I think we already agree that humans and zombies are functionally equivalent but that zombies lack phenomenal consciousness...
— Luke

Not because such circumstances are actually possible, but rather simply because we can assert that they are. — creativesoul

Because that’s how philosophical zombies are defined.

I think the duality is not between mind and matter in that sense, but that instead intelligence, or reason, or what was known in the earlier philosophical tradition as nous, is 'that which perceives things as they truly are'. But, taking a leaf from nondualist philosophy of mind, this faculty is itself never the object of perception, and as today's empiricism wishes to ground itself wholly in objects of perception, then as far as it is concerned, this is a faculty that can't be accounted for, or doesn't really exist. There are of course many open questions left by that account, but considering the nature of the subject, this is preferable ... — Wayfarer

Nice! I'm never disappointed.

To add...the modern view (so to speak), was attempting to comprehend the existence of other minds. In my opinion, it can be correlated directly to the nature of modern doubt. The classic view seems to have taken for granteed the assumption that nous was universal to species, and in need of no extrapolation. Of course, classic doubt was more dialectical (less reductionist and eliminativist). Anyways, "fly in a bottle", the question of "objective minds" is one of the funniest board games ever invented.

Philosophical Zombies...

Describing differences that we cannot distinguish between....

:meh:

Let's discuss either your position or mine. Attempting to cover both simultaneously is asking for trouble, especially when our respective positions use the same term in remarkably different ways... — creativesoul

Fair enough.

I'm a bit disappointed. I was looking forward to reading your answer to the question I posed. Now, it seems that there are more pressing issues rearing their ugly heads... — creativesoul

I don’t recall you posing a question to me - did I miss something?

...Correlation, as I see it, is the process of establishing a mutual relationship or connection between two things... ...The process as a structural relation exists without any resulting ‘correlation’ being manifest as such. When one is manifest, it informs the system’s most complex organisational structure, whether it’s as a causal correlation or a conceptual one.
— Possibility

Causal physical systems/interactions ARE correlations.
— Possibility

The above doesn't work(it's incoherent, self contradictory, and/or an equivocation fallacy). It also presupposes meaning at the subatomic level of existence, or it presupposes that not all information is meaningful. — creativesoul

I’m not all that capable of spotting incoherences, so you’ll have to help me with this. I consider all information to be meaningful, but only insofar as ‘all possible information’ is both meaningful/meaningless. This I consider to be a self-contradiction at the core of existence.

So, yes - you could say that I do presuppose meaning at the sub-atomic level of existence, but not with any certain or objective sense of definability. There is no distinction at the sub-atomic level between meaning, value/potential, action/change, substance, shape or distance. An electron correlates with a proton at a probabilistic distance, which may result in atomic structure. Meaning for a sub-atomic particle, though (in my view), is an arbitrary binary relation between existence and non-existence: matter/anti-matter.

Q: ‘How do you unmask a zombie?’

A: ‘Ask it “How are you?” ‘

Yet this tiny, trivial difference leads you to believe that zombies cannot exist. — Luke

No, that's backwards again. That tiny, trivial difference is the entirety of the supposed difference between humans and zombies. Eliminating the supposed problem of philosophical zombies is why I believe everything has that tiny, trivial thing: because if they didn't, then zombies are possible, and if zombies are possible then either we are zombies, or we're only not because magic.

In what sense does it have phenomenal consciousness at all if it “doesn’t have any perception, memory, feelings, thoughts, dreams, anything like that”? — Luke

In what sense does a philosophical zombie lack phenomenal consciousness even though it functionally has perception, memory, feelings, thoughts, dreams, etc?

The whole point of this exercise is to get to a place where we can say function determines experience, so anything that does those functions has those experiences. Whatever the people who postulate the possibility of philosophical zombies think is missing, that's the thing that I think everything has; and it's also the only thing I think Mary's Room demonstrates. (Namely, that there is a difference between first and third person perspectives, even though those perspectives are of the exact same thing).

I think we already agree that humans and zombies are functionally equivalent but that zombies lack phenomenal consciousness, so I’m not sure of your point here. Is it that there’s a large functional difference between rocks and humans? I don’t see how it’s relevant to phenomenal consciousness. — Luke

The point is that the difference between a rock without phenomenal consciousness and a rock with phenomenal consciousness is tiny, as is the difference between a philosophical zombie and a human, while the difference between a rock without phenomenal consciousness and a philosophical zombie, or a rock with phenomenal consciousness and a real human, is enormous. So the having of phenomenal consciousness or not is a trivial philosophical detail compared to the enormous functional differences between humans and rocks.

