I really don't think he's a crackpot, — Wayfarer

Perhaps not. But science does have social standards around these kinds of things. So in that context, that is how I would judge him.

And I would admit that within computer science, Hoffman would get more of a shrug. Computer scientists are used to making sci-fi like claims about what they can deliver with technology. The field has its own norms on this score.

I can see how consciousness creates or constructs experience... — Wayfarer

Well please tell me. I thought most people would say consciousness IS the experience. Or maybe the experience of the experience. But how could it be the cause of the experience? What does that mean?

So you or your family have never taken even an aspirin? You or your family have never had a vaccination? Honestly? — apokrisis

We didn't have a bottle for 30 years. Recently, I took about 6 over a two day period. Probably didn't need two, but I figure aspirin had been around for 150 years. I would rather have the natural form though, not synthetic. My wife had no need. Other than this, the closet pharmaceuticals is in Walgreens. BTW, I stopped drinking coffee which I started drinking after 35 years. That was the problem. No doctor needed.

Having studied health for 35 years, I've concluded the the mind permeates the body and if conditions are present, the mind will heal itself one cell at a time, which kind of gets us back on topic. The trick is one had to be very astute in understanding causes am having patience. The good physicians of old, the ones I grew up with and barely ever saw, understood this. The result is a very healthy mind/body that heals on its open. I treat all drugs as toxic.

Can you find where conscious agents gets a serious definition? I couldn't. So that's where the handwaving becomes a frantic blur. — apokrisis

It's really not that difficult. We are conscious, we are active, therefore we are conscious agents. The conscious agent decides, chooses; one's own actions. Where do you find the mysterious handwaving?

We are conscious, we are active, therefore we are conscious agents. The conscious agent decides, chooses; one's own actions. Where do you find the mysterious handwaving? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah but Hoffman appears to be saying that what we perceive to be the objects of experience - the metaphorical table of philosophical debates - are really a 'complex dynamical system of conscious agents'. That's what I'm not getting.

The philosophy I'm developing intersects with Hoffman's in some respects, but that particular claim is a bit of a show-stopper, I'm afraid. However I have an open mind, I am going to read some more.

It's really not that difficult. We are conscious, we are active, therefore we are conscious agents. The conscious agent decides, chooses; one's own actions. Where do you find the mysterious handwaving? — Metaphysician Undercover

Where does one start? :)

Perhaps here. With your version, what happens when your conscious choice about the facts of reality conflict with my choice as a fellow agent?

Actually he does have an answer for that - which is that our MUI (multi-modal user interface) is species-specific. So it generates a shared pool of 'icons' which are common to us h. sapiens. Whereas, to crib Wittgenstein, 'even if a lion could speak, we wouldn't understand what it says', because it's icons would be completely foreign to us.

(Sorry for butting in, please carry on.)

Yeah but Hoffman appears to be saying that what we perceive to be the objects of experience - the metaphorical table of philosophical debates - are really a 'complex dynamical system of conscious agents'. That's what I'm not getting. — Wayfarer

Objects are themselves conceptual, so they are a product of, created by the complex dynamical system of conscious agents.

With your version, what happens when your conscious choice about the facts of reality conflict with my choice as a fellow agent? — apokrisis

Then we have no agreement. I conceive of the object in my way, you in your way. The object is as it is to me, and it is as it is to you (model-dependent realism). Some process philosophers will deny that there even are any objects.

When we agree, concerning what is and is not, we can create objects. When we do not agree, all we have is processes which have varying descriptions depending on one's perspective.

...our MUI (multi-modal user interface) is species-specific. So it generates a shared pool of 'icons' which are common to us h. sapiens. — Wayfarer

But this seems to entangle two causal metaphysics in illegitimate fashion. If it is about the material facts of evolution and genetics where a mental model is being selected for its fit to a world, then that world is a reality standing beyond some species of agents.

As I say, I am OK with the first MUI bit of Hoffman. He says that is compatible with a realist interpretation. But then it is the attempt to jump to an idealist ontology - conscious realism - that it all falls apart.

So if we, as Homo sapiens, are forming a collective "MUI reality" by being conscious agents, rather than by being forced to adapt physically to a physical reality, then how does that work exactly? How does it fit in with lions and every other creature forming a different reality, not just a different interpretation of the one reality?

