As is often the case, the real mystery is why anyone gives a fuck about who touches their own junk.

And I think the answer is, we're a social species and it is something that is embarrassing. Consciously, I'm 100% on board with it being natural and healthy, but I would still be mortified if friends, family or the internet were to see me stroking the goomba.
And when people feel shame about something, it's natural to retroactively try to think of why that activity must be wrong.

They may be described mathematically as waves, but they are portrayed graphically as balls. — Gnomon

It's not just graphically. There are multiple models of the atom, and while there is a clear "best", most accurate model, it's nonetheless often useful to use one of the simpler, less accurate models.

e.g. It's a common misconception that teaching high school kids a planetary-ish model of the atom is wrong. When in fact, it's no more wrong than depicting the entire atom as a single sphere when teaching about the states of matter is wrong (or indeed, all high school chemistry). It's a useful abstraction.

And there is some relevance to my tangent here, in that modern physicists don't focus too much on metaphysical claims of what something "really" is. They make models, and if that model makes good predictions and inferences, that's awesome, but they usually avoid making the claim that the representations in that model are the real and final ones.

Please relax now. — god must be atheist

What? I wasn't disagreeing with you.
I was just clarifying one of my points.

To go into further depth on this, God may have viewed free will as a necessity. If there wasn't free will, then, once again, it would seem that God isn't all good and he would seem more like a puppeteer messing around with his puppets. Given that free will exists, we might as well be led to assume that it brings around more good than bad, because an all good God would never do the opposite, but also gives a place for evil things to happen without god impeding upon them. If God were to stop evil, then, in many cases, it would directly be interfering with the notion of free will. — Isaac242

This is the standard solution to the problem of evil, but it doesn't actually work.

How do I make decisions? I make decisions based on prior experiences and the kind of person I am. Well, God made all of those things. God knew, when he created me, that I am X type of person and my environment Y would lead to the end result Z. What other inputs could there be?

Furthermore, we can ask questions like Is there free will in heaven? If there is free will and no suffering in heaven, then why didn't God just make heaven only and call it a day? At the least it would show God's hands were not tied, as it is possible to make an environment with free will and no suffering.

Einstein's theory of specific relativity was pure philosophy at first, which got to be scientific knowledge after its predictive nature was shown. Newton's theory of gravity was at first mere philosophy. Maslow's theory of needs in a pyramid form is still not science but philosophy. — god must be atheist

Right, and these are very good examples of my point that concepts stop being called "philosophy" when they start making testable predictions.

But in terms of scientists being amateur philosophers I also meant it in a more negative way; of certain high-profile scientists taking philosophical positions that are nothing to do with their background (e.g. an astrophysicist talking about consciousness) and being quite dismissive of philosophical discussion on said topic (so often they are not even aware of the counter-arguments to their position).

In this sense, philosophy has no business in meddling in quantum theory. Quantum theory is a science, because it makes predicive results possible. Philosophy is really hard pressed to make even remotely accurate predictions. — god must be atheist

A couple of things I would say to this:

1. Many fields of human knowledge started out as philosophy, then became an -ology or -omy once they firmed up into making testable predictions. I'm only saying this because I think it's a bit unfair when people imply philosophy has never contributed anything (which you haven't said, but might be alluding to).

2. I'm fine with philosophers leaving science alone as soon as scientists leave philosophy alone.
A number of high-profile astrophysicists, neuroscientists etc make plenty of philosophical claims, and worse, they are often very dismissive of philosophers. So it's a case of "Don't listen to philosophers, it's all nonsense. Now, listen to my philosophical claims..."
Furthermore, these kinds of claims are often easily-debunked, because being a great theoretical physicist doesn't automatically mean that you are better at philosophical reasoning than the next man.

@bongo fury
Firstly, I find it hilarious to find someone that believes an assertion from a book is proof that qualia don't exist.

Secondly, I didn't say anything about images. I was simply saying color, pain etc are phenomena created by brains i.e. the same thing your quote is saying.

Finally yes, predictive power about the experiences themselves.
Ironically one example of subjective experience where we do have predictive power is optical illusions. I say "ironically" because this seems to support the notion of the brain constructing images.