The only way I can make sense of this is if you think that our phenomenal consciousness has no causal influence, or that it is an unnecessary appendage to human function. In that case, why do you believe that zombies cannot exist? — Luke

That's backwards again. The people supposing that philosophical zombies could exist are the ones talking as though phenomenal consciousness has no causal effect. They suppose you could have something that functions exactly like a human but "isn't conscious" in some way.

On my account, phenomenal consciousness is absolutely essential to all causation, because on my account phenomenal consciousness is identical to the input into the function of a physical thing -- any input into any function of any physical thing, while the specifics of that function are what matters for whether or not the thing really has a mind in the ordinary sense.

On my account, the only way something could possibly lack phenomenal consciousness would be if it received no input at all -- in which case, not only could it not do all the mental things humans do, but it would effectively vanish from existence, no longer interacting via any of the physical forces.

Not much or nothing? It makes all the difference between having and not having phenomenal consciousness. — Luke

Not much. I made this point already about the behavior of a rock.

In a colloquial sense we say a rock just sitting there is "doing nothing". But if it was truly doing absolutely nothing, it would be undetectable, and seem not to exist (just like the zombies above): it would not be reflecting or emitting any light, so it would not be visible; it would not be pushing back on any molecules that tried to intersect it, so it would not be touchable; etc. So technically the rock is "doing something", it's just not much in our colloquial way of speaking.

Likewise, technically the rock is "experiencing something" -- whatever it's like to do just that boring physics stuff and nothing else -- but that's just not much in our colloquial way of speaking.

Note he says 'Even in the most detailed physical description of matter there is no hint of any function or meaning.' And this applies to physicalism, including yours. — Wayfarer

If you'd followed the two threads that preceded this one (the one on mathematicism and the one on the web of reality -- skipping one on Kant-like "categories" that got little response, but you might like), you'd see that my kind of physicalism is all about function, and not exactly meaning per se, but information.

On my account all of reality is an informational structure -- the concrete physical universe is an abstract object, and all other abstract objects are concrete physical universes to any persons that may exist as substructures within them -- and particular physical objects are nodes in the web of signals that constitutes the function of the abstract object which is our concrete universe, which signals are the input into and output from those functions. Those signals are both the occasions of our phenomenal experience (the input into our functions), and the literal force of our behaviors upon other things (they are literally the force-carrying particles, mostly photons, that mediate our interactions with all other things, and so the only real output of our functions).

Physicalism on my account boils down to a kind of phenomenalism, a radical empiricism, where empiricism in turn is entirely about phenomenal experience. On my account physical stuff is "mental" in that sense, the sense that people who think zombies are possible mean by "mental", both in that it is the object of experience (half the point of the thread on the web of reality), and in that it is the subject of experience (half the point of this thread). But meanwhile, minds, actual minds functionally like human ones, are all made of physical stuff... which in turn is all "mental" stuff as above.

In that metaphysical sense of "mental", I don't think there is any distinction between the "mental" and the physical. The only real distinctions are between the function of one thing vs another. There is no substrate of one kind or the other that those functions are instantiated in. Function is everything.

In what sense does a philosophical zombie lack phenomenal consciousness even though it functionally has perception, memory, feelings, thoughts, dreams, etc? — Pfhorrest

Besides by definition, you mean? You tell me. You're the one claiming that the difference between having and lacking phenomenal consciousness is tiny and trivial. I consider the difference to be non-trivial.

The point is that the difference between a rock without phenomenal consciousness and a rock with phenomenal consciousness is tiny — Pfhorrest

Can you state what this difference is? You've told us that the difference is not "any perception, memory, feelings, thoughts, dreams, anything like that”, but this is exactly the type of thing that I would say that phenomenal consciousness is. So, what does a rock with phenomenal consciousness have that a rock without phenomenal consciousness doesn't?