I'm sure another handwaving answer could be created. But that is how it goes with crackpot theorising. The need for further outs keeps multiplying as soon as you try to take the "theory" seriously.

By contrast, a good theory of reality does the opposite. More and more gets explained as you take it seriously and try to poke holes in it.

When we agree, concerning what is and is not, we can create objects. When we do not agree, all we have is processes which have varying descriptions depending on one's perspective. — Metaphysician Undercover

So now the focus switches to agreement. Private wishes are not good enough. It has to happen that we desire the existence of the same object for it to be the case.

So right now I'm wishing you have no keyboard. I'm imagining that pretty hard. Did it happen?

It is not a matter of wishing, it is a matter of believing, that is what conceptualization consists of, deciding what is. If you believe that I have no keyboard, then obviously, for you I have no keyboard. Perhaps you believe I am posting through some other means, voice recognition?

But you were saying there was a conscious choice to believe in the reality of something like your keyboard. We had to agree to agree somehow. It's not really a choice if I can't then make a choice about that belief. I would hardly qualify as an agent.

As a theory, realism removes that kind of problem. The world is what it is, and then I am free to act and make choices or form beliefs within those constraints. There is nothing further to have to explain about you being in the same position.

But once you start down the crackpot road, the inconsistencies just keep multiplying at each step. You are now arguing for beliefs we can't not believe, choices we can't in fact make, etc.

Hoffman appears to be saying that what we perceive to be the objects of experience are really a 'complex dynamical system of conscious agents'. That's what I'm not getting.
— Wayfarer

Objects are themselves conceptual, so they are a product of, created by the complex dynamical system of conscious agents. — Metaphysician Undercover

But he seems to be saying objects consist of conscious agents - that objects are constituted by conscious agents, not that objects are constituted by the perception of them by conscious agents. You see the distinction? It seems very like panpsychism, but then he denies that, also. Complicated.

If it is about the material facts of evolution and genetics where a mental model is being selected for its fit to a world, then that world is a reality standing beyond some species of agents. — apokrisis

But he covers this in the paper attached to his Wikipedia profile here. He talks about the 'hypothesis of faithful depiction' which he says is behind realist cognitive models. He gives an example from a standard textbook:

Evolutionarily speaking, visual perception is useful only if it is reasonably
accurate . . . Indeed, vision is useful precisely because it is
so accurate. By and large, what you see is what you get. When this
is true, we have what is called veridical perception . . . perception
that is consistent with the actual state of affairs in the environment.
This is almost always the case with vision. .

I think the realist view is that the domain of perception - the world we see - is the real world, and that the only questions that can be asked are about how we see it (cognition and epistemology) or about what it consists of (ontology). But there is an assumption behind that stance, which is the sensory perception is basically veridical, that it is of things that exist independently of it. That is what Hoffman is questioning. Now, for you, as a naturalist, that completely undermines the basic premise of your outlook - that sensory perception is indeed veridical - so I understand it is deeply counter-intuitive. But one issue with realist theories is this: how do you get outside the perspective disclosed by your viewpoint, to compare it with the purportedly observer-independent reality? If you could compare it, then you wouldn't need a perspective, but if you can't compare it, then all you have is a perspective. That is one of the many criticisms of the so-called 'correspondence theory' which is inherent in realist metaphysics.

Also Hoffman also denies being idealist:

MUI theory is not idealism. It does
not claim that all that exists are conscious perceptions. It claims that our
conscious perceptions need not resemble the objective world, whatever its
nature is.

So he doesn't deny that there's an objective or mind-independent world; he simply denies that this describes the nature of experience (and therefore knowledge derived from experience.) He says that his theory accounts for the nature of knowledge and experience in such a way that it is consistent both between different subjects, and within itself; so more a 'coherentist' than a 'correspondence' theory.

When we do not agree, all we have is processes which have varying descriptions depending on one's perspective. — Metaphysician Undercover

But, sometimes you can be wrong. George and Alice can have a theory about, I don't know, 'how to mix rocket fuel'. George's attempts, however, never actually work, either he blows himself up or it fizzes out. Alice, meanwhile, has now been abducted by Kim Jong Un and forced to work on his rocket program - because her method works. That's not simply 'disagreement', it is supported by facts, by outcomes.

