If you think we have phenomenal consciousness, then how do you square that with physicalism? — Marchesk

I've never understood why people think there is any contradiction between believing that phenomenal consciousness is a mental, neurological, process that manifests itself as personal experience. The nervous system is at one level of organization while the mind is at another, higher level. This is analogous to how chemical processes manifest themselves as biological processes.

...if you think you can make physicalism work with phenomenal consciousness... — Marchesk

Although I don't call myself a "physicalist," I think a physicalist explanation is a good one for this situation.

I am very good at science, and the answers to the questions in established science are either correct or incorrect, except in frontier science. Many things in life have no simple answers. Most people learn by going through life facing the unknowns. — Largo

I'm a civil engineer. I took two philosophy courses in college, but I can't remember what we read. I recommend the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, probably the Stephen Mitchell translation since it's the most accessible to westerners. It takes two hours or less to read. The Taoist world view has been the most helpful, useful for my work as an engineer. Engineers, and scientists too I guess, are pragmatic. The Tao Te Ching lays out the most scientific, pragmatic metaphysics I've seen. I also loved R.G. Collingwood's "Essay on Metaphysics" and "Philosophy of Art." I think @Jamal is reading "An Essay on The Philosophical Method." Again, as a pragmatic engineer - "Pragmatism" by William James. And "Self Reliance" by Emerson because I love it.

I just finished Werner Heisenberg's intellectual autobiography, in English titled "Physics and Beyond," in it's original publication in Europe "Der Teil und das Ganze" (The Part and the Whole). @Pierre-Normand suggested it to me. I tentatively recommend it. I had hoped it would have more science like another book I read a while ago "Subtle is the Lord," which is a really good scientific biography of Einstein.

Heisenberg's book, written in the early 1970s, is told mostly as a series of conversations with his contemporaries starting when he was starting college in 1919 through the end of the 1950s. The recollections are very detailed. He must have kept a journal. I wonder also whether or not they were more dramatizations than memories. He knew everyone in physics in Germany during that period - Pauli, Hahn, Planck, Schrodinger, Bohr, and many others who I wasn't familiar with. He met Einstein. Some of this recollections, especially those during the war, seemed as if they might be self-serving.

The part I found most interesting was the timeline of discoveries in quantum mechanics and how each affected the scientific community. His explanation of the discovery of nuclear fission as a sustainable reaction with possible uses for energy generation and weapons was probably the most interesting part, along with his explanation why wartime Germany never put much effort into nuclear weapons.

Although thin on science, the book is very heavy on philosophy of science. Those sections were actually pretty interesting, especially the fact that Heisenberg and his colleagues were having the same kinds of discussions of truth and knowledge we have here on the forum.

All in all, pretty good but not enough science. And short, which makes up for some of the shortcomings.

Let's not clutter up your discussion any further. If you want to continue, we can take it out to the parking lot.

I don't think it means that because it's personal to you, the very fact that it's personal to you is all you need to talk about. — Jamal

You brought it up, not me.

There are the philosophical issues too. You often seem to forget that. — Jamal

I don't think that's true. Example please.

This is what we're exploring here. — Jamal

I was dealing with your OP in a straight ahead way. This is a discussion about whether or not definitions are needed in a philosophical discussion. How have I strayed from that? These are the posts that set this off:

Getting into arguments about the meaning of words is examining the substance and details of a particular position.
— Banno

Sometimes yes. Often no. As I noted, and you ignored, sometimes I want to look at a particular view of an issue and not talk about how others might define the issue. You often don't respect that desire. It is inconsiderate and unphilosophical. The solution is always simple, if you don't want to address the issues as laid out in the OP, go somewhere else. You seem to be unable to do that. — T Clark

It's right on the money. You and @banno apparently don't like the fact I think definitions are important. I'm making my case, which is completely in line with the question raised by the OP.

It's irrational, anti-philosophical, trivial and distracting. — Jamal

As I've noted, all my posts have been right on the subject of your OP. That's rational, philosophical, substantive, and responsive.

