With all due respect, this is the main problem I have with your theory - by excluding what transcends this ‘boundary of life and death’, your understanding of reality is limited — Possibility
But at this stage I find the theory itself insufficient as an explanation of consciousness, because it cannot posit a perspective outside of consciousness itself. — Possibility
I was referring to the issue at hand. Of course my theory exists within a larger theory. As a philosopher you would like to see it in this context, understandably, but even in its cut down version my web site stats tell me nobody has read the theory completely - average time spent being 3mins. :sad: — Pop
I wanted to ask you about a thread about six months ago, where you posted : "The learner is the universe itself, and the learned is the universe." Given we are talking about a situation in consciousness / mind, how did you know this?
I kind of agree with what you said, and suspect that this information is buried deep in DNA information or somewhere. If the fundamental bit of information is preserved in everything, so might be other information. I understand this is all highly speculative stuff, if you would rather not go into it. — Pop
Unfortunately, your website does not lend itself to being studied at length. Breaking your theory up into bite-size chunks addressing particular questions or areas of inquiry would be my suggestion (from a strictly marketing/communication standpoint). — Possibility
From the perspectives that you have characterized, the hard problem of consciousness can not be solved. For this reason the paradigm is likely false.
— Pop
That’s a rapid jump to a dismissive conclusion. There’s much more to my position than what I’ve outlined here in response to your theory. The hard problem of consciousness assumes that inanimate matter is unable to ‘experience’. — Possibility
but you have to recognise the anthropocentric lens this interpretation has, and account for it in relation to physics — Possibility
From the biological / cellular perspective, we simply feel pain or pleasure at the site, significantly what we feel is a gradient of pain or pleasure, and this dominates consciousness, no reason is necessary, and this gets attended to reflexively as a priority — Pop
The role of emotion has not been pinned down by science, and it is not a topic materialism can easily deal with. The way I see it, the biological system already understood emotion - why would it need a second emotional processor? I don't think it did, It needed a triangulation processor. Something to strip away the emotion from the information. A P.zombie can do all the things that a person can mentally, but it has no impetus to do them - it lacks the impetus that emotion provides as it has no Pain / Pleasure spectrum. Emotion seems to be the force providing impetus to consciousness. In science a bias is a systemic error, so there can be no advantage in possessing a systemic error in your computation. The best computation will be hard cold reason / logic , an emotional force can only hinder this, in my view. But this all takes time to integrate, so in the meantime I will look forward to your objections. — Pop
As an idealist this is not such a big problem for me as ultimately, I believe, reality only exists in mind, so minds that rely on physical proof might be unreachable, but there are plenty left over. All I can hope for realistically is to plant a seed or two.
I will have to brush up on structural realism. — Pop
So, do you believe that the universe is conscious but not self aware - a process of self organization with a bias to resist zero point energy? creating order from chaos? It seems this is what consciousness is - the order from what otherwise would be chaos? It is a different order in everybody, and everything. — Pop
I’m curious about this statement. Does a simple cellular organism experience pain or pleasure? It certainly would try to avoid existential threats - which seems to match your idea of what consciousness is for. So, is that organism conscious? — Roy Davies
Reality exist only as we perceive it, surely? — Roy Davies
We all have different conceptions as to what consciousness is. I have defined it as a system of self organization. But yes microorganisms do react to painful stimuli, so I would assume the absence of pain would be pleasure. — Pop
So we call it ‘painful’ because the behavior response is generally repellent. I’m not suggesting it’s something other than pain, I’m just making sure you understand that there is no awareness that something particular is ‘painful’ as such. — Possibility
So the separation of qualitative and quantitative information is an arbitrary differentiation of possible map alignment instructions (ie. reductionist methodology), that is incompatible with the way we actually interact with reality. — Possibility
We can not know this for sure with other humans either. I doubt vey much that it would be exactly the same pain that I, or you, would feel, but it is an emotion that gives impetus to behavior. There is information processing going on, and a decision is made, however limited it may be. — Pop
I'm having trouble understanding you as I don't think in terms of dimensions, but I think you are confirming that emotion cannot be separated from information. That would be how I understand it, from a reductionist point of view. I would say, from an idealists perspective, everything can be reduced to information, and everything has qualia, including information. How it is formed and processed is the question. I need to consider this, as you have instilled some doubt. — Pop
Sorry, this got a little heavy. — Possibility
a negative value affect perceived in the organism, attributed to the affecting area/object/event, that gives impetus to repellent action. — Possibility
No, that's ok, I'm glad you explained it. My problem is, as I do not think as you, I can not not always evaluate what you are saying, but I'm glad to get your alternative view, and perspective. I'm a plain old reductionist - too old to change now. — Pop
a negative value affect perceived in the organism, attributed to the affecting area/object/event, that gives impetus to repellent action.
