral act, but the way things feel is not.

If you're not familiar, Bernardo Kastrup does a good job of rigorously making the points you raised. See "Why Materialism is a Dead End" for a good example.

Terren

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2023 at 2:39 PM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The "brute fact" that John refers to doesn't help us to understand, for example, why some data processing feels good, and other data processing feels bad. Data processing, in and of itself, is a neutral act,

Yes intelligence is capable of going either way, so it's easy to imagine an intelligence which found sex to be painful and self mutilation to be pleasant, but such an intelligence wouldn't be able to get its genes into the next generation, so natural selection will ensure that creatures like that didn't stay around for long.

John K Clark

 

[Gadersd]

I know a bit about physics, but I am not sure about this qualia thing you speak of. Can you rigorously define it for me or measure it? Otherwise I really don’t know what you are talking about. All I know is that many neurons are communicating in an interesting way to produce typing motions on a keyboard that yield words such as qualia. You may say that you experience these “qualia” but just saying that doesn’t give me any insight into the matter.

If I were forced to define consciousness I would say that it is an optimizing control system that possesses a recursive model of itself so that it can optimize itself as well as features of its environment. This is a definition of something that can be mathematically described and measured. Until someone provides a workable definition of qualia I’ll keep it on my philosophical wish list.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that qualia is real. I just don’t think anyone understands it well enough to make any significant claims about it, such as it being outside our current model of physics. The quality of being unexplained doesn’t logically imply that we CAN'T explain it with our current information. It may very well be that we as humans lack the reflective capacity it takes to truly understand every aspect of ourselves.

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2023 at 2:12 PM Will Steinberg <steinbe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> That's kinda nonsensical to me.  Qualia do reject our current model of physics.  They have absolutely nothing in common, it appears, with charge, spin, mass, etc.  They are a fundamentally different thing.

Yes they are fundamentally different, some things are on one side of the subjective/objective divide and some things are on the other.

> I think the 'consciousness is an illusion' camp is cowardly. 

I don't know about cowardly I just think it's a silly thing to say because it means nothing. Illusions are a perfectly respectable subjective phenomenon, so how would things be different if consciousness was NOT an illusion?  Beats the hell out of me.

> There are plenty of other things we don't understand right now--dark matter or energy, the beginning or end of the universe, even something like black holes.  Do we call them ILLUSIONS?  No.  

That's because, unlike consciousness, the world would objectively be a very different place if those things didn't exist. But how would the world be different if a subjective thing like an illusion was an illusion? The question doesn't even make any sense. 

> People need to stop ignoring it. 

I disagree, I think people need to stop spending so much time dreaming up new theories of consciousness because it's getting them precisely nowhere. The field is not advanced one nanometers in a century and time could be better spent thinking about other things that have a chance of producing something important, like developing a new intelligence theory, however that's far more difficult to do because intelligence theories, unlike consciousness theories, actually have to do something. 

>  Even John, who calls it a 'brute fact' that consciousness is how data feels to be processed, seems reticent to include that with those other brute facts of the universe like the compositions and behaviors of space, time, energy, matter, etc.

We know the nucleus of an atom is made of protons and neutrons and they are made of quarks, and that may or may not be the end of the road. It could be that quarks are a brute fact and are not made of anything more fundamental, or maybe they're made of something even smaller (superstrings? Loop quantum gravity?). That's why the study of matter is a worthy activity but the study of consciousness is not.  We can at least imagine a particle accelerator more powerful than any we have now that might reveal what quarks are made of, but there is no way even in theory, much less in practice, of jumping through the subjective/objective divide because what you're demanding is explaining subjectivity using only objective things, and that's never gonna happen. That's why I'm sure we've reached a brute fact in our examination of consciousness, but I'm not at all sure we've reached a brute fact in our examination of matter.

> Rejection of the hard problem is a fear of understanding what the fuck life is. 

I've said it before I'll say it again, the hardest thing about the hard problem is explaining exactly what the hard problem is and what criteria you would use in determining if the problem has been solved.  

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

 why some data processing feels good, and other data processing feels bad. Data processing, in and of itself, is a neutral act, but the way things feel is not.  terren

Emotions were simply not taught when I went to grad school (1960s). Epiphenomena, they were called.  But consider this:  when data enter our senses they are compared to stored data to see if we recognize the input.  Stored data includes our emotions, if any (almost always some),  and so we know from memory (our emotional conditioned responses) even before that data stream becomes conscious, whether it evokes positive or negative emotions, as well as any similarities to previous stimuli..

bill w

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[Terren Suydam]

You're starting from the premise that data processing exists as a material process (e.g. in our brains), and that consciousness is how data processing feels. What you're sweeping under the rug is how you get an aesthetic valence out of a process that has no valence.

Terren

 

[Terren Suydam]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2023 at 4:37 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

 why some data processing feels good, and other data processing feels bad. Data processing, in and of itself, is a neutral act, but the way things feel is not.  terren

Emotions were simply not taught when I went to grad school (1960s). Epiphenomena, they were called.  But consider this:  when data enter our senses they are compared to stored data to see if we recognize the input.  Stored data includes our emotions, if any (almost always some),  and so we know from memory (our emotional conditioned responses) even before that data stream becomes conscious, whether it evokes positive or negative emotions, as well as any similarities to previous stimuli..

bill w

I'm talking about data processing as the objective process of processing information. How can feelings of any kind pop out of an objective process?