It might be inconsiderate, but it is not necessarily unphilosophical. Classically in philosophy, there is questioning the question. To do this might be to go against the wishes of the asker, who just wants a straight answer. It’s a refusal to abide by the terms of the debate as set out. But this is exactly what philosophy ought to do. The same goes for definitions. — Jamal

Baloney. If you don't want to play by the rules I set up in my OP, there are other threads to go too. My OPs always leave plenty of room for disagreements, but they focus on the issue I am interested in discussing. I don't start discussions offhandedly. I have a specific purpose in mind. Generally, it's because I don't understand something and want to examine it closer and I want help from you guys.

Some would say it’s inconsiderate of you to disrespect the topic in this way, in that you have failed to follow your own advice and “address the issues as laid out in the OP”. In this case I think it’s also unphilosophical. — Jamal

Baloney. I made a comment that was fully responsive to your OP. Then @Banno stuck his nose in in his usual smug, bullshit, lazy way. He pretends he's involved but he doesn't put any effort in.

Which is fine, but it pisses me off and I say so.

I see you’ve managed to personalize things again. — Jamal

In one of your posts in reply to me a few pages ago, you appeared to interestingly combine this personalizing approach — Jamal

This is very personal to me. I think I've made that clear throughout my six years here. Why would anyone participate if it weren't personal?

I asked you how this played out, but you were not interested enough to answer, so that avenue fizzled out. — Jamal

Remind me what I wrote that indicated I wasn't interested. Metaphysics and epistemology are at the center of who I am and how I see the world. Again - it's very personal to me.

The Self is Moses, leading his people out of evil Egypt. It's Martin Luther, breaking away from the mother church. It's Marx: the social critic. To the extent that these images become naturalized in the collective psyche, the Self endures, and will endure any assault on it. — frank

All this high sounding stuff is baloney. The self is regular old everyday reality. Real as a lug nut. We all have one. Health people feel at home with it. I recognize and sympathize with the idea that the self is an illusion, but only in the sense that everything is an illusion. Maybe the difference is that the self is the first illusion. The one that makes all the rest possible.

Then there is the mother, or indeed any close carer, of a baby: she recognises a something in the baby that is very particularly that new human being, a unique identity in the movements and eyes and responses and 'personality' that soon merges: if this were true, the self would be no myth, at least, not to others. 'Why is he acting that way?' 'He's just being himself.' — mcdoodle

I like the way you've put this.

Getting into arguments about the meaning of words is examining the substance and details of a particular position. — Banno

Sometimes yes. Often no. As I noted, and you ignored, sometimes I want to look at a particular view of an issue and not talk about how others might define the issue. You often don't respect that desire. It is inconsiderate and unphilosophical. The solution is always simple, if you don't want to address the issues as laid out in the OP, go somewhere else. You seem to be unable to do that.

you can stay with bert1's "Neuroscience has nothing to say about phenomenal consciousness", if you like. — Alkis Piskas

Except that, to me, it clearly does.

A good reason to imagine p-zombies is that they illustrate differences between philosophical theories of consciousness very well, and are an intuitive way to think about the issue. — fdrake

In my experience, p-zombies are just more pointless, unrealistic thought experiments like the trolley problem. They seem to be made up by people with too much time on their hands.

I don't like them personally. But I'm trying to put on my charitable hat for this thread. — fdrake

You can be the good cop and I'll be the bad cop.

Yes, yes. But to understand it you'll need to have done a lot of preliminary reading on Free Energy principles and understand a little of basic neuroscience and Bayesian probability. Nothing super in-depth, but the arguments simply won't be persuasive without that grounding. — Isaac

Thanks, I'll take a look. Most of the non-fiction I read these days mostly just makes me realize how much I don't know. I tend to just plow ahead and then go back and try to fill in the blanks.

Like that, for a start. Setting out a definition in order to ground an argument is already taking a stance, which may itself be brought into question. — Banno

Yes. We had this discussion once, at least once, when you tried to shanghai one of my threads. Sometimes, often, I want to examine the substance and details of a particular position. Getting into arguments about the meaning of words can make that impossible. Making every discussion a free-for-all makes it so you can't dig deeply into anything. That happens every day here on the forum. That's why, for most discussions, laying out definitions at the beginning is important.

