This is ingenious, but I see two problems. First, computer scientists are not authorities at all in the fields of linguistics or philosophy -- indeed, in my experience, they often have no interest in these fields. Their use of mentalistic terms about machines is as likely to be loose talk as anyone else's. Second, computation has if anything intensified the mystifying aspects of mentalistic terms. Hard enough to understand how to talk sensibly about human beliefs, desires, thoughts, and perceptions! but now we're also supposed to attribute physical or information-based versions of these states to a computer? Now that's mystifying. — J

Are you saying that philosophers should be telling the computer scientist how the computer works? Who do you call when your computer does not work - a linguist, philosopher or a computer tech?
Does this apply to all fields, where linguists and philosophers should be telling evolutionary psychologists, neurologists, quantum physicists, etc. how they should talk about their own fields?

From my experience philosophers are the ones that engage in lose talk. They use these terms without having defined them. What does it mean to know, believe, understand or to try? What does one mean by subjective and objective, direct and indirect, etc.? From my experience many philosophical problems are the result of a misuse of language.

With all respect, surely this is what "internal" is meant to refer to. Why deny that it's different from "external," i.e., not somewhere in the brain? — J

Then why can't you open the brain and point out where the mind is? I also said that it is possible that the mind is what the entire brain does, not just some internal part of it. What do you mean by "internal" and "external" in this respect? Do you mean the same thing as your birthday present being internal to the box with the wrapping paper and bow? If so, then why can't we open the brain to see the mind like we can open the box and see your present? It seems to me that using terms like "internal", "external", "subjective" and "objective" is evidence of your dualistic thinking making it more difficult to solve the problem.

This is reasonable, but if we succeed in doing this, what is the second step? What do you imagine could come next, scientifically? This is a serious question -- in fact, the question of the HPoC. We have to picture some way of explaining the mental with relation to the physical; finding the place in the brain that hosts or constructs the "model" merely sets the stage for this explanation by restating the problem. — J

This is why I said that we need to reconcile the contradictory aspects of quantum mechanics and classical physics. In doing so we would solve the observer and measurement problems and those solutions would pave the way to solving the HPoC.

I believe that part of the problem is continuing to look at this problem from a dualistic standpoint. It is dualism that creates the distinction between mind and world as being internal/external, non-physical/physical, etc. The very first step would be to abandon this mindset and the terms that stem from it. We also need to clearly define the words we are using.

One can act on his principles and experiences. I don’t kill flies because they are flies but because I am at eternal war with them. — NOS4A2

But the flies are not at war with you. They just do what they do instinctively, with no malicious intent on their part. In this way, they are innocent victims of your unwarranted war on them.

The abortion itself isn’t dehumanizing. Dehumanizing someone isn’t the act of killing, but of considering someone inhuman so as to make killing them easier. It’s a psychological and linguistic process. You strip away mentally as many human qualities as possible, question his humanity, so the homicide leaves a softer mark on the conscience. It’s why you cannot say what other species of life you are killing, despite questioning that he is human. — NOS4A2

What makes it easier to "dehumanize" a zygote vs an adult human if not a difference in the number of human qualities they have? I don't have to strip away any human qualities from a zygote. It's just a single-cell. If you want to point to the cause of the zygote being sexual intercourse between two humans then this is an arbitrary decision on your part as others would argue that killing an unwanted dolphin or chimpanzee is inhumane.

I’m completely against prohibition or forced births, and always was. But fairly recent advances in embryology and genetics makes it clear we’re ending an innocent human life. “Personhood” isn’t a coherent ground to stand on either, and the notion comes off as more superstitious than the transmigration of souls. So personally I cannot be dismissive of the victim and pretend abortion is some moral good to be celebrated. — NOS4A2

I never said it was a moral good to be celebrated. It's something that should be rare is not a situation most people want to be in to have to decide. As such, we should respect others predicament and let them choose what works best for them, because you are not them. It is dehumanizing to think that you can impose your arbitrary definitions on others when they are making a personal, private decision regarding something they did not want to happen in the first place.

I've been following this conversation with interest but I don't yet understand whether the computer-based terminology is meant to be a useful analogy or a literal description of the brain/mind/consciousness situation. Would any of you be able to help me out here? — J

Maybe a bit of both. When you, or computer scientists, talk about how a computer works we can't help but use the mentalistic terms to describe the behavior of the computer. We can't help but use terms like "know", "thinks", "understand", "trying", "learns", "communicate", etc. to describe what the computer is doing. Some might say that this is all loose talk and the machines aren't really understanding or trying anything, but computer scientists use these terms and aren't they authorities in this field? A better explanation is that computation has finally demystified mentalistic terms. Beliefs are information in memory, desires are goals, thinking is computation, perceptions are information triggered by sensors, trying is executing functions triggered by a goal. Instead of being hunks of metal, our brains are hunks of organic tissue, but still function like a computer in processing information for some goal.

Where does this working representation of the world occur? Is it discoverable by science? Which scientific discipline would we expect to discover and describe it? What would count as falsifying this theory? — J

I think this working model is somewhere in the brain, or maybe what the entire brain does rather than just part of it. A first step would be to isolate (if it's not something that the brain as a whole does), how or where sensory information from all senses come together (as the mind is amalgam of the information from all five senses at once) from which the model is constructed. I would think a combination of neurology and quantum physics would be applicable here, maybe some new field being a merging of the two. As for falsification, I think we would need to first determine how we can falsify the various interpretations in quantum mechanics to begin to think about how what I am proposing could be falsified.

I don't see any escape from the contradiction. In your original intention with your quote, you argued that the experience of seeing red can be interior to the mind. Through virtual seeing via the mind-supported imagination, we can lie in our bed at night and "experience" seeing red based on the neuronal memory circuits stored in our brain. Therein resides no literal red. In your later quote, you say, emphatically: — ucarr

This quote says (independent of your intended meaning) working memory is an internal representation of the world. You're describing a bifurcation of sensory experience and virtual seeing. Virtual seeing is constructed from code-bearing memory for "red."

