Do you equate mental and consciousness? — Patterner

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simulation: reproduces computational features

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

Imitation: reproduces behavioral features

OK

Model: reproduces (some) physical features

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

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

Yea, which makes it a nice test, no?

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

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

A recent discovery that might be of interest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A puzzling argument.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why? Can you quote or restate your argument?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vapor pressure is not a property of boiling? — noAxioms

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

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

Clarity on ontology.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answers to the negative would break the simulation.

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

Can you quote or restate your argument?

I did, just then..

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

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

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

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

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

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

. My initial statement on the issue said it all:

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

Beyond that, I was just explaining what I meant.

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

"I" is an indexical.

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

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

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

Not a mystery, perhaps; but a puzzle.

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

@Wayfarer, more grist to your mill.

A formal account:
Let:

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

Then for any extensional predicate F:

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

Yet he does not know whether:

• “I = A” or “I = B”.

And therefore he does not know whether:

• “I am F.”

Even when F is extensional.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This fundamental nature of consciousness cannot be undetectable. — noAxioms

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

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

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

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

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

Not much. Works for sea monkeys.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

You say you will notice, but this already presumes that you have the capacity to notice. If the simulation is just state and processing, there will be no distress. A faithful simulation of the human brain will, somewhere in its workings, faithfully process all the state associated with a full qualitative experience. The agent will "experience" it's qualia, and report nothing unusual. There just may not be any actual qualia.

In the same way, your chip sim faithfully processes all the state associated with electrical flow. There just isn't any actual electricity.

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

If you show a human an apple and ask them what color they are experiencing, they will say 'red'. This is a behavioral fact. And so, a simulated human agent should respond in the same way. If they do not, something is wrong with the simulation. But this says nothing about whether the agent is actually experiencing any qualia at all.

hat any of the values (the velocity of the moon relative to Earth say) is discreet, meaning it is impossible to express a typical real number. — noAxioms

Computers can't process infinite precision reals, but they can process numbers precise to an arbitrary degree. At some point the result will converge so that it is not measurably different.

...especially since the universe is seemingly not composed of true statements. — noAxioms

But hopefully, what one says about the university is.

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

Nice. Your sentence is indexical without being in the first-person. There is some tension between the Lewis account and the Anscombe/Wittgenstein account, but also some agreement in that both admit to a context, the one saying it is additional information, the other that it is a role int a language game.

An aside - the dependence here is on context, not on subjectivity. It's not that first-person statements are subjective - whatever that might mean - that is at issue, but how we account for the place of the context in first person statements and indexicals.

That's why the guff here about qualia is irrelevant.

An aside - the dependence here is on context, not on subjectivity. It's not that first-person statements are subjective - whatever that might mean - that is at issue, but how we account for the place of the context in first person statements and indexicals.

That's why the guff here about qualia is irrelevant. — Banno

To me the natural conclusion is that the guff here about indexicals is irrelevant.

Cogitophobia.

So Chalmers separates first-person access, the subjective, phenomenal, what-it-is-like aspects from the first-person perspective or standpoint, indexical, self-locating, contextual information (“I am here now”). Most philosophers conflate these.

It's been done here. Folk are using “What-it-is-like” accounts, which misunderstand the source of first-person irreducibility. They treat it as arising from private inner objects along the lines of qualia, but the actual source is grammatical: the first-person pronoun designates a role within communal language-games, not a metaphysical subject of experience.

Theories about qualia, and much phenomenology, disembodies the person from the practices that make the first-person possible, and thereby veer into a form of conceptual solipsism.

The formal logic being used here mitigates against the tendencies of natural language to take it's own grammar too seriously, to mistake it for ontology.

quote="Banno;1026883"]Folk are using “What-it-is-like” accounts, which misunderstand the source of first-person irreducibility. They treat it as arising from private inner objects along the lines of qualia, but the actual source is grammatical: the first-person pronoun designates a role within communal language-games, not a metaphysical subject of experience.[/quote]


This feels silly. How on earth do you get first person perspective from mere grammar? That is quite the trick. You point out that people conflate subject-as-language-role and subject-as-experiencer, only to then somehow reduce one to the other?