But he seems to be saying objects consist of conscious agents - that objects are constituted by conscious agents, not that objects are constituted by the perception of them by conscious agents. You see the distinction? It seems very like panpsychism, but then he denies that, also. Complicated. — Wayfarer

And he also says the conscious agents are constructing MUI icons. So no "objects", just their signs ... that somehow then have a background of process that actually, really, executes the necessary functionality.

Nothing adds up. That's my point. He says this is not idealism, or panpsychism or anything else. But then it also sounds just like that.

Hence my conclusion. He is another of many crackpots. Even university departments are full of them.

I think the realist view is that the domain of perception - the world we see - is the real world... — Wayfarer

Yes, that is a valid criticism. And the first thing they try to disabuse you of when you start studying perception and psychophysics. It is routine science itself.

Now, for you, as a naturalist, that completely undermines the basic premise of your outlook... — Wayfarer

Only if you never take a blind bit of notice of anything I have ever said. But carry on....

Now, for you, as a naturalist, that completely undermines the basic premise of your outlook...
— Wayfarer

Only if you never take a blind bit of notice of anything I have ever said. But carry on.... — apokrisis

OK. I had interpreted your frequent appeal to 'immanence' to imply that you believe the fundamental organising principle, whatever that might turn out to be, is something that in principle can be understood within nature itself. Whereas those of a generally idealist turn take that fundamental principle to be transcendent, so not knowable directly, but which, however, is the source of the intelligibility we see in nature.

He says this is not idealism, or panpsychism or anything else. But then it also sounds just like that.

Hence my conclusion. He is another of many crackpots. Even university departments are full of them. — apokrisis

Not sure I agree, but I do see your point.

I have always stressed that my position - being naturalism - is anti transcendence and pro immanence.

And that is why materialism becomes inadequate. You need pansemiosis to deliver the "other" of general laws and constraints. You need information as a real causal thing to complement matter as the other real causal thing.

And that is why materialism becomes inadequate. You need pansemiosis to deliver the "other" of general laws and constraints. — apokrisis

Why always retreat to pansemiosis as if it were some type of panacea when it is apparently only capable of defining conscious experience as a feeling, and the human mind as a feeling with memory? These are obviously incoherent conceptions.

Why not say something interesting rather than make lame garbled posts like that?

So I got around to watching the video. It's the same points as the Atlantic article. I did wonder though whether Dennett stole the computer icon metaphor for him when advocating his instrumentalism in his most recent book. Anyway, it makes sense that the brain's neurology too would be one of these symbols like Snakes and trains so I'm glad he made that point instead of glossing over it unlike the other Ted talk I linked. That seems to be his main point. How is consciousness created by the brain? - How does data get deleted by the recycling bin icon. (For the purpose of metaphor the "body" part of the mind/body problem is the same as the recycling bin icon). His solution being the bolded don't since they are only useful fictions to help guide us by evolution and the programmer/designer.

So it's more or less Berkeley's subjective idealism without the God part. He doesn't think he needs the God bit.

Why not say something interesting rather than make lame garbled posts like that? — apokrisis

Your scientific knowledge base is (at least) extensive, and your scientific understanding is, in many respects, profound. So, I suspect that you are more than capable of providing a comprehensive definition of "conscious" and "human mind" without using figurative language. That exercise could be instructive for everyone, and beneficial to the progress of this discussion in particular.

I have been working on an over-arching model of cognitive, social, and moral psychology for a number of years, and use this forum to test propositions and concepts; mostly with positive results which cause me to make modifications at both conceptual and model level.

For example:

1) My current working definition of human mind is: the set of conditions experienced, and functions exercised, by a human being which produce personal and social human behaviour, and

2) My current working definition of mind is: the set of conditions experienced, and functions exercised, by a psychophysical being which produce personal and social behaviour. This is intended to comprehend animal minds. I am undecided whether or not plants have minds. If I remember correctly, Javra thinks that is the case.

It would be great if pansemiosis could produce a general definition of mind which applies to both inanimate objects and living organisms, and a definition of human mind which takes psychology (the relevant scientific discipline) into consideration.

But you were saying there was a conscious choice to believe in the reality of something like your keyboard. We had to agree to agree somehow. It's not really a choice if I can't then make a choice about that belief. I would hardly qualify as an agent. — apokrisis

I don't see your point. The choices you have made have lead you to believe that I have a keyboard. The fact that you haven't the will to go back and analyze the correctness of all these choices, giving you the option to change your mind about this, does not mean that you do not have the choice to do so, it means that you do not have the will power. And if you had the will power to go back and doubt all these choices which factor in to you believing that I have a keypad, and you still choose to believe that I have a keypad, then the very fact that you've done this is evidence that this is a choice you have made.