As I understand you now, you're saying: cognitively speaking, the color red is visual information stored in memory as code, and stored code is working memory. — ucarr

First, I have deliberately tried to steer away from using terms like, "internal" and "external", as this just adds to the confusion by incorporating dualism. So whatever you interpreted from what I said, I never implied that the mind is internal and the world external. Instead of saying that working memory is an "internal" representation of the world, we say it is a working representation of the world. We could say the same thing about dreams. They are a working representation of the world, just an incorrect interpretation, no different than a waking hallucination is an incorrect working representation of the world. It is incorrect because we are incorrectly interpreting the red we experience as being a product of our senses' interaction with the world when they are actually another working model. We can have multiple working models going on at once. For instance, I could be seeing the world, but also modeling a future world (a prediction) at the same time. In fact, this is how we learn - by observing the world as it is now and then modeling a potential future and the path to take from how things are observed now to how you want things to be. Dreams are just a model of the second type without the world, which is why we end up confusing it with the real world.

Maybe we should talk in terms of experiences only and then assign seeing and imagining to types of experiences, so it is redundant to say things like "experience seeing". We don't experience seeing when asleep. We dream, which is a type of experience, and a different experience than seeing.

When you introduce the word "information," you rocket away from the external world into the interior of the mind. No, the color red itself is not the form of visual information stored in the mind. Instead, there is electro-chemical, neuron-mediated code within the brain.

The HPoC, as I understand it, derives from the question how (or if) the brain's code for our perceptions signifies the subjective experience of perceptions by an experiencing self. — ucarr

Again, I do not think that using terms like, "internal" and "external" is helpful here. The information in a computer is part of the "external" world, so I don't understand what you mean by rocketing "away from the external world into the interior of the mind".

You keep forgetting the first step and that is that any time you talk of electro-chemical, neuron-mediated code, you are only talking about how it all appears in your GUI. Neurologists describe the brain as "grey matter". Is the electro-chemical, neuron-mediated code within the brain grey?

A computer can process data from input (via its "senses" (keyboard, mouse, scanner, microphone, camera, etc), and in processing the data it can produce new information. This information can then be stored or used immediately for some output (action by displaying something on the screen, printing, producing sound from the speakers, etc.) The information in the computer is not the information that it received through it's input. It can even recall the processed information stored to process further without any access to the world, meaning that the information it is working with stored information instead of information received via some input. This isn't much different from how we can have a working model of the world and other kinds of working models going on in the form of predictions, imaginings and dreams.

I saw a tiger in my dream. I do vividly remember the image of the tiger, so that I can even draw it on a piece of paper how it looked. It is a visual experience, which is similar to the visual perception you have in your daily life.

It has nothing to do with making predictions or imagining something for the reasons I have put down on my previous post. Please read it again, if you haven't. — Corvus

You did not see a tiger. You dreamed a tiger. This is how you are misusing terms.

A prediction is an imagined future. You may predict you will see a tiger when you go to the zoo. The tiger you predicted is similar to, but not exactly like the tiger you now see when at the zoo and you can draw a picture of the tiger you imagined and the one you saw at the zoo so I don't see how your explanation shows that dreamed tigers are not like day-dreamed or predicted tigers when awake. Because you are awake, you have no problem distinguishing between imagining and the tiger at the zoo. When you are asleep you don't have the world imposing itself on your senses to be able to make that distinction.

Why do you think it is easier to visualize an imagining by closing your eyes as opposed to having them open? Because you don't have the world imposing itself on your eyes. You end up shutting off some of the input that allows you to focus on the details of the imagining.

Hegel and Kant have written about the images we see in our dreams as "inner impressions" which are different type of impressions coming from the external world.

I have not used any vague terms or fancy words in my posts, but just said seeing images in dreams are different type of images we see when we are awake in daily life.

You seem to be misusing the word "misuse" without knowing what the word "misuse" actually means. — Corvus

If Hegel and Kant used the term, "see" when talking about dreams they are misusing terms too. You seem to be making a plea to authority here, when it is just as likely that Hegel and Kant could be wrong, especially when they did not have access to the scientific knowledge we have now.

In your earlier quote immediately above, you argue that our working memory is not solely based on the immediate connection between self and world. In addition to this, you say our working memory can also be based upon imagination and dreams. — ucarr

What I am saying is imagination and dreams are a manifestation of the work being done in working memory. There is also the work of interpreting sensory data and one's memories, which includes imaginings and dreams, is used as a basis for interpreting sensory data.

Dreams are like a runaway loop in computer programming where one does not have the world imposing itself on their senses to break out of the loop. You break out of the loop when you are woken up. The mind is still working in trying to interpret the dream as real. In the dream you process the information as if it were about the world and even respond to the "stimuli". You might even talk in your sleep, or sleep walk.

If "the ontology of knowledge" can be construed as "the physics of consciousness," the central question of this conversation, then it seems that understanding the ontology of the world -- at least regarding physicalist physics -- has come first, and now consciousness lies under the microscope. — ucarr

You're forgetting that your understanding of the world is only via your GUI. Your understanding takes the form of the contents of your GUI. So it seems that you need to understand the nature of the GUI before you can even talk about the nature of the world. To say that you understand the world yet can't explain the nature of your mind when you can only know about the world via your mind is illogical. Science is based on observation and if one asserts that their observations are illusions, or cannot be explained, then that just pulls the rug out from all the scientific explanations we have about the world, including how the brain works.

My concern isn’t so much the taxonomy but the flesh-and-blood entity that you are justifying killing. I don’t require categories to tell me when it is or isn’t appropriate to take a life, and I don’t need to dehumanize someone. Simple justice and dignity suffices to inform how it is appropriate to treat another living being.

