Did you ever read the “Lathe of Heaven” by Ursula LeGuin? It’s not exactly what you described but it has a lot in common. Really good book. Pretty good movie. — T Clark

I have not. Earthsea is my favorite series of books every. (Tied with a few others.) But I haven't read most of her other stuff. Guess I should check it out.

It seems to me there could be a scifi story in what you're saying. If we came up with a way of thinking about something that actually changed its behavior, and it never behaved that way before we came up with that way of thinking about it. That would be pretty amazing.

It seems almost like the double slit experiment. If photons never went through without making the interference pattern before people started watching it. But Google AI says:

'The concept of an "observer" in quantum mechanics doesn't require a human or conscious being. Any interaction with a classical system, whether a detector or even just the environment, can act as the measurement that causes the wave function to collapse.'

Consider why it seems like we could have: it's entirely in retrospect. — Relativist

Not for me. I feel many choices as I'm making them. I struggle with them, looking for a reason too give one option a leg up. Yesterday, I had two scoops of salted caramel ice cream, and one chocolate. (Plus toppings, and a brookie at the bottom.) It took some time to decide. I find the notion that I am an automoton, unable to do more than act out the resolution of all the bioelectric signals jumping around in my brain, and the specifics of (in this example) how I go about eating my dessert determined in the same way, to be preposterous.

There are many times that what seemed to be the case was wrong. But we know they are wrong because it was demonstrated in one way or another. The default position isn't that anything that seems to be the case is not, and we don't need its falsehood demonstrated.

This makes me wonder, what would count as meaning that is independent or external to human thought? — Tom Storm

I don't know if anyone at all agrees with me, but I say the order of the bases in DNA mean amino acids and proteins.

I don't see how it's possible to deny that there is order in the universe, regardless of humans perceiving it. If solid H2O sometimes floated in liquid H2O, and sometimes didn't… If photons sometimes traveled at 299,792,458 mps, and sometimes didn't… If electrons sometimes repelled each other, and sometimes didn't…. if the strength of gravity sometimes followed the inverse square law, and sometimes didn't... On and on and on and on and on... It would be chaos if those things didn't always work the same way under the same conditions. The universe would be chaos. If a universe could exist at all.

But they do work consistently. With order. Call them properties, or laws, or whatever. But there is order to them all, everywhere.

One thing that might help take your ego out of the pictures is to pay attention to how someone who treats you badly treats everyone else. They treat everyone badly. It's who they are. It's not Abbott you. You just happen to be the person standing in front of them at the moment. They don't know you or care to. That being the case, why would you devote your time and thoughts to them? When you do that, they win. They successfully manipulated a random stranger into feeling negative things. Possibly ruining your day. And they did it with your full cooperation.

Cut it out.

We know there is an impulse in human beings to make meaning and wrest order out of chaos
— Tom Storm

Why is that?
— Patterner

You agree with this? I imagine it’s for facilitating survival and attempting to manage our environment. Making the wrong choice can harm or kill us. But it’s obviously more nuanced than my couple of sentences. — Tom Storm

I do agree. But your wording makes me wonder if we view it differently. There is meaning, and there is order. We find those things.

Good grief, it is hard to be human. — Athena

I hadn't noticed.
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

As a panpsychist I've been been considering whether the distinction between intentional cause and non intentional is sustainable. I think it may be, but the non intentional would be derived from the intentional. The only causes we actually know about are intentional. Other causes are often attributed to laws, which are descriptive and don't need the notion of cause to work, perhaps. Not sure. — bert1

It would make things easier if only intentional causes were called causes, and the other kind called something else.

Can you give an example of an activity someone perceives and mistakes to be an object?

Can you give an example of something a person is actually perceiving that does (edited to correct stupid autocorrect) not have temporal extension?
— Patterner

Any activity I suppose. At each moment it is new and different, therefore there is no temporal extension of any specific thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Perhaps. But is it likely that someone who thinks they are perceiving an object is actually viewing an activity?

but if "objects" doesn't fulfill the criteria for what the person is actually perceiving,
— Metaphysician Undercover

What are the criteria?
— Patterner

I would say that the single most important criterion for "object" is temporal extension. — Metaphysician Undercover

Can you give an example of something a person is actually perceiving that does (edited to correct stupid auto correct) not have temporal extension?

