Hi! Interesting ideas, but a few things to consider with your points.

1-2) Why is it matter that is combining to produce thought? Why not a more idealistic scenario where mind is more fundamental than matter? If qualia/consciousness also affect how matter behaves, which is more fundamental? Does matter cause qualia, qualia affect matter, or some dualist intermingling?

3) More than two objects may be working together, but what is an object in this scenario? Is it predefined volumes of matter, or the space the object is or is not in? Also, what does this interaction entail? Why do some objects and interactions generate a set of qualia and some not?

4) Evolution might guide the movements and processes of biological automata, but could experience of the color "red", and the color "red" itself, evolve from it? Also, one would need a model of free will in order for qualia to have any role in evolution, if qualia themselves are a benefit to organisms and not a deterministic byproduct of physics. If I can somehow act upon qualia, instead of just watching a movie of qualia flowing past, that strains strict materialist, deterministic models.

Nothing is an interesting concept, which seems to be explored in other threads, but yeah, it looked very pointilist.

It could just mean read and comprehend, but we always could go deeper. When you think about it, how do we know that our knowledge or senses like color make sense in themselves, and are not just some aftereffect from disjointed causes? I don't have an answer for that, but we have to do the best we can with the tools we have.

I'm curious where you got the eye picture. Is it a painting?

Sure, assuming we can agree on a definition for "see".

Matter/energy/whatever our "physical" substance is can be "Medium A". Space or whatever the space Medium A operates in can be "Medium B". The sensors are a property of Medium B. Medium B and Medium A overlap somehow, so the sensors have something to measure. I don't care if medium A is quantized or continuous. Medium B may be quantized or continuous (as I understand this is an open question in Physics with spacetime). Both cases are addressed in the paper. The argument is strongest when medium B is continuous, but even if it was quantized, there are problems. I don't see how you avoid a naturalistic Occasionalism, where medium B arbitrarily determines the placement of instances of medium A in relation to itself. I assume you cannot just negate the independence of both the physical properties of medium A (such as conservation of energy) or properties concerning the relationship of medium A to medium B (such as velocity and acceleration in classical mechanics).

We could go down the epistemological rabbit hole and ask all of these : ), but in the context of the statement it is the paper (and I guess myself) arguing it.

I may get into trouble myself speaking about Physics, but I don't think any of this works against the theory. Our sensors may not be measuring the exact positions of particles, but perhaps the energy of the system in a physical location, or the probabilities for where something might come up in a probability function once observed. What we call physical could theoretically be anything. We can perhaps add a third axiom about sensors in that they measure a physical property, but we won't specify the exact property. The question is how we tie the physical property, the space the property operates in, and mental properties together.

It's been awhile since I've done automata / language theory, but I guess it could like a Turing machine in that it takes the "input tape" of physical reality, instaneously performs any calculations needed, and stops at a thought (assuming it always stops). I like to think of it as a movie projector though, taking film as physical input and transforming into an image at a particular instant. Or perhaps a piano, in that whatever keys are pressed, it transforms into one sound, with the sound dependent on the exact keys pressed.

I still think it's a physical theory, and that it's not bound to classical physics, although I do use classical examples because they are easy to understand. Even what we know now might change in the future, if we ever get a unified theory combining our quantum / relativistic / string models. Even then, we may not know everything, and some stimuli from a parallel universe might upend our model yet again. Better to work out through reason what is fundamental.

Without delving into the full literature of the mind/body problem, we have both physical and mental properties, and I think something like a thought machine is a good way to link physical and mental properties, while letting us experience continuity of thoughts. Whatever is physical can be matter, energy, waves, quantum fluctuations, or whatever. The challenge is how to interpret the input.

Fair enough : ). If there is too much baggage with "outside", we could always define the universe as encompassing everything there is, which can include God. I'm not giving a deus ex machina, but explaining how a potential property of God might help.

It is a logical argument based on certain assumptions and one potential property of God. You are free to disagree. Just make sure your alternative solution makes more sense.

It seems you are taking back your proposal of how storage works, so we are now back to what do you mean by stored, and what is doing the storing?

I don't like the word storing, because I think of it more as reading a physical system state and mapping to a thought. Don't be confused by the infinity of potential physical states in a finite space. Instead, how can these states be interpreted and mapped? Let's take a tiny sphere, square, or some other space and call it a thought machine, with input a physical state and output to a thought. How do we read the physical input?