So it's not a problem, nothing to see here folks, but at the same time it's unsolved and we have basically no predictive power?

Of course, but we seem to be talking about something quite different now. — ChrisH

Yeah; I think you're alluding to "strong AI". But I would say that's irrelevant to understanding TheMadFool's argument. (S)He is just saying there's a distinction between nociception and pain.

While it may be possible one day to make a robot that feels pain, there is no doubt it is possible to make one that only has nociception and no experience of pain.

How can we be sure of this? — ChrisH

Well of course at a certain level, a robot should be capable of feeling pain since we're essentially robots made by nature.
However, it's also true that there must be a distinction somewhere, since we could write a 2-line program that responds "Ouch!" when you press a key, but I assume we all would agree that such a program does not actually feel pain. There is a difference between responding to stimuli and actually experiencing pain.

The more interesting question for me, is why so many people seem so committed to dismissing the hard problem. What's the issue with admitting something we don't know yet?

And I think it's:

1. The baggage. Many seem to feel that admitting we don't understand a fundamental aspect of consciousness is (re-)opening the door to souls, spirits and other nonsense.

2. The difficulty groking the problem in the first place. Since subjective experience is the window through which we naturally and effortlessly examine everything, many people have difficulty examining the window itself. And that includes me. Just like most people, I had to have a "penny drop" moment, where I realized that pain, color, smells etc are phenomena that occur in the brain, not in the outside world (or the body, in the case of pain), in a way we don't yet understand.
Many people arguing against the hard problem either have never had the penny drop moment, or didn't have it prior to strongly taking a position and are now committed.

I view "the hard problem" as not really a "problem". All its really doing is stating, "Figuring out how your subjective consciousness maps to your brain in an exact and repeatable model is hard." — Philosophim

Well firstly this concedes the point. You are agreeing it's difficult (hard) and a work in progress (a problem).

But the rest of your post seems to be implying that we broadly understand how phenomena like pain, or color occur, we are just narrowing in on more precise answers. As someone working in the field of neuroscience I can say that that just isn't the case.
While, for example, we can understand a great deal about how the visual cortex and retina process input data to perform, for example, edge detection, where the sensation of "redness" enters the picture, we still don't know.

And how you can know that we don't know, is in predictive power. I'm personally not very impressed by the various handwaves of the hard problem of consciousness because where are the testable inferences or predictions?

Perhaps, logically, the concept of free will is garbage. But I get this very strong feeling that I am making decisions. — flaco

It seems I must not be making my position very clear.
Because I *do* think you are making decisions.

Imagine someone offers me the choice of coffee or tea. I think about it...in the past, I have enjoyed coffee more. But OTOH, I heard a rumor that a puppy will die if I choose coffee, so I play it safe and choose tea.
That decision-making process is real. (Put aside here the fact that some decisions are made by the subconscious and just percolate up to the conscious. From the point of this argument, it's irrelevant -- we can say all the brain is "me", conscious or otherwise). It was not ordained that I would choose tea prior to me having those thoughts. And no-one could predict my choice without simulating those thoughts.

However, of course my choice is part of the physical universe. And of course if you could somehow rewind the tape and give me the same choice again, with the same inputs and knowledge again, I will make the same decision again. How could it possibly be any different? That would make no sense. (and here, put to one side quantum indeterminacy, since part of the premise is that most people, including me, wouldn't consider that to be "free will")

We have to take responsibility for the consequences of our decisions. — flaco

Absolutely. Although there are two caveats.

Firstly, if there really were an omnimax god, then he would be responsible for my actions too. Indeed more so, because he knows the consequences of my actions.
The concept of "free will" only solves the issue of god's culpability by assertion; it doesn't actually work when you think about it.

Secondly, justice systems around the world will increasingly need to wrestle with advances in neuroscience. e.g. imagine if we find a brain defect that makes someone 10x more likely to commit a violent crime...in the short term, that might be considered an extenuating factor when sentencing.
But, since our consciousness is simply neurochemical, ultimately all our actions could be traced to neurochemical structures and processes.
So, ultimately, we need to drop the notion of punishment for crimes, and just focus on the other goals of criminal systems: rehabilitation, deterrence and protection of the public. Many governments are already there, but the US is a laggard on this.

