The cultural invariant is the concept <five>, not what is counted — Dfpolis

Agreed. Which merely begs the question......from where did sure cultural invariant arise? It must be a condition of all similarly constituted rationalities, n’est pas? All that is counted, and the labels assigned to each unit of substance in the series of counting are immediately dismissed. What is left, both necessarily and sufficiently enabling a thoroughly mental exercise? It is nothing but the pure, a priori concepts, thought by the understanding alone, rising from the constitution of the mind**, the categories of quantity (plurality), quality (reality), relation (causality) and modality (existence). — Mww

I agree that there is question begging here, but it occurs when you equate, without supporting argument, "the pure" with "a priori" concepts. We know that people did not always count. Counting is an invented and learned skill, which we see transmitted from parent to child to this day. If enumeration were, as you say, "a condition of all similarly constituted rationalities," then there would never be a time when this culture could not count, but that could, and there would be no need to teach counting to children. Yet, there are still anumeric tribes such as the Piraha of the Amazon.

You may wish to consult Lorraine Boissoneault, "How Humans Invented Numbers -- And How Numbers Reshaped Our World" (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-humans-invented-numbersand-how-numbers-reshaped-our-world-180962485/) or Caleb Everett, Numbers and the Making Of Us. In the later you can read of the Piraha and other anumeric tribes.

So, the anthropological facts do not conform to your theoretical claims.

the concept of car alone is insufficient to justify the truth of the consequent (a guy will die). The synthetic requirement for an outstanding force is also necessary. — Mww

Yes, we need to have culturally shared experiences to appreciate danger. We do not give adequate weight to merely possible risks. I don't see how this helps you case.

That’s what I’m talking about!!!!!! Odd though, you acknowledge that which we know applies to all reality, yet balk at the realization they are the ground of all empirical exercise. Like counting. — Mww

Let's be clear. There are two questions here. (1) Where does our knowledge come from? I my claim is that abstraction from experience is adequate to give rise to so-called "a priori" knowledge. (2) What are the conditions for applying such knowledge once acquired? I affirm that there are no restrictions on applying transcendental principles to reality once we know them, and the only restriction for applying mathematical principles is that we are dealing with countable or measurable realities. (Of course the case has to meet the conditions of application of the principle).

This does not make having a concept of <two> a condition for meeting a husband and wife.

In many cases how we think of things does not matter.

Thus everything that is discovered is first and finally, empirical, i.e., revealed." Thus how I read it. — tim wood

Yes, but I was also trying to say how insights based on the nature of being may appear to be a priori.

For your argument to stand, you have to define empiricism idiosyncratically and in a way that itself "proves" your case, in short, begs the question. And at the same time destroys its common meaning. — tim wood

I was not trying to define "empiricism" at all. I am happy to admit it has many flavors. I was talking about "experience" -- about the world as it interacts with us and so reveals itself to us. So, I am unsure where you see question begging. Could you please explain?

I read it - you - as having the a priori being just a case of the a posteriori, a subset, a species. I argue that they're different animals. It is as if you wished to characterize people as apes. In evolutionary terms, yes, but not now. Not without violence to all the terms in use. — tim wood

I really do not follow this. Could you expand?

Let me say what I mean. Whenever we experience anything, we experience being -- something that can act to effect the experience we are having. We usually don't strip out all of the specifics to arrive at existence as the unspecified power to act; nonetheless, it is there, at the corner of awareness, ready to be examined and reflected upon if we choose to do so. So, there is a concept of <being> hovering in the background, and when we reflect on principles such as Identity or Excluded Middle, it is there to help us judge them.

and that requires something already operative in the intentional/logical order.
Thus, intentional being is ontologically prior to material being. — Dfpolis

In opposition to Sartre's "existence precedes essence"? But I'm not asking for argument here, either. — tim wood

Aquinas took the position on existence long before Sartre was a twinkle.

I don't see Material and Intentional as on the same order of abstraction as Essence and Existence. So, no such opposition was intended.

It is "ontologically" I request you briefly define. In particular and more simply, that ontological priority is not to be confused with temporal priority, yes? — tim wood

Exactly. A is ontologically prior to B is the actuality/operationality of B requires that of A, but not the reverse.

The challenge is to recapitulate for the rest of us in perhaps five sentences or less, the main point(s) of this thread. (Or to treat this challenge contemptuously, which in fact it may deserve!) — tim wood

Thank you for your appreciation. It would be unfair of me to summarize the careful reflections of others, especially in those cases where I see things differently.

I wanted to add that the reason sensible representations cannot make themselves known is that they are not operation in the intentional theater. Sensible representations are only potentially active at the level of thought and logic. To be actually operative, their latent intelligibility must become actualized, and that requires something already operative in the intentional/logical order.

Thus, intentional being is ontologically prior to material being.

We learn by abstraction from experience. — Dfpolis

Hmmmm, yes. I see. I see you’re talking about learning, I’m talking about understanding. — Mww

As we have no reason to think that babies understand counting, the understanding of counting found in older children comes to be. The coming to be of understanding is learning, and we can investigate it by seeing how children come to understand counting.

how do you suppose culturally differentiated systems find a commonality in their respective analysis? What is the same for a child here and now arriving at “5”, and a medieval Roman child arriving at “V”? — Mww

Each child, in any time and culture, has to count four instances before properly applying the fifth count. The cultural invariant is the concept <five>, not what is counted, or the words or signs used to express that concept.

One reason to believe would be, the world of experience satisfies some prerogatives that belong to a priori truths, re: one doesn’t need the experience of a severe car crash to know a severe car crash can kill him. — Mww

It is quite true that we do not need to have experiences to understand them, but we do need analogous experiences. If we had no experience of cars, it would be difficult to understand the concept of a car crash.

My point is this: to understand that I am dealing with an instance of supposed a priori knowledge, say <All As are Bs>, I have to recognize that that I have a instance of A before me. That means that my experience has to be able to evoke the concept <A>. But, if the concept <A> can be evoked by experiencing concrete As, I have no reason the think that the <A> must be given a priori. Since this argument works for any instance of knowledge that can be applied to experience, there is no reason to think that anything we can say of experience is given a priori.

Of course the concept <A> is not the judgement <All As are Bs>. Still, the usual justification for the claim that such a judgement is known a priori is that if one understand the concept <A> then one sees that <B> is somehow "contained" in it. So, if our understanding of <A> is a posteriori, then so is our understanding of <All As are Bs>.

But general a priori truths have nothing whatsoever to do with experience (hence the standing definition), but are sustained by the principles of universality and necessity, for which experience can never suffice, re: two parallel lines can never enclose a space. I think it’s more significant, not that we do know some truths a priori, but that we can. — Mww

I think that there is a great deal more information packed into our experience of being than you seem to. To my mind, any experience of being is adequate grounds for a transcendental understanding of being -- one that necessarily applies to whatever is. Such an understanding in turn adequately grounds the principles of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle. (Any "thing" that could violate these principles cannot confirm to our understanding of what a being is.)

Since, once we have such transcendental principles we know they apply to all reality, they may be thought of as a priori, but as they are grounded in our experiential understanding of being, they are, in the first instance, and ultimately, a posteriori.

Please excuse the delay, I've had some sort of a tiring "bug."

So, something like aristotelian realism about universals? — aporiap

Exactly.

I'm not familiar with terms like 'notes of comprehension' or 'essential notes'. — aporiap

You might think of an object's notes of intelligibility as things that can be known and predicated of the object. Notes of comprehension would be those actually understood and constituting some abstraction. "Essential notes" would be notes defining an object -- placing it into a sortal.

You say that logical distinction is predicated on the fact that intentional objects like concepts are different from materiality not ontologically but by virtue of not sharing these notes of comprehension. — aporiap

Yes. Most of what we think about are ostensible unities. We can "point them out" in some way, and they have some intrinsic integrity these are Aristotle's substances (ousia). Examples are humans, galaxies, quanta, societies, etc. Clearly some are more unified than others, but all have some dynamic that allows us to think of them as wholes.

Extended wholes can be divided and so their potential parts are separable. Logical distinction does not depend on physical separability, but on having different notes of comprehension. The material and form of a ball are inseparable, but they are distinct, because the idea of form abstracts away the object's matter and that of matter abstracts away its form. So, that we can think of humans as material and intentional does not mean that that are composed of two substances any more than balls are.

I mentioned in the post that it poses a problem for programs which require continual looping or continual sampling. In this instance the program would cease being an atmospheric sampler if it lost the capability of iteratively looping because it would then loose the capability to sample [i.e. it would cease being a sampler.] — aporiap

This is incorrect. Nothing in my argument prevents any algorithm from working. Another way of thinking about the argument is that it shows that consciousness is not algorithmic. In this particular case, if we want to sample every 10 ms. and removing and replacing the instruction takes 1 ms (a very long time in the computer world), all we need to do is speed up the clock by 10%.

The critical question is whether it is the presence or the operation of the program that would cause consciousness. It it is difficult to believe that the non-operational presence of the algorithm could do anything. It is also hard to think of a scenario in which the execution of one step (the last step of the minimal program) could effect consciousness.

Let's reflect on this last. All executing a computer step does is effect a state transition from the prior state S1 to a successor state S2. So if the program is to effect consciousness, all we need to do is start the machine in S1 and effect the transition to S2. Now it is either the S1-S2 transition itself that effects consciousness, or it is being in S2 that effects consciousness. If it is being in S2 that effects consciousness, we do not need a program at all, we only need to start the machine in S2 and leave it there. It is hard to see how see how such a static state could model, let alone effect consciousness.

So, we are left with the possibility that a single step, that which effects the S1-S2 transition magically causes consciousness. This is the very opposite of the original idea that a program of sufficient complexity might consciousness. It shows that complexity is not a fruitful hypothesis.

What do you mean they solve mathematical problems only? There are reinforcement learning algorithms out now which can learn your buying and internet surfing habits and suggest adverts based on those preferences. There are learning algorithms which -from scratch, without hard coded instruction- can defeat players at high-level strategy games, without using mathematical algorithms. — aporiap

They do use mathematical algorithms, even if they are unclear to the end user. At the most fundamental level, every modern computer is a finite state machine, representable by a Turing machine. Every instruction can be represented by a matrix which specifies, for every state, that if the machine is in state Sx it will transition to state Sy. Specific programs may also be more or less mathematical at higher levels of abstraction. The internet advertizing programs you mention represent interests by numerical bins and see which products best fit your numerical distribution of interests. Machine learning programs often use mathematical models of neural nets, generate and test algorithms and host of other mathematical methods depending on the problem faced.

Also I don't get the point about why operating on reality representations somehow makes data-processing unable to be itself conscious. The kind of data-processing going on in the brain is identical to the consciousness in my account. It's either that or the thing doing the data processing [i.e. the brain] which is [has the property of] consciousness by virtue of the data processing. — aporiap

If does not mean that machines cannot be consciousness. It is aimed that the notion that if we model the processes that naturalists believe cause consciousness we would generate consciousness. An example of this is the so-called Simulation Hypothesis.

Take an algorithm which plays movies for instance. Any one iteration of the loop outputs one frame of the movie... The movie, here, is made by viewing the frames in a sequential order. — aporiap

I think my logic is exhaustive, but I will consider your example. The analogy fails because of the nature of consciousness, which is the actualization of intelligibility. While much is written about the flow of consciousness, the only reason it flows is because the intelligibility presented to it changes over time. To have consciousness, we need two factors: contents, and awareness of contents. There is no need for the contents to change to have consciousness so defined. The computational and representational theories of mind have a good model of contents, but no model of awareness.

But, if it can't be physical, and it's not data processing, what is the supposed cause?

I don't think the multiple realization argument holds here.. it could just be something like a case of convergent evolution, where you have different configurations independently giving rise to the same phenomenon - in this case consciousness. Eg. cathode ray tube TV vs digital TV vs some other TV operate under different mechanisms and yet result in the same output phenomenon - image on a screen. — aporiap

Convergent evolution generally occurs because certain forms are best suited to certain ends/niches and because of the presumably limited range of expression of toolkit genes. In other words because of physical causal factors.

Still, I don't think your response addresses my question which was if the cause of hypothetical machine consciousness is not physical and it is not data processing, what is it?

What makes different implementations of TV pictures equally TV pictures is not some accident, but that they are products with a common design goal. So, I have two questions:
1. What do you see as the explanatory invariant in the different physical implementations?
2. If the production of consciousness is not a function of the algorithm alone, in what sense is this (hypothetical) production of consciousness algorithmic?

I am not in the field of computer science but from just this site I can see there are at least three different kinds of abstract computational models. Is it true that physical properties of the machine are necessary for all the other models described? — aporiap

Yes, there are different models of computation. Even in the seminal days of computation, there were analogue and digital computers. Physical properties are not part of the computation models in the article you cite. If you read the definitions of the model types, you will see that, after Turing Machines, they the are abstract methods, not even (abstract) machine descriptions.

