Data are atomic factual elements, but information is interpreted data. And I think that the difference is meaningful. — Wayfarer

I think so too. There is no information in a mindless universe. There's no math either.

But how do relations exist in the universe if they're mind-dependent? Can X be West of Y in a universe with no minds?

From which if finally follows that relations exist. Putting this conclusion together with our earlier one, we can see that relations have ontological existence. — Cuthbert

It seems like the relations are mind-dependent. Doesn't it require a mind to determine whether something is West of something else?

If we think about it, Ukraine has nothing to do with the North Atlantic or NATO, and Russian occupation or control of Ukraine poses absolutely no threat to the national security of America or Britain. — Apollodorus

Didn't Ukraine gave up it's nukes for security assurances?

Thanks!

All right, all right. What is your favorite book on philo of mind?

Minding is what highly adaptive, fully-functional, and sufficiently complex CNS-brains do. — 180 Proof

Which sufficiently complex CNS-brains have minds? Do octopi have minds? Lobsters? What about functional equivalents to sufficiently complex CNS-brains? Do any machines today have minds? What about the near future? What about the distant future? How will you test for the presence of minds? What does "sufficiently complex" mean?

If you agree that the mind is not noise, what is it equal to? The brain?

If "it's all noise" and "all" includes "minds" and it is "mind" that "attaches meaning to a bit of noise and calls it a signal", then, in effect what you're saying is, noise generates signals from noise. — 180 Proof

Do you think mind=noise???

Other than via physical instantiation (re: Boltzmann, Turing, Shannon, Von Neumann et al), how can we differentiate signals from noise? — 180 Proof

It's all noise until a mind comes along and attaches meaning to a bit of noise and calls it a signal. If a simulation of a tornado is running on a computer with no one observing it, is it still a simulation? It's interesting that the issue of observers pops up in physics.

I do not belong to a society, I belong to myself. — Garrett Travers

Of course you do, you rugged individualist.

I love this quote:

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

And also Roger Ebert reviewing Atlas Shrugged:
"For me, that philosophy reduces itself to: "I’m on board; pull up the lifeline."

The fact that there are forces in the world that can implement overwhelming force over me to steal my house and enslave my body, does not negate the fact that they are mine and not everyone else's. This kind of argument has no place in an ethical discussion. We aren't discussing the violation of an individuals rights. We're talking about the difference between public and private and how the two concepts can be disentangled. Not what justifies, or what can be used to revoke property from people and enslave them. I genuinely have no clue why you even said this. — Garrett Travers

Because there is a tension between your bodily/property rights and society's right to govern itself. You belong to a society, and you presumably (are you an anarchist?) agree that society has a right to imprison you and take your stuff if conditions warrant it. You do not have an exclusive right to your body and possessions. You've agreed that you will voluntarily give up those rights (again, assuming you don't shoot it out with the cops if the police ever do show up with a warrant) if society has a good enough reason. I also assume you won't fight to the death to defend your house against eminent domain.

Also, you're kind of a jerk.

Yes, I most certainly can. My body is private, as in exclusively mine. My house is private, as in exclusively mine. My art, my theories, my values, my interests, all exclusively mine. Private is that which no access is granted to without the consent of the owner. — Garrett Travers

Your body and house are private only in so far as you obey the laws of whatever society you're in. If you violate those laws, or if you simply give the state good reason to think you've violated them, your body and possessions are no longer exclusively yours to do with as you see fit. We can never completely disentangle from society, unless we're off in the woods somewhere, and even then, you can be subject to eminent domain.

I'm not just nitpicking. In a society, we all agree that our privacy and property rights aren't absolute. We can lose those rights pretty easily if the other members of our society suspect we're up to no good. I think that's what the other poster was talking about with his comment about entanglement.

Do we have any ethical obligations to our future selves?

Are fields rational? Are fields meaningful? Does the sunset I'm imagining exist in a field in my skull? When I think of my favorite song, is there music playing in a field somewhere in my brain? The mind is definitely not a field. You could say it's caused by fields, but that is also a tricky claim. The simplest thing is to stop assuming there's any mind-independent stuff.

I think it's easier to ditch all the talk of fields and assume mind is primary. That seems to require less assumptions.

You'll be a lot happier if you give your marbles to someone else. I'm someone else.

1. What about the qualia of a sunset? What information message is being sent viz-a-viz being awed by a beautiful sunset or painting?
2. What biological advantage does qualia provide? Presumably, information about bodily injury could be sent without any qualia at all, so what purpose does the feeling of pain serve? Also, do robots that have sensory apparatuses that send information to a CPU have qualia?

