OK, from this I gather that your statement that you're asserting an ontological distinction, a distinction in the mode of being, you're merely expressing opinion, not evidence of any sort. — noAxioms

I see it more as a matter of facts which you don’t recognize.

Sure, the machine probably follows machine instructions (assuming physics isn't violated anywhere), which are arguably an algorithm, but then a human does likewise, (assuming physics isn't violated anywhere), which is also arguably an algorithm. — noAxioms

Physics is violated only if you assume it is algorithmic. I disagree with this assumption. I believe that our own existence is 'proof' that physical laws allow non-algorithmic processes (as to why I believe that our cognition isn't algorithmic I refer to some of my previous posts).

BTW, I want to thank you for the discussion. It helped to clarify a lot of my own position. I didn't think that my denial of our cognition as being totally algorithmic is so important for me. What you also say in respose to @javra about the 'hedonic aspect' of consciousness would perhaps make sense if you assume that everything about us is algorithmic.

As I stated above, I do not think that sentient AI is logically impossible (or, at least, I have not enough information to make such a statement). But IMO we have not yet reached that level.

That opens a whole can of worms about identity. The same arguments apply to humans. Typically, the pragmatic answer is 'yes'. Identity seems to be a pragmatic idea, with no metaphysical basis behind it. — noAxioms

Again, I have to disagree here. We seem to be sufficiently 'differentiated' to be distinct entities. Again, clearly, if all our actions and cognitions were algorithmic what you are saying here would make perfect sense. After all, if all processes are algorithmic it seems to me that the only entity that there is in the universe is the whole universe itself. All other 'subsystems' have at best a pragmatic identity. Ultimately, however, they are only useful fictions.

You need to expand on this. I don't know what you mean by it. — noAxioms

I meant that 'interpretation-free QM' doesn't give a precise definiton of what a measurement is. It is a purely pragmatic theory.

I don't know. It seems to me life is processes, not properties. Our planet has various amounts of various elements, so that's what the laws of physics had to work with. But can't there be life on other planets that have different mixtures of different elements? I imagine there can be. I think different elements, different processes, different systems, can accomplish the work of life. — Patterner

I don't think that a 'process view' denies what I said. Note, however, that processes in order to be intelligible must have some properties, some structure. Otherwise knowledge is simply impossible.

In a 'process ontology', what I said perhaps would be modified as 'there is a potency for life-processes in non-living processes' or something like that.

supposedly anything can be possessed. From lifeforms to children's toys (e.g., Chucky), and I don't see why not toasters as well (this in purely speculative theory but not in practice, akin to BIVs, solipsism, and such) — javra

Purely speculative maybe, but they're relevant in an important way sometimes. I do keep such ideas in mind. BiV is a form of solipsism.
Some external vitality (you've not been very detailed about it) seems to have no reason to interact only with living things like a bacterium, a human finger cell, or perhaps a virus. Apparently, it cannot interact with anything artificial. I can't think of any sort of reason why something separately fundamental would have that restriction.

intents, and the intentioning they entail, are teleological, and not cause and effect.

You don't know that, but you say it like you do. I'm a programmer, and I know the ease with which intent can be implemented with simple deterministic primitives. Sure, for a designed thing, the intent is mostly that of the designer, but that doesn't invalidate it as being intent with physical implementation.

There's a massive difference between [cause/effect and intent] (e.g., the intent is always contemporaneous to the effects produced in attempting to fulfill it - whereas a cause is always prior to its effect).

The effects produced in attempting to fulfill it are not the cause of the intent.

What you do you mean "manufacture a human from non-living parts"?

Like 3D print one or something. Made, not grown, but indistinguishable from a grown one.

How then would it in any way be human?

That's for you, the created being, and for society to decide. A new convention is required because right now there's no pragmatic need for it.

Or are you thinking along the lines of fictions such as of the bionic man or robocop?

Naw, my mother is one of those. She can't swim anymore since she's so dense with metal that she sinks straight to the bottom. They don't tell you that in the pre-op consultation.

To the question of whether it experiences pain: I don't know. Intent?: As described by Thompson, probably so. — J

Thompson seemed to make conclusions based on behavior. The cell shies away or otherwise reacts to badness, and differently to fertile pastures so to speak. By that standard, the car is conscious because it also reacts positively and negatively to its environment.

I don't know that a car isn't conscious, but for me the possibility is extremely unlikely.

Probably because we're using different definitions. There are several terms bandied about that lack such concreteness, including 'living, intent, [it is like to be], and (not yet mentioned, but implies) free will'. People claiming each of these things rarely define them in certain terms.

I find being alive utterly irrelevant to any non-begging definition of consciousness. But that's me.

about as fruitful as a debate among 18th century physicists about what time is.

Good analogy, since there's definitely not any agreement about that. The word is used in so many different ways, even in the physics community.