On my account, the only way something could possibly lack phenomenal consciousness would be if it received no input at all -- in which case, not only could it not do all the mental things humans do, but it would effectively vanish from existence, no longer interacting via any of the physical forces. — Pfhorrest

Aren't you conflating phenomenal consciousness with physics more generally?

Saying that only humans have a first-person perspective isn't saying that we (or someone) only think of first-person perspectives when humans are involved, it's saying that there's something incorrect about considering the first-person perspective of anything else. — Pfhorrest

I see. Then the problem is prior to this stage, as this stage already assumes there exists a coherent, well-defined metaphysical constructed set 'first-person perspective' and that the only task is determining which objects satisfy its membership criteria. I think the problem is that such a set is ill-defined, possibly even incoherent and that is the cause of the confusion.

I’m not all that capable of spotting incoherences, so you’ll have to help me with this. I consider all information to be meaningful, but only insofar as ‘all possible information’ is both meaningful/meaningless. This I consider to be a self-contradiction at the core of existence.

So, yes - you could say that I do presuppose meaning at the sub-atomic level of existence, but not with any certain or objective sense of definability. There is no distinction at the sub-atomic level between meaning, value/potential, action/change, substance, shape or distance. An electron correlates with a proton at a probabilistic distance, which may result in atomic structure. Meaning for a sub-atomic particle, though (in my view), is an arbitrary binary relation between existence and non-existence: matter/anti-matter. — Possibility

:point: I'll leave you to that...

So, what does a rock with phenomenal consciousness have that a rock without phenomenal consciousness doesn't? — Luke

On my account, a rock with phenomenal consciousness is just an ordinary rock, and a rock without phenomenal consciousness would thereby cease to exist, or else be some kind of phantom rock that’s unresponsive to anything that’s done to it.

(Not that I think that’s actually possible, because every action is an interaction so any means it would have of making a phantom appearance would also be some means of acting upon it and so giving it something to experience).

On the account of people who think zombies are possible, a rock without phenomenal consciousness is just an ordinary rock, and a rock with phenomenal consciousness is ... also just an ordinary day rock, so far as we could tell, indistinguishable from a “zombie rock”.

You've told us that the difference is not "any perception, memory, feelings, thoughts, dreams, anything like that”, but this is exactly the type of thing that I would say that phenomenal consciousness is. — Luke

It seems to me like you just can't manage to separate the concepts of access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. Those things you list are all functional, access-consciousness things. And that is what I think consciousness in the ordinary sense of the word is all about.

Phenomenal consciousness is just some philosophical nitpicking that's completely beside all of that.

Aren't you conflating phenomenal consciousness with physics more generally? — Luke

Metaphysics, but yes that’s the point, phenomenal consciousness is some metaphysical thing, nothing to do with the functional capabilities that define conscience as we ordinarily mean it.

my kind of physicalism is all about function, and not exactly meaning per se, but information. — Pfhorrest

I have also noticed the overlapping meanings of ‘information’ and ‘meaning’. But there are many thorny issues here. ‘Information’ is nowadays used as if it were a ‘metaphysical primitive’, that is, something properly basic, as an alternative to matter (or matter-energy). After all, the reasoning goes, if the properties and actions of sub-atomic particles can all be described mathematically, then it seems obvious that everything consists of ‘information’.

My problem with that is that ‘information’ is a polysemic term - it has many meanings and different uses in different contexts. The original concept of ‘the atom’ was indeed properly basic - it was an indivisible point-particle; all that existed, said Democritus, were atoms and the void (atom = 1, void = 0, if you like). But if you attempt to assign ‘information’ to the foundational role that was previously accorded to the atom, then all of that conceptual simplicity is lost. ‘What information?’, or 'what do you mean by information?' ought to be the question when ‘information’ is pointed to as being fundamental or basic.

‘Meaning’, however, in the sense implied by that passage I quoted from Pattee, is a different matter altogether. To quote him again: 'All signs, symbols, and codes, all languages including formal mathematics are embodied as material physical structures and therefore must obey all the inexorable laws of physics.'

This simply means that if you take the symbol itself, the actual physical letter, like the pieces of a scrabble board, then they will obviously 'obey the inexorable laws of physics', because they're physical objects; they will burn, fall, decay, etc. But, he says:

'At the same time, the symbol vehicles like the bases in DNA, voltages representing bits in a computer, the text on this page, and the neuron firings in the brain do not appear to be limited by, or clearly related to, the very laws they must obey. Even the mathematical symbols that express these inexorable physical laws seem to be entirely free of these same laws.'