We need to break the space into smaller units so we can register difference in the space. These are the sensors, which have the properties of measuring physical space, and their sum readings output a thought. Subdivisions of the space, and the subdivisions having properties contributing to the whole, can't be avoided if the object having the thoughts is the same. Why fire a thought at one point, based on one physical state, or why fire another, based on another state?

We need to avoid the infinite regress, so these sensors don't have their own sensors, and are the smallest unit by which the thought machine can interpret space. From these indivisible units of space, however many there are, we can then build our thought machine. This is what I mean when I say from the "bottom up". Start with the sensors and then figure out the machine. Don't take the space the thought machine operates in and keep subdividing (from the "top down") to accommodate any state you wish.

For what I think is frequently missed is that the thought machine has its own properties independent of what is actually in a physical space. First, its sensors don't follow around the objects being measured. We don't redraw the sensors as the chess piece moves, for example. If the chess piece's sensor was in the same place relative to the chess piece, how would it register change?

Also, the machine is always firing and always measuring a state, independent of what is physically there. Take a square in space divided into two equal halves, and that same square also divided into three equal thirds. Let's say enough matter moves into the square so that half is filled. Sensors measuring matter for the halves would work, but the ones for the thirds would not, as we have to account for at least one sensor for one third needing knowledge of smaller intervals. We can't switch the sensors for the third back on if we later have enough matter for a 1/3 or 2/3 of the square, as that means the sensors for the halves would not work. We need to pick one fractional division of the square and stick with it.

Thus, in short, two axioms about sensors are:
1) They are the lowest interval by which a thought machine can measure and interpret distance. They can't process any states that require knowledge of smaller intervals.
2) They always give a reading, and their properties are independent of the item being measured.

You say the easiest example is when the sensor is another chessboard, so that sensor is what I meant by the second chessboard. If the sensor is not a chessboard, how do you envision the sensor working?

Do you envision then that the second chessboard has a third chessboard for one of its sensors, which has a fourth chessboard, then a fifth chessboard, in an infinite regress? Do you disagree that at some point we can't do this anymore and must stop?

There is infinite information in a finite space. There are an infinte number of ways to divide a centimeter, a milimeter, a tiny sphere, a cube, etc. However, let's be clear about your counterexample. What do you mean by stored? What is doing the storing? How is this thing storing staying constant in one sense, so we can say it is an object that is storing, yet measuring change?

I would argue that the arguments are there, but it's hard to clarify if you just throw up your hands in exasperation. There is a formal logic behind it, but there are some assumptions to start with, and many of the ways people might get out of the arguments are reducible to the assumptions. I think they are reasonable assumptions, but perhaps you disagree. Is there a point giving the most trouble?

I think in your classification it's a physical theory. There are always points, fractals, or any other construct we might devise that overlays a space, but we need to build from the bottom up.

The ultimate reality can be anything, whether waves or 3D objects. Sensors can be in any dimension and the thing they measure be in any dimension. The sensors just have to be in the same dimensions as the thing they measure. The thing being measured (let's say the waves) can move about as needed, through pseudorandom, random, or probabilistic methods, through any topology we give the universe. The sensors though are constant with respect to the waves, so that when the waves change, the sensors can register the change.

Let us have an example where a wave moves one way, however we would define movement, that means I think thought X. A wave moves another way, and now I think thought Y. What is constant, so that I can say it is I who thought X and Y, and not me thinking X and you thinking Y? It's not the wave itself, for if that was all that it took, the substance of the wave never changed, so how can it register change? If we care about the position, we need something outside of the wave, and that would be the sensors measuring the wave. Perhaps the sensors somehow move too in a way, as our brain follows our bodies around, but they need to be constant in relation to the wave, and external to the wave.

There are always theories where we can say stuff just happens. For example, it's always possible that the current thought I am thinking right now is the only one that has ever existed, with the past a figment of my imagination. There is no change, and thus no paradox. But that road, by denying our past, leads to the abandonment of the scientific method and any role for a system that makes sense through reason. I'm not saying you mean to go down this path, but let's put it out there to be clear, and not have the waves or any other hypothesized physics performing a role like this.

No worries. Let's see if I can address your concerns. The paper addresses it in more depth, but here goes...

