I just didn't write out 50,000 physical events. But now you can say which of them convert physical events to subjective experience. — Patterner

That's like asking which transistor state change is Tomb Raider. Subjective experience is not one neuron event (and 50k is way short).

My point was: 1) that most aspects of consciousness can be described algorithmically- this is what materialist philosophers of mind do.
...
2) on the other hand, feelings cannot be created via algorithm. — Relativist

It's a parallel process, but any parallel process can be accomplished via a Turing machine (presuming no weird reverse causality like you get with realist interpretations), so I disagree, the operation of any physical system at all (if it's just a physical system) can be driven algorithmically.
So your point 2 is one of opinion, something to which you are entitled until one starts asserting that the statement is necessarily true.

I am not aware of any physicalist hypothesis explaining qualia. — Patterner

I am also not aware of any non-physicalist hypothesis explaining qualia. Don't forget that.

I don't think 6-year olds have been tested in ways that we are currently talking about. — Patterner

The point of the 6-year old is that they have an intuitive feel about it, which is how the philosophers go about attempting a definition. You know what you want to designate as 'alive', and so you attempt to craft a definition that always meets that intuition. That's a nice example of a rationalized definition rather than a rational one.

I just didn't write out 50,000 physical events. But now you can say which of them convert physical events to subjective experience.
— Patterner
That's like asking which transistor state change is Tomb Raider. Subjective experience is not one neuron event (and 50k is way short). — noAxioms

"Which of them" doesn't necessarily mean "which one of them", and the thought that just one neuron event is our subjective experience of heat is preposterous. I think we agree on that, so let's move on. You said I couldn't find our subjective experience of heat in physical events because I glossed over many of them, and made assumptions about them. I assume that means you are familiar with how physical events produce subjective experience, when explained in more detail and without assumptions, so please map it out for me.

My point was: 1) that most aspects of consciousness can be described algorithmically- this is what materialist philosophers of mind do.
...
2) on the other hand, feelings cannot be created via algorithm.
— Relativist
It's a parallel process, but any parallel process can be accomplished via a Turing machine (presuming no weird reverse causality like you get with realist interpretations), so I disagree, the operation of any physical system at all (if it's just a physical system) can be driven algorithmically.
So your point 2 is one of opinion, something to which you are entitled until one starts asserting that the statement is necessarily true. — noAxioms

I am a physicalist, but I see no reason to believe feelings could be programmed into a turing machine, unless we treat feelings as illusions: a belief that the sensation is real, along with the behavioral reactions it induces. An alternative is that there is some aspect of the world that manifests exclusively as the feelings we experience. I'm open to other possibilities. Do you have something in mind?

If DNA was your identity, then identical twins would be the same person. That doesn't work. Consider a bacterium. When it splits, which is the original? That's where our notion of pragmatic identity fails and one must us a different one. It gets closer to the notion of rational identity. — noAxioms

Sorry for the late reply. Indeed, my point was that a person seems more than anything that can be described.

But in a sense, everything is more than what can be described by concept, isn't it?
Stephen Hawking once asked What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?. Regardless the question about the supposed 'agent' that 'breathed fire' into the equations, clearly all that exists can't be 'reduced' to concepts. I believe that concepts can 'map' (or perhaps even are) the structure of what exists. However, in the case of personal identity there is even more than just 'existence' IMO.

Pragmatic identity is simply a convenient way to describe things, a coarse-grained description that has a pragmatic value. However, in the case of persons, I believe that a person is real in a fundamental sense. It can be 'dissolved into' a more detailed description or anything else.

Of course, this is all speculative but things like 'qualias', subjective experiences, the experience of being an agent ('free will') and so on do suggest so.

Physics itself seem to have no notion of identity and is of no use is resolving such quandaries. — noAxioms

I'd agree with that. You and I seem to disagree on how 'complete' the description that current physical theories is. It might well be the case that in the future our 'current picture' of reality will be regarded as how we now see classical physics.

That seems not to be how evolution work, hence my skepticism on the discreetness of it all. — noAxioms

And you should be skeptic! I know I am proposing something sketchy here. But I do believe that the 'hard problem' etc point to something like that.

Well, you mix 'are' and 'behave' there like they mean the same thing. They don't. The former is metaphysics. The latter is not. Science tends to presume some metaphysics for clarity, but in the end it can quite get along without any of it. — noAxioms

Yeah, I used the words in a somewhat flippant way. In any case, my point was that proponents of epistemic interpretations of QM think that QM doesn't give a description. To people like Newton, Galileo and so on that would be somewhat absurd (and even Galileo suggested that science can 'disclose' less about the 'nature of reality' than his contemporaries thought).

