• Gender rates in this forum
    It's not prejudice, it is just that your gender/sex doesn't mean anything when you're talking about philosophy - at least it shouldn't -.Gus Lamarch

    Right, so why would people not answer then? If we realize that data say most of the people in this forum are man I think is interesting and meaningful anyway.
    Coud be a cultural bias, a biological bias, I don't know... while I'm sure there re serious studies about it. I'm sure the bias is there but could be I'm wrong and would be interesting to see if there re many more woman than what I would expect.
    Net, I find it interesting but is ok, I think it is a lot about prejudice and in this case prejudice wins.

    You can delete it if you want, I will understand.
  • A short theory of consciousness
    Raul

    SCIENTISM : excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques.Gnomon

    Enformationism : excessive belief in the enformation theories ( I couldn't find a good picture sorry) :lol:
  • A short theory of consciousness
    I like that analogy, and I take it literally. I suspect that the reason scientists and philosophers find Consciousness to be the "Hard Problem" is that they think in terms of physical Quanta, and ignore meta-physical Qualia.Gnomon

    Could you please mention some of those scientists or philosophers that think on consciousness as physical quanta? Maybe Chalmers? I can tell you not all the scientists and philosophers think on Consciousness in terms of Qualia. The cutting-edge theories on human consciousness are based on integrated information within the brain, not quanta anywhere.
    I'm asking this because I think this is a wrong prejudice you have.
  • A short theory of consciousness
    Information is inseparable from energy and matter.Pop

    Reading through this paragraph I have the impression you don't understand what information is. Do you have a definition of information? I'm curious because is clearly different from the one we find in wikipedia, so I'm curious. What is information for you and what is not information for you?
  • A short theory of consciousness
    BTW, what is your personal worldview? Can you summarize it in a few words? :smile:Gnomon

    My worldview in few words? I consider myself a natural-cognitivist. Professionals on this have explained many things of the world better than me. I rely very much on philosophers like Daniel Dennett, Sandro Nannini, Daniel Andler, Gerog Northoff and of course on great neuroscientists and mathematicians like Stanislas Dehaene, Tononi, Koch, and alon etc. They have really interesting theories and discoveries that change the way we understand things ! You notice I rely on contemporary people, not people from past centuries and I do it on purpose, it proofs to be very efficient in avoiding sterile ideas.

    So I read them and I try to understand what they discover. I'm not one of those that tries to create a theory and think it is the cutting-edge theory because I'm not a professional philosopher, I'm not a scientist so I don't have access to the latest technologies so it would be ridiculous and pretentious for me to build a theory of the world myself. Are you a philosopher or a scientist?
  • A short theory of consciousness
    Where did you get that absurd idea?Gnomon

    From the following paragraph you sent above:
    " My thesis is not intended to provide empirical value to scientific knowledge of the material world. Yet, it is intended to add some "epistemic" value to the philosophical understanding of immaterial Mind. The "proof" of that added value may not be known, until a new generation of philosophers grows-up without the weight of ancient materialistic or spiritualistic dogma. :joke: "
  • Gender rates in this forum
    This polarizes and divides a groupGus Lamarch

    Actually no one is responding so it looks like many people think like you do.
    I'm anyway surprise, but it is a learning for me, a sad one.

    I recognize history is full of polarizations and divisions based on gender, religion and race and it looks like you and many people in this forum are reluctant to share their gender as they are afraid of prejudices. This is sad but it is what it is. And you're right , we never know who is on the other side.
    I myself feel free of sharing I'm a white man and atheist and a natural-cognitist but, again, I respect if people are afraid of sharing their attributes.

    Maybe, from a philosophical forum, I was expecting these prejudices would not be there...

    Statistical populations are a basic fact of reality.Pantagruel

    Right, so for me it was interesting to see the gender distribution but looks like not everyone thinks like we do. Actually looks like we're a minority.

    on an internet forum is not representative of the global population in a number of ways, including gender.SophistiCat

    Yes, I agree, it would not be a result of any scientific value but I find it interesting at least to see if my prejudices and assumptions are correct. This is to say that I'm expecting that more than 90% of people attracted by philosophy are men.

