My position is that, considering the current state of science, as I am familiar with it, it seems most plausible that mind evolved in a physical world. — Janus

What do you mean by "considering the current state of science"? There are any number of examples throughout history of the most plausible explanation for something, according to that time's current state of science, being as wrong as can be. What is it about our current state that convinces you that, despite the fact that it doesn't seem to be a physical process or function, not even to you, it is?

On the contrary I think it is more likely that the way the mind seems to us is a kind of illusion. — Janus

I've always had trouble understanding this position. The way the mind seems to itself... The mind is an illusion being fooled by itself. Illusions fool the viewer. The audience. But, in this case, that upon which everything else is built, the viewer and the illusion are the same thing.


I agree about Idealism. I don't understand why minds wouldn't exist as their true selves in their true realm/setting, but concoct a setting nothing like it in which to exist, where they cannot act or interact according to their nature.

↪Patterner OK. I have no more questions for you. — Janus

How about answering a couple? :grin:

You don't believe it could just on account of the fact that it seems to be inexplicable? — Janus

You believe it could just on account of the fact that it seems to be inexplicable? My point being, it supports my position more than yours. What supports your position?

Have you considered the possibility that it is not mind and matter itself which are incompatible, but just our conceptions of mind and matter which seem incompatible, — Janus

I have considered the possibility. Can you give me any specific thoughts along these lines?

No, it says that the inability to explain something in terms of physics does not entail that the thing to be explained is non-physical. — Janus

Ah. Ok. Can you give me another example of something that can't be explained in terms of physics that is not non-physical?

You don't believe it could just on account of the fact that it seems to be inexplicable? — Janus

You believe it could just on account of the fact that it seems to be inexplicable?

Have you considered the possibility that it is not mind and matter itself which are incompatible, but just our conceptions of mind and matter which seem incompatible, — Janus

I have considered the possibility. Can you give me any specific thoughts along these lines?

You don't think consciousness could evolve in a merely physical world? — Janus

That is correct.

As you acknowledge there is no way to test the idea that they are not compatible anyway. — Janus

I was taking about proto-consciousness when I said it's not a theory because it's not testable.

Even if you could somehow confirm that mind could not possibly have evolved from physical matter, what difference would that knowledge make to your life as lived? — Janus

I just said:
"And, no, it really doesn't matter. Again, if you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make. But the search for understanding is fascinating. At least imo."

I think it's the most fascinating topic of all. As I recently said, I don't need a reason to delve into the subject any note than I need a reason to listen to Bach, read Dune, or look at the view from the top of a mountain.


But there's also this. Two quotes from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Hope you know who Data and Dr. Crusher are.

1) Data made a daughter, named Lal.

Lal: I watch them, and I can do the things they do. But I will never feel the emotions. I’ll never know love.

Data: It is a limitation we must learn to accept, Lal.

Lal: Then why do you still try to emulate humans. What purpose does it serve, except to remind you that you are incomplete?

Data: I have asked myself that, many times, as I have struggled to be more human. Until I realized it is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are, Lal. It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yields its own rewards.

2) Data and Dr. Crusher:

Data: What is the definition of life?

Crusher: That is a BIG question. Why do you ask?

Data: I am searching for a definition that will allow me to test an hypotheses.

Crusher: Well, the broadest scientific definition might be that life is what enables plants and animals to consume food, derive energy from it, grow, adapt themselves to their surrounding, and reproduce.

Data: And you suggest that anything that exhibits these characteristics is considered alive.

Crusher: In general, yes.

Data: What about fire?

Crusher: Fire?

Data: Yes. It consumes fuel to produce energy. It grows. It creates offspring. By your definition, is it alive?

Crusher: Fire is a chemical reaction. You could use the same argument for growing crystals. But, obviously, we don't consider them alive.

Data: And what about me? I do not grow. I do not reprodue. Yet I am considered to be alive.

Crusher: That's true. But you are unique.

Data: Hm. I wonder if that is so.

Crusher: Data, if I may ask, what exactly are you getting at?

Data: I am curious as to what transpired between the moment when I was nothing more than an assemblage of parts in Dr. Sung's laboratory and the next moment, when I became alive. What is it that endowed me with life?

Crusher: I remember Wesley asking me a similar question when he was little. And I tried desperately to give him an answer. But everything I said sounded inadequate. Then I realized that scientists and philosophers have been grappling with that question for centuries without coming to any conclusion.

Data: Are you saying the question cannot be answered?