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2023 at 5:04 PM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

> You're starting from the premise that data processing exists as a material process

That seems like an entirely reasonable place to start. Information is physical, we can now determine the maximum amount of information that can be contained within a closed surface, and we know that any logically irreversible manipulation of information, such as the erasure of the smallest possible part of information, a bit, requires a minimum amount of energy and at room temperature (20 °C) it's 0.0175 electron volts.

>  and that consciousness is how data processing feels.

Yes, I think that's one of the axioms of existence, and like all axioms there's no way to prove it.  

> What you're sweeping under the rug is how you get an aesthetic valence out of a process that has no valence.

There are more flattering ways to express that concept but basically you're right. However if there is absolutely no way to get rid of the dust then sweeping it under the rug is the only logical thing you can do; and that's what happens when you run into a brute fact, and if you keep digging eventually you will. Either that or the questions go on forever with no ultimate answer.

John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2023 at 5:13 PM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm talking about data processing as the objective process of processing information. How can feelings of any kind pop out of an objective process?

You seem to be demanding a simple explanation for how subjectivity is generated that uses only objective things in the explanation and is so intuitively obvious once it is explained that it makes you wonder why you hadn't thought of it yourself. But there is no way in hell that's ever gonna happen; and even if it did there would be no test that could determine if the explanation was really correct.

John K Clark

[Stathis Papaioannou]

That’s the hard problem of consciousness, and there is no answer, even in theory. If the answer is that we have magical god-stuff inside us, then why should magical god-stuff produce consciousness?

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Stathis Papaioannou

[Terren Suydam]

There is one more move available to you - start with a new set of axioms. Instead of assuming that the universe is made of stuff, you assume the primary ontology is consciousness. There are still huge problems to solve, but at least it's possible to go from consciousness to stuff, versus the other way around.

That's the brute fact - that an ontology that makes stuff primary is impossible.

Terren

[Terren Suydam]

Yeah, that's why I've come to reject physicalism. I just don't see any way around the hard problem. If your axioms lead you to a contradiction, then you reject your axioms.

Terren

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 8:09 AM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There is one more move available to you - start with a new set of axioms. Instead of assuming that the universe is made of stuff. you assume the primary ontology is consciousness.

It's impossible to prove that an axiom is correct but you can prove an axiom is wrong, all you need is one counter-example and in this case there are lots. Your axiom conflicts with the fact that consciousness changes when the arrangement of matter changes, your consciousness changes dramatically when you take a sleeping pill, or a powerful anesthetic, or a deadly poison. And the atoms that make up a book on number theory are unable to add 2+2, but if the same atoms that were in the book are arranged in a different way, such as in the form of a simple adding machine or any other sort of Turing Machine, they can.

 

> That's the brute fact - that an ontology that makes stuff primary is impossible.

I don't understand what that means.  

John K Clark

[Terren Suydam]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 9:12 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 8:09 AM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There is one more move available to you - start with a new set of axioms. Instead of assuming that the universe is made of stuff. you assume the primary ontology is consciousness.

It's impossible to prove that an axiom is correct but you can prove an axiom is wrong, all you need is one counter-example and in this case there are lots. Your axiom conflicts with the fact that consciousness changes when the arrangement of matter changes, your consciousness changes dramatically when you take a sleeping pill, or a powerful anesthetic, or a deadly poison. And the atoms that make up a book on number theory are unable to add 2+2, but if the same atoms that were in the book are arranged in a different way, such as in the form of a simple adding machine or any other sort of Turing Machine, they can.

None of those are necessarily problems for idealism. They just highlight that with idealism, you have to do the work of explaining why our world appears to be lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics, but there's no inherent contradiction there, just a failure to imagine how/why that could be the case. The point is that you don't have this basic contradiction at the core of the ontology like you do with physicalism.

 

> That's the brute fact - that an ontology that makes stuff primary is impossible.

I don't understand what that means. 

 

John K Clark

 

It's just saying that the Hard Problem is a proof that the axioms at the heart of physicalism are wrong.

Terren

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[Telmo Menezes]

Am Di, 10. Jan 2023, um 15:25, schrieb Terren Suydam:

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 9:12 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 8:09 AM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There is one more move available to you - start with a new set of axioms. Instead of assuming that the universe is made of stuff. you assume the primary ontology is consciousness.

It's impossible to prove that an axiom is correct but you can prove an axiom is wrong, all you need is one counter-example and in this case there are lots. Your axiom conflicts with the fact that consciousness changes when the arrangement of matter changes, your consciousness changes dramatically when you take a sleeping pill, or a powerful anesthetic, or a deadly poison. And the atoms that make up a book on number theory are unable to add 2+2, but if the same atoms that were in the book are arranged in a different way, such as in the form of a simple adding machine or any other sort of Turing Machine, they can.

None of those are necessarily problems for idealism. They just highlight that with idealism, you have to do the work of explaining why our world appears to be lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics, but there's no inherent contradiction there, just a failure to imagine how/why that could be the case. The point is that you don't have this basic contradiction at the core of the ontology like you do with physicalism.

 

> That's the brute fact - that an ontology that makes stuff primary is impossible.

I don't understand what that means. 

 

John K Clark

 

It's just saying that the Hard Problem is a proof that the axioms at the heart of physicalism are wrong.

I wouldn't go as far as calling it a proof, but I agree with the sentiment. I would say that the Hard Problem is strong evidence that matter cannot be primary. What I further suspect is that nothing can be primary: that every model that is complete is wrong, and that every model that is not wrong is not complete.

