Do you equate mental and consciousness? — Patterner

Alright, since you've been using 'consciousness', are you saying that you cannot detect your own consciousness? That it has no physical effect?
Funny that you're straight up refused to answer a question asked so many times now.

In terms of ontology, things have properties, processes do not have properties. — Relativist

Oh really. Vapor pressure is not a property of boiling? Light absorption spectrum is not a property of photosynthesis? Sorting efficiency is not a property of a sort process? Bias not a property of decision making?
I suppose one can argue that these are all properties of whatever is running the process (can't think of what in the case of boiling, since vapor pressure is neither property of water nor of heat.

Unclear what you might hope to accomplish by taking this stance.

You are missing the point. It simulates the current. But there is no current, just numerical values representing current. — hypericin

That's right. It simulates current for the purpose of learning what real current will do to the real circuit. I never said the simulation was the same thing as the actual chip. Just that it has all the same relevant properties, so one can learn all you need to know about the real chip behavior without actually making one.

Simulation: reproduces computational features

Disagree with this one. Computation is used, sure, but most often the purpose is not to reproduce computational features. They simulate the weather a lot, but not the computational features of the weather at all.

Imitation: reproduces behavioral features

OK

Model: reproduces (some) physical features

You're thinking like a model ship or something, not a model of physics, the latter of which does not reproduce physical features. The λCDM model is an example of the latter.

And so, Does the simulated guy have qualia? It would seem this can only be true if qualia were computational.

Yea, which makes it a nice test, no?

And if so, you can't build a qualia detector

Well, you ask the guy if his qualia is still there. If you go with the zombie argument, then qualia is epiphenomenal and the zombie is lying when he makes up stories about it. I don't seem to understand how that argument helped Chalmers' case since the zombie behaving identically without the qualia is either inconceivable or an assertion of epiphenomenal, which is identical to fiction.

A recent discovery that might be of interest.

Lewis asks us to imagine there are two gods, one who lives on the tallest mountain and one who lives on the coldest. One is angry and hurls thunderbolts on the people below, the other generous and showers mana. Each is omniscient in a distinctive way: they know which non-indexical sentences are true.6 For example, they each know the truth-value of "The generous god lives on the tallest mountain", "there are two gods", and "one god throws thunderbolts". The question is: can either deduce the truth-values of any indexical sentences?

Lewis’ remarks suggest not. Moreover, there are general theoretical reasons to think this, namely: the truth-values of indexical sentences vary with who the god is (and more generally with the context); I am the angry god is true for one god, false for the other. The coldest mountain is here is false in one god’s
context but true in the other’s. If either indexical sentence followed from the non-indexical premises available to both gods, it would be a logical consequence of true premises, and so true itself—no matter what the context was. So neither can be entailed by the premises. — Gillian Russell

Each god is omniscient about non-indexical facts. They each know the truth values of sentences like:

• "The generous god lives on the tallest mountain"
• "There are two gods"
• "One god throws thunderbolts"

The Question: Can either god deduce the truth values of indexical sentences?
For example:

• "I am the angry god"
• "The coldest mountain is here"

The idea: Indexical sentences can't follow from non-indexical premises. The gods know all non-indexical contents — i.e. all propositions that are true at the world. But indexical sentences don’t have fixed contents unless we first supply a context (agent, time, place, etc.). The angry god can know “There is one angry god” but not "I am the angry god".

There is a piece of information each god lacks, of a different kind from ordinary propositional/worldly information. It is contextual or self-locating information.

A puzzling argument.

Disagree with this one. Computation is used, sure, but most often the purpose is not to reproduce computational features. They simulate the weather a lot, but not the computational features of the weather at all. — noAxioms

I mean 'computational' in the broad scene, where one state of a weather system physically "computes" the next. The state and only the state is what is transformed, not the substance. And if you think about it, there must be a homology between this physical "computation" and the sort of computation a computer does, otherwise the computer wouldn't have the causal power to simulate it.

You're thinking like a model ship or something, not a model of physics, the latter of which does not reproduce physical features. — noAxioms

Right. Just trying to make my little taxonomy more complete.

Well, you ask the guy if his qualia is still there. I — noAxioms

But remember, this is a simulated human. Part of a human's behavior is to respond to questions about their qualia as if they had them. Answers to the negative would break the simulation.