What would a life without any wants look like? — schopenhauer1

I live as close to a life without wants as I ever have or ever will again. Not rich but enough money to live on with the things that matter to me. A house with the mortgage paid. No debt. No desire for expensive things. A 10 year old car that runs well. Reasonably good health. Health insurance. Loved and admired by the semi, sort of philosophy community.

Now that I don't have to do things any more, I pay more attention to why I do the things I do. It takes some getting used to. That's what's good about having a life without wants - lots of time to pay attention.

Try reading my post again you pillock. — Jamal

I suggest that we don’t know that other people are conscious, insofar as it is simply part of what it means to be a person. Maybe you could describe it as an animal certainty, but it seems a stretch to describe it as a knowing. — Jamal

Your comment does not stand, because it takes me to be saying something I’m not saying, something I did not say in the post you responded to. You projected a position onto me that I do not hold. — Jamal

Ok then, I guess the subtlety of your argument confused me. We don't know people are conscious because... I think we're about to get into another discussion of what it means to know, which I'd rather not.

I think I can almost accept that I wasn’t clear enough. My criticism of the use of “I know that x” in cases of indubitable certainty is just a repeat of what Wittgenstein says in On Certainty, and I shouldn’t assume people are familiar with that. — Jamal

That rings a bell. I think I read it 53 years ago in one of the two philosophy classes I took in college. Maybe I'll even agree if that will put an end to the p-zombie bullshit.

Try reading my post again you pillock. — Jamal

I read it the first time. I read it again just now. My comment stands.

And don't call me Willcox.

I fully agree. In fact, I will make this statement a little stronger: Neuroscience has nothing to do with human consciousness. (At the level of the mind, of course.)

One must also recognize that there are prominent neuroscientists today who admit that and differentiate mind from brain. But this doesn't change the nature of Neuroscience. — Alkis Piskas

Saying that the brain and mind are different things is not the same as saying the brain has nothing to do with the mind or that neuroscience has nothing to do with human consciousness.

I can't conceive of any of the leading theories in quantum physics. — Isaac

Albert Einstein couldn't conceive of the leading theories of quantum physics. As you said, that doesn't mean they are wrong.

But if you think it would be easier with an example, we could use https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10057681/1/Friston_Paper.pdf — Isaac

Have you read it? Is it worth it?

Do you not find the argument from analogy completely compelling? I know some don't, but I struggle to understand why not. — bert1

I agree. I don't get it either.

I suggest that we don’t know that other people are conscious, insofar as it is simply part of what it means to be a person. Maybe you could describe it as an animal certainty, but it seems a stretch to describe it as a knowing. — Jamal

In what plausible universe would I be the only one who has this characteristic, even though everything physical about me and other humans is the same; even though my biology and neurology and that of other people is the same; even though my behavior and that of other humans is the same; even though what I report as my experience and what other humans report is the same. It's an argument looking for a issue to argue about when there's none there. What value is there in having this argument? What do we learn from it beyond the fact that humans will argue about anything.

I'm saying I've never heard of any cogent explanation for how matter can give rise to consciousness. I'm not claiming there are none. — Janus

See "The Feeling of What Happens" by Damasio. I'm not saying it will be convince you, but it is a serious scientific attempt at a preliminary explanation.

I think artificial intelligence will prove or at least threaten to be a mirror for us. — plaque flag

I see artificial intelligence; along with other advancements such as genetics, nuclear power and weapons, particle physics, nanotechnology, and longevity research; as the first times humanity has stepped beyond itself and its world to take on the power to change the basis of our reality in a practical way. I think maybe this is where it all breaks down. Maybe this is why no aliens will ever have to worry about humans coming along and invading. I worry for my children.

And yet isn't it fundamentally an experiential question? Is studying the nature of consciousness equivalent to actually charting the boundaries of consciousness? Or is it just a lot of talking about consciousness? Personally, I believe the boundaries have to be studied with severe existential commitment, otherwise, it is mostly just words. — Pantagruel

I think what we call phenomenal consciousness, experience, what it's like to be... is a mental process much like other mental processes. Everyone makes such a big deal about it, but I see it as an interesting subject to try to understand. I also think looking at experience from the inside is interesting. Are they the same thing? No. One is biology, neurology. The other is psychology, self-awareness. We use different terms to describe them, but then we use different terms to describe chemistry and biology too.

