Because in my view, states of consciousness are just brain states — Kenosha Kid

Very important distinction here: are they brain states or are they caused by brain states. Because for me it is the latter (note: I am not saying they are only caused by brain states). I cannot understand how it can be the former. So the experience of the color red is a 600nm wavelength entering your eye?

I'm assuming by brain state you mean the literal state of my brain as a certain experience is happening, and that that experience is (somehow) that brain state. So we are talking about the location and movement of particles here and additionally implying that having a brain means being conscious.

So let me pick your consciousness a bit here. What are the properties of brains that allow for consciousness, aka what passes as a "brain"? If someone had a steel rod fly through their head and survived their brainstate is obviously different from ours, are they still conscious/is their damaged brain still a brain? What about other animals or are we just talking about human brains here? If someone had a surgery that replaces a part of their brain with an electrical component are they still conscious/does that modified brain pass as a brain? And if so, that would mean that even non-organic components can pass as "brains" in whichcase how do we make a non-organic brain that produces consciousness?

with faux surprise — Kenosha Kid

Not so much surprise. I was just pointing out that maybe it isn't incompatable.

State what it is. — Kenosha Kid

The ability to have an experience. I know this doesn't explain any more than the previous "definition". But that's because this can't be simplified.

cannot or will not say what it is they are talking about, — Kenosha Kid

I would just like to point out that that doesn't make it meaningless. If I asked you to describe what "shape" is for instance you would also struggle. Because the concept is so basic any attempt at defining is going to require more complicated concepts which only make sense assuming you already know what "shape" means.

If we were to define a word by using multiple other words, then define each of those by using multiple other words, we would have an infinite loop where people can no longer understand the language because in order to understand any one word they must understand infinitely many. Which is why I think there is a "cutoff point", words that do not need definition just pointing. An example is "Red". You point at enough red things and anyone will understand what red means and you do not need a definition. I think "shape" and "consciousness" are such words among others. And that's why people use synonyms to describe consciousness.

you cannot say what 'it' is — Kenosha Kid

I have now answered what "it" is. The ability to have an experience. You will likely find that inadequate but on the off chance you don't: does a computer have 'it'?

I was not doing some reductio ad absurdum here. I was implying that this point of contention is useless. No one cares whether or not water is wet and it doesn't help in whatever discussion you decide to have about water. In the same way I don't think "are you aware of being conscious" is important. — khaled

Then how do you know that you are conscious? Its important to know how you know that you are conscious, or any other fact for that matter. Do you know that there are eggs in the fridge in the same way that you know that you are conscious?

Water isn't wet. Wet is a relationship between water and something else. An object that is not water is wet when water interacts with it.

is just a different location of the first person experience.
— Harry Hindu

Oh so you understand what it means now all of a sudden? You just used it to form a correct sentence. Congratulations! — khaled

No. I was simply reiterating your explanation and showing you how your distinction between first and third person is nonsensical. So, no. I still don't know what you mean by first person experience. It sounds redundant.

Then how do you know that you are conscious? — Harry Hindu

I know that I am experiencing something. I later call this ability to experience something "consciousness".

Do you know that there are eggs in the fridge in the same way that you know that you are conscious? — Harry Hindu

No because I cannot be wrong about the fact that I'm experiencing something.

Water isn't wet. Wet is a relationship between water and something else. — Harry Hindu

Or I could define "wet" as "in contact with water" in whichcase water would be wet unless it is just one molecule. Again, this is pointless.

It sounds redundant. — Harry Hindu

What sounds redundant?

I know that I am experiencing something. I later call this ability to experience something "consciousness". — khaled

How do you know that you are experiencing something?

No because I cannot be wrong about the fact that I'm experiencing something. — khaled

You cannot be wrong that eggs are in the fridge if you experience them in the fridge? If your aren't wrong that you have experiences and you have experiences of eggs in the fridge, then how can you say that you can be wrong about eggs in the fridge, but not about having experience of eggs in the fridge?