Speaking of identity, it is kind of hard to follow Wafarer's identity given the somewhat regular change of avatar. @Banno (and 180) also does this with similar rate of regularity. You guys don't realize how much stances and personalities I associate with the avatar more than the name. It's like my wife coming home, same person I always knew, but after having swapped to a totally new unrecognizable body. My avatar has been unaltered since the PF days. — noAxioms

LOL, agreed.

"Which of them" doesn't necessarily mean "which one of them", and the thought that just one neuron event is our subjective experience of heat is preposterous. — Patterner

Good. Just checking. Earlier in this topic, somebody (not you) suggested almost exactly that, as if a computer could feel pain if it executed a 'feel pain' machine instruction. This was meant sarcastically, but meant to imply that physicalism would require that there is similarly one 'feel pain' synapse in a brain.

You said I couldn't find our subjective experience of heat in physical events because I glossed over many of them, and made assumptions about them.

Well, you can't find subjective experience of heat in physical events possibly because you don't understand what the physical events are doing. I don't claim to have this knowledge either. It's besides the point of illustrating that it cannot be done, which probably isn't going to be accomplished by not understanding what does go on.

I assume that means you are familiar with how physical events produce subjective experience

Again, no. Not the point.

I am a physicalist, but I see no reason to believe feelings could be programmed into a turing machine, unless we treat feelings as illusions: a belief that the sensation is real, along with the behavioral reactions it induces — Relativist

OK. Similarly, I do see reason to believe that. Our opinions differ. I'm OK with that. Can you demonstrate that feelings cannot be programmed into a Turing machine? I outlined a simple way to do it in my OP. Simple, but compute intensive, beyond our current capability, which is too bad. Doing so would likely not change anybody's stance. Such is the nature of subjective proofs. They only prove things to the subject.

An alternative is that there is some aspect of the world that manifests exclusively as the feelings we experience.

That aspect is a testable prediction. So test for it. Find out where some simple effect that cannot be physically caused. If there's no suggested test for that, then there's no real theory that supports your alternative.

Indeed, my point was that a person seems more than anything that can be described.

But in a sense, everything is more than what can be described by concept, isn't it? — boundless

My arm is more than what can be described, sure. I tried to say as much in my OP (not specifically mentioning arms).

Stephen Hawking once asked What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?

That's a question for the universe being mathematics, and not just being described by it. MWI suggests simply: "In a closed system, its wave function evolves according to the schrodinger equation". So if the universe IS actually a wave function, the breathing of fire refers to what's driving the evolution of that wave function, which is much like asking what created the universe.

Personally I don't see a need for a fire. That's realism's problem, and yes, MWI is a realist interpretation.

Regardless the question about the supposed 'agent' that 'breathed fire' into the equations, clearly all that exists can't be 'reduced' to concepts.

Depends on your definition of exists, but saying otherwise is essentially idealism. And most definitions of existence are pretty dang idealist. I really tried to hammer that home in some of my recent topics.

I may not be an idealist, but I've come to terms with 'existence' being an ideal, which is awfully dang close to being an idealist I guess. Personal identity is certainly an ideal, with no physical correspondence. It's a very useful ideal, but that's a relation, not any kind of objective thing.

Pragmatic identity is simply a convenient way to describe things, a coarse-grained description that has a pragmatic value. However, in the case of persons, I believe that a person is real in a fundamental sense. — boundless

OK. We differ on this point.

Of course, this is all speculative but things like 'qualias', subjective experiences, the experience of being an agent ('free will') and so on do suggest so.

I'm pretty sure that the subjective experience of a free agent vs the experience of a non-free agent (however you want to define that) is pretty much identical, and thus having free will is not something one can determine by introspection.

You and I seem to disagree on how 'complete' the description that current physical theories is. — boundless

I know that quantum mechanics does not tell you how to make a cherry pie. Does that make QM incomplete or does it just mean that you're leveraging the wrong tools to explain how to achieve the pie?
There are those that deny that pies are physical because they cannot describe them in terms of field equations. I consider that fallacious reasoning. Maybe the pies are not just particles, but any claim to that effect needs more justification that just personal incredulity.

In any case, my point was that proponents of epistemic interpretations of QM think that QM doesn't give a description.

Really? It does describe, but it describes what we know more than attempt to describe what is. In that sense, any such interpretation is far closer to the science of the situation than is a metaphysical interpretation.

To people like Newton, Galileo and so on that would be somewhat absurd (and even Galileo suggested that science can 'disclose' less about the 'nature of reality' than his contemporaries thought).

Not exactly sure what you're saying they find absurd. Yes, it has always been the nature of science that the more we understand, the less we realize we know about the actual nature of things. This is sort of a progression from the naive realism (of say classical physics) to the statement that reality is stranger than we can know.