Crusher: No. I think I'm saying that we struggle all our lives to answer it. That it's the struggle that is important. That's what helps us to define our place in the universe.

Or, as Jung said:

The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly. — Jung

To me the lack of explainability of experience in physical terms is not a central criterion in deciding whether experience and consciousness of that experience is just a manifestation of physical processes . — Janus

I don't think I understand you. It looks to me like this says the inability to explain it in physical terms is not important to the question of whether or not it can be explained in physical terms.

We can imagine the logical possibility that the mental is somehow completely independent, but that is just a logical possibility we seem to have no evidence to believe in. — Janus

I don't imagine the mental is completely independent of the physical. I don't think we can remove mass or charge from particles, and I don't think we can remove proto-consciousness from them, either.

Mind you, my thoughts on all this are just speculation. I don't think physical properties can account for consciousness, so there must be something else at work. I've tried to work out this idea. But it's not even a theory, since I can't imagine how it could be tested. And, no, it really doesn't matter. Again, if you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make. But the search for understanding is fascinating. At least imo.

As to the natural vs. the supernatural/transcendental:

If nature consists of that which is visible and measurable in quantifiable ways — javra

Everything in the universe is natural. If there is anything in the universe that is non-physical, invisible, and unmeasurable in quantifiable ways, it is still natural.

what difference do you think it would make to how we live our lives? — Janus

Someone on another site has this sig:
If you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make?

Excellent saying.

Of course, it applies to quite a few topics around here. But here we all are. :grin:

There are competing approaches to naturalism, and the underlying assumptions guiding what we now call the physical sciences don’t remain static. I assume that within a generation or two physics, which has already in the past 125 years substantially altered its concepts of the physical, will come closer to where the biological and embodied cognitive sciences have arrived on this issue. — Joshs

Yes, very interesting things will be happening in there near future, I'm sure! :grin:

How do you imagine we might go about finding out whether consciousness is non-physical or not? Do you believe there is some fact of the matter we might one day discover? — Janus

Nothing about the physical properties and laws of physics suggests subjective experience. That's from an expert in the field of physical properties and laws of physics. But I realize that's very broad, and, obvious as it is to me, I understand why you don't see it. We need to observe something, something small and specific, that cannot be explained completely by physical properties and laws of physics. Something that would be explained if consciousness is causal. If I'm right about consciousness, we'll see such a thing one day. If I'm wrong, we won't. If we do, more people will start thinking in ways that could help solve the puzzle.

If we don't see such a thing, it could be we simply haven't seen it yet. Which is the same thing I often hear from physicalists, on TPF and elsewhere.

Here's a problem:

One way of formulating the hard problem is to ask: if we had a complete, canonical, objective, physicalist account of the natural world, including all the physical facts of the brain and the organism, would it conceptually or logically entail the subjective facts of consciousness? If this account would not entail these facts, then consciousness must be an additional, non-natural property of the world.

Consciousness is a natural thing. Anything in the universe is natural. The problem is the belief that there cannot be any aspect of the universe that is not in the purview of our physical sciences. As Nagel says in Mind and Cosmos:

...intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole. — Thomas Nagel

How have we concluded that we have so great a grasp of things that we can rule out any possibility that something exists outside of that understanding? The last sentence should be:
"If this account would not entail these facts, then consciousness must be an additional, non-physical property of the world."

Not being willing to consider that possibility means never attempting non-physicalist methods. So, if the answer is outside such methods, it will never be found.


In any event-

Whatever the true nature of what we call the physical is, my point is that there has never been any suggestion that consciousness has any of its characteristics.
— Patterner

Sure there has. You just have to read phenomenology. — Joshs

I don't see any suggestions of physical characteristics of consciousness in your quote. I'm not suggesting there is a spacial element. Consciousness is not an object. But we can discuss physical properties of other processes, and see how they come about due to the physical properties of particles. Electron shells explain redox reactions, which are a vital part of metabolism. What can we say about consciousness?

You can only measure dimensions and weight of something which is presumed to remain qualitatively the same over the course of the quantitative measuring and weighing. Any calculation of differences in degree presupposes no difference in kind during the process. Otherwise one is dealing with a new thing and has to start over again. The world doesn’t consist of objects with attributes and properties which remain qualitatively the same from one moment to the next. We invented the concept of object as a qualitatively self-same thing so that we could then proceed to perform calculative measurements. Obviously, this works out well for us, but it doesn’t mean that ‘physical’ objects exist out there in the world rather than in the abstractions that we perform on the continually changing data we actually experience in our interactions with the world. — Joshs

Whatever the true nature of what we call the physical is, my point is that there has never been any suggestion that consciousness has any of its characteristics.

