Everything he's done since coming down the escalator is a step too far. A thousand times already, it's been 'that's it, now he's done it, there's no coming back from this.' And yet, here we are. — Wayfarer

Don't you think that he's a real threat to society? — Wayfarer

I'm focusing on what consciousness actually is, about explicitly trying to grasp our intuitions about what it is. And you're discussing the how and why, which doesn't make sense in this thread since we didn't even elaborate what it actually is. How can we talk about why and how something was made if we didn't clarify what we're talking about? — Skalidris

The first conclusion is that there are no rational reasons to believe that consciousness always come with the notion of individual. And that therefore, they should be treated as two different matters. The second derives from the first one: there could be several neural networks experiencing consciousness in our brain. — Skalidris

I was quite surprised recently at the number of people I've spoken to that consider other animals as not "conscious".

It's a difficult word to tackle because of semantics but as far as I gathered, they meant has a lack of an "I" sensation/experience of self, therefore little to no agency to apply to a self, and act mindlessly on mere precribed impulses. — Benj96

The strings are our emotions - the predictive system; you're saying that's what controls our actions. — NotAristotle

The predictive system can study itself? — NotAristotle

However this is not a generic thread about qualia and our subjective experience as a consciousness, this is, as the title suggests, a thread about challenging our intuitions of consciousness. How is anything that you wrote a reply to my thread? It seems like you are just expressing your opinion about consciousness. — Skalidris

That is not necessarily what I mean when I speak of "seeing reality as it is." As I am presently using it, I mean seeing reality in contradistinction to the way reality is seen through the lens of an apparent illusion of consciousness. — NotAristotle

But because all of this becomes so extremely complex with maybe thousands of predictions that occur all the time, we don't experience it as such, but instead we experience some emergent phenomena of "being", an illusion that forms out of these basic adaptive functions. — Christoffer

Still, it seems to me that any sort of illusion of reality would be weeded out by evolution in favor of a more honest interface, seems to me like that would have an evolutionary advantage. — NotAristotle

Wouldn't there be the possibility to know one's emotions and thereby know why one is acting? And, is it not the case that if we know how we are going to act, we have the ability to act in a manner contrary to what we are conscious of? — NotAristotle

And, if consciousness really is an illusion, why the illusion? Wouldn't we be better equipped evolutionarily speaking to see the truth; reality as it really is. — NotAristotle

I'm not talking about the limits of knowledge. There is no end of things to discover. I'm talking about the limitations of objectivity as a mode of knowing. — Wayfarer

Not according to Brian Greene: — Wayfarer

This is the sense in which quantum physics definitely mitigates against physicalism, and why you are compelled to dispute it. — Wayfarer

Are your notions here based on work by Daniel Dennett or Thomas Metzinger? — Tom Storm

But the philosophical point about the inherent limitation of objectivity remains. — Wayfarer

I recall a quote from a philosopher of science along the lines of facts being constructed like ships in bottles, carefully made to appear as if the bottle had been built around them. — Wayfarer

If, by 'laws of reality' you mean 'natural law' or 'scientific law', are these themselves physical? I think that is questionable. The standard model of particle physics, for instance, comprises an intricate mathematical model, or set of mathematical hypotheses. But are mathematics part of the physical world that physics studies? This as you know is a contested question, so I'm not proposing it has a yes or no answer. Only that it is an open question, and furthermore, that it's not a scientific questio — Wayfarer

Furthermore physics itself has thrown the observer-independence of phenomena into question. That, of course, is behind the whole debate about the observer problem in physics, and the many contested interpretations of what quantum physics means. I know that is all a can of worms and am not proposing to debate it, other than to say that both the 'physicality' and 'mind-independence' of the so-called 'fundamental particles of physics' are called into question by it. — Wayfarer

If Christoffer responds to this and tries to correct your misconceptions, do you consider it likely that you will be inclined to tell him that his response was too long?

If so, it would be considerate to say so now. — wonderer1

Sorry, I thought you were referring to the post I responded to. We'll see. — Wayfarer

If the problem with explaining apparently emergent phenomena is just that you need a "lot more computational capabilities," then what you have is merely 'weak emergence,' and reduction still works. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would posit myself as a physicalist emergentist. What type is still up in the air since that's a realm depending on yet unproven scientific theories. — Christoffer

A striking feature of quantum mechanics is known as “quantum entanglement”. When two (or more) quantum particles or systems interact in certain ways and are then (even space-like) separated, their measurable features (e.g., position and momentum) will correlate in ways that cannot be accounted for in terms of “pure” quantum states of each particle or system separately.