And that's because they operate in terms of semantic rules, not physical causation. Logic and reason operates on a different level to physical causation. Hence Pattee's appeal to dualism, albeit of an indeterminate nature.

But one example I give is this: that you can encode the same meaning, or intelligible content, in a variety of different forms such as different languages, different systems (binary, analog etc), different media (electronic, physical). Say you have a very specific piece of information - a formula or recipe - that has to specify an exact outcome. This information can be transformed and translated across many systems and languages, yet still retain the same information. Mistranslate it, and the information is lost. So the information is separable from its physical expression. This implies dualism (although as stated before, not in the Cartesian sense, but closer to that of 'form and matter' or hylomorphic dualism).

It's not to say that information and matter are entirely separate, as information can only be represented by material form. But then, ask yourself, in the domain of pure mathematics, what are the objects of analysis? They are purely abstract, and yet, they are determined in accordance with rules. I cannot see how such rules are physical in any way, shape or form.

Those signals are both the occasions of our phenomenal experience (the input into our functions), and the literal force of our behaviors upon other things (they are literally the force-carrying particles, mostly photons, that mediate our interactions with all other things, and so the only real output of our functions). — Pfhorrest

This is very close to something Steve Pinker says:

Why did Bill get on the bus? Because he wanted to visit his grandmother and knew the bus would take him there. No other answer will do. If he hated the sight of his grandmother, or if he knew the route had changed, his body would not be on that bus. For millennia this has been a paradox. Entities like `wanting to visit one's grandmother' and `knowing the bus goes to Grandma's house' are colorless, odorless, and tasteless. But at the same time they are *causes* of physical events, as potent as any billiard ball clacking into another.

The computational theory of mind resolves the paradox. It says that beliefs and desires are information, incarnated as configurations of symbols. The symbols are the physical states of bits of matter, like chips in a computer or neurons in the brain. They symbolize things in the world because they are triggered by those things via our sense organs, and because of what they do once they are triggered. If the bits of matter that constitute a symbol are arranged to bump into the bits of matter constituting another symbol in just the right way, the symbols corresponding to one belief can give rise to new symbols corresponding to another belief logically related to it, which can give rise to symbols corresponding to other beliefs, and so on. Eventually the bits of matter constituting a symbol bump into bits of matter connected to the muscles, and behavior happens. — Steve Pinker

(Steve Pinker, How the Mind Works Penguin: London, 1998)

I find Pinker's attempt to explain the nature of logic here simple-minded; it's materialist philosophy of mind 101. But I still think it's how a lot of people intuitively feel about it, and I think it's close to your account. After all, we say, the brain is a product of evolution; it has come about through an unguided series of fortuitous physical causes (a la 'blind watchmaker') and yet it's capable of rational understanding - that must be how it works, right? But the whole point of Pattee's argument is that the order of symbols operate according to completely different rules to those that govern how 'things bump into each other'. Physicalism simply assumes that this must be what is happening, because only physical things exist. (This is the subject of the well-known 'argument from reason' which happens to be a favourite of mine.)

The fundamental issue with the panpsychist model is that it treats 'conscious experience' as an attribute of objects, some really-existing property or feature which humans apparently possess and which needs to be explained. But all of this, the entire edifice, is built around an implied perspective, which is that 'conscious experience' is itself objectively real, when it's not. You're looking at conscious experience from the outside - but what is looking? What role does the observer have in that? On the one hand, the observer is making all these judgements about what 'conscious experience' must be, but on the other hand, when you try and empirically demonstrate what 'the observer' is, you can't, because 'the observer' is never an object of experience. Instead, conscious experience is that within which the whole concept of 'objectivity' arises.

So basically, panpychism is an attempt to treat 'conscious experience' as an elemental attribute of matter itself, meaning that physicalism can dissolve the knotty problems of the relationship of mind and matter. But I see it as form of 'scientism' nonetheless, because it's operating within the subject-object duality which is inherent in the naturalist mind-set. But grasping that requires a gestalt shift, a reversal of the 'field and background' perspective from within which the realist model is constructed.