What I'm arguing against is the idea that the truth of idealism is obvious and that physicalism is inconsistent or incoherent. Such facile attempts to dismiss opponent's views and the lack of ability to recognize that others can be totally familiar with the same arguments as you are and yet disagree about what they demonstrate, and the assumption that the if they disagree the other must not understand the arguments, that goes with that attitude is what I continually argue against. — Janus

Calling the view you disagree with 'naive "folk" understanding' and 'vague intuition' is not arguing against that attitude. It literally is that attitude.

If numbers didn't exist, then you couldn't be writing about them, so they must exist somewhere.
— RussellA
,
So, then, if the first even prime greater than 100 didn't exist I couldn't be writing about it? — Art48

I have to try to find a way to word this...

You're not writing about it. There is no even prime number greater than 100. Not hypothetically, not in theory. You're writing a list of characteristics that, when combined, do not describe anything. Not even something that can't be physically made, but can be envisioned and discussed. Same with a square circle. These aren't even paradoxes. They're logical impossibilities.

The Meinong link 180 provided likens the square circles to unicorns. I disagree. Unicorns aren't logically impossible. They just don't exist. But we can picture them in our heads, and even draw pictures and make models of them.

A hypercube is an interesting example. It can't exist in our reality. We can't picture it in our mind, and can't draw or build a model of one. But we can calculate how many sides and verticies it has. We understand how the idea of it came about.

Joshs, I don't understand your point.

Physical properties combine in many ways, but the results are always physical. We can measure the size of physical objects in three physical dimensions. We can measure mass, weight, volume. We can measure hardness
— Patterner

Are such properties inherent in objects or are they the products of historically formed ways of organizing our relation to the world? Heidegger has argued that we never just see a hammer with its properties and attributes. We understand what a hammer is primordially in what we use it for and how we use it, and in terms of the larger associated context of relevance. The hammer as a static thing with properties is derived from our prior association with it as something we use for a purpose. — Joshs

I can stumble upon something I've never seen before, that doesn't resemble anything I've seen before, and whose purpose or function I can't guess. But I can still measure its dimensions and weigh it.

Husserl showed how the empirical notion of object that you’re describing emerged in the era of modern sciences with Galileo. The Egyptians and Greeks first developed the concept of a pure ideal geometric form (perfect triangle, circle, square, etc) as the modification of actual interactions with real , imperfect shapes in nature. Armed with such pure mathematical idealizations as the straight line and perfect circle, it occurred to Galileo that the messy empirical world could be approach using these ideal geometries as a model. Now everything we observe in the actual world could be treated as an approximation of a geometrically describable body. — Joshs

No matter how anyone views these matters, people were measuring and altering stone and wood to make buildings and bridges long before Galileo.

The notions of scientific accuracy and calculative measurement were made possible by thinking of actual things as imperfect versions of pure genetic bodies. The point Im making is that the physicalism you’re describing (self-identical things with mathematically describable properties and attributes) is not a product of the world as it supposedly is in itself. It is a human invention that depends on ignoring the contribution of subjective practical use and relevance to our perception of the world.

Once we recognize this it is no longer necessary to posit a distinction between an outer world of mathematically measurable things and an inner world of subjective consciousness. And the subject here is not to be understood according to traditional idealism and an internal realm The subject is just as much produced though pragmatic interaction in an environment as the objects of the world it interacts with. — Joshs

I've read this a few times. I'll keep trying. I just don't see how this changes the fact that physical things are measurable in various ways, but consciousness is not. In what physical terms can we discuss consciousness? What is its speed? How much does it weigh? What are it's physical dimensions? Does it have mass or charge? We can say an awful lot about the physical world with our physical sciences, but our physical sciences can't say anything about consciousness.

Fine. Let's not use the word "exist" — Art48

I think we should use the word "exist." Perhaps there are types of existence other than physical.

As to the question of the nature of consciousness—we have the scientific studies on one hand and the naive "folk" understanding on the other. As to which to rely on, I will choose the former because I don't think intuition is an especially reliable guide to understanding the nature of things. — Janus

I wouldn't be so dismissive of people like Chalmers and Nagel. Their positions are far from naive, and are the result of far more than intuition. They have spent countless hours, I suspect at least as many as anyone here, studying the available material on consciousness, trying to come up with theories that fit all the data, and organizing their thoughts writing books about it all.