If you are suggesting that we have to let the conclusions of free-will and no-free-will coexist, then I'm in agreement. — flaco

Well, you could put it like that, but I prefer to just say the concept of free will is garbage. And, importantly, saying there is no free will is akin to saying "there is no P and not-P"...it's a null statement that tells us nothing.

The brain is a container full of chemicals. When the brain goes from state A to state B those chemicals just act according to the laws that govern chemical reactions whether deterministic or random. So how is this different from any other bowl of chemicals? — flaco

The neurochemical nature of the brain is a complete red herring though.

Forget about humans and brains for a minute.

Imagine some world where there are intelligent agents with "souls", and that these souls are driven by magic -- no chemistry involved. Furthermore, souls are non-deterministic.

Well, we can still ask: How do these agents make decisions? How they decide whether to drink coffee or tea, or to go bowling or watch a movie?
If the answer is any combination of the properties of the soul itself and the experiences that it has had, then it would seem we have exactly the same "problem" of free will as we do with humans and brains. The soul's decisions seem to simply be the product of its initial state and the things that happened to it.
And for the indeterminacy part, we can ask what difference that makes -- if it is just some random factor, then, well, there is a random factor in human decisions too (quantum indeterminacy), and most people do not seem to think this counts as free will.

My point is that the reason we don't have free will is because of the nonsensical definition of the concept itself, it's nothing to do with the neurochemical nature of our brain.
The only reason neurochemistry comes up at all is because of our intuitions here -- it's really weird to think of our mind as both being physical and conscious at the same time. So we generally want one of these descriptions to "win" and be the "real" description; a reductive materialist description generally wins because it's easier to grok.
But neurochemistry is not the issue with the free will concept.

This thread is too long to read through, so I'm going to add my 2 cents knowing it's probably duplicate.

99% of the arguments against systemic racism seem to be based on a misapprehension of what the term means. e.g. Ben Shapiro made a long video that essentially contained one argument: that there is no shady cabal conspiring to keep black people down.
Well, sorry Ben, but even assuming your assertion is true, that's not what systemic racism means.

It just means that a particular group or institution unfairly racially discriminates for whatever reason. No conspiracy or nefarious plan required. So it's enough to just show different treatment by banks, police etc (possibly correcting for things like income disparities, depending on what data we're looking at).

I frequently come across the idea that philosophy is useless navel-gazing, and my response is as follows:

1. Everyone holds philosophical ideas, even if they are not aware of them. It's impossible to take any action or inaction without some notions of what reality is, what life is etc

2. Philosophical ideas that have not been scrutinized are often flawed. Furthermore, while philosophical debates often fall short of concluding what is true, they are actually quite good at exposed flawed ideas.
Just look at theism -- most people are some flavor of theist, yet many of the reasons that people believe in God have compelling philosophical counter-arguments. It's just most people are not aware of them. Because they think that philosophy is useless navel-gazing.

3. Philosophy is the name given for discussions that are at the extreme of human knowledge. When any part of philosophy reaches a stage where we can make testable predictions, it becomes an -ology, or a branch of mathematics or whatever, and we stop referring to it as philosophy.
So, it only looks like philosophy doesn't deliver concrete things, because once things become concrete, we don't call them philosophy any more.

I agree with the arguments given by the OP, but not the conclusion.
I think, rather that trying to rehabilitate the concept of free will, we should just throw it out as incoherent nonsense.

But, and this is critical; the non-existence of this nonsensical concept has nothing to say about my actions.

When I make a decision, that's really my brain (concious or unconscious or both) making a decision. You cannot predict what I would do without simulating my brain and memories and essentially asking that copy of my brain what it wants to do.
Sure, I make choices based on past experiences and the kind of guy I am...what's the alternative to that? Even if there were souls, where do the soul's decisions come from?

I think a lot of the reason we've got into this mess with free will is because of religion. Religions need free will to operate in a way where God is 0% culpable for our actions. That requirement is why the definitions (e.g. "could have chosen differently") are frequently such a mess, since there's no way to square an omnimax god not being responsible for what happens.

I get what you mean but if that's what's meant by "death is the equalizer" then, why is the world making such a big issue of premature deaths among the underprivileged? — TheMadFool

Because you're equating two different things. The only thing that they have in common is that they are both talking about death, but they are making wholly different points.

