Matter has causally relevant "properties" anyway you slice it. — Francis

But the quantum spin that stands behind EM charge is a geometric property more than a material one, wouldn’t you agree? The geometric structure of intrinsic spin is both what the quark and lepton share, as well as what makes them different.

There is nothing it is like to be a football, then?

You were using the idea to make a distinction between what might be a problem of experience between beings who care about it with an object you are confident does not share the problem.

The point is that there is nothing it is like to be a football to a football. There is not something it is like to be a football, because a football does not have a point of view. All we can do is think about what we would feel like if we, with our consciousness, were made out of the materials of, and shaped like, a football.

That's not at all the same thing as what it is like to be a bat.

I wouldn't, spin and charge are two separate properties of particles. Physicists have actually managed to model the behavior of some particles by separating them into "quasi-particles" in which one has the spin and one has the charge.

https://www.sp.phy.cam.ac.uk/research/1d-transport/SCseparation

They do this by treating them as two different phenomenon of the particle, not necessarily related.

You were using the idea to make a distinction between what might be a problem of experience between beings who care about it with an object you are confident does not share the problem.

A panpsychist like Chalmers might disagree. “Conscious experience”, to him, is fundamental after all. It does not supervene on the physical properties.

Please cite the text to support this statement.

That's the weasel argument. We happily accept the idea of a physical quantity – a measure of "stuff" or substantial being, such as charge. And so the linguistic trick is get us thinking of a quality – qualia – in a similarly physicalist and countable way. Little jolts of experience like the feeling of red or smell of a rose flashing through the mind.

The sleight of hand works as our folk metaphysical notions of physical quantity are as suspect as our ones about mental qualities.

Something fundamental like charge is treated as if it were like a measure of some fluid stuff that flows. It is already pictured and talked about in an overly concrete fashion. Then Chalmers takes that folk physics and applies it to the mind as if consciousness is also a quantity of this atomistic stuff called qualia, or isolated flashes of experience. — apokrisis

:clap: :100:

There is something it is like to be a football. — NOS4A2

:sweat: :up:

Please cite the text to support this statement.

Which one?

I picked up the entire 1957 Americana Encyclopaedia collection at a garage sale, all 30 volumes. They came with a very nice cabinet. — NOS4A2

30 volumes!! I just checked it in Wiki: 45,000 articles, 6,500 contributors, 9,000 bibliographies, 150,000 cross-references, 1,000+ tables, 1,200 maps, 4,500 images. Quite impressive!
First published in 1820! At that time, my country was still under the Ottoman occupation! :grin:
Enjoy!

What is this "something that can be experienced"? All these references to "something", for instance, "there is something it is like" ... — NOS4A2

Well, one has to use ... something! :smile:
Words like "something", "thing", etc. function as wildcards, passe-partouts. They are used for lack of ... something more concrete. I guess they are OK, as far as they help expressing, explaining, etc. ... something.

it can only be assumed in a series of question-begging assertions. — NOS4A2

Yes, I guess this is often the case.

Consciousness: a categorical mistake. To have consciousness is not like having an ice cream cone.

spin and charge are two separate properties of particles. — Francis

Separate but connected. Spin breaks local chiral symmetry and charge breaks global translational symmetry. So an electron combines the two in that it is a handed fermion that can then exchange photons as translational momentum.

The point being that the account of a "fundamental particle" is to be found in the patterns of geometry rather than in the qualities of material substance. An electron is a fundamental structure of relations that emerges due to a context of constraints.

Physics thinks in terms of form rather than matter now.

Physicists have actually managed to model the behavior of some particles by separating them into "quasi-particles" in which one has the spin and one has the charge. — Francis

Appealing to topological order only reinforces the point I just made. It demonstrates that "particles" are emergent regularities of nature that result from symmetry breaking.

Well, one has to use ... something! :smile:
Words like "something", "thing", etc. function as wildcards, passe-partouts. They are used for lack of ... something more concrete. I guess they are OK, as far as they help expressing, explaining, etc. ... something.

My own view is this. We do need to use something, and that something is whatever physical thing the word “conscious” describes. That thing is the object we need to analyze because it is that thing we are speaking about when we speak about a conscious thing. So in my opinion we need to abandon the question begging and the reification, not only because they are fallacious, but because they tend to lead us to false conclusions.

There is something it is like to be a football. — NOS4A2

What is it like to be a football? What are you thinking of? Round (or oval if you're a septic), inflatable, ect? Is that what you mean?

What is it like to be a football? What are you thinking of? Round (or oval if you're a septic), inflatable, ect? Is that what you mean?

I'm just confused by the statement that "there is something it is like to be such-and-such". It refers to the same thing too many times for me. There is something (the football) it (the football) is like to be the football (the football). It can be applied to literally anything, is all I'm saying.