    It's anyway interesting already to see that in this forum most of the people are still afraid of prejudices on sharing their gender...
  • A short theory of consciousness
    new generation of philosophers grows-up without the weight of ancient materialistic or spiritualistic dogma. :joke:Gnomon

    The contemporary philosophy has to go in hand with science and it helps it making progress as well as sense explaining the cultural and epistemic implications of scientific discoveries.
    You're basically dreaming on going back in history to the times when people were following the dictates of Asclepio?
    Those times you mention without the "weight of ancient materialistic or spiritualistic" dogma are those of the beginning of civilization. Spirituality brought stability to societies and now science is the next leap ahead, no way back :nerd:
  • Translatio Studii
    impossible to achieve in a Universe with finite time and matterGus Lamarch

    For me it makes sense and I can imagine it possible. I don't understand your argument. Why a finite Universe would imply singularity impossible to achieve?
  • The self
    Just a world of material things bound to the necessity of casual sufficiency,Constance

    What is material Constance? I think you're very reductive or do not understand contemporary physics if you think as material world as bounded to the necessity of casual sufficiency.
    I could understand you say this 100+ years ago... not after relativity and all the rest...

    something epistemological that carries the object, the cat, to my interior world.Constance

    Of course, as I say those causes are the mental objects you learned during childhood. Your chilhood is when you internal world gets built.

    Causality doesn't do this.Constance

    Yes it does.
    can carry, if you will, the "ofness" that eventually becomes my knowledge OF the catConstance

    We call it memory, neural-traces that keep our memories and form our memories as the memories of the computers but in the brain and with neural networks. (have you watched the second Blade Runner?).
    Artificial Neural Networks do it as well.

    there is no model beyond this that can be brought in for comparison.Constance

    Yes, there is a model, the one you build during your childhood as your brain interacts with the world.

    If you cannot affirm that causal networks are analytically epistemological,Constance
    this is what I'm affirming, neural networks that have learned are causally epistemological.

    . If you take electromagnetic fields to be in their exhaustive analysis about what is "out there," independent of experience, then you would be committing the metaphysical fallacy of positing things unseen.Constance

    Pragmatics do not only refer to the world you see. Your comment is quite naif. Electromagnetic fields are part of nature, are natural. This is why I tell you you should stop using materialism or physician because you have an obsolete understanding of matter (materialism); better if you talk about nature.
    Blind people are humans too :grin:

    We can now proceed to construct a new model of the world, one in which values are not subordinated the "metaphysics" of science, and the subjective/objective division at the ontological level simply vanishes.Constance

    It has been built: heterophenomenology. I see you haven't watched the videos of Dehaene I proposed you. You're too concentrated trying to show you're right :nerd:


    Science needs to know its place, however.Constance

    Are you the one telling science what is his place? :lol:
    Science has won its place along history and many people have died defending it, but here we're, in a very humble way, with the ambition of explaining and understanding everything but step by step in a continuous and humble dialogue with nature, with our nature.
  • A short theory of consciousness
    The BothAnd PrincipleGnomon

    Ok, so this just confirms what I said, Your theory is a potpourri of ideas very descriptive of your own pop-movie.
    No epistemic value, no consequences or implications for anything. I'm sorry Gnomon, I'm being intellectually honest, don't get too attached to this theory. Try to get new sources and new perspectives, not trying just to be right in what you say but listening to the novelties, the epistemic progress.
    Contemporary times are great for this, you never get bored :nerd:
  • A short theory of consciousness
    makes more sense to me. :nerd:Gnomon

    I see, you work on your intuitions that tell you that a G*D is needed and I understand you're not a scientist, right? basically you have put together a good movie.
  • The self
    All language is contingent, analyzable, but that presence before me is not language.Constance

    Of course it is not language. It is about biology of your brain.
    Capgras syndrome, phantom-limb-syndrome... we can induce you the feeling of someone following you just increasing certain neurotransmitters and certain hormones in your blood and brain... and you would swear someone is following you, doesn't this change the way you understand "presence" and the "feeling of presence"? And you still think you can rely on your metaphysical ideas of the "pure presence"?