Anything with the right cognitive skillset can play communal language games. ChatGpt, for instance. But this does not track at all with whether ChatGpt is an irreducible subject. It can be the (unlikely) case that it is, and the (likely) case that it isn't. Similarly, a dog, while communicative, lacks language entirely. Certainly they have no notion of indexicals. Yet, there is something it is like to be a dog, just as much as there is for me and you.

If the matrix product of these two concepts results in a 2x2 grid, where each cell is perfectly possible, how can one have their origin in the other?

Subject, Language User: Human
Subject, Non-Language User: Dog
Non-Subject, Language User: LLM
Non-Subject, Non-Language User: Tree


I honestly don't see how anyone can conflate these. I remembered and found this quote of yours (I remembered the thread title somehow).

Going over my own notes, I found an admission that I did not understand qualia - from 2012. In 2013, I said I do not think that there is worth in giving a name to the subjective experience of a colour or a smell. In 2014, I doubted the usefulness of differentiating a smell from the experience-of-that-smell. Never understood qualia. I still don't see their purpose. — Banno

Has your understanding improved in the intervening decade plus? Is it possible that you, and maybe some others here, have a cognitive architecture that makes it difficult to fix on qualia as a distinct concept? Or, is this just another philosophical difference?

Has your understanding improved in the intervening decade plus? — hypericin

No. I continue to think the qualia are incoherent. In so far as they are private sensations, they are irrelevant, and in so far as they are public, we already have 'red" and "sour" to cover that use.

How on earth do you get first person perspective from mere grammar? — hypericin

I don't. The logical or public irreducibility of first-person ascriptions is linguistic. Stop trying to explain them by positing private inner objects such as qualia. First-person grammar explains why self-ascriptions behave differently from third-person reports; it does not explain the existence of conscious subjects.

Yes, the object itself. OK, the topic I linked is more about there being no physical boundary for an object itself — noAxioms

Rocks have physical boundaries―namely where the surface meets the air or water and the ground. The boundaries may not be precise on the atomic level, but a boundary does not have to be absolutely precise for us to be able to identify an object.

The identity is more a question of: Is this rock the same one it was yesterday? What if I chip a bit off? — noAxioms

"This rock"! If it is this rock yesterday and today it is the same rock. Which rock did you chip a bit off? This rock or that rock? If you break a rock in half then it is the same rock now in two pieces
from one perspective, or from another it is two smaller rocks. It all depends on how you frame it―there is no context-independent fact of the matter.

I don't think it follows, but the convention typically chosen by anybody is a mind dependent one. There are very few definitions that are not. "Is part of the universe" is heavily mind dependent, especially because of 'the' in there, implying that our universe is special because it's the one we see. — noAxioms

Conventions? You are talking about descriptions or specifications, not about the objects described or specified. The objects are not conventions either.

I am currently away visiting family for holidays, which is why replies are not always prompt.

You say you will notice, but this already presumes that you have the capacity to notice. — hypericin

You're right. For instance, I presumed memory is physical. If that's taken away, I will have no memory of that which was taken away, but I also will be completely unable to function since I could not utter a sentence, lacking memory required to remember what I wanted to say and where I was in the utterance, and lacking language knowledge at all.
So perhaps I (the simulated copy of me) would just be a vegetable, in no distress at all.

If the simulation is just state and processing, there will be no distress.

If there was memory of the qualia, then its abrupt absence would be noticed. Whether that causes distress or not depends on if that distress is part of what was taken away. It probably was. Either way, if the simulated entity notices the lights going out and he retains the ability to report things, he'd report it.

A faithful simulation of the human brain will, somewhere in its workings, faithfully process all the state associated with a full qualitative experience.

Not if dualism is true. It would be like perfectly simulating a physical radio and expecting it to play music. It just wouldn't because you're missing something that is more than the physical radio, and the simulated radio would have zero access to real radio waves.

Point is, the simulation makes for a wonderful falsification test for both sides of the issue, leaving me to wonder how each side would reject the results if their own opinion was falsified.