Telmo

Terren

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[William Flynn Wallace]

I'm talking about data processing as the objective process of processing information. How can feelings of any kind pop out of an objective process?  Terren or Stathis

Terminology problem:  just what is an objective process?   Emotions are parts of the autonomic nervous system and are just as objectively real as thoughts.   bill w

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 9:25 AM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 9:12 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 8:09 AM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There is one more move available to you - start with a new set of axioms. Instead of assuming that the universe is made of stuff. you assume the primary ontology is consciousness.

It's impossible to prove that an axiom is correct but you can prove an axiom is wrong, all you need is one counter-example and in this case there are lots. Your axiom conflicts with the fact that consciousness changes when the arrangement of matter changes, your consciousness changes dramatically when you take a sleeping pill, or a powerful anesthetic, or a deadly poison. And the atoms that make up a book on number theory are unable to add 2+2, but if the same atoms that were in the book are arranged in a different way, such as in the form of a simple adding machine or any other sort of Turing Machine, they can.

> None of those are necessarily problems for idealism. They just highlight that with idealism, you have to do the work of explaining why our world appears to be lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics,

The obvious answer is that  our world appears to be lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics because our universe IS lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics. And Occam's razor says the simplest explanation that explains an observation is the best.

 

>>> That's the brute fact - that an ontology that makes stuff primary is impossible.

>> I don't understand what that means. 

 

> It's just saying that the Hard Problem is a proof that the axioms at the heart of physicalism are wrong.

If I knew exactly what the hard problem was maybe I'd agree I don't know. But at least tell me this, tell me what sort of thing would convince you that the "hard problem" had been solved? If somebody said X produces consciousness then what sort of thing would X have to be, could it be complex and made of many parts or would it have to be simple and be all of one thing and not have parts at all? I'm assuming you would demand that X be pure objective stuff since you're trying to figure out how to jump over the huge subjective/objective gap. Is my assumption correct?  

John K Clark

[Gadersd]

I think therefore I am. The only thing we know for sure is our own consciousness. Therefore we must treat ourselves as primary and derive everything else through this lens. Indeed, even physics is secondary as we only have second-hand observations of it. We cannot prove that the world is not an illusion but we can all prove ourselves.

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[Terren Suydam]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 10:33 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 9:25 AM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 9:12 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 8:09 AM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There is one more move available to you - start with a new set of axioms. Instead of assuming that the universe is made of stuff. you assume the primary ontology is consciousness.

It's impossible to prove that an axiom is correct but you can prove an axiom is wrong, all you need is one counter-example and in this case there are lots. Your axiom conflicts with the fact that consciousness changes when the arrangement of matter changes, your consciousness changes dramatically when you take a sleeping pill, or a powerful anesthetic, or a deadly poison. And the atoms that make up a book on number theory are unable to add 2+2, but if the same atoms that were in the book are arranged in a different way, such as in the form of a simple adding machine or any other sort of Turing Machine, they can.

> None of those are necessarily problems for idealism. They just highlight that with idealism, you have to do the work of explaining why our world appears to be lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics,

The obvious answer is that  our world appears to be lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics because our universe IS lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics. And Occam's razor says the simplest explanation that explains an observation is the best.

Yes, that is the obvious answer, but sometimes the obvious answers are wrong.

 

>>> That's the brute fact - that an ontology that makes stuff primary is impossible.

>> I don't understand what that means. 

 

> It's just saying that the Hard Problem is a proof that the axioms at the heart of physicalism are wrong.

If I knew exactly what the hard problem was maybe I'd agree I don't know. But at least tell me this, tell me what sort of thing would convince you that the "hard problem" had been solved? If somebody said X produces consciousness then what sort of thing would X have to be, could it be complex and made of many parts or would it have to be simple and be all of one thing and not have parts at all? I'm assuming you would demand that X be pure objective stuff since you're trying to figure out how to jump over the huge subjective/objective gap. Is my assumption correct? 

I don't think the hard problem can be solved, that's why I'm no longer a physicalist. I think the "Hard Problem" is actually a poor name for what it's describing, because calling something a problem suggests there's a solution. It's more of a category error.

Idealism makes the category error go away. Nothing "produces" consciousness. Consciousness is primary. In idealism, the question is what produces the laws of physics. That's a "hard problem" in that there may actually be a solution to that.

Terren

 

John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 10:44 AM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> The obvious answer is that  our world appears to be lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics because our universe IS lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics. And Occam's razor says the simplest explanation that explains an observation is the best.

> Yes, that is the obvious answer, but sometimes the obvious answers are wrong.

But usually they are not, usually Occam's razor is a very effective strategy and I see absolutely no reason to deviate from it in this case.

 

>>> It's just saying that the Hard Problem is a proof that the axioms at the heart of physicalism are wrong.

>>If I knew exactly what the hard problem was maybe I'd agree I don't know. But at least tell me this, tell me what sort of thing would convince you that the "hard problem" had been solved? If somebody said X produces consciousness then what sort of thing would X have to be, could it be complex and made of many parts or would it have to be simple and be all of one thing and not have parts at all? I'm assuming you would demand that X be pure objective stuff since you're trying to figure out how to jump over the huge subjective/objective gap. Is my assumption correct? 

> I don't think the hard problem can be solved, that's why I'm no longer a physicalist. I think the "Hard Problem" is actually a poor name for what it's describing, because calling something a problem suggests there's a solution. It's more of a category error. Idealism makes the category error go away. Nothing "produces" consciousness. Consciousness is primary.