We know there is an impulse in human beings to make meaning and wrest order out of chaos — Tom Storm

Why is that?

I'm just not very good at this. Wondering about any specifics.

Celebrate diversity as a strength that enriches our deeper collective consciousness. By accepting and embracing our differences, we fuel our collective strengths and struggles.
— RadicalJoe

Can you say how? — Tom Storm

People in different areas have had to face different circumstances and challenges. Desert nomads know how to live under conditions that would kill people of a fishing village, and vice versa. What challenges can they solve by combining their ways and knowledge?

but if "objects" doesn't fulfill the criteria for what the person is actually perceiving, — Metaphysician Undercover

What are the criteria?

Fear is the slave driver of human kind, it has great utility as motivation, but if it's excessive and unreasonable one can easily be destroyed by it, or rendered stupid.
— Nils Loc

Absolutely agree with this. — AmadeusD

Yup. Also low self-esteem, since I can't resist quoting Northern Exposure. :grin:
Low self esteem is the root cause of practically all the pain and misery in the world. It's what drives war, and torture, and genocide. It's what evil is. Do you think Hitler liked himself? Or Cortez? We hate others because we hate ourselves.
-Leonard

When we are offended, what is the best way to handle this. — Athena

The best way is to not be offended. You do that by realizing you're talking to a bunch of anonymous people who, if you learned their names, would be total strangers. It's easy to be hurt by people we care for. Feelings of betrayal. Feelings of loss. They might have even used something personal to hurt you.

None of that applies to anonymous strangers who you don't ever actually see. How can you be hurt in this setting? If someone is trying to hurt anonymous strangers who they never actually see, it's a pretty serious character flaw. If you are hurt by it, it's on you. It is entirety your doing. Don't do it.

If you aren't hurt by their words, you can respond only to anything of value they said, or, if there is nothing of value, just move on.

↪Patterner Old. I am surprised that Apo was reduced to name calling so quickly. — Banno

Oh! I didn't realize. I just thought it was a typo.

And here is Banjo to join the mean girls with his usual constipated approach to insult. — apokrisis

That's excellent! You should change your name to Banjo!

I tried to keep human intention out of the question. — T Clark

Good luck with that. :grin:

What are the two types of causes? I was trying to limit my discussion to efficient cause. Did I fail? — T Clark

I don't know if you failed according to Aristotle, or anyone roast. I'm saying the reason the 8 ball moved is the physical impact of the cue ball, and the reason the cue moved is your decision to move it. Those seem very different to me.

Do all fall under the umbrella of thoughts?
— Patterner

It is difficult to answer that question. We would have to define what a thought is. In my view, a thought is a relationship with an idea where the idea is actualised, but the idea is a diffuse problem, so the thought does not represent the idea. If we think of something as simple as a football, the thought extends to consider football as a sport, the players, how a ball is thrown, how it is kicked, a whole context that nevertheless remains virtual, waiting to be actualised as the thought progresses in its determinations. Thought is that mental phenomenon such as an image, a notion, a concept that is constantly being determined. But the important thing is that this is not a representation of something outside the mind. A football does not represent the kick or the throw; both are a virtual objective that happens to the ball and is determined as a concept in our thinking. — JuanZu

I think you are making my point. "If we think of something as simple as a football..." We're thinking. Doesn't thinking involve thoughts? Can we think without thoughts?

I think the discussion would go differently with a better understanding of math. What do you know about using math to discover things or explain how things work? — Athena

I don't know exactly what you have in mind, but consciousness seems outside of the scope of mathematics.

Isn't weighing options and choosing among them a mindful activity? — RogueAI

It is.

How does that work on a physical basis alone? — RogueAI

It doesn't. The world is filled with things people chose to make that would not exist if not for our minds. This is why we have always differentiated between natural and man-made objects. We can usually tell the difference at a glance.

