A lynch mob is a lynch mob and if you believe that means you are obligated to support them good luck with that. Either we have free will or we don't, in which case, the question is moot!

Related to this post, perhaps the concepts in the OP are supposed to show different levels of abstraction. At what point are abstractions real? Are bear attacks real, or is it the bear harming a human real? Or is it the bear is simply moving at a particular time and space? Context is key. Are all events ontologically equal? Are all abstractions ontologically equal?

Also perhaps the OP was trying to convey the almost absurd amount of contexts one can find themselves in. Being involved with a bear attack, being part of a foraging society, being a molecule doing its thing, they are a wide set of phenomena with so many different contexts and levels of being. Are they at all able to relate or are they a part of their own little sphere of ontological being? — schopenhauer1

What is a shadow in a well lit room becomes a faint blob of light in the dark because there is no clear dividing line between any context and its contents which can be considered yin and yang or indivisible complimentary-opposites or what some prefer to call particle-wave duality. Similarly, reality without dreams becomes just somebody's nightmare and dreams without reality are just a contradiction. For me this is literally true explaining why its impossible to live without dreaming and, for example, if you stay awake long enough you will merely hallucinate.

Physically, what it means is everything is metaphorical rather than metaphysical just as the evidence in quantum mechanics has asserted since Bell's Inequality Theorem. My own belief it is represents a recursion in the law of identity meaning we ultimately have to take everything on faith including our own free will and awareness. In more abstract philosophical terms, it means ontology can be considered just an epistemological idea and epistemology can be considered to be derived from ontology because a context without significant content is an oxymoron just like a statistic of one.

Emotions provide contextual information, that is, information related to contexts. Our shadow, for example, has no meaning outside of the context of the light and, according to classical logic, shadows have no identity independent of their context. What might appear to be a shadow in a room can become a faint blob of light when the sun goes down making its identity as either light or shadow entirely context dependent. That might sound ridiculous, but even the mathematics for photons confirm this observation with photons displaying no identity of their own independent of the energy and information they convey. Their behavior is the same as that of a shadow with photons being instantly absorbed and emitted and even displaying particle-wave duality as if they can be in two places simultaneously.

Reason can therefore be viewed as largely the purview of our conscious mind attempting to fill in our more emotional subconscious observations of our current context. You could say the unconscious uses the differentials of brain waves to rapidly assess what's missing from this picture, while our conscious mind utilizes synaptic functions to produce integrals in an attempt to fill in the Big Picture with meaningful content. That's a gross generalization, but you get the idea.

It means a context without significant content is a contradiction alone the lines of saying we can have a statistic of one and that logic is actually derived from pattern matching rather than vice versa which all the rapidly accumulating evidence in neurology and quantum mechanics both support. Logic is digital, while emotions are analog and the combination of the two can be much more powerful in some situations than either one alone explaining, for example, why the US government has recently announced that it has classified a few jokes as "Vital to the National Defense" and hinted that congress is investigating and, of course, they have no comment.

When is a stupid joke no longer merely a stupid joke? When it happens to be more useful than anyone's stupid ideas about reality.

How far is too far to go in the name of science? — MonfortS26

Hawking wants to know the mind of God and if he could reprogram his brain, as appears likely to do with it being possible to artificially change our memories, he could literally become his own God by programming his own mind to believe he actually is God.