A philosophical zombie has sense organs and can use them in all the ways a real human can, they just don't “really experience” using them. — Pfhorrest

All the ways that humans use sense organs includes "really experiencing" using them. If philosophical zombies do not use sense organs to really experience using them, then they cannot use sense organs in all the ways a real human can.

At least Santa is coherent.

If philosophical zombies do not use sense organs to really experience using them — creativesoul

Sorry, ambiguous sentence. I didn’t mean “use them to really experience”, but “really experience what it is like to use them”.

On my account, a rock with phenomenal consciousness is just an ordinary rock, and a rock without phenomenal consciousness would thereby cease to exist, or else be some kind of phantom rock that’s unresponsive to anything that’s done to it. — Pfhorrest

On your account, then, phenomenal consciousness is simply physical existence? So, p-zombies are functionally identical to humans except they lack...physical existence? That's a very broad take on phenomenal consciousness.

It seems to me like you just can't manage to separate the concepts of access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. Those things you list are all functional, access-consciousness things. And that is what I think consciousness in the ordinary sense of the word is all about.

Phenomenal consciousness is just some philosophical nitpicking that's completely beside all of that. — Pfhorrest

And you can't seem to separate the concepts of phenomenal consciousness and physical existence. Phenomenal consciousness is about what it is like to have a particular experience from a first-person perspective. There is no qualitative aspect of experience (or qualia) for a rock. Unless rocks are somehow conscious - in the normal sense of that word (which is not synonymous with bare existence) - then there is nothing it is like to be a rock. Rocks don't have any awareness of their experience or any first-person perspective, so there is no "what it is like" for a rock (e.g. from a rock's perspective). At least, rocks certainly don't exhibit any perspective or awareness that is typically associated with, and often defined as, consciousness.

And you can't seem to separate the concepts of phenomenal consciousness and physical existence. Phenomenal consciousness is about what it is like to have a particular experience from a first-person perspective. There is no qualitative aspect of experience (or qualia) for a rock. Unless rocks are somehow conscious - in the normal sense of that word (which is not synonymous with bare existence) - then there is nothing it is like to be a rock. Rocks don't have any awareness of their experience or any first-person perspective, so there is no "what it is like" for a rock (e.g. from a rock's perspective). At least, rocks certainly don't exhibit any perspective or awareness that is typically associated with, and often defined as, consciousness. — Luke

I've not failed to separate the concepts, I've intentionally drawn a connection between them: the only thing that phenomenal consciousness could be if it's truly separate from all functional aspects like the zombie-people stipulate, is something without which anything would in effect not exist.

I agree that rocks aren't conscious, in the normal sense of that word. The normal sense of that word is the thing called access consciousness, it's a purely functional thing, and even philosophical zombies are stipulated to have it. The only thing I think rocks have is whatever's left after that is accounted for, which gets called "phenomenal consciousness", but I think has nothing to do with consciousness in the ordinary sense of the word, and is something that is just a fundamental part of what it means for anything to exist: the capacity to receive input from other things, not just to act upon other things.

The only thing I think rocks have is whatever's left after that is accounted for, which gets called "phenomenal consciousness", but I think has nothing to do with consciousness in the ordinary sense of the word, and is something that is just a fundamental part of what it means for anything to exist: the capacity to receive input from other things, not just to act upon other things. — Pfhorrest

Maybe that's the only way you're able to make sense of it, or to make it fit with your worldview, but that's not what phenomenal consciousness means.

It's the only thing it could possibly mean if it's all that's supposed to distinguish a real human being from a philosophical zombie that is absolutely indistinguishable from a human being in the 3rd person. Anything else would fall under the domain of things you could distinguish a zombie from a human by.

[Rocks have] the capacity to receive input from other things, not just to act upon other things. — Pfhorrest

Do you often talk to rocks?

If I act upon a rock, it reacts: if I push it, it moves, if I shine a light on it, it reflects it, etc. That demonstrates that the rock is receiving input.

Likewise, a rock can hurt you, and that demonstrates that you can receive an input from them.

I just think that it's best to talk these things over. So as to avoid unecessary human-rocks violence.

That doesn't help.

The notion of "what it's like to use sense organs" is fraught. There is no description adequate enough to exhaust all actual answers to a question formulated about that notion when and if posed to different individual humans. There are a whole slew of different things that most all humans have in common, but what it's like to be human, and/or what it's like to use one's own sensory organs are not a part of what most all humans have in common. Ask a thousand different people what it's like to use their senses and you'll soon enough see precisely what I mean here.