You are now arguing for beliefs we can't not believe, choices we can't in fact make, etc. — apokrisis

I really don't understand why you don't apprehend this as a choice. The only reason you are saying that it's a choice "we can't in fact make", is because it is a choice you have already made. Nevertheless, you still have the option to doubt, reassess the choices you have already made, and perhaps change your mind.

But he seems to be saying objects consist of conscious agents - that objects are constituted by conscious agents, not that objects are constituted by the perception of them by conscious agents. You see the distinction? It seems very like panpsychism, but then he denies that, also. Complicated. — Wayfarer

I see the difference but I don't see it as panpsychism. I see the existence of an "object" as dependent on justification. Justification is the means whereby we agree on things. So numerous conscious agents together, in agreement produce an object. This is a form of "objectivity". An object is conceptual, and me conceiving of something does not, in this perspective, produce an object, although if we have agreement amongst us we have an object due to this objectivity. This justification, and agreement can stand as the basis for the objectivity of knowledge. So for instance, if you take the mathematical objects, they do not exist as eternal objects in the platonic sense, they are created by human beings in conception, justification, and agreement. This form of "objectivity" allows for objective knowledge without the need for independent Platonic Forms as "objects".

So he doesn't deny that there's an objective or mind-independent world; he simply denies that this describes the nature of experience (and therefore knowledge derived from experience.) He says that his theory accounts for the nature of knowledge and experience in such a way that it is consistent both between different subjects, and within itself; so more a 'coherentist' than a 'correspondence' theory. — Wayfarer

If we adopt this perspective, how I interpret what Hoffman says, we have to be careful about creating ambiguity between different senses of "objective". If he claims that there is an independent, "objective reality", then this reality is not objectified by the existence of objects, because objects are created by conscious agents. So it is more difficult to escape idealism than he may claim. If he claims that independent reality is objective, he needs some form of justification for this, and will end up with a different sense of "objective" which is not grounded in the usual realist claim of independent objects, but some other form of grounding.

But, sometimes you can be wrong. George and Alice can have a theory about, I don't know, 'how to mix rocket fuel'. George's attempts, however, never actually work, either he blows himself up or it fizzes out. Alice, meanwhile, has now been abducted by Kim Jong Un and forced to work on his rocket program - because her method works. That's not simply 'disagreement', it is supported by facts, by outcomes. — Wayfarer

Yes, this is a very important difference, one which we should all come to respect. If we say "truth" is what human beings agree on, the accepted knowledge of the day, then we are really saying that every statement which is justified is true. Objectivity in knowledge is produced by justification and agreement. But if we respect the fact that even widely accepted knowledge may end up being wrong, then we look for something else to ground "truth" in, and this is what exists independently of human beings. So if we claim that there are "objects" which exist independently, we need to support this position. We need to find the physical basis of "an object". What does it mean to be an object, existing independently from how we as human beings are perceiving the world. Modern science, relativity theory, and process philosophy, all tend to lead us toward the conclusion that objects are produced by human perception. So if we want to maintain the realist assumption of real independent objects, we must find the physical basis for this assumption.

Modern science, relativity theory, and process philosophy, all tend to lead us toward the conclusion that objects are produced by human perception. So if we want to maintain the realist assumption of real independent objects, we must find the physical basis for this assumption. — Metaphysician Undercover

Using Bohm's Interpretation, not Copenhagen, we have real world that mind is actually viewing. But the real world may be nothing like the image we see just as a hologram is nothing like the image that we see when the reconstructive beam is passed through it. The mind does a transformation.

Many minds will see approximately the same thing, because the brain which is creating the reconstructive is approximately the same, but also different. Different enough in perspective and construction that each mind will perceive something different.

These images permeate consciousness throughout a living organism.

Where Hoffman totally falls apart is where he waffles between conscious agents everywhere and declaring in the same breath not everywhere. Admittedly even Bergson had troubles with this, but he did provide some details by declaring matter as the Elan Vital (mind) moving in the direction against self- organization/creativity.