    We can even make someone more or less religious, believe more or less in deities, or make him believe he is god by stimulating activity in certain areas of the brain (see Ramachandran research). Doesn't this change the idea we have about religion?

    A tumor can change your personality (see the case of pedophile the medicine discover he was pedophile because of a tumor in his brain, famous one you can google). Doesn't this change the idea we have about pedophile? It challenge our justice system and our values (google it, is really worth it).
  • My View on the Modern day Computer
    would put in the category of magicelucid

    Yes, computers are magically amazing! what about airplanes flying? After so many flights I've taken I'm still amazed seeing those super-heavy monsters flying in such a safe way!

    The technology we have created in the last, I would say 100 years ? ...is really amazing.

    Take Plato or Aristotle and bring them here, they would think gods have descended to earth!
    Aside comment: And then, after a few days people would call them slavist, machists and xenophobes :rofl: ... technology has not only changed our life but our values and ethics as well.
  • The self
    Pain is NOT reducibleConstance

    It is not reducible I agree, naturalism (forget about word materialism) is not reductive because it actually expands our understanding on the power of biology in our brain instead.
    I would say that dualists are the ones that have a "reduced" concept of the power of nature (matter, energy, however you want to call it) and lose time with what I think are naif and solipsistic intuitions of the meta-thinking that has not made any progress since Aristotle. Metaphysicians are always trying to reinvent the wheel (Kant, Heidegger, etc...), this is well accepted among philosophers.
    The pain you feel in your finger can be induced in your brain from external people activating the specific group of neural network that trigger it using electromagnetic fields. Doing this you won't need the finger to feel the pain, we induce it. But you, subjectively will swear it is your finger burning !
    If I disable those specific finger-pain related neural networks you will not feel that pain anymore even if I cut your finger.
    Makes sense?
    Let's go even beyond, we could trick you neural networks in a way that when I burn your finger you feel the pain in you ear. All this is possible and it is possible because all your pain is within the biology and architecture of your brain.

    It is painful I know, but pain is in your brain.
  • The self


    Ok Constance, let's go with how the cat gets into the brain.
    At the beginning it works the same way a cat would get into the microchips of the computer that has a webcam. Light hits the cat that hits our eye that hits our visual cortex.
    Our visual cortex contains already certain neurons that are sensitive to the cat as part of our learnings when we were children (I assume this brain has seen and interacted with cats before).
    So those neurons related to cat-ness get activated (here it is exactly same way a CNN works), the image triggers the associated word cat, uit gramatics and it triggers as well lot of neural-networks that get activated that situate the cat within our model-of-the-world so that we get the cat and its properties, expectations activated, the cat-ness gets active.
    Our brain is ready to interact with the cat.
    Makes sense?
  • Translatio Studii
    Where's the light of knowledge moving to?Gus Lamarch

    Kurzweil's Singularity?.. so it will end up that all the energy of the universe will be invested-itself in knowing itself. Something like that.
  • Translatio Studii
    historians saw the metaphorical light of learning as moving much as the light of the sun did: westwardGus Lamarch

    First time I hear this. Super-interesting, thanks for sharing! :up:
  • Deja vu...?
    Do you support that what I and many others have experienced is paranormal?BARAA

    It is not paranormal but it is for sure extraordinary as it is not how we experience normal life.
    Thomas Metzinger has done very good studies into these phenomena but I guess you have read him and you're not satisfied.
    Let me put it this way, if I and a team of researchers would be able to induce you the feeling of the deja-vu would you believe it is just our unconscious cheating us? Unconscious activity is the one that has the power :cool: , our consciousness raises from it.
    A good proof to this is the fact that feelings take 200ms to reach consciousness (Libet) and it has been proven as well that we can read in your brain when a decision is made before you become conscious of it. We can basically read you mind before you do it :gasp: One example, we can visualize activity in your cortex, ask you to decide to push a red button or a blue one and we see in the screen your decision before you become conscious of it. There're very solid and universally accepted experiments about this. Of course this is not the case with all the kind of decisions we made, but it works for certain types of decisions.