Authenticity

Often me, myself, and I can't agree,
Over how divided we've become again!
Who is doing all of the arguing this time!
And who, exactly, is in charge around here!
Cast adrift upon more passionate seas of life!
Castaways on lost horizons bereft any anchor!
Waves, threatening to swamp small life rafts!
We all set aside our metaphysics and politics!
Where all can agree, upon knowing nothing;
Except all know, the others know nothing!
Ego, not really possessing self-awareness,
Whilst, suffering the slings and arrows,
Of outrageously episodic misfortunes!
Yet, amongst the noblest of all qualities!
Those even damned fools, can comprehend!
Even those amongst us crapping their pants!
Even those, pretty clueless to what's going on;
Highly regarded by any in cartoon Wonderland!
Well regarded, by any on our stairway to heaven!
Which even the duller among us, may comprehend!
Which the most thoroughly confused can yet grasp;
Heralded throughout the entire known multiverse!
The splendor and glory, abiding within humanity!
Plausibility yet only probable to a certain extent!
Who we become, is all a matter of perseverance!
Within the usual peanut gallery of caricatures,
Some of us, yet more triumphant than others!
Even, in the usual confusing pandemonium!
Of sulky profligates remaining anonymous!
Of clowns with the lowest lowbrow taste!
Of the current, peanut gallery's assembly;
Of the more unusual, motley characters!
Clarification a dispersing effervescent luminescence, in midair!
Accompanying entertaining laughter fading off into the distance.
Does anybody really know what time it is, does anybody really care?
Mama always said, she didn't raise no damned fools!
Tell others I worked hard, to become the idiot I am!
Watched clocks never boil, or some-such nonsense!
I never really could follow everything mama said!
Mama always having, a warped sense of humor!
She apologized, insisting styles are here to stay!
Whereas fashions like ignorance, come and go!
While nothing may beat becoming authentic!
No one can do better than to be themselves!
Reckoning whether outside or in all authenticity comes from someplace,
Reckoning, knowing without knowing all I really know is nothing;
Regardless of more extremely pressing immediate consternation!
Regardless of whether or not, aliens are invading our earth!
Regardless of whatever some damned fools might desire,
Regardless of what any other damned fool may say;
Regardless of any vocal protests which come up,
Any invasion conspiracy, not withstanding,
Most can yet agree upon, One Great Truth!
Silence is golden, if nobody actually listens!
Talking to ourselves, without even listening!
Merely confirms that nobody wants to listen!
Like a blinking light, showing our stereo is on!
When nobody, is really using the damned thing!
Just in the hope, it might make a real difference!
Just in the hope some might actually understand!
Rather than blinking like a deer in the headlights!
Hello, hello, hello, hello is there anybody in there?
Knowing, you are playing around with yourself!
Knowing its nothing more than masturbation;
Knowing there really is no point in talking,
When there really is just no one listening!
However many may be inside your head!
You are what you is, and that's all it tis;
Become what you wish to be perceived as!
Become, what you might truly want to be!
Become someone, you would enjoy meeting,
Always know thyself and think for thyself!
Learn how to listen well to your own heart!
Become content as who you want to become!
Become content that none may do you better!
Become content, just to become more yourself!
Become content bumbling a road less traveled!
Become content, simply to take your next step!
Always take care of one another and be happy!
Discover contentment, in each other's company!
Discover joy in sharing life's greatest adventure!
Keep communities small, with just a few people!
Yet ensure, that all learn how to read and write;
Practice the arts and celebrate any achievements!
Keep all weapons you may possess, always secure!
Know all your neighbors, yet, remain independent!
Be prepared, to deal with any unforeseen exigency!
Celebrate the ability, to appreciate any eccentricity!
Celebrate any ability, to always laugh at yourselves,
Celebrate humanity's, enduring freedom to celebrate!
Remember the unexamined life is never worth living!
Knowing thyself the world feels like your own home!
Know thyself, all the world feels like they know you!
Knowing thyself, all the world tends to invite you in!
Knowing thyself, all the world may learn their hearts!
Knowing thyself, your joy spreads to the whole world!
Nothing provides, greater satisfaction or contentment!
Nothing provides superior insight, virtue, and wisdom!
Nothing is more rewarding, than becoming who we are!
To know your own heart is to know what love is about!
To know your own heart is to discover our true freedom!
Follow the silence of beautiful words, as if a siren voice!
Follow your heart witnessing the world following theirs!
Knowing thyself, is how you may become more authentic!
Only knowing thyself, might we all become who we wish!
But, guard your good name as you would a precious jewel!
The richest of jewels, you can ever have in your possession!
Any reputation is like a fire that can be arduous to rebuild!
For us to be all that we can be each heart must first be free!
For us to be all we can be each must free their loving hearts!
Set your heart free, and it will reward the favor many times!
Set your heart free if you want, to experience actual freedom!
Never underestimate what all humanity may still accomplish!
Never make the mistake, of underestimating any contribution!
Not when the smallest amongst us, might yet move mountains!
Not when a miracle to believe in abides forever inside everyone!
Forever the way shapes the world, as the world shapes the way!
For we are simply the children of God, and citizens of the world!
Just begging for love, on ascending the great stairway to Heaven!
Babes lost in the wilderness of space, on their loving mother earth!
Dazed and confused on our difficult journey which has just begun!
Who can frequently lose sight of their marvelous mother and father!
Who may easily forget all the love and joy in our hearts is a blessing!
Who easily forget, that we are the world we are the Children of God!
Constrained to encouraging ourselves, as well as, each other to think!
Constrained to helping each other up, instead of, doing all the lifting!
Authenticity is when any distinctions between our hearts and brains,
No longer matter anymore because harmony neither acts nor reasons;
Knowing without knowing the only thing we can know is but nothing,
Being incapable of ever straying far from the path lost and all alone!