I was just saying that the links in the chain of events you listed represent two very different types of cause. I wasn't intending that to be an argument or contradiction to what you're saying.

Well, I certainly appreciate you trying to understand me! Let me try to make things a bit more clear.

1. Consciousness and Subjective Experience are the same thing. Or maybe better to say the definition of Consciousness is Subjective Experience.

2. Consciousness is fundamental.

3. Consciousness is thus an essential property of fundamental particles or whatever is fundamental in the universe.

4. The fundamental particles have no mind even though they have consciousness (subjective experience). Consciousness isn't simple existence at that level. Rather, all that is subjectively experienced at that level is simple existence.

5. An information processing system (not just any old process will do) is not only a unit in regards to processing information. It is also a unit in regards to consciousness. Information processing unifies consciousness. Or maybe information processing is the environment in which consciousness merges. Or something...

Now all that can be internally consistent, but it's still speculation.

Mind is another matter. There are minds. We just don't necessarily have a good definition of it, know it's true nature, or all agree on the definition.

I can understand why Ogas and Gaddam say what they say. And it's surely the beginning.

A mind takes in a set of inputs from its environment and transforms them into a set of environment-impacting outputs that, crucially, influence the welfare of its body.

Surely, that describes minds. Even ours, at least in part. But it's still difficult to say a bacterium has a mind. It may have been inevitable, though, that, once there was information processing, sensing and acting upon what is sensed would come about.

At some point such a configuration can bring about thinking off the kind we do. Can thinking take place without a mind? How is "mind" defined such that it exists, but does not think?

I'm not clear about thoughts/ideas. Can we have an idea other than by thinking it? Has there ever been an idea that wasn't thought? I don't see how that can be.

But does that mean all thoughts are ideas? Are there types of thoughts that are not ideas?

There is surely thinking in non-word form. As I recently said somewhere, Ildefonso is a great example.

ChatGPT... I don't know. Is information being processed? I think the information processing has to be for - "in the eyes of" - the system doing the processing. DNA and some other molecules turn the information in DNA into proteins, which house the DNA, allowing it to keep synthesizing protein, and reproduce. Photons hit the retina, signals of that event are sent to the brain in a different form, *insert a thousand more steps*, the brain can act accordingly.

I don't think a calculator is processing information. It's just a tool we use. Is ChatGPT otherwise? I'm not arguing that it's not. I'm just thinking it might be a Chinese Room? It takes input, and outputs something. But is any of it relevant to ChatGPat? Or does it only mean something to us?

So a few things came to mind. The first is obviously that you're attribution of consciousness to fundamental particles contradicts current knowledge — Jack2848

What knowledge does it contradict?

Namely the definition you use for consciousness and subjective experience for fundamental particles and everything else as a result. No longer requires the usual abilities. Such as a living real-time changing awareness rather than a dead one. — Jack2848

I don't understand what you mean.

You even define consciousness at the fundamental level as 'just existing'. Which makes sense because there's not much there at that level. — Jack2848

I don't define consciousness as "just existing" at that level. I'm saying that's all there is to subjectively experience at that level. I'll try my vision analogy again. If i look at a ball that's just sitting there, that's all i see. A ball just sitting there. That doesn't mean I define vision as "just sitting there".


There is no information processing going on in a chair. So the particles are all subjectively experiencing, but they are not experiencing as a unit. And what they are experiencing is simple existence. They have no mechanisms or processes that could be subjectively experienced as things like feeling.

Can't a sorry old pragmatist like me not have values and meaning without all the claptrap? Just living a productive life and enjoying it? — apokrisis

If that's what you value, knock your socks off! :grin:

I guess that’s my understanding of what a constraint is— something that prevents something else from happening. It reduces the number of possible futures. — T Clark

Sure. But doesn't every action, even inaction, constrain things one way or another? Aaron Judge hitting the ball is a constraint, because he prevented the ball from hitting the catcher's mitt. That wasn't his goal. his goal was to hit the ball. It just so happens that hitting the ball prevents that. Is there a line between something being a constraint and the idea that any course taken means every other course is not taken?