— Possibility
- I'll take this, as you are describing a process of self organization with an affective bias. — Pop
There is no reasonable way to separate consciousness from life. They are two aspects of the one thing. Consciousness is the quality that gives rise to life, and in turn consciousness is the singular thing that life expresses. The notion that only some forms of life posses consciousness is incoherent and baseless. All living creatures are self learning and programming. All living creatures are involved in a process of self organisation - always! They are all conscious, but they all possesses a different degree and a different version of consciousness.
Sort of. Our self-organisation process from intentionality to action will always be subject to affect: every thought, word and movement contains at least some reference to our affective state, no matter how ‘rational’ we think we are. As far as I can see it’s only a ‘bias’ if it’s excluding or unfairly dismissive of information, though. — Possibility
The way I see it, reductionism seeks accurate methodologies to render the world into more efficient forms of information. The problem is that the methodologies we currently rely on and have built into our language and logic are based on old assumptions and anthropocentrism that no longer stand up to scrutiny. — Possibility
As a reductionist-idealist, it appears that you view consciousness as the base existence, with the ‘pleasure/pain spectrum’ and ‘zero point energy’ as upper and lower limitations in relation to an assumption of ‘mind’. Your notion of ‘emotion-information’ seems to me just another form of anthropocentric logic - albeit one with a bias towards qualitative information, dismissing quantitative information as ‘irrelevant’. That’s how I understand it, at this stage, anyway. — Possibility
At some point, like every other theory of consciousness, you’re going to have to reconcile your theory with quantum physics (the home of reductionist-materialists) - just like any quantum physics interpretation is going to have to reconcile with general relativity, gravity, the measurement problem and, of course, qualia. — Possibility
Hi Pop, I've read through your full article. — Malcolm Lett
I was very interested as you suggested in your OP that it tackles the hard problem of consciousness. However, I don't think you actually touch on that question. — Malcolm Lett
You don't offer any basis for this claim. It sounds like you are assuming panpsychism, which is not generally accepted. Perhaps you could offer a more detailed account of why you think everything living is conscious.
Thanks for pointing that out. I would have thought this was self evident - .All living creatures are self learning and programming. All living creatures are involved in a process of self organisation - always!
But several people have mentioned this, so perhaps I will have to strengthen my case in this regard.
Overall, I'd say that you've conflated self-organisation and consciousness without providing an explanation. — Malcolm Lett
Also, take a look at the Free Energy Principle (from Karl Friston), I think you'll find it's very similar to your theory of the Emotional Gradient, but is more general. I'd also suggest it's a better characterisation than using the word 'emotion'. — Malcolm Lett
Hooray! I think we agree! It seems to me that this is what I'm characterizing in the OP instance of consciousness. In my estimation, and yours, consciousness at all times has an affective state, and the affective state reduces to a feeling, which is ultimately resolved to a point on a pain / pleasure spectrum. Affect / feelings are ultimately painful or pleasurable, that they have this affect on us orients us in our personal reality, and provides impetus to behavior. The affect creates an emotional bias - it colors the subsequent thinking / response with emotion. Hard to see when the affect is mild, but easy when it is severe. It is the element P.Zombies lack, that we posses, so this is the element that creates consciousness. In my thinking, the PPS is the base, thinking ultimately bounces off this base, to create more thinking and action. — Pop
I think you would characterize our position as being relative to the different dimensions of reality effecting us. I would simply say we poses a sanity that orients us in our world. Yes it is anthropocentric, as from an idealists point of view reality is personally constructed and only exists in an end user consciousness. There is an outside physical world with real people, but we have no access to it. We only have access to our personal construction of it, which is slightly different for everyone. Hence every instance of consciousness is unique. — Pop
This would be outside my skillset, and area of interest. I am really more interested in the psychology, belief, and sanity aspects of consciousness. I think you are correct, that it needs more information to be more credible. I see this information coming from research in biology. Proving cellular complexity to be a consciousness would seal the deal, I think, and there are good strides being made with cellular imaging and animation - at some point the penny must drop that this is too complex to be explained by chance — Pop
You don't offer any basis for this claim. It sounds like you are assuming panpsychism, which is not generally accepted. Perhaps you could offer a more detailed account of why you think everything living is conscious. — Malcolm Lett