Donald Hoffman has a religious background. So, I think that Conscious Realism only works as part of a theological system. What I find interesting about it is this claim:

The ontology of conscious realism proposed here rests crucially on the notion of conscious agents. This notion can be made mathematically precise and yields experimental predictions (Bennett et al. 1989, 1991; Bennett et al. 1993a,b; Bennett et al. 1996). — Donald Hoffman

Finally, the YouTube video where Hoffman presents his mathematics (skip to 27:20):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eWG7x_6Y5U
Physics from Consciousness (skip to 34:40): the equations for Conscious Agent Asymptotics and Free Particle Wave Function are the same.

I tried watching the whole lecture but it is so muddy, I just couldn't. He is trying too hard to be acceptable. A far, far better exposition of the problem and possible theory of perception begins here:

https://youtu.be/RtuxTXEhj3A

Thanks. To start, I question the value of trying to define consciousness as that already puts it in the class of a thing rather than a process. I don't see consciousness as anything fundamental in the world, just what it is like to be a really complex version of a modelling relation.

That doesn't mean I dismiss the problem of "raw feels" or qualia. It is just that I don't think that is the correct explanatory target. Once you know enough about how the brain executes any function, you can see why it has the particular qualitative character that it does. Mach bands is a good example.

But the question of "why any qualitative character at all - when perhaps there might be just zombiedom?" is the kind of query which already reifies awareness in an illegitimate way. It turns it from being the consequence of a process (a modelling of the world which prima facie ought to feel like something) to being a state of being, a kind of extra glow or ghost or spirit, that then appears to deserve an explanation in terms of being "a fundamental stuff or realm".

To think the Hard Problem actually makes sense is to have already concluded consciousness is an ontic "simple", against all the scientific evidence that it is what you get from an unbelievably complex and integrated world modelling process.

And this approach is familiar to any biologist. Folk used to believe that life must be the result of a ghost in the machine. Life had to be a simple, some kind of fundamental spirit or force of animation. But biology got to work and dispelled the mystery. The body is not exactly a machine. However once we see it as a semiotic relation between information and matter - genes and chemistry - then we can see we are talking about a self-creating process. Rather than life, we are talking about lively. Instead of seeking an explanation of what special thing makes inanimate flesh light up with "life", we understand that it is the unbelievably complex and integrated process that adequately accounts for the flesh being what we would then call "alive".

So that is why I take the approach I do. The metaphysics that worked to fully account for life should also continue on to account for mind. The Hard Problem - which is tied to a metaphysics of simples - just doesn't have the bite that people so easily presume.

So I am starting with the belief that awareness is the outcome of a certain species of systems complexity. And the way to explain that causally is to identify the essence of that complex process. What in general is the organisational trick that explains what the brain is doing in its now vastly elaborated way?

To answer that, one has to look to what metaphysics and science has to say about complex systems. Most of science, and even philosophy, is strictly reductionist. It breaks the complex world down into simples. Which is fine as part of the story, but also limited. Then there is a long tradition of holism or organicism. And that shows reality to be irreducibly complex. Even when things are made as simple as possible, they are still complex in terms of their essential structure of relations. Nothing is atomistic. Everything starts as already a process, some basic kind of relation.

One can start with Anaximander, the first true metaphysician. Apokrisis of course was his term for the "first process" - dichotomisation or "separating out". Then there is Aristotle with his four causes, his theory of hylomorphism, and the true start of systems thinking. Hegel and Kant got it. Then Peirce really managed to crystalise it. And finally the systems approach has become increasingly concrete and mathematically definite through the last century of scientific modelling.

So the basic trick of life and mind is that it is a particular kind of complex organisation - a modelling relation (as the mathematical biologist, Robert Rosen, defined it). Stan Salthe and Howard Pattee are then two of Rosen's circle who fleshed out a full understanding of what this means through the 70s and 80s under the general banner of what was hierarchy theory then. A connection got made to the new thermodynamics of dissipative structures (the follow-on from Prigogine's far-from-equilibrium open systems).

Salthe coined the idea of infodynamics. Pattee really sharpened things with his epistemic cut. And then this particular group of systems biologists heard about Peircean semiotics - which had pretty much been lost until the 1990s - and realised that they were basically recapitulating what Peirce had already said. So as a group they did the honourable thing and relabelled themselves bio-semioticians.