So your brute fact is that something as wonderful and complex as consciousness just is, and that's that. My brute fact is that something as wonderful and complex as consciousness is the result of the simplest thing conceivable, something that can have only 2 states, for example on or off. I like my brute fact better and I'm pretty sure William of Ockham would too, and as an added bonus it agrees with experimental results (the effects of anesthesia and poison) which your brute fact does not.

 John K Clark

[Will Steinberg]

There HAS TO be a better explanation for consciousness than "it's magic ok don't talk about it".  It exists.  Things that exist have explanations for how they work.  No, we might not understand WHY the universe exists, but we know some of how a lot of parts of it move.  We have equations that can accurately predict motion, charge, etc.  There's no reason that consciousness shouldn't at least have rigorous details for how it interfaces with energy and matter.  Acting like it's some unexplainable thing is so unscientific.  It's the opposite of seeking truth and knowledge.  It's shying away from things that are hard to explain by saying they're magic, or impossible to explain.  That kind of attitude is what has always prevented people from gaining knowledge.  Reducing disease to some general bad vibes or miasma.  Saying space was a simple etheric fluid and leaving it at that.  That's where we are with consciousness right now.  A group of reactionary denialists (which is usually the majority) wants to actively stop seeking truth because the current models are good enough and because they have invested time and money into learning the grammar of those models.  

Consciousness CAN be explained.   The standard model will eventually be antiquated, anyway.  Stop clinging to the present--mystery is the norm.  

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 1:01 PM Will Steinberg <steinbe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There HAS TO be a better explanation for consciousness than "it's magic ok don't talk about it". 

Why? We would certainly like a better explanation, but the universe is not required to be compatible with human desires. 

> It exists. 

Yes. Without a doubt at least one example of consciousness exists.

> Things that exist have explanations for how they work. 

And the things involved in that explanation need explanations of their own about how they work, and those explanations need explanations too, and that goes on and on forever, unless of course things terminate in a brute fact.  

> No, we might not understand WHY the universe exists, but we know some of how a lot of parts of it move. 

And my explanation involves a part that can only move from on to off or off to on, the simplest explanations are the best provided they get the job done, and a part can't get any simpler than that.  

 

> We have equations that can accurately predict motion, charge, etc.  There's no reason that consciousness shouldn't at least have rigorous details for how it interfaces with energy and matter. 

So if somebody came out with a theory that said X causes consciousness and X only consists of objective things like mass, energy, momentum, electrical charge and spin then you would have a better intuitive understanding about how all that stuff could actually produce consciousness then me just saying consciousness is the inevitable byproduct of intelligence? I don't think so.  And nature has given us one and only one clue in helping us figure out all this stuff, every one of us knows with absolute certainty that they are conscious, and if Darwin is right there is only one reason Evolution would've bothered producing consciousness and that's because it's a byproduct of intelligence. However valuable consciousness may be to us it's completely useless to evolution, but intelligence is not.  

> It's shying away from things that are hard to explain by saying they're magic, or impossible to explain. 

It's shying away from things that have not made an inch of progress in 1000 years and will not do any better in the next 1000. 

> That kind of attitude is what has always prevented people from gaining knowledge.  Reducing disease to some general bad vibes or miasma. 

It's easy to tell a good medical theory from a bad one, in one the patient lives and in the other the patient dies, but it's impossible to tell a good consciousness theory from a bad one. They all work equally well (or equally poorly) because there are no facts that any of them need to fit.  

> Consciousness CAN be explained.   

Tell me what sort of thing would convince you that the so-called "hard problem" has been solved? If X causes consciousness what sort of thing is X?  I'm not asking for a precise theory, I just want to know the general sort of thing X must be to satisfy you. If X is complex then its parts can't be simpler than what I'm proposing, something that can only change from on to off or off to on. And if X is simple and yet is still able to produce something as complex and wonderful as consciousness then you're just talking about magic. I suppose somebody could claim that any brute fact is magic, but your magic needs to be super elaborate to work while mine is as rudimentary and simple as it's possible to be.

John K Clark

[Terren Suydam]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 11:08 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 10:44 AM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> The obvious answer is that  our world appears to be lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics because our universe IS lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics. And Occam's razor says the simplest explanation that explains an observation is the best.

> Yes, that is the obvious answer, but sometimes the obvious answers are wrong.

But usually they are not, usually Occam's razor is a very effective strategy and I see absolutely no reason to deviate from it in this case.

But you said yourself that you need to sweep some inconvenient facts under the rug to make physicalism work. Even if you ultimately choose not to deviate from it, that is clearly a reason to do so.

 

 

>>> It's just saying that the Hard Problem is a proof that the axioms at the heart of physicalism are wrong.

>>If I knew exactly what the hard problem was maybe I'd agree I don't know. But at least tell me this, tell me what sort of thing would convince you that the "hard problem" had been solved? If somebody said X produces consciousness then what sort of thing would X have to be, could it be complex and made of many parts or would it have to be simple and be all of one thing and not have parts at all? I'm assuming you would demand that X be pure objective stuff since you're trying to figure out how to jump over the huge subjective/objective gap. Is my assumption correct? 

> I don't think the hard problem can be solved, that's why I'm no longer a physicalist. I think the "Hard Problem" is actually a poor name for what it's describing, because calling something a problem suggests there's a solution. It's more of a category error. Idealism makes the category error go away. Nothing "produces" consciousness. Consciousness is primary.