Philosophy is defined as love of wisdom. Is it wise to simply accumulate knowledge for its own sake? That almost sounds like accumulating money for its own sake. What is the point of knowledge you cannot use? — Janus

I can't imagine you mean this the way I'm taking it. But I don't know how else to take it, so I'll respond to it that way.

Yes, absolutely, knowledge for its own sake. Do you use every bit of knowledge you attain? Do you even try to? Of course not. It's impossible. Have you ever read about something you were not planning to use? I would imagine so. Probably most of the things any of us learn about the topics here. How many of use make a living with such knowledge?

Learning is one of the defining characteristics of our species. The drive to learn is another. We can learn. It's inconceivable that we not bother. All of us not attempt to learn anything that doesn't have a practical purpose?

What's the point of gazing out over the world from the top of a mountain, or the Grand Canyon, or watching an aurora borealis? What's the point of listening to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos or Beethoven's string quartets? What's the point of reading Dune or The Malazan Book of the Fallen? What's the point of Monet, Michaelangelo, or Escher? What's the point of learning?

It's all joy.

↪Patterner What you say is not true. We can measure neural activity. Of course, you will say that isn't consciousness, but that is just an assumption—assuming what is to be proved. — Janus

Neural activity is electrical and chemical signals moving along the neurons. That is consciousness? Photon hits retina, rhodopsin changes shape, concentration of ions changes, signal is sent along optic nerve, (skipping a thousand other steps), signal arrives in specific area of the brain. That is a description of my subjective experience of red? That, presumably added to other signals hitting the brain, is a description of my brain's awareness of itself?

Or think of energy itself—it can only be measured in terms of its effects. If it cannot be directly observed and measured, will you say it is non-physical? — Janus

Energy is particles in motion. We know which particles move in which medium. We can measure how fast they move. It's all physical.

I agree if by science you mean physics. — Janus

It all reduces to physics. We can't follow every particle of air. But we know what they are all doing statistically, and can think of the total in terms of the laws of thermodynamics. But the laws of thermodynamics do not exist exactly as they are for any reason other than the way particles Interact.

The same is true of the way oxygen works in our cells. Electron shells, electron sharing, etc. Everything reduces to physics.

I have not heard an explanation for how consciousness reduces to physics.

Just as a matter of interest do you care whether consciousness is physical or not? Personally, I'd rather it wasn't physical because then there might be some hope that this life is not all we get. I've made my peace with the idea that this life is most probably all we get, but whatever the case is, I don't think it matters what I think about it. What will be will be. — Janus

It's ironic that you think consciousness is entirely physical, but would like it to be otherwise in the hopes of an afterlife, while I think consciousness has a non-physical component, but don't want an afterlife. But, of course, you're right. What will be will be.

Beyond those kinds of concerns do you think the answer to whether consciousness is physical or not could matter for any other reason? — Janus

You ask this in a philosophy forum?? :grin: Knowledge for knowledge's sake is reason enough for most anything, imo. But the true nature of our Selves, and the explanation for how various chunks of matter can subjectively experience, be aware that they are subjectively experiencing, and be aware that they are aware that they are subjectively experiencing?? That's freakin' fascinating beyond anything else!

I get that our experience doesn't intuitively seem to be physical. — Janus

It's not about intuition. It's a lack of physical characteristics. Physical properties combine in many ways, but the results are always physical. We can measure the size of physical objects in three physical dimensions. We can measure mass, weight, volume. We can measure hardness.

We can measure things about physical processes. Like how far something moves, and how long it took to move that distance. We can measure how things change speed and direction when moving. We can measure the speed of light.

We can measure how much energy something uses to move, or grow. We can calculate what percentages of particles are moving at what speed, given the temperature of a cylinder of air. We can measure events that take place in a millionth of a second. We can tell the age of things by how much of a radioactive isotopes it contains.

All of these things can be seen to be the result of the physical properties of the particles that make up everything.

Not a word of any of that applies to consciousness. It has no physical aspect, despite the fact that the examples of it we are aware of exist within a physical medium. And everything we know of the properties of particles "seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience."

That's a little more substantial than "vague intuitions."

Some of us suggest the possibility that our physical sciences cannot answer every question about reality.

If it is not the meaning of the words that affects you in a certain way, could random words affect you in that same way?