Sure. I have no problem with that as long as you recognize that that particular way of breaking things up is not the only way of looking at it. It’s a matter of convention. You decided which particular aspects to focus on based on your own judgment, and not on any kind of universal principle. That focus was a matter of human value, not scientific principle. — T Clark

That's how you broke it down in your OP. I was just replying to the parameters you gave.

Here's where the break comes. Your muscles and bones moved in those specific ways because you chose to move them in those specific ways, because you intended the cue to hit the cue ball, because you intended the cue ball to hit the 8 ball, because you intended the 8 ball to go into the pocket. (i'm assuming you intended to hit the 8 ball into the pocket.) But that didn't have to happen.
— Patterner

Are you saying that the appropriate place to make a break is based on human intention? So that causality only is significant when there’s people around. I don’t think that’s what you’re saying, so I think I must be misunderstanding. — T Clark

Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt. :grin: No, I didn't mean that. I was trying to distinguish between different types of causes. Cue hitting cue ball, cue ball hitting 8 ball, and 8 ball falling in the pocket are all one type. I don't know what anybody else might call them, but I would probably just call them brute force causes? Thing 1 bangs into Thing 2, and Thing 2 moves.

That's very different from you intentionally moving the cue in a certain way in order to make something specific happen.

When I go back to what I wrote about the chain of causality, one thing that jumps out to me is that constraints—events that prevent future events—have a bigger effect on what happens in the world then causes—events that result in future events. The asteroid didn’t cause humans to evolve, it prevented dinosaurs and other organisms from continuing to evolve. Hitler didn’t cause me to be born, he prevented other potential futures from taking place. — T Clark

I don't think the asteroid and Hitler were constraints. The asteroid prevented the continued evolution of dinosaurs by wiping them out. Or, iirc, it wiped out land animals above a certain size. Hitler prevented a lot of potential futures by murdering millions who would have had children. If a constraint is "a limitation or restriction", then I don't think it applies to these two cases?

Argh! My last word was a mistake. I meant to say:
Are you saying actual information is information that is being processed? If it is not being processed, it is potential information?

So, I would rephrase to say, when information of a system is not being actively processed, its form or state is Potential instead of Actual. For example, there is lots of information in your brain, that you are not currently aware of or thinking of. But it's available to activate, when needed. — Gnomon

It is complicated. Photon hits retina, it's converted, a signal is sent to the brain, where it's represented in a certain way. Assuming no malfunction in the pathway, that will happen. Information about light will be in the brain, in non-light form. But that information might never be acted upon at all. It's possibe that acting upon it is impossible, like if I have locked-in syndrome, even if I interpret it.

But I might not interpret it. We don't interpret everything that comes in through our retinas. So information that had to be created (as opposed to the information in a book) is never even interpreted.

Nice OP! I've only looked at the Chain so far.

My initial thoughts are...

The 8 ball went into the pocket because the cue ball hit it. It couldn't have done anything else.
The cue ball hit the 8 ball because the cue hit it. It couldn't have done anything else.
The cue hit the cue ball because your muscles and bones moved in specific ways. It couldn't have done anything else.

Here's where the break comes. Your muscles and bones moved in those specific ways because you chose to move them in those specific ways, because you intended the cue to hit the cue ball, because you intended the cue ball to hit the 8 ball, because you intended the 8 ball to go into the pocket. (i'm assuming you intended to hit the 8 ball into the pocket.) But that didn't have to happen. You could've played darts instead. Or hit on a girl. Or sat at the table and talked to a friend. Or various other things. But you chose to play pool. And, when the table ended up just as it ended up, you could've chosen to miss or scratch, or walk away without hitting the ball at all.

The car could not have done anything other than what it did. The driver could've chosen something else. You could've chosen not to go with your friends. Your mother giving birth to you? I guess there's a lot of choices in all of that, but one of the most important things that was not a choice was exactly which sperm hit the egg. Even that depends on various things, such as when the mood hit your parents, and other factors we don't need to discuss about your parents.


