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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is obviously something wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

I imagine so. But also to people like me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How is that determined?

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

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

Glad things are going better. :smile:

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


:rofl:

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

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

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

:up:

Ok. Just wasn't sure if you thought I was saying anything about creation stories, or anything at all in any religious vein.

Sorry about your Thanksgiving. Indeed, a lot of negative possibilities come along with our mental capacity. And the negative crap is, like Yoda said about the Dark Side, quicker, easier, more seductive.

I don't think that explanation comes up in any creation stories. — Athena

Were you still speaking to me when you said this?

I like the acknowledgement of evolutionary progression. However, thinking is something that we do. Thinking is existentially dependent upon certain biological structures that we have. We know that because we have observed and recorded the affects/effects that damaging those structures has on the mind and/or cognitive abilities of the injured. There is no good reason to attribute thinking to creatures that do not have very similar relevant biological structures. — creativesoul

This is from Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious, by Antonio Damasio:

Sensing is not perceiving, and it is not constructing a “pattern” based on something else to create a “representation” of that something else and produce an “image” in mind. On the other hand, sensing is the most elementary variety of cognition. — Damasio

This is from Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos, by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam:

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.

Accordingly, every mind requires a minimum of two thinking elements:
•​A sensor that responds to its environment
•​A doer that acts upon its environment

Some familiar examples of sensors that are part of your own mind include the photon-sensing rods and cones in your retina, the vibration-sensing hair cells in your ears, and the sourness-sensing taste buds on your tongue. A sensor interacts with a doer, which does something. A doer performs some action that impinges upon the world and thereby influences the body’s health and well-being. Common examples of doers include the twitchy muscle cells in your finger, the sweat-producing apocrine cells in your sweat glands, and the liquid-leaking serous cells in your tear ducts. — Ogas and Gaddam

Ogas and Gaddam soon talk about the roundworm. In addition to sensors and doers, the roundworm has two thinking elements. One neuron connects the sensors and the forward-moving doers, and activates the movers when the sensors say there is food ahead. Another neuron connects the sensors to the backward-moving doers, and activates the movers when the sensors say there is poison ahead. The stronger the signal a neuron gets from the sensor, the stronger the signal it sends to its mover.

Also, the two neurons inhibit each other. The stronger the signal a neuron receives from the sensor, the stronger it inhibits the other neuron.


The authors of these two books are calling it 'thinking' from the beginning. The roundworm is a step up. It is judging conflicting inputs, and choosing. It might be stretching the definitions of 'judging' and 'choosing'. And maybe it's stretching the definition to say "This process of changing inputs into outputs—of changing sensation into useful behavior—is thinking." But all of this is, surely, the first stage of thinking. The sensors could evolve into eyes, or nose, or whatever. The movers could evolve into a tail, or legs, or whatever. But what connected them in the first ancient life evolved into our thinking. And, even if in only the most primitive sense, they are performing the same functions.

:rofl: Ok then!

Why don't we hold them accountable for there pain and death they cause each other?
— Patterner

Accountability applies only to those who know they've done wrong(those who know better).

Other creatures capable of thought, belief, and/or meaningful experience are utterly incapable of comparing their own thought, belief, and/or behaviour to anything else at all. Knowing better requires having done so. Hence, they cannot know better.

In order to choose better, one must know of better. That's one thing some humans do that no other animal can. So, in this sense, they(language less animals and experience) are utterly different. They cannot form, have, and/or hold any sort of thought and/or belief that requires comparing one's own thought, belief, and/or behaviour to anything else at all, societal ethical standards, moral codes(morality); rules of acceptable/unacceptable behaviour notwithstanding. — creativesoul

Exactly my point.

This is the same way that a die is technically determined if you do the physics equations to predict how it will fall. — Brendan Golledge

After it leaves the hand, that is. When it leaves hand isn't determined.

I must confess I don't know enough about how language-less animals think to know what is old and what is new in our intellectual and cognitive abilities. — Ludwig V

I have no idea, myself. I don't know anything about how certain appendages went from forelegs to wings. I don't know what the intermediate steps were, or when any of them happened. But I think people who study that stuff have a pretty good amount of detail.

Thinking began in single-celled species. Nothing more than sensing light and moving in response to it is more complicated than dominoes knocking each other down. I can't imagine what the steps are between that and what we can do.
-Sensing multiple input, weighing them, and choosing one.
-Storing patterns of input, and referring to it when similar input is perceived.
-Thinking different things because the body develops different abilities.