I have been talking about finite state machines, because modern computers are the inspiration of computational theories of mind, and about Turing machines because all finite state machine computations can be done on a Turing machine, and its simplicity removes the possibility if confusing complex machine design with actual data processing. I think few people would be inspired to think machines could be conscious if they had to watch a Turing machine shuttle its tape back and forth.

Even if consciousness required certain physical features of hardware, why would that matter for the argument since your ultimate goal is not to argue for the necessity of certain physical properties for consciousness but instead for consciousness as being fundamentally intentional and (2) that intentionality is fundamentally distinct from [albeit co-present with] materiality. — aporiap

All the missing instruction argument does is force one to think though why, in a particular case, materiality cannot provide us with intentionality. It moves the focus from the abstract to the concrete.

I actually think my personal thought is not that different to yours but I don't think of intentionality as so distinct as to not be realized by [or, a fundamental property of] the activity of the physical substrate. My view is essentially that of Searle but I don't think consciousness is only limited to biological systems. — aporiap

We are indeed close. The problem is that there are no abstract "physical substrates." The datum, the given, is that there are human beings who perform physical and intentional acts. Why shoehorn intentionality into physicality with ideas such as emergence or supervenience? Doing so might have social benefits in some circles, but neither provides an explanation or insight into the relevant dynamics. All these ideas do is confuse two logically distinct concepts.

Naturalists would like to point to an example of artificial consciousness, and say "Here, that was not so hard, was it? We don't need any more than a good understanding of (physics, computer science, neural nets, ...) {choose one}. Of course, there is no example to point to, and if there were one, how could we possibly know there was?

If you want a computer to tell you it's self-aware, I can write you a program in under five minutes that will do so. If you find that too unconvincing, I could write you one that outputs a large random of digits of pi before outputting "I wonder why I'm doing this?" Would such "first-person testimony" count as evidence of consciousness? If not, what would? Not the "Turing test," which Turing recognized was only a game.

I don't understand why a neuron not being conscious but a collection of neurons being conscious automatically leads to the hard problem. — aporiap

I don't think it does. I think Chalmers came to the notion of the "Hard Problem" by historical reflection -- seeing the lack of progress over the last 2500 years. I am arguing on the basis of philosophical analysis that it is not a problem, but a chimera.

Searle provides a clear intuitive solution here in which it's an emergent property of a physical system in the same way viscosity or surface tension are emergent from lower-level interactions- it's the interactions [electrostatic attraction/repulsion] which, summatively result in an emergent phenomenon [surface tension] . — aporiap

The problem is that consciousness is not at all emergent in the sense in which viscosity and surface tension are. We know the microscopic properties that cause these microscopic properties, and can at least outline how calculate them. They are not at all emergent in the sense of appearing de novo.

We understand, fairly well, how neurons behave. We know the biomechanics of pulse propagation and understand how vescules burst to produce release neurotransmitters. We have neural net models that combine many such neurons to provide differential responses to different sorts of stimulation and understand how positive and negative feed back can be used to improve performance -- modelling "learning" in the sense of useful adaptation.

None of this gives us any hint as to how any combination of neurons and/or neural nets can make the leap into the realm of intentionality -- for the simple reason that none of our neuroscientific knowledge addresses the "aboutness" (reference) relevant to the intentional order.

There is an equivocation on "emergence" here. In the case of viscosity and surface tension, what "emerges" is known to be potential at the microlevel. In the case of consciousness, nothing in our fairly complete understanding of neurons and neural nets hints at the "emergence" of consciousness. Instead of the realization of a known potential, we have the coming to be of a property with no discernible relation to known microstructure.

Well the retinal state is encoded by a different set of cells than the intentional state of 'seeing the cat' - the latter would be encoded by neurons within a higher-level layer of cells [i.e. cells which receive iteratively processed input from lower-level cells] whereas the raw visual information is encoded in the retinal cells and immediate downstream area of early visual cortex. You could have two different 'intentional states' encoded by different layers of the brain or different sets of interacting cells. The brain processes in parallel and sequentially — aporiap

Let's think this through. The image of the cat modifies my retinal rods and cones, which modification is detected by the nervous system in whatever detail you wish to consider. So, every subsequent neural event inseparably caries information about both my modified retinal state and about the image of the cat because they are one and the same physical state. I cannot have an image of the cat without a modification of my retinal state, and the light from the cat can't modify my retinal state without producing an image of the cat.

So, we have one physical state in my eye, which is physically inseparatable from itself, but which can give rise to two intentional states <the image of the cat> and <the modification of my retinal state>.

Of course, once the intellect has distinguished the diverse understandings into distinct intentional states and we start to articulate them, the articulations will have different physical representations. But, my point is that no purely physical operation can separate one physical state into two intentional states. Any physical operation will be performed equally on the state as the foundation for both intentional states, and so cannot separate them.

Okay but you seem to imply in some statements that the intentional is not determined by or realized by activity of the brain. — aporiap

That is because I hold, as a matter of experience and analysis, that the physical does not fully determine the intentional. I first saw this point pressed by Augustine in connection with sense data not being able to force itself on the intellect.. Once I saw the claim, I spent considerable time reflecting on it.

Consider cases of automatic processing, which show that we can respond appropriately to complex sensory stimuli without the need for intellectual intervention. Ibn Sina gives citara players as his example, Lotze offers writing and piano playing as his, Penrose points to people who carry on conversations without paying attention, J. J. C. Smart proffers bicycle riding. So, clearly sensory data and its processing does not force itself on awareness.

The evidence for "the unconscious mind" similarly shows that data processing and response can occur without awareness. Most of us have been exposed to Freudian case studies at some point. Graham Reed has published studies of time-gap experiences in which we become aware of the passage of time after being lost in thought. Jacques Hadamard provides us with an example of unconscious processing in Poincare's solution to the problem of Fuchsian functions.

In Augustine's model, rather then the physical forcing itself on the intellect, we do not become aware until the will turns the intellect's attention to the intelligible contents. This seems to me to best fit experience.

I would say intentional state can be understood as some phenomenon that is caused by / emerges from a certain kind of activity pattern of the brain. — aporiap

What kind?

Of course the measurables are real and so are their relations- which are characterized in equations; but the actual entities may just be theoretical. — aporiap

While I know what theoretical constructs are, I am unsure what you mean by the measurables if not the "actual entities." How can you measure what does not exist?

I was trying to say that introspection is not the only way to get knowledge of conscious experience. I'm saying it will be possible [one day] to scan someone's brain, decode some of their mental contents and figure out what they are feeling or thinking. — aporiap

I never give much weight to "future science."
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The more accurate thing to say is that there are neurons in higher-level brain regions which fire selectively to seemingly abstract stimuli. — aporiap

I have no problem with this in principle. Neural nets can be programed to do this. That does not make either subjectively aware of anything.

That seems to account for the intentional component no? — aporiap

How? You need to show that this actualizes the intelligible content of the conscious act.

What mechanism is the child using to relate a word he hears to an object he sees, in a system of quantitative analysis, that doesn’t have an a priori component? How does he understand exactly what he’s doing, as opposed to simple learning by rote? What do I say to my child, if after saying, “count this as one, these as two.....”, he asks, “what’s a two?” — Mww

We learn by abstraction from experience. What the child learns in the first instance is sequence of words ("one," "two," "three," etc.) In the second phase of learning to count, the child learns that these words can be put into one-to-one correspondence with pennies, apples, oranges, etc. In the third phase the child abstracts, and comes to see that the act of counting is independent of what is counted. This is the basis of abstract numbers.

At no point do we need to look beyond experience to some a priori intuition.

As with many question children ask, we must defer the answers until they have the background to understand them.

You are right, the I see no need for any a priori assumption. My question would be, if we had a priori "knowledge," what reason would we have to believe that it applied to the world of experience?

I would say these states are correlated with awareness, or even that they are awareness looked at in an objective, as opposed to a subjective, way. — Janus

Yes, I think it is an error to see sensory (purely physical) and intellectual representations as separate. They are the same physical state considered without and with awareness, not two separate representations (awareness being the source of subjectivity).

We are informed by what we see and our reasons for saying what we do about what we see are on account of what we see, not on account of those objective processes, of which we are completely unaware until we have understood some science of optics, visual perception and neuroscience. — Janus

Yes, we are informed by what we see. And, yes, we have no immediate awareness of neural processes. My seeing the apple is identically the apple being see by me. Still, as physical-intentional unities, my process of being informed does involve neural representation, transmission and processing. If we ignore this, then we leave the impression that we see mind as separate from matter, instead as merely distinct.

The neural processing is not the ultimate source of the information we are aware of, but it is an instrumental cause. As I said previously, the semiology involved is unlike any other, and so bears further reflection. So, I sympathize with your desire to further parse this out. Still, I think "correlation" and the denial of causality is not moving us in right direction.

I suppose counting could be construed as an intellectual operation, in as much as I am connecting an a priori representation of quantity to spatially distinguishable objects. On the other hand, I don’t agree that seeing is a physical operation, in as much as an object impressed on a bunch of optic nerves can be called seeing. Is it merely convention that the intellect is required to call up an internal object to correspond to the impression, in order to say I am in fact seeing — Mww

Since we have to teach children to count by counting specific kinds of things, I see no reason to think that there is any a priori component to counting.

As for seeing, there are many discussions in the literature of complex "automatic" operations such as bicycle riding and driving, which require visual processing, but which can occur while we are "lost in thought." Many of us have had the experience of reading a page, and having no idea what we read because we were thinking of something else. So, it seems clear that seeing, including visual processing and appropriate physical responses, can occur without awareness.

Kant is a complex thinker, and I should not have brought him up in an offhand way. So, my apologies for that. If we are to discuss him, it should be from the foundations up.

As for Aquinas, there is no doubt that he saw reason as serving faith. That does not mean that he saw reason as subservient in the sense of yielding sound conclusions to blind faith. Rather, following Augustine, Aquinas saw theology as faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum), and reason as the tool providing that understanding.

No, I have been saying they are correlated; which obviously means they are not unrelated. What I am saying is that the relationship is not causal. — Janus

I agree that these physical states are not efficient causes of thought; however, as bearing intelligibility, they can inform awareness and so may be seen as informing causes.

(I think "presented" would be a better term here). — Janus

I agree. "Presented" is much better.

awareness of the states is not the same as the states — Janus

We have to be careful here lest we create an epistic gap. Awareness of the states is not the states in the sense that it is more than the states. Physical states are merely intelligible. Our awareness of them is that intelligibility actually known. Still, one and the same intelligibility that is latent in the presented states is actual in awareness.

There is a tricky analogy here, for the actualization of potential is analogous to the informing of matter. As the matter that was unformed remains in the formed product, so the information latent in the physical presentation remains as the contents of consciousness. Of course, information is immaterial, and that is what makes the analogy tricky. Still, the persistence of presented information in the conscious state is more than correlation. The information plays a dynamic role, even though that role is not efficient causality.

If the states are preconceptual then they cannot serve as reasons for action. — Janus

I do not think this follows. As long as it plays an essential role in determining the form of our thought, preconceptual intelligibility is part of the reason we act as we do. I walk over to the preconceptual apple because it will allay my hunger. It is an essential part of the reason I'm walking toward it.

By brain will represent these facts in a way that can inform me that I am hungry; however, it cannot force me to turn my attention to, to be come aware of, this intelligible representation. — Dfpolis

I think this is an example of anthropomorphic thinking. — Janus

Maybe I'm thinking anthropomorphically because I'm thinking of humans?

Your mind may "represent" the facts or it may not; I don't think it is right to say that that the brain "represents" anything. Often you will simply eat without being aware of any reason to do so, but of course it is possible to think something like "I am hungry, I should eat something". — Janus

I am not sure how you're defining/thinking of "representing." I agree that there are senses that do not work, and the sense that does work is an unusual one. So, I would like to see why you object before deciding to agree or disagree.

The reason I am using the term is that it is clear that information is transmitted and processed by our nervous system and brain. Since the information is not the nervous system or its physiology, I think it is fair to say it is represented by it.

Of course we can and do act at an automatic level. I mentioned that earlier in distinguishing sensory and conscious activity.

I'm not claiming that the brain is a deterministic machine; it may well be an indeterministic organ, but the point is that there is no "I" that is directly aware of neural processes such that it could direct them. — Janus

The "problem" is not that there is no "I," the problem is that it is beyond my power as a human subject to know my brain state. There are many consequences of this. For example, it rules out hypotheses which see consciousness as a form of proprioception.