So if it isn’t human life what kind of life would you suggest it is? — NOS4A2

You can only ever act on your categories. It's why you don't have a problem killing a fly as a fly is not a human even though it has flesh and blood. As I said before, we will agree 99% of the time what a human is. A vast majority of these "flesh-and-blood" entities fall neatly into that category. It is only those entities that are on the fringes of the category that we might disagree. In fact, a zygote has no flesh or blood, so according to your own words, they would not qualify.

What I am focusing on is those grey areas in those boundaries where life starts and life ends. How is terminating a life that is in a coma and may never come out, or ending a life that is on life support and may never be able to come off of it, dehumanizing someone? People make those decisions frequently and we don't say that they are being de-humanizing, rather the opposite. Terminating a zygote or embryo when it wasn't wanted in the first place, or when tests show that there could be serious mental or physical problems, or is a threat to the mother's life, isn't any more dehumanizing than terminating those at the end of their lives to give them some semblance of dignity. You are free to have an abortion or not. You are not free to force others to have children when they don't want them and the pregnancy is still in an early stage. Thinking you can force a woman that was raped to have a child, or to have a child with severe mental or physical disabilities when you aren't the one that will have to worry about that child's well-being through it's life and after the mother dies, is dehumanizing.

Seeing images in your dreams and making predictions are totally different things happening in your mind. They are not the same activities. Seeing something is visual. Predicting something is imagining. There are two types of prediction. One by your hunch, and the other by inductive reasoning. Both activities involve your intention, will and inference.

Seeing visual images in your dreams is random events happening without any of above. Plus it is visual operation with no imagination, guessing or reasoning. — Corvus

Imagine imagining something when you don't have the world imposing itself on your senses and mind. The imagining would seem real, like your dream does. The dream would take the place of the world precisely because the world is absent when you are asleep.

You're not seeing anything when you dream. Seeing is the process of using your eyes to take in light. The existence of light is a necessary component of seeing. Can you see anything when the lights are out? You are simply misusing terms.

My issue is the identity of indiscernibles. She’s some other being one minute then a human being the next, while anyone watching this supposed change can see that one organism isn’t replaced by another.

Rather, it is a kind of being or animal or organism whose life begins at this time and ends that time, after which it decomposes. “Viability” is too squishy of a continuity principle for me. I want to be able to point at something and say “that’s a so-and-so” without having to check its vitals. There needs to be a taxonomical term for this being and “human” or “man” suffices.

But I’m still interested to read what other non-human being precedes us. — NOS4A2

But that's the thing. Categories are mental objects that can represent the world as it is only to a degree. Our categories tend to fall apart when we attempt to distinguish one thing from another with finer detail. Astronomers have the same problem in defining what it is to be a planet. This is why I am saying that there is a grey area. Your boundaries might not line up with others, and since there is no clear boundary, it is up to you, and you alone, to decide what you want to do with your boundaries. If you can't even clearly distinguish what it is to be a human in these grey areas, then your foundation for limiting what others can do in these grey areas is not as solid as you think.

I would say the brain is more like the actual computer with a CPU, working memory and long-term memory, not just a CPU. Each part is necessary and cannot function without the other parts.
— Harry Hindu

I understand you to be referring to R.A.M./R.O.M. with: "working memory and long-term memory." — ucarr

No. RAM is the working memory. ROM is Read Only Memory. Long term memory is more like your hard drive and can be "written" to as we store new experiences in long term memory that we can then access in the future. ROM would be more like our instincts. They cannot be changed, but they can be overridden by RAM, an example would be how we attempt to control our instinctual behavior in social situations.

I think consciousness, performing in its virtual imaging mode, as based on memory, greatly complicates and perplexes the discreteness and certainty of the location of the referent in relation to the viewer. The portability of memory in time and in space complicates our understanding of the original link between referent and viewer regarding their respective locations.

Furthermore, I think this loosening of the link between the two is one of the main causes of the HPoC. I can access my own subjective memory directly. I can only attempt to access another person's subjective memory indirectly, as via listening to a narrative recounted from memory by another person. — ucarr

I think that speaking in terms of some "I accessing memory directly" is what loosens the link you speak of. This creates the illusion that the "I" is separate from what it accesses "directly". If the "I" is accessing anything, it is the world via its senses. Working memory is just a working model of the immediate environment relative to the body.

I think it's possible to understand that even in the case of one's own subjective memory of being oneself, a separation exists between oneself as thing-in-itself (a kind of pure objectivity of a thing, extant, I believe, more as concept than experience) and a mental representation within subjectivity.

I guess I'm saying we are not exactly our thoughts. Evidence for this might be the fact that sometimes the motives for our behaviors are unconscious.

As to the question of the general form of working memory, firstly, I think memory has a circular structure. Going forward from there, I speculate subjectivity is a higher-order of mnemonic feedback looping. Going forward from there, our ability to know what it's like to be someone else depends upon our virtual viewing (in our imagination) of the GUI of the contents (code) of the other person's working memory. — ucarr

Sure, our mind is only part of what we are. We are our body. I can only control my limbs, not the limbs of others. I feel pain when my body is injured, not when someone else is injured. I don't like speaking in terms of "subjectivity" and "objectivity". Are we not trying to speak objectively about what minds are for everyone, not just you or me? Can we talk about the ontology of minds without epistemology getting in the way? Or do we have solve the problem of the ontology of knowledge before we can start talking about the ontology of the world?

If by central executive you mean CPU (central processing unit), then I say it's not an unreasonable stretch to construe "processing" as "views." In each case -- the CPU in one and the brain in the other -- a processor processes data in the act of constructing a world view. Furthermore, the brain also manipulates data that simply exists in memory. When you imagine or dream of the experience of seeing red, that's an example of your brain manipulating data that simply exists in memory. — ucarr

I would say the brain is more like the actual computer with a CPU, working memory and long-term memory, not just a CPU. Each part is necessary and cannot function without the other parts.

I would distinguish between "processing" and "views" as a view being a type of processing where the information being processed is about the world relative to the one processing the information. This is why the world appears and sounds to be located relative to your eyes and ears and that all of our sensory perceptions are about the world relative to our locating in space-time.