Say a sensor covers a chessboard square. In one sense we don't need all the information the square could convey. We could just need, say, whether a chess piece is present on the square in our thought mapping, but not need how much the piece weighs, or its color. We would take this limited information and map it to all possible thoughts. If there are 2^64 permutations of a 8x8 chessboard having filled or not filled squares, there are 2^64 possible thoughts. In this sense our perception is finite, and the outcome is finite. Such a system could work, as long as we can address how the sensors work, but the problem is in the sensors themselves, and how they could register just whether a piece was present. There could even be infinite possible sensors, and infinite combinations, but it is the nature of the sensors that is the problem.

Hopefully we agree that infinite sensors with each having volume is unreasonable (any overlapping sensors should be split into separate sensors). To make the system reasonable, we need to either have a finite number of sensors with volume, or infinite point-sized sensors. I believe each of these two options has problems.

From your objections, you might be thinking that a finite number of sensors with volume is possible. However, I don't think we can just say that the chessboard squares are continuous sensors, so that they could register if they are 80% filled, or 60% filled or 42.3346734591% filled. This is how it looks from the top down as we examine how it might work. But for something fundamental, to avoid the infinite regress, it needs to be built from the bottom up. We must assume that the sensors, at the lowest level, are always on, always giving a state valid throughout and completely encompassing their space, and not relying on subsensors to tell what percentage of its space is actually filled. With continuous sensors, we push the question of what is happening in a given space down another level, to cover the various places on the continuum, but at some point we can't do that anymore.

Hi ,

You should be able to just click on the "Download from archive" button on the PhilPapers page. If that doesn't work I can post another link.

Regarding your concerns, it's too late to change the abstract, but I think the abstract shows we need something like God in our conception of reality, and we can't escape it by just assuming, say, a physicalist ontology. I want though to leave open the question of how thought emanates from my proposed base level. I think it depends on potential theories about free will, divine causation and omniscience, the problem of other minds, etc. I do believe my paper works well if we assume there is no free will, but that doesn't stop us from throwing other elements into the mix to get to our preferred outcomes. A theologian or philosopher will need to do this anyway to demarcate God's powers, how he might "know" what we are thinking or doing, and how we as individual units come into this world and experience the arrow of time. My theory is just one potential puzzle piece.

Without delving too deeply into what qualia are, if we accept that we had "thoughts", or whatever we call the phenomenal properties, in the past, and have different "thoughts" now, how could such a situation come about? What is constant that represents a human whose "thoughts" are different, and what changes and is being measured to allow for different "thoughts"? I would think the paradox still applies.

Hi, thanks for reading! Some replies...

1) Admittedly, the potential paradox is strongest when considering physical cases, and the physical is not a 100% assumption that we can make. However, even if reality is more idealistic, I tend to think that we need both something that measures (our hands/eyes, brain, or whatever represents "us") and something that is measured (the stimuli allowing us to form a thought, whether atom/photons in a physical location or something more mental). I find it hard to escape something resembling a physical "space", where the stimuli can exist independently when we aren't interacting with them, and which we can then measure. Thought needs to change for a reason. Perhaps we jump around between, say, Platonic forms, but I'm trying to stay away from solipsism, and a physical background allows for other minds to exist in the same sphere of reality I might be in.

2) The problem is not so much having an infinity of points or space to overcome, à la Zeno, but what is a point doing affecting our reality? Whether it is an infinity or just one or two points, if we abscribe properties to these points, but they have a volume of 0, can they really be said to affect 3D objects? Going back to the light switch example from the paper, how could we tell if the point had properties in reality or not? If it is really the adjacent areas that have the properties, then let's not abscribe them to the points, but to the area/volume in the dimension we are measuring.

I don't want to leave an impression of just finding a potential problem and getting out through deus ex machina. I just think there are issues reconciling our experience in a system without some higher thought at the most fundamental metaphysical level. The properties of the one underlying this thought are another question.

I'm having a little trouble following, so my apologies if I'm missing your point. The problem is not the number of inputs per se. There could be an few, such as the limited number that the human eye could process, or a reading of everything in the universe. It's how an input could register change. If the input takes up area/volume, how does it handle cases where it is only partially filled? In section VII I argue the sensor must be completely filled to fulfill all we expect of a sensor. If a point/plane/lower dimensional object, how can it have relevance in the space being measured due to it's area/volume of 0?