It also relates to the issue of representation we have been discussing, for neural representations are neither formal nor instrumental signs. Instrumental signs, such as words and smoke, have to be recognized for what they are in themselves before they can signify. If I can't make our your writing, or think the smudge on the horizon is dust, then they cannot signify your intent or the distant fire. Thus, since we do not know our brainstate, it cannot represent as instrumental signs do.

At the same time, while brainstates may encode information, the information they encode is only intelligible unless it is the focus of awareness. That means that brain states cannot be formal signs, as ideas are. The whole being of an idea, all that it can do, is refer. As long as our neurally encoded information is only intelligible and not actually known, it is not a formal sign, either.

That is why I held back in discussing your objection to neural states as representations -- for they are neither instrumental nor formal signs. Perhaps, the problem is thinking of neural representations as signs. Or, if we do think of them as signs, we need a third category of sign -- one that bears information, but need not be recognized for what it is to inform.

So, the succession of brain states is determined by nature, not by ourselves, and thus, as far as we are concerned, it is a deterministic process. — Janus

I don't think this is the right formulation either. As I said earlier, we have some control over what contents the brain activates. If I want to find something to eat now, my brain will activate contents related to possible food sources. If I do not, it will not. This does not mean that we tell each neuron how to respond, but only that we set goals to which our brain tries to respond. That part of nature is part of myself.

It is much more rational to say that my decision to eat now causes the brain to activate neural complexes encoding what there is to eat now. — Dfpolis

This is where the category error comes in. Your decision to eat now has its own correlated brain state from which the "neural complexes encoding what there is to eat now" ensues causally. This is a deterministic process (as far as we are concerned because we are not directly aware of it and cannot direct it). — Janus

I think this is a confusing notion of determinism. Determinism means that our actions is completely defined by the state of the world prior to my conception. If my brain is responsive to the the goals set by my will, it is not so determined. Even if I do not control the means in detail, the brain is responding to my will. No upper level manager wants to control the fine details required to implement a decision.

But, your decision to eat now gives you reason to seek what there is to eat now. These are two different ways of understanding what is going on; the first in terms of causes, the second in terms of reasons. — Janus

While I agree that intentional reasons and physical causes are distinct, they are not unrelated. There is more than correlation here. I know that I need nourishment because I am neurophysically informed that I do. My brain activates complexes storing data on possible things to eat because I have decided to eat. We may need to discuss the nature of the causal links betokened by these two "becauses," but that is no reason to deny that such links exist.

Once we commit to a single course of action among the many we may have considered, its physical implementation has begun -- in other words the act of intentional commitment and the act of physical initiation are inseparable. Aquinas observes that we know we are committed to an intentionality when we will the means of realizing it -- or in modern parlance, when we walk the walk.

You speak of correlated brainstates as though they "just happen." Why should my brainstates be correlated with my intentional state if there is no interaction? Why should my awareness of the the sensed "just happen" to have the content transmitted to my brain by my peripheral nervous system? Such "correlations" cry for a causal explanation.

I think the two are co-arising and co-dependent. In other words, the "zero point field" or "quantum foam" or "akashic field" or "implicate order" or whatever you want to call it, cannot be without there being a correlated material existence. — Janus

I agree with you on this specific point. It is logically impossible to have laws operative on material reality (laws of nature) without a material reality for them to be operative on. Thus is not the ground on which the issue of ontological priority is to be settled.

Still, the fact that we know and can affect physical reality shows that, unlike mathematics and poetry, they are dynamically linked. — Dfpolis

To my mind you are still thinking dualistically here. We are 'part and parcel" of the physical world and the informational world; I would say there is no real separation; and dynamism abounds but it is not ultimately in the form of "links" between things which are separate or separable. — Janus

You are attributing to me a dualism I am not espousing. Humans are integral beings capable of physical and intentional acts. That does not mean that our physicality is separate from our intentionality, only that they are logically distinct. Whether some residual power of intentional operation is separable, whether our awareness can survive death, is a separate question to be decided on its own merits.

Experience falsifies the claim if I’d said “reason’s sole domain is to *force* thinking correctly”. A set of logical rules doesn’t come with the promise of their use, only that we’re better off if we do. — Mww

Excuse me, I misunderstood you.

counting does not depend on what is counted — Dfpolis

Why isn’t this just like “seeing does not depend on what is seen”? Seeing or counting is an actual physical act, and mandates that the objects consistent with the act be present. Now, “the ability to see or to count does not depend on what is seen or counted” seems to be true, for I do not lose my visual receptivity simply because my eyes are closed. Otherwise, I would be forced into the absurdity of having to learn each and every object presented to sensibility after each and every interruption of it.
Are you saying counting and the ability to count are the same thing? — Mww

First, because counting is an intellectual operation, while seeing is a physical operation,. Second, because counting is the basis of the natural numbers, which in turn are the basis of arithmetic, while no science is based on seeing in the same way. It is because counting does not depend on what is counted that we may think of numbers, and their intrinsic relations abstractly. Thus, arithmetic is abstracted from experience, and not given a priori.

Counting is a mental act, that may or may not supported by a physical act. Of course, to count, we need countable objects -- discrete unities of some kind.

No, I am not confusing actuality with potency.

The categories are the same for Kant as they were for Aristotle. My mistake if I got the impression you were a fan of Aristotle, hence I didn’t feel the need to define them. — Mww

Kant's categories are not those of Aristotle. For Aristotle, the categories are different ways in which something can be said to "be." This does not appear to be the case for Kant. Also, Aristotle develops his list a posteriori, by reflecting on actual usage, while Kant wants an a priori list.

What is Cosmogenesis and who is the authority for it? What is ideogenesis and who is te authority for that? — Mww

"Cosmogenesis" means the process by which the cosmos came to be and "ideogenesis" is the process by which concepts come to me. I don't think either is a matter to be settled by an appeal to authority.

That said, I accept the standard Aristotelian-Thomist account of ideogenesis as abstraction from a physically-encoded representation (the "phantasm").

As an example, your reasons for doing something or thinking something is not intelligible in terms of neural processes. — Janus

If you mean that they are irreducible to neural processes, alone, I agree. But, if you mean that they are unrelated to neurophysical processes, I cannot agree. Many desires are biologically based and neurophysically represented. These representations are not the reasons, but awareness of the represented states may well be reasons for my choosing to act in a specific way. So, neurophysical representations and processing play a causal role in the reasons I consider.

You think what you do for reasons, neural processes do not cause you to think the way you do, even though neural processes are arguably correlated with your thinking. — Janus

Now we come to will, and the physical-intentional interface. Suppose my blood sugar is low and my stomach is growling. By brain will represent these facts in a way that can inform me that I am hungry; however, it cannot force me to turn my attention to, to be come aware of, this intelligible representation. I may be meditating, solving a complex problem, or doing something else that is engaging my attention. So, you are right that the neural state cannot cause me to think <I am hungry>. However, if I will to turn my attention from what was previously occupying it to my bodily state, the representation will determine the content of what I think of my body state is. I will think <I am hungry> and not, say, <I am thirsty>.

So, the efficient cause of my thought will be my will-directed awareness, but its formal cause will typically be neurophysically encoded information. That is why brain trauma can affect thought.

we cannot parse any relationship between causes and reasons, because the former is predicated on determinism and the latter on freedom; neither of which can be understood in terms of the other. — Janus

I don't think this is a question of determinism vs freedom, though free-will directs our awareness. To continue with the hunger example, once I become aware of my hunger, I can decide to ignore it for the moment, or to do something about it. If I decide to act, I may think of what is on hand to eat. This will cause the activation of various physically encoded memories. Since these memories are activated in response to a free decision, it is inadequate to think of the brain as a deterministic machine. It has to be responsive to my decision to think about this, and not that. So, if we have freedom, it cannot end at the edge of intentionality.

We might be able to give an intelligible account of the succession of neural states, and although they may be understood to be in a causal series, they cannot be meaningfully mapped as causes onto the successive phases of the movement of thought in a way that explains a relationship between the physical succession of causes and the intentional succession of associations and reasons. — Janus

If this were so, we would be left with some form of intentional-physical parallelism a la Leibnitzian Monadology. It is much more rational to say that my decision to eat now causes the brain to activate neural complexes encoding what there is to eat now. Then, being presented with this encoded intelligibility we become aware of the options and can will to eat one rather than another. If I had decided to ignore my hunger, and return to my prior engrossing activity, none of my food memories would have been activated.

Are you thinking of cosmogenesis or ideogenesis? — Dfpolis

I'm thinking of cosmogenesis. — Janus

OK, we could write several books on this. Here is a short reflection. Several naturalist cosmologists have posited that it is physically possible that the universe could have begun as nothing -- by which they mean a state with no matter or energy. This might happen as the result of a quantum fluctuation in which positive and negative energy states net out to zero total energy.

If we reflect on this hypothesis, we see that it equivocates on "no-thing." In fact, they are assuming that there are operative laws which at least allow quantum fluctuations to occur and which require energy to be conserved. As I have argued previously, the laws of nature are essentially intentional. So, their "nothing" is not the absence of any operative existent, but only the absence of empirical matter.

Of course this is not a general analysis of cosmogenesis, but it does point to intentional reality as more fundamental than material reality.

The point is that being distinct ways of thinking, any attempt to unite them breeds confusion. — Janus

I agree that trying to unite the intentional and physical perspectives can, in fact, lead to confusion. Still, the fact that we know and can affect physical reality shows that, unlike mathematics and poetry, they are dynamically linked.

I haven't said that the two processes, the intentional and the physical, are identical. I have said they are correlated, and that each has its own respective account which is unintelligible in terms of the other. — Janus

We agree: they are correlated. I cannot agree that they are unintelligible in terms of each other. If they were, we would not recognize that they are related. Yet, their relation has been recognized for two and a half millennia. Aristotle recognized that our experience of sensation implied the existence of data conduits, a combined representation (the phantasm), and a central processing organ to integrate various sensory modalities into that representation. He then undertook anatomical studies to find these structures.

When we read neuroscience, we are generally satisfied that is account of sensation agrees with our experience. This is not the case with naturalistic accounts of awareness.

Whether the intentional is dependent on the physical or the physical on the intentional is ultimately an unanswerable question. — Janus

On what basis and in what context? Are you thinking of cosmogenesis or ideogenesis? Of course there are divergent views, but there ave been divergent views on all important matters. That does not make them undecidable.

It's not a matter of "keeping them separate"; they are separate. — Janus

No, they are not separate. They are distinct ways of thinking about one and the same topic, just as wave mechanics and matrix mechanics are different ways of conceptualizing quantum events, or aerodynamics and manufacturing logistics are different approaches the production of an airplane. Different ways of thinking are complementary.

Yes, it is, because a priori knowledge derives from universality and necessity, which Hume’s empirical grounds, with respect to cause and effect, do not and can not possibly afford. — Mww

While Hume's model of universalization though association is clearly inadequate, we need not invoke a priori knowledge to remedy this. As I pointed out in my last post, abstraction (seeing, for example, that counting does not depend on what is counted) is adequate underwrite necessary truths.

(No, not literally unthinkable, for reason has no power to not think. Reason’s sole domain is to enable thinking correctly, which means understanding does not confuse itself with contradictions.) — Mww

I think experience falsifies this claim. We all make errors in reasoning. Logic enables us to discover those errors.

The data of pure reason are categories, without which reason and indeed all thought, is impossible

This requires some justification, beginning with a definition of "categories."

Reason does not conclude, that being the sole domain of judgement. While judgement is a part of the total faculty of reason, it is improper to attribute to the whole that which properly belongs to the particular function of one of its parts. In this much I grant: without categories reason has no means to, and therefore cannot, derive transcendental principles. — Mww

It seems that we are going deep into Kant, which is far from the thread topic. I would be happy to discuss Kant with you, but I think the proper place would be another thread.

These are two descriptions of the one process. From a phenomenological perspective we can say that something about the tree caught your attention, and to stop and look at it, which in turn triggered associations which led to you having a series of thought about it. — Janus

While they describe the same process, they describe different aspects of that process. The physical description deals with the actualization of sensibility, while the phenomenal description requires the actualization of intelligibility. This difference is critical. To think of the tree, I need not only sense the tree, but also actualize its intelligibility to form the idea <tree>. Describing how light scattered from the tree modifies my neurophysical state, and how that state is neurally processed, elaborates the sensory aspect of the process, but says nothing of the actualization of intelligibility required to think <tree>.

There is no doubt that these processes are correlated, and since the time of Aristotle, it has been recognized that the intentional state (the idea) is dependent on the sensory representation (which he called the phantasm). But, correlation and dependence are not identity.