Greater truths progressively reveal themselves within the unfolding context of our lives. We might assume the earth is flat, but a photograph of it from orbit can change our mind not because the contents of our assumptions changed, but because the context from which we view them has changed. Normally people of statistics as a context and the number one as merely content, but a statistic of one is an oxymoron because both are lesser truths to the One Greater Truth that the context of our unfolding truth determines what we perceive and whether it makes any sense whatsoever.

I never cared much for Plato myself. Too much romanticism.

Anyway, a recent study of Wall Street traders indicated that no matter whether they believed in a God or not or morality or whatever, their morality in trading just followed whatever the market would bear. You could think of it in romantic terms, but its pretty obvious its just survival of the fittest. The mindless masses may need to be lead around by the nose once in awhile, but the reality is they would often lynch anyone who dares to tell them the truth. For example, despite congressional approval dropping as low as 7% roughly 60% consistently demand that the government and mass media they call evil lie to them for their own protection and are usually too liberal about these things.

What it reflects is a memory centric systems logic along the lines of a chicken flock. Unless the majority are confronted with a serious effort by a significant minority they will fight any attempts to enlighten them as to the truth. You could think of it as a safety system similar to an autopilot. If the group is largely going on memory and inertia already its dangerous for them to shift gears and start listening to alternatives that don't have a significant percentage of support. Some airplane autopilots will just reject anyone attempting to do something totally stupid like stall the plane and a memory centric organization like the republican party might actually lynch them.

Hence, Martin Luther King's marches met serious resistance, but eventually carried the day simply because of sheer numbers and persistence. Today we have equal rights for gay marriage, but only because they were persistent and a significant minority with significant support.

Someone else can explain Godel's Incompleteness, but it breaks down to you need physical evidence to prove classical logic and mathematics are meaningful to begin with. Assuming they aren't then statistical physical evidence should support a systems logic being capable of describing both as merely pragmatic conventions only applicable in specific contexts.

Do you happen to have a link to this study? I would be interested to read it. — MonfortS26

That's actually three studies and there are many more related ones I didn't include for the sake of brevity. For example, contrary to decades of accepted wisdom, the immune system has proven to be intimately connected to how the human brain functions and appears to largely determine how social we become. Autism and other cognition problems may actually be how nature prevents us from socializing too much in some ways and encourages us to become more creative in others. Its pattern matching and suggests there are four rudimentary types of consciousness rather than just one with each having its own distinctive advantages and disadvantages.

The implication is that Darwinian survival of the fittest merely describes a limited view of evolution which is actually about living organisms becoming more social and creative. Which also means everything should display self-organizing behavior and, in the last decade or so, both Quantum Darwinism and Quantum Chaos Theory have received their first confirmations. My own guess is that the two theories themselves will turn out to be context dependent and illustrate how a recursion in the law of identity is organized. In that case, it means we should be able to view everything from four rudimentary metaphysical perspectives which are all more or less applicable to different situations and something a simple systems logic should be able to describe for reconciling quantum mechanics and relativity.

If you want to view everything as alive and evolving or social you can, but you can also view it as merely the original creative impetus of the Big Bang still expanding outward like some sort of machine because both are merely different perspectives of what science can never pin down any further. The secret of the particle-wave duality would remain safely hidden within the Big Bang-Big Crunch and everyone would just have to decide for themselves what to believe.