Just as in your circuit example. The sim circuit faithfully reports so many amps at each point. Yet, there is no actual current flowing, so in a certain sense the sim circuit is lying, as is the sim human.

he zombie behaving identically without the qualia is either inconceivable or an assertion of epiphenomenal, which is identical to fiction. — noAxioms

Why? Can you quote or restate your argument?

Alright, since you've been using 'consciousness', are you saying that you cannot detect your own consciousness? That it has no physical effect?
Funny that you're straight up refused to answer a question asked so many times now. — noAxioms

Well, twice, anyway. and I haven't answered it because I've been trying to make you understand what I actually said. But first I'll answer, and then I'll try to make you understand.

Yes, I detect my own consciousness. Although 'detect' is too weak a word for this. I am my consciousness. I would give up quite a few body parts before I would give up consciousness. I am still me without an arm, or a leg, or both, or even all of my arms and legs. But, at some point, I'm sure I would wish I no longer had subjective experience. Wayfarer and I recently posted these two quotes:

the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. — Routledge Intro to Phenomenology

Everything begins with consciousness, and nothing is worth anything except through it. — Albert Camus

What I said is:
If what we can detect cannot explain something, then we should consider the possibility that there is something we can't detect.

To try to clarify, let me try it this way:
If what we can detect (the physical) cannot explain something (consciousness), then we should consider the possibility that there is something we can't detect (the fundamental nature of consciousness).

Vapor pressure is not a property of boiling? — noAxioms

No. It's a property of the material. I'm referring to the intrinsic properties of existents. Everything that exists has intrinsic properties.

Unclear what you might hope to accomplish by taking this stance. — noAxioms

Clarity on ontology.

One could say that "red has the property of being in a wavelength range of X-Y" but it's just way of talking. Red isn't a thing. Rather, the word "red" corresponds to wavelength range of X-Y.

One could refer to speed as a property of running. But speed is actually a property of the runner (or more precisely: a relation between the runner and the earth).

There is a piece of information each god lacks, of a different kind from ordinary propositional/worldly information. It is contextual or self-locating information. — Banno

OK, It seems pretty obvious that indexical truth does not follow from non-indexical truth. Not sure how to apply that here. For one, most indexical statements come with an implied context, allowing a reasonable assessment of truth. Secondly, I'm not sure if the first/third person dichotomy is an index/non-index kind of division, mostly because yes, context is almost always implied, and almost any statement is indexical, such as 'noAxioms lives to his 55th birthday'. The context there is subtle and often missed, but it's there.

Thanks for joining in. Don't think it was due to my jibe about your avatar-du-jour.

I mean 'computational' in the broad scene, where one state of a weather system physically "computes" the next. — hypericin

OK. Don't think I've ever see the word used that way. States correspond to data, and data does not compute, the engine does. It is unclear if in reality there is an engine involved in the evolution from one state to the next. This would be the 'breathing of fire into the equations' that Hawlking spoke of. A simulation is typically a presentist model, whereas reality probably isn't. It's the presence/absence of that fire that is the difference.
I.E. If the universe is a mathematical structure, it is not necessary that there is a more fundamental engine doing computations somewhere. That would make mathematics not fundamental at all.
And yes, this is only my 11th topic here, but I've done one on that subject as well, 3 years ago.

And if you think about it, there must be a homology between this physical "computation" and the sort of computation a computer does, otherwise the computer couldn't simulate it.

A simulation is typically classical, and the universe is not, so a computer cannot simulate reality. I see no evidence for instance that 1) there is state at all (counterfactuals), and 2) that any of the values (the velocity of the moon relative to Earth say) is discreet, meaning it is impossible to express a typical real number. The set of numbers available to a (infinite capacity) computer is countably infinite, but the reals are not, and I suspect the universe uses reals.
I don't think something as crude as a human crosses the barrier into requiring more than such a classical simulation, but the expression of the initial state of such a system possibly does cross some sort of measurable-in-principle barrier.

But remember, this is a simulated human. Part of a human's behavior is to respond to questions about their qualia as if they had them.