Your post seems to blend two ideas though. That our conceptual framework is fundementally lacking, and that we simply lack computational power adequate to "brute force," our way through these issues. I would just ask if these are the same position vis-á-vis emergence? — Count Timothy von Icarus

With the former view, I do think it's quite fair to ask if superveniance and thus "emergence" are even framed in the right terms, using the right categories. This is in line with process-based critiques of the entire problem, that it rests on bad assumptions baked into science that go back as far as Parmenides. The "lack of computational power," explanation seems like a different sort of explanation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I've noted, this conditions a lot of what you write. Hence, 'the blind spot'. — Wayfarer

Hence the mind-created world. — Wayfarer

Why would these preclude an identical systematical object producing consciousness? Surely an 'artificial' system which is based upon the current iteration of the human brain, in all it's complexity, would include all of the results of that developmental period, thus providing a commensurate system that 'takes into account' the goals which its development 'pushed toward'?

I'm not tied to that, so my question then becomes: How does the 'history' change the actual 'formula' which results in consciousness? Is this a meld of physical and non-physical properties? — AmadeusD

"guiding principles" "to form" "goal" I don't mean to be overly critical - do you mean these terms metaphorically or literally? — NotAristotle

Consciousness emerging from anything we currently know of, seems magical to me.
The idea that a system which mimics hte brain can result in conscious experience seems to comport with the fact that the brain does either produce, or receive consciousness. What's special about hte brain?

I realise, that is the question to some degree - I just have no reason to think it is yet. — AmadeusD

Although wonderer1 and Christoffer may disagree with me, I think it is not possible. And I think it is not possible because of the kind of history that is needed, specifically a biological history, for consciousness. This may be more of a local, as opposed to a global explanation, of why one system is conscious but not another, but I think a historical explanation is adequate.

I am of the opinion now that consciousness may be fundamentally physical, at least I have no qualms with that being the case. — NotAristotle

I'm just looking for what it is that makes something emergent. Mainly as opposed to reduction. — Banno

Show us how in terms of the Lorenz contractor. — Banno

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <style>
        body {
            margin: 0;
            overflow: hidden;
            background-color: #f0f0f0;
        }

        canvas {
            display: block;
        }
    </style>
    <script>
        const canvas = document.createElement('canvas');
        document.body.appendChild(canvas);

        const ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');
        canvas.width = window.innerWidth;
        canvas.height = window.innerHeight;

        const lorenzSystem = (x, y, z, sigma, rho, beta, dt) => {
            const deviation = (Math.random() - 0.5) * 0.1; // 10% random deviation
            const dx = (sigma * (y - x) + deviation) * dt;
            const dy = (x * (rho - z) - y + deviation) * dt;
            const dz = (x * y - beta * z + deviation) * dt;

            return {
                x: x + dx,
                y: y + dy,
                z: z + dz
            };
        };

        const drawDot = (x, y, size, color) => {
            ctx.beginPath();
            ctx.arc(x, y, size, 0, Math.PI * 2);
            ctx.fillStyle = color;
            ctx.fill();
        };

        const animate = () => {
            const sigma = 10;
            const rho = 28;
            const beta = 8 / 3;
            const dt = 0.01;

            let x = 1;
            let y = 1;
            let z = 1;

            const emergentTerm = () => Math.sin(Date.now() * 0.001) * 0.5;

            const renderFrame = () => {
                const { x: newX, y: newY, z: newZ } = lorenzSystem(x, y, z, sigma, rho, beta, dt);

                const lorenzX = newX * 10 + canvas.width / 2;
                const lorenzY = newY * 10 + canvas.height / 2;