    There're other experiments that show that a deja-vu and other experiences like out-of-the-body ones are altered states of consciousness.
    For example we can induce body movements using electromagnetic field in certain areas of your brain without telling you. And you will absolutely say it was you who moved it while the researches know very well they were the ones inducing it. If we ask you why you moved it, you would not know.

    The same way with deja-vu. Try the following, next time you will have one, try to write what will happen in the future right before it happens. You will see you're not able to do it. You have the strong feeling you know what will happen and then it happens, but you're not able to externalize it. It is basically becase the reality is that you don't know what will happen next but you just feel you know it.

    Psychotropic drugs as well are a good example for producing altered consciousness states where the subject experience and narrative can be that he has kind of paranormal experience but we know from the outside that this is not the case.

    Of course we don't know everything about how brain and our consciousness works but there're quite solid experiments that dissolve the idea of any paranormal activity and show that this is more us, humans, being too anthropocentric, thinking our brain contains something ontologically special.
    Capgras syndrome as well is very interesting to better understand how our consciousness and experience of the world works and the power of unconsciousness.

    All this is what Dennett calls... heterophenomenology!
  • Deja vu...?
    : your future self is sending memories back to youBook273

    Nice science fiction movie :wink:
  • Are we ultimately alone?
    existential, ontological or phenomenological possibilitiesJanus

    :up:
  • A short theory of consciousness
    we can't study the Mind empirically, we must investigate it philosophicallyGnomon

    While you're right, I consider metaphysics unreal :-) , it is not that I think it studies unreality, it is just that it is counter productive to use the term metaphysics as it implies a reality beyond physics, it connotates a dualism view of the world.
    Metaphysics and meta-smthg terms are feeding what I think is a false intuition that is, as you mention, that mind cannot be studied empirically. I think heterophenomenology works and studying subjectivity empirically with the help of neuroscientific techniques and technologies is not only possible, it is what we do since a long time (not only Dennett but contemporary psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience do it).
    Another story is us accepting that We, our Self, is not within our brain and its biology. I claim we should stop using the term mind as I think it is as well misleading and we should extend, instead, the use of the word brain and its relationship with the world (as Georg Northoff claims as well and as weìre doing with the concept of information).
    Looks like Aristotle never used the word "metaphysics" and the etymology of the word itself is full of misunderstandings. Since then, and fed by dualistic intuitions as well as the fact that physics and science as we know it today was not very powerful and extended in the past 2 millenials, this concept got "viral" and each philosopher has tried to build its own metaphysics, trying to justify the existence of a kind of discipline superior to science. This "supremacy" of metaphysics is for me just sterile epistemologically.

    I don't think you will grasp the fundamental revolution of nowadays understanding of our brain if you keep saying that there is any kind of physics vs metaphysics like being 2 sides of the same coin.

    mental flip is required to view the other side.Gnomon

    I think the mental flip is needed to stop talking metaphysics.

    I understand why they use that common-but-outdated termGnomon

    Yeap, I do as well, and I personally don't like they use it. If you read their work I think using the word panpsychism induces to confusion.

    Enformationism is all natural, no magical.Gnomon

    This is interesting, so for you the mind is inside nature?, then you're and maybe you don't know :smirk: , a natural cognitivist as I do (Sandro Nannini, Daniel Andler, etc.)

    cutting-edge concept in Physics & Cosmology, that everything in the world is a form of Information : Energy, Matter & Mind.Gnomon

    Ufff, here I think you've gone too far. Everything? Are you sure you're not repeating philosophical mistakes history shows we use to do? basically that we exaggerate and extrapolate too much concepts created by the contemporary discoveries?
    I agree the concept of information has become very powerful and I agree it helps articulate better how the world works. It has become such a powerful term because we all are experiencing a reality full of information technologies but saying that energy, matter and mind are a form of information I think is wrong.
    Forgetting about mind, that is misplaced here as it is a different category, energy and matter can be in a chaotic, uncertain state with high entropic so containing low amounts of information. I think information's ontology has to be understood as a property and/or attribute of a certain state of energy/matter. More similar to "temperature" for example, you can measure temperature of any system so the same way you can measure the level of certainty, the amount of "information" it has.