There were other allied groups around. Dozens of them. I was part of Salthe and Pattee's group - having looked around and found they were head and shoulders above the rest. But there were plenty of other important theoretical circles, like second order cybernetics, or generative neural nets, or complex adaptive systems, or dissipative structure theorists, or general system theorists, or .... well really, dozens and dozens.

So what is really the story is that there is a systems perspective. Instead of life or mind being ontic simples - animating spirits - they are understood in terms of a particular species of complexity. And the job is to seek explanations in those terms. Once you get that and start looking around, you find there are a whole range of people and groups who have been feeling the same elephant. They might all use different jargon. But they are arriving at the same kind of insights.

Again, this is only my perspective, but I find Peircean semiosis is the best way to zero in on the esssence of systems causality. It has a set of features I could list. And indeed I am always mentioning them.

But for now, in this thread, the key point is why I reject the usual demand of "answer the Hard Problem". Framing that as the crucial question is already to presume that the answer has the form "consciousness is an ontic simple, a substance". It gets to be like being asked "when did you stop beating your wife?".

The proper question we ought to be asking is what kind of fundamental system or process is a brain (in a body with a mind)? That is, we know the brain with its embodied modelling relation with the world is a really complex example of living mindfulness. It meets your working definition in terms of "the set of conditions experienced, and functions exercised, by a psychophysical being which produce personal and social behaviour."

But boil down an actual human that has grown up as a set of interpretive habits in the world into the simplest description of the trick involved, and you get the general thing that is the irreducible triadic relation described by Peircean semiosis.

And I also put all my money on this being a pan-semiotic deal as fundamental physics is arriving at the same irreducible triadic process as the causal explanation of how existence itself could come to be. A story of constraints and degrees of freedom emerging from the symmetry-breaking of fundamental indeterminism.

Or going right back to Anaximander, the dialectical process of apokrisis which organised the formless and boundless chaos of the Apeiron.

So when he says 'consciousness creates', what I take that to mean, is that he is referring to the way consciousness integrates all of the momentary impressions, sensations and judgements into a cognitive whole, one aspect of which we then designate as 'an object'. We're unaware of this cognitive process as it's going on, because it's by definition unconscious, beneath the threshold of conscious awareness, but giving rise to our experience of the world. I think it's basically Kantian in that sense, and also quite compatible with Buddhist philosophy of mind. — Wayfarer

You seem to be saying contradictory, or at least unfounded, things here: that "consciousness integrates all of the momentary impressions..." and that it is "by definition unconscious". Is it consciousness if it is unconscious? And if even that is not contradictory and it could be, if it is unconscious, then how could you know that it is consciousness doing the integrating?

that "consciousness integrates all of the momentary impressions..." and that it is "by definition unconscious". Is it consciousness if it is unconscious? And if even that is not contradictory and it could be, if it is unconscious, then how could you know that it is consciousness doing the integrating? — Janus

But that is common knowledge. You yourself are not conscious of the fact that your perception is a stream of momentary saccades which the mind then integrates into a simple unity. Think about 'the blind spot' - I'm sure you know that there is a simple experiment you can perform that shows that there is always a spot in your field of vision that you don't see. But you don't notice you don't see it until you perform that experiment. (Blind spots are also fruitful metaphors in philosophy, see for instance this title by mathematician/philosopher William Byers.)

There are many such processes that give rise to what we call 'normal consciousness'. But until we pay attention to what constitutes normal consciousness, then it is, well, just normal. It has a taken-for-granted quality that it would never occur to us to question. But after all, 'philosophers wonder at what men think ordinary', and a major part of that is becoming aware of the constructed or conditioned nature of consciousness.

Anyway, the upshot of that is that this is the sense in which I say the mind 'creates the world'. There are mental factors or attributes that lie behind or underneath our conscious experience, that shape and fashion our conscious experience, but are not themselves disclosed by it (which is the meaning of 'transcendental' in Kant and Husserl.) That doesn't mean that my individual mind, the tip of the iceberg that constitutes my conscious or discursive awareness, creates the literal physical universe, but that 'mind' provides the cognitive and intellectual framework which constitutes the world I live in (c.f. Wittgenstein 'I am my world'.)

