That couldn't be more wrong. Surely you know of the many controversies over the interpretation of quantum physics. The question of whether the objects of analysis really exist, or in what sense they exist, is central to that. — Wayfarer

There are a variety of interpretations of QM, and it seems unlikely that it will ever be possible to verify which one is correct. That seems a background curiosity, and gives a good reason to be agnostic as to which interpretation is correct. However, it does not provide a reason to deny that the "objects of analysis" exist. These objects are (obviously) analyzable- which seems sufficient reason to regard them as real. If some interpretation of QM entails these things as being nonexistent, that seems more of a reason to deny the interpretation, than a reason to deny the existence of these analyzable objects.

At worst, this interpretation establishes that it is possible the object doesn't exist. But that possibility still seems no more than an idiosyncratic curiosity - not a fact that further scientific investigation should feel obligated to take into account.

Perhaps such idiosyncratic interpretations of QM might lead some brilliant scientist to develop a new paradigm on this basis. If that paradigm is more successful at making predictions, then it could become relevant. But unless/until that occurs, it seems a dead-end.

What I said ‘couldn’t be more wrong’ was this:

A scientist doing science is not going to worry about whether an atom of hydrogen is "really out there" or not. — J

That’s why I mentioned the Bohr-Einstein debates which were precisely over this issue, insofar as this statement assumes the realist attitude.

There are the things, and there are the experiences of the things. I don't understand how this is controversial.
...
Of course consciousness gives an advantage. — Patterner

This is inconsistent with your assertions. The part that gives the advantage is sensory input and the ability to react to it, all 'things' according to your posts above. You've defined consciousness as only experience of those advantages, hence it does not itself give any additional advantage. If it did, it would become on of those cognitive things, experienced perhaps, but no longer experience.

You seem to describe it like somebody going to a cinema to experience some stream of 'things'. Go into a room showing a human and you get the experience of a human. Go to a different room and you get the experience of a rock, which is pretty blank, but at least it's still a stream of almost nothing. Go to the photon room and you don't even get that since you are punted out of the cinema as fast as you enter.

Point is, you going to the cinema has zero effect on the story being told in any particular room.

1) If consciousness is not present from the beginning, then there is nothing but physical. Physical things and processes, and evolution that occurs through purely physical mechanisms, and selects for arrangements that are advantageous only in physical ways.

2) Somewhere down the line, consciousness emerges.

You are very much confusing emergence and change. The latter takes place over time. The former is not a temporal effect, but rather a property of a system that is not a property of any one of its parts.
So per physicalism (which is not defined as 'lack of consciousness from the beginning'), over time, matter rearranges (mechanism unimportant) into physical configurations which have this emergent property.

Biology might do this rearrangement via growth or by evolution. Other arrangements might be by design (growth is a form of change by design). Yet others might be by some other mechanism (including possibly yourself).

Does it not seem like amazing happenstance that physical arrangements having nothing to do with nonexistent consciousness are selected for, and consciousness, which did not exist and was not selected for, just happens to emerge from those arrangements?

This is a gross misrepresentation of the physicalist position, especially given your definition of consciousness. Under physicalism, biological experience is part of cognition (the information processing), not something separate that merely experiences the cognition. No, it isn't amazing at all that the simplest creatures evolve to react to their environments, and as soon as they do this, the beginning of consciousness is already there and needs only to be improved. It would be far more amazing if these simple adaptations never occurred. Even plants do it.

The value of a coin is not a property of the coin. — noAxioms
Ok.
Aristotle again. — Banno

No. Aristotle distinguished social/legal value (of say money) from real value (of say food). I am saying that value (of any kind, money, food, whatever) is not a property of the thing of value, but a relation of the thing with that which values it.
I said this in reaction to your assertion that value was a property of the thing itself.

:roll: — Banno

Your argument from ridicule is noted, but fails to justify your apparent dismissal of my statement, or perhaps of Aristotle's stance on value.

it's possible the person you're replying to is introducing a concept or argument not specifically addressed by the argument or belief system you refer by name of one person. — Outlander

Indeed. I tried to clarify above. Thx for the support of somebody who actually couldn't spout the teachings of any of the famous names. I try to do my own philosophy and would totally fail a philosophy course which focuses more on the history of what others said and not so much on how to go about working it out for yourself.

I don't rate [a fossil record] as memory. A rational observer such as ourselves can intepret it, but it is not information that is conserved for the sake of maintaining homeostasis as memory is for an organism. — Wayfarer

So you're saying it isn't memory if there's not a purpose of homeostasis in it? Wow...

Nice example. The word and the meaning are separate parts of the idea. — noAxioms
So you agree that the idea exists as an irreducible mental event? — MoK

Your inability to parse a statement leaves me floored. I give a clear example of an idea being reduced to parts, and you suggest that I would agree that ideas are irreducible.

Aristotle — noAxioms

- that odd idea that properties are "more real" than relations.

So you're saying it isn't memory if there's not a purpose of homeostasis in it? Wow... — noAxioms

Show me I’m mistaken and I’ll change my view. As always.

‘ ‘… 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!’ ~ Ernst Mayr.

I'm not sure. The problem seems to hinge on whether we can speak objectively about experiences that can only be had subjectively. A lot of traditional science would rule this out. — J

I think maybe the problem is trying to speak objectively about experiences that can only be had subjectively, and trying to fit the study of consciousness into the mold of traditional science. Maybe a new way is needed.

I agree. A key problem is how we know that a subjective experience is being had in the first place. We posit such experiences for everything from other people, to animals, to (for some optimists) AI . . . What version of science can help us with this?