I guess you want to go from:

What form the data takes in memory is the ultimate question here.
— Harry Hindu

to:

So which form does working memory actually take? Which one is the real form working memory takes?
— Harry Hindu

I guess the passage is intended to be a narrative that elaborates two or more forms of "working memory."

Also, I guess you believe one form is real and the other not. — ucarr

I'm not asking which one is real. I'm simply asking what form does the contents in any type of working memory take. We seem to have a problem with how we experience other's working memory compared to how we experience our own working memory. If it is simply a matter of perspective - of BEING your working memory as opposed to representing the working memory of others because it would be impossible to BE others' working memory so your only option is to represent it, then that is ok.

Seeing a tiger attacking you in your dream is "seeing something" i.e. seeing an image and motion. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with making predictions, solving problems etc. — Corvus

That is why I explained in the same post that you cherry-picked that predictions are a type of imagining, and dreams are a type of imagining where you do not have the external world to ground your experience.

What it is like for you to make a prediction and to imagine things when you are awake?

Why is absolute morality only absolute sometimes and relative some other times — night912

Morality only appears to be absolute when a vast majority of people agree. The morality that we thought was absolute would be shattered when we meet an alien species with a different set of morals.

Ok, if it’s not a human being then what is it? — NOS4A2

What if we were to start off with a definition like this: a human as a viable (it can survive on its own without artificial life support) organism descended from apes with a brain to body ratio of at least 2%

This does not mean that parents that want to save the life of their premature fetus should be legally prevented from doing so. This is only to determine when it is okay to choose for yourself when it is permissible to have an abortion. If you don't want an abortion you have that choice, or want to continue to keep your infant or elderly family member on life support, you have that choice.

I think we would agree what a human is 99% of the time and it is only in the gray area of embryos, fetuses, and the brain-dead, or those on life support that we might disagree. And it is in those grey areas that we as individuals should have the right to decide what we want to do without government interference because at that point what a human is is subjective.

Well, now you're establishing some kind of Cartesian theater where there is a GUI that is being viewed, but viewed by what?
— Harry Hindu

Viewed by the brain that constructs the simulation of the world within the visual field of the eyes. — ucarr

I think that "view" is the wrong way to look at this. The central executive in a computer does not view the data it is working with. The data simply exists in memory and is manipulated in real-time by the central executive. What form the data takes in memory is the ultimate question here. From our perspective it takes the form of silicon circuits, computer code and logic gates. From others' perspective the data in your working memory takes the form of neurons and the chemical and electrical signals between them. But from our own minds, we do not experience neurons and their chemical and electrical signals. We experience colors, shapes, sounds, etc. of which others' working memory is composed of. From our own perspective, our own working memory takes the form of colors, shapes, etc. and it is only by observing others' working memories that we experience something different. So which form does working memory actually take? Which one is the real form working memory takes?

Is there a "what it is like" for the computer in its working memory? What about when the computer takes visual information, like your fingerprint, and compares this visual information to its database to allow you to log into the computer. One might say that the computer is just comparing ones and zeros and does not have a visual experience of your fingerprint and the ones stored in its database. But that is just how it looks like for someone that isn't the computer's working memory.

Seeing something means there was an object in the physical world, which came into your retina in the form of lights, and activated your neurons and converted into images, which was transferred into your brain. But in the case of seeing an object in your dreams, you have no external object, which causes all the seeing process.

So what are you actually seeing, when you are seeing a tiger trying to attack you in your dream? — Corvus

The same type of thing you experience when you make predictions, goals, solve problems, etc. Imagining is part of the process that we use to make predictions and solve problems. One might argue that the more imaginative you are, the more intelligent you are, as you are able to come up with novel ideas to solve problems. When we are awake, most us are able to distinguish between what the world is informing us via our senses and what we imagine. Some with mental disorders like schizophrenia are unable to make this distinction.

When you are asleep you do not have the external world to compare, so you are similar to a schizophrenic when you are dreaming. Dreaming is simply the same process as day-dreaming, or making predictions when you are awake, but without external stimuli to ground you.

I’ve tried “a member of the species Homo sapiens” or “a biologically distinct human organism”. — NOS4A2

These definitions are circular.

You might as well ask when an embryo pops into existence. It doesn't. There's a single-celled organism which we label "zygote" that gradually develops into a simple multi-cellular organism which we label "embryo" that gradually develops into a more complex multi-cellular organism which we label "foetus" that gradually develops into an even more complex multi-cellular organism which we label "human" or "person".

Some might use the label "human" earlier in the development cycle than others, but that's a personal linguistic convention with no philosophical or moral relevance. — Michael

So then what are we saying when we say, "human rights"? Is anyone free to decide when you are a human or not and deserving of "human rights"? Are we free to decide when you are a "Michael" or "Mary"?

I've said that I think it's unlikely that non-biological entities will turn out to be conscious. — J

Yes, but why would you think it unlikely that will be the case when you don't have enough information to say what is likely or not? I'm trying to get at your reasoning here.

Well, yes, then various things follow, but I don't think that's a good thing to say. My own consciousness doesn't at all resemble this description phenomenologically, and once again we're a long way off from being able to say that, despite this, it "really is" working memory plus sensory information. Just for starters, for whom is the information informative? — J

For you, who else? If my description does not resemble what it is like for you, then please explain what it is like for you. Does your visual, auditory, tactile, etc. sensations inform you of some state of affairs in the world? Does it allow you to know things about the world? If so, what is knowledge if not possessing information about something, or being informed of something?

To answer that question, we would have to define what it means to be a human being. Care to take a run at it?

Images in dreams are interesting in the sense that, the dreamer sees images that don't exist in the external world. Where do the dream images come from? You say, well from your memories, experience, and amalgamation of what you have seen before. But there are also images that you have never seen, experienced or the places that you have never been in your life previously in your life.
Where then those images come from?

Of course all the mental images you see and dream exist in your brain. Then while sleep, your brain is supposed to shut down too. — Corvus

If it did shut down completely you wouldn't be able to wake up to loud (and possibly dangerous) noises in the world.