If reproduction is part of the definition of life, then worker bees and mules are not alive. Neither is my mother, as she's is 83. — Patterner

A mother has reproduced. The definition does not require something to continue to do so. The mule cannot reproduce, but mule cells can, so the mule is not alive, but it is composed of living thing. Hmm...
Not shooting you down. Just throwing in my thoughts. New definition: A thing is alive if the 6 year old thinks it is. Bad choice, because they anthropomorphize a Teddy Ruxpin if it's animated enough.

She says many consider Darwinian evolution to be the defining feature of life.

Plenty of nonliving things evolve via natural selection. Religions come to mind. They reproduce, and are pruned via natural selection. Mutations are frequent, but most result in negative viability.

In which case no individual is living, since only populations can evolve.

Easy enough to rework the wording to fix that problem. A living thing simply needs to be a member of an evolving population. What about computer viruses? Problem there is most mutations are not natural.

"An automobile, for example, can be said to eat, metabolize, excrete, breathe, move, and be responsive to external stimuli. And a visitor from another planet, judging from the enormous numbers of automobiles on the Earth and the way in which cities and landscapes have been designed for the special benefit of motorcars, might wellbelieve that automobiles are not only alive but are the dominant life form on the planet". — Carl Sagan
Similarly humans, which are arguably inert without that immaterial driver, but the alien might decide they're the dominant life for instead of simply the vehicles for said dominant forms.

fire is certainly alive — javra

That's always a good test for any definition of life. How does fire rate? Are you sure it isn't alive? It certainly has agency and will, but it lacks deliberate intent just like termites.

You more specifically mean certain reactions of organic chemicals, namely those which result in metabolism - or at least I so assume. — javra

Google says:
Metabolism refers to all the chemical reactions that occur within an organism to maintain life.

That might be circular.
...

And not all life uses cellular respiration. — Patterner

I was also going to point out that circularity.
Not all life metabolizes. Viruses for example, but some deny that a virus is alive.

Mind you, I personally don't place any importance on life, in the context of this topic. So while I find the question intriguing, I question its relevance. The discussion does belong here because there are those that very much do think it relevant.

My overriding question is:. Can there be life without chemical reactions? — Patterner

I don't see how, but there can't even be rocks without chemical reactions, so that's hardly a test for life.

Your question -- which reduces to "Why is biology necessary for consciousness?" -- is indeed the big one. If and when that is answered, we'll know a lot more about what consciousness is. (Or, if biology isn't necessary, also a lot more!) — J

:up:

I have to assume we could make a program that duplicates itself, but does so imperfectly. — Patterner

They have these. Some are viruses or simply mutations of user interfaces such as phishing scams. On the other hand, they've simulated little universes with non-biological 'creatures' that have genes which mutate. Put them into a hostile environment and see what evolves. Turns out that the creatures get pretty clever getting around the hostilities, one of which was a sort of a spiney shell (Mario Kart reference) that always killed the most fit species of each generation.

Physics is violated only if you assume it is algorithmic. I disagree with this assumption. — boundless

Barring a blatant example of a system that isn't, I stand by my assumption. Argument from incredulity (not understanding how something complex does what it does) is not an example.

I mean, some parts of physics is known to be phenomenally random (unpredictable). But that's still algorithmic if the probabilities are known, and I know of no natural system that leverages any kind of randomness.

Good discussion anyway! — J

BTW, I want to thank you for the discussion. — boundless

Wow, two in one go. Thank you all. It may not seem like it, but these discussions do influence my thinking/position and cause me to question thin reasoning.

I didn't think that my denial of our cognition as being totally algorithmic is so important for me. — boundless

That's something I look for in my thinking. X is important, so I will rationalize why X must be. I had to go through that one, finally realizing that the will being deterministically algorithmic (is that redundant?) is actually a very desirable thing, which is why all decision making artifacts use components with deterministic behavior that minimizes any randomness or chaos.

Other examples of X are two of the deepest questions I've come to terms with: Why is there something and not nothing? Why am I me?
Answers to both those questions are super important to me, and the answers rationalized until I realized that both make assumptions that are actually not important and warrant questioning. The first question was pretty easy to figure out, but the second one took years.

As I stated above, I do not think that sentient AI is logically impossible (or, at least, I have not enough information to make such a statement). But IMO we have not yet reached that level.

I can grant that. Sentience is not an on/off thing, but a scale. It certainly hasn't reached a very high level yet, but it seems very much to have surpassed that of bacteria.

Identity seems to be a pragmatic idea, with no metaphysical basis behind it. — noAxioms
Again, I have to disagree here.

You suggest that if I fix my door (reattach a spring that fell loose, or worse, replace the spring), then it's a different door. OK, but this goes on all the time with people. You get a mosquito bite, a hole which is shortly repaired and blood which is replenished in a minute. Are you not the person you were 10 minutes ago? I have some pretty good arguments to say you're not, but not because of the mosquito bite.

We seem to be sufficiently 'differentiated' to be distinct entities.

Being a distinct entity is different than the entity maintaining any kind of identity over time.
You seem to suggest that the identity somehow is a function of biological processes not being algorithmic. Not sure how that follows.

I meant that 'interpretation-free QM' doesn't give a precise definiton of what a measurement is. It is a purely pragmatic theory.