You've defined consciousness as only experience of those advantages, hence it does not itself give any additional advantage. — noAxioms

No, I haven't. Look all you want, and you will not find me saying that anywhere. Consciousness is causal. There's no denying that. All we have to do is open our eyes and look anywhere at all the things humans have made that would not exist if only the laws of physics were at work. The more consciousness has to work with, that is, the greater the mental capabilities of the conscious entity, the more consciousness can use the laws of physics to do things that the laws of physics would never do without consciousness. Which are things that are favorable to the survival of the conscious entity.

At least they were historically. Humans do a lot of things that aren't for our survival.

I agree. A key problem is how we know that a subjective experience is being had in the first place. We posit such experiences for everything from other people, to animals, to (for some optimists) AI . . . What version of science can help us with this? — J

I'm suggesting we need a new version of science. All our sciences use the physical to explore the physical.

Fair enough. I wonder if the so-called human sciences might offer some options. Some versions of psychology, for instance, offer themselves as hard explanatory science, yet don't limit their explanations to physical causes.

I'm suggesting we need a new version of science. All our sciences use the physical to explore the physical. — Patterner

We are dealing with an anomaly, so-called experience, within physicalism. I agree that we need to discard physicalism/materialism. We at least need two different substances, the so-called experiencer and the object of experience, if you want to describe the phenomenon of experience coherently.

We know dark matter exists, because of its gravitational effect. But that's it. With all our sciences, we can't detect it at all. It doesn't absorb, reflect, or emit light. It doesn't impact matter. Nothing. But we know it's there.

I think we know consciousness is there for a similar reason. Consciousness isn't explained by the physical properties of the universe. Something we can't detect with all our sciences is there. Unfortunately, we can't measure its effect the way we measure dark matter's. At least not in any way I can think of.

We know dark matter exists, because of its gravitational effect. But that's it. With all our sciences, we can't detect it at all. It doesn't absorb, reflect, or emit light. It doesn't impact matter. Nothing. But we know it's there.

I think we know consciousness is there for a similar reason. — Patterner

It may be the case that both dark matter and consciousness are inaccessible to current scientific investigation. But I don't think we know about them for "a similar reason." As I understand it, dark matter is a postulate that seems to be required by the math, and has so far stood up under theoretical pressure. Surely consciousness is more than a postulate, something we have to infer or deduce? Or maybe you mean that it would look that way from a strictly 3rd person viewpoint, with no access to any person's mind? But of course this immediately raises the conundrum of how there could be any viewpoint at all that did not partake of consciousness. In short, my access to consciousness is a given, even when I'm wondering whether other beings have it too.

I think we know consciousness is there for a similar reason. — Patterner

Consciousness, to me, is the ability of the mind to experience, so we cannot measure it. We cannot measure consciousness if it is used as a synonym of experience as well.

Consciousness isn't explained by the physical properties of the universe. — Patterner

Sure. It is the basic assumption of physicalism that an electron, for example, doesn't experience.

Something we can't detect with all our sciences is there. — Patterner

The mind, although it is present, is a light substance, so we cannot detect it, at least at the current stage of scientific development.

I'm saying dark matter and consciousness are both thought to exist because matter is doing things that can't be explained by what we know about matter. Or at least no other explanation has been found, and people who are many times more knowledgeable about what we know than I am say we don't have the vaguest idea.

But that's as far as I'm going with that. Certainly, the specifics are extremely different. There probably aren't two people in the discussions here who agree on the definition of consciousness. I don't know how many can give a firm, consistent definition of their own, regardless of agreement with anybody else. And nobody has evidence for how it comes about. For the most part people will not even attempt to understand another person's theory, wanting only to say it's wrong. So no attempt to work on any theory can be done by more than the holder of that theory. Not easy to find answers this way.

On top of which, as I recently said, all theories play out the same.

Surely consciousness is more than a postulate, something we have to infer or deduce? — J

Sorry. I was meaning that in regards to my position, that consciousness is fundamental.

People with different guesses about the nature of consciousness could easily, and many obviously do, think otherwise.

I'm saying dark matter and consciousness are both thought to exist because matter is doing things that can't be explained by what we know about matter. — Patterner

OK, I see that parallel.

There probably aren't two people in the discussions here who agree on the definition of consciousness. — Patterner

True, but I bet we all would affirm that our own consciousness is real and (perhaps) indubitable. As you say:

I was meaning that in regards to my position, that consciousness is fundamental. — Patterner

My general idea is that it we shouldn't be surprised if our physical science can't examine something that does not have physical properties. So examine consciousness with tools that do not have physical properties. Ideally, with tools that have the same properties consciousness has. But there is often disagreement over what those properties are. — Patterner

You assume that consciousness does not have physical properties. Is consciousness something different than being conscious?

If yes, then what is the difference?

If no, does not being conscious have physical properties, and is it not those physical properties that allow us to tell that consciousness is present?

Yes to both. But we cannot hook them up to anything kind off detector and see the consciousness that their behavior suggests is present. We can see the physical correlates of consciousness, but not there consciousness. — Patterner

That might indicate that the idea of consciousness as something undetectable is a kind of reification, as distinct from simply being conscious, which is a detectable condition.

Ideas to me are irreducible mental events. — MoK

A pretty sketchy notion.

Indeed. We can detect consciousness. That's why we differentiate between some's being asleep and awake...

And we differentiate between doing something consciously and unconsciously - driving to the local shops being the usual example.