Bad wording on my part. I think consciousness is always the same, and can always be causal. But the conscious thing in question has to be up to the task.I don't know at what point of complexity I think an entity must attain before its subjectively experience can be casual
— Patterner
That's a pretty big problem. Everything else fundamental is also fundamentally causal. It's not fundamental now, causal later - it's causal at a fundamental level. If consciousness isn't causal at a fundamental level, but it is causal at a microscopic scale... I think the whole idea, in my opinion, crumbles — flannel jesus
Without having ever read anything on the topic, I was a physicalist up until several years ago. I had never heard of the terms physicalism or materialism, but that's what I was. Never occurred to me there was another option, so what was my default position. A guy on another site wanted to pull his hair out because of my stubbornness, but, eventually, turned me around. It wasn't intuitive. Everything is physical particles, and everything, even consciousness, reduces to particles, was intuitive.↪Patterner I think you're not taking the emergent possibility seriously enough personally. The possibility that consciousness really does emerge from certain large scale physical arrangements and interactions. I think the idea seems alien to you - which is fair, it's by no means easy to grasp - and so your reflex is to go for something that's at least apparently more intuitive. — flannel jesus
A particle can't do anything other than interact with other things according to the laws of physics. It doesn't have systems for movement. It doesn't have systems for choosing between options. It can subjectively experience, but what is that like for a particle? — Patterner
An archaea acts. But it's entirely physics and chemistry. There's information processing, which is what I suspect is needed for groups of individual particles to subjectively experience as a unit. There is information processing in protein synthesis, in the series of reactions between photons hitting the eyespot and the archaella moving, and whatever other systems it has. The consciousness is of a much more complex thing than just particles. Still, there's no possibility of choosing between actions, or not acting. This may be the beginnings of thinking, but it's just the bare beginnings. There's not enough going on. — Patterner
According to physicalism, biological information and the genetic code are mere metaphors. They are like those computer programs that allow us to write our instructions in English, thus saving us the trouble of writing them in the binary digits of the machine language. Ultimately, however, there are only binary digits in the machine language of the computer, and in the same way, it is argued, there are only physical quantities at the most fundamental level of Nature. ...
The idea that life evolved naturally on the primitive Earth suggests that the first cells came into being by spontaneous chemical reactions, and this is equivalent to saying that there is no fundamental divide between life and matter. This is the chemical paradigm, a view that is very popular today and that is often considered in agreement with the Darwinian paradigm, but this is not the case. The reason is that natural selection, the cornerstone of Darwinian evolution, does not exist in inanimate matter. In the 1950s and 1960s, furthermore, molecular biology uncovered two fundamental components of life—biological information and the genetic code—that are totally absent in the inorganic world, which means that information is present only in living systems, that chemistry alone is not enough and that a deep divide does exist between life and matter. This is the information paradigm, the idea that ‘life is chemistry plus information’.
Ernst Mayr, one of the architects of the modern synthesis, has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the view that life is fundamentally different from inanimate matter. In The growth of biological thought [15], p. 124, he made this point in no uncertain terms: ‘… The discovery of the genetic code was a breakthrough of the first order. It showed why organisms are fundamentally different from any kind of nonliving material. There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years!’ — What is (Biological) Information
A lot of people, like Greene, say physicalism must be the answer, — Patterner
"Supervenience already implies a function from micro-configurations to macro-properties: if two systems are identical in all micro respects, they must be identical in their macro-properties. But this function need not be definable in purely micro-level terms. The criteria that fix the mapping may depend on high-level structures or capacities that cannot themselves be specified without invoking macro-level concepts." — Pierre-Normand
So does this substance called mind have a molecular structure? — Wayfarer
Nicely said. So it's functional structure that is emergent? Top-Down causation?It's all about molecules, atoms, proteins and electrons, but it's not just about those things. As proper parts of living organism, those constituents are caught up into functionally organized anatomic structures (such as cell membranes) and channeled through the finely tuned and regulated metabolic pathways that Brian Greene provides striking descriptions of. Those are indeed processes that arise in far from equilibrium thermodynamic conditions such that relatively low-entropy forms of energy (such as incident solar radiation or energy-dense molecules like glucose) get harnessed by the molecular machinery to produce work in such a way as to sustain and reproduce this machinery. What is being sustained and reproduced isn't the parts, but the form: that is, the specific functional structure of the organism. The parts, and the proximal interactions between them, don't explain why the organism is structured in the way it is, or why it behaves in the way it does. Rather, the high-level norms of functional organization of the organism, characterised in the higher-level terms of anatomy and physiology, explain why the individual atoms, electrons, protons, and organic molecules are being caught up and channeled in the specific way that they are to sustain processes that are geared towards maintaining the whole organism (at least for awhile) away from complete decay and thermodynamic equilibrium. — Pierre-Normand
But physicalism had nothing to offer. I have yet to hear a theory, or even a wild guess, about how Chalmers' Hard Problem is explained with physicalism. Nobody who believes physicalism is the answer knows what that answer is, and people like Eagleman, Hoffman, Greene, and Crick say we don't have the vaguest idea how to look for it. — Patterner
I think non physicalism is the explanation because physicalism is not. Consciousness is non physical. That's why, despite having learned some pretty impressive things about the physical, we're struggling so hard to understand consciousness. We can't begin to study it with our physical sciences, and can't see any connection between physical properties and subjective experience.I posit this: that the only reason you think non physicalism is the explanation is because we have no understanding of non physicalism... — flannel jesus