I'm just confused by the statement that "there is something it is like to be such-and-such". It refers to the same thing too many times for me. There is something (the football) it (the football) is like to be the football (the football). It can be applied to literally anything, is all I'm saying. — NOS4A2

Yeah I see, the meaning of the figure of speech is opaque to some, and unhelpful in getting the concept across sometimes.

Interesting OP. There's some merit to the idea that a good deal of talk about consciousness is often empty.

And frankly, I suspect that one of the issues is that, at least on our own human case, we are confusing self-consciousness thinking that I am thinking, or experiencing that I am experiencing, such that I can tell you "I am seeing a blue car racing toward us", is perfectly understandable and common, with consciousness, which would "just" be experiencing.

To be conscious is to be aware that I am reading these letters right now, or that I move my eyes, I'll see a light, but removing the propositional form.

We alter between these two meanings and find it difficult to imagine that we don't have a clue what it would be like to be a bat, in part because bats don't appear to show self-awareness. We do.

And also, another issue is that we still persist with this nagging idea of "dead and stupid matter", that that thing out there which makes our rocks and rivers, can't possibly think, no matter how it is configured.

But modern physics makes it evident that matter is not this way, it's not this block of concrete stuff, it's much more sophisticated than these notions. Still, seeing matter in this way shouldn't cause us to believe that matter so-organized must think, but at the same time, we should also stop short of concluding that matter cannot think.

The latter view is extremely less likely, but, should be noted anyway.

I'm just confused by the statement that "there is something it is like to be such-and-such". It refers to the same thing too many times for me. There is something (the football) it (the football) is like to be the football (the football). It can be applied to literally anything, is all I'm saying. — NOS4A2

You can, in theory, learn everything there is to know about a football. You can learn about its aerodynamics; the way it absorbs heat from the sun; the elasticity; the frequencies of the visible spectrum that it reflects, etc., etc. And you can learn all there is too know about the particles that the football is made of, and how their properties gave rise to all those other things you learned about. In the end, you will know everything there is to know about the football.

You can do the same for, the famous example being, a bat. You can learn many of the same things that you learned about a football. But, of course, there are other things. And other kinds of things. It has life processes. Respiration, metabolism, circulation. You can learn about its wings, body shape, and everything else that gives it the ability to fly. You can learn about its echolocation. What frequency it uses, how its ears work, etc., etc. And you can learn all there is too know about the particles that the bat is made of, and how their properties gave rise to all those other things.

However, in the end, you will not know everything there is to know about the bat. You will not know what it is like to be a bat. A bat has consciousness. It has an inner life. None of your learning will have told you what those things are like. And he chose the bat because we really can't imagine what it's like to be a bat. As he put it:

It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one’s arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in one’s mouth; that one has very poor vision, and perceives the surrounding world by a system of reflected high-frequency sound signals; and that one spends the day hanging upside down by one’s feet in an attic. Insofar as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. — Nagel

All of that is what is meant by "There is nothing it is like to be a football to a football" and "There is something it is like to be a bat to a bat."

we should also stop short of concluding that matter cannot think. — Manuel

We certainly should stop short of that, since we are matter, and we think.

I agree.

Chalmers was a big hit because he was "making it respectable to be a Cartesian dualist again". That was literally the gleeful response of the philosopher sat next to me when Chalmers gave the hard problem talk that made his name. — apokrisis

Chalmers proposes the concept of "naturalistic dualism" as an alternative to traditional Cartesian Dualism. According to this view, consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, irreducible to physical processes, but it is still causally linked to the brain and the physical world. Chalmers suggests that consciousness may be a fundamental aspect of reality, akin to space, time, and matter, but which may not be fully explicable within physicalist scientific frameworks.

I agree with him, although I know it's not very satisfactory from an engineering perspective.

A sociological side-show in other words. — apokrisis

Yes, it's annoying that he's gone on to become a tenured academic at New York University, author/editor of half a dozen anthologies on philosophy of mind, and that rarest of things, a well-known philosopher. You'd think we could have expected something better from a Bronze Medallist at the International Mathematics Olympiad.

What am I not grasping? — NOS4A2

The point of the paper you're quoting. This passage by Dashiell is very similar to Gilbert Ryle's criticism of Descartes' in his famous book, The Ghost in the Machine:

“Consciousness, properly an abstract term which, like “happiness”, “graciousness”, or “thoroughness”, refers to some quality of the human being taken in abstracto. However, the hypostatizing tendency of human thinking has led to its use as if referring to something existential. Since a man may be conscious, it is easy to fall into the assumption that he may have consciousness, then that something like a consciousness exists.

Here, I take it that the word 'existential' means 'existing'. So he's accusing Chalmer's of 'reifying consciousness', of making it out as some thing. But Chalmers doesn't do that.