                // Check for random deviation and split the trajectory
                if (Math.random() < 0.1) {
                    const emergentX = lorenzX + Math.cos(emergentTerm()) * 50;
                    const emergentY = lorenzY + Math.sin(emergentTerm()) * 50;

                    drawDot(lorenzX, lorenzY, 1, '#3498db'); // Blue dot (Lorenz system)
                    drawDot(emergentX, emergentY, 2, '#e74c3c'); // Red dot (Emergent part)
                } else {
                    drawDot(lorenzX, lorenzY, 1, '#3498db'); // Blue dot (Lorenz system)
                }

                x = newX;
                y = newY;
                z = newZ;

                requestAnimationFrame(renderFrame);
            };

            renderFrame();
        };

        window.addEventListener('resize', () => {
            canvas.width = window.innerWidth;
            canvas.height = window.innerHeight;
        });

        animate();
    </script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

No, why would it? The only thing at stake would be whether the term 'emergence' would be used, which is not super rigorous. — hypericin

I've always been skeptical of that. People pass out from far lesser interruptions to cerebral blood flow than the total catastrophe of beheading. More likely it was some involuntary muscle contractions, fancifully interpreted. — hypericin

Consciousness doesn’t emerge as a property any more than unconsciousness does, or happiness, or sadness, or anger. I do not think that it’s possible to show someone acquires more properties, or different properties, should she shift her emotions from one to the other, or when he falls asleep. The properties required for any state of emotion, consciousness, feeling, or mind are already present. No such thing emerges. Rather, the body changes in ways that are observable. — NOS4A2

For me, “consciousness” appears as the last refuge for those who wish to rescue the doctrine of the soul. — NOS4A2

An alternative opts for two distinct descriptions, A and B, that use different terms to talk about the same thing. This is sometimes called dualism, sometimes supervenience. This is not unproblematic, but may be preferrable to the confusion of reduction and emergence.

Perhaps we could ask, how is emergence not simply reduction, backwards? — Banno

Isn't emergence no more than Emperor Reduction in his new clothes? — Banno

If consciousness emerges from brains, then consciousness would emerge from something functionally equivalent to a brain, correct? — RogueAI

Imagine a sphere in front of you (tennis ball size) at arms length. Now bisect it vertically and examine the two halves.

Can you do that? Easy right. The way your brain does it is nothing like a computer operates. — Mark Nyquist

'They' being 'philosophers'. Seeking facts, would be the better description, 'truth' is too polyvalent a term. — Wayfarer

Yes, I understand that, but what is is about brains that makes them conscious? There must be something about brains that makes them necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness. What makes brains so special? — RogueAI

the evolutionary necessity can simply be boiled down and explained through the human species starting with the evolutionary trait of adaptability, the need for it. Humans are highly adaptable in nature when speaking of only our basic body functions. Adaptability is an extremely powerful evolutionary trait, especially for animals that move over large distances and climates. It is not far fetched that the whole reason we developed our level of consciousness is due to this adaptability, a function that makes us able to plan and change behaviors according to the environment. This increase in complexity developed through evolution would then, just like other emergent systems of high complexities, produce new functions that weren't part of the intended simple function. That in order to be adaptable, we developed systems to recognize, memorize and formulate visualized scenarios in order to be able to plan our next moves. These systems together would be able to produce a new level of complexity which may be the reason why subjectivity occurs. — Christoffer

What is it about the brain that makes it the seat of consciousness? — RogueAI

In 1905, a French physician sought to find out. He attended an execution and stood close to the guillotine. He approached as soon as the severed head tumbled into the basket below and called out the man’s name.

He claimed the eyelids lifted and the man looked briefly at him before lowering his gaze. The physician called his name again and received a similar response. The man did not respond to a third prompt. The physician concluded based on his observations that a severed head could retain consciousness for 25 to 30 seconds.

If a complex phenomenon manifests properties that are not present in its components, and could never have been predicted by studying the components, these properties can be described as emergent. But this doesn't explain anything at all. — hypericin

Briefly, can you sketch out your reasoning for why consciousness emerges from brains and not, say, hearts? Or livers? And why are only some brain functions conscious? Do you think some information processing is required for consciousness to emerge? — RogueAI

There are countless examples of emergence in nature. Why should we think that particular arrangements and complexities of matter/ energy cannot produce novel qualities? For a start, think about chemistry. How reliable do you believe your intuitions are on this? — Janus

What matters in the case of consciousness is the thing that is conscious, — NOS4A2

I think on your very, very long post you went off the rails in your very first paragraph.

A physical object is always going to be primary and it's definition will be secondary. If there is any ambiguity about what the parameters of the physical object are they should be resolved by setting parameters on the physical object.