The first is a philosophical statement based on the fact that none of us can escape death, and indeed, death is not far away, since we're mayflies compared to the universe. There is no "happily ever after", only "dead ever after", no matter who you are. So equal in that sense.

However, when exactly that happens, and what was the proximate cause, very obviously is not equal between groups, or over time and regions, for a plethora of reasons. Humans can, and should, do a lot to try to address these inequalities and also generally improve the situation for everyone. We've had a lot of success in this: life expectancy worldwide has increased a lot, and in much of the developed world (not US) the life expectancy between rich and poor is negligible.

In some twisted sense, it's comforting to know everyone dies no matter how unequal we are in life.

Yet, if one looks at the statistics, we see a disproportionate number of deaths among the poor, the underprivileged, the minority, the weak — TheMadFool

I think you've missed the point that it's not saying all groups are going to have the same distribution of ages or types of death. Merely that everyone is going to die eventually; the end of every life story, good or bad, rich or poor, popular or pariah, is death.

In the not-too-distant future it may no longer be true though. Many people alive today may get to see a time where life extension therapies are available. In the long run, what will the effect be? Will some of us still live mere decades, bodies plagued with disease for the end third of that time, while others run and play for centuries?
In that scenario, I don't think many would find it very comforting to reflect on the fact those elf-people will eventually die someday, probably when they've had their fill of pleasures.

Yeah I'm done here.
None of this is complicated to someone who genuinely wants to learn and understand why their intuition seems contrary to scientific convention. This is clearly not the case here.

Also consider a scenario where you observe a gold ingot on a table. Before you start measuring its weight, you must first determine whether the ingot is actually real or not, right? You couldn't measure the weight if it weren't real. — TheMadFool

No; there is clearly something being weighed here, the observation is "real".
However, the proposition that I have N kilograms of gold needs further investigation to confirm.

What you say implies that the probability has to be something other than 50%. Two possibilities - either less than 50% or more than 50% - make your choice and explain why. — TheMadFool

The probability will depend on the specifics of what's being measured and how. It's something calculated, not something known apriori from just saying "well either it is or it ain't".
If you look up how to calculate p value you find it's not a trivial topic.

If three people are involved, the probability that each one's observation being real is 50%. The probability that all three of them are observing something real is calculated thus: 50% * 50% * 50% — TheMadFool

No it's not calculated like that. Can you respond to the argument I just made, refuting this (with the cookie example)? Or indeed, any of the other examples that others have posted?

I beg to differ. When you observe something, say a reading on weighing scale that reads 12 kg, what's the checklist you have to go through before you come to the conclusion that what there is a mass that's 12 kg? — TheMadFool

What wouldn't be on the checklist is the words "real" or "not real".
The checklist would be on what I could infer from my observation and what further data I need to collect to raise confidence in such inferences.
It's nothing to do with real or not real.

That raises a lot more questions than answers, friend. — TheMadFool

The question for me is whether you're interested in understanding this, or if the whole thread is just for you to proselytize. Numerous examples have been given as to why the number of alternatives has nothing to do with their probability. Ergo there is no reason to assign a probability of 50%.

It's being updated - probabilities are being multiplied. What other mathematical operation would you say is the correct method of updating to the final probability? — TheMadFool

It's not as simple as one operation; the actual calculation of a P value depends on the specifics of how much data is being collected, what the noise range is for that data and so on. But yes, as we gather more data our confidence in a proposition goes up.

Multiplying this number, as you've done, comes up with obviously absurd results. Imagine I am trying to figure out if you ate my cookie. If there are cookie crumbs on your shirt, I'm 80% confident you did it. If your fingerprints are on the cookie jar, 50%. But if I see both things, then by your logic, it's somehow less likely than either individual piece.
(and note, even if you quibble with the actual numbers, the point is, as long as they are less than 100% this will always be the case; multiplying them will decrease our confidence, by your logic.

1. Not everyone has picked up on it, but the "real" and "not real" thing is a bad framing, right from the start. As Mww correctly pointed out, we know the observation is real, the question is whether it points to some new phenomenon or just, say, noise in a cable or whatever.

