I think there are only physical things, and that physical things consist only of their empirical properties, which are actually just functional dispositions to interact with observers (who are just other physical things) in particular ways. A subject's phenomenal experience of an object is the same event as that object's behavior upon the subject, and the web of such events is what reality is made out of, with the nodes in that web being the objects of reality, each defined by its function in that web of interactions, how it observably behaves in response to what it experiences, in other words what it does in response to what is done to it. — Pfhorrest
. A subject's phenomenal experience of an object is the same event as that object's behavior upon the subject
So we can't really even say what a physical thing is, other than in a common-sense way. But as we're dealing here with foundational definition of what constitutes the nature of being, then does declaring that there are 'only physical things' say anything beyond your adherence to physicalism? — Wayfarer
That wasn't what I was saying there, but I do say something like that. What I was saying was that the events that communicate the impact of the stone to the person it hits, the exchanges of photons between the electrons of the stone and the electrons of the person's body that transfer momentum and energy and so on between them, are the same events that constitute the raw phenomenal experience of the person of being hit by the stone.However, surely you can't be saying that stones experience the hitting of a human subject. — Wayfarer
The fundamental point about beings, as distinct from inanimate objects, is that they are demonstrably subjects of experience, whereas there is no grounds for asserting that with respect to stones and other objects. — Wayfarer
↪180 Proof What exactly was it you were applauding in this post that is different from anything I've said that you've been arguing against since? I've just been rephrasing the same thoughts since then and for some reason it seems you heartily agreed the first time and have disagreed ever since. — Pfhorrest
There are three exhaustive possibilities when it comes to what things have any first-person experience at all, where that having of a first-person experience at all is what is meant by "phenomenal consciousness", which is the topic of the "hard problem of consciousness". Either:
-Nothing at all has it, not even humans; or
-Some things don't have it, but other things do (and if there is ultimately only one kind of stuff, which doesn't have it in its simplest form, then somehow that stuff can be built into things that somehow do have it); or
-Everything has it. — Pfhorrest
The third option dissolves that big thorny problem of the second option, without falling into the absurdity of the first option. — Pfhorrest
What I was saying there is roughly that "to do is to be" and "to be is to do" (a thing's existence consists entirely in what it does, all of its properties are dispositions to act upon observers in certain ways) and "to be is to be perceive[able]" (a thing's existence consists entirely of its its observable properties) are different ways of phrasing the same statement, because for a thing to be "perceived" (more technically observed or sensed; perception is something more than that in contemporary terminology) is for it to act upon the observer. What's actually going on is an interaction between two things, and that same interaction constitutes both the behavior of the one thing upon the other, and the experience the other thing has of the first thing.
There's nothing "absurd" about humans being mistaken about what seems like "first person experience" that's, in fact, merely an illusionary artifact (i.e. a verb mistaken as a noun) of an ecology-situated, strange looping, reflexive information processing system. Further elaboration I've referred to here.