The agent will "experience" it's qualia, and report nothing unusual. There just may not be any actual qualia.

How can qualia be experienced if there isn't any? This all seems contradictory. I've essentially created a p-zombie here, which is identical under physicalism and not identical under dualism (both substance and property). The dualist will thus reject the test on grounds of p-zombies behaving identically, but I've argued how that cannot be. They cannot make up a story about something they cannot know. They're not conceivable without some serious denial of logic.

In the same way, your chip sim faithfully processes all the state associated with electrical flow. There just isn't any actual electricity.

OK. I never said there was. That's what it means to be a simulation. The simulated chip cannot detect if it's real or if it's a simulation. If the simulation is incomplete, then it could detect the difference. For instance, the simulation does not simulate mass, but the chip has no way of testing its own mass. If it did, then it needs to be part of the simulation.

If you show a human an apple and ask them what color they are experiencing, they will say 'red'.

OK, but under dualism, the zombie simulated would be a human body, not a human.

If they do not, something is wrong with the simulation.

Exactly The simulation is missing a critical component, and would thus not be simulating a human. That's why it makes such a nice falsification test, since it works only if a human body and a human are the same thing.

Computers can't process infinite precision reals

Never worked with an analog computer then? I have. Interesting stuff, but hard to simulate anything complicated since they're so limited. No memory, no instructions.

especially since the universe is seemingly not composed of true statements. — noAxioms

But hopefully, what one says about the university is.

How about a statement of the form "The cold mountain is to the left". — noAxioms

Nice. Your sentence is indexical without being in the first-person. — Banno

"The universe is not composed of true statements" is also an indexical and thus lacks an objective truth value. The language usage there is so common that most forget that it's an indexical.

There is some tension between the Lewis account and the Anscombe/Wittgenstein account, but also some agreement in that both admit to a context, the one saying it is additional information, the other that it is a role int a language game.

Not being well versed in any of the known philosophers, I don't know how (Wittgenstein presumably) argues for the language game thing, and I see arguments made by language games all the time.

YRocks have physical boundaries―namely where the surface meets the air or water and the ground. — Janus

Where it meets the ground is pretty ambiguous. I've a small protrusion of rock in my yard. Does the rock end near the vaguely defined mean ground level? Does it mass a kg or is it a continental plate, even if most of the plate is not the slate that protrudes from my yard? Read the topic if you're interested. One test is: "How big is this?" where 'this' is something pointed to or touched. No actual language is allowed, since the contention is that 'this' is an ideal, defined only by language. Just saying 'rock' gives a huge clue about an ideal instead of the thing in itself.

Even with biological beings it's quite ambiguous. How much do I weigh? Well, 9 stones, but that includes the roll of coins in my pocket. Is that part of me? Fiction says it is. Logic has no clear answer. Convention says it's not part of me, but convention is an ideal.

The boundaries may not be precise on the atomic level, but a boundary does not have to be absolutely precise for us to be able to identify an object.

Of course. Such is the nature of a pragmatic ideal.

It all depends on how you frame it―there is no context-independent fact of the matter.

Just so. Hence identity also being merely an ideal, lacking in objective truth.

The objects are not conventions either.

Your statement immediately above seems to suggest otherwise.

In so far as they are private sensations, they are irrelevant — Banno

You may think the core feature of conscious experience is irrelevant. Others disagree.

in so far as they are public, we already have 'red" and "sour" to cover that use — Banno

These don't generally refer to qualia. Rather, to public features. We just happen to identify these features by a internal coding system, qualia. How each of our coding systems presents to us is not communicable by language or any other means, as there is no stable referent language can latch onto.

The logical or public irreducibility of first-person ascriptions is linguistic. Stop trying to explain them by positing private inner objects such as qualia. — Banno

I'm not. I think one has nothing to do with the other. You are the one trying to shoehorn your language games into a topic far afield from them.

"The universe is not composed of true statements" is also an indexical — noAxioms

I don't think so.