Again, the notion of a philosophical zombie is a consequence of not having gotten human thought and belief right to begin with.

Humans 'use' physiological sensory perception(sense organs) to detect, perceive, distinguish, and draw correlations between different things. All correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content. That's how consciousness emerges within capable creatures... via correlations drawn between different things:Via thought and belief formation. We do this(draw correlations;form thought and belief) prior to, during, and long after language use begins in earnest:From before birth until death. The correlations drawn by the individual ARE individual experience. There is no "what it's like to really experience using sensory perception" aside from a saying borne of language use displaying an emaciated understanding of human thought and belief(human minds) hard at work.

The concept of Biosemiotics requires making a distinction between two categories, the material or physical world and the symbolic or semantic world. — Howard Pattee

Which presupposes that the material or physical 'world' is not a necessary elemental part of all meaning. That's a false presupposition.

In this thread I will lay out a hybrid philosophy of mind: one that is eliminativist (nothing has a “mind”) in one sense, panpsychist (everything has a “mind“) in another sense, and emergentist (only some things have a “mind”) in another sense. — Pfhorrest

Sorry I'm late to the party. Looks like you are being unfairly accused of Magic & Mysticism. I can relate.

Your hybrid theory pretty much sums up my view. You and I are coming at this question from different directions, but seem to have met in the middle. We use different terminology, but come to similar conclusions. My custom coinages and usages are defined in the Enformationism Glossary.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/

my physicalist ontology, which straightforwardly rules out the possibility of mental substances, and it is only in that sense that my philosophy of mind is “eliminativist”: — Pfhorrest

Mind is a “substance” only in the sense of Spinoza's "Universal Substance", and Aristotle's notion of "Hylomorphism" : Matter + Form (Essence). Hence, Brain + Mind.

"strong"emergentism holds some wholes to be truly greater than the sums of their parts, and thus that when certain things are arranged in certain ways, wholly new properties apply to the whole that are not mere aggregates or composites of the properties of the parts. — Pfhorrest

Strong Emergentism sounds like Holism, as defined by Jan Smuts. And the mechanism of that seemingly “sudden” emergence is the topic of physical Phase Transition. We know it happens, but not the intermediate steps, from water molecules to ice crystals.
"Holistic thinking (in a broad sense) is currently aligned with systems theory in opposition to reductionist approaches, " https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00359198709520121?journalCode=ttrs20

consciousness as we ordinarily speak of it is something that just comes about when physical things are arranged in the right way. — Pfhorrest

“Arranged in the right way” is what I call "Enformed". The “many details” are stages of enformation that occur as Energy causes physical patterns to change. Some of those changes are thermal, as in thermodynamics. But some result in different physical forms, as in liquid to solid transitions. The “magic” is simply the flow of enforming energy from one pattern of relationships to another. That pattern (form) change is what we call "Causation".

So when it comes to phenomenal consciousness, either it is wholly absent from the most fundamental building blocks of physical things . . . or else it is present at least in humans, as concluded above, and so at least some precursor of it must be present in the stuff out of which humans are built, — Pfhorrest

Yes. The "precursor" of Consciousness is Universal (general) Information which begins as amorphous mental concepts (Plato's Forms) and then becomes physical Enformation in the process of Creation (Big Bang). Since I am not aware of any plausible scientific theory to explain the pre-creation source of Information, I adopted the Religious notion of an eternal BEING with the power to create new beings (G*D). I have no personal experience with that abstract Potential, so it's just a hypothesis to explain the data of the Real World. Enformation (e.g. DNA) is present in the "stuff" (matter) of which humans are built.

Panpsychism most broadly defined says that everything has a mind, . . . proto-experientialism — Pfhorrest

I find the notion of sub-atomic particles possessing the attribute of human-like Consciousness, to be absurd. So I prefer to call that proto-mind, simply the "power to Enform" -- to cause Change (energy) -- which causes Emergence (significant change), which ultimately results in suitably complex physical formations as, A> Living Organisms (biological behavior); B> single-cell Experience of environment (touch, proto-experience); C> gradually increasing scope of Awareness (sentience): D> the extension of Aboutness (meaning), and E> finally producing the feedback loop of Self-Awareness, that we know as animal Consciousness. When that level is reached, it gradually expands its sphere of awareness to include Abstractions, which is a key feature of Human Consciousness.