Or I could define "wet" as "in contact with water" in whichcase water would be wet unless it is just one molecule. Again, this is pointless. — khaled

Exactly. You need something else that isn't water to be in contact with water. Contact is a type of relationship between water and something else. You haven't said anything different than what I just said.

What sounds redundant? — khaled

First-person experiences. If all experiences are first person then it is redundant to even use first person as a qualifier to describe experiences.

How do you know that you are experiencing something? — Harry Hindu

Because there is an experiencer (me) who is aware (conscious) of these experiences. And that is the definition of "having an experience"

Your question implies that it is possible to have an experience but think you're not having an experience. Can you give an example of that?

You cannot be wrong that eggs are in the fridge if you experience them in the fridge? — Harry Hindu

I don't "experience eggs in the fridge". That's word salad no offence. I see eggs in the fridge. I cannot be wrong that I am seeing eggs in the fridge (Assuming I'm not blind of course). But I can be wrong about whether or not there are eggs in the fridge (could have been an elaborately placed cutout so as to make it seem like there are eggs there).

You need something else that isn't water — Harry Hindu

No. You decided to define it as "isn't water". I decided to include water. Anyways I won't bother with this pointless line anymore.

If all experiences are first person then it is redundant to even use first person as a qualifier to describe experiences. — Harry Hindu

Sure. Let's just say "experiences" then. Do you get what that means?

But assuming complete knowledge of the componenets the structure is just simplification and adds no predictive powers. So if "consciousness" is a structure it has to arise out of some prooperty or other of its componenets. — khaled

When is there complete knowledge of the components without structure, and what would the predictive powers be in that case? Structure is not a simplification - it’s an understanding of the potentiality in relations between components. It is what enables us to complete our knowledge of the components, particularly when those components are not directly observable.

The way I see it, all the components of consciousness have relational properties, whether we acknowledge them as aspects of consolidated structures such as atoms, molecules, objects and organisms, or not.

Very important distinction here: are they brain states or are they caused by brain states. Because for me it is the latter (note: I am not saying they are only caused by brain states). I cannot understand how it can be the former. So the experience of the color red is a 600nm wavelength entering your eye? — khaled

No, because we do not experience a 600nm wave, nor is one entering the eye the brain state. Irrespective, what I think of as consciousness is not relevant. When YOU ask whether a computer has it, you need to state what YOU mean.

The ability to have an experience. I know this doesn't explain any more than the previous "definition". But that's because this can't be simplified. — khaled

No one is asking you to simplify anything. I'm asking you what you mean by a word. Merely refering to another equally ambiguous word isn't helpful. If you cannot explain what you mean by consciousness, how can I or anyone else answer a question about it and know we're talking about the same thing?

I would just like to point out that that doesn't make it meaningless. If I asked you to describe what "shape" is for instance you would also struggle. Because the concept is so basic any attempt at defining is going to require more complicated concepts which only make sense assuming you already know what "shape" means. — khaled

Not remotely. The shape of an object is its outline. If you ask me what shape I'm in, potentially I'll get confused, can ask you what you mean, and you can clarify that you're asking about my physical health. There's no fundamental problem with shape. There's no fundamental problem with Pfhorrest's definition of consciousness either (in that respect), or Dennett's. Mine will probably curl up at the edges. But yours is absent entirely.

What does it mean for a thing to "have experiences"?

How do you know that you are experiencing something? — Harry Hindu

Because there is an experiencer (me) who is aware (conscious) of these experiences. And that is the definition of "having an experience" — khaled

This is circular. What is an experiencer? Are you referring to a homunculus?
Also, you previously said this:

Saying "aware that you are conscious" is like saying "wet water" — khaled

...but now you are saying that you can be aware (conscious) of experiences. How is an experience different from awareness/consciousness?