The qualia of our inner conscious world are information messages. — Raymond

What about qualia associated with hallucinations? In the case of phantom limb pain, what information message is there? Is it a mistaken information message? What about the beauty of a sunset?

Just like processes in the physical world follow a path of least resistance, so do brain processes. — Raymond

So what else in the physical world is conscious besides brains? Rivers? Electric currents?

According to my description of consciousness: "I believe that the concurrent experience of these two perspectives (inner/external) is what we experience as consciousness. Our internal quasi-perceptual awareness combined with what we are able to perceive directly" I guess that any thing that can do this is conscious. — Brock Harding

That sounds very panpsychist.

we'd have to precisely know what consciousness is — Hermeticus

Therein lies the rub. Not only do we not have a precise definition, we have no scientific definition. We have to go by folk definitions. Science is also unable to tell us if a 6-month old fetus is conscious, or if the latest Boston Dynamics robot is conscious (or even Stockfish). I don't see science answering these questions anytime soon, so I think the continued failure of science to say whether machine x is conscious or not is catastrophic to the question of whether science will ultimately explain how unconscious matter can produce conscious states.

What things, besides us, are conscious?

This sounds like functionalism. Do you think mind is the program that the brain is running?

Walking is not as real as legs that do the walking.

Consciousness/mind, just like walking, is an activity. To think that consciousness/mind is an object, like legs are, is a mistake; this error gives warrant to Dennett's claim that consciousness is an illusion. — Agent Smith

If minds are brains, then minds are nouns.

If mind is a verb, why do we use it as a noun so often (e.g., my mind is made up)?

:up:

Thanks, I just bought his book: Philosophy of Mind, a Beginner's Guide.

I like that quote of Ed Feser a lot.

:up:

What else besides brains are conscious/can become conscious?

https://behavioralscientist.org/rethinking-consciousness-a-qa-with-michael-graziano/

Sounds a lot like computationalism. If computers can be conscious, how will we verify that? Which computers, exactly, are conscious? Are some computers already conscious? Why are brains conscious? Because they compute? Is anything that computes conscious?

I decide to imagine a blue elephant. As I do so my brain goes through a series of states dictated by my decision and its content. It's not so much that the mind moves physical things, rather the mind is physical things. There's only one world. — Daemon

If the mind IS a physical thing (i.e., mind=brain), then when you imagine a blue elephant in your mind, shouldn't there be a blue elephant inside your skull?

Do you think minds can exist on other stuff than a working brain in a living body? — Raymond

The only thing we know that exists for sure is our own mind. If minds come from brains, how do brains produce minds?

Good points. Also, if mind is what the brain does, why is it just the brain that does mind? Why doesn't the heart do mind as well? Why do only specific parts of the brain do mind?

Why would it look different? — khaled

Why would red to you look different than red to me? Maybe small changes in neural structure and brain chemistry. Who knows? My point is simply that looking at brain scans cannot tell you that red to me looks the same as red to you.

If I clone you do you think there is a chance that “red” to the clone will look different from “red” to you?

The clone would occupy a different point in space, would physically diverge from me right after the cloning process. These are very small changes, but who's to say whether they result in different mental states. Since the contents of my mind are a black box to you and vice-versa, you can't get around this problem. You will never know if red to me is the same as red to you. It's an insolvable problem.

If you can see them, yes I think. — khaled

But the reverse isn't true. You couldn't reverse engineer a mental state by observing brain states. Even if you were looking at the brain states of someone you were convinced is seeing red, the inverted spectrum problem would pop up. Is the person with brain states "seeing red" really seeing red, or does red to them look blue to everyone else?

Try it. Open up the motherboard and tell me what the first 10 switching operations for the Windows Kernel is.

Of course, there are devices that can detect binary code. You can't do so with your eyes however. Similar to how you can't see feelings when looking at a brain without the use of special tools. — khaled

But it is possible to see the switching operations. For example, the first computers were the size of rooms and made of vacuum tubes. Could you "reverse engineer" the code from the switching operations, if you had the right tools?

I didn’t say you can’t see code. I said you can’t see code by simply looking at a computer. You can bust open the motherboard and look at it all you want (like looking at a brain) and you won’t see what’s happening in there. — khaled

Wouldn't you see a set of particular switching operations? That's what code ultimately is.