Unless there wasn't a time when consciousness didn't exist. If it is fundamental, a property of things, as, for example, mass and charge are, then it was always there. There was always experiencing. Yes, reality started perceiving itself when structures of perception evolved. At which point, there was the experience of perception.

I have a lot of sympathy with your stance and there is an interpretation of my stance which fits with yours. But it comes from an entirely different root to what is being discussed in this thread.

I’ve been thinking of raising the issue of electrical charge and consciousness. As you mention charge, this seems like an appropriate time.
It occurs to me that consciousness might be emergent from the presence of charge in matter (mass, or extension, ie spacetime). Or the other way around, the presence of matter (spacetime) in charge. Although when it comes to extension in space and time and charge, they are all a consequence of extension and rely on it to have existence.

To put that simply, space/time/charge emerge together. Consciousness could be emergent in the presence of charge in matter. The animating part, electricity. We can see how electricity and charge play a fundamental role in life processes. Particularly in the central nervous system, indeed in thought, sentience and the exalted state of consciousness observed in humans. We are an electrical processing device, which processes information for the purpose of increasing our chances of survival.

So rather like your train set aeroplane analogy. We have developed a processing device to be better at survival, but inadvertently produced something which could take us out into space.

This is that the Buddha's teaching is like the stick used to stir a fire to help get it burning. But when the fire is burning, the stick is tossed in.

A beautiful metaphor, something I have acted out many times. Thankyou.

No, science has not yet put together the entire puzzle that will answer the question of consciousness, but all the pieces of the puzzle so far point to consciousness being a function of neurological processes. Any other theory is just a matter of wishful thinking. — Questioner

:100:

‘The promissory notes of materialism’

‘The promissory notes of materialism’ — Wayfarer

...says the ChatGPT subscriber.

Do you think there is ever going to be a paradigm that does not have self and other? What does it mean to not have self-other? Will all minds and consciousnesses merge into one?
— Patterner

I can only say that 'transcending the self-other distinction' is a recurring motif in mysticism and the perennial philosophies, generally. That is why 'Nirvāṇa without remainder' is said to be only possible on the far side of death. — Wayfarer

For millennia, various traditions have been trying to accomplish this. But the practitioners still answer to their individual names, and it's said the goal can't be achieved while alive.

What is your vision off the future? Will we no longer use the sciences that developed by ignoring consciousness? Will we not live in houses, not use electricity, not use propulsion systems and math to launch ships to Mars and beyond?
— Patterner

I don't believe interstellar travel is at all feasible for terrestrial creatures such as ourselves. We might be able to send ultrasmall computers via laser energy, but we'll never send large metal and composite material vessels with living organisms in them. Mars is a possibility, but the idea of colonizing Mars is a Musk fever dream. (I'm writing a 'psi-phi' novel on this very theme at the moment, although constantly sidetracking myself with forum posts.) — Wayfarer

Fine, let's use another example. Will doing away with the subject–object paradigm mean we will no longer use our current sciences to try to find or develop better energy sources?

Although I really don't have any idea what your position is, I know that we both think consciousness is a bigger, and/or more ubiquitous, part of the universe than many people posting here do. That doesn't mean we will, or should, discard physical sciences. There probably are times when one aspect of reality is not needed for, and possibly interferes with, our pursuits in one area or another. There will probably always be people wasting their time trying to prove that things like sodium ions passing through the membranes of neurons produce consciousness. But it might be equally foolish to insist that we cannot find way to produce lighter, stronger metals without first figuring out how to add consciousnes as an ingredient.

Any other theory is just a matter of wishful thinking. — Questioner

Another expert psychologist on the forum! What causes materialism? Too much breast milk?