I suppose it's possible to walk the path; there are some physical observables (behaviour etc) which provide sufficient justification for claiming that a test subject has narrow content - the thing is it would always be return that the subject would have narrow content as a p-zombie is stipulated to be able to emulate any physical aspect of a human. The fork in the road is that there are non-physical observables which suffice for that justification - but I've no idea what they could be. — fdrake

The whole p-zombie thing has always driven me crazy. Of course other people have internal lives that are like mine, i.e. phenomenal consciousness, experience, what it's like to be them. Doubting that is the same as Descartes doubting everything but his own existence. What possible value is there in doubting it. By the way the argument is phrased, it is impossible to tell by any objective means. It's like the multiverse - metaphysics at best, meaningless otherwise.

So often we don't seem to have much of a grip on what is supposed to be meant by 'consciousness.' — plaque flag

That is painfully true, as evidenced by just about every related discussion here on the forum. Be that as it may, with current issues about AI, it looks like it's going from an interesting philosophical problem to a practical political and social one.

I just realized I left something out. I love dictionaries, thesauruses, lists of rhyming words, etymologies. I love definitions. I like to take a word I think I understand and see if I can write a useful definition. It's harder than it should be but satisfying when you come up with a good one. My favorite; egregious - conspicuously bad. I don't remember where I got that.

Definitions are not some formalistic, regimented requirement of mechanical language. They are something to play with, juggle, kick down the street.

Panpsychism might be a fact, but one that I don't know empirically. — bert1

We could have a long and fruitless discussion about this, but I suggest we don't.

OK, science geeks, how do we determine whether an AI is conscious? What do we do? What tests do we give it?
— RogueAI

Another good question. — bert1

How do we know other people are conscious? What standards do we use? Apply those same standards to AI.

[edit] I see you made that same suggestion in a previous post.

The point he’s trying to make is that while cognitive science is adequate for the explanation of the various functions of consciousness, it can’t show how to bridge the explanatory gap between those accounts and the felt nature of first-person experience. — Wayfarer

Yes, I understand that's what he's saying. Isn't that rejecting scientific explanations for conscious experience? That's how I would characterize it.

@javi2541997

I don't know if you saw this:

In new book, Murakami explores walled city and shadows — AP

Neither does David Chalmers. — Wayfarer

I've only read a little by him. One essay on the hard problem and a few quotes. He sure seems to reject scientific explanations for conscious experience. Have I misread him?

why do you think it lost you — Banno

Because poetry wasn't the subject of the discussion. Because figuring out the language is part of the experience of poetry. Because providing definitions would, in many cases, distract from the experience of the poetry. Because poetry works on a different part of the mind than philosophy or prose. Because ambiguity in poetry is a feature while in philosophy its a bug. Because I'm not interested in the subject in relation to poetry.

I also didn’t bother following along when he began analyzing the poetry, and skipped to the end, which didn’t seem to be saying very much. Could be I’m missing out, but what I took away from it was that Collingwood is a good one to read on this stuff. (Self-reliance doesn’t imply that you shouldn’t read books, only that you shouldn’t get all your ideas from books.) — Jamal

I was thinking after I wrote that last post - Making a definition in poetry is like explaining a joke.

I am wondering, ↪T Clark, what you made of the article ↪Wayfarer linked. — Banno

It started out interesting, but then switched from talking about definition in a general or philosophical sense to a poetic one. That lost me, at least from the point of view of this discussion. The need for and use of definitions in poetry is very different from that in philosophy.

