I've wondered if Tegmark is really serious. :chin:

I’m a panpsychist like you, as you know, and I support MUH. They fit together very nicely in my view: if everything is a mathematical structure, and physical reality, which is to say empirical reality, is just the structure of which we are a part, with which we are in communication, then phenomenal experience is just the input into our function of signals from other functions of that structure, which in turn have their own inputs that constitute their own phenomenal experiences, and outputs that constitute their behaviors, which constitute all of their observable, empirical, physical properties. To do is to be perceived, to perceive is to be done unto, and to do or perceive or be perceived or be done unto is to be.

Some, like Dennett, just don't accord "phenomenal consciousness" the kind of autonomous metaphysical status that philosophers like Searle, Nagel and Chalmers think it ought to have. — SophistiCat

Dennett argues against phenomenal consciousness in all his talks and writings, because he's knows well it can't be squared with physicalism. On this, he and Chalmers do agree. For Dennett we're conscious in the functional sense, which can cause a cognitive illusion that we experience more than that.

MUH is not incompatible with physicalism (it just reframes what physical things are), — Pfhorrest

It's certainly incompatible with materialism. A mathematical ontology isn't compatible with there being stuff, so I don't see how it's physical. But I guess if we're allowed to redefine the meaning of "physical" to be whatever is consistent with physical models.

then phenomenal experience is just the input into our function of signals from other functions of that structure, which in turn have their own inputs that constitute their own phenomenal experiences, and outputs that constitute their behaviors, which constitute all of their observable, empirical, physical properties. To do is to be perceived, to perceive is to be done unto, and to do or perceive or be perceived or be done unto is to be. — Pfhorrest

I don't see where the functional turns into the phenomenal. You have every bit as much a hard problem with functionalism as you do with materialism.

It's certainly incompatible with materialism. A mathematical ontology isn't compatible with there being stuff, so I don't see how it's physical. But I guess if we're allowed to redefine the meaning of "physical" to be whatever is consistent with physical models. — Marchesk

Yeah, physicalism isn't the same thing as materialism. Berkeley called his whole ontology "immaterialism" (though we today call it "subjective idealism"), and yet he still professed physicalism. I am against "materialism" in the same sense that Berkeley is: I don't think there is any more to physical things than their empirical properties, which are just dispositions of them to produce certain experiences in us, by behaving upon us in certain ways upon our interaction with them. (My underlying ontology on how those experiences all get generated and synchronized coherently with each other is drastically different from Berkeley's though, as he basically just said "God did it is observing everything all the time", while mine is more "all things are mutually observing each other all the time").

I don't see where the functional turns into the phenomenal. You have every bit as much a hard problem with functionalism as you do with materialism. — Marchesk

When you're treating the entire universe as just a bunch of informational signals passing between functionally-defined nodes of a single giant informational structure that is our universe, and treating phenomenal experience as just being the recipient of signals from outside of yourself, they mesh together much better than when you treat the rest of the universe as dead billiard balls (hey, even billiard balls can process information if you set them up right) and phenomenal experience as ineffable magic.

Yeah, physicalism isn't the same thing as materialism. — Pfhorrest

But physicalism is understood in the realist sense of materialism. There is some kind of mind-independent stuff making up the world.

But physicalism is understood in the realist sense of materialism. There is some kind of mind-independent stuff making up the world. — Marchesk

Yeah, but realist doesn't have to mean transcendent. Being mind-independent is not the same thing as being mind-inaccessible. There is (on my account) definitely stuff out there that isn't generated by or contained in our minds, but is entirely constituted of mind-accessible stuff. It's all information, and not all of the information is in our minds, but any kind of information can in principle be copied or modeled or recreated in our minds, which are information-processing machines, themselves constituted of more information (just as every program in a computer is made of data of the same kind that it reads, manipulates, and writes; and tying back to panpsychism, any bit of data can be run as code, but most of it won't do anything of note when run, just like on my account everything has phenomenal experience, but most things have nothing of any note in theirs).

Yeah, physicalism isn't the same thing as materialism.

What's the difference?

On this, he and Chalmers do agree. For Dennett we're conscious in the functional sense, which can cause a cognitive illusion that we experience more than that.

How is functional-consciousness and qualia-illusion supposed to be different from actual-consciousness and actual-qualia?

It's certainly incompatible with materialism. A mathematical ontology isn't compatible with there being stuff, so I don't see how it's physical. But I guess if we're allowed to redefine the meaning of "physical" to be whatever is consistent with physical models. — Marchesk

There is nothing to redefine here, because there aren't any commonly established definitions for physicalism or materialism. All these arguments over this or that being compatible with physicalism/materialism is pure wankery, in my opinion. Argue substance, not isms. (Same goes for realism, of course. Crispin Wright famously wrote that "a philosopher who asserts that she is a realist about theoretical science, for example, or ethics, has probably, for most philosophical audiences, accomplished little more than to clear her throat.")

There is nothing to redefine here, because there aren't any commonly established definitions for physicalism or materialism.

Physical is the same thing as material, it means measurable / observable. To redefine words is to speak gibberish, just like not knowing what words mean.

What's the difference? — Zelebg

Physical just means as you say, observable. Empirical. Often times colloquially "materialism" is used synonymously, sure, but there is also a long philosophical history at least from Aritstotle to Locke of treating "material" objects as having some kind of "material substance" that "underlies" their observable properties, or in which those properties "inhere". A non-materialist physicalist considers that nonsense: if you stripped away in your mind all the observable properties of a thing you're imagining, down to just the bare substance, you'd be left imagining nothing, so the notion of a "material substance" apart from its observable properties is incoherent. Physical things are just bundles of their properties, the observable properties are the whole of the thing, there's no unobservable "real thing in itself" to which those properties are stuck. People like Hume and Berkeley argued strongly against that kind of materialism in the Modern era.

I think you said material objects are made of material substance, while physical objects are bundles of their properties. And you are not even joking. Can you give an example of one material and one physical object, please?

It's a difference of how to philosophically understand the same objects, not two different classes of objects. Materialists will say all physical things are material, non-materialists will say none of them are.

It's not a matter of opinion, you either speak English or Gibberish.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/physical

Take it up with the thousands of years of philosophers who use them differently, not me. I'm just following their convention.