You may think the core feature of conscious experience is irrelevant. Others disagree. — hypericin

If qualia are private, then how is it that you and these others agree about them? How do you know that, when you use the term "qualia", you are all talking about the same thing? Especially if:

How each of our coding systems presents to us is not communicable by language or any other means, as there is no stable referent language can latch onto — hypericin

If you’re right that qualia are private, then you can’t claim consensus with others who also believe in them, because there’s no way to determine whether your “qualia” and their “qualia” refer to the same thing.

So qualia can't be usefully used in our discussions of consciousness. Or they are not private.

If qualia are private, then how is it that you and these others agree about them? How do you know that, when you use the term "qualia", you are all talking about the same thing? — Banno

We don't know, and can never know, that the content of our qualia agree. What most of us do agree is that there is something that it is like to see an apple and smell ammonia. This shared fact structures our collective experience, and the concept can be communicated with language. While qualitative content can never be.

The concept is public, in that it refers abstractly to universal human features most of us understand. But a part of the concept is that its concrete instantiations as qualia we individually undergo are private.

We can go on.

Chalmers move is to suppose a structural similarity between the players, that there is a "shared internal geometry" to which terms such as "qualia" make reference. He suposes that indexicals like “here,” “now,” along with “this feeling,” “my visual field” succeed in reference despite lacking Wittgensteinian criteria. Qualia are understood by acquaintance, not by public criteria.

Dennett would reply that phenomenal concepts don't pick out anything. What is spoken of as "the sensation of red" is not a thing at all, so much as the illusion of a thing. Consider how the red in the sunset changes over time as well as over the span of the sky; what here is the sensation of red?

Dennett repeats Wittgenstein's point, that if two people cannot compare referents, and cannot check criteria, and cannot correct or be corrected, then they are cannot genuinely be said to be “talking about the same thing.”

He points out that relying on phenomenal introspection cannot be shown to be reliable. Reports of “similarity” among experiences are public behaviour, not windows into private geometry - if this "geometry" is to amount to anything, it is imposed by us, not grounded in introspection. What Chalmers is relying on is not private sensations but public behaviour.

I think Dennett has the better case here.

While I was writing this, you replied:

We don't know, and can never know, that the content of our qualia agree. What most of us do agree is that there is something that it is like to see an apple and smell ammonia. This structures our experience, and the concept can be communicated with language. While qualitative content can never be. — hypericin

I think it clear that you are relying on a structure that is imposed by our shared language, a structure that is public. We can see the shared language, and that gives us the illusion of a shared private world.

Chalmers thinks he’s appealing to private, introspected items. But every scrap of evidence he uses for “shared structure” comes from public behaviour—reports, discriminations, linguistic practices. So the “private geometry” collapses into a public one.

A faithful simulation of the human brain will, somewhere in its workings, faithfully process all the state associated with a full qualitative experience.
-hypericin

Not if dualism is true. It would be like perfectly simulating a physical radio and expecting it to play music. It just wouldn't because you're missing something that is more than the physical radio, and the simulated radio would have zero access to real radio waves. — noAxioms

I don't know which types of dualism would agree, but the property dualism I have in mind, with consciousness a fundamental property, does not.

If qualia are private, then how is it that you and these others agree about them? How do you know that, when you use the term "qualia", you are all talking about the same thing?
— Banno

We don't know, and can never know, that the content of our qualia agree. What most of us do agree is that there is something that it is like to see an apple and smell ammonia. — hypericin

And that is what needs explanation. It doesn't even matter whether or not what it is like for me to see red is the same as what it is like for you to see red. we need to know why there's something it is like for anybody to see red, as opposed to nothing taking place other than a massively complex bunch of particles bouncing around, with some moving one way because photons of one range of wavelengths hit the retina, and some moving another way because photons of another range of wavelengths hit the retina.

we need to know why there's something it is like for anybody to see red — Patterner

FWIW, my take:

We, as conscious beings, live in the perspective of the brain's executive decision maker. All qualia are informational, they tell us about the world and about ourselves. Qualia are the way that the brain presents information to itself, in a form it can efficiently process and act upon. Sensory data, bodily sensations, feelings, all just information that guide us in making decisions and ultimately acting.