But I gave a definition that QM theory uses. Yes, it's pragmatic, which doesn't say what the measurement metaphysically IS. Perhaps that's what you're saying. No theory does that. It's not what theories are for.

I see it as a matter of fact which you don’t recognize. — Wayfarer

Perhaps because I don't see anything as a matter of fact. I call that closed mindedness. So I have instead mere opinions, and yes, ones that don't correspond with your 'facts'.

"intents, and the intentioning they entail, are teleological, and not cause and effect" -- javra

You don't know that, but you say it like you do. I'm a programmer, and I know the ease with which intent can be implemented with simple deterministic primitives. — noAxioms

As it happens, I know it on par to knowing that 2 and 2 doesn’t equal 5 but does equal 4, and can likely justify the affirmation you’ve quoted from me much better than the latter. You could have engaged in rational debate in reply. Instead, you affirm knowledge of what I do and don’t know. And uphold this not via any sort of rational argument but via a pleading to authority, namely your own as “programmer”.

In truth, I find it hard to take the sum of your replies to me seriously, this as far as rational philosophical discourses go. So, I’ll just bail out of this thread and leave you to your philosophical musings.

Wow, two in one go. Thank you all. It may not seem like it, but these discussions do influence my thinking/position and cause me to question thin reasoning. — noAxioms

:up: the same goes for me. These kinds of well made discussions, even if do not lead to a change of opinion, helps to clarify one's own.

That's something I look for in my thinking. X is important, so I will rationalize why X must be — noAxioms

Yes, I hear you. I don't think that is a 'dogmatic' approach if it is done with an open mind. Yes, some rationalizations can be a sign of dogmatism but if the inquiry is done in a good way it is actually a sign of the opposite, in my opinion.

So, even if on this subject we probably end the discussion with opposite ideas, this discussion perhaps helps both to consider aspect of our own position that we neglected and so on.
In my case, ironically, it helped me to understand how my own conception of 'consciousness' seems to exclude the possibility that conscious beings are algorithmic and this perhaps means that physical laws do make room for that. To me the biggest evidence (but not the only one) that our cognition isn't (totally) algorithmic is the 'degree of freedom' that it seems to be present when I make a choice. As I told in another discussion we had, this is, in my opinion, also strictly linked to ethics. That is we have a somewhat free power of deliberation that makes us eligible to be morally responsible (in a way that this concept doesn't become purely utilitarian and/or totally equivalent to being healthy/ill - although I do believe that there is a strong analogy between good/evil will and being helathy/ill, however both the analogy and the difference are crucial).

Reegarding the two other questions you wrote, they are also important for me. In my opinion, they are ultimately mysterious but, at the same time, I believe that they are worth asking and at the same time we can find some partial answer also to those.

I can grant that. Sentience is not an on/off thing, but a scale. It certainly hasn't reached a very high level yet, but it seems very much to have surpassed that of bacteria. — noAxioms

:up: Note that, however, I'm also a weirdo that thinks that the 'scale' is indeed like a scale with discrete steps. Nevertheless, I believe that the latency for the 'higher' level of sentience must be present in the lower. It seems to me that, to be honest, this inevitably leads to a less 'mechanicistic' view of the 'insentient'/'unliving' aspects of Nature.

Are you not the person you were 10 minutes ago? I have some pretty good arguments to say you're not, but not because of the mosquito bite. — noAxioms

Buddhists would tell you that saying that "you are the same person" (as you did change) and "you are a different person" (as the two states are closely connected) are both wrong. Generally, change is seen as evidence by most Buddhists that the 'self is an illusion (or 'illusion-like')'.
In my opinion, I would say that I am the same person. To this point, think about how the scholar D.W. Graham interpreters Heraclitus' fragment B12 "On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow." (and Aristotle's view):

The statement is, on the surface, paradoxical, but there is no reason to take it as false or contradictory. It makes perfectly good sense: we call a body of water a river precisely because it consists of changing waters; if the waters should cease to flow it would not be a river, but a lake or a dry streambed.
...
If this interpretation is right, the message of the one river fragment, B12, is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice, but something much more subtle and profound. It is that some things stay the same only by changing. One kind of long-lasting material reality exists by virtue of constant turnover in its constituent matter. Here constancy and change are not opposed but inextricably connected. A human body could be understood in precisely the same way, as living and continuing by virtue of constant metabolism–as Aristotle for instance later understood it. On this reading, Heraclitus believes in flux, but not as destructive of constancy; rather it is, paradoxically, a necessary condition of constancy, at least in some cases (and arguably in all). In general, at least in some exemplary cases, high-level structures supervene on low-level material flux. The Platonic reading still has advocates (e.g. Tarán 1999), but it is no longer the only reading of Heraclitus advocated by scholars. — DW Graham, SEP article on Heraclitus, section 3.1

Regardless the validity of Graham's interpretation of Heraclitus, I believe that it might be used to defend the idea that we can remain identical while changing. Life, after all, seems to be intrinsically characterized by some kind of 'movement'.