The point is that it is a category error to say that the physical and physiological process cause you to think certain thoughts, because it is other thought and memory associations which cause that. — Janus

We cannot have any association of thoughts without first actualizing the intelligibility latent in sensory representations. Coming at this more phenomenologically, there is a considerable literature, going back to at least to Ibn Sina, showing that humans engage in automatic behavior, being "lost in thought," while engaging in complex tasks such as playing musical instruments, bicycle riding or driving -- all without a shred of task-related awareness. (I can provide a long list of citations if you like.) Such reports show that even complex sensory processing need not involve awareness and the actualization of intelligibility.

I would not say that thoughts cause other thoughts. We have neurally-based associations, and we have logical processes which allow us to evaluate such associations. In both cases it is the thinking subject, and not thoughts, that are causal.

The point is that they are two different types of analysis best kept separate, and confusion and aporias often result when talk of causation operating across the two kinds of analysis is indulged in. — Janus

I see not reason to keep them separate. They are two projections of the same reality. Each is partial and incomplete. The best thing to do is compare them for points of agreement, and then determine what each projection grasps that the other misses. Doing so leads to a more complete model of reality.

They're empirically supported — aporiap

No, they are hypothetical. Your Wikipedia reference says "The grandmother cell, sometimes called the "Jennifer Aniston neuron," is a hypothetical neuron that represents a complex but specific concept or object."

The support cited in the article is behavioral (which is to say physical), with no intentional component. I am happy to agree that behavioral events require the firing of specific neural complexes. The problem is, a concept is not a behavior, but the awareness of well-defined notes of intelligibility. The article offers no evidence of awareness of the requisite sort.

If for every intentional state, there is a corresponding physical state and vice versa, then it could be said, as Spinoza does, that they are the same thing seen from two different perspectives. If this is right then to say either that physical states cause intentional states or that intentional states inform physical states would be to commit a category error. — Janus

This is fails on two counts.

The first has to do with the fact that that every instance of sensory awareness has a twofold object, violating your assumption of a one-to-one correspondence of physical and intentional states. As I noted in a previous post in this thread, every instance of sensory cognition has an objective object, which informs of the sensed object, and a subjective object, which informs us of the sensing subject. One and the same modification to my neural state grounds both the fact that there is an apple, and that I am seeing. Thus, a single physical state (the apple's modification of my neural state) grounds two intention states -- <there is an apple> and <I am seeing>.

The second is that concurrence does not preclude causality. Of course, it provides no ground for time sequence by rule or accidental causality -- which requires two separate events. Still it is a necessary condition for concurrent or essential causality, as exemplified by Aristotle's paradigm case of the builder building the house. In that case there is agency unless the builder is actually building and no effect unless the house is actually being built. In the present case the material state is intelligible, but not actually understood unless it is actually known by the intellect. So, the intellect is an actualizing concurrent cause.

I am unsure what category error you are contemplating, unless it is the requirement for two separate events, which does not apply in cases of essential causality.

Which is PRECISELY the error Kant points out regarding Hume’s characterization of the principle cause and effect. — Mww

Kant's assumption that we have a priori knowledge is inadequate grounds for calling Hume's position an error. While I am a determinist in physics, I am one on a posteriori grounds -- because I see determinism as working to explain the physical universe, and not because I think that physical indeterminism is logically or metaphysical impossible. God could change the laws of nature from second to second. He seems to have chosen to leave them fixed.

But, Kant wants more than the principle of causality to be known a priori. He wants it to be imposed by the mind so that its contrary is literally unthinkable. The number of reflective people who believe in the ontological indeterminism of quantum theory shows that this is simply wrong. Indeterminism is quite thinkable, even if I disagree with it -- as are alternate views of space and time. So, causality, space and time are not forms imposed on reality by the mind, but empirically derived concepts.

a principle being grounded in pure reason, as are all principles whatsoever, absolutely **must** have it’s proof also given from pure reason. — Mww

Pure reason is reason without data. Lacking grist, it can conclude nothing, not even transcendental principles. It is when reason is exposed to being, when it has reflected on the nature of being as encountered, that it comes to understand the principles of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle -- and seeing that they are grounded in the nature of being, understands that they apply transcendentally.

Kant’s argument wasn’t that there IS a proof per se, but rather no empirical predicates at all can be attributed to a possible formulation of it. — Mww

This is because the experience grounding these principle is the experience of existence, and existence is not a predicate. The fact that it is not a predicate does not mean that it is not found in experience -- for it is found in any and all experience.

Kant’s argument was that the thesis of which Hume was aware (a priori judgements do exist), having been considered, was summarily rejected (slave of the passions and all that happy crappy) because it wasn’t considered **as it ought to have been**. In other words, he didn’t consider it the right way. — Mww

In other words, Hume did not agree with Kant's assumptions.

I shall not insult your intelligence by informing you the human cognitive system is already in possession of a myriad of pure a priori principles of the kind Hume failed to address, first and foremost of which is, quite inarguably, mathematics. — Mww

It would not insult my intelligence. There is no reason to think that mathematics is not grounded in experience. For example, arithmetic, which cannot be proven to be consistent, is consistent because it is grounded in the experience of counting. So, its consistency reflects the self-consistency of the countable reality from which we abstract it.

On the other hand, Euclid's parallel postulate, involving as it does infinity, cannot be adequately grounded in experience, and its inadequate experiential grounding was why it was questioned. If mathematics were known a priori, there would be no reason to question it.

The problem with Hume's empiricism is not that he saw all knowledge as based on experiences, but that he did not recognize the limits of association as a tool of generalization. When we generate universal conclusions on the Hume-Mill model of induction, we must always add the assumption that the cases we have not seen are like the cases we have seen. As a result Hume-Mill inductions are always dubious -- even though of practical utility.

Coming to universal conclusions by abstraction is quite different. For example, the central insight of arithmetic is that counting is independent of what is counted. Once we see this, we can deal with numeric relations abstractly and universally. Thus, while Hume-Mill induction requires the addition of a dubious hypothesis, abstractive induction subtracts irrelevant factors and so adds nothing to the data.

And as a final contribution, I submit there is no logical reason to suppose cause and effect should lend itself to being differentiated between kinds, with all due respect to Aristotle. — Mww

I am not sure what you mean. Surely the sculptor, her material, the from she imposes on it, and the motivation for her work are all different kinds of explanatory factors in the creation of a statue.

Isn’t a proposition where the subject and predicate describe the same event and contain the same information a mere tautology? — Mww

If they contain the same information, it surely is a tautology. When I was saying why propositions are true, I did not say that the subject and predicate contained the same information, but that they had the identical object as their referent. In general, they will have different aspects of the same object as their referents, as "The 16th president of the U.S. was bearded." If the person who was the 16th president was not the same person who is bearded, this would be false.

It’s not that the relationships are contingent; it’s that instances that sustain a principle governing them are. If cause and effect is an intelligible relationship prior to our knowledge of it’s instances, doesn’t it’s very intelligibility mandate such relationship be necessarily a priori? — Mww

I take the position that, while we may have uninstantiated ideas, abstract relations are not real, only their instances are. <Fatherhood> is not a relation, but the idea of a relation. If there are no actual fathers, then <fatherhood> would only be an uninstantiated idea.

Knowledge being a priori or a posteriori depends on how we come to know it. Something may be true transcendentally (true of all existents), but it is not a priori unless we know it without the experience of an existent informing us. Once we see it in one case, then like the insight that counting does not depend on what we count, we may see that the principle does not depend on the kind of being we apply it to, but only on the fact that we are applying it to a being.

I mean to assert that concepts and intentions exist and are distinct from their material instances and yet to then say these things are somehow still of same ontological type [i.e. physical] as physical objects seems difficult to reconcile [what makes them physical if they're not composed of or caused by physical material?]. It just seems like an unsubstantiated assertion that they are ontologically the same. — aporiap

I'm unsure what I said that led to this interpretation. It does not reflect my view. Concepts, whether of intentions or of physical objects, are intentional realities. I am calling concepts "orthogonal" if they share no notes of comprehension. That the concept of materiality does not share notes of comprehension with the concept of intentionality does not mean that the concept of materiality is itself material. The concept of materiality points to what extended and mutable. It is not itself extended and mutable.

Once you make the implicit assumption they are ontologically distinct then it becomes clear that any interaction between intentional states and physical substance serves as a counterargument to their being distinct from materiality [since material and nonmaterial have no common fundamental properties with which to interact with each other (charge; mass; etc)]. — aporiap

When I use "distinct" I mean aspects that can be separated in thought, but not in reality.

What logical orthogonality prevents is an analytically true connection. It does not prevent contingent connections. We know from experience that material objects are intelligible and that their intelligibility informs concepts. We also know, from experience, that our committed intentions can be embodied in material states. These are contingent, not analytic truths. So, orthogonality does not preclude interaction. It means that we have to look to experience to find it. It also means that the orthogonal concepts are mutually irreducible.

Intentional states inform physical states but I mentioned before [and I think this is important] that this is always by virtue of a physical-material mechanism. — aporiap

I don't think that your claim is possible. Of course, our intentional physical acts are neurally mediated, but if we follow the causal chain back to its intentional origin, the first step must involve the direct modification of the physical by the intentional. If this were not so, then intentionality could have no physical effects. Michelangelo's intention to sculpt could never have produced the David.

How is this possible? As I have discussed many times{1}, the laws operative in nature are essentially intentional. Characterizing the laws of nature as intentional acts is concurrent with their first mention in Western literature. Jeremiah, apparently relying on a cultural consensus, used the Lord’s “covenant with day and night and the fixed laws of heaven and earth” (Jer. 31:35-36) as a sign of His faithfulness to Israel. The same insight is the basis of Aquinas' Fifth Way to prove the existence of God. So, I claim no originality in seeing the laws of nature as intentional, although the arguments supporting my case are my own.

There is no dynamics linking the laws of nature to the material states evolving in response to them, for they themselves are the dynamics. Thus, in physics we explain time development by appeal to what turns out to be an intentional reality. Of course, it is not described as such in physics, because the Fundamental Abstraction of natural science leaves physics devoid of intentional concepts. Still, once we understand the nature of intentionality, it is easy to see that it applies to the laws of nature.

So, it is not unreasonable to see human committed intentions as effecting their embodiment in the same way -- by being the very dynamics by which intentional processes are driven. If the general laws of nature are intentional, then they, and committed human intentions, act in the same, intentional, theater of operations. Thus, our intentions could perturb the general laws of nature.

Of course, this line of reasoning only motivates a hypothesis. It does not prove that human intentions can modify the operation of the laws of nature. However, there is an overwhelming mass of empirical data confirming the hypothesis that human intentions can modify physical processes. I have discussed this data before in the thread on "Fallacies of Strawson's Argument vs. Free Will":

Dean Radin and Roger Nelson (1989) reviewed 832 experiments by 68 investigators in which subjects were asked to control random number generators, typically driven by radioactive decay. They subjected the results to meta-analysis, a method for combining data from many experiments. While control runs showed no significant effect, the mean effect of subjects trying to influence the outcome was 3.2 x 10^-4 with Stouffer’s z = 4.1. In other words, subjects controlled an average of 32 of every 100,000 random numbers, and this effect is 4.1 standard deviations from pure chance. The odds against this are about 24,000 to 1.

Radin and Diane C. Ferrari (1991) analyzed 148 studies of dice throwing by 52 investigators involving 2,592,817 throws, found an effect size (weighted by methodological quality ) of 0.00723 ± 0.00071 with z = 18.2 (1.94 x 10^73 to 1). Radin and Nelson (2003) updated their 1989 work by adding 84 studies missed earlier and 92 studies published from 1987 to mid-2000. This gave 515 experiments by 91 different principal investigators with a total of 1.4 billion random numbers. They calculated an average effect size of 0.007 with z = 16.1 (3.92 x 10^57 to 1).

Bösch, Steinkamp, and Boller (2006) did a meta-analysis of 380 studies in an article placing experiments in the context spoon bending and séances. They excluded two-thirds of the studies considered. Nonetheless, they found high methodological quality, and a small, but statistically significant effect.

So, the hypothesis that human intentions can perturb the general laws of nature is confirmed beyond a statistical doubt.

The 'seeming' ontological jump from intentional state [not-physical] to physical change in muscle activity is what I argue never happens because there must ultimately be some physical nature to that intentional state in order for it to lead to a physical change. — aporiap

Yes, there must be. While the concept of <matter> is orthogonal to the concept of <intention> physical processes are more than material. They are also intentional via the operation of the laws of nature. So, I try to be very careful not to confuse "material," which voices matter as an abstraction, with "physical" which includes not only matter, but the (intentional) laws under which material states evolve over time.

In physics we have material states |psi(t1)> which are defined by the values of physical variables at time t1. These states evolve over time into later states, |psi(t2)>, in response to a time-development operator, exp-iH(I2-t1) which expresses the laws of nature with their intrinsic intentionality. I give the formalism not to confuse, but to show that physics distinguishes material states, |psi(t)>, from the intentionality (time development operators) under which they evolve. What physics does not do is point out that time-development operators express intentionality.