What exactly is he discerning in this essay? Bitbol is not claiming that he can determine what reality is like independently of experience. Notice at the outset, he says 'no alternative metaphysical view is advanced.' He is claiming that reason can notice when it has overstepped its bounds by mistaking the conditions of experience for objects within experience. That critique does not establish an alternative ontology - it is ameliorative rather than constructive. — Wayfarer

Indeed, and this point is well taken. However, there's a real tension in Bitbol's position. The issue is not that he wants to engage in a critique of reason, but that his critique relies on a normatively binding use of reason to establish limits, while simultaneously denying reason any standing to make normatively binding claims about reality. In contrast to Nagarjuna, Bitbol's critique is not merely therapeutic. He makes claims about correctness, error and order which raises the question: are these claims themselves unconditionally valid, or merely perspectival? If they are unconditionally valid, then reason seems to have precisely the kind of authority Bitbol denies it in ontology. If they are not, then it becomes unclear why his critique binds anyone who does not already share his stance.

There's a Buddhist metaphor that comes to mind. This is that the Buddha's teaching is like the stick used to stir a fire to help get it burning. But when the fire is burning, the stick is tossed in. There's another simile, the 'simile of the raft'. This compares the dharma to a raft 'bound together from fragments of sticks and grasses' (hence, nothing high-falutin') which is used to 'cross over the river' but which is discarded when the crossing is accomplished (Alagaddupama Sutta.) This has been compared to Wittgenstein's 'ladder' metaphor, that philosophy is like a ladder that is discarded after having been climbed. — Wayfarer

Yes, this is philosophy as therapy. People can (and do) find real value in such an approach, but the persistent worry is that if reason is simply discarded along the way (e.g. ladder, veil, raft, etc.), what is left to adjudicate insight from delusion, depth from emptiness, transcendence from regression?

Because it's not true, — Wayfarer

To the extent that you’ll not see the word “true” in a scientific paper, this is accurate. The most that a scientific paper will claim is that “this is the best explanation for the evidence collected.”

Are you claiming that what Bitbol is saying is “true?”

yet a very large number of intelligent people seem to accept that it is. — Wayfarer

Thus raising questions about their intelligence?

Would you question the intelligence of the MIT Consciousness Club, whose members aim to build a bridge between philosophy and cognitive neuroscience? They do this by exploring how “neurological activity gives rise to human experience.”

Maybe we can look at one aspect of neurological research into consciousness, and determine how it would appear through the lens of Bitbol’s analysis.

Consider the perceptual reality monitoring theory of consciousness (PRM). PRM is a higher-order theory of consciousness, meaning it associates the emergence of consciousness with the emergence of the reality monitoring function - i.e. perception (sensory input) > signal evaluation > reality tagging (signal reliable?) > consciousness/cognition/thoughts.

Philosopher Matthias Michel, (co-leader of the MIT Consciousness Club and the Old Dominion Career Development Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy), takes a science-based approach to his work, and investigates PRM. This past year, he published Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision – which explored distribution of conscious (vs. unconscious) vision in aquatic and terrestrial animals.

In the last section of the paper, he writes:

“… we offer an argument that seeks to explain, rather than merely describe, this co-evolution of model-based planning and consciousness.”

His conclusions suggest:

“… by selecting a coherent set of representations among the myriad representational activities the mind is engaged in, a reality monitoring mechanism grants those representations the epistemic profile that is typical of our conscious representations. Through this lens, reality monitoring and the capacity for model-based planning are deeply intertwined, offering a new perspective on the functions of conscious vision.”

So – what would be Bitbol’s critique of this investigation? What step in reality monitoring is made invalid by the measurement question of quantum mechanics?

And because ideas have consequences. — Wayfarer

Scientific knowledge is not “ideas” but the only substantiated knowledge we have, based on the best evidence. It can be examined and tested – for example in function-based theories of consciousness. Can Bitbol’s claims be tested?

Which is why strict scientific realists, like Sir Roger Penrose, say that quantum theory must be wrong or incomplete. — Wayfarer

Well, if the physical evidence contradicts the mathematical model, I would say it is the mathematical model that must be adjusted, because it is impossible to adjust the physical evidence.