2. The idea that if we have two options then those two options must have 50% probability, is a logical fallacy. I can't seem to find the name of the fallacy right now, but it is a known, named fallacy. Probability does not work like that.

3. Multiplying the "50% chance of being real" at the end is also wrong. The whole point of repeating the experiment is to raise our confidence level that it wasn't just experimental error. To the extent these numbers make any sense at all, the 50% would need to be raised after each positive result.

Whether time not existing makes intuitive sense to you is neither here nor there.
The fact is, physicists understand a lot about time. GPS systems have to correct for the effect of earth's gravity on time. It's fundamentally linked to the geometry of our universe. So, yes, from a scientific point of view, time being finite and having a discrete start is easier to explain than eternal time.
That's not to say there is not still an explanatory gap; my last post was at pains to emphasize this.

On your point about time being a phenomenon of consciousness, I think you may be getting confused with the arrow of time. Time itself can be defined in a number of objective ways. However, a progression of events, forwards, could be an illusion of consciousness. e.g. The universe could be a bunch of static snapshots, but at each snapshot the conscious agents there feel as though time flowed up to that moment. Could be.

There are two common misconceptions or misframings of this issue, and I think the OP basically stumbles into both of them (not to sound too critical; most discussions do IMO)

1. "Explaining existence itself is just a matter of explaining how there can be a start point. So, if there's no start point, there's no problem".
2. "If we hypothesize that there is no reason / explanation for existence, that's conclusive of something".

However, explaining existence itself is not merely talking about a start point in time.
It is more like an explanatory gap. We have no model that accounts for how stuff can exist, and from which we can make useful predictions and inferences from. Maybe such a model is fundamentally impossible -- after all, a "model" implies some prior actors and actions.

However "no explanation is possible" of course implicitly admits we have no explanation.

And more specifically on time; time is also a "thing". As counter-intuitive as it is for us, we've known for over a century that time (as part of space time) has a geometry, and is even malleable. So, throwing away a start point in time, and supposing that time is eternal, actually adds to the "things" we need to explain, at least from a physics point of view. It certainly doesn't solve anything.

1. I'm intrigued by the fact that no two vascular trees are identical. However is a vascular tree an instance of complexity? Granted that, as I said, no two are identical but a bird's eye view of the vascular system bespeaks a simplicity - a result of a simple random branching algorithm. Nothing that's beyond the capacity of genomes. — TheMadFool

Of course it's not beyond the capacity of genes; I'm not the one arguing that anything is.

The point is simply this: the genome is a recipe for how to make a human. It doesn't, and couldn't, encode everything about the end product.

As you said, there's some parts of our genome that don't code for any protein and are labeled as junk DNA but this is, as is the case in all of science, only the current best judgement on the matter. — TheMadFool

"Best judgement" is somewhat misleading here, making it sound like some best guess.
Actually our understanding is based on a number of factors and testable observations. We see that long stretches of DNA can be duplicated, and we see duplication events, such as whole chromosome duplication occurring in plants. We know what sequence of alleles will code for a protein, and which cannot result in a protein being produced. We can see sequences that were incorporated from retroviruses, and can see in which species they were first incorporated (this is very good evidence for evolution btw). So we can be very confident at this point that junk DNA is a thing, and that most DNA is junk (as most fits within the above and similar categories).

As with all of science, we could be wrong. But also as with all of science, we can talk of how confident we are in a model based on its testable predictions and inferences. We can have similar confidence in junk DNA as we have for, say, plate tectonics.

If it turns out that junk DNA truly has zero phenotype information content then it speaks in my favor - genotype is not sufficient to explain phenotypic complexity. — TheMadFool

I don't follow your logic.
But also, let's not get sidetracked; this point was addressing your point about how simpler organisms can have a bigger genome than humans. Well, this is the answer.

Because your foregoing quote asserted same. — 3017amen

No it didn't. Again, you aren't reading.
I'm saying that this whole misconception is based on a language issue in English (and other languages that contract "logical not" and "something").

That's the polar opposite of trying to construct a philosophical proposition based on some quirk of the English language, which is what you just did. I'm criticizing such logic.