And in fact it is currently made sense of in terms of physical mechanisms [albeit coarse grained and drafted at present] - as a hypothetical mechanism: some web of 'concept-cells' [higher level cells in a feedforward neural circuit that invariantly fire in response to a very specific stimulus or object class] are activated in conjunction with reward circuitry and a motor-command sequence is initiated. — aporiap

The problem with this kind model is its lack of intentional concepts. We can fully describe its operation in physical terms. So, it does not tell us how, for example, the idea <awareness> can give rise to the physical act of saying "awareness." That speech act can only occur if intentional states can modify physical states. So, the model is clearly inadequate.

Hiding this inadequacy in "concept cells" does nothing to advance our understanding.

Right but all of this goal directed decision making is ultimately mediated by physical processes happening in the brain. It also doesn't need to be determinate to be mediated by physical process. — aporiap

We agree. Where we disagree is on the causal effectiveness of intentions. The inability to understand how this can happen is not an argument against the observational datum that it does happen.

I don't know biophysically how these types of things are encoded in a distributed, non localized fashion or in a temporal pattern of activity that doesn't have spatial dimension or etc so I couldn't say they are one or the other but I guess I'd say they could be spatially decomposable. — aporiap

I think you are confusing intelligibility, which can certainly be spatially distributed, as these words are, which what is actually known. The concept <apple> has one and only one operation: it refers to actual and potential apples. It does not resist pressure, scatter light or generate electrochemical pulses. It only refers. Of course, it has physical support that encodes information. Still, the idea is not the encoded information that supports it. Encoded information is not known information unless its intelligibility is actualized by a knowing mind -- which is to say that it has to become operational in the intentional, not the physical, order.

How do you define 'biophysical support'? What in addition to that support would you say is needed for a full explanation? — aporiap

To form and execute my intention to go to the store I need physically encoded memories, physical senses, and a brain capable of processing the relevant data. All of that is necessary, but none of it is a goal, which is an intentional commitment. As Brentano points out, intentions are about something beyond themselves. Physical states are fully described by their intrinsic character -- we need not look beyond them to understand their operation.

I can program a robot or a computer with a goal, but the goal is mine, not the machine's. All the machine does is make state transitions that require no understanding of its goal to predict. On the other hand, my arrival at the store can be predicted independently of the detailed mechanisms that get me there. A set of state transitions that were not predetermined will get me to the store.

the contexts are different but, again they are both [the invariance of the goal and the ball's deterministic behavior] explainable by physical processes - some neurons are realizing a [physically instantiated] goal which is influencing via [probabilistic] physical interactions some other set of neurons which are informing behavior via other [probabilistic] physical interactions. The ball is a simple physical system which is directly being impacted by a relatively deterministic process. — aporiap

You seem to be arguing against a position that is not mine. I see humans as physical beings, requiring physical means to effect physical ends. The question is, is the paradigm of physics, as applied in various fields, including neuroscience, adequate to our experience? The case for the affirmative starts with a huge obstacle, because the fundamental abstraction of natural science leaves behind a good half of human experience -- the part informing of us of the subjective object. So, we have no reason to believe that any science that begins with the Fundamental Abstraction will be adequate to our experience as subjects.

As to the case in point. The paradigm of physical explanation is that applying a time development operator to the initial state gives us the final state. It does not matter if the initial state is simple, as a canon ball, or complex, involving millions of neurons, glia and psychoactive compounds.

Your hypothesis is that an adequate explanation of goal directed behavior is encoded (somehow) in our initial brain state. Yet, as soon as we encounter an obstacle, the initial brain state hypothesis becomes inadequate. We are no longer operating on our original representation of the world, but on a new representation not part of our initial brain state. That means that your original assumption can no longer explain what happens.

What does remain constant, the explanatory invariant, it an intentional state -- my commitment to go to the store. Now, you will say that that commitment is somehow explained by a physical (non-referential) brain state. But, how can what is non-referential explain an intention that is intrinsically referential?

I am making broad-band metaphysical assumptions of materialism and emergentism which implies I take things like 'valence' and 'concepts' to be materially realized in physical systems. — aporiap

That is precisely the point! These are assumptions with no rational support and many rational doubts. I explained, via the Fundamental Abstraction, why physicalist approaches to philosophy cannot deal with the full range of human experience. I showed you evidence for the causal effectiveness of intentionality. So, you can assume what you like, but doing so closes you, a priori, to possibilities the evidence leaves open. Such a stance rejects the scientific mindset in which data trumps belief.

Say you want a pizza. Pizza can be thought of as a circuit interaction between 'concept cells' [which -in turn- have activated the relevant visual, tactile, olfactory circuits that usually come online whenever you come into contact sensorily with pizza], particular reward pathway cells, cells which encode sets of motor commands. — aporiap

A key position in the Age of Reason was the rejection of "occult" properties, but here you are positing "concept cells" as a cover for abject ignorance of how any purely material structure can explain the referential nature of intentional realities. Where are these concept cells? How do they work? They are as irrational and ungrounded as the assumption of homunculi.

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{1} For example in my video "#14 Laws of Nature 6: Intentionality" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19Ac7rTbWB4); in my article "Mind or Randomness in Evolution," Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (2010) XXII, 1/2, pp. 32-66 (www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution); in my book, God, Science and Mind: the Irrationality of Naturalism, pp. 55ff; and in a number of posts on this forum.

Fair enough, but since, as you point out, we do not know the laws of nature, how do we know they obey the Principle of conservation of energy? And is the Principle of conservation of energy, a Principle of physics or of nature? — Inis

The whole point of physics is to learn as much as we can about the laws of nature by studying their actual operation. Experimentally, we know that the law of conservation of mass-energy applies with great accuracy over the the domain in which it has been tested. Of course, no measurement can be completely accurate. So, all that we really know is that it provides with a very accurate description of physical events.

And is the Principle of conservation of energy, a Principle of physics or of nature? — Inis

Both. It is a description of a regularity in nature, but a very accurate one. As an essential cause it is a law of nature.

Also, I'm not sure the Principle of conservation of energy even tells you how to measure whether energy is conserved or not. — Inis

Yes, the law of physics is part of a large theoretical framework, including methods for making measurements and calculating quantities such as mass and energy from them.

I assume the quote is from Kant. Note that he contradicts himself saying "did not distinguish these two kinds of judgements, as he ought to have done." If this were the case, he could not have specifically addressed a priori arguments, by "regard[ing] this augmentation of conceptions, ... independently of the impregnation of experience, as altogether impossible." No one can reject a thesis that was never considered.

How is the builder building identically being the building built any different than the ball hitting identically being the hit ball? — Mww

"The builder building the house" describes the identical event, with the same information, as "The house being built by the builder." I am not sure what you mean by the "ball hitting," but certainly the bat hitting the ball is identically the ball being hit by the bat. Have I missed your point?

all empirical relationships concerning cause and effect are contingent with respect to human knowledge, which implies if any absolute necessity, that is to say, the falsification of which is impossible, must arise from a priori conditions. — Mww

It seems to me that relationships need to be intelligible in order to be the object of human knowledge. So the relations are logically prior to our knowledge of them -- and not contingent on our knowledge.

It is not that the events of house building or ball hitting are necessary. The necessity is in the linkd between an essential cause and its effect. While there may well be no builder building or house being built, given that there is a builder building, necessarily something is being built. Likewise, given that something is being built, necessarily something is building it. In other words, every happening is a doing, and every doing is a happening.

Relating this to your quotation, I see no reason to suppose that this principle is known a priori. It suffices to think that, having once grasped it a posteriori, in an experienced example, we can see, that it applies in all future cases "a priori."

Have I addressed your concern?

But energy is not conserved by the Principle of energy conservation. It is conserved due to the dynamics undergone by a system obeying the laws of physics. — Inis

To avoid any confusion, let us distinguish the laws of nature, which are operative in nature, and the laws of physics, which are approximate human descriptions of the laws operative in nature.

When we speak in the plural of the laws of nature, it is not because there are many different laws in nature, but because the dynamics of nature, which is its law, is understood by us in many partial ways. What I mean is that the same unified dynamics conserves mass-energy, momentum, angular momentum, attracts masses, repels like charges, and so on. Nonetheless, when we think and write of it, we do so in terms of abstractions as though these various aspects were separate laws.

So, to say that mass-energy is conserved by the law of conservation of mass-energy is to speak of one aspect of the unified dynamics in abstraction -- and does not deny that in reality there is one, many faceted dynamics at work in nature.

I hope this addresses your point. If not, let me know.

what is your idea of Hume’s thesis that Kant was bullheaded about, with respect to “time-ordered causality”? — Mww

Hume showed that we could not know that there was any intrinsic necessity to time-ordered causal sequences. This was not a new discovery, as Ibn Sina used the observation as a basis for proving the existence of God. Still, it seems to have shocked Hume's contemporaries, many of whom were beginning to coalesce around the mechanistic determinism later articulated by Laplace.

Kant seems to have felt that, since time-ordered causality was known to be necessary, Hume's analysis must be flawed. The result was the separation of noumena and phenomena and the whole system of Transcendental Idealism with the supposed imposition of the forms of time, space and causality by the mind. Of course, there were many other factors motivating Kant, some of them from the mystical tradition, but I do think the causality issue was the crucial one.

I’d guess A.) you’re talking about the effect on our knowledge of a thing being antecedent to the causality of the thing’s impression given to us by sense, or, B.) you’re talking about the simultaneity of the external impression on sense and the internal knowledge of the object so impressing. — Mww

I have in mind the distinction of Accidental and Essential Causality, which goes back at least of Aristotle, and which was common in Scholastic analysis. What contemporary philosopher's mean by "causality" is time-ordered or accidental causality. E.g.. the cue striking a billiard ball in the appropriate way is the cause of it going in the corner pocket. Kant defined this notion of causality as "time sequence by rule," and it is what Hume showed to have no intrinsic necessity. Since it links two separate events, intervention is always possible in principle, and so such sequences cannot be absolutely necessary.

The other type of causality, (essential causality) might be called concurrent causality. It does not involve separate events but is the result of analyzing a single event into agent and patient. Aristotle's paradigm case is a builder building a house. In it the builder building is the cause and the house being build is the effect. The analysis of this event reveals an identity that serves as the basis of necessity. (The builder building the house is identically the house being build by the builder.) As there is only one event there is no possibility the separation of cause and effect or of intervention. So, essential causality has an intrinsic necessity.

Lest one think that essential causality plays no role in modern thought, the laws of nature operate by essential or concurrent causality. Mass-energy being conserved by the law of conservation of mass-energy is identically the law of conservation of mass-energy conserving mass-energy. So essential causality is alive and well today. It is just not discussed by most contemporary philosophers.

Further, the two types of causality are linked. The the general sequence of causal and caused events is explained by integrating the essential causality of the laws of nature over time.

Again, no honest question id bothersome. Thank you for your kind words and interest in my thoughts.

If I understand you correctly, you mean the observer by ''knowing subject'' and you consider it different from the observed - the ''known subject''.

Why? — TheMadFool

Because, as Aristotle points out in De Anima iii, in the act of coming to know sensible objects, the knower acts as an agent, while the known is a patient. Before we come to know the object. it is intelligible, but not actually understood. We are capable of being informed, but not actually informed (wrt the object). When we turn our attention to the sensory representation, both of these potencies are actualized by a single act.

Since the object has only the potential to operated in the logical order, it is not yet operational, and so cannot operate to make itself known. Nor, for that matter, can our capacity to be informed (nous pathetikos = passive intellect). Still, there is an aspect of the subject, which Aristotle calls nous poiētikos (the agent intellect), which is operative and so capable of actualizing both potencies. If there were not, intelligibility could not become actually known, and we could not become actually informed.

If one reflects on the phenomenology, it is easy to identify the agent intellect with our awareness, for it is by turning our awareness to various objects that we come to know them.

Thus, subjects and their sensible objects are distinct and related as agent and patient.

What other concept makes you feel that way? If I understand you correctly you don't consider material (scientific) explanations adequate to explain the ''knowing subject''. — TheMadFool

You understand me correctly. Feelings are irrelevant to deciding such abstract questions. They are to be resolved by logical analysis -- which begins by noting that every instance of actual knowledge requires a knowing subject and a known object.

Why and how is the ''knowing subject'' different from the ''known subject''? — TheMadFool

I wrote "knowing subject" to make role of the subject in the subject-object relation of knowing clear. Of course, we also know the operation of the subject, or we could not discuss it.