Your question implies that it is possible to have an experience but think you're not having an experience. Can you give an example of that? — khaled

"Experience" is just a word. You've been trained to refer to this event as an "experience". But what is it that we are referring to really? Telling me that it's an "experience" just tells me what scribble I can use to refer to this event, but what is this event? Is it the only event (solipsism)? Is it an event among many others (realism)? If the latter, how does this event relate to, and interact with, the other events? You might say that all this is unimportant and that we can use a computer without knowing how it works, but you still have to know what a computer is to use it. The amount of detail that you know about the computer is relative to what you want to do with it, and I troubleshoot them so I know more than just how to use them. That is the level of detail I want when it comes to "experiences" and "consciousness" because then we can learn how to fix them and maybe even improve them.

No. You decided to define it as "isn't water". I decided to include water. Anyways I won't bother with this pointless line anymore. — khaled

No, I didn't. Go back and read what I said. I said that it is a relationship between water and something else. It's not my fault that you aren't paying attention.

I don't "experience eggs in the fridge". That's word salad no offence. I see eggs in the fridge. I cannot be wrong that I am seeing eggs in the fridge (Assuming I'm not blind of course). But I can be wrong about whether or not there are eggs in the fridge (could have been an elaborately placed cutout so as to make it seem like there are eggs there). — khaled

Sure. Let's just say "experiences" then. Do you get what that means? — khaled

No, because I thought that seeing is a type of experience, but you are saying that it isn't. Care to clarify?

Then we sharply disagree. — javra

Do you disagree with the qualitative difference, or the out-dated notion of a god-given Soul? If the latter, then we may be somewhat in agreement. :smile:

Categorical error: seeing a mechanical representation, an altogether empirical enterprise, is very far removed from the a priori originating cause it. — Mww

That is not the issue. A thing cannot be at once hidden from the world and and have an open representation in the world. The latter is an observation that the thing has *some* footprint in the world, which makes it amenable to physical enquiry.

Good methods for precisely this taken to mean methods for the scientific study of consciousness. — Mww

Yes. The mechanical representation must end up being a good one, ideally not a representation at all but the thing itself. One needs to know what phenomena one is looking to phenomenalise, which isn't hard. In an example elsewhere, I suggested pleasure. Not pleasure *of something* necessarily, just pleasure. You need to know what phenomena phenomenalise pleasure. This has thankfully been done. There is a very particular area of the brain that, when stimulated, will cause the subject to react with signs of pleasure, will have them self-report pleasure, will lead them to, when given the button, press it repeatedly, even fight you for it, in a statistically compelling (i.e. independent of the individual) way. So when we observe brain activity in that region, using specific technology that causes lights to light up in a region of the screen corresponding to that region, we have a phenomenon: I see lights in that preselected region, or not. Boom! Phenomena phenomenalised! I see your pleasure.

Now obviously I predict the response: I see but a correlate of your pleasure, an electromechanical feature that corresponds to your phenomena. But then any phenomenon I experience is incomplete, whether it is of my pleasure or of yours. When I see the Moon, I know the Moon itself is not in my eye, or brain, or phenomena, but rather my lunar phenomena are just correlated to the real thing. Same goes with my phenomena of your phenomena. It can only be a correlate. The task is to identify what of your pleasure is unaccounted for in my indirect experience of it.

I don’t know what to do with that. Sorry. — Mww

Oh go on, answer it! Pleeeeeeease?

I noticed once an item of dogma from one of the Hindu religious sects: 'life comes from life'. To my knowledge, this supposition has not yet been overturned by an empirical observation. — Wayfarer

I think I can very much understand and respect where you’re coming from. Abiogenesis is a big thorn in the side. As for myself, though, I do strongly believe in the universe having once existed in the absence of lifeforms - despite my idealist leanings.

primacy of awareness — javra

How would you define this? — Olivier5

My own definition of awareness’s primacy: The tenet that everything which can and does exist (i.e., everything that can and does stand-out in any way) is either directly or indirectly contingent on the presence of awareness - with some existents (like the objectivity of space, time, and matter) being contingent on all cooccurring instantiations of awareness, some (like the intersubjectivity of cultures and languages) being contingent on certain limited cohorts of cooccurring instantiations of awareness, and some (like one’s personal REM dreams) being contingent on unique instantiations of awareness. This tenet of awareness’s primacy thereby results in a stance of idealism.