The places in your dream are amalgams of places you have been in the world. By using an amalgam of places you have been you can create unique places.

There is also the issue of how sensory deprivation can cause hallucinations. When you are asleep, you are being deprived of sensory input, but not completely or else you would not be able to wake in when in danger. The lack of visual input can cause you to hallucinate, or dream in the case of being asleep. You can hallucinate places you have never been, but they all are amalgams of places you have been. Even if you never experienced the idea of extra-terrestrial aliens, you might still arrive at the idea via incorporating several different ideas about life and its existence on other planets.

Let say, you are seeing a wall in front of you. You see the rows of bricks piled to make up the wall. But you also notice, the wall is level with the fence next to it. The walls and fence exist in the external wall in material level (materially, you can go and touch and inspect the walls and fences). But the levelness you perceive don't exist in the world. It exists in your mind or the perceiver's mind. — Corvus

But this goes back to what I said about thinking that humans are separate from the world. We are not. If the ideas in our mind can cause things to happen in the world then it seems to me that the mind is on the same level as the world. You are simply trying to make a special case for minds, but all that does is cause problems in trying to explain how the mind and world can interact causally when we know that they can - from experience.

Likewise, absence of sound, emptiness of space don't exist in material level, but they are perceived by the perceiver in the mind.

Now, the levelness of the walls, absence of sounds (silence), emptiness of space don't exist. Are they then pure product of mind, which are caused by the external objects? Or are they something that exist in the world without being noticed until the perceiver notices them? Because everything we perceive must come from external world. — Corvus

Ideas exist. They have a causal impact on our behavior in the world. The idea of Santa Claus causes some people to behave in certain ways in the world. To say that Santa Claus exists in the world instead of in your mind is to simply make a category mistake, not that Santa Claus doesn't exist. It does exist - as an idea, and it exists on the same level as the world because the idea can cause things to happen in the world. That is not to say that the world is made of ideas. Ideas are a complex arrangement of information and it is information that is fundamental, not ideas.

On the contrary! When you experience the world as it is, then your experience is the world. Doesn't mean that the world is a figment of your experience. — jkop

Solipsism implies that the world and the experience are one and the same, which is what you are doing. Only in distinguishing between the world and your experience do you become a realist and at the same time an indirect realist as the experience is not the same thing as the world.

Yes. Potential is not-yet Real. Science and philosophy are tools for dispelling our ignorance. :smile:

Potential :
Unrealized or unmanifest creative power. For example the Voltage of an electric battery is its potential for future current flow measured in Amps. Potential is inert until actualized by some trigger.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html — Gnomon

How does saying that potential is not-yet-real differ from saying it doesn't exist? In your example, it seems that you are simply saying that potential is simply the current state of an electric battery before being connected to a system to supply it with energy. Some batteries are never connected to a system so it would be incorrect to say that they have the potential to do anything. It is our ignorance of what the future holds for the battery that makes us think of "potentials" and "possibilities" when, in a deterministic universe, there is no such thing except within our minds.

Well, now you're establishing some kind of Cartesian theater where there is a GUI that is being viewed, but viewed by what?
— Harry Hindu

Are you implying the GUI is being viewed by an immaterial mind? Would this be, in context of your thinking, cognition-to-cognition, along the lines of mental telepathy? — ucarr

I wasn't implying anything. I was taking what you said - your description - and asking a question about it. You are the one that equated a GUI to our visual experience, but a GUI requires something to "look at it", or be aware of it's contents for some purpose.

So, simulation of the world by GUI is movement towards consciousness and thus it resembles the mind more than it resembles its code? — ucarr

Okay but you can only access the code via a GUI. I can only access your neurons via my GUI. Your neurons and the code appear in my GUI as visual representations of what is "out there". The neurons and the code do not exist as represented by the GUI. As you said, the GUI is a representation, and not the neurons and code as it actually is. So maybe terms like, "neurons" and "code" are representations of how they appear in the GUI and not how they are in the world, and how they are in the world is simply information or process and we are confusing the map (GUI) with the territory.

A mass of neurons has processing of memory functions attached; I'm not sure, but I think AI operates in similar fashion. — ucarr

If AI can answer questions about itself does that make it self-aware? If not, what does it mean to be self-aware if not to be aware of oneself in some capacity?

We don't yet know. My hunch is that it's going to be a version of the same thing that makes a biological creature alive, and a computer not. And yes, this could all be off base -- the sort of thing people will marvel it a few centuries hence -- "How could those people have gotten it so wrong?" But for the moment, I haven't heard of anything that suggests a computer could have inner states. Do you know of anything along these lines? (Grant me, for the moment, the idea that an inner state would be a sign of consciousness.) — J

I don't understand your point. If we don't know how a mass of neurons can be conscious then how can we even extrapolate whether a computer, robot, or a planet with life is conscious or not?

You have no reason to assume that a computer can't be conscious if you can't even explain what consciousness is and why a mass of neurons has it.

If we say that consciousness is a type of working memory that contains sensory information, then we design a robot computer that has a working memory that processes information coming in from it's camera eyes and tactile sensors on it's hands and feet as well as microphones to hear, would we then say that the robot is conscious? The "inner" state would be it's working memory and it's contents and the central executive that is processing the information within it, just like it is for you.

Develop into human beings. Interesting that you now phrase it that way. — Michael

I don’t care about flies and am at constant war with them. It’s wrong to kill a human being when he doesn’t deserve it. Flies deserve it in virtue of their very nature. — NOS4A2

I understand the position. A human-in-utero is morally insignificant. I just don’t understand how one can reach that conclusion. I suppose his worth might increase and decreases with his cell count, or, he is morally worthless until he is in my phone book, but who knows?