Contrary to Gilbert Ryle's claim in the Concept of Mind, we know ourselves by introspection. How is this possible? Because every act of knowing is informative not only of its primary, typically sensible, object, but of ourselves as subjects. Let us call the known sensible thing the "objective object" and ourselves, as known concomitantly, the "subjective object." If I am aware of seeing a ball, the objective object is the ball, but the act of knowing the ball is replete with information about myself as subject. I am informed that I can see, that I can know sensible objects, etc. The powers so known are aspects of myself as subject and, jointly, these powers constitute the subjective object in seeing the ball.

No honest question needs an apology. Thank you for your interest.

What is interesting is the ''hard'' in The Hard Problem of Consciousness. Why didn't Chamlers use ''impossible''? — TheMadFool

Because he do not understand the Fundamental Abstraction of natural science and its implications.

Are you taking this a step further and claiming this is the IMPOSSIBLE problem of consciousness? — TheMadFool

Yes. I am not saying that we cannot understand consciousness, only that to do so requires primitive concepts that were projected out of natural science when it left our experience as knowing subjects on the table to fix attention on known physical objects.

There is nothing "spooky" or unnatural about being a knowing subject. It is just logically distinct from being a known object and so beyond the scope of concepts that apply only to reality as objective.

So a datum (asymmetry or symmetry) is epistemically and ontically foundational? — Galuchat

Data are the given that we seek to understand. As given they are irreducible and so fundamental. Since things a given when we interact with them they are ontologically prior to being given. Still as far as thought goes, things have to be given before we can reflect on them.

This sounds like nominalism, is that correct? — aporiap

It is Moderate Realism, which sees universal concepts grounded in the objective character of their actual and potential instances rather than in Platonic Ideas or Neoplatonic Exemplars. Nominalism and conceptualism see universals as categories arbitrarily imposed by individual fiat or social convention.

1.

Why would the program not be conscious when running the first 5 steps of the algorithm? — aporiap

If we assume that consciousness is the result of the mere presence of all the steps, then it will not be conscious for 1-5 because the minimum complexity is absent. On the other hand, if we think consciousness is a consequence of running the instructions, it can't be either. Why? Because if running only a few steps elicited consciousness, then the program we started with would not be the shortest possible, since the few steps (1-5) we ran to elicit consciousness would be shorter.

Why not it simply loose consciousness when the program has reached the missing instruction in the same way a computer program freezes if there is an error in a line of the code and simply resume running once the code is fixed? — aporiap

The program does not run into the missing instruction. It is halted and the instruction removed, then later replaced before it is executed.

The way this scenario is construed makes an issue for any kind of binary descriptor of a continually running algorithm [e.g. any sort of game, any sort of artificial sensor, any sort of continually looping program] not just specifically for ascribing consciousness to an algorithm. Eg. Say you call this algorithm an 'atmospheric sampler'. Say you take one instruction out now it is no longer an atmospheric sampler algorithm because it cannot sample, let it run until after the instructional code, now repair the instruction and it has become an atmospheric sampler seemingly a-causally. — aporiap

No. Notice that we run all the original instructions. Any program that simply runs an algorithm runs it completely. So, your 'atmospheric sampler' program does everything needed to complete its computation.

The problem is, we have no reason to assume that the generation of consciousness is algorithmic. Algorithms solve mathematical problems -- ones that can be presented by measured values or numerically encoded relations. We have no such representation of consciousness. Also, data processing operates on representations of reality, it does not operate on the reality represented. So, even if we had a representation of consciousness, we would not have consciousness.

In the computational theory of mind, consciousness is supposed to be an emergent phenomenon resulting from sufficiently complex data processing of the right sort. This emergence could be a result of actually running the program, or it could be the result of the mere presence of the code. If it is a result of running the program, it can't be the result of running only a part of the program, for if the part we ran caused consciousness, then it would be a shorter program, contradicting our assumption. So, consciousness can only occur once the program has completed -- but then it is not running, which means that an inoperative program is causes consciousness.

We are left with the far less likely scenario in which the mere presence of the code, running or not, causes consciousness. First, the presence of inoperative code is not data processing, but the specification of data processing. Second, because the code can be embodied in any number of ways, the means by which it effects consciousness cannot be physical. But, if it can't be physical, and it's not data processing, what is is the supposed cause?

The implicit assumption is that the complexity of an algorithm is what generates consciousness and that complexity is reduced by reducing the number of instructions. — aporiap

The general assumption among supporters of the computational theory is that complexity is required. I never found that assumption cogent, and do not make it myself. The argument does not relate program length to complexity. It only notes that if there is a Turing programs able to generate consciousness, one or more of them must be of minimal length. Whether is tis complex or simple is irrelevant to the argument.

This assumes data processing can only happen in a turing machine like manner — aporiap

No, not at all. It only depends on the theorem that all finite state machines can be represented by Turing machines. If we are dealing with data processing per se, the Turing model is an adequate representation. If we need more than the Turing machine model, we are not dealing with data processing alone, but with some physical property of the machine.

I agree that the brain uses parallel processing, and might not be representable as a finite state machine. Since it is continually "rewiring" itself, its number of states may change over time, and since its processing is not digital, its states may be more continuous than discrete. So, I am not arguing that the brain is a finite state machine. I am arguing against those who so model it in the computational theory of mind.

Perhaps this is why say, a neuron, which is a single processing unit is not capable of consciousness whereas a conglomerate of neurons is. — aporiap

This assumes facts not in evidence. David Chalmers calls this the "Hard Problem" because not only do we have no model in which a conglomerate of neurons operate to produce consciousness, but we have no progress toward such a model. Daniel Dennett argues at length in Consciousness Explained that no naturalistic model of consciousness is possible.

It is also clear that a single physical state can be the basis for more than one intentional state at the same time. For example, the same neural representation encodes both my seeing the cat and the cat modifying my retinal state.

Why make the dichotomy between "natural" and "psychological" objects? — aporiap

"Dichotomy" implies a clean cut, an either-or. I am not doing that. I see the mind, and the psychology that describes it, as involving two interacting subsystems: a neurophysical data processing subsystem (the brain) and an intentional subsystem which is informed by, and exerts a degree of control over, it (intellect and will). Both subsystems are fully natural.

There is, however, a polarity between objects and the subjects that are aware of them.

even in the physical sciences we don't have access to 'things in themselves' anyway, — aporiap

Please rethink this. Kant was bullheaded in his opposition to Hume's thesis that there is no intrinsic necessity to time ordered causality. As a result he sent philosophy off on a tangent from which it is yet to fully recover.

The object being known by the subject is identically the subject knowing the object. As a result of this identity there is no room for any "epistic gap." Phenomena are not separate from noumena. They are the means by which noumena reveal themselves to us.

We have access to reality. If we did not, nothing could affect us. It is just that our access is limited. All human knowledge consists in projections (dimensionally diminished mappings) of reality. We know that the object can do what it is doing to us. We do not know all the other things it can do.

We observe everything by its effects. It is just that some observations are more mediated than others.

The point is that these fall within the range of natural objects albeit of a lesser degree as opposed to something wholly different so as to involve a completely different way of knowing or learning about them. — aporiap

This is very confused. People have learn about themselves by experiencing their own subjectivity from time immemorial. How doe we know we are conscious? Surely not by observations of our physical effects. Rather we know our subjective powers because we experience ourselves knowing, willing, hoping, believing and so on.

Those words still mean what the author intended even if no one ever reads what he wrote — Harry Hindu

Yes, they do, but that only supports my point that intent is logically prior to expression. They have meaning only because they express their authors intent. Yet, when the author is gone and her language forgotten, the meaning of her words is only latent and will remain so unless and until someone is able to decode her language

Just because some effect isn't noticed, or part of some awareness, doesn't mean that the cause never happened. — Harry Hindu

I agree completely. I never claimed otherwise.

You are basically saying that meaning only arises in the relationship between matter and ideas. I'm saying there is no distinction that you have been able to coherently show between them and that they are both causal and can establish the same kind of relationships - meaningful/causal. Meaning is the relationship between cause and effect. — Harry Hindu

You are confusing potential meaning, intelligibility, which is found in matter, with actual meaning, which is found only in minds.

I explained in the OP how matter and ideas differ. That both can cause effects only means that they both exists. To make your case, you must show that they cause the same kinds of effects. They do not. Ideas are formal signs and can do only one thing -- refer to their real, potential or imagined objects. Matter does many things, but intrinsically, it does not refer to anything. Of course, we can use it as evidence for its causes, but to be actual evidence minds have to understand its causal relations. So any actual meaning matter has depends on the extrinsic factor of a mind actualizing its intelligibility.

If they can't be imagined, then how do you know what they mean? How do you know that you're thinking of <indenumerable infinity> or of <existence> if they don't have any imagery that the words refer to? How do you distinguish between <indenumerable infinity> and <existence> in your mind (other than seeing the words on a screen)? — Harry Hindu

I know the meaning of abstract concepts because I grasp the notes of comprehension that define them. I may think of, or even imagine, examples, but the examples are not the meaning. I understand <indenumerable> as ruling out countability -- counting has no power to exhaust what is indenumerable. I understand <infinite> as denying limits. I understand <existence> as reflecting the power to act in some way -- but as <existence> places no limit on the kind of act, it cannot be imagined, even though I can imagine specific things doing specific acts.

Again, if words don't refer to some mental image, then what do they refer to? — Harry Hindu

Words refer to any object able to properly evoke the idea they express. "Human" refers to any being that, when encountered, can properly evoke the idea <human>. "Properly" carries a lot of weight here, but it is easy to define. An instance can properly evoke an idea if its notes of intelligibility (what can be known about it) correspond to the notes of comprehension defining the idea.

Again, yes, we typically think of an example when we think of concepts, but the example will always have specific characteristics ("accidents") not found in the concept. So, the example is not the concept.

I think your problem is that you are over-complicating things. — Harry Hindu

My problem is that I'm doing philosophy where small errors can quickly grow into ludicrous positions. So, I have to be very precise.

what does the scribbles, "unicorn" refer to? — Harry Hindu

As I said, the image thought of as existing. Harry Potter does not exist, but when we talk about him, we think of him as though he did exist. Aristotle called this "the willing suspension of disbelief."

Another contradiction! Unicorns don't exist, yet all there is to a unicorn is what we imagine! — Harry Hindu

This is not a contradiction if you accept what I said about the image thought of as existing.

What does your unicorn look like? How do you know you're thinking of a unicorn? — Harry Hindu

The minimalist idea of a unicorn is a horse with a horn between its eyes. In my imagination they are small, white, and have a spiral on the horn. Still, if an author wished to write of a variant on this, I would take no exception.

How do you know what those strings of symbols mean? — Harry Hindu

The meanings of word strings is defined by a shared social convention that we learn.

Actually, I'd go so far as to say that categories only exist in minds. Therefore the only kind of category is a mental category, (or a concept). — Harry Hindu

I would agree as long as you admit that universal ideas have a foundation in reality. E.g. each homo sapiens has the objective capacity to evoke the concept <human>.

So why place them in the category, "ideas"? — Harry Hindu

Because they have something (not everything) in common: their whole being, all they can do, is refer. — Dfpolis

And so can matter. I already went over this. — Harry Hindu

And I already explained that potential reference is not actual reference.

So you have yet to explain the difference between "matter" and "ideas". — Harry Hindu

As we are making no progress, this should be our last exchange on this topic.

how are intents different than matter if in both cases there is a constant and something that changes? — Harry Hindu

Again, because when material objects change, what remains unchanged is their matter. When intentions change, they do not remain through the change. The old one ceases to be and the new one comes to be.

Being actually predetermined is not the same as actually existing. — Dfpolis

Sure it is. It is your perception of time that makes you see the future as something that doesn't exist yet. — Harry Hindu

Baloney! It may be predetermined that rain will fall in the desert. That will not prevent dying of thirst as actual rain can.

Your mind stretches those causal relationships — Harry Hindu

I understand that this is your belief. I also understand that sometimes "time flies" and other times it seems to crawl. I do not see that this tells us anything about the objective nature of time.

First, the word, "unicorn" does not just evoke <unicorn>, the word itself is evoked by <unicorn>. As I have been saying, words and ideas are both causes and effects of each other, and each carries information about each other. — Harry Hindu

The word is indeed evoked by the idea in the author of a locution, but it must evoke the idea in the recipient if the locution is to communicate. If I look at the word "unicorn," and have no idea what a unicorn is, the string cannot signify unicorns to me. That is why unknown languages are meaningless to us -- because they are incapable of evoking the ideas their authors intended in us.

Second, I have no idea what you mean by "imagined/potential unicorns". There is the word, "unicorn", pictures of unicorns, and the idea <unicorn> (a mental image of a unicorn), and the causal relationship between them. That's it. An imagined unicorn is just another name for the mental image of a unicorn. — Harry Hindu

Universal ideas do not just apply to actual instances but to any potential instance we may encounter in the future. Even if you believe unicorns are impossible, you still want the idea <unicorn> to apply to imagined unicorns.