    Hey, it works for me. But, I'm not holding my breath, waiting for the next momentous Paradigm Shift, that was prophesied by New Age heralds, and fringey physicists steeped in Eastern philosophy. For me, it's just a personal worldview.Gnomon

    Right, and I really appreciate your view, it is estimulating to exchange ideas here :wink: :up:
    I invite you to listen some of these videos, and you will feel how the concept of mind and metaphysics will little by little dissolve:

    http://www.georgnorthoff.com/
    https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dehaene+perception
  • The self
    ll you said is evasive.Constance

    Why evasive? I have responded but looks like you need more. Here you have all you need to understand on the state-of-the-art on how the brain works:
    https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=deahene+on+perception

    By the way, the perceiving agent is your brain, not "you". You, yourself, is a construct within it.
    You already know my manifesto on th eontology of the self:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/490508
  • The self
    How is it that an epistemic connection is made such that cat over there gets into this brain thing such that I can say, I know the cat is under the table in a way that is sustainable independently of any experience making faculties.Constance

    My previous answer responds all these questions. Your interaction with cats and tables in your childhood created those mental objects in your mind as well as the rules on how they interact within the "model-of-the-world" you create as you grow.
    Let's put it this way, a blind-born person would never be able the cat is black, the same way you would never be able to say the cut is under the table if do not experience the cat and the table and its relationship with the world.

    One risk is though that once you get self-consciousness you start getting into what I think is the epistemic trap of the "meta-"... meta-physics, meta-ethics, meta-meta-meta-meaning"... there is nothing like that out there. It is an epistemological trap, we could say an intellectual epiphenomenon with no epistemic value outside yourself.
    Humans, reflexive people, with a very developed self-consciousness can understand you concepts. Most europeans have studied continental philosophy and metaphysics so belief me I know what I'm talking about, but, again,it has no epistemic value outside us.

    References to other theoretical terms already violate the terms of the question.Constance

    Well, "solipsism" doesn't complicate it for me, nevertheless is it you that is talking above about "epistemic connection"
  • The self
    nly way to move forward, or at all, would be dialectically.Constance

    Right, but not a solipsist dialectic but a dialectic coming from the dialogue with nature, our nature, the world through scientific method. This is the dialectic that has made progress human history.
    We're not better philosophers or better people than past civilizations but we do have best technology and science than in the past. This is the actual, factual breakthrough.

    In this this physical model of all things, how is it that anything out there (the mind independent world) gets in here (the mind)?Constance

    This one is an easy one. Do you have children? just observe them, see how the grow and learn,. Specially during the first 3-4 years. They interact with the external world in many ways, they copy the behaviour and sounds of the adults, they try and learn via a trial-error approach.
    Their inner nervous system that initially is just worried about keeping homeostasis in a very simple way (crying when hungry) little by little gets more sophisticated.
    Their brain absorb so many things during those 3-4 years, it creates so many mental objects.... should I follow? This is how the external and physical world gets in your brain.
    Then the self rises as the baby interact in society and builds self-consciousness.... should I continue?
  • Is artificial epistemology redefining humanity?
    Do people do the same thing? I do not know.tim wood

    Right, I honestly think none of us know...
    but looking at the power of unconsciousness and how it cheats us building our consciousness, sometimes it makes us belief it is our idea, others that is like an intuition, others the ideas are then when we wake up... it is all the same. I belief heuristics + CNN-like networks are at the core of our reasoning, of course, all this correlated into biological neural networks and our central nervous system.
  • Some Observations on Matter and Mind by Marcuse
    'mystical' can come under attack so easily.Jack Cummins