I reject this fantasy. If my qualia valished abruptly, I would 1) notice, 2) not feel obligated to pretend otherwise as you imply, and 3) probably not even be able to express my distress since qualia is required for a human to do almost any voluntary thing like communicate coherently.

Answers to the negative would break the simulation.

Why? The simulation just makes the chemicals and momentums do their things. It has no high level information that it's a human being simulated. It's just a bounded box with state, suitable for simulating a heap of decaying leaves as much as anything else without any change of code.

Can you quote or restate your argument?

I did, just then..

To try to clarify, let me try it this way:
If what we can detect (the physical) cannot explain something (consciousness), then we should consider the possibility that there is something we can't detect (the fundamental nature of consciousness). — Patterner

First of all, that wording half implies that we can only detect the physical. I do admit that you don't explicitly deny the ability to detect anything non-physical.
Your argument instead hinges on the lack of explanation. Physicalism might indeed not have an full explanation, but neither does your alternative, which lacks even the beginnings of one. So positing something undetectable isn't an improvement.

Secondly, the point I keep making: This fundamental nature of consciousness cannot be undetectable. It may itself be non-physical, but it has to cause physical effects, because you are physically responding to it. That's the part that's self-inconsistent with your suggestion.

No. It's a property of the material. I'm referring to the intrinsic properties of existents. Everything that exists has intrinsic properties. — Relativist

I consider processes to exist as much as the material involved in the process. This all seems a quibble about choice of language application and not about how anything actually works.
Why does this point matter?

Unclear what you might hope to accomplish by taking this stance. — noAxioms

. My initial statement on the issue said it all:

In terms of ontology, things have properties, processes do not have properties. You may have meant it in a de dicto sense. Regardless, we agree consciousness is a process. — Relativist

Beyond that, I was just explaining what I meant.

OK, It seems pretty obvious that indexical truth does not follow from non-indexical truth. Not sure how to apply that here. For one, most indexical statements come with an implied context, allowing a reasonable assessment of truth. Secondly, I'm not sure if the first/third person dichotomy is an index/non-index kind of division, mostly because yes, context is almost always implied, and almost any statement is indexical, such as 'noAxioms lives to his 55th birthday'. The context there is subtle and often missed, but it's there. — noAxioms

"I" is an indexical.

What is shown is that there is a barrier to entailment between sentences int he third person and sentences in the first person. Given access to all true third-person sentences, even the gods cannot deduce the simple "I am on the coldest mountain".

The context is an addition, not found in any third person sentence.

It would seem that first person accounts are indeed not reducible to third person accounts.

Not a mystery, perhaps; but a puzzle.

Damn Lewis. The more I read of his, the better he gets.

@Wayfarer, more grist to your mill.

A formal account:
Let:

• the domain be {A, B}
• all extensional predicates be fully interpreted
• every extensional sentence about A and B be known by both gods

Then for any extensional predicate F:

• A knows whether F(A)
• A knows whether F(B)

Yet he does not know whether:

• “I = A” or “I = B”.

And therefore he does not know whether:

• “I am F.”

Even when F is extensional.

This shows that extensional truths about the world still do not fix the reference of “I”.

It seems that Lewis has demonstrated the irreducibility of first person accounts. What is at issue now is whether this amounts to more than grammar. Now I would, perhaps along with Anscombe and Wittgenstein, both admit that this is no more than a piece of grammar, and yet maintain that while "I am not the god on the cold mountain" does not tell us anything more than "Banno is not the god on the cold mountain", it nevertheless positions me in the language game.

First of all, that wording half implies that we can only detect the physical. I do admit that you don't explicitly deny the ability to detect anything non-physical. — noAxioms

I am glad you admit that, because I do not deny the ability to detect anything non-physical. Consciousness is non-physical, yet we detect it. As I said, I think 'detect' is too week a word for this, but it will do.


I'm reversing the order of your next two paragraphs. I don't think it changes your meaning in any way, and I'm not intending to do anything like that. It's just that putting them in this order seems a more natural progression for my point.

Secondly, the point I keep making: This fundamental nature of consciousness cannot be undetectable. It may itself be non-physical, but it has to cause physical effects, because you are physically responding to it. That's the part that's self-inconsistent with your suggestion. — noAxioms

I don't know how I am being inconsistent when I agree with everything you just said. And I have never said otherwise.