There's not even a single wild guess as to a model about how the non physical mind works, operates, evolves from the past into the future. Nobody who believes in non physicalism even tries to come up with one, and they don't have the vaguest idea how to find one or even begin performing experiments on the non physical mind to test their ideas. — flannel jesus
Might this be how you're thinking of the 'non-physical'? — Wayfarer
I am attempting to have conversations about it, in the hopes of gaining any degree of understanding.I'm not thinking about it at all, because there's no model to think about. It's a placeholder thought, not a rich thought. There's no attempt to understand how it works — flannel jesus
It is appealing because, despite being able to detect and measure unimaginably small and large physical phenomena, we cannot so much as detect consciousness with our physical senses or sciences, there is no apparent connection between consciousness and the physical properties of the universe, and there is no physicalist guess as to how it might work. That makes a non physicalist approach speaking.and that's exactly why it's so appealing, I think, as an explanation for consciousness. — flannel jesus
there is no physicalist guess as to how it might work. That makes a non physicalist approach speaking — Patterner
I don't think so. Consider a set of words, let's call this set SW, which has a minimal number of words for creating only one meaningful sentence, let's call the meaningful sentence MS. Now consider the set of all sentences, let's call this set SS, that you can build with arranging the words randomly. Only one sentence in SS has a meaning. SS is a weak emergence. The idea that MS is referring to is strong emergence for two reasons: 1) It is more than SS, and 2) It is irreducible.The weak emergence vs strong emergence is a bit misleading. — Manuel
We have good intuition about what water is: Liquid is a state in which the material is almost incompressible, and it can take different shapes. We have a theory for it, too.It suggests that we have an intuitive understanding of the resultant effects of a given process - say molecules giving rise to water. We may have a theory of liquidity, but we have no intuitions about it. — Manuel
Or maybe there is a model, including the mind, that can explain the strong emergence.But if someone says I think all emergence is "strong", they think you are being a mystic. I think that's just what nature does. — Manuel
we know that materialism fails since it cannot explain how ideas emerge and how they can be causally efficacious in the world, given that ideas are irreducible and have no parts — MoK
We have good intuition about what water is: Liquid is a state in which the material is almost incompressible, and it can take different shapes. We have a theory for it, too. — MoK
Or maybe there is a model, including the mind, that can explain the strong emergence. — MoK
I don't understand what you mean by particles have water in them! Water refers to a system of H2O molecules. We have a good intuition on why water changes its behavior in terms of the properties of its parts. We even have good intuition on why parts have these and those properties, such as speed, mass, spin, etc. These properties are the result of the string vibrating in different forms.Do you have the intuition that prior to combination a particle contains water in it? I don't. We have a theory yes, but I don't know someone who says that it was evident all along that particles have water in them, you can't see it, touch it, etc. until the experiment comes about. — Manuel
Consciousness, to me, is the ability of the mind, the ability to experience.Some emergence is more shocking to us that others, consciousness out of matter vs. liquidity in particles. — Manuel
Think of a meaningful sentence. The sentence is weak emergence. An idea, however, emerges once you complete reading the sentence. The emergence of the idea is strong since the idea is more than the sentence, and it is irreducible.But what do you gain by saying one is strong and the other is weak, if you lack intuitions (not theories) for both? — Manuel
I don't understand what you mean by particles have water in them! Water refers to a system of H2O molecules. We have a good intuition on why water changes its behavior in terms of the properties of its parts. We even have good intuition on why parts have these and those properties, such as speed, mass, spin, etc. These properties are the result of the string vibrating in different forms. — MoK
Consciousness, to me, is the ability of the mind, the ability to experience. — MoK
Think of a meaningful sentence. The sentence is weak emergence. An idea, however, emerges once you complete reading the sentence. The emergence of the idea is strong since the idea is more than the sentence, and it is irreducible. — MoK
This kind of emergence is fully explicable in terms of the physical properties of the components and the laws governing them. There is nothing mysterious left over once we understand the physics and chemistry. — Wayfarer
On this view, consciousness is not an inexplicable product of complex organization but a manifestation of properties already present in the fundamental building blocks of the world. — Wayfarer
Correct, you can explain the phenomena in theoretical terms. But the phenomenal property of water is untouched even knowing the theory. The mystery is how could apparently liquidless molecules give rise to the phenomena liquidity?
Likewise, if what some assume is true that experience merges from a combination of non-mental physical stuff, we have no intuition as to how the mental could emerge from the non-mental.
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I don't see a fundamental difference in how puzzling these things are. — Manuel
If you are trying to describe macro-level functions in micro-level terms, then the macro-level description is also indispensable. Otherwise what would it be that you are trying to describe in micro-level terms?
This just seems obvious. But the complaint that seems to be commonly made is that the macro-level description is lost in the micro-level description, and that the micro-level description is thus not a true description. But how could it be otherwise? — Janus
I think this problem is what constitutes the so-called "hard problem". No micro-level description will be acceptable to those who demand that physicalism should be able to explain subjective experience, if it eliminates the macro-level description. but it must eliminate the macro-level description (Sellars "manifest image" of human experience and judgement) otherwise it would not be a micro-level description.
Fair enough.Well it's fine if you think that, but you should equally hold it against non physicalism that there's no non physicalist guess as to how it might work. It's not like you're abandoning a non working idea for a working idea - you're abandoning a lack of an idea for another lack of an idea.
That doesn't mean non physicalism is false, but it certainly shouldn't leave anybody with extreme confidence that it's true. — flannel jesus
I think panpsychism fails to explain the unity of experience; therefore, it is not acceptable.But Nagel also sees this as an argument in support of panpsychism: If consciousness really arises from matter, then the mental must in some way be present in the basic constituents of matter. On this view, consciousness is not an inexplicable product of complex organization but a manifestation of properties already present in the fundamental building blocks of the world. — Wayfarer
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