But weighing the moral worth of human beings in various stages of their development so as to decide who are morally permissible to kill is a disgusting business. We’ve left ethics entirely and have approached an exercise in excuse-making and dehumanization, in my opinion. — NOS4A2

It's no less disgusting business than weighing the moral worth of non-human organisms. Is it wrong to kill plants? Flies? Cows? Dogs? E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial? — Michael

Embryology shows that the zygote does not develop directly into a human being. The embryo undergoes many changes that reflect the organisms' evolutionary history. The human embryo initially resembles a fish embryo (It even has gills.), then an amphibian, a reptile and eventually a mammal. So while the embryo has the potential to become a human being, in this current state it isn't.

And to say that an embryo/zygote has the potential to develop into a human being, miscarriages shows that isn't necessarily the case. This is why I don't like bringing up terms like "potential" and "possibility" as if these things exist outside our minds. They don't in a deterministic universe. "Potentials" and "possibilities" are simply ideas that stem from our own ignorance of the deterministic path some process will take.

And then there are some extreme environmentalists who think we should be saving the flies in the Amazon rainforest, yet are fine with terminating the life of a zygote, embryo or fetus. In the grand-scheme of things humans are not more valuable, or special, than flies or cockroaches. To humans, yes, humans are special, but that is a subjective projection.

Some might argue that humans are destroying the planet, and that adding more humans to a planet with limited resources is immoral for those already alive, or that bringing an unwanted child, or a child with severe mental or physical handicaps, into the world is immoral.

Morality is subjective. It is up to each of us to do what is right for ourselves and to pick our battles carefully with others that are doing something different that either has an effect on how others live and the choices they can make or it doesn't.

This is why I get peeved when people on the right argue that the issue should have been taken out of the federal government's hands and place it with the states. The federal government never had it in their hands. Instead, Roe v. Wade implied that the decision was with the individual. In giving it to the states we now take it out of the hands of the individual and place it among a group - the people that live in a certain state to decide for the individual.

As a Libertarian, I believe in the right to life and the right to choose. Abortion is one of those issues that is difficult for a Libertarian to navigate. But as a deterministic moral relativist, I can only make decisions for myself, and what is best for myself, not for others that may be in entirely different circumstances.

Could sounds in dreams might interrupt the dream, and make the dreamer wake up from sleep, therefore you subconsciously switch the volume off during dreaming? — Corvus

I had a dream where I was trying to escape from captivity and I heard an alarm when I escaped but when I woke up the alarm was actually my alarm clock. So it seems that our minds are not completely shut off from the world and we interpret external stimuli as part of the dream.

The unique experiences we have in a dream is an amalgam of prior experiences. This is how we come up with unique ideas when awake - by logically incorporating various experiences together to come up with a new idea that is applicable to real-world situations. Think of dreams as this same process but without the logical direction that would be applied when we are awake. In the dream world we don't have the external world applying boundaries to our experience. It's more like a runaway process.

How about when we perceive silence, emptiness in space or time passing? The objects of our perception actually don't exist in material level. However, we still perceive them. — Corvus

What does it mean for our perception to not exist in a material level? Our perceptions and dreams can have a causal impact on the world, no different than when a errant baseball smashes a window. Our ideas and dreams are as real and exist on the same level as the baseball and window. The issue seems to be in thinking of ourselves and our perceptions as distinct, or separate from the world, when we are not.

But another way to think of quantum reality is as a field of Potential that can become Actual — Gnomon

I think what you wrote is very interesting and pretty much lines up with what I've been thinking.

I think the idea of potential is just that - an idea and not some inherent property of reality. Ideas like randomness, probability, possibility and potential are all ideas that stem from our ignorance.

Reading this,

there is no reason to say that quantum entities are ever really waves. Rather, the probabilities of where we will observe them in an experiment can be conveniently determined by the calculus of the Schrödinger equation, proposed in 1926 in response to de Broglie, which is formally analogous to a kind of wave equation. But a wave of what? Not of a physical thing – a density or field – but of a probability. The distribution of these probabilities, when observed over many repeated experiments (or a single experiment with many identical particles), echoes the amplitude distribution of classical waves, showing for example the interference effects of the famous double-slit experiment. — Philip Ball

seems that we are confusing some property of an electron as a wave when the wave is a property of the probability of finding a electron particle. But does the Schrodinger equation represent something fundamental about reality, or something fundamental about our ignorance?

Bishop Berkeley understood, correctly, that such a split makes no sense, so he decided to focus on the mind. Matter is not eliminated, but it's not fundamental. Mind is. — jkop

As such, idealism is a anthropomorphic projection.

In direct realism, the mind is directly linked to the world.My conscious awareness of the world is the actual world, not a mental replica. There's no gap between my conscious awareness and the world. — jkop

Sounds more like solipsism to me.

Now we go deeper into the brain_mind interface. The experience of seeing red, like the experience of seeing animated graphic images on a computer screen, is an interpretation of code for the experience. The Graphical User Interface of images viewed on a computer screen is an interpretation of Java, C++, etc. When you look at the code directly, you won't see any graphic images. Likewise, when you study neuron synaptic firing rates, electric current and voltage levels in active parts of the brain, etc., you won't see any graphic images replicating the natural world. There's no analog simulation of the natural world within the databases of computers, and there's no analog simulation of the natural world within the brain. — ucarr

Well, now you're establishing some kind of Cartesian theater where there is a GUI that is being viewed, but viewed by what? Also, the computer screen is a physical object that emits light so this still does not seem to be a valid example. The code produces output to the screen so it displaying colors and shapes on the screen would be more like a behavior produced from the processing of information going on within the computer, in the same way that you respond in the world based on the sensory processing (perception) in the brain.

What I'm trying to say is that the world may be more like the GUI than the code, more like the mind than the neurons, and the code and neurons are interpretations of other GUIs and the minds respectively. Silicon circuits and neurons are how OTHER minds are interpreted from our own. I am not trying to argue for idealism or panpsychism as that would be another type of projection. What I am trying to say is that primary "substance" of the world is process, relationships or information.