You seem to suggest that the identity somehow is a function of biological processes not being algorithmic. Not sure how that follows. — noAxioms

If all processes are algorithmic, I would believe that they can be seen as aspects of the entire evolution of the whole universe. Some kind of 'freedom' (or at least a potency for that) seems necessary for us to be considered as individual.

But I gave a definition that QM theory uses. Yes, it's pragmatic, which doesn't say what the measurement metaphysically IS. Perhaps that's what you're saying. No theory does that. It's not what theories are for. — noAxioms

To make some examples, in Rovelli's RQM all physical interactions are measurements. In most forms of MWI that I know, IIRC only the processes that lead to decoherence can be considered measurements. In epistemic interpratiotions measurements are updates of an agent's knowledge/beliefs (and of course, what this means depends on the interpreter's conception of what an 'agent' is). In de Broglie-Bohm measurements are particular kinds of interaction where the 'appearance of collapse' happens.
And so on. There are, in my opinion, an extremely large number of ideas of what a 'measurement' actually means in QM among the experts. So, it's not clear at all.

I think that adopting 'QM without interpretation' would force one to 'suspend judgment' on what a 'measurement' ultimately is.

Perhaps we are saying the same thing differently. I suspect we do.

Perhaps because I don't see anything as a matter of fact. I call that closed mindedness. So I have instead mere opinions, and yes, ones that don't correspond with your 'facts'. — noAxioms

Well, that solves it. All living beings are made from marshmallows, and the moon really is cheese. Time we moved on.

As Erwin Schrödinger cogently pointed out, once lived experience has been left aside in order to elaborate an objective picture of the world, “If one tries to put it in or on, as a child puts colour on his uncoloured painting copies, it will not fit. For anything that is made to enter this world model willy-nilly takes the form of scientific assertion of facts; and as such it becomes wrong”. Panpsychism is the unambiguous target of this criticism. It represents a clumsy attempt at overcompensating the consequences of adopting the intentional/objectifying stance needed to do science, by adding to it (or by replacing it with) patches of experience very similar to the patches of colour added on the surface of an uncoloured drawing. As soon as this is done, the new picture of the world looks like a scientific picture, apart from the unfortunate circumstance that its additional elements cannot be put to test as it would be the case of a scientific theory. This does not make panpsychism plainly wrong, but rather torn apart between its phenomenological origin and its temptation to mimick a theory of the objective world. As a consequence, panpsychism proves unable to define adequate criteria of validity for its own claims. — Michel Bitbol, Beyond Panpsychism

Reference is to Schrödinger E. (1986), What is Life & Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press

I think this criticism applies to all the current proponents of panpsychism - Philip Goff, Anakka Harris, Galen Strawson, etc. They're all trying to preserve the veracity of the scientific model while injecting an element of subjectivity into it 'from the outside', so to speak.

@Patterner

It represents a clumsy attempt at overcompensating the consequences of adopting the intentional/objectifying stance needed to do science, by adding to it (or by replacing it with) patches of experience very similar to the patches of colour added on the surface of an uncoloured drawing. — Michel Bitbol, Beyond Panpsychism

I don't agree that this is what panpsychism is attempting to do. And I maintain that physical objects and processes cannot add up to subjective experience.

They're all trying to preserve the veracity of the scientific model while injecting an element of subjectivity into it 'from the outside', so to speak. — Wayfarer

I think panpsychism is less likely to prove true than some version of consciousness as a property only of living things, but still, I don't agree with this characterization. The problem goes back to this part of what Bitbol says:

the new picture of the world looks like a scientific picture, apart from the unfortunate circumstance that its additional elements cannot be put to test as it would be the case of a scientific theory. — Michel Bitbol, Beyond Panpsychism

"Cannot" is the misleading term. Since we don't at this time have a scientific account of what consciousness is, or how it might arise (or be present everywhere, if you're a panpsychist), it's claiming far too much to say it "cannot" be tested. It cannot be tested now. But if it can be eventually couched in scientific terms, then it will be testable.

If panpsychism is at best an untested hypothesis, that should keep us modest about any claims that it's correct or true. But we also don't have license to say that it's flawed in some theoretical or philosophical way that can demonstrate, now, that it will never be science. Panpsychism as I understand it is not "mimicking a theory of the objective world." Rather, it's saying that if and when we understand what consciousness is, we will discover that our current division of "objective" and "subjective" into areas that can and cannot be studied scientifically, is just plain wrong. Philosophers do seem divided on whether this is even conceivable. I've never had any trouble with panpsychism in this way. If subjectivity is "really in there" in everything that exists, well, then that will be a feature of the objective world. What we lack is a vocabulary of concepts -- or, as it may be, mathematics -- to capture it.

They're all trying to preserve the veracity of the scientific model while injecting an element of subjectivity into it 'from the outside', so to speak.
— Wayfarer

I think panpsychism is less likely to prove true than some version of consciousness as a property only of living things, but still, I don't agree with this characterization. — J

Indeed. It's hard to see how a property of particles can be considered "from the outside." Mass and charge are not "from the outside."