Indeed. if anyone's blood pressure goes up because of what they read on the Internet, it has nothing to do with anything physical. It is only about the meaning.

too genteel to resort to such underhanded tactics. Ironically, non-physical verbal attacks on odious beliefs are often used by the Physicalist trolls on this forum to counter-attack those who have offended their mentally-constructed non-ideal worldview. :smile: — Gnomon

Heh. I hadn't thought of that. :up:

↪Patterner Don't you see something wrong with this? — Wayfarer

There is obviously something wrong.

I find it enjoyably ironic that it might be the case that we lack cognitive ability to determine why we have cognitive abilities. — Tom Storm

Indeed! :grin: One of my favorite sci-fi books is Neverness, by David Zindell. In it is a quote attributed to Lyall Watson (I don't know where it is in Watson's writings. Anyway:

If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't. — Lyall Watson

Consciousness is surely the subjective experience of physical things. But the physical things don't hint at the subjective experience. Something is happening in addition to the physical things.
— Patterner

This frame probably has special appeal to those who are idealists or religiously inclined. — Tom Storm

I imagine so. But also to people like me.

In fact it is on account of their physicality that they can be causally efficacious. Otherwise we would be looking at dualism which comes with the interaction problem. — Janus

A good absorber is a good radiator. And the physical properties of matter that allow iron to become magnetized also make iron subject to magnetism. If there is a non-physical property of matter, right there with the physical properties like mass and charge, that explains the emergence of consciousness, something physical properties don't seem remotely suited for, then it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to think that that property could also make matter subject to consciousness.

↪Patterner Interesting. Do you think we can demonstrate that feelings are not the product of physical events? — Tom Storm

I believe it is self-evident, similar to the way it is self-evident that cheese is not the product of a spinning wheel. As absurd as that example is, I believe the consciousness example is even moreso. At least spinning wheels and cheese are both physical things.

A better analogy might be flight as the product of a spinning wheel. Again, both are physical. But flight is a process, as is consciousness. But, as I've quoted before, Brian Greene states the problem nicely in Until the End of Time:

And within that mathematical description, affirmed by decades of data from particle colliders and powerful telescopes, there is nothing that even hints at the inner experiences those particles somehow generate. How can a collection of mindless, thoughtless, emotionless particles come together and yield inner sensations of color or sound, of elation or wonder, of confusion or surprise? Particles can have mass, electric charge, and a handful of other similar features (nuclear charges, which are more exotic versions of electric charge), but all these qualities seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience. How then does a whirl of particles inside a head—which is all that a brain is—create impressions, sensations, and feelings? — Greene

While consciousness is the subjective experience of physical things and events, there is no hint of the physical about it. Let's say very intellectually and technologically advanced beings from another galaxy, who are made of very a different mixture of elements than we are made of, found one of us, and could study us completely at any level, even down to watching every individual particle in us. What is there about the many physical structures and processes that would would suggest to them that we are conscious? Why would they think we are more than robots? Consciousness is surely the subjective experience of physical things. But the physical things don't hint at the subjective experience. Something is happening in addition to the physical things.

I don't think it's a matter of demonstrating that it's not a product of physical events. I think it's a matter of demonstrating it is. Everyone I've read who believes physicalism is the answer says we just need to wait until the physicalist answer is figured out. But that's not evidence that physicalism holds the answer. Neither is physicalism's amazing successes in many physical pursuits. Neither is the fact that we've only found physical things with our physical sciences.

I don't believe there is any determinable fact of the matter about all this. — Janus

Surely not. We wouldn't have all these threads about the same thing for years and decades of it was any. :grin:

In response to your question about people being emotionally affected by things that are said to them or by things they believe; I don't deny any of that—I just think it is all physical processes. So, I'm not understanding your puzzlement. — Janus

Aren't you saying the equivalent of, "I don't think comets make any difference, as long as they don't crash into us and negatively impact significant issues"? If we are just the sum of uncountable physical events, then no feelings or beliefs that result from that sum make us any more able to not negatively impact anything than a comet is. Some of us will end up with the feelings and beliefs that don't negatively impact things. But those that end up with the negatively impacting feelings and beliefs are just comets caught in the gravity well. No?

What effects do you think our (purported) experience of qualia... — Janus

You don't merely think our experience of qualia is redundant? You question that we have these experiences? You don't experience redmess, an additional experience to what an electric eye detects? You don't experience sweetness, an additional experience to what ... uh ... an electric tongue detects?