I have a lot of questions about p-zombies too, but we don't need them in this instance. Any number of computer-generated entities can do all the things you mention: respond to their environment, learn, make predictions, use feedback loops, offload routines to different parts of memory. So I disagree that "Consciousness is necessary for learning and making predictions." This is why the purple cow is such an annoying example -- it doesn't do anything. It simply sits there, so to speak, being a mental image, again so to speak. If a computer-generated entity could do this, I would have to allow that it might be conscious, but I don't believe it can. Except by rather strained analogy, there's no equivalent of a digital state that also has a subjective appearance to the software that we cannot experience.

Having said this, some computer-savvy poster is going to show me I'm wrong! OK, I'm ready. . . — J

But that's the thing. What makes a mass of neurons conscious, but a mass of silicon circuits not conscious?

The purple cow would be like a bug in the code. As I said before, not all ideas/imaginings are going to be applicable to the world. It only becomes a problem if you or the computer misinterprets the purple cow as something more than a bug in the system, but some external stimuli.

The computer has memory. You have memory. Your consciousness is like the working memory in a computer. The computer can store different types of data in its memory just like you store different types (colors, sounds, sensations, etc.) in your memory. This memory space is what we call consciousness. The difference between you and the computer is that the computer has not been programmed to establish a feedback loop in its memory - to refer to its memory as an object of information to process. I other words, it is not self-aware in the sense that you and I are.

Some have proposed "wavicle". What do you suggest?
My question about Math & Metaphysics was philosophical, not scientific. So the distinction between Real and Ideal is relevant for a philosophy forum. :smile: — Gnomon

The key to understanding the relationship between philosophy and science is to realize that philosophy is a science and the conclusions of one branch of the investigation of reality must not contradict those of another. All knowledge must be integrated. Dualism causes problems. Monism solves those problems.

What is a wavicle?
"It is in your dictionary. Something which simultaneously had the property of a wave and a particle in physics. My physics class was over 70 years ago so I’m not up on that contradictory word. It is like saying something is frozen and liquid at the same time. Like an “honest thief”.

Its a rather pathetic attempt to assign one ( made up) word to the wave-particle duality of nature that is described in quantum mechanics mathematics. Wave–particle duality ___Wikipedia. — Gnomon

Either we take the attributes of waves and particles that do not contradict each other and integrate them into what it means to be a wavicle, or we come up with another word. What about process or information?

I appreciate your taking the time to lay all this out for me. Could I ask you to take this to a simpler level, and describe to me what you think happens when I imagine a purple cow? I'm still concerned about the hard problem, understood as the emergence of subjectivity (or the illusion of subjectivity, if you prefer) from chemical/neuronal activity, — J

I'm certainly not claiming that I am certain in what I am saying. I'm just trying to make sense of the mind-body problem by thinking that the problem is more of a language problem than anything else.

What I'm saying is that what you refer to as "chemical/neuronal activity" is just another process that lies outside of the process of your mind. We can continue to use those terms of "chemicals" and "neurons" but instead of thinking of them as physical things, we think of them as other processes. There are processes in the brain that are not related to our conscious mind. We can be unconscious and there is still brain activity. So when you imagine something your conscious process is accessing certain mental information stored in an unconscious process of your brain.

You might ask, 'Why would we need to be conscious of an imagining?" Why can't a p-zombie do the same thing but without the actual experience of imagining a purple cow? The answer is that I don't think the p-zombie is a valid argument. Blind sight patients still respond to their environment even though they don't have a visual experience but only to a limited degree. Blind-sight people do no behave in the same way than people that do have visual experiences. A blind-sight person would not be able to drive or operate complex machinery. Consciousness is necessary for learning and making predictions. It is a type of working memory. Just think of how you learn something and eventually become proficient at it. When you are learning something new you are fully conscious of what you are doing. You have an idea or prediction (which is the same thing as an imagining about some future state) about what you want to accomplish and use your senses to be aware of the current state and you process the information about how to get from the current state to the predicted state. You engage in certain behaviors to get to your predicted state and then observe the effects, and then try again (creating a sensory-behavior feedback loop) and again until you accomplish your goal. Once you are able to repeat the process to and continue to get the same results you become proficient at the task and eventually the information process is off-loaded to unconscious processes where you can accomplish those tasks without thinking much about it. Think about when you learned to ride a bike. You were fully conscious of every movement you were making and your balance in practicing to ride a bike. Now you can ride it without thinking about it, or without much conscious effort.

Because we evolved the ability to link different concepts together to come up with new ideas that can be applied to the world means that there will be times that our brains link together new ideas that cannot be applied to the world, or not in the way you might think. Can imagining a purple cow cause you to then paint a cow purple or genetically engineer a cows to have purple fur or skin? Imaginings, hallucinations and dreaming are these types of imaginings. Predictions are imaginings with some type of goal applied to them, whereas dreams and imaginings of purple cows are not.

Actually, direct realism is part of the hard problem. In asserting that you see the world as it is - as static objects and physical brains, and comparing that to how the mind appears and is described as being non-physical and immaterial is how the hard problem arises.
— Harry Hindu

:roll: That's not direct realism. Why bother? — jkop

In the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, direct or naïve realism, as opposed to indirect or representational realism, are differing models that describe the nature of conscious experiences; out of the metaphysical question of whether the world we see around us is the real world itself or merely an internal perceptual copy of that world generated by our conscious experience. — Wikipedia

If you're using direct realism in a different way then I would hope that you would explain.

I asked you what an observer is, and you didn't answer the question.
— Harry Hindu

For example, a bird observing its environment,, birdwatchers observing the bird, a prison guard observing prisoners, a solo musician observing his own playing, an audience observing the musician, scientists observing their experiments, a thinker observing his own thinking (e.g. indirectly via its effects). — jkop

All you are saying is that an observer observes. :confused:

Yeah, don't bother. :roll:

Computers operate according to the parameters, programming, and designs created by the scientists who build them. While it's true that large language models can generate unexpected insights based on their training data and algorithms, the key point is that these systems do not understand anything. They process and output information, but it's not until their output is interpreted by a human mind that true understanding occurs. — Wayfarer

Humans operate according to the parameters, programming, and designs created by natural selection. How does an unconscious process (natural selection) create consciousness, but a conscious process (human minds) can't?