If subjectivity is "really in there" in everything that exists, well, then that will be a feature of the objective world. What we lack is a vocabulary of concepts -- or, as it may be, mathematics -- to capture it. — J

I'm not aware of any math for any other guess about the nature/origin/explanation for consciousness. Which is not a surprise, since, to my knowledge, consciousness doesn't have any physical properties/characteristics to examine/measure mathematically.

I don't agree that this is what panpsychism is attempting to do. — Patterner

The metaphor Schrodinger gave was, 'once lived experience has been left aside in order to elaborate an objective picture of the world, “If one tries to put it in or on, as a child puts colour on his uncoloured painting copies, it will not fit." 'Putting colour back in' is a metaphor, but, leaving aside whether the metaphor itself is apt, Schrodinger's starting-point is accurate. Scientific method disregards or brackets out the subjective elements of phenomenal experience so as to derive a mathematically-precise theory of the movements and relations of objects. Consciousness is 'left out' of this, insofar as it is not to be found amongst those objects of scientific analysis. So panpsychism proposes that it must in some sense be a property of those objects, even if current science hasn't detected it. I think that's what Schrodinger's criticism means, and I think it is an accurate description of what panpsychism proposes to do.

As for whether its advocates are really trying to do that:

“Experience is the stuff of the world. Experience is what physical stuff is ultimately made of.”
— “Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism,” Galen Strawson, Journal of Consciousness Studies 13(10–11), 2006.

“If physicalism is true, the experiential must be physical, because the experiential exists, and physicalism is the view that everything that exists is physical. The only way to avoid radical emergence is to suppose that experiential being is present throughout the physical world.”
— ibid.

It is exactly this kind of gambit that Schrodinger's critique anticipated.

Rather, it (panpsychism) is saying that if and when we understand what consciousness is, we will discover that our current division of "objective" and "subjective" into areas that can and cannot be studied scientifically, is just plain wrong. — J

But this division is intrinsic. Science depends on the bracketing out of the subjective. Its power lies in its ability to treat phenomena as objects of measurement and prediction, abstracting from the first-person standpoint. But that same abstraction ensures that consciousness — the condition of possibility for any object to appear — cannot itself appear as an object in that framework. In Husserl’s terms, consciousness is not one more thing among things; it is the ground within which “things” arise.

Bitbol’s point in Beyond Panpsychism is that phenomenology doesn’t try to patch consciousness back into the scientific picture (as panpsychism does) but to reverse the direction of explanation: instead of asking how consciousness arises within the world, it asks how the world appears within consciousness. That’s what makes phenomenology radical — it goes to the root (radix) of the knowing relation itself. The goal is not to extend the scientific image to include the subject, but to reveal that the scientific image itself is a derivative construction grounded upon experience. And you can see how this dovetails with Chalmers critique.

Scientific method disregards or brackets out the subjective elements of phenomenal experience so as to derive a mathematically-precise theory of the movements and relations of objects. Consciousness is 'left out' of this, insofar as it is not to be found amongst those objects of scientific analysis. — Wayfarer

That is true, regardless of what guess anyone has about the nature of consciousness, and regardless of the actual answer. Consciousness has always been there. It's just been ignored for certain purposes.

Indeed. And isn't that the central factor in this debate?

I'm not aware of any math for any other guess about the nature/origin/explanation for consciousness. — Patterner

There's Penrose's conjecture that consciousness depends on quantum phenomena, which are understood (if at all) primarily in mathematical terms. I lean toward the idea that math is the language of deep structure, so if consciousness can be captured scientifically, it may require a mathematical apparatus at least as elaborate as what's been generated by physics in the past decades. Speculation, of course.

But this division is intrinsic. Science depends on the bracketing out of the subjective — Wayfarer

Yes and no. Yes, methodologically. But no, not ontologically. There is nothing in the scientific viewpoint that has to deny subjectivity, or claim that it must be reducible to the currently understood categories of physical objectivity.

After all, isn't it objectively true that you are conscious? Objectively true that you possess, or are, subjectivity? Why would we bar science from acknowledging this? I doubt if most scientists would dispute it. Science is not a subjective procedure, but it can and does study subjective phenomena. It does so objectively, or at least as objectively as possible, given our primitive concepts.

This seems so apparent to me that it makes me think you must mean something else entirely when you say that "scientific method disregards or brackets out the subjective elements of phenomenal experience." Do you mean it disregards them as facts? I don't see why that must be so, except for a very hardcore physicalist.

A harder question, as Nagel points out, is whether "I am Wayfarer," spoken by you, is a fact about the world. If there are truly non-objective facts that cannot be made objective, this might be one of them.

Indeed. And isn't that the central factor in this debate? — Wayfarer

If all agree that consciousness has always been there, and had just been ignored for certain purposes, then I don't know what the debate is about.

Yes and no. Yes, methodologically. But no, not ontologically. There is nothing in the scientific viewpoint that has to deny subjectivity, or claim that it must be reducible to the currently understood categories of physical objectivity. — J

I'm afraid that's not the point. Modern scientific method was founded on a deliberate division between what came to be called the primary and secondary qualities of bodies — a move that located objective reality in quantifiable properties (extension, motion, mass) and relegated qualitative appearances to the mind of the observer. Locke and the British empiricists codified this, and Descartes’ separation of res cogitans and res extensa reinforced it. And none of that is a matter of opinion.