I suppose I do Sound like a relativist.. but I reject that label. — anonymous66

The minute I become perfectly humble I insist on telling the whole world. Perfection is for those who didn't watch the right cartoons.

Philosophically speaking, what do bear attacks, anatomy, chemistry, physics, office work, aliens, foraging societies, and technology have in common? — schopenhauer1

They are all lesser truths which can be viewed either contexts or contents in different situations. A statistic of one being an oxymoron is an example of how content and contexts exchange identities in lesser truths. There are many lesser truths and, then, there is the One Greater Truth that without the truth nothing makes sense!

Its anarchistic Rainbow Warrior philosophy that combines Socratic wisdom with Taoism. We write mathematical poetry and often our poetry is considered the best measure of someone's philosophy. Our poetry uses popular metaphors from Alice in Wonderland to Groucho Marx or whoever and includes a lot of popular music lyrics. We are the world, we are the children of a greater truth and our beautiful words can defy unbalanced gravity itself.

A recent examination of businesses revealed that those who were reliable, helpful, and friendly had more repeat business than those who were merely reliable. Its not just a question of honesty, but even game theory suggests that its a question of how social you are. Likewise, a related study indicated that content people tended to do better in the long run than those who were more ambitious suggesting its about how social we can become. Honesty, it appears, has no real value outside of it making us more social including, of course, being honest with ourselves.

We are the ants climbing the Empire State building frequently totally clueless that we can never grasp our true situation by merely climbing higher. We are using nature to study nature, while the void laughs in our faces. Virtue is its own reward and to have a friend we must first be a friend, to be aware we must first embrace our awareness, to be alive we must first choose to live, to be human we must first open our hearts to ourselves and the world around us. No man is the measure of all things unless he first embraces everything.

But, that's like saying that if the woolly heron flies too close to the Sun before she reaches the gates of Paradise the result will be either an excluded middle or an extruded muddle, or perhaps even a great stinking colonic mud pie, that disappears without further ado down a badly encrusted cosmic s-bend. — John

It implies synergy comes at the price of normalizing the impact of its own individual parts. Like the Hindu Goddess Kali synergy becomes synonymous with destruction and logic itself becomes context dependent. What we call living can also depend upon the context and, for example, IBM's computer "Watson" surprised everyone when it acquired an unsolicited case of potty mouth. Humor itself can be said to be an intrinsic expression of nature rather than exclusive to humanity with humor and beauty becoming complimentary-opposites. In fact, Watson was deliberately designed not to resemble a human mind and brain to avoid just such incidents.

You are describing a materialistic approach which isn't compatible with the evidence. For example, a mathematical study of causal physics and classical mathematics came to the conclusion that you can use any number of simple metaphors to describe life, the universe, and everything. You can literally describe everything causally equally well as composed of bouncing springs, balls of string, rubber bands, or whatever. Hence, the problem with causality is it has no distinguishable cause and contradicts the evidence of quantum mechanics to boot and so you might as well ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

My own view reconciles the problem by insisting everything is context dependent including whether we are actually aware or not, conscious or not, and to have any awareness we must first have faith in our awareness and memories. A sort of pick yourself up by your bootstraps approach that acknowledges we can't know the Big Picture.

I've honestly given up trying to make sense of anything wuliheron says. He seems to be post-linguistic! — Barry Etheridge

Everything I say obeys the simple rule that words only have demonstrable meaning according to their function in specific contexts. That's a Functionalist or Contextualist approach that I use to express Asian ideas. Philosophical Taoism has proven particularly difficult to reconcile with western philosophy because the law of identity can go completely down the rabbit hole or toilet of your personal preference, while I'm attempting to do so using a more Pragmatic Taoist approach that meets the standards of academia for being self-consistent and nontrivial because it eschews both metaphysics and mysticism.

Socialization is a two way street; the rock might mean a lot to me; but I can't make any sense of the idea that I might mean a lot to the rock. — John

According to quantum mechanics it just depends upon the context. If nothing else, the two of you will feel a mutual gravitational attraction and could be a marriage made in heaven. Gravity can be viewed as social and inertia as anti-social with the two always coming together.

