I really don't think he's a crackpot, — Wayfarer
I can see how consciousness creates or constructs experience... — Wayfarer
So you or your family have never taken even an aspirin? You or your family have never had a vaccination? Honestly? — apokrisis
Can you find where conscious agents gets a serious definition? I couldn't. So that's where the handwaving becomes a frantic blur. — apokrisis
We are conscious, we are active, therefore we are conscious agents. The conscious agent decides, chooses; one's own actions. Where do you find the mysterious handwaving? — Metaphysician Undercover
It's really not that difficult. We are conscious, we are active, therefore we are conscious agents. The conscious agent decides, chooses; one's own actions. Where do you find the mysterious handwaving? — Metaphysician Undercover
Yeah but Hoffman appears to be saying that what we perceive to be the objects of experience - the metaphorical table of philosophical debates - are really a 'complex dynamical system of conscious agents'. That's what I'm not getting. — Wayfarer
With your version, what happens when your conscious choice about the facts of reality conflict with my choice as a fellow agent? — apokrisis
...our MUI (multi-modal user interface) is species-specific. So it generates a shared pool of 'icons' which are common to us h. sapiens. — Wayfarer
When we agree, concerning what is and is not, we can create objects. When we do not agree, all we have is processes which have varying descriptions depending on one's perspective. — Metaphysician Undercover
Hoffman appears to be saying that what we perceive to be the objects of experience are really a 'complex dynamical system of conscious agents'. That's what I'm not getting.
— Wayfarer
Objects are themselves conceptual, so they are a product of, created by the complex dynamical system of conscious agents. — Metaphysician Undercover
If it is about the material facts of evolution and genetics where a mental model is being selected for its fit to a world, then that world is a reality standing beyond some species of agents. — apokrisis
Evolutionarily speaking, visual perception is useful only if it is reasonably
accurate . . . Indeed, vision is useful precisely because it is
so accurate. By and large, what you see is what you get. When this
is true, we have what is called veridical perception . . . perception
that is consistent with the actual state of affairs in the environment.
This is almost always the case with vision. .
MUI theory is not idealism. It does
not claim that all that exists are conscious perceptions. It claims that our
conscious perceptions need not resemble the objective world, whatever its
nature is.
When we do not agree, all we have is processes which have varying descriptions depending on one's perspective. — Metaphysician Undercover
But he seems to be saying objects consist of conscious agents - that objects are constituted by conscious agents, not that objects are constituted by the perception of them by conscious agents. You see the distinction? It seems very like panpsychism, but then he denies that, also. Complicated. — Wayfarer
I think the realist view is that the domain of perception - the world we see - is the real world... — Wayfarer
Now, for you, as a naturalist, that completely undermines the basic premise of your outlook... — Wayfarer
Now, for you, as a naturalist, that completely undermines the basic premise of your outlook...
— Wayfarer
Only if you never take a blind bit of notice of anything I have ever said. But carry on.... — apokrisis
He says this is not idealism, or panpsychism or anything else. But then it also sounds just like that.