Qualia exist only in the context of the brain that produces them. We are, each of us, a machine within a machine. The brain creates for us a virtual world, and then lets us executive decision makers use and act on this information.

Qualia are as real as a computer animation. They exist, but only in terms of the larger framework which supports them. There is no exotic physics, nothing mystical. Just a system organizing information in a way it is able to effectively process and act on.

Form our perspective, qualia are elemental, mysterious, and apart from the material world. But that shouldn't be surprising for virtual machines who experience everything only through qualia.

I'm not sure I understand. It seems like you're saying the brain understands the information well enough to convert it to a different format? If it understands the information in the first place, why does it need to convert it? I can understand a computer AI understanding the code, but presenting it in a form we can efficiently process and act upon. But why does the brain present what it already understands to itself in a different form?

Or am I misunderstanding?

But why does the brain present what it already understands to itself in a different form? — Patterner

Think division of responsibility. Different parts of the brain are responsible for different functions. When receiving information from the world, one part of the brain translates that information into a form that can be easily processed and acted upon. Then the executive, the conscious part, uses that translated information to learn and to act.

I'm inclined not to be one of those that rejects Einstein, but that isn't to say that other interpretations (that are inconsistent with all of the above) are wrong. — noAxioms

I agree with you that relativity - both special and general - taken literally imply 'eternalism'. And, indeed, the existence of time dilation, the limit of the speed of light, black holes, gravitational waves etc corroborate the validity of general relativity.
However, there is other empirical evidence (mostly experiential evidence) that I can't deny that seem to suggest that 'eternalism' is wrong.

Perhaps yes on the mathematical truths (arguably not since so many of them depend on unprovable axioms), but definitely not to any sort of concepts, all of which seem to supervene on something more basic. — noAxioms

I would also add something like 'Goodness', 'Beauty' etc as fundamental, but I would digress.
Regarding unprovable axioms, I'm not sure that this is a problem. I mean, can you give an example of a 'mathematical truth' that is not based on axioms?

I just said that such truths are not physical, the opposite of your assertion here. — noAxioms

Ok, fine. In which case, however, you're saying that something that isn't physical exists, so you can't be a physicalist (unless you are using the term 'physicalist' to describe a 'broader' position in which the mental supervenes/reduces/emerges/is dependent on the physical but doesn't exclude the existence of non-physical entities).

But there's so many more of the latter, to the point that you are more likely than not to be part of one of them. — noAxioms

I do not get the point you and Carroll make. I'll read Carroll's paper. At best it seems to me that it is an objection to the 'plausibility' of MUH rather than a critique of its consistency and/or it being a correct description of reality.

How would you respond to somebody who cannot envision such an explanation being possible, especially given the current lack of such an explanation? — noAxioms

To them, I would reply that in the case of 'consciousness' I see properties like qualia, the experience of 'free will' etc that seem obviously harder to be understood in terms of what we know of the 'physical' than in the case of 'cherryness'. This difference leads me to think that a complete physicalist explanation of 'consciousness' is less likely than a physicalist explanation of cherryness.

I would have said that the new model is closer, but sure, you'll never get all the way to ding an sich. — noAxioms

Agreed. I would also add that this implies that the 'ding an sich' has some kind of intelligibility. Otherwise, we would able to distinguish which model is 'better'.

Same can be said of SR. It demonstrably does not correspond to reality. But it was never an attempt to do so. GR is closer, but just like NM, breaks down at the boundary cases. Doesn't imply that we should teach neither NM nor GR in schools. — noAxioms

Of course, yes. Even from a purely pragmatical point of view that the skeptic shares this is true. However, the skeptic wouldn't agree that we can say that NM or GR (or QM for that matter) can give us true knowledge. They work but their usefulness is no guarantee to their correspondence to reality.

I can grant that to the skeptic. But past at a certain point, the skeptic position seems to me to lose its plausibility. GR seems indeed to be closer to 'reality' than NM was. However, 'reality' is 'veiled' to borrow from an expression of Bernard d'Espagnat, so the quest of the knowledge of it doesn't stop (precisely becuase it is 'veiled' and not 'totally clear' or 'totally hidden').