What does it mean to understand something? Searle said the same thing using the Chinese Room thought experiment, but all he showed is that the man in the room understands something. He understands the language the rules are written in and he understands to write this scribble when he sees that scribble. But these are not how one learns a language. If he had instructions that show what the scribbles refer to in the world rather than what to write when he sees that scribble, he would understand Chinese in the same way that native speakers do.

Additionally, I dispute the idea that the brain is simply a 'physical object.' The brain might appear as a physical object when extracted from a body and examined by a pathologist or neuroscientist. But in its living context, the brain is part of an organism—embodied, encultured, and alive. In that sense, it's not just an object but part of a dynamic, living process that produces consciousness in ways that no computer can replicate. — Wayfarer

Sounds like you are agreeing with me by describing the brain as a process or a relationship. :up:

Likewise, when we experience seeing red, it's because that specific wavelength stands in contrast to other wavelengths of visible light. Therefore, within the neuronal circuits of the brain wherein we interpret the specific wavelength for red, there's nothing therein that's red because the relativistic effect that supports our experience of red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes, not within the neuronal circuits of the visual cortex of our brain. — ucarr

But we can imagine and dream of red things. So it seems to me that the color red is the form visual information takes and stored as such for future use in making predictions about the world. For us to be able to apply what we predict to the world, our predictions need to be similar to what we attempting to realize in the world, or else how could we apply new ideas to the world?

Are Mathematics and Metaphysics "real" or "ideal"? — Gnomon

How about neither and we come up with a better word.

Is an electron a wave or particle? How about neither and we come up with a better word?

Yes. The "in here / out there" distinction is a product of dualistic thinking. Do we talk about a table being outside of the apple that is sitting on it in the same way we talk about this distinction between the mind and the world? What if we were to simply talk about the mind as a relationship, or a process, and acknowledge that everything else is a relationship, or a process. Talk about in here vs out there would become meaningless. We can only be ("access") what we are and our experience of things other than ourselves can only come in the form of relationships - of how these other things interact with our senses, in the same way that everything else is a relationship between it and its environment or its own parts, depending on which perspective we are taking.

Imaginings and dreams are amalgams of what we have experienced before. The mind isn't just colors and sounds. There is a logical process underlying it all in the way that it processes sensory information to produce valid responses. We often solve some of the biggest problems by blending together different ideas or experiences we have had prior into unique ideas that can be applied to how we function in the world.

We get most of our information visually so it is no wonder that most of what we imagine, dream and conceive of will take the form of visual models. If they didn't then how would we apply our imaginings and new ideas to what we actually see in the world? I think there are other underlying (unconscious) processes that our dreams "represent" in that dreams are relationships between the way our mind constructs reality using visual information and other unconscious processes.

Computers create models of the world. Does this mean that the computer can imagine things? What makes brains so special in that minds arise from them but cannot arise from a computer? Both are physical objects and both are doing similar things in processing (sensory) information. If a physical object like a brain can produce a mind, then why not a computer? That's the thing - neither a brain nor a computer are physical things. They are processes.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/

In my posts above I'm arguing against the property dualism that is implied in the so called hard problem of consciousness. The problem reappears also in epistemological forms of dualism, such as in indirect realism, or in any philosophy in which it is assumed that consciousness is inaccessible to our knowledge.

Those are not my problems. I'm a direct realist, and a monist, so there's no need for you to give me a lecture on the monist nature of the world. Likewise, when I'm talking of subjective and objective in their ontological and epistemological senses, I'm not trying to split the world in two. In a monist world, things can have different modes of existing, and some things are observer-dependent (e.g. money) while other things (e.g. mountains) exist regardless of observers. But thanks anyway — jkop

Actually, direct realism is part of the hard problem. In asserting that you see the world as it is - as static objects and physical brains, and comparing that to how the mind appears and is described as being non-physical and immaterial is how the hard problem arises because it does not account for causation and that causes are not their effects and vice versa. I have argued that the distinction between direct and indirect is incoherent. What does it even mean to directly or indirectly access something? I asked you what an observer is, and you didn't answer the question.

So it's not just an issue of perception. It's a problem of language-use. We don't need to use terms like, "direct", "indirect", "subjective" and "objective", even in a monist sense.

We agree that subjectivity could be a dualist illusion. (I don't think it is, but I'm happy to assume it for purposes of argument.) But if it is, we still need to know why. You say, rather cavalierly, "Abandon dualism." OK, I imagine a purple cow and I follow this up by saying to myself, "This experience of me-and-purple-cow-image is illusory. There is no separation." But this doesn't make the purple cow go away, or change into something else. I'm sure you don't believe this would happen either, but what do you believe? What changes, for you, in this sort of experience when you introduce the idea of monism? Is it that experience, as presented, becomes a sort of brute fact, about which it's no longer possible to ask questions? This isn't meant to be snarky, I'm genuinely interested. — J

How is it illusory? Are you imagining a purple cow or not? The fact that you can imagine things is not illusory. It is illusory when you project that purple cow into the world, as if it were not just an imagining. In asserting that the purple cow is an imagining, and not an organism, you dispel the illusion.

Monism solves the problem because your argument about how material objects like brains give rise to immaterial minds is a problem of dualism. In thinking that the world and mind are two different types of things creates the problem. Thinking of them as the same solves it.

Well, not entirely. You still have to also understand that the way the world appears is just a map and you are confusing the map's static symbols (perceptual objects) with the way the world is (not static objects), which is more like your mind than the way the world is represented by your mind. I do want to clarify that I am not arguing for idealism or panpsychism as that would be another type of subjectivity in projecting one's mind onto the world. Everything is process, relationships, or information. Take your pick. They all mean similar things. The mind is just a type of process, relationship, or information.