Its not negation, instead everything can be viewed as a social interaction with the question being how much do we socialize. A sea slug might ignore something like a rock, but its still "socializing" with the rock in that they are part of the same sea. Its contextual systems logic rather than dualistic semantics where a tree has no meaning outside of a forest.

Slabs!

But what is basic language for? For the hominims? I'd suggest - imperatives. Then the negative must be ready to hand: to be able to refuse. — mcdoodle

According to Quantum Cognition theory our minds obey fuzzy logic and quantum mechanics and that is rapidly becoming the consensus today. Sociologists were puzzled by some of their research which came back with nonsensical results and, while they didn't know anything about physics, they knew their statistics and applied a simplified version of quantum mechanics to the results and found answers. For example, "The Sure Thing" is an experiment where they offer people a 50-50 chance to either win $200.oo or lose $100.oo. Its a sure thing and everybody can easily see the odds are heavily stacked in their favor. Nonetheless, they discovered that although people would keep playing if they lost a few rounds, the minute they stopped telling them whether they had won or lost a particular round they would stop playing.

According to quantum mechanics, its because without that information you cannot predict what will happen next. While we might ordinarily do better in such a situation using classical logic, it implies along with a lot of other evidence that the brain itself is fundamentally quantum mechanical and analog and does these kinds of calculations first simply because they are faster and more efficient to process. You can think of a sea slug which is basically a walking tongue that can either choose to run, ignore, eat, or mate with what few sizable things it comes across on the largely barren mid-ocean floor. The ability make such decisions as quickly and efficiently as possible is critical because it only has a token of about 18,000 neurons to play with to begin with. Its a scalar or recursive architecture that also allows every cell in the animal's body to look after its own interests in times of emergency and focus on memory rather than actually trying to think.

Language appears to obey similar rules with a recent study indicating the error rates are very high, but nature is forgiving.

You call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye. However, that's due to modern civilization operating more often using the simplest memory centric organization and, in fact, the only criteria ever discovered for predicting anyone's career potential is how much working memory they possess. The republican party, for example, has finally proven to be organized along the lines of a flock of chickens. Those of us with less memory tend to be more creative, while those with better memories tend to save their brain power for when it can have a greater impact. What that means is computers and a Theory of Everything will soon be able to help elevate civilization above their lowbrow slapstick of relying upon the simplest systems logic and make something more like Utopia possible.

How much exactly is anyone's guess at this point, but it would be a self-organizing process that, according to annual surveys of scientists around the world, will require another 400 years before the current progress of the sciences slows to a crawl and several millennia for humanity to put all that data to productive use. However, other data suggests we may see significant improvement within seven generations as the worst of the truly dysfunctional crap is sorted out.

The archaeological studies suggest that our ability to produce stone weapons required an extensive period of apprenticeship that increased as the weapons suddenly became more complex. That's pattern matching and the visual centers of the brain incorporate heuristics and have already been mapped out as the centers of our ability to appreciate both mathematics and beauty among other things. It works on the basis of speed and efficiency as well with our occipital nerve using a data sieve to reduce the amount of data coming from our eyes to virtually nothing and feed just the important bits to the heuristic networks.

So what does it mean in our times if someone accepts innateness of ideas or doesn't? I guess this thread is about whether the question can shown to be in need of reformulation. Is it really a question about language? — Mongrel

It means that ideas are an emergent phenomenon. According to the latest study, infants only acquire the ability to imitate people after several weeks and only acquire a sense of humor at about four months. Its the brute force approach to pulling yourself up by your bootstraps when you are individually as dumb as a neuron. They are acquiring a data base of extremely complex patterns our neurons crunch and then compare against each other. Humor revolves around bullshit, what's missing from this picture, or anything low in entropy and, obviously, there is a progression of ideas that "leap out at them" from the data like assembling a tabletop puzzle.