The problem is: when we look around for what it is Chalmers is talking about we come up empty-handed. — NOS4A2

That is because it is not visible to the objective sciences, which is not a shortcoming of Chalmer's theory, but the point, which you're not seeing.

But upon an objective analysis we find there is only one state and it is wholly biological. — NOS4A2

Presumably, you would agree that there is a difference between a non-sentient organism, such as a tree, a simple sentient organism, such as a fish, complex sentient organisms such as elephants and primates, and complex, rational, sentient beings, such as humans. All can be understood through the perspective of biology, but biology does not necessarily extend to, or explain, the nature of what differentiates the complex-sentient and rational-complex-sentient beings from trees and comb jellies. They are subjects of experience - something which is not plausibly deniable. At issue is what it is that gives them this quality of subjective awareness.

You can do the same for, the famous example being, a bat.

I think there is an important sense in which this isn't true. Yes, in principle we could learn all sorts of details, but I think it most likely that forming a comprehensive mental model of something as complicated as the processes occurring in the brain of a bat are well beyond the cognitive faculties of humans.

I'm speaking as an electrical engineer who has designed a system that other engineers find very difficult to wrap their head around, but that system is utterly trivial by comparison with a mammalian brain. I don't think there is any good reason to credit humans with the capacity to fully grasp what is going on in such complicated systems as the brains of mammals.

Presumably, you would agree that there is a difference between a non-sentient organism, such as a tree, a simple sentient organism, such as a fish, complex sentient organisms such as elephants and primates, and complex, rational, sentient beings, such as humans. All can be understood through the perspective of biology, but biology does not necessarily extend to, or explain, the nature of what differentiates the complex-sentient and rational-complex-sentient beings from trees and comb jellies. They are subjects of experience - something which is not plausibly deniable. At issue is what it is that gives them this quality of subjective awareness.

I do agree, but I do not need to add mental properties. Their biologies are different. Their positions in space and time are different (the principium individuationis). This accounts perfectly for what differentiates the complex-sentient and rational-complex-sentient beings from trees and comb jellies.

The simple reason why I cannot know what it’s like to be a bat is because I am not a bat. I am not of the same biology. I am a different thing. This also accounts for why I cannot see from your perspective, which is the perspective of your particular and discrete biology. We do not need to stir in fictions like experience, consciousness, and mental properties, because all states of experience (as Chalmers called them) are states of the body.

It’s why I cannot conceive of the p-zombie, and the conceivability of p-zombies is one of his strongest arguments. It just falls apart unless you beg the question regarding experience, and reify the ghosts.

This also accounts for why I cannot see from your perspective, which is the perspective of your particular and discrete biology — NOS4A2

We are biologically identical, to all intents and purposes. Sure, science can tell our DNA apart but from a biological perspective, we're both members of the same species, and all our fundamental biological traits are identical.

We do not need to stir in fictions like experience, consciousness, and mental properties, because all states of experience (as Chalmers called them) are states of the body. — NOS4A2

States only experienced by a conscious sentient being. Not an anaesthetized being, nor a corpse.

Here's a rather long extract by the author of What it is Like to be a Bat which makes a similar point:

The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental – consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory. — Thomas Nagel, The Core of Mind and Cosmos

We are biologically identical, to all intents and purposes. Sure, science can tell our DNA apart but from a biological perspective, we're both members of the same species, and all our fundamental biological traits are identical. — Wayfarer

Awfully loose usage of "identical" there.

Chalmers proposes the concept of "naturalistic dualism" as an alternative to traditional Cartesian Dualism. — Wayfarer

It's still dualism. And it still relies on confusing people by treating qualities as quantities.

...but which may not be fully explicable within physicalist scientific frameworks. — Wayfarer

It doesn't even make metaphysical sense. :grin:

Yes, it's annoying that he's gone on to become a tenured academic at New York University, author/editor of half a dozen anthologies on philosophy of mind, and that rarest of things, a well-known philosopher. You'd think we could have expected something better from a Bronze Medallist at the International Mathematics Olympiad. — Wayfarer

I've never denied his talent for climbing the greasy pole of popular opinion. He gives the crowd what it wants.

I've never denied his talent for climbing the greasy pole of popular opinion. He gives the crowd what it wants. — apokrisis

Exactly.

The simple reason why I cannot know what it’s like to be a bat is because I am not a bat. — NOS4A2

The point isn't that you cannot know what it is like to be a bat. The point is that there is something it is like to be a bat. And, while we are not aware of any consciousness that is independent of a brain's activity, knowing everything about a bat's brain's activity doesn't give us any insight on the bat's inner experience. It doesn't suggest the bat has any inner experience. It's all just physical processes.

Awfully loose usage of "identical" there. — wonderer1

We are biologically identical in a way that you and an orangutan is not.