If the definition of the word you are using doesn't match the physical object.then you are using the wrong word. — Mark Nyquist

The idealists, when held to account, find that they are unable to give a simple account of error, or even of their not being alone. The physicalist uses words like "reduction" or "emergence", waving a hand in the air when asked what such things might actually be. — Banno

The alternative to both is found most explicitly in that grandmother of philosophy, Mary Midgley, but can be seen in other Oxbridge philosophers from the middle of last century. It's simply that we use different types of explanation in different situations, that we need not, indeed ought not, commit to there being a single monolithic explanation of everything.

The world is far too interesting for that. — Banno

Maybe Christoffer can articulate it in a way that I can't see how to at the moment, but I can point to examples. For instance, suppose I have designed a voltmeter. When an instance of such a voltmeter is powered, it has the emergent property of displaying a number corresponding to the voltage applied to the input terminals. That emergent property supervenes on the particular properties of components within that specific instance of the voltmeter design.

Another instance of the same voltmeter design might have a different emergent property due to having different specific components. For example, voltmeter A may be more accurate than voltmeter B. Because the emergent accuracy of voltmeter B supervenes on B's components, changing the emergent accuracy of voltmeter B would require a change in one or more of the specific components of B that the emergent property supervenes on. — wonderer1

"emergence," being any sort of magic wand for difficulties in forming an ontology — Count Timothy von Icarus

"How do you combine a bunch of building blocks and get something completely new that wasn't in the blocks to start with?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Even if you really really really believe it, it doesn't falsify physicalism. — wonderer1

It is long. And it provides no insight. Could be wrong, but that seems the case to me. — AmadeusD

I tend towards dismissing your arguments in the same spirit that you trend to dismiss a vast range of philosophical spirituality as ‘religious fantasy’. You strike me as a highly intelligent and articulate atheist with cast-iron convictions. — Wayfarer

Whereas I see philosophy (and in some ways, religion) as being precisely the concern with what Victor Frankl called ‘man’s search for meaning’. But you dismiss it as an infantile search for comfort, as being like thumb-sucking. That’s how it comes across to me. — Wayfarer

And the reason I tend towards being dismissive is because I couldn’t say anything inside what you consider valid terms of reference which could hold any sway. What you’re asking for is a scientific explanation of what is outside the purview of scientific explanations. Whereas I feel you’re saying, if something is outside the purview of science, then how could it be worth considering? — Wayfarer

Again, a very, very long post, which unfortunately shows no insight into the fundamental plight of existence, which is precisely the sense of separateness and the accompanying anxiety that this produces. But, of course, that is dismissed on account of it being 'religious'. — Wayfarer

If monism and evolution are true, emergence must be true. — creativesoul

Okay so if I'm understanding you correctly, what I'm calling a physical process emerges from, is a result of, not the physical fundamentals, rather it is the result of the interaction of those fundamentals where that interaction results in properties that were otherwise not present. — NotAristotle

As an analogy, H2O, the result of interaction between atoms, is a liquid at room temperature, while oxygen and hydrogen atoms, the constituents, do not have the property of being liquid at room temperature. — NotAristotle

With respect to emergent properties - the emergent qualities of substances like glass or water as analogies do not really provide the basis of explanations for consciousness in terms of emergence. New properties can emerge from simpler constituents—glass from sand, liquidity from a combination of hydrogen and oxygen. These examples show that a whole can indeed have properties that its constituent parts do not possess individually, a central idea in emergence theory. — Wayfarer

However while these examples demonstrate physical and chemical emergence, they do not adequately address the unique challenges posed by consciousness. The emergence of physical properties like the transparency of glass or the liquidity of water can be (and have been) completely explained through physical and chemical processes. These are objective properties that can be observed and measured from an external perspective. — Wayfarer

Consciousness, on the other hand, presents a different kind of problem. It's not just about the emergence of new properties but about the emergence of the capacity for subjective experience. This includes what it feels like to see, feel pain, or taste. This subjective quality is what is not observable or measurable in terms of objective properties of chemical substances. And that is by design, as by design, scientific observation excludes the subject. — Wayfarer

Even if we fully understood the brain's physical and biological attributes - and we're a very long way from that - we might still lack an explanation for how these attributes give rise to subjective experience. There is an incommensurability involved which is not bridgeable in terms of more data. This gap in understanding leads us to question whether the concept of emergence, as understood in physical sciences, is sufficient to explain consciousness, or whether it is, at best, just another analogy or metaphor (or straw to grasp at). — Wayfarer