Ideas are not images. First, some ideas are too abstract to be imagined. What is the image of <indenumerable infinity> or of <existence>? How could we have an image of indenumerable infinity using a finite number of neurons? Second, ideas are indeterminate, while images are determinate. Is the idea <human> black, Caucasian or Asian; male or female; old or young; tall or short? None, of course, but any image will have definite characteristics.

An imagined unicorn is not the mental image of a unicorn, which is an image, not a unicorn, but a mental image thought of as existing.

While there are categories, <category> is not a fundamental concept. An instance is in a category because its objective nature, its intelligibility, is able to evoke the concept defining the category. If beagles were not able to evoke the concept <dog> they would not be categorized as dogs. So concepts are logically prior to categories -- and concepts refer to all of their potential instances, not just those that we have experienced or those that actually exist at any given time. — Dfpolis

This is just more confusing. This is just a bunch of unnecessary use of terms in a long-winded explanation. — Harry Hindu

The point is that categories are based on concepts and concepts are based on objective intelligibility being actualized by minds. So, appealing to categories does not avoid dependence on mental concepts.

All I am saying is that ideas have causal power. — Harry Hindu

I accept that.

Does an idea of a unicorn exhaust a unicorn like the idea of a horse exhausts a horse? — Harry Hindu

As unicorns don't exist, all that there is to a unicorn is what we imagine it to be. Horses, on the other hand are real, and can be studied. Over time we learn more, and it is always possible to to be surprised. So our idea <horse> does not exhaust the reality of horses.

No, that isn't an example of my restatement of your claim.
It would be more like we have 100 different things with no relationship at all. Everything would be made of a completely different element and with a different function. Using your explanation of "essences" and "existence" there is no possibility for the existence of categories. — Harry Hindu

I still don't understand your reasoning. Categories are based on common notes of intelligibility in their instances. All instances of materiality are extended and changeable. All instances of intentionality are about something.

This would mean that the idea of a horse and the idea of a unicorn have different essences because they both do different things. — Harry Hindu

Of course. The idea of a horse is not the idea of a unicorn. Still, both are ideas -- are about something -- and so are intentional realities.

So why place them in the category, "ideas"? — Harry Hindu

Because they have something (not everything) in common: their whole being, all they can do, is refer.

Can you please try to stay focused. That isn't what I asked. I don't think you're actually taking the time to read what I'm writing. You seem to only want to push your view. — Harry Hindu

I am doing my best to understand what you are saying. This should be clear from the time I spend responding to each point you make.

If two things do the same thing then they would have the same essence. Does the idea of grass eating grass have the same essence as the idea of a goat eating grass? — Harry Hindu

They would not have the same essence unless the full specification of their possible acts is the same. The fact that they share some powers is not enough. So, no, the idea grass eating grass would not have the same essence as the idea of a goat eating grass. While both are ideas because all they can do is refer, what they refer to is different. So they can't both perform the same act (refer to a goat eating grass).

And I already went over this with you where you talked about how you change your intent and I pointed out how this is no different than how an apple changes color, but you didn't respond to it. — Harry Hindu

Yes, I know. I did not respond, because I did not understand how it helped you. Say an apple changes color from green to red. The principle of continuity, what remains the same, is the apple, not the color. One color ceases to be, and the other comes to be. In the same way, if I change my intent, I, the intending subject remains, but my old intent ceases to be and my new intent comes to be. The principle of excluded middle allows no continuity between willing to go and not willing to go, or between no being red and being red.

On the other hand, matter is, itself, a principle of continuity. The mass before a physical transformation is the mass after the transformation. So, I don't see how this helps you.

No, the present state is one of the universe's actual predetermined states. — Harry Hindu

Being actually predetermined is not the same as actually existing.

I think you have this backward. Time is a measure of change, and change occurs because what was merely potential becomes actual. Determinism is irrelevant to the reality of change. — Dfpolis

Time is the stretching out of the causal relationships that make up the universe. A causal relationship is a change (cause and effect). — Harry Hindu

I have no idea what "Time is the stretching out of the causal relationships that make up the universe," means. I have a very good idea of what "Time is the measure of change according to before and after means." We have no power to stretch causal relations. We do have the power to measure change.

Dfpolis, thank you for the excellent post! — aporiap

You are welcome. I thank you for your thoughtful consideration and wish you and yours a joyful Christmas.

You explicitly state in the previous sentence the separation is [by substance?] mental. How would you categorize 'mental separation' if not as an ontological separation? — aporiap

The basis for logically distinct concepts need not be separate, or ontologically independent, objects. In looking at a ball, I might abstract <sphere> and <rubber> concepts without spheres existing separately from matter, or matter existing formlessly. Thus, by ontological separation, I mean existing independently or apart. By logical distinction, I mean having different notes of comprehension.

Further, while concepts may have, as their foundation in reality, the instances that can properly evoke them, they are not those instances. The concept <rubber> is not made of the sap of Hevea brasiliensis. Natural rubber typically its. So, generally, in contrasting logical and ontological I am contrasting concepts with their foundation in reality.

Finally, concepts are not things, but reified activities. <Rubber> is just a subject thinking of rubber.

1. Neurophysiological data processing cannot be the explanatory invariant of our awareness of contents. ....

Well I think this is a bit 'low resolution'/unspecific. It's definitively clear neurophysiological data alone isn't sufficient for awareness but that doesn't mean that a certain kind of neurophysiological processing is not sufficient - this is the bigger argument here. — aporiap

It is low resolution. My purpose was to convince the reader that we need more than mere "data processing" to explain awareness -- to open minds to the search for further factors.

In my book, I offer the following:

The missing-instruction argument shows that software cannot make a Turing machine conscious. If software-based con­­­scious is possible, there exists one or more programs complex enough to generate consciousness. Let’s take one with the fewest possible instructions, and remove an instruction that will not be used for, say, ten steps. Then the Turing machine will run the same as if the removed instruction were there for the first nine steps.

Start the machine and let it run five steps. Since the program is below minimum complexity, it is not conscious. Then stop the machine, put back the missing instruction, and let it continue. Even though it has not executed the instruction we replaced, the Turing machine is conscious for steps 6-9, because now it is complex enough. So, even though nothing the Turing machine actually does is any different with or without the instruction we removed and replaced, its mere presence makes the machine conscious.

This violates all ideas of causality. How can something that does nothing create consciousness by its mere presence? Not by any natural means – especially since its presence has no defined physical incarnation. The instruction could be on a disk, a punch card, or in semiconductor memory. So, the instruction can’t cause consciousness by a specific physical mech­anism. Its presence has to have an immaterial efficacy independent of its physical encoding.

One counterargument might be that the whole program needs to run before there is consciousness. That idea fails. Con­sciousness is continuous. What kind of consciousness is unaware the entire time contents are being proces­sed, but becomes aware when processing has terminated? None.

Perhaps the program has a loop that has to be run though a certain number of times for consciousness to occur. If that is the case, take the same program and load it with one change – set the machine to the state it will have after the requisite number of iterations. Now we need not run through the loop to get to the con­scious state. We then remove an instruction further into the loop just as we did in the original example. Once again, the presence of an inoperative instruction creates consciousness. — Dennis F. Polis -- God, Sceince and Mind, p. 196

Thus, we can eliminate data processing, no matter how complex, as a cause of consciousness.

John Searle points us in a different direction, suggesting that it may not be abstract, but embodied, data processing that gives rise to consciousness. In other words, that some cryptic property of the physical brain, and not its mere data processing, causes consciousness. I am happy to agree that consciousness is unexpectedly (from the perspective of physics) found in humans. Still, the claim of emergence from cryptic (aka "occult") properties of matter is not an explanation, but a belief.

In natural science care what Ptolemy, Brahe, Galileo, and Hubble saw, not the act by which the intelligibility of what they saw became actually known. Thus, natural science is, by design, bereft of data and concepts relating to the knowing subject and her acts of awareness....

I don't think the first sentence ... leads to the conclusion in the second sentence.

Empiricism starts with defining a phenomenon -any phenomenon. Phemonema can be mental or physical or can even be some interaction between mental and physical ... — aporiap

I have no problem with empiricism. I see the role of philosophy as providing a consistent framework for understanding of all human experience. My observation is directed specifically at natural science, which I think is rightly described as focused on physical objects, or if you prefer, physical phenomena.

Aristotle, who I think has made as much progress as anyone on understanding the nature of consciousness, based his work on experience, but treated our experience as subjects on an equally footing with our experience of physical objects.

So connections are in fact being attempted between what's traditionally been considered a 'mental field' e.g. psychology and 'physical' fields e.g. biophysics. — aporiap

Yes, they have. I am not disputing this, nor do I have a problem with holistic explanation. I am merely pointing out that physicalist approaches, and those naturalistic approaches founded on physicalism or materialism, are logically incapable of explaining consciousness, and that, as a consequence, the "Hard Problem" is a chimera.

To be orthogonal is to be completely independent of the other [for one to not be able to directly influence the other]. — aporiap

That is not what I explained that I mean by concepts being orthogonal. I explicitly said, "... logically orthogonal. That is to say, that,though they co-occur and interact, they do not share essential, defining notes." Having non-overlapping sets of defining notes makes concepts orthogonal -- not the consideration of interactions in their instances, which is a contingent matter to be resolved by reflecting on experience.

Concepts are abstractions and do not "interact." All that concepts do (their whole being) is refer to their actual and potential instances. Still, it is clear to all but the most obdurate ideologues, that intentionality can inform material states. Whenever we voice a concept, when we speak of our intentions, our speech acts are informed by intentional states. Conversely, in our awareness of sensory contents, material states inform the resulting intentional states. So, the fact that intentional and material abstractions are orthogonal does not prevnt material and intentional states from interacting.

What reflecting on the orthogonality of materiality and intentionality does, is force us to look for bridging dynamics. Whatever dynamics allows intentions to inform material states, in describing it, we must employ both material and intentional concepts. Whatever dynamics allows material states to inform our consciousness, in describing it, we also must employ both material and intentional concepts. If we did not, then there would be no "middle terms," no connections, leading us from one kind of state to another.

... the fact that this is a unidirectional interaction [i.e. that only physical objects can result in changes to mental states and not the other way around without some sort of physical mediator] gives serious reason to doubt an fundamentality to the mental field - at least to me it's clear its an emergent phenomenon out of fundamental material interactions. — aporiap

This misses the fact that intentional states do inform material states. That we are writing about and discussing intentionality shows that intentional states can modify physical objects (texts, pressure waves, etc.)

Think of the intention to go to the store. The resulting process is unlike a ballistic trajectory, which is fully determined by the initial physical state and the laws of nature. I go to the garage, and find my car will not start. This was unknown at decision time, and so can't be part of my initial state, but, if I am commited, I will find other means. I planned on a certain route, encoded in my initial state, but as I turn the corner, I find my way blocked by construction. I find an alternate route to effect my intended end. In all of this, the explanatory invariant (which can revealed by controlled experiments) is not my initial physical state, but my intended final state. Clearly, intentional states can produce physical events.

I'm unsure why intentions [my understanding of what you mean by intention is: the object of a mental act - judgement, perception, etc] are always considered without parts. I think, for example, a 'hope' is deconstruct-able, and [at least partly] composed of a valence component, an cognitive attitude of anticipation, a 'desire' or 'wanting' for a certain end to come about, the 'state of affairs' that defines the 'end'. and sometimes a feeling of 'confidence'. I can also imagine how this is biophysically instantiated [i.e. this intentional state is defined by a circuit interaction between certain parts of the reward system, cognitive system, and memory system]. So what you have is some emergent state [the mental state] composed of interacting elements. — aporiap

To say that intentions have "no parts outside of parts" does not mean that they are simple (unanalyzable). It means that they do not have one part here and another part there (outside of "here"). My intention to to go to the store is analyzable, say, into a commitment and a target of commitment (what if is about, viz. arriving at the store.) But, my commitment and the specification of my commitment are not in different places and so are not parts outside of other parts.

Of course my intention to go to the store has biophysical support. My claim is that its biophysical support alone is inadequate to fully explain it.

First, as explained in the scenario above, the invariance of the intended end in the face of physical obstacles shows that this is not a case covered by the usual paradigm of physical explanation -- one in which an initial state evolves deterministically under the laws of nature. Unlike a cannon ball, I do not stop when I encounter an obstacle. I find, or at least search for, other means. What remains constant is not the sum of my potential and kine

Second, you are assuming, without making a case, that many of the factors you mention are purely biophysical. How is the "valance component," as subjective value, grounded in biophysics? Especially when biophysics is solely concerned with objective phenomena? Again to have a "cognitive attitude" (as opposed to a neural data representation) requires that we actualize the intelligibility latent in the representation. What biophysical process is capable of making what was merely intelligible actually known -- especially given that knowledge is a subject-object relation and biophysics has no <subject> concept in its conceptual space?