From that point on, the objective sciences proceeded by isolating the measurable, repeatable, intersubjectively verifiable aspects of phenomena — the features that should appear identically to any observer. That methodological bracketing was enormously fruitful, but it gradually hardened into an ontological assumption: the belief that the model thus produced is the whole of what is real.

This is the confusion Nagel examines in The View from Nowhere: the tendency to mistake the “view from nowhere” for a perspective that could exist independently of the conscious beings who adopt it.

When you say “it’s objectively true that you are conscious,” you’re appealing to an abstract inference that science can register only at one remove. The felt reality of consciousness — what it’s like to be an observer — is not something that can be observed. It’s not one more item within the world; it is the condition for there being a world of items at all.

If all agree that consciousness has always been there, and had just been ignored for certain purposes, then I don't know what the debate is about. — Patterner

The debate is about what you mean when you say 'there'.

If all agree that consciousness has always been there, and had just been ignored for certain purposes, then I don't know what the debate is about.
— Patterner

The debate is about what you mean when you say 'there'. — Wayfarer

I'm agreeing with what you said:

Scientific method disregards or brackets out the subjective elements of phenomenal experience so as to derive a mathematically-precise theory of the movements and relations of objects. Consciousness is 'left out' of this, insofar as it is not to be found amongst those objects of scientific analysis. — Wayfarer

Our subjective experience is in everything we do, every moment. It is ignored/disregarded/bracketed out, beginning, it is often said, with Galileo, who was trying to understand and describe the universe with mathematics. And you can't understand or describe our subjective experiences with mathematics.

:up:

I'm not aware of any math for any other guess about the nature/origin/explanation for consciousness.
— Patterner

There's Penrose's conjecture that consciousness depends on quantum phenomena, which are understood (if at all) primarily in mathematical terms. I lean toward the idea that math is the language of deep structure, so if consciousness can be captured scientifically, it may require a mathematical apparatus at least as elaborate as what's been generated by physics in the past decades. Speculation, of course. — J

I don't suspect consciousness can be captured scientifically. Despite many very smart people trying their best; despite them not falling for another élan vital scenario; despite putting their efforts into scientific methods; despite everything - nobody has found a hint of physicality in consciousness. It's one thing to see physical properties of consciousness, but being unable to figure it all out. It's another thing to not have anything physical at all to examine in any way. I think we should be going about it in a new way.

We have lost Harry Hindu. I'm quite distressed by this.

“If one tries to put it in or on, as a child puts colour on his uncoloured painting copies, it will not fit. For anything that is made to enter this world model willy-nilly takes the form of scientific assertion of facts; and as such it becomes wrong”. — Reference is to Schrödinger E. — Wayfarer

This is oft quoted, and nobody seem to know where it comes from or the context of it. But Schrödinger is definitely in your camp. Some other quotes:

living matter, while not eluding the “laws of physics” as established up to date, is likely to involve “other laws of physics” hitherto unknown

I've said this much myself. The view requires 'other laws', and a demonstration of something specific occurring utilizing these other laws and not just the known ones.

Life seems to be orderly and lawful behaviour of matter, not based exclusively on its tendency to go over from order to disorder, but based partly on existing order that is kept up

it needs no poetical imagination but only clear and sober scientific reflection to recognize that we are here obviously faced with events whose regular and lawful unfolding is guided by a 'mechanism' entirely different from the 'probability mechanism' of physics.

... the space-time events in the body of a living being which correspond to the activity of its mind, to its self-conscious or any other actions, are […] if not strictly deterministic at any rate statistico-deterministic. To the physicist I wish to emphasize that in my opinion, and contrary to the opinion upheld in some quarters

Here he mentions explicitly that this is opinion.

For the sake of argument, let me regard this as a fact, as I believe every unbiased biologist would, if there were not the well-known, unpleasant feeling about ‘declaring oneself to be a pure mechanism’. For it is deemed to contradict Free Will as warranted by direct introspection.

The feeling is indeed unpleasant to some. Introspection is not evidence since it is the same, deterministic, free-willed, or not.

let us see whether we cannot draw the correct, non-contradictory conclusion from the following two premises:

(i) My body functions as a pure mechanism according to the Laws of Nature.

(ii) Yet I know, by incontrovertible direct experience, that I am directing its motions, of which I foresee the effects, that may be fateful and all-important, in which case I feel and take full responsibility for them.

The only possible inference from these two facts is, I think, that I — I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that has ever said or felt 'I' — am the person, if any, who controls the 'motion of the atoms' according to the Laws of Nature.

This quote seems to argue for physicalism. It puts up two premises (one from each side?) and finds them non-contradictory. This is interesting since it seems to conflict with the beliefs otherwise expressed here.

He goes on to rationalize a single universal consciousness. Not sure if this is panpsychism. I think this quote below tries to argue against each person being separately conscious.