    Right, it can be easily attacked. I'm sorry but I'm one of those against any kind of mysticism.
    We have the other side of the coin, people that attack science as "just" materialism and reductive.
    I think we have to respect each other so create an open space to express ourselves.
    What I'm trying to say is, I try not feeling to be "attacked" but being honest with myself.

    the metaphysical "being-as-such" gives way to "being-instrument."Pantagruel

    Very interesting indeed, I would personally delete the word "metaphysical" and it would be better, but is a personal preference :wink:
    Couple of thoughts:
    1 - Would you say this "being-instrument" would be today equivalent to being a technology?
    2 - Could it be said the other way around: "being-instrument" gives way to "being-as-such"? your possibilities as an instrument of reality would determine your self, your being?
  • Is artificial epistemology redefining humanity?
    The substrate likely constrains what the system can and cannot do.Olivier5

    Substrate implies limitations but I think those limitations are more quantitative (like speed of processing) than qualitative. You can simulate in traditional computers probabilities and randomness that can simulate what you say, cases where the door is neither open or close.
    Do you think Qbits allow new types of functionalities vs traditional bits? I think is only about more power in terms of more speed that then makes certain types of problems solvable within human-time scale.
    But if you have examples of new qualities, new capabilities I would be very interested. Quantum computers are still hard to grasp for me.
  • Is artificial epistemology redefining humanity?
    I have worked in AI and use it every day, and this is not an accurate depiction of AI.Wayfarer

    Yes, of course it is not accurate, it is not even a description but a valid example to illustrate my idea that AI learn and treat information in a similar way our brain does. It was not my purpose to define it. I started working with AI 20 years ago... I know what I'm talking about, I think :wink:

    When you look inside CNNs for visual recognition that have learned already and you see how they have organized into groups of artificial neurons sensitive to different aspects of the vision (edges, angles) and that they have as well created a hierarchy for higher level of concepts like a nose or an eye you realize there is something super-powerful there. It is basically the way our visual cortex works.

    A dog knows, through its own sort of common sense, that it cannot leap over a house in order to reach its master. It presumably knows this as the directly given meaning of houses and leaps — Steve Talbott

    Nowadays AI is still limited because we apply it to specific functionalities that are immediately useful for us but an AI can potentially get a model-of-the-world similar to ours and then the idea of this article will not be true anymore as those General AI would manipulate and generate abstract concepts the same way we do...
  • Are we ultimately alone?
    saying the complete opposite of what we might be inclined to thinkJoshs

    I give up then :chin:

    No wonder, you seemed to have missed the central
    idea of Being and Time.
    Joshs

    Right, me and many other people. But good you were able to grasp it :up:
  • Is artificial epistemology redefining humanity?
    That would because we try to reproduce on silicone stuff that happen in the brain. So after decades we've made some (modest) progress.Olivier5

    And maybe that the key is on how we manage information... and not that much the physical substrate.
  • Is artificial epistemology redefining humanity?
    I think that steampunk fiction has emerged as the new offshoot where cyberpunk was going. So, perhaps we will see people with steam engines attached and clock parts, not just robots, walking the streets of our post apocalyptic future.Jack Cummins

    Yeap a kind of MadMax, instead of a Blade Runner :rofl:

    eugenics is already on it's way.Jack Cummins

    Right, I would say the worst of it risks of getting back and reinforced by the latest bio-technologies.
  • Is artificial epistemology redefining humanity?
    intuition, which I suspect cannot be directly programmedtim wood

    Try to define intuition and you will see it is overestimated. Ask this question to Ke Jie, the champion of Go that lost against AlphaGo AI. Many asian people could tell you AI was having intuitions and imagination to win against Ke Jie...
  • A short theory of consciousness
    Feeling our Emotions :Gnomon

    :up:
    metaphysical FeelingsGnomon

    Why metaphysical feelings? What does a feeling be metaphysical? I personally would not attribute to feelings to be metaphysical but I would try to understand them better. I think any meta-something is for me a form of dualism, laziness to understand things, that I do not accept as a valid epistemic argument.
    I know the implications of my claim, basically this claim destroys an important part of continental philosophy but it is what it is, this is how I see it.
    I see that this implies as well that I do not agree with your Enformationism because as you say it contains metaphysical aspects. So I don't think it is worth I invest a lot of energy in understanding it in depth.