So your brute fact is that something as wonderful and complex as consciousness just is, and that's that. My brute fact is that something as wonderful and complex as consciousness is the result of the simplest thing conceivable, something that can have only 2 states, for example on or off. I like my brute fact better and I'm pretty sure William of Ockham would too, and as an added bonus it agrees with experimental results (the effects of anesthesia and poison) which your brute fact does not.

Your brute fact is a category error and a base contradiction. It's saying the ghost is the machine, and yet physicalism only allows machines.  For physicalists who allow consciousness, they are at complete odds with the rest of their metaphysics. They allow it because they have to (unless they're courageous enough to deny consciousness), but it's a terribly inconvenient fact that consciousness exists, which is why most physicalists would really rather not talk about it.

Terren

 

 John K Clark

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[William Flynn Wallace]

OK, let's everybody jump on me:  how about this:  consciousness is the private experiences of a person's inner and outer world.  It is nothing more than an awareness of incoming stimuli (at least some of them) from the outside world and from the person's unconscious mind and short term memory (temporary storage of experiences).  This awareness is greatly turned off in sleep (though powerful stimuli can get through and awaken the person).  Simple things like EEG can determine the level of awareness (and they claim they can tell sometimes what a person is dreaming!).

If consciousness is anything more than the above, let me know.  Maybe I am naive but I can learn.   I don't think there is any mystery to it.  Certainly not any ghosts. bill w

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 2:09 PM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> The obvious answer is that  our world appears to be lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics because our universe IS lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics. And Occam's razor says the simplest explanation that explains an observation is the best.

> Yes, that is the obvious answer, but sometimes the obvious answers are wrong.

>>But usually they are not, usually Occam's razor is a very effective strategy and I see absolutely no reason to deviate from it in this case.

> But you said yourself that you need to sweep some inconvenient facts under the rug to make physicalism work.

There's nothing special about physics in that regard, with EVERY theory about anything eventually you either hit a brute fact or you keep on asking "why" questions forever. But with physics the amount of dust you need to sweep under the rug is much less than with religion or or any other sort of voodoo.

> Your brute fact is a category error and a base contradiction.

Philosophers say "category error" when they have no other rebuttal hoping that the other guy doesn't know what it means so he'll just shut up. 

> It's saying the ghost is the machine,

It's saying the ghost is information, it's not the machine and it's not even the atoms in the machine, it's the way the atoms in the machine are put together. So no machine is unique. 

 

> and yet physicalism only allows machines. 

And it says there are basically only 2 different types of machines, cuckoo clocks and roulette wheels . Are you proposing a third type?  

> For physicalists who allow consciousness, they are at complete odds with the rest of their metaphysics.

Not if a part of their metaphysics is that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently.  

> They allow it because they have to (unless they're courageous enough to deny consciousness),

Courageous? Some philosophy professors may say that in their first year philosophy course in order to sound provocative, but I don't believe for one second they really believe that consciousness doesn't exist. But if they do then they're imbeciles. 

> but it's a terribly inconvenient fact that consciousness exists, which is why most physicalists would really rather not talk about it.

Physicists would rather not talk about consciousness because people have been talking about it for thousands of years and at the end of all that babble we learned precisely nothing. You said as much yourself, you said  "I don't think the hard problem can be solved" so what is there to talk about? I think it's time to move on to something that can be solved. 

John K Clark

[Terren Suydam]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 2:56 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 2:09 PM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> The obvious answer is that  our world appears to be lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics because our universe IS lawfully ordered and constrained by the laws of physics. And Occam's razor says the simplest explanation that explains an observation is the best.

> Yes, that is the obvious answer, but sometimes the obvious answers are wrong.

>>But usually they are not, usually Occam's razor is a very effective strategy and I see absolutely no reason to deviate from it in this case.

> But you said yourself that you need to sweep some inconvenient facts under the rug to make physicalism work.

There's nothing special about physics in that regard, with EVERY theory about anything eventually you either hit a brute fact or you keep on asking "why" questions forever. But with physics the amount of dust you need to sweep under the rug is much less than with religion or or any other sort of voodoo.

With physics you have multiple brute facts - the one we've been discussing about how consciousness magically pops out of stuff, and also the traditional "where does stuff come from in the first place?"

 

> Your brute fact is a category error and a base contradiction.

Philosophers say "category error" when they have no other rebuttal hoping that the other guy doesn't know what it means so he'll just shut up. 

And people say what you said to avoid dealing with the point.

 

> It's saying the ghost is the machine,

It's saying the ghost is information, it's not the machine and it's not even the atoms in the machine, it's the way the atoms in the machine are put together. So no machine is unique. 

And information is objective... right?  In other words, information is lawful, it can be described, quantified, etc. Machines can be realized in terms of software, or information processing, so I don't think the distinction between machines and information is all that important. And that's what consciousness is - the way this objective sense of information feels when it's being processed. The ghost is the machine.

 

> and yet physicalism only allows machines. 

And it says there are basically only 2 different types of machines, cuckoo clocks and roulette wheels . Are you proposing a third type?  

Where did you get the idea I was proposing a third type? lol

 

> For physicalists who allow consciousness, they are at complete odds with the rest of their metaphysics.

Not if a part of their metaphysics is that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently.  