It leads almost immediately to the invention of souls, as many as there are bodies, and to the question whether they are mortal as the body is or whether they are immortal and capable of existing by themselves. The former alternative is distasteful, while the latter frankly forgets, ignores or disowns the facts upon which the plurality hypothesis rests.
...
The only possible alternative is simply to keep to the immediate experience that consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown; that there is only one thing and that what seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception (the Indian MAJA); the same illusion is produced in a gallery of mirrors, and in the same way Gaurisankar and Mt Everest turned out to be the same peak seen from different valleys.

There's lots more, but this introduces his general stance on things.

Well, that solves it. All living beings are made from marshmallows, and the moon really is cheese. Time we moved on. — Wayfarer

Those are difficult interpretations to mesh with empirical evidence, but it can be done. But with like any interpretation of anything, it is fallacious to label one's opinion 'fact'.

As it happens, I know it on par to knowing that 2 and 2 doesn’t equal 5 but does equal 4, and can likely justify the affirmation you’ve quoted from me much better than the latter. — javra

A bold move to put a choice of interpretation on par with 2+2=4. OK, so you don't consider it an interpretation then, but justification seems lacking so far. OK, you quoted studies showing bacteria to demonstrate a low level consciousness. I don't contest that. The interpretation in question is whether physical means is sufficient to let the bacteria behave as it does. I've seen no attempt at evidence of that one way or the other.
I'm in no position to prove my side. To do so, I'd need to understand bacteria right down to the molecular level, and even then one could assert that the difference is at a lower level than that.

I don't think that is a 'dogmatic' approach if it is done with an open mind. — boundless

I don't think it's done with open mind if the conclusion precedes the investigation. I need to be careful here since I definitely have my biases, many of which have changed due to interactions with others. Theism was the first to go, and that revelation started the inquiries into the others.
The supervention on the physical hasn't been moved. It's the simpler model, so it requires extraordinary evidence to concede a more complicated model, but as far as I can tell, the more complicated mode is used to hide the complexity behind a curtain, waved away as a forbidden black box.

On 'my other two questions':

I believe that they are worth asking

I believed they're the two most important questions, but the answer to both turned out to be 'wrong question'. Both implied premises that upon analysis, didn't hold water. Hence the demise of my realism.

Note that, however, I'm also a weirdo that thinks that the [consciousness] 'scale' is indeed like a scale with discrete steps. — boundless

Cool. Consciousness quanta.

Buddhists would tell you that saying that "you are the same person" (as you did change) and "you are a different person" (as the two states are closely connected) are both wrong. Generally, change is seen as evidence by most Buddhists that the 'self is an illusion (or 'illusion-like')'
In my opinion, I would say that I am the same person.

The pragmatic side of my agrees with you. The rational side does not, but he's not in charge, so it works. It's a very good thing that he's not in charge, or at least the pragmatic side thinks it's a good thing.

The statement is, on the surface, paradoxical, but there is no reason to take it as false or contradictory. It makes perfectly good sense: we call a body of water a river precisely because it consists of changing waters; if the waters should cease to flow it would not be a river, but a lake or a dry streambed.

A river is a process, yes. If it was not, it wouldn't be a river. Pragmatically, it is the same river each time, which is why one can name it, and everybody knows what you're talking about. It doesn't matter if it's right or not. Point is, it works. What if the river splits, going around an island? Which side is the river and which the side channel (the anabranch)? I revise my statement then. It works, except when it doesn't. What happens when the anabranch becomes the river?

Most of this is off point. I don't even think a rock (not particularly a process) has an identity over time. For that matter, I don't think it has an identity (is distinct) at a given moment, but some life forms do. Not so much humans (identity meaning which parts are you and which are not).
I mean, how much do you weigh? Sure, the scale says 90 kilos, but you are carrying a cat, so unless the cat is part of you, the scale lies.

If all processes are algorithmic, I would believe that they can be seen as aspects of the entire evolution of the whole universe. Some kind of 'freedom' (or at least a potency for that) seems necessary for us to be considered as individual. — boundless

Still not sure how that follows. Take something blatantly algorithmic, like a 4-banger calculator. It's operation can be seen as aspects of the entire evolution of the whole universe.and it seemingly lacks this freedom you speak of. The caluclator is (pragmatically) an individual: It is my calculator, quite distinct from the desk it's sitting on, and the calculator over there owned by Bob. So it's probably not following because you're using 'individual' in different way than <is distinct from not X>.

In epistemic interpratiotions measurements are updates of an agent's knowledge/beliefs (and of course, what this means depends on the interpreter's conception of what an 'agent' is).

OK, agree that you've identified a different meaning of 'measurement' there, but that doesn't change the QM definition of the word, and your assertion was that QM doesn't give a definition of it, which is false, regardless of how different interpretations might redefine the word.

I think that adopting 'QM without interpretation' would force one to 'suspend judgment' on what a 'measurement' ultimately is.

Yes, exactly. Theories are about science. Metaphysics (QM interpretations in this case) are about what stuff ultimately is.