All that said, I don't think it really makes any difference if people want to have faith in something transcendent if that is what they need and as long as that thinking doesn't negatively impact significant issues in this life on account of them being thought to be of lesser importance. — Janus

I thought I was following you, even if disagreeing, until this paragraph. What impact does that thinking have over and above the effects of the neuronal and bodily processes which seem almost unquestionably to give rise to it? If that's all there is, then how can it have any impact? I see you responding to Wayfarer, saying his (his?) ability to say something to you which would raise your blood pressue and affect your adrenal glands amounts to physical interactions. What if he does, indeed, raise your BP, affect your adrenal glands, and whatever other things. In that state, you might, say, react violently when someone you love does or says something you don't like a few minutes later? Is it not just the physical interactions taking place, having nothing to do with your experience of the sum of all those interactions? What does "as long as" mean in this context?

I haven't spoken with ChatGPT in more than a year. But back then, it was making mistakes. I pointed out factual errors occasionally, and it apologized, saying I was correct. It never gave me an answer as to how it made such an obvious error. It has all the information instantly available, but gives the wrong answer?

Discussion of qualia and the nature and significance of subjectivity are subjects for the numerous threads on David Chalmers and the 'hard problem'. — Wayfarer

Indeed. And I'm sure there will be numerous more threads about it.

, if is right about what you mean, would 'superfluous' be a good word? I'm thinking it's redundant to say I am fast, quick, and speedy. But you're saying there's a different thing going on, but it doesn't actually do anything, and nothing would be different if it didn't exist?

I think 'qualia' in its subjective sense as opposed to its 'sense data' sense is a kind of reification, and maybe the latter is too.
— Janus

I always thought that was the whole point, if qualia does not refer to something with its own ontology above and beyond the physical process of an experience there's really no use to the word at all. — goremand

This is my point. It is something with its own ontology above and beyond the physical process of an experience. It is our experience of hearing an A major chord, whereas a machine only detects vibrations of 440, 553.365, and 659.255 Hz.


, I'm not sure I understand what you think is redundant. I don't mean that in a smartass way. I mean I'm not sure what you're saying.

You can think of it like that, but really your experience of it is nothing over and above your drinking of it, except as an (unnecessary) idea. — Janus

Necessary or not, it is a feeling about drinking it that the machine or very distracted person does not have. Isn't that the point? How can something I have that they do not be a redundant feature? It seems to me this is what consciousness is all about. Would you give it up?

Yes, that's what I mean. That's why it's not redundant. My experience of it is something extra. Something on top of just drinking it.

It seems redundant to say we experience the quality of beer, for example, rather than just saying we drink the beer. Sure, the beer has a taste, but that is not separate from its fizziness and its coldness, and they are all just a part of drinking it. — Janus

I haven't been reading nearly all of this thread, so I don't know if you're speaking from a stance other than what I get reading it in a vacuum. But if I'm understanding, them I disagree. We can pour beer into the gullet of a machine that can detect all of the properties that give it its taste, fizziness, and coldness, and give us a printout of those qualities that far exceeds our own ability to analyze it. But that machine will not experience the beer. You can drink it while engaged in an engrossing, or heated, discussion, and not experience it. I hate beer, and naked women all around me would not sufficiently distract me from the unpleasant experience of it.

The Nihilsum would be a concept that exists(or of existence) between the categories of something and nothing by being neither fully one nor the other but instead exists as a paradox that resists clear categorization. — mlles

Everyone please bear with me. As with many things at TPF, I've never heard of this.

Are you speaking of a category? Or are you speaking of things that fall within this category?

The one that gets the closest to the truth? — Questioner

How is that determined?

Perhaps if I say G. Crombies, people will know what I mean.

I'm not entirely sure how you mean everything. But I like your idea, and have a thought. I propose adding a person, Jane. You are Peter. Alexa and I are both present, observing as you and Jane interact. This is Alexa 3.0. She has visual and olfactory sensors, so observes pretty much what I do. But, while I am having a subjective experience of watching you and Jane interact, Alexa is not. Because there is something it is like to be me, to me, but there is not something it is like to be Alexa, to Alexa. Therefore, there is something it is like for me to experience something, but there is not something it is like for Alexa to experience something.

Glad things are going better. :smile:

What's wrong, Dominic? Cat got your tongue?


:rofl:

Humans have a lot of beliefs that no other species has, and we wouldn't without language. That seems like a significant difference to me.
— Patterner

This is the direction this discussion needs to take. — creativesoul

Since this thread is intended to discuss common ground between the thoughts of humans and other species, perhaps a new thread, discussing differences, in order to better understand human thought?

:up: