It represents a clumsy attempt at overcompensating the consequences of adopting the intentional/objectifying stance needed to do science, by adding to it (or by replacing it with) patches of experience very similar to the patches of colour added on the surface of an uncoloured drawing. — Michel Bitbol, Beyond Panpsychism

I don't agree that this is what panpsychism is attempting to do. And I maintain that physical objects and processes cannot add up to subjective experience.

As for a cause- that may be different. Hitting a billiard ball causing another billiard ball to move is quite reliable, but to argue that, say, thinking about climate change leads to depression reliably, while true, is vastly more complex. There are many more variables as to what constitutes depression than the regularity in which a ball causes another ball to move. — Manuel

There is no way to predict what most thoughts will cause most people to think next. Different people have different memories; percentages of various hormones at any given moment, and in general; mental strengths (Mozart and Einstein); and other factors. So thinking about climate change might cause one person to think depressing things, but cause another person to think of the girl he had a crush on in the class he took on climate change. But in both cases, thinking of climate change caused the next thought.

A bold statement. Can you please reference any known lifeform that can live in the complete absence of both aerobic or anaerobic respiration? — javra

Mmmm... No. I asked google, and it said yes. I should have looked into it.

You more specifically mean certain reactions of organic chemicals, namely those which result in metabolism - or at least I so assume. — javra

What I mean is this... For a very long time, a writer took a feather, dipped it in ink, and wrote. A writer writes, eh? Pencils and pens came along at different times, but people still wrote with them.

Then came typewriters, and now computers. Nobody is writing any longer. So there are no writers any longer.

But, of course, there are writers today, typing away on their computers. And we write posts and emails all the time. Nobody bats an eyelash at the obvious misuse of the word. It's ludicrous to suggest we aren't wiring. Because writing is a pursuit. A goal. It's not the tools.

I'm wondering if the chemical reactions that we've called life are the quill and ink, pencils, and pens.

While this can be viewed as a tautology (the laws of physics allow life because there is life...), I also think that this is a very interesting point. To me this suggests that we perhaps do not know enough of the 'inanimate' and this is the reason why the properties associated with life seem so different from the properties associated with 'what isn't life', i.e. life is, so to speak, latent in 'what isn't life'. — boundless

I don't know. It seems to me life is processes, not properties. Our planet has various amounts of various elements, so that's what the laws of physics had to work with. But can't there be life on other planets that have different mixtures of different elements? I imagine there can be. I think different elements, different processes, different systems, can accomplish the work of life.

Compare a geometrical shape such as a trapezoid. One might learn how to use the word correctly, and thus recognize trapezoids, without being able to say exactly what are the qualities that make the shape a trapezoid. Or, one might be taught those qualities, along with the word "trapezoid," and then categorize the shapes one encounters. — J

I swear I'm not trying to be difficult, but I don't get it. How can you learn how to use the word correctly other than by being taught those qualities? And how can you categorize the shapes without recognizing them?

Which approach should we adopt in the case of consciousness? Do we already know what the word means, so that it's only a matter of finding the entities to which it applies? Or do we already know what's conscious and what isn't, without being able to define consciousness, and hence it's a matter of figuring out what conscious things have in common, and thus perfecting a definition? — J

I thought we were talking about life. As for consciousness, yes, I already know what the word means, and nothing you bring up applies. :grin: :lol: Anyway, my thought is that everything is conscious. More precisely, subjective experience is a property of all particles. They all experience their own being. Which, in the case of a particle, isn't much. There are no mechanisms for sensory input, storage of information from previous sensory input, feedback loops, or any other mental activity.

When a physical system processes information, the conglomerate of particles experiences as a unit. DNA is where it all began. But even though information is being processed when DNA is being replicated, or protein is being synthesized, there are no mechanisms for sensory input, storage of information from previous sensory input, feedback loops, or any other mental activity.

When the information processing includes sensory input, storage of information from previous sensory input, and feedback loops, it is experienced as vision and hearing, memory, and self-awareness.

You know, or not. Sadly, I can't think of a way to test for anything.

I agree. It is the goal of very few machines to endure or to be fit. That's not a fundamental difference with the typical life form, but it's still a massive difference. Machines need to be subjected to natural selection before that might change, and a machine that is a product of natural selection is a scary thing indeed. — noAxioms

I have to assume we could make a program that duplicates itself, but does so imperfectly. Since they operate so fast, they could doubtless go through a million generations in a fairly short time.

How much storage space and power would be needed to support such a thing? If one evolved to overwrites others, it might be manageable.ay least the space.

Hey, why not unnatural selection? We could give it mutations faster than nature works.

Yes, it can get sticky.

Google says:
Metabolism refers to all the chemical reactions that occur within an organism to maintain life.

That might be circular.
-Life is something that involves various chemical reactions.
-Various chemical reactions maintain life.

And not all life uses cellular respiration.

My overriding question is:. Can there be life without chemical reactions? Is it the chemical reactions that define life? Or maybe the chemical reactions are the means to an end, and that end is a better definition of life.

The first thing Sara Imari Walker talks about in Life As No One Knows It is how definitions differ, and how any definition rules out some things you think are alive, and includes some things you think are not.
— Patterner

Interesting. Would it be easy for you to cite an example of each? Curious to know what she has in mind. — J

I assumed you're familiar with one. If reproduction is part of the definition of life, then worker bees and mules are not alive. Neither is my mother, as she's is 83.

She says many consider Darwinian evolution to be the defining feature of life. In which case no individual is living, since only populations can evolve.

For something that's included that we think is booty living, she cites Carl Sagan' Definitions of Life:

For many years a physiological definition of life was
popular. Life was defined as any system capable of
performing a number of such functions as eating,
metabolizing, excreting, breathing, moving, growing, reproducing, and being responsive to external stimuli. But many such properties are either present in machines that nobody is willing to call alive, or absent from organisms that everybody is willing to call alive. An automobile, for example, can be said to eat, metabolize, excrete, breathe, move, and be responsive to external stimuli. And a visitor from another planet, judging from the enormous numbers of automobiles on the Earth and the way in which cities and landscapes have been designed for the special benefit of motorcars, might wellbelieve that automobiles are not only alive but are the dominant life form on the planet. — Carl Sagan

And I'll include this conversation between Data (an android, if you're not familiar) and Dr. Crusher, from Star Trek:The Next Generation.

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.

One question worth considering: Which way does the argument point? Is it, "Any entity that can do this value-seeking thing will now be defined as 'being conscious'"? Or is it, "We know (have learned/hypothesize) that being conscious means having the ability to do the value-seeking thing, so if it can do it, it's conscious"? — J

I don't follow. I don't see significant difference between those options. It seems like just different wording.

Can an entity, alive or not, do this value-seeking thing and not be conscious? I agree with him that we don't yet know. — J

I know I'm alone here at TPF in my thinking that consciousness is fundamental. But, if I'm right, then there is consciousness in all such entities. And not just the individual particles that make up the entity, each experiencing only its own individual existence. The entity would be conscious as an entity. Value-seeking surely isn't accomplished without information processing, which is what I think accounts for collective consciousness. Of course, that doesn't imply mental abilities like ours. An archaea only experiences being a single-celled organism, not an entity with things like memories, abstract thoughts, and self-awareness.

That could be true, but you'd have to say more about why. — J

Maybe. But the definition of life is famously unclear. The first thing Sara Imari Walker talks about in Life As No One Knows It is how definitions differ, and how any definition rules out some things you think are alive, and includes some things you think are not. So maybe the question isn't as much "Why?" as it is "Why not?".

Life on this planet has always been of a certain type. That makes sense, because the laws of physics woked with what was available. Certain arrangements of matter.

Does that mean something cannot be alive if it isn't made of those same arrangements? Can life not come to exist on other planets that contain very different mixes of elements?

If that's not a problem, then why can't we consider some specific mixes of elements here to be alive?

Maybe the key is not what life is made of, but what it's doing. This can apply too anyone's definition.

The enactive framework strongly supports a continuity of life and mind, showing that living systems are inherently value-constituting and purposive. — J

That's a great way of putting it. If life wants to endure, it needs to know what is valuable.

I would like to say: Therefore, something choosing valuable things in order to endure is living. But I don't think anyone would let me have that. I suspect people will say only biological things are living. I'd say maybe we should expand the definition of living, and divide it into Biological Life, Mechanical Life, and whatever else.

Solution to that reasoning is to simply use a different word— noAxioms

Ok. What is that word?
— Patterner
Not my problem if I don't use that reasoning. I feel free to use the same word to indicate the same thing going on in both places. — noAxioms

You are the one who suggested that solution, because you want cars to be seen as having the mental abilities we have. I'm fine with cars being seen as not having them.

That said, I'll say again that when we eventually learn the answer about consciousness (and I think we will), we'll learn that you can't have consciousness without life. — J

Of course, I'm going to disagree regarding consciousness, because I think it's fundamental. However, we probably think we need the same features, whether the answer is panpaychism, physicalism, or whatever (not sure what your theory is). I'm just wondering if there is reason to believe biological life is the only thing that can provide those features.

Foremost, I do not think the qualities we are after can be developed in a vacuum. I've posted this quote of David Eagleman before. From Annaka Harris' audiobook Lights On, starting at 25:34 of Chapter 5 The Self:

I think conscious experience only arises from things that are useful to you. You obtain a conscious experience once signals makes sense. And making sense means it has correlations with other things. And, by the way, the most important correlation, I assert, is with our motor actions. Is what I do in the world. And that is what causes anything to have meaning. — David Eagleman

Do things and get consistent results, and meaning grows.

Having other entities of the same kind to observe and interact with is probably necessary. Reinventing the wheel takes too long. And, at least in our case, even if we were kept alive as infants, we would never learn without others. I think our brains wire themselves in response to interactions, among other things.

Biological life is not the only thing that can manipulate the environment. Robots can. But can they learn meaning from doing so? AlphaGo learned, didn't it? Not the kind of things I'm talking about. But is there a reason we can't program something that can? we do some pretty amazing things, but I don't know if we could program something that wires itself in response to its experiences.

I still don't think that's enough to get an entity like us. I think there needs to be a lot more information processing systems and feedback loops. We are just so full of such things they can't be counted. And they're all working together for this brain and body. Still, in principle, is it impossible?

As Nagel says, this explanation, ‘however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience—how it is from the point of view of its subject.’ The physical sciences are defined by excluding subjective experience from their domain. You cannot then use those same sciences to explain what they were designed to exclude. This isn’t a failure of neuroscience—it’s a recognition of the scope of third-person, objective description. The first-person, subjective dimension isn’t missing information that more neuroscience will fill in; it’s in a different category. — Wayfarer

I can't imagine there's a better way to word it.

Abilities that a car lacks.
— Patterner
But abilities that it necessarily lacks? I suggest it has mental abilities now, except for the 'proof by dictionary' fallacy that I identified in my OP: the word 'mental' is reserved for how it is typically used in human language, therefore the car cannot experience its environment by definition. Solution to that reasoning is to simply use a different word for the car doing the exact same thing. — noAxioms

Ok. What is that word?

But I also think that there is some rudimentary intentionality even in the simplest life forms (and perhaps even in viruses which are not considered living). — boundless

Yes. Rudimentary intentionality. Rudimentary thinking.

Since nearly all life uses DNA, it's a reasonable assumption that LUCA had DNA. And LUCA would have been an extremely simple form of life. But there would still be great complexity, as there is in today's simplest, single-celled life. And it's all acting to keep itself alive.

I think if AI had to act to keep itself alive, it would be a good step. Something would matter to it, as might say.

Why do you [think] it must be alive? What aspects of life do you think are required for consciousness?
— Patterner

And this connects to the discussion above. I'd endorse Wayfarer's speculations, and add quite a few of my own, but it's a long story. Maybe a new thread, called something like "The Connection between Life and Consciousness - The Evidence So Far"? And yes, if panpsychism is valid, that would appear to contradict the "consciousness → life" hypothesis. — J

(Thanks for pointing out the omission. I've fixed it.)

I think it would be a great thread, although our guesses about the connection between life and consciousness are very different.
.

Edit: now the link worked. It isn't the video that I had in mind, so I'll watch it. — boundless

Yeah, I just fixed the link. I don't know how I managed to screw it up so badly the first time. Thanks for pointing it out. It's a 31 minute overview video. He also has two other videos going into more detail.
Part 1 is 29 minutes.
Part 2 is 16.

I have no idea what video apokrisis posted. I just did a search. This post is about the same stuff, but there's no link to a video.

A purely reductionist explanation to all that doesn't seem credible. So, the 'emergence' that caused all of this is something like a 'non-reductionist emergence' or something like that. However, the details of how the emergence of life happened are unclear and details matter.

Again, I don't deny abiogenesis but I do believe that we have yet to understand all the properties of the 'inanimate'. Perhaps, the hard difference we see between 'life' and 'not-life' will be mitigated as we progress in science. — boundless

I don't mean this is how life emerged, as in abiogenesis. I mean life is various physical processes, such as metabolism, respiration, and reproduction, and we can understand these processes all the way down to things like electrons and redox reactions. There's nothing happening above that isn't explained below. There is no vital force/élan vital needed to explain anything.

We cannot say the same about consciousness. Many say we should learn our lesson from the mistaken belief in the vital force/élan vital in years gone by, and find similar answers to those we've found for life. And a whole bunch of very smart people are looking for such answers. But there is no hint of such answers. Because there is no physical definition or description oc consciousness. As I said, consciousness is not physical processes like photons hitting retinas, rhodopsin changing shape, signal sent up the optic nerve to the lateral geniculate nucleus, signal processed, processed signal sent to the visual cortex, and a million other intervening steps. No amount of added detail would be a description of the experience of seeing red.

Yes, that's the question we don't know how to answer: Would such a structure result in consciousness or subjectivity? Is that what it takes? Is that all it takes? My initial reaction would be to ask, "Is it alive?" If not, then I doubt it could be conscious, but I have no special insights here. Many years of thinking about this incline me to believe that consciousness will turn out to be biological -- but we don't know. — J

Well, since I think consciousness is fundamental, I'm gonna have to disagree. :grin: I think that, since consciousness is a property of all things, enough information processing and feedback loops acting together as a single unit are experienced as sentience and self-awareness. If I'm right, maybe we'll get an AI that will convince us. If you're right, we never will. Although, unless another theory is proven right, we'll always be in the boat we're in now.

Why do you think it must be alive? What aspects of life do you think are required for consciousness?

I personally believe the brute fact position is unsatisfying, and that at transcendent ground does not precipitate infinite regress. — Dogbert

How is a transcendent ground not brute fact or part of an infinite regress? What third alternative is there?

Well, yeah I did have a visual of what the limerick was representing — Harry Hindu

I think it's interesting that very little of the visual that the limerick is representing is involved with the goal. But it still does the job. The nature of the first line, and the rhythm and rhyme of the first two make you think the fourth line will rhyme with the third. Combined with the only visual that really matters, an oar being stuck into something, and Bob's your uncle.

The question is whether they can, or could, experience anything at all. My educated guess is that they can't -- they can't be subjects -- but it seems far from axiomatic to me. — J

I don't think they currently experience anything like we do, because there isn't even a small fraction as much going on in them as there is in us. A single-celled bacterium has far more going on it in that any device you might be thinking of. A huge number of processes in even the simplest life form, an awful lot of them involved in information processing. If we ever make a device with as many information processing systems working together with the goal of the continuation of the device?

I don't know if I would say that you put that thought in my mind. I'd rather say that you caused that thought in my mind — Harry Hindu

I meant I put the thoughts of the woman swimming in the sea, getting hit in the eye by the oar of a guy in a punt in your mind. I did that by posting it where you would read it. In the event that you then found a certain other thought in your head, which is likely, it's not a coincidence. That's the intent of whoever wrote this limerick, and my intent in posting it here. It caused that certain other thought. The words are arranged in such a way that, without saying anything remotely like what many people think after reading it, they directed your thoughts in a specific way.

I honestly find the whole distinction between 'strong' and 'weak' emergence very unclear and tends to muddle the waters. When we say that the form of a snowflake emerges from the properties of the lower levels, we have in mind at least a possible explanation of the former in terms of the latter.
If 'strong emergence' means that such an explanations isn't possible then I do not think we can even speak of 'emergence'.

So, yeah, I believe that emergence must be intelligible. — boundless

I don't believe there's any such thing as 'strong emergence'. There's just emergence, which most think of as 'weak emergence'. And it is intelligible.

The lower level may not possess the properties of the upper, but the properties of the lower can always be seen to account for the properties of the upper.
-The properties of electrons, protons, and neutrons explain how they combine to form atoms, and different kinds of atoms.
-The properties of atoms explain how the combine to form molecules.
-The properties of molecules explain how they combine, and the properties they have in groups.

No, no subatomic particle, atom, or molecule has the property of liquidity. But the properties of the subatomic properties are the explanation for the properties of the atoms, which are the explanation for the properties of the molecules, which are the explanation for the property of liquidity. In The Demon in the Machines, Paul Davies says:

An engineer may fully understand the properties of steel girders without the need to consider the complicated crystalline structure of metals. A physicist can study patterns of convection cells knowing nothing about the forces between water molecules. — Paul Davies

The engineer and physicist don't need to know those lower level things. But those lower level things are responsible for the existence of the upper.

Skipping a lot of things and not getting into much detail, just to get the point across...

-The liquidity of H2O is due to the shape of the molecules and the hydrogen bonds that form between them, which are stronger than the bonds between various other molecules that are gases at the same temperatures.

-The shape of H2O molecules, that is, the 104.54° angle, is due to the spacing of the pairs of electrons. Oxygen's outer shell has six electrons. Two are individually paired with the electrons of the hydrogen atoms. The other four are in two pairs, called 'lone pairs'. The electron clouds of the lone pairs take up more room than the pairs shared between the O and H, which pushes the H atoms closer together than is seen in other molecules of this tetrahedral arrangement, which is usually 109.5°.

-The electrons are all negatively charged, so repel each other. They are able to pair up because they opposite spins.


Life is a much more complex example of emergence. Various physical processes - such as metabolism, respiration, and reproduction - are defining characteristics of life. None of those processes can be found in any subatomic particle, atom, or molecule. But we can go through the levels just the same. I'm not going to do even as much as I just did for water, because this is already far too long. But watch this video about the electron transport chain. It explains how electrons being transported from one thing to the next in the mitochondria leads to a proton gradient, and how the pent-up proteins, when released, power the synthesis of ATP. ATP is the power source of nearly everything involved in those physical processes that are the defining characteristics of life.


There is no emergence that does not break down in such ways. If consciousness is an emergent property, and physicalism is the explanation for its emergence, then it must break down in such ways. The first step would be to say exactly what consciousness is, as we can say what liquidity, metabolism, respiration, and whatever else are. Then we can take it down, level by level, as we can liquidity, metabolism, respiration, and whatever else

Consciousness is not physical processes like photons hitting retinas, rhodopsin changing shape, signal sent up the optic nerve to the lateral geniculate nucleus, signal processed, processed signal sent to the visual cortex, and a million other intervening steps. That is not the experience of seeing red.

Oh! Here's a good one!

There once was a woman named Bree
Who went for a swim in the sea.
But a man in a punt
Stuck an oar in her eye
And now she's blind, you see

I wonder if anyone got a certain thought in their mind. A thought that has nothing to do with that limerick, but which I, nevertheless, intended you to think.

If it worked, was it because certain thoughts I put in your mind caused it?

They want to know, "Why couldn't it be the case that everything you describe as pertaining to yourself, and other living beings, also pertains to devices, AIs, et al.? Why is it obvious that they're different?" — J

"Everything"? Surely not. How does memory work in anything that demonstrates memory? I don't know which devices you have in mind, but which have any mechanisms that we know play a role in memory? I would ask the same about sensory input. And doing things to the environment outside of our skin. All of these things, and more, add up to what we experience as humans. Should we assume anything that has no memory, no sensory input, and does not act on the environment because of what it senses and remembers, experiences everything that we do?

Yes, but still divided up in your mind depending on your present intention (goal in the mind). As I said before, "It’s our focus, intention, or interpretive stance that ‘collapses’ that field into discrete thoughts or objects." So it isn't just our thoughts that we divvy up - it is the entire world including the people within it. — Harry Hindu

If I'm following you, the reason for that is that we are incapable of perceiving everything that exists all at the same time, and incapable off perceiving events that have not yet taken place. We perceive what we are able to, when we are able to. So we perceive the entire world including the people in it divvied up, our thoughts are generated in that manner, and we can break them up in that same manner.

This is how Nagel said it:

But fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism – something it is like for the organism. — Thomas Nagel

I don't think there can be anything it's like to be any organism, to be anything, for that thing, if it does not have certain mental abilities. Abilities that a car lacks.

Just looking at this again.

My father ordering a chef salad in a restaurant is obvious a different thought than my wife's boss's desire to get her to eat at their monthly meetings. We can focus on, as you said, whatever interests us.
— Patterner
Well, now you're talking about different minds, not thoughts in the same mind. — Harry Hindu

They are thoughts in the same mind. My mind. I was thinking of the chef salad I was eating; which lead to how I acquired the salad; which led to my wife's boss; and all the thoughts of chef salad brought up thoughts of my father's love of them. Those were all my thoughts; my mind.