Third, how is a circuit interaction, which is fully specified by the circuit's configuration and dynamics, "about" anything? Since it is not, it cannot be the explanation of an intentional state.

I'm still forming my thoughts on this and this part of your post but I'll give you a response when I think of one. — aporiap

I await your reflections.

Data being asymmetries, are you referring to anything other than symmetry? — Galuchat

I am sorry, I do not understand this, as it seems to me that symmetry is as much a datum as asymmetry. A priori, we could have either.

Thank you.

So, I consider the related general definitions of information, message, communication, code, and data to constitute a foundational concept which applies to both material (physical) and intentional (mental) domains. — Galuchat

If that were so, we could not define them in terms of more fundamental concepts, but I think we agree that we can.

Okay, the string, "unicorn" represents, or symbolizes (both are synonyms of "express") the idea <unicorn>. You seemed to contradict yourself by saying that universals refer to potential instances. — Harry Hindu

To express an idea is to instantiate a sign capable of evoking it. So, "unicorn" is an expression because can evoke <unicorn>. Still, it is not a symbol for the idea, because it is not the idea <unicorn>, but imagined/potential unicorns (animals) that both the word and the idea refer to.

Instead of "potential instances" - which seems like a loaded term, I'd use the term "category". Unicorns, cats, dogs and planets are categories. We put things (Uni) in mental boxes, or categories (unicorns) - Uni the unicorn. — Harry Hindu

While there are categories, <category> is not a fundamental concept. An instance is in a category because its objective nature, its intelligibility, is able to evoke the concept defining the category. If beagles were not able to evoke the concept <dog> they would not be categorized as dogs. So concepts are logically prior to categories -- and concepts refer to all of their potential instances, not just those that we have experienced or those that actually exist at any given time.

You said they have different essences because they can do different things. Every thing does something different, which means that each idea is a different essence, and each material thing is a different essence. — Harry Hindu

No, as I explained in my last response to this same issue, things are not essences. Essences are specifications of possible acts, but specifications do not entail that what is specified actually exists -- that it is operational.

Ideas are not things, but subjects thinking of things. Further, ideas are abstractions. The do not exhaust what we are thinking of. Since ideas are abstractions, they can leave individuating characteristics behind, and so the same idea can be evoked by many individuals. That is why many concepts are universal.

There is no distinction between what is ideas and what is matter if everything is different from each other. — Harry Hindu

This is a complete non sequitur, and I can't think of how you came to this conclusion. The fact that we have 100 different plastic toy cars does not mean that there is no difference between the idea of plastic and the idea of a toy car.

Goats eat grass, but grass doesn't eat grass, so they would be different essences. — Harry Hindu

Yes, goats and grass have (not are) different essences. Goats can eat grass , but not photosynthesize sugar. Grass can photosynthesize, but not eat grass.

But wait a second, can you imagine grass eating grass (the idea of grass eating grass)? Would that then make it the same essence as the idea of the goat eating grass? — Harry Hindu

We can imagine many things, but that does not make them exist. Grass that ate grass would have a different essence than actual grass.

Every thing has a different essence and existence. — Harry Hindu

Yes.

ach idea would have a different existence and essence. So what? What does that have to do with the difference between what an idea is and what matter is? You've simply explained the difference between things, not the difference between the category "idea" and "matter" — Harry Hindu

That is because the distinction of essence and existence is metaphysical (an observation about being as being) and applies to all finite beings. I explained it to deal with your misunderstanding my use of "essence," not to explain the difference between the concepts of materiality and intentionality, which I already explained in the OP.

To distinguish materiality and intentionality, we need to reflect on more than the fact that they both exist and have an essential character. We need to reflect on our contingent experience to see their essential differences -- what things in each category can do that things in the other category cannot.

It seems to me that one's essence defines one's existence. It seems to me that they are inseparable, as one's essence/existence is a relationship with everything else, so in a sense you did redefine "thing" as "essence/existence". In a deterministic world, that relationship would be deterministic, with no potentialities. — Harry Hindu

Yes, the relation of essence and existence is transcendental -- all beings have both and they are ontologically inseparable. Still, we can distinguish them mentally -- think of them separately.

Determinism alone does not eliminate the distinction between actual and potential. Even if the time-development of the universe were fully determined by its initial state at one time the present state was not the universe's actual state, but only a fully determined potential state.

"Potentialities" are the result of our perception of time, as if the future is yet to happen and still isn't determined. — Harry Hindu

I think you have this backward. Time is a measure of change, and change occurs because what was merely potential becomes actual. Determinism is irrelevant to the reality of change.

You still haven't addressed the differences between "idea" and "matter". — Harry Hindu

Reread the OP.

Sort of like how one has to select from a set of possible options. But there is only one meaning to the message - the source's intent. What did the sender intend when they wrote the message? How you interpret the message depends upon your experiences. Try to understand a message in a different language. How could you ever hope to come up with even a set of possible messages when looking at a different language? You'd have to learn the language, just as you have to learn the language of your sensory impressions. — Harry Hindu

Yes, there is more to semantic communication than the accurate reception of the physical message. That reception is only a preliminary step in a complex, semiotic process -- one that you have begun to sketch.

While semiotics is an important area of understanding, it is a tangent that would take us far from the topic of my OP.

Now you say that we ought to distinguish intentional from non-intentional, using the method of physics, which has no capacity to even recognize the intentional. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is not my claim. While mathematical physics only considers objective physical reality as measurable, philosophy spans all reality. We can look at what physicists actually do, at the abstraction(s) and methods they employ, to see what physics is competent to discuss. So, I am using the method of physics materially, not formally. In other words, I'm not employing that method as my method, but looking at it as an object of study.

Now you say that we ought to distinguish intentional from non-intentional, using the method of physics, which has no capacity to even recognize the intentional. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. Reality has a wide span. Physics deals with a subset of it. We can only decide which subset by looking at what physics actually does. I am not saying that whatever is left is intentional, because there could be "more things in heaven and earth ... than are dreamt of" in our philosophy. I'm only saying that intentionality is not part of the subset dealt with by physics.

In doing that, I'm not defining the intentional as the complement of the physical -- that would beg the question in the OP. Rather, I am defining intentionality a posteriori, by looking at its nature and standing on the shoulders of those, such as Brentano, who've done so.

How are you going to convince a physicalist, who believes that there is no aspect of reality outside this physical part of reality, without referring to this part of reality which is outside. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can't, nor have I tried to do so. If you look my arguments in the OP, they explicitly involve the intentional reality left on the table by the Fundamental Abstraction.

You cannot assume that the physicalist will accept your assumption that there is something outside the purview of physics, because this contradicts the physicalist premise, fundamentally. — Metaphysician Undercover

I assume only that physicalists experience more than their theory can account for. My task, then, is to induce them to reflect on the unexplained data.

As I already pointed out, it is you that is equivocating - using terms like, "matter", "ideas", "being" and "essences" without any clear explanation of what those things are. — Harry Hindu

In the course of the thread, I have explained what each of these terms means. You did not ask for further clarification when I did so. However, even if I were unclear, that is not equivocation, which requires the same term to to be used with different meanings in different instances.

So when you use the string of scribbles, "unicorn", what do those scribbles refer to? If it refers to your idea of a unicorn, then "unicorn" is an idea of a unicorn. — Harry Hindu

The string, "unicorn" expresses, but does not refer to, the idea <unicorn>. Except when we're considering ideas, universals do not refer to ideas, but to potential instances -- to potential realities that could evoke the idea when and if we experience them. Because of ideas' potential and contingent nature, the existence of an idea has no implications for extramental reality.

As for animals and ideas, they have different essences because they can do different things. A goat can eat grass, but the idea of a goat can't. — Dfpolis

Then the grass would be a different essence than the goat. All you have done is redefine "thing" as "essence", and that throws a wrench into your explanation of "matter" and "ideas". — Harry Hindu

I am unsure what line of thought led you to this conclusion.

Things, beings, are characterized by an unspecified capacity to act. They are operational -- have "causal power" in your turn of phrase. That unspecified capacity is what is intended by the concept of <existence>.

We know from experience, however, that things can not only act, but act in specific ways. They can do these acts, but not those. Goats can eat grass. The idea of a goat can't. So, a thing being able to act in unspecified ways does not exhaust its reality. The specification of each thing's possible acts, which is its essence, resolves this indeterminacy.

In sum, essence is a specification, but an abstract specification does not entail that any operational thing has that specification. Existence reflects operational capability of what essence specifies.

So, I haven't redefined "thing" as essence. Every real thing has both essence (specification) and existence (operational capability).

Each idea does different things and would therefore be a different essence. How would you know that you have an idea of a horse as opposed to a unicorn, if those ideas didn't do different things? — Harry Hindu

I never said that the ideas <unicorn> and <horse> do the same things. <Unicorn> refers to actual and potential unicorns while <horse> refers to actual and potential horses. Contingently, there are no actual unicorns, but there are actual horses.

However, thanks for your clarification. From that, it appears we agree on the nature of Shannon information. Where we disagree, is that your original comment was "considering the message materially, as Shannon did". — Galuchat

I think I was by arguing from the bit-by-bit reception of the message instead of from its meaning.

Nonetheless, I was not entirely satisfied with my reply, as it did not close the loop bake to a mental foundation in the case of non-semantic "messages" such as DNA sequences. I left them with the reduction of ontological rather than logical possibility. That left open the possibility of understanding information without reference to a knowing subject.

As a result, I have further reflected on the reduction of ontological possibility . I have come to see that it is convertible with the specification of intelligibility, and, as a potency, intelligibility cannot be understood without reference to its actualization by a knowing subject. Thus, while the reduction of ontological possibility (something being formed) is not logical possibility, it is at the nexus of the logical and logical orders. It is the foundation in reality for our understanding of what is so formed.

Shannon defined information as communicated code (which can apply to physical, biological, and semantic processing), not as "the reduction of logical possibility" (which can only apply to semantic processing). — Galuchat

Shannon wrote:

The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages (Italics added). — Claude Shannon -- A Mathematical Theory of Communication

Shannon then gives three reasons for using logarithms of the number of possible messages to measure information. So, it is clear that Shannon saw information as the reduction of possibility.

In support of your second point, he also says "These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem." However, he is not denying a semantic aspect -- only saying that any semantic aspect is irrelevant to communications engineering. In other words, communications engineering does not deal with information holistically, but in abstraction from its meaning.

That said, I think you're confused about what I am saying -- about what possibility is reduced in Shannon's definition. Messages can be considered formally or materially -- in terms of their meaning, or in terms of their physical character. While related, these are distinct concepts. Shannon, as an engineer, is concerned with the message's physical character, not specifically, but in abstraction as a way of encoding, say, bits.

If we take bits as an example, the engineering problem is that of receiving the bits properly. That problem conceives of the message materially, not formally. We care what the bits are, not what they mean. So far, I think we agree.

Where we disagree is how logical possibility relates to this. You have brought in semantics, pointing out that not all codes communicate meaning to minds. However, that is not what I meant in saying that the the possibility in Shannon's definition is logical. I am considering the message materially, as Shannon did -- not formally (as meaning something) as you are.

Thinking of messages materially, what is logically possible before a bit is received is that the bit can be an a or a b. What each state means semantically, or even in terms of 0s and 1s, is irrelevant to the engineering problem. So, the logic of this logical possibility relates only indirectly to the meaning a bit may evoke (its semantics). It relates to what the bits of the message might be before they are received.

So, as I have said, once the bits are transmitted, they are physically determined and it is no longer physically possible that they be other than they are. What is open before each bit is received, is the logical possibility of what it will be. Even if no mind is informed as each bit is received, the intelligibility of the received message is further determined (its possibilities are reduced). Intelligibility belongs to the logical order, or, perhaps, the ontological order.

Now consider a non-semantic "message," say a DNA sequence. If we are determinists with respect to purely physical processes, as I am, then every purely physical state, together with the laws of nature, determines the subsequent states. As there is only one physical possibility, information cannot reduce the set of physical possibilities. All the execution of the DNA code can do is inform the resulting structure -- reducing what is ontologically possible to what is physically actual.

So, in such cases we are not dealing with the reduction of physical possibilities (because there is only one), or with the reduction of logical possibilities (ignorance), because no one is being informed, but with the reduction of ontological possibility, because being can take many forms beyond that actualized by the DNA code.

I meant the general resurrection. The idea being that the end of man cannot result in an incomplete realization of human nature.

I sent you a message on the immortality thread idea.