I do notice that you tend to personalize the issues, as you have done here, and that is indeed very different from my approach. I'm not saying it's bad or uninteresting; it's just very difficult for me to find a way of engaging with it (although I'm doing okay right now). — Jamal

This is definitely true. A lot of my understanding of philosophical issues comes from my examination of my own way of knowing and experiencing things. Introspection, intuition, are the most important aspects of knowledge to me. Maybe "interesting" is a better word than "important."

what is right for engineering may be wrong for philosophy. — Jamal

I think my approach is right for engineering and for my philosophy. Two of my favorite quotes which lay out how I see things.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet. — Kafka

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,— that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost—and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. — Emerson - Self Reliance

By "genius," Emerson didn't mean like what Einstein was, he means more the essence of who we are. Both of these quotes describe a kind of philosophical, well, self-reliance. That appeals to me in all my western individualism. On the other hand, Lao Tzu also describes the rejection of tradition and authority in favor of insight.

I think I want to say that the latter is the definition-centric one and the former is more like philosophy, where "planning is guessing". That is, in philosophy and innovation, things have to be kept open to a significant degree; or to put it differently, we have to realize that things just are open. — Jamal

Yes... well...

All in all, I'm not sure that anything we've said makes your and my differing approaches to definitions any clearer to me. On the other hand, laying out my understanding of how philosophy works, how my philosophy works, has been helpful. It's the first time I've expressed it in the way I did here.

What I think Chalmers is actually trying to convey by 'something it is like...' is, simply, being. Being, and what it means to be, is surely one of the major preoccupations of philosophy (and much else besides) although it's not always explicit - for Heidegger questioning the meaning of being is philosophy. (And I do wonder whether eliminative materialism is in some ways a manifestation of what Heidegger called 'the forgetfulness of being'.) — Wayfarer

I think I recognize pretty well what consciousness is from the inside. I have no problem with how you've expressed it, although my take is less poetic and more matter of fact.

Another point I'd make is that there is the study of consciousness as an object of analysis - which is cognitive science - which I'm interested in, and trying to get a better understanding of. — Wayfarer

I'm surprised at this statement. It had seemed to me that you rejected attempts to understand consciousness from a scientific point of view. I think Chalmers definitely does. Or am I wrong about that? And yes, I agree, I want to know a lot more about cognitive science.

But the philosophical question about the nature of the mind (a term I prefer to 'consciousness') is broader, and deeper, than the specific questions which are the subject of cognitive science. — Wayfarer

My first response to that would be "Well sure, that's what psychology is about." I imagine you would find that unsatisfactory.

I think there's a completely unambiguous answer to that: we are not robots, or machines, or even simply organisms, but beings, and a science that doesn't understand that is a risk to humanity. You never know what you, or the person next to you, is capable of being, or becoming. — Wayfarer

It just seems like you could say the same thing about anything. There's more to the world than what science can see. Ok. I think that's a different argument than Chalmers and the other what-is-it-like guys are making. Maybe I'm misunderstanding it.

My objection to neuro-reductionism is that what it is seeking to explain is something which is different in kind to other topics of scientific analysis — Wayfarer

I don't think I'm what you call a "neuro-reductionist," although maybe you would disagree. I made the following comment earlier in this thread:

I classify phenomenal consciousness as a mental process. That's the kind of a thing I say it is. The category I say it belongs in. One of the characteristics of a mental processes is that they are behaviors or at least that they manifest themselves to us as behaviors.

If it's not a mental process, what kind of a thing is it? What category does it fit in? — Me

Do you have an answer to that question? If phenomenal consciousness is not a mental process, what is it? And why isn't it suitable for examination by scientific methods?

I more or less agree. I found his unpleasantness easy to ignore. But he pretty much asked to be banned in his last post, and he robusty refused moderation. — bert1

As I said, I didn't question the decision, but I often found his posts interesting.

Any views on this, — Tom Storm

Your OP made me think of a discussion @frank started a while ago - Occam's razor is unjustified, so why accept it?

Occam's razor says that if we have a choice between a simple answer and a compound one, we should pick the simple one.

It's widely accepted even though it actually has no justification. It's acceptance seems to come down to its intuitive or aesthetic appeal. Is that enough? Or should we just reject it? — frank

I disagreed with him in the discussion, but since then I've thought about it and I think he's right. It is an aesthetic standard, but I still find it compelling, or at least appealing. I'm not sure how that fits into your discussion, but it's what came to mind.

the Aeon article that Wayfarer linked to above — Jamal

I hadn't seen that link. The article looks interesting. Thanks.