Not necessarily. People can still be confused, and imagine criteria for "sameness" in certain scenarios that neither they nor anyone else actually apply. For instance, the criterion that "all the molecules have to be the same" is simply imaginary, its not actually a thing. — hypericin

How is it decided what is confusion, and what is or is not a thing?

Either the chairs are all the same chair and the people are all the same person, or the chairs and the people are identical copies. If the universe isn't keeping track, meaning there is no objective answer, then it's up to each person to judge for themselves.

↪Patterner I think the very concept of original and duplicate breaks down entirely. — flannel jesus

Can you explain what you mean?

Whoever is keeping track, I would think it would be the same for us as it is for chairs.

I think there is a difference between two things being identical and two things being the exact same thing. A factory can pump out, let's say, 1,000 chairs in a day. if this factory is perfect in all detail, including the number of atoms of each type in every one of those thousand chairs, they are not all exactly the same chair. They are only all identical to each other.

I wouldn't say it is otherwise with a human. Identical copies of me are not the exact same person.

What's interesting is that the universe doesn't have a sense of identity for things like atoms. At a fundamental level, the universe can't tell the difference between one electron and another one, one atom and another one.

So if a god steps in and separates all the atoms in your body, and then puts together a bunch of "different" atoms in the exact same arrangement half a meter to your left... who is to say that those aren't "your atoms"? Atoms have no identity, so they have just as much a claim to being your atoms as any other atoms do. — flannel jesus

We all have our opinions. Mine is that, if all of my atoms are separated from each other, I no longer exist. Just because my atoms all still exist doesn't mean I still exist. Just because my atoms can be put back together doesn't mean I still exist. If an exact duplicate is made so both original and duplicate exist, are both originals? I don't see how that can be. If you then destroy the original, is the duplicate now considered the original? I don't see how that can be, either.

Sorry. I just realized you quoted a different post than the one I thought you I'm talking about my post immediately before your previous post.

If done perfectly, the replica would not know he wasn't me. But he wouldn't be.
— Patterner

Why? Because he doesn't have your soul? — flannel jesus

No. For the reasons I said. (I don't believe in any soul.)

Well, we're talking about Star Trek transporters
— Patterner

Err, I don't ... think ... that's happening. But nevertheless, if I;ve missed that, it's worth noting that what Star Trek does has zero bearing on the discussion as its not one based within the restrictions of that universe. — AmadeusD

It's the premise of the OP. But that's a catch-all. Any other hypothetical methods of doing the same thing are fine.

The entire point is to figure out whether you think the guy walking out on Mars is 'you' and then if so, how that's the case. Your position is quite clear, happily :P

You obviously don't think it is for similar reasons I don't. That's not particularly relevant, I don't think. We have no idea what B would 'think' because this is fiction, speculation and semi-nonsense all rolled into one.

Your response applies to a body well, but not a self as we can't know what that consists in (currently). But that response - It's the one i gave to Mijin in certain terms - covers any argument for bodily continuity well in this TE. Parfit's take is that there is no 'you'. There is no self - simply relation R. That relation is just psychological continuity. There need be no identity (nor could there be, on his and my conceptions). There was no identity to continue. So while intuitively, I think everything you've said makes sense, when you drill into the thought experiment, they largely don't answer much I think. — AmadeusD

I don't think there's any need for the thread if the person walking out on Mars does NOT think he's me. In Star Trek, he thinks he is. indeed, he could not think otherwise, and is indistinguishable from me. But, as has happened on Star Trek, and could happen in scenarios we devise, the original could remain, joined by the copy, or it could be multiple copies but no original. If the original is not destroyed, then the copy is more obviously not the original, regardless of how these things are defined.


As for a self, we can only all give our opinions, I suppose. Mine is that the self is simply the subjective experience of the entirety on question. My self is the experience of this body, with these senses; this brain, with these memories; etc. The continuity of self is due to the memories.

Of course, in regards to this thread, the self of the original and the self of a copy are going to be indistinguishable. Even the copy wouldn't feel other than the original feels/felt.