The metaphysics of physicalism is that stuff (i.e. objective, quantifiable, measurable) is all that exists. That's at odds with consciousness, which is not stuff. Nor is it information (which is objective). As you say, it somehow pops out as the feeling of information being processed, but that's unquantifiable and immeasurable.  So it's at odds with the metaphysics of physicalism.

 

> They allow it because they have to (unless they're courageous enough to deny consciousness),

Courageous? Some philosophy professors may say that in their first year philosophy course in order to sound provocative, but I don't believe for one second they really believe that consciousness doesn't exist. But if they do then they're imbeciles. 

Courageous because they're at least being consistent with their metaphysics. I don't understand it myself, but it takes balls to deny consciousness publicly.

 

> but it's a terribly inconvenient fact that consciousness exists, which is why most physicalists would really rather not talk about it.

Physicists would rather not talk about consciousness because people have been talking about it for thousands of years and at the end of all that babble we learned precisely nothing. You said as much yourself, you said  "I don't think the hard problem can be solved" so what is there to talk about? I think it's time to move on to something that can be solved. 

I agree, which is why I've come to reject physicalism. I believe that ultimately, it's possible to explain anesthesia, poison, and mind-altering drugs starting from an idealist metaphysics, and tackling that problem from that angle is a hell of a lot more interesting to me than hearing fundamaterialists explain away consciousness without taking it seriously enough to admit that there's no way to get aesthetic valence out of stuff.  You think waving it away with a "brute fact" cuts the mustard but all you've succeeded in doing is denying an important part of consciousness just to preserve your commitment to your metaphysics.

Terren

 

John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 3:23 PM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> There's nothing special about physics in that regard, with EVERY theory about anything eventually you either hit a brute fact or you keep on asking "why" questions forever. But with physics the amount of dust you need to sweep under the rug is much less than with religion or or any other sort of voodoo.

>With physics you have multiple brute facts - the one we've been discussing about how consciousness magically pops out of stuff, and also the traditional "where does stuff come from in the first place?"

Unlike religion, physics never claimed to have solved every problem in existence like  "where does stuff come from in the first place?" And as far as consciousness is concerned, it's irrelevant. If science hasn't solved every problem it has at least solved quite a few, but religion has never solved any. 

 

>> It's saying the ghost is information, it's not the machine and it's not even the atoms in the machine, it's the way the atoms in the machine are put together. So no machine is unique. 

> And information is objective... right? 

That's what Claude Shannon said  

 

> In other words, information is lawful, it can be described, quantified, etc. Machines can be realized in terms of software, or information processing, so I don't think the distinction between machines and information is all that important.

Information is physical so it needs matter, but atoms are generic, there are no scratches on them to tell them apart, any atom will work as well as any other. 

 

>> Not if a part of their metaphysics is that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently.  

> The metaphysics of physicalism is that stuff (i.e. objective, quantifiable, measurable) is all that exists.

Not necessarily all that exists but all that can be investigated.  

> That's at odds with consciousness, which is not stuff.

That's why physicist know that investigating consciousness will always lead nowhere.  

 

> Nor is it information (which is objective).

If information is not "stuff" then neither is energy, but I think both are.  

> As you say, it somehow pops out as the feeling of information being processed, but that's unquantifiable and immeasurable. 

Yep, that's why it's an axiom.  

> So it's at odds with the metaphysics of physicalism.

Not if a part of the metaphysics is that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently.  

 >I believe that ultimately, it's possible to explain anesthesia, poison, and mind-altering drugs starting from an idealist metaphysics,

You believe you can look at the chemical formula for Propofol  (C12H18O) and obtain from that an intuitive understanding of how it will change consciousness. Don't hold your breath.

> You think waving it away with a "brute fact" cuts the mustard 

I don't know about cutting the mustard but I do know for a fact that an iterative chain of "why" questions either ends in a brute fact or it does not end in a brute fact and therefore goes on forever. Logically there is simply no other alternative. 

John K Clark

[Will Steinberg]

Your brute fact stops much further out than it should.   We don't just say an electron is a magic sphere with negative charge.   We used to, but we know a bit more about how they are actually formed now. 

There is a 100% chance imo that qualia have specific binding properties to physical reality.   If it wasn't objective, all sorts of absurdities and contradictions would occur.

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Wed, 11 Jan 2023 at 09:26, Will Steinberg <steinbe...@gmail.com> wrote:

Your brute fact stops much further out than it should.   We don't just say an electron is a magic sphere with negative charge.   We used to, but we know a bit more about how they are actually formed now. 

There is a 100% chance imo that qualia have specific binding properties to physical reality.   If it wasn't objective, all sorts of absurdities and contradictions would occur.

Suppose we find that there are fundamental qualia particles that we can measure with instruments, and work out which entities have qualia and what qualia they have. Well, WHY do these qualia particles produce qualia? Why aren’t we just zombies?

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Stathis Papaioannou

[Terren Suydam]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 4:03 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 3:23 PM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> There's nothing special about physics in that regard, with EVERY theory about anything eventually you either hit a brute fact or you keep on asking "why" questions forever. But with physics the amount of dust you need to sweep under the rug is much less than with religion or or any other sort of voodoo.

>With physics you have multiple brute facts - the one we've been discussing about how consciousness magically pops out of stuff, and also the traditional "where does stuff come from in the first place?"

Unlike religion, physics never claimed to have solved every problem in existence like  "where does stuff come from in the first place?" And as far as consciousness is concerned, it's irrelevant. If science hasn't solved every problem it has at least solved quite a few, but religion has never solved any. 

Nobody here is talking about religion.

 

> As you say, it somehow pops out as the feeling of information being processed, but that's unquantifiable and immeasurable. 

Yep, that's why it's an axiom.

I know, and I understand. You're just trying to make it work. But at the end of the day it doesn't pass the smell test. At best, it's a careless elision of the most important aspect of consciousness, and at worst it's a way to stop people from asking questions.

 

> So it's at odds with the metaphysics of physicalism.

Not if a part of the metaphysics is that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently. 

That's not central to physicalism. That's a move you (and others) make. But that doesn't mean it's not at odds with the core of physicalism.

 

 >I believe that ultimately, it's possible to explain anesthesia, poison, and mind-altering drugs starting from an idealist metaphysics,

You believe you can look at the chemical formula for Propofol  (C12H18O) and obtain from that an intuitive understanding of how it will change consciousness. Don't hold your breath.

I'm not asserting that. I'm not really sure what kinds of explanations are possible with an idealist metaphysics (as I am wrapping my head around it), but AFAIK it's just a really difficult problem, not an impossible one, to explain how drugs impact consciousness from that perspective.

 

Terren

[Henry Rivera, PsyD]

On Jan 10, 2023, at 1:59 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
…

However valuable consciousness may be to us it's completely useless to evolution, but intelligence is not.  

So far my experience suggests consciousness and intelligence are correlated and codevelop even. Both/either may be the point of evolution—continued development of knowledge of self. Gene pool success will be superior among the most intelligent individuals eventually. 

To get a bit fantastic, once we learn the mechanisms of consciousness, perhaps we will have the knowledge to transcend material form, to manipulate space-time. Maybe that’s why there aren’t more evolved aliens obvious in our neighborhood (in reference to other threads).

Lastly, I maintain psychonauts are our best source of intelligence on these matters. Leary for example wrote extensively on the trajectory of consciousness and evolution in Exo-psychology. It’s too esoteric for most still. This path of inquiry is still taboo, but that is changing as our collective intelligence increases.

Anyone else ever heard this:

You are the universe experiencing itself from a unique point of view. 

I suggest it is relevant. 

-Henry

[Will Steinberg]

I agree that the last statement is important and feel like some kind of weird strange loop recursion is part of the answer. 

To Stathis--I think if we found this qualia particle (I think it's closer to what John thinks) then the circumstances would naturally lead to more paths of inquiry, as they always do.  The problem right now is that most scientists seem to have fully given up on solving consciousness whatsoever.

I think it probably IS axiomatic that consciousness is how information feels to be processed, or rather that information processing is how consciousness moves.  To me, consciousness is so different than everything else (and the only lens for all that other stuff,) that it must be one of very few truly fundamental aspects of reality, perhaps two.

I think it goes something like,bthere is consciousness, and form.  Consciousness organizes through form.  And all form that will ever be witnessed will be witnessed by consciousness. Which is what we do as conscious forms.   Self consciousness is something different I think and a much less complicated problem, pretty much just applying standard logic and math to this new understanding of actually fundamental forces.

As to why consciousness and form become separate from some kind of monad, or exactly what line they are opposites across, I'm not quite sure.  But it must make sense somewhere out there, otherwise it wouldn't exist.

The dualists were half right perhaps.  But the interfacing of mind and body is a lot closer than they thought, in my opinion.

Who knows, maybe dark matter is the weight of consciousness, or black holes are literal gods.  So much unknown 

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 5:26 PM Will Steinberg <steinbe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There is a 100% chance imo that qualia have specific binding properties to physical reality. 

I agree. If there was no relationship between physical reality and qualia Evolution would've never bothered to invent it , but it did because qualia affected our intelligent actions. Or to put it another way, consciousness must be a byproduct of intelligence. 

John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 5:38 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Suppose we find that there are fundamental qualia particles that we can measure with instruments, and work out which entities have qualia and what qualia they have. 

Even if such a particle existed and actually produced qualia there would be no way even in theory to prove that it did, and even if by some magic you manage to do that it would immediately lead to your next question:

> Well, WHY do these qualia particles produce qualia? 

That is an excellent question! And even if, after building a new multibillion dollar qualia particle excelerator, you discover that the qualia particle is not fundamental but is made of smaller simpler parts, you'd want to know how those smaller simpler parts manage to produce qualia. And the simplest conceivable part of a machine is a part that can only change from on to off or off to on.

> Why aren’t we just zombies?

What's with this "we" business? By direct experience I know for a fact that I am conscious but I can't prove and I will never be able to prove that I'm not the only conscious being in the universe or even the Multiverse. However I have a hunch I am not.

John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 6:15 PM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>> So it's at odds with the metaphysics of physicalism.

>> Not if a part of the metaphysics is that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently. 

> That's not central to physicalism. That's a move you (and others) make. But that doesn't mean it's not at odds with the core of physicalism.

Frankly I don't give a damn. As someone who reads more than most I have something a bit embarrassing to admit, when you first used the word "physicalism" I had to look up the word to be sure what it meant because it just doesn't show up much in the scientific stuff I tend to read. If I'm not a member of the "physicalism" club that's fine with me because I never knew I was supposed to belong.

 >>>I believe that ultimately, it's possible to explain anesthesia, poison, and mind-altering drugs starting from an idealist metaphysics,

>> You believe you can look at the chemical formula for Propofol  (C12H18O) and obtain from that an intuitive understanding of how it will change consciousness. Don't hold your breath.