But in saying that everything has phenomenal consciousness, — Pfhorrest

"Phenomenal Consciousness" (inter-relations between phenomena) may be prefigured in the mathematical “relationships” or “links” between imaginary “nodes” in a mathematical field, or between actual physical objects.

but that first-person experience needn't amount to much if the thing having the experience is so simple as a rock or atom or electron. — Pfhorrest

Yes. A rock is impacted by energy from the environment, and is changed slightly in response, for example, absorbing heat. But that kind of enformation is fleeting and trivial, unless it melts the rock into magma ( a phase transition; a new form or state). By contrast, a human experience is recorded as a memory (en-forms, engrams), which is translated into "first-person" meaning (knowledge), and may then be exported to other humans in words (symbolic information).

with the nodes in that web being the objects of reality, each defined by its function in that web of interactions, — Pfhorrest

I too, think of Reality as a universal Information network, with physical objects at the nodes, and inter-relationships (energy, forces) as the links. But each object (holon) is a network in itself.

but then I also don't think supernatural things are possible or even coherent, — Pfhorrest

The only “supernatural thing” in my worldview is whatever preceded the Big Bang as the First Cause, which is literally, and by definition, super-natural. The Cause of something new cannot be its own Effect.

But "minds" in a more useful and robust sense . . . as subjects have an experience that is heavily of themselves as much as it is of the rest of the world. — Pfhorrest

Yes, but it's hard to draw a hard line between primitive “experience” and sophisticated “awareness”. Presumably a single-cell organism is defined by having some distinguishing membrane between Self and Environment. But that would be the extent of its self-awareness. Humans, on the other hand, can picture themselves in relation to a much larger context, even a cosmic stage.

I hold a view called functionalism, which holds that a mental state is not strictly identical to any particular physical state, — Pfhorrest

Yes. That's the problem for those who identify Mind with brain states. Mind is a function of brain states, but a function is the product, not the mechanism itself. The map is not the territory.

"functionalist panpsychism". — Pfhorrest

In my thesis, I call that universal functionalism EnFormAction : the act of Enforming (verb), and the state of being Informed (noun).

I hold that the function of an object, the mapping of the inputs it experiences to the behaviors it outputs, — Pfhorrest

Yes. A function is described in a map as a set of relations between This and That (ordered pairs). The relationship pattern is the meaning of the map.
"A function is a relation for which each value from the set . . . the first components of the ordered pairs is associated with exactly one value from the set of second components of the ordered pair."

The first of these important functions, which I call "sentience", is to differentiate experiences toward the construction of two separate models, one of them a model of the world as it is, and the other a model of the world as it ought to be. — Pfhorrest

I would limit “sentience” to the physical senses, one of which is the sensation of Pain. But the ability to differentiate Reality (as-is) from Ideality (as-if) is a later development of Mind, probably following the emergence of Self-consciousness.

Sensations are the raw, uninterpreted experiences, like the seeing of a color, or the hearing of a pitch. When those sensations are then interpreted, patterns in them detected, identified as abstractions, that can then be related to each other symbolically, analytically, that is part of the function that I call "intelligence" — Pfhorrest

Those abstract “patterns” are what is known as Information. The ability to interpret those abstractions into personal meanings, and to use that knowledge for self-interest is the beginning of Intelligence. To use that knowledge for broader interests is the beginning of Wisdom.
"An information pattern is a structure of information units like e.g. a vector or matrix of numbers, a stream of video frames, or a distribution of probabilities. "

That reflexive function in general I call "sapience", — Pfhorrest

Sapience = Wisdom. Self-reflective awareness : to put the Self into a larger context.
Note -- The kind of discriminating judgment that few animals possess, and even few homo sapiens exercise to its full extent.

an experience taken as indicative, interpreted into a perception, and accepted by sapient reflection — is what I call a "belief". — Pfhorrest

Indicative = symbolic; semiotic.
Interpretation = convert abstract information into pertinent personal meaning
Belief = acceptance of interpretation as useful to Self, or as part of personal Worldview