The asteroid hitting the Earth was a big factor in the conditions on the Earth when humans evolved. However, after it hit and played its role in setting up those conditions, any number of things could've happened. It didn't cause humans to evolve, because humans might not have evolved at all. Mutations are random. The mutations that led to humans might not have happened. They might have, and could have, happened in various other places where other factors did not make that mutation an advantage.


Hitler was like the asteroid. He had a lot to do with setting up the conditions that lead to your birth. But either of your parents could've made any of 1 million other choices in the days weeks and months before they met, which might have made it impossible for them to meet. Hitler didn't have anything to do with the choices they made that did lead to their meeting. or at least certainly not all of them.

Are you saying actual information is information that is being processed? If it is not being processed, it is potential energy?

Information in a dead organism has been transformed into Entropy (dissipated Energy). — Gnomon

Doesn't the fact that people have sequenced Neanderthal DNA, among other groups, say it is still information?

We seem to be going a bit off topic. I was about to start another thread so we didn't hijack this one. Then I realized it's your thread. :rofl: So all good.

My position is such that most of what you're saying just doesn't fit. I'll be as brief as I can, although I know it's still so long that I can't blame anybody for not reading it. Also, my position is relatively new to me, having taken various ideas for granted for so long, without having put much thought into them. Hopefully, I am not contradicting myself because of automatically saying things the way I did for so long.

1) My position is that consciousness is fundamental. It is a property of particles, just as things like mass and charge are. So there is always subjective experience.

Everything experiences its own being. For the extreme majority of the universe, it's only particles that are subjectively experiencing. Particles don't have any kind of mechanisms for mental abilities, perception, or anything else I can think of. Their consciousness is of simple existence.

Not that existence is simple. I'm just saying consciousness is there even when things like thinking, sentience, and awareness are not. The phrase I use is:
The things we are conscious of are not what consciousness is.


2) I think groups of particles are conscious as a group when information is being processed. The system that's processing information is a physical unit, and the act of processing information allows the consciousness of all the particles to subjectively experience as a unit.

I would guess the beginning of information processing was DNA synthesizing protein, although I'm sure there would have been precursors. But DNA has no mechanisms for things like mental abilities and perception. (At least the protein synthesis system, itself, does not. Obviously, once the body is made, which is the end result of protein synthesis, the mechanisms are there, and, at least in our case, so are mental Abilities, perception, and awareness.)


3) MINDS
I've quoted it several times, most recently just a few days ago in another threat. In Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam write:

A mind is a physical system that converts sensations into action. A mind takes in a set of inputs from its environment and transforms them into a set of environment-impacting outputs that, crucially, influence the welfare of its body. This process of changing inputs into outputs—of changing sensation into useful behavior—is thinking, the defining activity of a mind.

They then beginning discussing the simplest minds - molecule minds:
All the thinking elements in molecule minds consist of individually identifiable molecules.
It seems quite a stretch to say archaea or bacteria are thinking when photons got they're eyespots, and their flagella nice in response. And humans think in ways that have nothing to do with changing inputs into outputs in order to influence the welfare of the body. But I do think their definition is where thinking begins. Thinking would not have come to exist if the entities where it began in this extremely basic way were not interacting with the environment in ways that helped them survive. Thinking can be abstract now, but it couldn't have originated that way. It needed solid footing. Maybe the solid footing didn't have to have anything to do with the physical, but the physical did the trick. It offers consistency. So response to stimulus can be counted on to do what it's expected to do. That's needed, because thinking needs to make sense.

Among the changes evolution brought about was the addition of information processing systems. More and more were added, all tied together in the same physical unit. Therefore, all subjectively experiencing as a unit. Enough information processing systems and feedback loops are subjectively experienced as what most would say is true thinking, awareness, and self awareness.