    Tononi and Koch seem to have bitten the bullet and accepted a form of panpsychismGnomon

    Searle says that as well. I disagree, I do not understand IIT as a form of panpsychism but I understand why many people think this way. IIT measures a foundational property of consciousness, it implies consciousness being a measurable attribute of any physical system like, for example, temperature. But accepting this implies accepting a different concept of consciousness, with completely different connotations. It does mean that IIT consciousness does not always contain a psyque and this implies we have to start talking about types of consciousness, like mammifere's or human's consciousness (types of consciousness that do contain a psyche because of emotions, feelings, social behaviours, etc.). I personally like IIT this very much because it has many practical consequences like that we can measure if a patient in lock-in syndrome is conscious or not looking at its IIT Phi coefficient, what is amazing!

    Consciousness itself seems to have no material attributes:Gnomon

    Right, it is like the liquidity of water or any other substance. It is an attribute of the systems but the consciousness coefficient, IIT Phi, has to be beyond certain thresholds for human-like consciousness to arise. Below that threshold the consciousness is more and more "solid"... it cannot contain a psyche because it is not complex enough. I mean low conscious Phi means that consciousness is not the way we see it in living matter or mamifers but just a low level of integrated information we very low potential to develop even any kind of intelligent behaviour. Low-Phi's can be for example systems of particles that (i.e., molecules) interact between them but following physical laws and without "willingness", etc...

    Information is Generic in the sense of generating all forms from a formless pool of possibilityGnomon

    I read you Enformation concept in your link. It is amazing your effort of putting all this together and I envy you capacity to do it.
    I'll be honest and sorry if I'm maybe too sharp but is a risk we all run when we expose our ideas.
    Yes, we like unifying theories, einstein dreamed about a unified theory of the universe and you try to unify dualism and monism, but your Enformation is descriptive of things is not even a theory. What is the novelty and the implications of your Enformation? I can create my own concept as well, religions create their own systems of believes, Heidegger created his own concepts as well but what are the implications? Sounds like intellectual massage, a potpourri. Where is the epistemic value. Aren't you hiding all the important questions again behind a G*D. You can call it God or G*D or Dieu or Dios, it is always the same dualist story.
    Let me put it differently, is your Enformation or your theory of consciousness able to do any kind of prediction? Like general relativity does or like quantum mechanics does? I mean a kind of "test" to proof your theory is adding epistemic value. I think the answer is not, this is why I say it is just descrptive.

    Net, it is always attractive aesthetically to link up our intuitions (intuitions are more or less the same since our brain is like it is, from Plato and before him, only scientific discoveries create novelty) with new scientific concepts but I think what is important is to stop calling science "materialist" or "reductive" and put things the other way around: science is what is augmenting (not reducing) the concepts of nature like matter, energy, space, time.

    By the way, in your Enformation concept I think you're missing implications of quantistic theories to our naif-intuitions on time and space, cause-effect,... once you understand some of quantum theories you start grasping that God, the initial cause, is maybe not needed if time is relative to the properties of our universe based on a mix of astronomic constants or maybe it was God to set them up? :-)

    https://courses.lumenlearning.com/astronomy/chapter/some-useful-constants-for-astronomy/
  • A short theory of consciousness
    because living systems can do nothing other then self organize.Pop

    Spontaneous self-organization as spontaneous decrease of entropy ? I'm not sure "self-organization" is an exhaustive enough word. I like Damasio's argument much more that says the purpose of emotions is to maintain homeostasis, survival.
  • Is artificial epistemology redefining humanity?
    I just disagreed with you about that.fishfry

    We never know who is on the other side so I share arguments materials I find very interesting and formative. This is one of the nice things of this forum.
    If you think you know enough, is ok, we agree that we disagree and that's all.