> I'm not asserting that. I'm not really sure what kinds of explanations are possible with an idealist metaphysics (as I am wrapping my head around it),

It's conceivable that if you study chemistry and biology a lot you might get an intuitive understanding of why the chemical (C12H18O) interferes with the brain's data processing and retards intelligent activity, however if you don't make use of my axiom that there is a relationship between data processing and consciousness it won't help you in establishing an intuitive understanding of consciousness.

John K Clark

[Terren Suydam]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2023 at 6:21 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> You believe you can look at the chemical formula for Propofol  (C12H18O) and obtain from that an intuitive understanding of how it will change consciousness. Don't hold your breath.

> I'm not asserting that. I'm not really sure what kinds of explanations are possible with an idealist metaphysics (as I am wrapping my head around it),

It's conceivable that if you study chemistry and biology a lot you might get an intuitive understanding of why the chemical (C12H18O) interferes with the brain's data processing and retards intelligent activity, however if you don't make use of my axiom that there is a relationship between data processing and consciousness it won't help you in establishing an intuitive understanding of consciousness.

John K Clark

There's 100% a relationship there. If one is using idealist metaphysics though, you invert that claim: matter and information processing is how consciousness manifests as separate from itself.

For most of my life I've subscribed to physicalism and tried really hard to understand how consciousness could pop out of brains. My thinking was that anything that could be described as a cybernetic system has a subjective quality to it - similar to your brute fact, mine was "there is something it feels like to be a cybernetic system". But I just couldn't solve the valence problem. Interestingly, there are some folks at the Qualia Research Institute who are working with the idea that qualia is isomorphic to mathematical objects realized in the neural dynamics of the brain, or more generally, in the information dynamics of any information processing system, and their key insight is that valence is isomorphic to the symmetry of that mathematical object. It's a pretty good argument.

But at the end of the day, you're still left with the question: but why does symmetry feel good and anti-symmetry feel bad? Why is there subjectivity at all?  The laws of physics don't demand it.

Interestingly, I think these sorts of ideas are still relevant for idealists who are trying to build a narrative about how the physical world manifests in terms of a fundamental "unified consciousness". You still have to explain propofol. It's just that there's an inversion, the direction of explanation flows in the opposite direction. But those ideas are still relevant.

Terren

[John Clark]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2023 at 10:29 AM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> It's conceivable that if you study chemistry and biology a lot you might get an intuitive understanding of why the chemical (C12H18O) interferes with the brain's data processing and retards intelligent activity, however if you don't make use of my axiom that there is a relationship between data processing and consciousness it won't help you in establishing an intuitive understanding of consciousness.

>There's 100% a relationship there.

There's a 100% a relationship between chemistry and data processing, and between data processing and intelligent behavior, however that says nothing about consciousness unless you believe that Darwinian Evolution is probably correct or believe that my axiom is probably true. I happen to believe that both are probably true.

> If one is using idealist metaphysics though, you invert that claim: matter and information processing is how consciousness manifests as separate from itself.

Maybe so I'm not sure because I know little about idealist metaphysics and thus feel no obligation to defend it.

> Interestingly, there are some folks at the Qualia Research Institute who are working with the idea that qualia is isomorphic to mathematical objects realized in the neural dynamics of the brain,

I'm sure they're very smart and it took them hundreds or thousands of hours of deep thought to come up with it, but how on earth do they propose to prove that their consciousness theory is true or even provide a tiny particle of evidence that their theory is less wrong than the 19 dozen rival consciousness theories that have been floating around for centuries? My theory is not really about consciousness, it's about consciousness theories, and in the nutshell it says "stop wasting your time on this".

> but why does symmetry feel good and anti-symmetry feel bad?

Probably because symmetrical people are usually healthier than non-symmetrical people, so if by random mutation somebody is sexually attracted to symmetrical people of the opposite sex then they're more likely to get their genes into the next generation than those who are attracted to non-symmetrical people. So after a few generations the population that likes symmetry comes to predominate and that's why most people think the Elephant Man was ugly and would not consider such a person to be a satisfactory sexual partner.

 

> Why is there subjectivity at all? 

Because consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently. That may leave you unsatisfied but like it or not I don't think you'll ever get a better answer than that, not even if you work on the problem until the sun becomes a red giant.

> You still have to explain propofol

The chemical degrades the brain's data-processing, which degrades its intelligence, which degrades its consciousness, or more precisely degrades the data's consciousness. 

John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 2:49 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> OK, let's everybody jump on me:  how about this:  consciousness is the private experiences of a person's inner and outer world. 

OK, but being a private experience it can't be shared. 

> It is nothing more than an awareness of incoming stimuli

Yeah but "awareness" is just a synonym for "consciousness".  

> Simple things like EEG can determine the level of awareness

If you don't believe that intelligent behavior is a sign of awareness then why in the world would you believe that a squiggle on a graph produced by an EEG machine is?  

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

If you don't believe that intelligent behavior is a sign of awareness then why in the world would you believe that a squiggle on a graph produced by an EEG machine is?  

John K Clark

Intelligent or unintelligent behavior is a sign of awareness (which of course is a synonym for consciousness).  If a squiggle correlates strongly with self-report of awareness then I'll buy that it is reporting consciousness.  Reporting what is in your conscious mind - (introspection is the term which was used in the late 1800s and early 1900s hundreds to characterize a method of studying psychology).  Can be very difficult, such as in the case of smells and emotions.  It produced no progress in psychology and was replaced by Behaviorism.    bill w

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