But that is common knowledge. You yourself are not conscious of the fact that your perception is a stream of momentary saccades which the mind then integrates into a simple unity. Think about 'the blind spot' - I'm sure you know that there is a simple experiment you can perform that shows that there is always a spot in your field of vision that you don't see. But you don't notice you don't see it until you perform that experiment. — Wayfarer

But you see the point. Consciousness ends up being conscious of how it must be the product of unconscious processes. A gap that was being filled can be noticed under special controlled circumstances. The believable explanation is then in terms of some straightforward realist account of the structure of the eye and the role of anticipatory neural processes.

So what consciousness discovers is that it is these anticipatory neural processes that must be causing it. When the processes are absent, there is a blind spot. When they are acting, there isn't - there is a consciously experienced filling in.

As usual, talk of consciousness as an ontic simple implodes as soon as you give it a slight push. The fact that "everyone knows" that there are unconscious processes behind conscious experience should give the game away. The process is the thing, and talk of "consciousness" as the thing is the reification of that process.

Consciousness ends up being conscious of how it must be the product of unconscious processes. — apokrisis

You have misinterpreted the point. The 'blind spot' was simply for illustrative purposes - the actual processes involved are of far greater depth and subtlety than that. 'Man, know thyself', is the point.

for now, in this thread, the key point is why I reject the usual demand of "answer the Hard Problem". Framing that as the crucial question is already to presume that the answer has the form "consciousness is an ontic simple, a substance". It gets to be like being asked "when did you stop beating your wife?". — apokrisis

In Pattee's The Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiosis there's a useful passage about the 'epistemic cut', which I think shows that Pattee acknowledges that he can't really dissolve dualism so easily.

Physics usually assumes human observers. The origin of life question is: How did this separation, this epistemic cut, originate?

So here, he seems to be asking, how did the separation between 'observer and observed' originate? Because this is implied in the very origin of life itself.

He goes on:

As Hoffmeyer (2000) has pointed out, the apparently sharp epistemic cut between these categories makes it difficult to imagine how life began and how these two categories evolved at higher levels. The epistemic cut appears to be a conceptual as well as a topological discontinuity. It is difficult to imagine a gradual cut. The problem arises acutely with the genetic code. A partial code does not work, and a simple code that works as it evolves is hard to imagine. In fact, this is a universal problem in evolution and even in creative thought. How does a complex functioning set of constraints originate when no subset of the constraints appears to maintain the function? How does a reversible dynamics gradually become an irreversible thermodynamics? How does a paradigm shift from classical determinism to quantum indeterminism occur gradually? At least in the case of thought we can trace some of the history, but in the origin of life we have no adequate history. Even in the case of creative thought, so much goes on in the subconscious mind that the historical trace has large gaps. I will state at the outset that I have not solved this problem. In fact, even after decades of effort I have not made much progress other than clarifying the problem.

My underline. Now it would seem to me that if you wished to declare the problem solved, or dissolved, then you would have to have solved this problem. And I think the gap in your account is that pan-semiosis itself can't be established without some concept of 'mind' already in play, because if there's semiotics involved, there must be signs and interpreters. And where do these come into play outside living organisms?

You're looking for an explanation that still comes out of physics:

I also put all my money on this being a pan-semiotic deal as fundamental physics is arriving at the same irreducible triadic process as the causal explanation of how existence itself could come to be. — apokrisis

Whereas, I doubt the explanation is within the purview of the sciences.

You have misinterpreted the point. The 'blind spot' was simply for illustrative purposes - the actual processes involved are of far greater depth and subtlety than that. — Wayfarer

My point was that we can uncover the fact that there are underlying processes. Indeed it is common knowledge as you say. And so after that, treating consciousness as not being about those underlying processes becomes bullshit. The burden shifts to having to justify why there might be anything extra to say.

So here, he seems to be asking, how did the separation between 'observer and observed' originate? Because this is implied in the very origin of life itself. — Wayfarer

Pattee rightly points to the crucial question. But also he didn't accept Peirce's approach - the logic of vagueness - as the way to deal with the issue. That is the further step that Salthe takes.

'Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.' ~ Max Planck.

Nevertheless, I've gone off Hoffman a bit. It's not that I don't agree with his basic point about the primacy of consciousness, but it's more that I think he's tendentious - he's decided on what he believes and then supports in what may well add up to pseudo-scientific terminology. (I don't know for sure, as I'm not well versed enough in maths to judge it, but that's my intuitive feel for it.)