And I'm saying that's an incorrect use of terms in comparing the opposites of something and nothing. — 3017amen

But I'm not making such a comparison. I am saying that comparing a chair to the absence of a chair is sufficient, and something indeed can be compared to nothing. The point is that we don't need an opposite in the sense of "sadness" and "happiness" (which you considered opposite) or positive and negative. (Implicitly) comparing things to their absence is the normal standard.

Entire lives: a phrase that implies a static existence, timelessness and eternal.

And I'm saying that's impossible by virtue of time, change, stasis, and common sense. Otherwise, you must support some form of eternal psychological nirvana... ? — 3017amen

Once again: a lifetime is not timeless or eternal. It's typically 70-80 years. So I have no idea what you're getting at with this.

I've answered the OP with demonstrable scientific facts, so I'm not sure what there is left to debate and why you still find it hard to believe. To reiterate once again simply:

1. There is not a one-to-one correspondence between genes and phenotypal complexity: e.g. the layout of blood vessels in the body is extremely complex, and it isn't coded directly in the genes.
2. Most DNA does not code for anything, or redundantly codes for the same protein. This is why there is no simple correlation between size of genome and complexity of the organism. Often the primary factor in how big a genome is is how many chromosome duplication events have occurred in an organism's history.

Considering the scientific consensus that genotype determines phenotype and taking into account that increasing complexity in organisms generally means complexity in phenotype, it should be the case that more complex the organism, the greater its genome size. — TheMadFool

A couple of things to be aware of:

1. Genetics doesn't directly define the qualities of an organism; there is an interplay with the environment and the rest of the organism. We're aware of nature vs nurture in terms of personality, but in fact all of our physical characteristics too depend on a complex interplay within the body, within the womb environment and then later within the external environment.
To give a trivial example, no genome is big enough to code for the structure of the capillaries. Instead, a process happens that results in a certain "branchiness" of capillaries. But "run" the same genome again, and the capillaries will not be the same.

2. The more important point; there's an awful lot of redundant genes; the majority of the human genome is "junk" DNA and doesn't code for any protein i.e. it does nothing. In certain plants that have a much bigger genome than ours, the proportion of junk or duplicate DNA is much greater (duplicate DNA can sometimes have a different phenotypical effect than one copy, but often is redundant).
So there is no inconsistency here.

I kind of disagree with the OP in both senses :razz:

Ok, I easily see how, if we have two rocks made of the exact same material and one is twice as big as the other, the bigger one should weigh twice as much. There certainly is something mathematical about this place we live in. — Gregory

I know I'm in the minority on this, but IMO, the fact that we can do math, and make good predictions about the external universe doesn't prove that the universe is mathematical.
Mathematics is a set of tools for rearranging data; deriving non-obvious facts from obvious facts -- essentially augmenting our reasoning process, and intuition. It works because it's self-consistent and the universe seems to be self-consistent, and for thinking beings like us, formally figuring out what can be inferred from what we know is of course a big deal.

I often see physicists say things like "we discovered some math that helps with problem so and so" and stuff like that. I have a hard time putting my finger on what they are saying. It often seems like that are taking math a priori and assuming that the world must accord with it. That would be a Pythagorean position though. It would need defending. Anyone willing to help me reason through this issue?

It's actually the opposite of what you're saying. They aren't assuming maths works. They are using maths to make predictions or inferences and finding that they work; they make good predictions.

At this point, there's such a long track record of applying maths usefully that it's the most promising place to first look. You're free to use mysticism to try to predict events, but humans have done that for thousands of years and come up with nothing. Or, if you have an alternative way of making predictions, go for it! No-one would be upset to discover another way of successfully understanding our universe.

Why have any consistency to anything? Why not have a gravitational force that changes constantly or a conservation law that works "most" of the time. — Benj96

FIrstly, even if they changed constantly we'd still write equations describing the frequency by which they change, or the type of randomness. The "rules" are just a description of what we see, so they'll always be rules.

Secondly, perhaps they do change over vast distances / timescales / bubble universes? We can't rule that out right now, and indeed many physicists suspect that this is the case. In which case, the laws just look static to us because we're the beat of a hummingbird's wings in the grand scale of things.