I'm sympathetic to the idea of something like "physicalism without reductionism," but as is discussed earlier in this thread, I'm not sure such a thing currently makes much sense with how physicalism is generally defined. Physicalism might have to become just a vague commitment to naturalism and metaphysical realism to deal with strong emergence (which, to be fair, I think that's how many people colloquially use the term). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would say with high confidence that most scientists do not spend much time focused on the ontology of physicalism, problems related to supervenience, the causal closure principle, etc. Kim's argument against the possibility of strong emergence, given a substance metaphysics, seems very strong. Given that, strong emergence doesn't seem to be an option for physicalism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

To be sure, I've seen theoreticians who do end up having to consider things like Kim's work suggest a move to a process metaphysics. But this move probably requires jettisoning a lot of what makes physicalism "physicalism."

It's an example of Hemple's Dilemma, I guess. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What I wanted to ask you is, can you say more about "emergent physicalism?" Is it roughly the same as "process physicalism" (my thesis here is that consciousness just is a physical process) ? — NotAristotle

I have no fear of science. Your posts are too long to deal with. — Wayfarer

It's like the waiter blaming math for you not able to count your money correctly when failing to pay for dinner — Christoffer

But that is the very essence of 'scientism' (link to wikipedia.) Note the sinister overtones of 'deviating from knowledge'.

I think your arguments are influenced by what Thomas Nagel describes in his essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. (Nagel is not a religious apologist, and that essay is written from the perspective of analytical philosophy. I can provide a reference to it if need be.) — Wayfarer

But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective.

This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess. This in turn leads to the over-valuation of objectivity as the sole criterion for truth.

But it is not until all of these disparate elements are synthesized into Gestalts that meaning emerges.

As a matter of fact, they exist only as claims made by sentient beings, with no material evidence to back up those claims. Indeed, brain scans reveal electrical activity, but do not display sensations or inner experience.

our cognitive construction of the world is not itself amongst the objects of the natural sciences, and so is deprecated by physicalism, even though, in a fundamental sense, the physical sciences depend on it. This points towards the fundamental contradiction in the physicalist conception of the world.

... the way in which our technology– and science–dominated culture accentuates the division between mind and world, self and other. Coming to understand the sense in which ‘mind creates world’ offers a radically new perspective and way of exploring this division.

That would be something like Popper’s ‘promissory materialism’, would it not? Popper coined this term to critique a particular stance within the philosophy of mind. This stance holds that physicalist explanations for all mental phenomena will eventually be found, even if current scientific understanding falls short. Popper saw this as a kind of "promissory note" – a belief in future explanations based on physicalism, despite a lack of current evidence or understanding. It is difficult to disentangle from scientism, the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion or marginalization of any other perspective. Like promissory materialism, scientism assumes that science will eventually provide answers to all questions, including those traditionally addressed by philosophy, the humanities, or religions.

The cardinal difficulty with both views is that it neglects or ignores a fundamental starting axiom of scientific method, which is limiting the scope of enquiry to the realm of objective fact, and in so doing, also disregarding the role of the scientist in choosing which questions to pose and how they should be posed. And that can’t be dealt with by the idea of emergence, because in that paradigm, the very faculty which poses the questions is supposed to be the outcome or effect of some prior and presumably physical causal chain, by some unknown means - which we’ll work out in future, promise! — Wayfarer

Notice the scope of that claim - not about those things which are objectively measurable and about which we may arrive at inter-subjective agreement, but anything. So here science is being presented not only as an authority, but as a moral authority.

Maybe (as I suspect) that's a claim that scientists themselves would not make, regardless it is true that science is looked to as the 'arbiter of reality'. — Wayfarer

You ask "Who cares what the politicians say?" Well, we know the effects can be from what politicians say -- right there. Without Trump urging them on, those people would not have marched on the Capitol. — GRWelsh

If you are a physicalist, what convinced you? Or is it just the grounding of your thinking? — frank

That strengthens Ciorans point in suicide. We are put in an impossible situation. The nostalgia for “unbirth” can never be attained. It doesn’t negate choosing not to impose the very dilemma on another. — schopenhauer1