I would like to draw attention to what you just said about consciousness not being physical, which I have been saying for several weeks in conversations with you and others.

Your argument instead hinges on the lack of explanation. Physicalism might indeed not have an full explanation, but neither does your alternative, which lacks even the beginnings of one. So positing something undetectable isn't an improvement. — noAxioms

It isn't merely the lack of a physicalist explanation. It's the lack of any hint of what a physicalist explanation might look like. The reason for that is because it is trying to build something non-physical out of physical components. That's worse than trying to build a wooden house out of water, because at least wood and water are physical things made out of the same primary particles. if I told you I saw somebody pour a bunch of water on the ground, and suddenly there was a house, you would be skeptical. If you saw it happen yourself, you would still think somebody was pulling a fast one. But building something non-physical out of physical components is unquestionably the answer, despite the fact that many brilliant people have been failing to even get a vague idea of how it might work?

No, there is no evidence for what I'm suggesting. But at least I'm positing something from which this non-physical phenomenon can be built. A fundamental property. We don't know whatmass is. We don't know what charge is. We only know what those things do, and the proof is all around us. We don't know what dark matter is, and cannot detect it in any way. But we assume it exists because we can see what it does. The evidence is all around us. I'm suggesting another fundamental property. We don't know what consciousness is, but we know it exists because we feel what it does. The proof is ourselves.

The context is an addition, not found in any third person sentence.

It would seem that first person accounts are indeed not reducible to third person accounts. — Banno

Relevance noted. Trying to see if it solves anything, especially since the universe is seemingly not composed of true statements.

The context is typically there for most indexicals, including any first person account. Our gods seem to have no point of view, or they'd know their context.

How about a statement of the form "The cold mountain is to the left". Is that a third person sentence? It arguably references an unspecified context, but not necessarily a subjective one.

Beyond that, I was just explaining what I meant. — Relativist

OK. The whole thing came up because you suggested that I consider a process to be a 'thing', and apparently because I consider processes to be eligible for having properties. We have differing opinions on this, and 'thing' isn't precisely defined, so that kind of explains the disconnect.

This fundamental nature of consciousness cannot be undetectable. — noAxioms

I don't know how I am being inconsistent when I agree with everything you just said. — Patterner

That's kind of funny because I read what I said myself and I decided it doesn't follow. The noun there is 'nature', and the nature of this consciousness may be undetectable even if the consciousness itself is. That just means you cannot know how it works, which is true of plenty of physical things, anything with multiple interpretations.
It still stands that whatever it's nature, this posited immaterial <whatever> must have physical properties in order to work, and that means it should be (and is) physically measurable. You just need to figure out where and how, and only once you know that can you lay judgement on what can and cannot utilize it.

It isn't merely the lack of a physicalist explanation. It's the lack of any hint of what a physicalist explanation might look like.

I disagree since it's pretty trival to put environmental awareness, appropriate reaction, and intent into some fairly simple devices. That's at least a hint, better than not only a lack of dualist explanation, but an actual assertion that there isn't ever going to be one. The whole point of the black box is its blackness, the inner working being deliberately hidden, the opposite of investigation of how anything works.

if I told you I saw somebody pour a bunch of water on the ground, and suddenly there was a house, you would be skeptical.

Not much. Works for sea monkeys.

But building something non-physical out of physical components is unquestionably the answer, despite the fact that many brilliant people have been failing to even get a vague idea of how it might work?

Are you dissing dualism here? The brilliant people seem to have a vested interest in not investigating how it works. There very much is data to investigate like how this supposed non-physical stuff is so susceptible to physical damage.

We don't know what dark matter is, and cannot detect it in any way.

Nonsense. If it's undetectable, then it should have no reason to be posited (*1). It very much is detected because it's effects are physical and measurable. Thing is, it's slippery stuff and defies being captured in a container.

But we assume it exists because we can see what it does.

But that's how you detect anything. We don't detect the moon directly, but we see what it does. Dark matter is like that, just way less obvious. What they didn't do is suggest the galactic rotation curves are caused by magic. They could have. Perhaps MOND is an attempt at doing so, except it has never worked.


*1 There often very much IS a reason, but the reason is not to explain nonexistent evidence. Not all explanations have knowledge as their goal.