Squaring circles would be logically impossible. Maybe this will make better sense:

Chair and anti-chair (your analogy) is the same as saying something and anti-something. And I'm saying that's an incorrect analogy to something and nothing. Please read what I said. — 3017amen

"Please read what I said" :smirk:
I'm giving the example of squaring circles as something that is logically impossible. And the example of the anti-chair to illustrate that not everything has an opposite, many (most) things do not have a true opposite, but can be compared to their absence.
So, what part of either analogy is incorrect? What are you disagreeing with?

Activities: requires time and change.
Entire lives: a phrase that implies a static existence, timelessness and eternal.

You with me yet? — 3017amen

This is possibly the least clear thing you've said so far. How is a human lifespan "timeless and eternal"?

But the point about equilibrium, in finding an appropriate analogy about the human condition (opposite feelings) and nature, was that while a person can be happy they will eventually be sad, but they can also be content. And so there you have opposites as well as stasis/equilibrium/contentment. Either way, you have energy (consciousness in this case) working behind the scenes through change and time. Nothing is static. The closest thing that comes to it is homeostasis which is the gradient between opposites that you even mention in your last post. — 3017amen

What you previously said was that consciousness seeks equilibrium, which is a baseless assertion. This new point, that consciousness is not static, I can agree with.
Neither point actually addresses what I was saying; that there is no intrinsic reason why a brain only capable of various levels of sadness or neither sad nor happy is not possible.

Even though you don't agree with unity of opposites, did you at least comprehend its meaning? — 3017amen

I don't get what you mean by it, no. And I don't think it's adding to this discussion; it seems to rely on agreeing to several propositions that I do not, and is not adding clarity.

But, once again, itching is not analogous because the concept or semantic definition of itching itself is a predicate verb (in that case). Therefore the opposite of itching is (simply) not itching. — 3017amen

What's language got to do with it? The simple fact is, brain states don't have opposites (just like chairs don't have an opposite). It's more obvious in the case of itching than sadness, and that's why I used it as an example. But neither has a true opposite.

Instead of talking about a gap of what remains, why don't we just call it an explanatory gap?
Because, after all, how we measure what we know / don't know, about anything, is explanatory power.

If we have a model of consciousness, what questions can be unambiguously answered by reference only to the model?

There are hundreds of questions we can ask about consciousness. To give a simple example, let's talk about physical pain.

Doctors would like to know exactly what pain is, and how to quantify it. Quantifying pain numerically may never be possible, but we can at least agree some pains are worse than others...what determines this? And do we experience pain as soon as we have a nervous system, or is it something that requires development in the brain? Can you be a pain p-zombie?
Less usefully, but still interesting: what's the worst pain a human brain could experience? Note: this does not mean what pain the human nervous system can relay, or the most pain a human has experienced; it means what is the limitation of the brain itself?

Right now it's pretty clear the explanatory gap is still big.

It's an incorrect analogy for the reasons I stated. Hence; something and anti something. — 3017amen

It's like if I had said you can't square a circle, and your retort is that the analogy is invalid because you can't square a circle. You are repeating back what I said, as if it's a refutation, and, importantly, ignoring the actual point.

Ambivalence itself (in concept) would become a homeostasis. Meaning in our context, nothing is not 'really' nothing at all. Otherwise there would be no laws of gravity, no space time, no light, no dark, (no consciousness) etc.. — 3017amen

Sorry I don't follow what you're saying. Can you break this down?

I love the idea, but it's not logically possible (consciousness tends to seek homeostasis). — 3017amen

I see no reason to believe the assertion that consciousness seeks homeostasis e.g. There are activities that might give us joy our entire lives...is that a broken consciousness?
But, even if I agreed, I don't see how this would rule out the possibility of a brain that could only experience various levels of sadness + neutrality, or various levels of happiness + neutrality. After all, a consciousness can experience various levels of itchiness + neutrality...there is no opposite to itching.

The first thing to say 3017amen, is that most of your post doesn't even make sense in light of what I posted, that you're ignoring points that I made, or agreeing with me but writing as though you're refuting me. So let's try this again, and please read carefully this time

"anti-chair"
— Mijin

Incorrect. See above. — 3017amen

This is what I mean. What do you mean "incorrect"? I said we don't need an anti-chair and can compare a chair to the absence of a chair. What are you disagreeing with?

It's not that you need the opposites, it's that the opposites are logically necessary for existence of any binary concept. As another example, it is logically necessary to eventually have sadness in the place of happiness. — 3017amen

The point is, that many things, probably most things, do not have a perfect opposite, only their own absence.
An example of something with an exact opposite would be electric charge. We can talk about 3 states; positive charge, its opposite: negative charge, and finally, neutrality; no net charge at all.
Most things are not like this though; we can only talk about 2 states; the phenomenon is present to some degree or it is not.

In terms of psychological examples, I gave the example of itching, as a very obvious example of something without an opposite. You didn't respond to that, so let's go with your example of happiness and sadness.

In terms of "folk psychology" we might consider happiness and sadness to be opposites. After all, the same stimuli might provoke these emotions on a sliding scale; if the value of my company is a value X, then there might be values of X that would make me feel sad, some values of X that I would be ambivalent about and others that might make me happy.

However, in terms of neurology, there's little basis for this idea. Sadness is a whole different pathway in the brain, involving different neurotransmitters and different activation areas. There's no reason in principle a brain couldn't be constructed that could only experience one state and not the other.
Finally, the sliding scale argument falls apart when we consider other candidates for being the opposite of happiness: disappointment, frustration, anger, angst etc...all of these can be on a sliding scale with happiness depending on the stimulus.
And if we were to say that all of these emotions can be bracketed under the umbrella of "sadness" that would only serve to show that it's an extremely crude concept, and not something we can apply formal logic to, and call it the precise opposite of anything.

Yeah, I'm not much of a fan of the idea of necessary opposites.
It's just not true in general: I don't need an "anti-chair" for the concept of a "chair" to make sense; I can compare a chair to the absence of a chair.
And likewise I don't believe that we need evil for the concept of "good" to make sense, or that whatever is least good we would necessarily call "evil" any more than there needs to be an opposite of an itch, and the most non-itchy I ever feel must be labelled as some discrete concept in itself.

Now, in the case of "nothing" and "something", this might seem to be a distinction without a difference. After all, in this case specifically, [absence of something] = [opposite of something] = nothing.

But the point is, if I find this logic dubious in most cases, I already have reason not to want to apply it here.

First you say it's non-sensical to ask if nothing exists, then you do just that. Also, nothing in the English dictionary does not say that nothing is kinda something. Your post is non-sensical. — Gregory

No, I think you have not read my post correctly -- which is understandable; the whole issue that I am talking about here is how the English language is breeding certain Epistomological misconceptions and misunderstandings, so it is necessarily difficult to discuss this issue.

So, let's be clear. At no point have I said that nothing exists is itself nonsensical. Indeed I have said several times now that there is nothing logically inconsistent in nothing existing whatsoever.
What's nonsensical is asking for a demonstration, or evidence of, nothing in our universe. It's treating "nothing" as some discrete entity that we could view and measure, and that makes no sense.

To the OP, why is 'nothing is still something'' wrong? — 3017amen

My point is that the reasoning behind "nothing is still something" is usually based on various misconceptions related the fact that in English, "logical negation" + "thing" has been contracted into a singular noun.
Statements like "Demonstrate me a nothing" or "Show me that nothing can exist" are nonsensical statements, that can't even be translated into languages that don't have this contraction.
So the burden is on believers of that statement to give some valid reason for thinking it to be true not based on this misapprehension.

Having said that, "thing" can mean different, well, things, and the statement is obviously true in some senses. For example, a state of nothingness is still a state; and the concept of "nothing existing" alludes to such a state.

But, importantly, "nothing is still something" is often used as a jumping off point for "solutions" to the problem of existence itself. For example, the implication is often that the concept of nothing existing is somehow self-inconsistent, and therefore a physical universe must necessarily exist. But again, once you appreciate the linguistic issues with "nothing" in English, there's no reason at all to think that "nothing existing" is self-inconsistent.

Nothing is better than heaven.
But a ham sandwich is better than nothing.
Therefore a ham sandwich is better than heaven. — Pfhorrest

Haha, that's brilliant. It's both funny and alludes to exactly the issue I'm talking about.