No. If my atoms are separated, I do not exist.
— Patterner

How do you know that? — Mijin

How do I know that, if my atoms are separated, I no longer exist?

the replica would not know he wasn't me
— Patterner

I find it quite exciting that we actually do not know whether this would obtain. — AmadeusD

Well, we're talking about Star Trek transporters, or whatever is similar enough. Nobody has ever materialized on any of the shows and thought they were a duplicate.

I certainly agree - but humour me - is your take that there's a set of interlocking criteria (these atoms, at this time, in this configuration) that cause someone to be 'you'? Obviously, I take there is only one shot/possible 'you' in this, just asking in that form to get clear response. — AmadeusD

Not sure you meant to word it the way I'm taking it. Nothing can cause anyone or anything to be me. I'm the only possible me. Even if a duplicate of me was made, nobody could tell us apart, and neither of us could prove that we were the original, there would still be only one original me.

I could even be a duplicate, and not know it. But I'd still be the only me.

The computationalists and IIT proponents, for example, suggest that consciousness emerges from computation and/or information processing, and they usually invoke a threshold of computation/processing before consciousness emerges, else they end up close to panpsychism. — RogueAI

Does IIT not say consciousness is information processing?


[

There's plenty of artificial computer devices that do a whole lot more information processing than does what I might consider to be a barely conscious organism, and I don't consider the devices to be conscious. — noAxioms

Well, I think everything is conscious, but only of itself. A computer that processes information may do so remarkably well, and at speeds we can't imagine. (We can't solve a billion simple addition problems in a lifetime.) But that's all it does. Otoh, the simplest organism that you might consider to be barely conscious has quite a few different information processing systems within it. Starting with DNA synthesizing protein. I don't know which organism you have in mind, but there is likely sensing the environment, doing something in response to what is sensed, metabolism, etc. I would say that organism's subjective experience of itself is a lot more complex than most computers.

Well done.

You cannot successfully transport a living person if you separate all their atoms. You have already failed, because separating all of a person's atoms means the person no longer exists.
— Patterner

How do you know that? Let's say there was technology that allowed me to separate and reform all your atoms within a nanosecond. Would you survive that process? — Mijin

No. If my atoms are separated, I do not exist. You can build a replica of me, from the atoms that were once part of me, or from different atoms of the same kinds, in a nanosecond or a decade. If done perfectly, the replica would not know he wasn't me. But he wouldn't be.

If moving my actual atoms is needed for a successful transport...why is that? What's so special about my atoms? What if we partially use my atoms....how do we square the binary nature of me being alive or dead and the apparent continuous nature of n atoms being from the original? — Mijin

You cannot successfully transport a living person if you separate all their atoms. You have already failed, because separating all of a person's atoms means the person no longer exists.

Well, if the experiments go the way he expects them to go, it would be reasonable to think they went that way for the reason he expected them too.

Heh. Fixed.

The original is always killed, and a copy constructed at the destination. Maybe deconstructing the original is needed to get all the information, and I don't know how deconstructing a living human can be seen as not killing them. Or deconstructing is not needed, but the original is destroyed so that there aren't multiple copies.

Panpsychism cannot explain the unity of experience. — MoK

What is your explanation for the unity of experience?

I think panpsychism fails to explain the unity of experience; therefore, it is not acceptable. — MoK

End of the day, all theories explain it with, "That's the way it is." Even beyond theories of consciousness. Why is there something instead of nothing?

And we don't understand how, by combining them together water could arise, because each individual molecule shows no "wetness".
— Manuel
We understand how. The properties of water are functions of the properties of parts. We can also simulate water. — MoK

Right. Single molecules of water cannot be wet. Wetness is a property of groups of molecules, because of the way they bond under certain conditions. And the molecules bond the way they do under those conditions because of their properties.

It is just not easy to have an intuition for how the properties of a particle can be explained in terms of the vibration of the string. I am not a string theorist, so I cannot tell you how a certain vibration leads to a particular property, but I am sure string theorists have good intuition about this. — MoK

I can't imagine explaining it as intuition, either. Nothing about string theory can be intuition, even if they can make an internally consistent, mathematically perfect theory. And there isn't any evidence to support the theory either.

In this Ted Talk, Brian Greene gives a good talk about those strings, among other things.

I can't see why you keep insisting that a particle, or a crystal, is a subject of experience. — Wayfarer

Because off this:

But Nagel also sees this as an argument in support of panpsychism: If consciousness really arises from matter, then the mental must in some way be present in the basic constituents of matter. On this view, consciousness is not an inexplicable product of complex organization but a manifestation of properties already present in the fundamental building blocks of the world. — Wayfarer

Well it's fine if you think that, but you should equally hold it against non physicalism that there's no non physicalist guess as to how it might work. It's not like you're abandoning a non working idea for a working idea - you're abandoning a lack of an idea for another lack of an idea.

That doesn't mean non physicalism is false, but it certainly shouldn't leave anybody with extreme confidence that it's true. — flannel jesus

Fair enough.

It is not possible to say how much consciousness a tree has. It experiences weather and may store some memory, such as rings but it is unlikely that it has consciousness as we know it. — Jack Cummins

Since a tree is so very different from us, its subjective experience of itself is very different from our subjective experience of ourselves. Which is my position on consciousness - simply the subjective experience of the given subject.

I don't think I would say a tree's rings are memories, though. Because I don't think the tree pulls up any memories because of the rings.

Indon't even think the rings are information. We can figure out various things because of them. But the rings don't actually mean those things. The information we can glean from them is not processed. Not even in a simplistic way like photons hitting eyespots, leading to the twitching flagellum.

I don't know if I'm understanding you. Are you thinking there is a physical mechanism for consciousness within us, and we would be able to see it if our physical senses pointed inward?

Not only that but all mental and physical phenomena. — NOS4A2

Is there a reason that our technologies cannot detect the physical mechanism of consciousness? We know about all kinds of things going on the brain, after all. Neurotransmitters are a great example.

I'm not thinking about it at all, because there's no model to think about. It's a placeholder thought, not a rich thought. There's no attempt to understand how it works — flannel jesus

I am attempting to have conversations about it, in the hopes of gaining any degree of understanding.

and that's exactly why it's so appealing, I think, as an explanation for consciousness. — flannel jesus

It is appealing because, despite being able to detect and measure unimaginably small and large physical phenomena, we cannot so much as detect consciousness with our physical senses or sciences, there is no apparent connection between consciousness and the physical properties of the universe, and there is no physicalist guess as to how it might work. That makes a non physicalist approach speaking.

The illusory aspects of consciousness is the result of how little information it gives about ourselves, the body. For instance our senses largely point outwards, towards the world, so I am unable to see what is going on behind my eyes. The periphery is so limited that I am completely unaware of what is going on inside my body save for the few and feint feelings it sometimes offers.

If that conscious periphery gave us enough information about the body I’m sure consciousness wouldn’t be a such a mystery, and ideas like panpsychism wouldn’t even be entertained. — NOS4A2

I don't know if I'm understanding you. Are you thinking there is a physical mechanism for consciousness within us, and we would be able to see it if our physical senses pointed inward?

But we don't usually think of inanimate objects as possessing internally maintained structural integrity. — Janus

No, I don't think we do. I've never heard of any self repairing, non-living system. Not sure what that would even look like.

I posit this: that the only reason you think non physicalism is the explanation is because we have no understanding of non physicalism... — flannel jesus

I think non physicalism is the explanation because physicalism is not. Consciousness is non physical. That's why, despite having learned some pretty impressive things about the physical, we're struggling so hard to understand consciousness. We can't begin to study it with our physical sciences, and can't see any connection between physical properties and subjective experience.

To refuse to consider that something might exist outside of the scope of our physical sciences, to think that we are certain there can be nothing to reality other than what is within the scope of our physical sciences, when the most important thing to any of us, our consciousness, is outside the scope of our physical sciences, is a very illogical mindset, imo.

↪Patterner Something like that strikes me as highly plausible. I think that's roughly the Chalmersian take too - but he calls awareness without experience consciousness too - I find that a hard sell, but all else about panpsychism attracts me so .. I could just be wrong LOL — AmadeusD

I'm not sure about that. How can you be aware without experiencing?

It's all about molecules, atoms, proteins and electrons, but it's not just about those things. As proper parts of living organism, those constituents are caught up into functionally organized anatomic structures (such as cell membranes) and channeled through the finely tuned and regulated metabolic pathways that Brian Greene provides striking descriptions of. Those are indeed processes that arise in far from equilibrium thermodynamic conditions such that relatively low-entropy forms of energy (such as incident solar radiation or energy-dense molecules like glucose) get harnessed by the molecular machinery to produce work in such a way as to sustain and reproduce this machinery. What is being sustained and reproduced isn't the parts, but the form: that is, the specific functional structure of the organism. The parts, and the proximal interactions between them, don't explain why the organism is structured in the way it is, or why it behaves in the way it does. Rather, the high-level norms of functional organization of the organism, characterised in the higher-level terms of anatomy and physiology, explain why the individual atoms, electrons, protons, and organic molecules are being caught up and channeled in the specific way that they are to sustain processes that are geared towards maintaining the whole organism (at least for awhile) away from complete decay and thermodynamic equilibrium. — Pierre-Normand

Nicely said. So it's functional structure that is emergent? Top-Down causation?

↪Patterner I think you're not taking the emergent possibility seriously enough personally. The possibility that consciousness really does emerge from certain large scale physical arrangements and interactions. I think the idea seems alien to you - which is fair, it's by no means easy to grasp - and so your reflex is to go for something that's at least apparently more intuitive. — flannel jesus

Without having ever read anything on the topic, I was a physicalist up until several years ago. I had never heard of the terms physicalism or materialism, but that's what I was. Never occurred to me there was another option, so what was my default position. A guy on another site wanted to pull his hair out because of my stubbornness, but, eventually, turned me around. It wasn't intuitive. Everything is physical particles, and everything, even consciousness, reduces to particles, was intuitive.

But physicalism had nothing to offer. I have yet to hear a theory, or even a wild guess, about how Chalmers' Hard Problem is explained with physicalism. Nobody who believes physicalism is the answer knows what that answer is, and people like Eagleman, Hoffman, Greene, and Crick say we don't have the vaguest idea how to look for it. A lot of people, like Greene, say physicalism must be the answer, and, even though we have no clue at the moment, we'll figure it out at some (possibly very distant) point in the future. They say that as though it's proven that that is what's going to happen.

I don't know at what point of complexity I think an entity must attain before its subjectively experience can be casual
— Patterner

That's a pretty big problem. Everything else fundamental is also fundamentally causal. It's not fundamental now, causal later - it's causal at a fundamental level. If consciousness isn't causal at a fundamental level, but it is causal at a microscopic scale... I think the whole idea, in my opinion, crumbles — flannel jesus

Bad wording on my part. I think consciousness is always the same, and can always be causal. But the conscious thing in question has to be up to the task.

The thing is, consciousness is causal. It wasn't physics and interacting particles that wrote Beethoven's string quartets, flew people to the moon, manufactured computers, contemplated the nature of consciousness, built the Sphinx, on and on. None of that would have ever happened without the thoughts and intentions that come with consciousness.

That's what we have to explain. So how could it have happened? Let's say physicalism. Through purely physical interactions, life begins, and evolves. There's no such thing as consciousness. Then, a certain physical complexity comes into being. And, though consciousness was not planned, and consciousness had no role in bringing that complexity about, for no reason, that physical complexity just happens to be perfect for the existence of this entirely new thing that it has nothing to do with.

What an extraordinary, bizarre turn of events. And a happy turn, at that, since it is the thing that defines us all. It's the thing none of us would willingly give up. Want to become an automoton? Lose an arm, or your consciousness? Lose an arm and a leg, or your consciousness? How much if your physical self would you give up before thinking consciousness is no longer desirable?

That scenario is just too bizarre. One thing has nothing to do with the other. Then, holy cow, look at that!

I find it easier to believe that consciousness was always there, and, with the aid of consciousness at every opportunity, the system developed greater complexity to be subjectively experienced.

A particle can't do anything other than interact with other things according to the laws of physics. It doesn't have systems for movement. It doesn't have systems for choosing between options. It can subjectively experience, but what is that like for a particle?

An archaea acts. But it's entirely physics and chemistry. There's information processing, which is what I suspect is needed for groups of individual particles to subjectively experience as a unit. There is information processing in protein synthesis, in the series of reactions between photons hitting the eyespot and the archaella moving, and whatever other systems it has. The consciousness is of a much more complex thing than just particles. Still, there's no possibility of choosing between actions, or not acting. This may be the beginnings of thinking, but it's just the bare beginnings. There's not enough going on.

By the time we get to humans, we can choose between any number if things. We make choices between conflicting motivations. no longer purely physical factors determining which option you take. The subjective experience of our selves plays a role in our decision-making. As is evidenced in our creations all around us.

I think awareness and consciousness differ — AmadeusD

Perhaps the subjective experience of information processing systems of sufficient number and/or complexity is awareness. And when sufficient feedback loops are also present, the experience is self-awareness.

I wonder if you are seeing consciousness as being about the processes of being alive, as in that respect it is the same. However, rocks and crystals are not alive in the way we understand it. — Jack Cummins

No, that's not it. I don't see consciousness as being processes of being alive, mental processes, or anything. I see it as nothing but subjective experience.

i don't think rocks or crystals are conscious as a unit. Just a huge number of particles that are each subjectively experiencing their own existence. I don't think the conditions for a group consciousness exist in such things.

I would think it either is, or is not. I don't understand how it could be an illusion.

Saying that, I am not a dualist but am aware of the difference of objects and human consciousness, even though some even see human consciousness itself as an illusion. But, it is to speculate on different degrees of consciousness, ranging from minerals, plants animals and humans (possibly AI as a further development). — Jack Cummins

I do not see it this way. My thinking is that consciousness is always the same. It is subjective experience. Nothing has rudimentary consciousness. What really counts is the thing having the subjective experience. What is the subjective experience of crystals? How does the subjective experiences of a crystal, an archaea, a plant, a mouse, a chimpanzee, a human?

This really gets to the nub of the problem. What I'm saying is that the knowledge we have of our own consciousness is of a different order to the knowledge we have that others are conscious. To be conscious is to know of our own existence, in a direct and unmediated way. I know that I am in a different way to the indirect and mediated knowledge I have of other minds.

Chalmers’ “what-it-is-like”-ness is precisely about this direct, first-person givenness. That element — the qualitative feeling of being — is not captured by any third-person account, no matter how detailed. This is where the irreducibly subjective aspect of consciousness shows itself. — Wayfarer

Agreed.

This is why I think the panpsychist move is ultimately a misstep. By trying to objectify consciousness — to treat it as a measurable attribute of matter — it attempts to assimilate consciousness into the obective mode, from which it is essentially different. The first-person reality of consciousness doesn’t appear as an object in the world; it manifests as the point of view from which the world is experienced. — Wayfarer

I do not think it is a misstep.

Is it or is it not an objective fact that we're all subjectively conscious? Just because neither of our first-person realities of consciousness appear as objects in the world doesn't mean they don't both come into being for the same objective reason/when the same objective conditions are present.

Two telescopes made on the same machinery, seconds apart, can never have the exact same view of anything at the same time, despite being made the same way, out of the same materials, and working the same way.