Perhaps we are saying the same thing differently. I suspect we do.

We don't disagree so much as it appears on the surface.

Since we don't at this time have a scientific account of what consciousness is, or how it might arise (or be present everywhere, if you're a panpsychist), it's claiming far too much to say it "cannot" be tested. It cannot be tested now. But if it can be eventually couched in scientific terms, then it will be testable. — J

If I were to place my bets, even if the scientists claim to have done this, the claim will be rejected by those that don't like the findings. I'm not sure what form the finding could possibly be. Can you tell what I'm thinking? Sure, but they have that now. Will we ever know what it's like to be a bat? No. Not maybe no. Just no.
So what's not being tested that in principle might be testable then?

So what's not being tested that in principle might be testable then? — noAxioms

Whether a given entity is conscious.

When you say “it’s objectively true that you are conscious,” you’re appealing to an abstract inference that science can register only at one remove. The felt reality of consciousness — what it’s like to be an observer — is not something that can be observed. It’s not one more item within the world; it is the condition for there being a world of items at all. — Wayfarer

An abstract inference . . . is that really what it is? Do you regard it as a fact that you are conscious? Do you think that science will forever be at one remove from that fact? I just can't see why. The felt reality has nothing to do with its factuality. Science doesn't have to observe, i.e., experience this felt reality in order to accept it as a fact, an item in the world. Science can't experience any of the macro- or micro-phenomena of the physical world either. That has never prevented scientists from bringing them under the umbrella of objective reality.

Again, I'm positive that we're somehow at cross-purposes, since what I'm saying seems to me uncontroversial. (And we both admire Nagel!) Don't we both agree that consciousness is a natural phenomenon, a part of the "given world" rather than some sort of intrusion into it? Do you think science is hobbled by its methods so that it can only inquire into certain parts of that world?

the objective sciences proceeded by isolating the measurable, repeatable, intersubjectively verifiable aspects of phenomena — Wayfarer

Yes. And that will happen for consciousness as well, is my guess. I would further claim that consciousness is a necessary postulate for many scientific inquiries; if it were not, you'd have to maintain that psychology, sociology, economics, and game theory are not sciences.

Do you think science is hobbled by its methods so that it can only inquire into certain parts of that world? — J

I would think so. At least in regards to the physical sciences. We can't weigh, or measure in any way, consciousness with the tools of the physical sciences.

We can't weigh, or measure in any way, consciousness with the tools of the physical sciences. — Patterner

I can only reply: not yet. But virtually none of the physical forces we now recognize as objects of scientific knowledge were weighable or measurable a few hundred years ago. I know I can be monotonous about this, but we simply can't say what will be possible once we actually start to understand what consciousness is. Way too early to say what we can or can't know.

I understand, and you're no more monotonous than I am. :grin: I just think that, since there's no hint of any physical properties of consciousness, despite many very smart people trying with our best technology, and leading experts in the physical sciences saying the physical properties of matter don't seem to be connected to it, we might want to explore other ideas.

we might want to explore other ideas. — Patterner

For sure. I'd love to pursue the other ideas. I can imagine people saying, in 2125, "They used to think consciousness might be a physical property! How weird."

The problem is verification. I can't imagine how many internally consistent ideas can be developed. Including any physicalist ones. But how to tell which, if any, is right?

They used to think consciousness might be a physical property! How weird." — J

I'm a hundred years ahead of my time. :rofl:

Don't we both agree that consciousness is a natural phenomenon, a part of the "given world" rather than some sort of intrusion into it? Do you think science is hobbled by its methods so that it can only inquire into certain parts of that world? — J

I'll refer to the potted quote I provided from Husserl again:

In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense—this would be a subjective idealism, itself a consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is cause and the world its effect—but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role. For this reason, all natural science is naive about its point of departure, for Husserl (PRS 85; Hua XXV 13). Since consciousness is presupposed in all science and knowledge, then the proper approach to the study of consciousness itself must be a transcendental one — Routledge Intro to Phenomenology

Also, as you mentioned Nagel, another passage I quote regularly:

The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental – consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. — Thomas Nagel, the Core of Mind and Cosmos

I would further claim that consciousness is a necessary postulate for many scientific inquiries — J

Not as an object of science, but as its pre-condition. Note the juxtaposition of 'natural' with 'transcendental' that Husserl refers to, which he derives from Kant, although he differs with Kant in signficant ways. Transcendental is 'what is necessary for experience but not given in experience.' So consciousness is not an 'intrusion' into the world, but neither is it an object within it.

I rather like this, from Mind and Cosmos

The intelligibility of the world is no accident. Mind, in this view, is doubly related to the natural order. Nature is such as to give rise to conscious beings with minds; and it is such as to be comprehensible to such beings. Ultimately, therefore, such beings should be comprehensible to themselves. And these are fundamental features of the universe, not byproducts of contingent developments whose true explanation is given in terms that do not make reference to mind. — Thomas Nagel

:100: But, you know, that book was subject of a massive pile-on when it was published. Nagel was accused of 'selling out to creationism'.

Another passage from the same book:

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36