I couldn't get over the fact that even the simplest of creatures are involved in a process of self organization, and I asked myself am I always involved in a process of self organization, and concluded yes. So I arrived at a definition, and tested if the definition works for the universe and concluded that it did. — Pop
I see no reason why consciousness should be exclusive to organic lifeforms — Merkwurdichliebe
Steady on - my point is that our affective state is NOT reducible to ‘a feeling’ or resolved to a point on a pain-pleasure spectrum, except through ignorance, isolation or exclusion of information. Subsuming an affective state under a singular value-concept of ‘pleasure-pain’ ignores the complexity of that state, and ultimately the complexity of consciousness itself. — Possibility
If every instance of consciousness is unique, then why get caught up in the inaccuracy of defining consciousness from our own limited experience? Our understanding of consciousness will come not from the content, but from the structure. Not from the trees, but from the forest. Not from quanta or qualia, but from a tested and refined relational structure that renders this complexity of information reliable for every interaction. — Possibility
While I agree that we rely for the most part on a personal construction of the world (inside and out), I disagree that we have no access to reality at all. Rather, our access is limited by the construction of the system and by its available energy - the attention and effort we can spare in the moment - and our efficiency in this has been developing at a rapid rate. How do you think we constructed our view of reality in the first place?
That you refer to ‘an outside physical world with real people’ is telling. The reality of the world beyond the ‘self’ does not really consist of ‘things’ and ‘people’, but of interrelated possibility or existence-information, which we organise into ideas, subsume under concepts, render as objects and reduce to physics for our various purposes. And it’s the same inside our skin - we are inseparable from this existence-information, except in our own ‘mind’ or socio-cultural construction through ignorance, isolation and exclusion. — Possibility
I see no reason why consciousness should be exclusive to organic lifeforms. If consciousness is indicated by the impulse towards self organization, what are the implications in considering that the atom indisputably factors as one of the greatest organizations known to man? — Merkwurdichliebe
I think you mostly object to my reductionist approach. You interpret what I am saying literally and definitively. But I characterize the theory as a sketch. And in the instance of consciousness I state it works something like this.
Our affective state has to be reducible to something - note that it is always either painful, or pleasurable, or something in between. There is great complexity going on , as you state, and I doubt that such a thing as an instance of consciousness can exist, however this complex state has to be characterized in some way and I think the OP dose a fair job. It is not ignoring the complexity of the state, but trying to pin it to a simple, and widely understood expression. — Pop
This is where our philosophies diverge. From an idealists perspective all the things you mention are variable concepts in our mind. So it is not possible for me to construct a theory from the paradigm that you pose. I have to look to the trees, and find the elements that are common to every tree, and proceed from there. I think I have characterized a reliable emotional mechanism of consciousness, but you find it too simplistic for your paradigm. — Pop
If you do not agree that affective states are feelings that ultimately resolve to a pain / pleasure spectrum, then you are left in an affective limbo, with no possibility of answering the hard problem, as is the case with Barrett, I imagine. — Pop
My point is, Pop cannot make a statement to the effect that all things experience consciousness and assume it to be self evident. They either must state that they take it as an assumption/opinion (and thus make it explicit that they will not attempt to prove it), or they must offer some rationale. — Malcolm Lett
you cannot account for experiences that are simultaneously both painful and pleasurable in your methodology. — Possibility
Looking at what is common to every tree will not give you an understanding of the forest — Possibility
How do you figure that? Firstly, Barrett never aimed to answer the hard problem, but to provide a more accurate theory of emotion that reconciles psychology with current neuroscience. Secondly, if according to idealism, everything exists in mind, then surely there can be no hard problem to begin with? — Possibility
That is a good one. I think If one seeks to avoid the experience then it is more painful then pleasurable, and visa versa. If they are equal then it is a neutral experience. — Pop
By studying expressions of consciousness, I've come to understand that consciousness is endlessly variable and open ended ( an evolving process of self organization with no upper limit :starstruck: ). So I look to its base for consistency. The trees are all different in their expression, but for a common reason. — Pop
I've been there and found it to be a dead end. Emotion is the difference between a human being and a P.Zombie. Solving emotion, solves consciousness, in my opinion. Who would not want to do that? — Pop
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