You wish to claim qualia is an illusion? Please sum it up first rather than elaborate. — Zelebg
I explained in the opening post why the problem is hard... — Zelebg
A philosophical zombie would be, by definition, something that has all of that reflexive information-processing functionality, but is missing "phenomenal consciousness". I'm saying that things like philosophical zombies can't exist, because you can't be missing that, because everything necesssarily has it ... — Pfhorrest
"P-zombie" is an incoherent construct because it violates Leibniz's Indentity of Indiscernibles without grounds to do so. To wit: an embodied cognition that's physically indiscernible from an ordinary human being cannot not have "phenomenal consciousness" since that is a property of human embodiment (or output of human embodied cognition). A "p-zombie", in other words, is just a five-sided triangle ... — 180 Proof
I keep saying that I'm not claiming that, I'm not talking about that sense of "consciousness" at all (although I agree that that is the important sense of "consciousness", it's just not the topic of this thread). If you're going to keep thinking I'm saying something I'm not, despite repeatedly saying that that's not what I'm talking about, I'm going to stop trying to say it.What evidence - fundamental physical law - shows that every physical thing cognitates (i.e. reflexively processes information, or adaptively behaves/moves/transforms itself)? — 180 Proof
It is defined that way, as independent of any particular functionality. I didn't make that definition. I don't think the thing that is defined that way is important. I think it's trivial. But philosophers talk about it, and this thread is explicitly about it, and my take on it is that it's a trivial thing that everything has and doesn't distinguish between anything, and so not worth saying anything more about it. Instead, we should talk about access consciousness for all the interesting philosophical discussion. You seem to want to say that only access-conscious things are phenomenally conscious, and I think that that gives too much importance to phenomenal consciousness, makes it something that does actually distinguish between things, except that it just so happens to correlate with access consciousness somehow, so that distinction becomes entirely redundant.What evidence is there that "phenomenal consciousness" is anything other than (the) output, or function, of a nonlinear dynamic process? — 180 Proof
I'm saying that "subjective experience of consciousness" points to nothing that exists in it's entirety prior to naming and descriptive practices, and yet consciousness does. So...
P-zombie" is an incoherent construct because it violates Leibniz's Indentity of Indiscernibles without grounds to do so. To wit: an embodied cognition that's physically indiscernible from an ordinary human being cannot not have "phenomenal consciousness" since that is a property of human embodiment (or output of human embodied cognition). A "p-zombie", in other words, is just a five-sided triangle ... — 180 Proof
But the "information-processing" part in general doesn't suddenly spring into being; everything all the way down is capable of processing information, at some level. — Pfhorrest
t seems to me you are writing about minds, not consciousness. Yes, we can look at what minds do, especially if they can talk and write. — Coben
Phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness track each other. — fdrake
Therefore, phenomenal consciousness comes in degrees. — fdrake
Actually it's not. I am not assuming that minds and consciousness are different things. I am simply pointing out that epistemologically we can track minds and what they do, but we cannot track consciousness. Perhaps these are indeed facets of the same thing. But we can measure one and not the other. Just as we can track behavior - which is how we track minds - or we can track glucose uptake, but we can't track consciousness because we do not know what is conscious and what is not. And perhaps that means we do not also know what has mind or not. Current research into plant intelligence - a phrase that is no longer fringe - is finding many of the behaviors of animal minds. But then we can't communicate and the chemisty is different. So we can neither rule out consciousness nor can we confirm it. Perhaps plants and some computers now can do many things that minds can do without being aware, without experiencing. Perhaps the functions always correlate with being aware. We don't know. I am not asserting dual substances. I am saying we don't know where consciousness begins and ends. Perhaps yes mind, where there is mind, is always the same as the consciousness that is there, but perhaps there is a rudimentary consciousness in all matter. I am blackboxing the monism vs. dualism debate and also being cautious.There wouldn't be a distinction between minds and consciousness. That is just continuing to use the false-dichotomy from the material-mind paradigm. — Pantagruel
You are talking about activities. We do not know that all consciousnes is active.Everything that emerges establishes functional systems at its own level. Consciousness qua consciousness is perfectly explicable and can be studied to the extent that its activities exhibit systematicity. Which the activities of consciousness certainly do. — Pantagruel
In fact, there are people designing neural nets now that don't solve a problem directly (the problem is coded at the level of the hidden neurons) but solve it by having the neurons link in a way that mimics neurons in the brain. So the physically-faithful neural net can solve the same problems as the concept-driven neural net, but the physical model is much larger and less efficient. — Pantagruel
Subjective experience is the result of the phenomenal model of intentionality relationship (PMIR).
Actually it's not. I am not assuming that minds and consciousness are different things. I am simply pointing out that epistemologically we can track minds and what they do, but we cannot track consciousness. — Coben
Explaining consciousness is like trying to explain vision to a blind person, sound to a deaf person and life to a dead person.
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