It's all dizzying.

So even our awesome power to wreck the entire planet has forerunners. The rabbits' power is not different power; rather, the humans have a "super" of a power that animals also have. I think perhaps that's a better way to think of at least some of the features that we have been talking about. — Ludwig V

Sure. Just as, at one time, there was only one species of animal on the planet that had the ability to fly, even though other species were able to move in other ways. We can even see how the ability to fly evolved from how other species were moving. Still, it was a new ability.

At another time, only one species of animal had the ability to breath air, even though other species were able to get oxygen in other ways. We can even see how the ability to breath air evolved from how other species were getting oxygen. Still, it was a new ability.

At the moment, only one species has the ability to think in certain ways/about various types of things, even though other species are able to think. We can even see how the ability to think in new ways evolved from how other species are able to think. Still, it is a new ability.

Physicalism Is Dead — Marc Wittmann

Thank goodness that's finally settled!


:rofl:

There is no ELE like us. It might be a good idea to better understand the things that make us different, rather than deny that we are.
— Patterner
I'm sorry, I don't understand what "ELE" means. But it's a fair point. — Ludwig V

Forgot this. Extinction Level Event.

Does that mean you agree with me? — Ludwig V

You mean with this?

The thing is, it seems to me that since, for better or worse, we are animals in so many ways, it doesn't really make sense to say that we are "utterly" different from other species. — Ludwig V

No two species on earth are 'utterly' different. That's impossible. I couldn't guess what the full list is, but, at the very least, all species have DNA and use glucose for energy. The explanation for this is that all earth species - indeed, all living individuals on earth (assuming no extraterrestrials) - are descended from one common ancestor that had these characteristics. That common ancestor is called LUCA, which stands for Last Universal Common Ancestor.

The closer we and another species are to our MRCA (Most Recent Common Success) on the tree of life, the more characteristics we share.
-We share more characteristics with other primates than we do with mammals that are not primates.
-We share more characteristics with other mammals than we do with vertebrates that are not mammals.
Etc.

Mistake lol

.
Yeah, they can be jerks. Which makes for great videos on fb. :rofl:

Why do you suppose we relate our ethical principles only to use? Why don't we hold them accountable for there pain and death they cause each other? Why do we often kill dogs that break their chain and attack people?

The thing is, it seems to me that since, for better or worse, we are animals in so many ways, it doesn't really make sense to say that we are "utterly" different from other species. — Ludwig V

We still die from diseases, just as other species do. We die if we fall from great heights, which many other species do not. We take in energy the way most other animal species do. Locomotion, respiration, vision, on and on, as much like the other species as they are all like each other.

But humans are super-duper-special; utterly different from other species in so many ways that are hugely important to humans. — Vera Mont

To deny that humans are leaps and bounds above any other species in significant ways is willful ignorance.

Proportionally, we are not the fastest, strongest, or most durable. We can't fly, we can't burrow, we can't swim underwater for more than a few minutes. Yet, because of our intelligence, we surpass every other species in all of these ways, and more. And we can do things no other species can do to the least degree, or is even trying. Such as travel to other celestial bodies, store information outside of our bodies, communicate instantly with the other side of the world, create intelligent entities that are not our biological offspring, and make a good go at destroying life on the planet. There is no ELE like us. It might be a good idea to better understand the things that make us different, rather than deny that we are.

Sadly, intelligence is not restricted by ethics. — Ludwig V

Not buy a long shot.

The earlier discussion centred on the consequences of Cartesion dualism for our treatment of animals. — Ludwig V

Which is all nonsense. People who want to be cruel will spin whatever they can to justify their cruelty.

There are differences between human and animals. There are also similarities. So the interesting part is what “significant” means. Actually, I think the significant differences are the ethical ones. — Ludwig V

Nothing matters more. What makes humans different from other species? What is there answer to the Hard Problem of Consciousness? How did life begin? Did anything exist before the Big Bang? All fascinating topics. And we are driven to explore the unknown, and try to answer questions. But if we do not treat others, human and others, well, then we're filthy creatures pretending to be better than we are.

We have moral obligations to animals – essentially, not to treat the cruelly. But they have not corresponding moral obligations to us; in fact they can’t be judged by our ordinary moral standards – though one could argue that they do have something like the beginnings of a moral sense. — Ludwig V

Some do. But it doesn't matter. No animal other than us can be judged for cruelty. They aren't thinking cruel thoughts when they do anything. They aren't choosing to be cruel. Only we have that capacity.