We are, obviously, far more complex than telescopes. Our brains and bodies follow the same general plan, but there are many differences between our brains. We also have different experiences, which means different memories, beginning before we're even born. So, while we might argue that we could arrange things such that it's possible for two telescopes to have the exact same view of something at different times, even that's not possible for different people. It's not even possible for one person to have the same experience more than once.

Panpsychism is also subject to the 'combination problem' - the question about how primitive, conscious units of matter are able to combine in such a way as to give rise to the unitary sense of self that characterises actual conscious experience. — Wayfarer

What guess about the nature of consciousness doesn't have to deal with the combination problem? Does it somehow make more sense that consciousness is nothing but the physical activity of the brain, and the activity of these neurons over here are all somehow combined into one subjective visual experience, the activity of those neurons over there all somehow combine into one subjective aural experience, and the activity of both groups of neurons, as well as that of still other groups of neurons, somehow combine into one subjective experience that is visual, aural, and whatever else?

I don't know anything about your idealism. How does that avoid the combination problem?

If my position is correct, then the combination problem is obviously not a problem. No matter what guess is actually the correct one, the combination problem clearly isn't a problem.

I could not find any, so my assertion above stands. A counterexample is required. — noAxioms

Not sure what you mean. What example of yours would I be countering? Just curious. I'm not looking to counter you. I'm just wondering how you would measure such a thing.

Effects are measured in physical change. You measure a physical change, how do you determine that it was fundamental consciousness that caused that rather than something else? Some other physical cause? — flannel jesus

I don't know about fundamental consciousness. I don't think we can be conscious of the things we are conscious of without some kind of fundamental consciousness. But I don't think the subjective experience of a particle is causing anything. I don't know at what point of complexity I think an entity must attain before its subjectively experience can be casual, any more than any physicalist can say at what point they think the physical complexity of the brain causes consciousness to emerge.

But, eventually, consciousness is causal. I think what Hofstadter says about the comet approaching and hitting Jupiter at the beginning of I Am a Strange Loop makes a good case for this. What he talks about can't be explained by physical causes.

You're looking at the question as if it is an objective matter - a question of 'what is really there'' and whether 'consciousness' is a constituent of the objective domain. But I'm saying that this is the wrong way to look at it. — Wayfarer

And I disagree. I'm willing to believe we are all conscious. Just because I can't know your instance of consciousness doesn't mean I won't accept that you are conscious. I do. I can't prove that any consciousness other than my own exists, but I don't care about proof in this instance. If I didn't accept your consciousness as fact, I wouldn't be participating in the conversation. So my starting point is that subjective experience is an objective fact. And the explanation is (maybe) that consciousness is a fundamental part of reality.

That's what panpsychism does, though. Mass, charge and other physical properties are observable and measurable, whereas the idea that matter possesses properties of consciousness is purely conjectural. Again, it is an attempt to rescue the credibility of materialism by saying it must be a property in all matter - instead of questioning materialism itself. That is explicitly what Galen Strawson says about it, mine is not a straw man argument. — Wayfarer

You interpret it that way. I interpret it that physical is not all there is to reality.

I understand the physical we experience every moment isn't exactly what it seems. However, whatever the explanation for what is not exactly physical seeming to be physical, it does seem to be physical. How many seeming forms could whatever is really there take? Why did it take this one? It seems bizarre to me that the nature of reality would assume a false nature that is so unlike its true nature that there's no way to detect that true nature within the system of the false nature, and it's impossible to prove that true nature's existence. I must consider that, somehow or other, the physical, imperfect though our understanding of it may be, is, in some sense, true.

But it's not all there is. It's not the full story.

.

If consciousness is fundamental, then we can't measure it in the ways we measure everything else.
— Patterner
Sure you can. You can measure its effect on everything else. — noAxioms

Can you elaborate? How do you measure the effect consciousness has on everything else? What's the method, or procedure? Which sense, or what tool, is used?

Careful with this 'we'. I've looked at philosophy of mind from many perspectives. — Wayfarer

Sorry. I didn't mean you. I meant people in general, as a result of "Galileo's Error".