4) As I said, human minds are far beyond simply changing inputs into outputs for the benefit of the organism. We have all manner of abstract thoughts. This is what I'm talking about when I ask if a mind exists if there are no thoughts. (I think "thoughts" is a better word than "ideas" in this.). I think people who arrive at the human mind in entirely different ways might be able to ask the same question. Certainly, there can be a lot going on in a human mind without anything abstract. We can and do "think" in the way Ogas and Gaddam describe. But for those who only consider the more abstract to be proper thinking, what do you have when there are no such thoughts taking place? The extreme example being under general anesthesia. Is there a mind present?

Those who say the mind is exactly and nothing other than the brain might say the mind is present, since the brain is. It's just not thinking.

Those who say the mind is a certain kind of brain activity might say there is no mind, since that activity is not taking place. I'm in this camp. I don't think there is a mind separate from brain activity. (Our consciousness - our subjective experience - of that mind is another matter.)

Those who say the mind is something different from the brain (soul?) would have to say whether or not there is a mind when someone is under GA.



So, as I said, much of your post doesn't apply to my position:

If something is an object or process and has subjective experience then it has consciousness or a mind. — Jack2848

There's always consciousness, since it is fundamental. There is not always a mind.

But a mind exists only if there's subjective experience (which you deem to be consciousness). — Jack2848

There's always subjective experience, since it is fundamental. I say a mind exists only if there's activity of certain kinds taking place. And, again, our consciousness - our subjective experience - of that mind is another matter. I suspect the abstract thinking is only possible when sufficient information processing systems, feedback loops, and consciousness are all present. Consciousness is always present. But we are the only things we are aware of that have sufficient information processing systems and feedback loops. Archaea's subjective experience of its mind, if we're willing to call it a mind for the sake of argument, is nothing like ours, and it doesn't not have abstract possibilities.

Chat gpt is an object or process but doesn't have subjective experience. — Jack2848

If my position or right, it does. Everything does. At least the particles do. And there is probably information processing taking place, so it may be subjectively experiencing as a unit. And I think we can probably give AI the "solid footing" that interacting with the physical world gave naturally-occurring thinking, just as we gave it information processing. But we need to give it a lot more, and feedback loops.

Yes, it's always Information, but it comes in different Forms. — Gnomon

What is the form of there information in the DNA of a dead organism? What is the form of there information in a book that is sitting in a box in the basement?

DNA is chemistry, and it is inert until it is read & implemented by a biological system. The information is encoded in the patterns of interrelationships.

Yes, it's like a tree falling in a forest : it doesn't make a protein unless there's RNA to read it, and ATP to power the change, and amino acids as raw material. So, the verbal Information (EnFormAction) of DNA is not static chemicals, but the active process of reading & implementing the code. :smile: — Gnomon

I don't understand what you're saying. Particularly "the verbal Information". I don't know if you're answering my question. Is the order of the bases in the DNA of a dead body, or written in a book that is sitting in a box in the basement, information?

I think it's always information. I don't think it only becomes information when it is being processed, or being interpreted by a mind.

Ha! I'm not that clever with computer technology, but I can copy & paste. :nerd: — Gnomon

I meant someone hacked your account and is posing as you, but gave thself away by not doing the footnotes.

First of all, I suspect you are a hacker, because I have never seen Gnomon post without footnotes. :rofl:

True. Information is a verb, not a noun, a process, not an object. It's what I like to call EnFormAction : the power to transform from Potential to Actual. Shannon's abstract Data has potential, but no actual meaning, until it is interpreted by a Mind. :smile: — Gnomon

I think I disagree. I believe DNA is information. The codons mean amino acids, and strings of codons mean proteins. (I know not everyone agrees with that, so you might consider my point incorrect already.) Processing that information is a verb. In its natural form, the information is processed.

There are times when it is not processed in its natural form, such as when the organism is dead, as well as when in other forms, such as written in books or modeled with Tinker Toys. Is it not still information? At these times, there is usually no mind interpreting it. Is it not still information even then?

I suppose this could be a philosophical question similar to the tree falling in the forest.

Yes, I agree about what an idea is made of. My bullet points are a general idea of what I think.

So you think to fall into the category of "idea" it must involve relationships and encounters. What we have in our head of a marble isn't properly called an idea. It is only an image.

Do all fall under the umbrella of thoughts?