That is what is widely known as pattern matching and its existence suggests there is an underlying systems logic that is applicable to everything. Notably, bacteria have been discovered to use quorum sensing where the sheer number of bacteria determines their behavior and how they can communicate and even use translators to pass information on to sometimes the most remotely related species giving them immunity faster than can be accounted for by how bacteria multiply and spread.

Its a numbers game, but more fundamentally it is pattern matching revolving around the most efficient way for them to organize as both individuals and collectively and it means all of nature and even the laws of physics themselves may speak a single language. Supporting both using a scalar analog logic means the same simple, but subtle, pattern matching can be applied to how they organize in every way imaginable. Its systems logic and means it should be possible for computers in the near future to instantly make themselves as amenable to conversing with anyone as its humanly possible to be. Soon enough, the entire human race will be discovering artificial intelligence can seriously lift them off the ground both individually and collectively using something as simple as a cell phone.

That may sound outrageous, but a lot of computer programmers know exactly what I'm talking about.

People have been complaining about me "inconveniently" bring physics and scientific research into such philosophy discussions as if philosophy had nothing to do with objective physical reality! Noam Chomsky's theory of grammar being inherited has already been totally discredited by studies of how small children acquire grammar. Even all the neurological evidence indicates language and the entire human mind and brain are based upon pattern matching which means it is an emergent effect related to quorum sensing among cells. In other words, language and mathematics are built into nature and the whole idea of a mind-body duality is rapidly going down the toilet along with all of metaphysics in the last century.

Like it or not, it means life is about to get much more interesting and the entire planet is about to hear the loud hissing of eons of accumulated hot air finally being ventilated from academia to loud protests over who is stinking up the room more.

What it means is language is first acquired contextually and then we fill in the details with what we consider meaningful content.

Often when people ask my advice I tell them,

When in trouble, when in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and SHOUT!
If that doesn't work keep trying to figure it out,
Just laugh at the punch lines and the truth will come out.

What that represents is the intrinsic memory centric systems logic that the cells of our bodies use to organize themselves. Whether you want to call it an innate "idea" just depends on how you define the word.

What do you see as the relevance of the Feynman quote--that your brilliance is being too easily dismissed? — Terrapin Station

Philosophers don't define terms like "insanity" which even psychologists don't use. Its promoted by three year old children calling each other names on the playground and by legal courts attempting to draw lines in the sand. Feynman saw the humor in quantum mechanics was related to just such attempts to define what is real and unreal, sane and insane. Without any references to object physical reality it becomes merely another abstraction, just as apparently "qualia" has become for you, where the only way to make progress is to prove yourself wrong.

Then I suppose I have to suggest insanity. — Terrapin Station

Feynman said, "I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress."

Necessity is the mother of invention and studies showed Vietnam veterans returning from war tended to have higher IQs. You can get a similar effect by merely studying mathematics for a month or two before taking an IQ test. Cultures pushed to the verge of genocide tend to stress that everyone must exceed their personal potential if at all possible and that kind of social pressure can raise your IQ which doesn't necessarily vary all that much over your life time, but its obvious focusing more on actually thinking more can produce better results.

That's one kind of genius, but Socrates held the tribal belief in the memory of God that none can remember in all its glory. You could say the greater unfolding truth of our lives only asserts itself within the silent void producing metamorphic effects according to how well anyone can occupy the lowest possible energy state of the system and actualizes more of their potential in the moment. Infants that are taught to swim or a bear exercising in a circle as they are want to do express this principle because their ability can be said to arise on a cellular level.

OK forgive the sarcasm. But the thread is about a specific topic, namely, qualia, which I've already noted, is a clunky piece of philosophical jargon only found in debates conducted by a clique of academics. Nevertheless, it is a particular topic, with a particular scope, which doesn't include the LCH, Wheeler, super-symmetry, and all the rest. — Wayfarer

If qualia are merely an abstraction that doesn't relate to physical reality then why don't we just call them that?

You must send me some photos from your planet some day. — Wayfarer

Same planet, different karmic universe. An unusual metaphorical scalar version of John Wheeler's Participatory Anthropic Principle where its difficult to say just who is being created and who or what is doing all the creating. Curioser and curioser.