Hence my conclusion. He is another of many crackpots. Even university departments are full of them. — apokrisis
And that is why materialism becomes inadequate. You need pansemiosis to deliver the "other" of general laws and constraints. — apokrisis
Why not say something interesting rather than make lame garbled posts like that? — apokrisis
But you were saying there was a conscious choice to believe in the reality of something like your keyboard. We had to agree to agree somehow. It's not really a choice if I can't then make a choice about that belief. I would hardly qualify as an agent. — apokrisis
You are now arguing for beliefs we can't not believe, choices we can't in fact make, etc. — apokrisis
But he seems to be saying objects consist of conscious agents - that objects are constituted by conscious agents, not that objects are constituted by the perception of them by conscious agents. You see the distinction? It seems very like panpsychism, but then he denies that, also. Complicated. — Wayfarer
So he doesn't deny that there's an objective or mind-independent world; he simply denies that this describes the nature of experience (and therefore knowledge derived from experience.) He says that his theory accounts for the nature of knowledge and experience in such a way that it is consistent both between different subjects, and within itself; so more a 'coherentist' than a 'correspondence' theory. — Wayfarer
But, sometimes you can be wrong. George and Alice can have a theory about, I don't know, 'how to mix rocket fuel'. George's attempts, however, never actually work, either he blows himself up or it fizzes out. Alice, meanwhile, has now been abducted by Kim Jong Un and forced to work on his rocket program - because her method works. That's not simply 'disagreement', it is supported by facts, by outcomes. — Wayfarer
Modern science, relativity theory, and process philosophy, all tend to lead us toward the conclusion that objects are produced by human perception. So if we want to maintain the realist assumption of real independent objects, we must find the physical basis for this assumption. — Metaphysician Undercover
The ontology of conscious realism proposed here rests crucially on the notion of conscious agents. This notion can be made mathematically precise and yields experimental predictions (Bennett et al. 1989, 1991; Bennett et al. 1993a,b; Bennett et al. 1996). — Donald Hoffman
So when he says 'consciousness creates', what I take that to mean, is that he is referring to the way consciousness integrates all of the momentary impressions, sensations and judgements into a cognitive whole, one aspect of which we then designate as 'an object'. We're unaware of this cognitive process as it's going on, because it's by definition unconscious, beneath the threshold of conscious awareness, but giving rise to our experience of the world. I think it's basically Kantian in that sense, and also quite compatible with Buddhist philosophy of mind. — Wayfarer
that "consciousness integrates all of the momentary impressions..." and that it is "by definition unconscious". Is it consciousness if it is unconscious? And if even that is not contradictory and it could be, if it is unconscious, then how could you know that it is consciousness doing the integrating? — Janus
But that is common knowledge. You yourself are not conscious of the fact that your perception is a stream of momentary saccades which the mind then integrates into a simple unity. Think about 'the blind spot' - I'm sure you know that there is a simple experiment you can perform that shows that there is always a spot in your field of vision that you don't see. But you don't notice you don't see it until you perform that experiment. — Wayfarer
Consciousness ends up being conscious of how it must be the product of unconscious processes. — apokrisis
for now, in this thread, the key point is why I reject the usual demand of "answer the Hard Problem". Framing that as the crucial question is already to presume that the answer has the form "consciousness is an ontic simple, a substance". It gets to be like being asked "when did you stop beating your wife?". — apokrisis
Physics usually assumes human observers. The origin of life question is: How did this separation, this epistemic cut, originate?
As Hoffmeyer (2000) has pointed out, the apparently sharp epistemic cut between these categories makes it difficult to imagine how life began and how these two categories evolved at higher levels. The epistemic cut appears to be a conceptual as well as a topological discontinuity. It is difficult to imagine a gradual cut. The problem arises acutely with the genetic code. A partial code does not work, and a simple code that works as it evolves is hard to imagine. In fact, this is a universal problem in evolution and even in creative thought. How does a complex functioning set of constraints originate when no subset of the constraints appears to maintain the function? How does a reversible dynamics gradually become an irreversible thermodynamics? How does a paradigm shift from classical determinism to quantum indeterminism occur gradually? At least in the case of thought we can trace some of the history, but in the origin of life we have no adequate history. Even in the case of creative thought, so much goes on in the subconscious mind that the historical trace has large gaps. I will state at the outset that I have not solved this problem. In fact, even after decades of effort I have not made much progress other than clarifying the problem.
I also put all my money on this being a pan-semiotic deal as fundamental physics is arriving at the same irreducible triadic process as the causal explanation of how existence itself could come to be. — apokrisis
You have misinterpreted the point. The 'blind spot' was simply for illustrative purposes - the actual processes involved are of far greater depth and subtlety than that. — Wayfarer
So here, he seems to be asking, how did the separation between 'observer and observed' originate? Because this is implied in the very origin of life itself. — Wayfarer
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