That is my point - that it is only in some mind that they are identifiable as different thoughts. — Harry Hindu

Certainly. It is only in minds that thoughts exist at all. There is no other place they can be differentiated or isolated.

I'm not following. In whose mind are my father ordering a chef salad in a restaurant and my wife's boss's desire to get her to eat at their monthly meetings not easily identifiable as different thoughts?

You were the one that used the word, "isolation" and I was simply trying to get at your meaning of your use of it. — Harry Hindu

I lost track. Dawnstar first used it. I just don't see the difficulty. We can break things up however we want. My father ordering a chef salad in a restaurant is obvious a different thought than my wife's boss's desire to get her to eat at their monthly meetings. We can focus on, as you said, whatever interests us.

Since I came into this thread saying that "sentences" aren't clear expressions of thoughts — Dawnstorm

Ted Chiang wrote a short story called Understand, in which a man becomes super intelligent. Not really intelligent. Super intelligent. He says this:

I’m designing a new language. I’ve reached the limits of conventional languages, and now they frustrate my attempts to progress further. They lack the power to express concepts that I need, and even in their own domain, they’re imprecise and unwieldy. They’re hardly fit for speech, let alone thought. — Ted Chiang

But did they really occur in isolation? What do you mean by isolated? It seems to me that the isolation is a mental projection onto the thinking process just as we project our categorical boundaries onto other natural processes. And each thought shares a property with the thought before it. — Harry Hindu

I don't really know what you had in mind with the word "isolation". But, unless we say we have only one thought per day, spanning the entirety of the time we're awake and thinking, then, whatever it means, we isolate thoughts all the time. I just ate a salad. You don't need, and surely don't want, to hear all the thoughts surrounding it. My wife gave it to me. She got it last night at a late meeting for her job. Her boss had these meeting every month. He always gets food. but my wife only eats one meal a day, and it is keto, so she never eats at these meetings. For some reason, that bothers her boss. He always wants her to eat, and actually you could say he pressures her to eat. don't know why he feels so strongly about it. Anyway, it's usually pizza or something, and she's not gonna eat it under any circumstances. But last night he got her this nice chef salad, and asked her how that was. She said she would eat it today. She gave it to me instead. My father absolutely loves chef salads. He always says, "That was good! It had everything!" it cracks all of us up. we can go to any restaurant, with the most amazing food in it, and he's darned likely to ask if they have a chef salad.:rofl:

I just ate a salad.

I don't see how one isolates a thought from the process of thinking. It would be like trying to isolate the stomach from digestion, and I don't see how that would get us any closer to how thoughts are caused. — Harry Hindu

I don't know about being able to isolate a thought from the process of thinking, but we can clearly talk about different thoughts in isolation. I can think of my door that needs work too keep thme cold out. I don't know what to do, so I need to find a carpenter. I really like the music of The Carpenters, and Karen had an amazing voice. Karen does because, even though she was recovering from anorexia, it had already causes damage to her heart.

We can talk about many separate thoughts in all that.
-My door letting in the cold
-carpenters
-The Carpenters
-Karen's death
-anorexia

Would you agree that conclusions are caused by reasons? Have you ever reached a conclusion without a reason? Would that still qualify as reasoning (thinking)? — Harry Hindu

I would agree that conclusions are caused by reasons. I think reasoning is one way a thought can cause another.

But I don't think all thoughts caused by another are the result of reasoning. Sometimes it's just an association, which means memory.

And not all thoughts are caused by other thoughts. For example, sensory input often causes thoughts.

It seems more important to lay out what we mean by "cause" so even understand how it happens in the physical realm to understand how it might apply to the mental. — Harry Hindu

My definition might be something like:
Thought B was caused by Thought A if B would not have come into existence at the time it did had A not existed first.

As for how it works, I'm thinking of this:
B came into existence because of an association work A (meaning A triggered a memory); because it was the conclusion of a line of reasoning that lead from A to B; (other "mental mechanisms"?).

So my initial question is now: “Can one J-thought cause another — J

One thought can cause another. It happens all the time.

and if so, is this by virtue of a World 2 relationship, a World 3 relationship, or some combination?” — J

I won't be able to help you with this. I just don't get the idea well enough. Or maybe the point of it. We'll see if I catch on as you guys discuss.