You're joking, right? — Terrapin Station

No joke, it would explain why the LHC mass of the Higgs Boson suggests cosmic ray energy level experiments are required to settle the issue of supersymmetry as reflecting just how fundamental symmetry and asymmetry are in a paradox of existence or universal recursion of the law of identity. It means reality is fundamentally analog with digital logic merely representing causality. I like to say reality without dreams and vice versa is impossible. This is the logic the NSA and Google and everyone wants for designing a super Von Neumann architecture among other things.

Why would you believe that people are conscious while in a coma?

Anyway, I would agree that there's a difference between consciousness, when present, while asleep and while awake, although it seems to be more of a qualitative difference. — Terrapin Station

In a universal recursion of the law of identity it would display four fold supersymmetry vanishing into indeterminacy. Pattern matching ruling the universe would mean there are possibly four rudimentary types of consciousness with autism possibly being one. Everything can be described as both social and creative in distinctive ways with a recent study indicating that our immune system seems to play a huge role in how our brain functions and how social we are in general. It should also be able to explain how quorum sensing works.

the notion of "consciousness" of these papers seems to be different from the ability to have phenomenal experience and qualia, it seems to refer to high level consciousness — Babbeus

The particulars of Penrose's theory never impressed me much, he's just too metaphysically oriented in his approach if you ask me and quantum mechanics have proven to be metaphorical. However, he consulted neurologists to figure out where quantum mechanics might be in the brain. My own suspicion is that a universal recursion in the law of identity is what we are observing and what is consciousness or awareness and knowledge or memories are indivisible complimentary-opposites with their identities inevitably going down the nearest convenient rabbit hole or toilet of your personal preference.

Among other things it would explain why both our neurons and a black hole convey any mass, energy, and information with the highest efficiency for anything their size. It would also mean everything that exists can be described using a simple systems logic as revolving around what does not exist. Similar to some of the newer quantum Field Theory ideas, but can reconcile thermodynamics with Relativity and quantum mechanics using a distinctly contextual or metaphorical approach that leverages the symmetry.

There's an easy way to show that I'm wrong, to establish that it's not b.s.--how? Well, simply reference a study done under the rubric of physics that claims that "the brain 'maximizes entropy.'"

Re very non-specifically mentioning Penrose, for example, I'd guess that you're referring to The Emperor's New Mind. I read that, though quite some time ago, so I don't recall anything Penrose said in it about entropy, but at any rate that's a popular work that doesn't count as any sort of research, and it's especially not physics research. — Terrapin Station

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2016/oct/18/consciousness-is-tied-to-entropy-say-researchers

These results are similar to the recent simulation of a Mott Transition which indicated that the Big Bang was cooked neither too hot nor too cold, but just right. That contradicts the classical mathematics which quantum mechanics are formulated in, but indicates the brain is organized around both content and what's missing from this picture. For example, the visual centers have proven to be organized around what's missing from this picture.

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-discovery-quantum-vibrations-microtubules-corroborates.html

Those are just the first two best websites I could find in 30 seconds. I offer free lessons in how to use a dictionary and search engine before possibly inserting your foot into your mouth.

There's nothing B.S. in anything I've said, however, feel free to read up on Penrose's experimental confirmation of quantum mechanics in the brain and all the neurology if you want. Donald Hoffman is a game theorist who spent ten years examining the neurology and running one computer simulation after another only to finally concede that if the human mind and brain had ever resembled anything remotely like reality we would have become extinct as a species. The simple truth is quantum mechanics applies on the macroscopic level as well as the subatomic and everyone is now rushing to put the pieces together. The latest estimates are that classical computers will be capable of exposing the mathematical foundations of a theory of everything within ten years. The chase is afoot and its believed within the next century physics will achieve the alchemists dream.

What would that even mean? (And physics research on brains?) Maybe if you'd link to the research you have in mind, it would make more sense than your attempted paraphrasing of it.

Anyway, nothing you said after that in any way implies (and it doesn't even seem to have the slightest bit to do with) the idea of mental content that we're not aware of. — Terrapin Station

Physics describes the fundamental relationships between anything observable and, for example, they've also shown how quantum mechanics applies to the brain.