For millennia, various traditions have been trying to accomplish this (i.e. 'divine union'). But the practitioners still answer to their individual names, and it's said the goal can't be achieved while alive. — Patterner

The discussion was the emergence of consciousness as the 'self-other' distinction basic to the emergence of organic life. It is also a basic theme in phenomenology.

The issue is not that he wants to engage in a critique of reason, but that his critique relies on a normatively binding use of reason to establish limits, while simultaneously denying reason any standing to make normatively binding claims about reality — Esse Quam Videri

I think your concerns about ‘the discarding of reason’ are perhaps overblown. Bitbol is not trying to establish normative limits on reality in the Kantian sense of legislating what can or cannot be the case tout court. Rather, he is diagnosing a performative incoherence in a specific epistemic stance —namely, the assumption that consciousness (I actually prefer ‘mind’) can be treated as a fully objective explanandum from inside the very practices that presuppose lived experience. Phenomenology, generally, is dealing with the philosophical conundrums that arise from 'objectification'.

Well, that is an impressive research program! Not questioning that, at all. There is an explosion of similar kinds of research under the heading 'consciousness studies'. One of the triggers was the 1996 publication of David Chalmer's essay Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness'. This was the paper that articulated the 'hard problem' of consciousness. So as not to get bogged down in too many digressions, it is worth recapitulating some of the key ideas and paragraphs from this paper.

One is the contrast between 'easy problems' and 'the problem of consciousness'. Chalmers says the 'easy problems' - problems which easily admit of a scientific explanation - are:

*the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;
*the integration of information by a cognitive system;
*the reportability of mental states;
*the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
*the focus of attention;
*the deliberate control of behavior;
*the difference between wakefulness and sleep.

He says 'There is no real issue about whether these phenomena can be explained scientifically. All of them are straightforwardly vulnerable to explanation in terms of computational or neural mechanisms.'

But, he goes on:

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of "consciousness", an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state.

I should note, I think 'the hard problem' is a polemical or rhetorical construct. It's purpose is only to point out that the first-person, experiential quality of experience can never be properly captured from a third-person perspective. So it's not a problem to be solved, in that sense, and (some have said) a misuse of the term 'problem' on those grounds (i.e. properly described, it is a mystery, not a problem.) But I'm bringing this in, because it serves to focus on what exactly is at issue in many of these discussions.

So – what would be Bitbol’s critique of this investigation? — Questioner

I can't speak for Michel Bitbol, but I will point out that phenomenology is usually found in these programs, for the reasons given above. Chalmers is not himself associated with phenomenology but many other researchers in the field are. This is in recognition of the criticism of phenomenology, that the third-person accounts of conscious experience must necessarily omit something of fundamental importance.

Key Concepts in the Phenomenological Approach to Consciousness Studies

Researchers often use several key "tools" or concepts derived from classical phenomenology (like that of Edmund Husserl or Maurice Merleau-Ponty):

Intentionality: The idea that consciousness is always "consciousness of something." Every mental act has an object (a thought, a feeling, or a physical thing).

The Epoché (Bracketing): The practice of setting aside "natural" assumptions about the external world to focus strictly on how a phenomenon presents itself to the mind.

Neurophenomenology: A modern sub-field (popularized by Francisco Varela) that seeks to "naturalize" phenomenology by using rigorous first-person descriptions to help scientists understand brain activity patterns.

So, the opposition here is not between 'phenomenology and science'. It's between 'phenomenology and reductive materialism', where 'reductive materialism' is the belief that the first-person nature of subjective experience is insignificant or secondary to the objective description. Daniel Dennett is the natural foil for these arguments, as he believes that first-person consciousness is essentially derivative from unconscious cellular processes.

Can Bitbol’s claims be tested? — Questioner

Not relevant. Falsifiability is a criterion used to distinguish empirical from non-empirical claims. Bitbol's arguments are not empirical arguments, but are based on reasoned inference from the apodictic nature of first-person experience.

Incidentally, in respect of neurological modelling of first-person experience, take a look at The Neural Binding Problem, specifically The Subjective Unity of Perception. It acknowledges the hard problem of consciousness, saying that 'enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience'.