If causation isn’t a very good model of what happens when we think J-thoughts, then can we come up with a better description, something more contentful than merely “association” or “affinity”? — J

I think causation is a good model, and I think it's because of associations.

Yes, I suspected that was your thinking.

They're most definitely causing the trains to show up. The proof of that if that if those people would stop showing up, the trains would eventually also stop showing up :wink: — Pierre-Normand

True enough. But the idea is that the gathering of people at that time and place is not the cause of the train's arrival. If nobody showed up when they needed to to catch the train, the train still would have shown up. It wasn't even the purchase of those particular tickets that caused the train to show up. Tickets for that particular day of the week and time would have to stop for some time before they stopped having three train stop there. At which point, no number of people gathering there would cause the train to stop.

So what was my thought process here? What's clear is that, even though I was prompted to "retrieve 12" and I knew I was prompted such, I didn't bother to retrieve twelve. — Dawnstorm

You knew you were being prompted to retrieve 12, so chose not to, all without thinking of 12? aren't you thinking of 12 when you realized it's what was being prompted? Isn't the best you could do choosing to stop thinking about 12?

I think you misunderstand my position. "Thought" is what's going on in when we're thinking. The process; the stream of consciousness (or part of it, whatever we're willing to count as thinking). "A thought" is unit that occurs with that process. It's perfectly possible to be thinking, but there's no good way to break what's going on apart to isolate "a single unit that makes up a thought". — Dawnstorm

Yes, I was misunderstanding. However, I think I disagree. In what way can we not break apart what's going on and isolate a single thought? Driving into work this morning I see a lot of leaves on the ground. It's autumn. I think New Yorkers as a rule like autumn. Pumpkins and squash and apples are big this time of year. All the apple orchards have apple cider and cider donuts this time of year, and there's usually fudge also. One orchard has a cupcake festival every year, which is as wonderful thing as you can imagine. Autumn also reminds me of a particular Monty Python moment with the leaves falling off the tree, seen here:
https://youtu.be/O7rU2l9WiYo?si=r0N021_livZ8fVd2

Allof these things can be seen as separate images/moments/thoughts, can't they?

I'm suggesting we need a model of what type of thoughts can reasonable compared to each other on a level that's relevant to causation. I'm sorry for being so convoluted, but that's just how I... think. — Dawnstorm

Sure, we should be able to come up with ideas for models along these lines. Any suggestions? I can't say I'm entirely clear on what you have in mind.

Finally, thought in the context of cause and effect needs certain traits amenable to cause. What are they? — Dawnstorm

Difficult to answer, since, as I've said, we don't even know what charge, which is fairly important for physical causation, is. If mental causation is a significantly different thing, it's going to be even more mysterious, since we don't have centuries of systematic study of it.


My apologies to you and . I don't know anything at all about Popper. I only heard his name for the first time recently, in another thread, and haven't been able to make head or tail out of what you two are saying about his Worlds.

It's not causation. It's memory retrieval. — L'éléphant

It seems to me retrieving a memory is a big way one thought causes another. Any kind of association is a memory. The fact that bananas are yellow is stored in my memory. So seeing something yellow might make me think of bananas. There was a ridiculous, hilarious show with Space Ghost as a talkshow host. One time he just blurted out that bananas have potassium, when it was only a tangent to the conversation. So thinking of bananas might make me think of Space Ghost.

Because of the operation of the mind -- thoughts are modes of thinking. If a thought can cause you another thought, are you not removing the mind from the equation? — L'éléphant

Maybe that is the mind. I've asked elsewhere - What is the mind when there is no thinking taking place?



Regarding causation in general… A famous example of correlation not being causation is watching a train station for a day, and noticing that every time a bunch of people gather at it, a train shows up.

One thought following another is not correlation. it is causation. Think of paparazzi. Your next thought might be that Lady Di was killed because they were trying to outrun the paparazzi. It might be pizza, because both words start with p, have zz, and have at least one a and i. Who knows how many other things the word causes people to think? But none of those thoughts were about to be thought anyway. They wouldn't have been thought (well, there are coincidences) if you hadn't been thinking about paparazzi. And paparazzi obviously did not become a thought in anticipation of Lady Di or pizza.

obviously, there are times when one thought was not caused by a previous thought. One example is you might be in the middle of thinking anything, and then you see or hear or smell something, and it entirely changes your thoughts.