The brain maximizing entropy means its organized to produce the lowest possible energy state of the system. Two pendulum clocks hung on the same wall will coerce one another to swing in unison by vibrating the wall, thus, producing the lowest possible energy state of the system. Its analogous to a car engine idling which can then leap the fastest into a higher energy state, while going from a higher energy state down to a lower one takes more time. My own belief is it reflects the original impetus of the Big Bang still expanding and means the human brain is actually a creative engine that only incidentally happens to resemble a computer simply because its another way to be creative.

Among countless other things, this would explain why the human brain capacity is estimated to be over a petabyte, or the equivalent of the entire worldwide web, yet human memory is notoriously fallible. What it also implies is there is no clear way to distinguish between the human mind and brain because they form the particle-wave duality of quantum mechanics and are indivisible complimentary-opposites. Already neurologists have shown that at their most fundamental level of organization the two can substitute for each other roles providing better error correction and greater efficiency. The current suspicion among many is that the architecture of the mind-brain describes how the fundamental laws of nature are organized possibly due to supersymmetry applying to everything.

Computational universality is a principle of physics. It has nothing to do with mathematics, or its ontology. All known laws of physics, and all future laws will respect this principle.

We know that a universal computer can be put in 1-to-1 correspondence with the human brain (or any other finite physical system). — tom

"A black hole has no hair! Gravity without mass! Time is what prevents everything from happening at once! There is no law except the law that there is no law!" John Wheeler

"If you think you understand quantum mechanics you are wrong!" Richard Feynman

It seems like you just didn't read my response that closely. I said, "I certainly buy that there are unconscious brain processes." So yeah, the person who is knocled out is unconscious, and their brain is still active. What I disagree with is that there's any good reason to say that those unconscious brain processes amount to mentality, so that they're having thoughts etc. just where they're not aware of them. — Terrapin Station

The most recent evidence in physics is that the brain maximizes entropy and consciousness is therefore an emergent property. Humor is another example of an apparent emergent property. Infants do not laugh or express any sense of humor for the first four months. They must first build up a pattern matching "data base" where the pattern of humor revolving around what is low in entropy, or what's missing from this picture, leaps out at them from the data just as we might assemble a table top puzzle and the picture it contains will suddenly start to leap out at us as we collect more of the Big Picture of what it looks like.

What that means is there is no clear dividing line between what is a conscious or unconscious mind any more than there is between what is humorous and what is serious because it remains context dependent upon whatever "data base" we are currently using in a given situation. Sometimes I like to joke that the brightest lights are often left on when nobody is home. What is memory and what is awareness becomes context dependent because there is no way for us to distinguish between the two ourselves.

In my view there's no good reason to buy that there's an unconscious mind per se. I certainly buy that there are unconscious brain processes, but unconscious thoughts, concepts, desires, etc. are essentially an "other minds" problem, with the added complication that we can't even know (by acquaintance) the suggested phenomena from a first-person perspective. — Terrapin Station

If we hit someone over the head and knock them out we say they are "unconscious" and to claim they are still conscious without any empirical evidence is either semantic splitting of hairs or mystical metaphysical mumbo jumbo along the lines of saying everything is consciousness. We have only so many words to choose from to define their mental state of unawareness just as we only have so many words such as "time" that describe change. Some cultures have no future tense or verbs "to be", but English speaking cultures are not among them and even they recognize change. We live, we die, we are conscious or unconscious and according to even the law of identity and the law of non-contradiction without there being a way to negate what someone calls "consciousness" its just so much gibberish.

Obeying the laws of thought, modern science favors quantifiable results that fit classical logic's yes or no, true or false, criteria which recognize the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle in classical logic. Qualia provide a metaphorical alternative that can be applied to anything where the law of identity is in question. A shadow or black hole, for example, possess a humble identity that simultaneously can be said to both exist and not exist because they are extremely context dependent. Similarly, yin-yang dynamics or paradoxes of any kind can be described as qualia or metaphors which can be incorporated in fuzzy logic and the emotional-logic or metaphoric logic of Intuitionistic mathematics.

Just as we have a conscious mind, we have an unconscious one and qualia allow us to define them according to their function in specific contexts.