My post regarded a conditional partly constructed from “if primacy of awareness is true” and not an argument for awareness’s primacy. I currently don’t want to engage in any such argument.

Comes from latin informare: give form to, and also educate — Olivier5

That’s right. To in-form is to constrain or give shape. And information is a constraint on uncertainty. It produces concrete definiteness from a sea of possibilities.

So your attempt here, to remove the essence of "sign" from the sign, and say that "a sign intrinsically refers to nothing" is self-contradicting — Metaphysician Undercover

A word like “baby” doesn’t have intrinsic meaning just as a collection of four letters. It gains meaning as a communal habit of interpretation.

The intent of the author then becomes the most important factor in meaning, validating "what is meant by", so that the premise of infinite possibility, and your assumption that it is "completely up to a community of speakers to agree as to the semantics of any utterance", is falsified. — Metaphysician Undercover

So how do you use “baby” in a sentence? Do you always have your own completely private meaning in mind? Is that a useful habit do you find?

Oh go on, answer it! Pleeeeeeease? — Kenosha Kid

Ok, fine. The Rock....with or without hair?
———————

My own definition of awareness’s primacy: The tenet that everything which can and does exist (i.e., everything that can and does stand-out in any way) is either directly or indirectly contingent on the presence of awareness ... This tenet of awareness’s primacy thereby results in a stance of idealism. — javra

Okay, so very different from phenomenology’s primacy of perception. I got confused.

And information is a constraint on uncertainty. — apokrisis

Yes, or a signal standing out from the noise.

My own definition of awareness’s primacy: The tenet that everything which can and does exist (i.e., everything that can and does stand-out in any way) is either directly or indirectly contingent on the presence of awareness - with some existents (like the objectivity of space, time, and matter) being contingent on all cooccurring instantiations of awareness — javra

So how does this work?

It seems that awareness is being defined by its freedom to be about anything. A mind can imagine what it wishes. Yet also minds then all interact to co-create a shared spacetime material world. They are somehow constrained to agree due to the demands of being able participate as actors in the same place.

Now this holism is a systems way of looking at things. It says some kind of synergistic duality of parts and wholes is need to have "a world". Even a materialist needs to claim a reality that involves matter and laws - locally differentiated parts being organised according to global integrating rules.

So both idealism and materialism actually must invoke some form of triadic systems ontology, even if both want to claim to reduce the wholeness of reality to some kind of monistic primacy - a world that is actually mind, or a world that is actually matter.

Thus what I point out is that panpsychism tries to make sense by smuggling in a triadic relational perspective while still sounding like a monistic idealism standing in paradigmatic contrast to a monistic materialism.

Given that, it is better just to keep on going and openly embrace a triadic relational ontology - which is what Peircean semiotics is.

The categories of both matter and mind then drop away as we focus on the bare structure of networks of differentiated relations (secondness) and the generalised world of integration (thirdness) that results.

To talk about ontology in either the language of matter or mind already freights the conversation with all sorts of ontic commitments that create all the friction. Every thread becomes a rerun of idealism vs realism - the effort to reduce a dualism to a monism.

But the way out of the bottle is to see a triadic systems logic as the maximally general ontology. It is much more abstract - a mathematical representation in moving past questions of concrete quality. We don't have to worry about the mind as a quality (a quality of experiencing, whatever that is), or matter as a quality (the quality of substantial being, whatever that is). We are now dealing with a notion of pure relations - a system of signs and interpretance.

So again, both materialists and idealists can work their way towards some kind of triadic ontology. They can see what needs to be said to inject some necessary holism back into their general reductionism.

But this just winds up being inefficient as ontology. The step forward - as Peirce demonstrated - is to arrive at a proper ontology of a system of relations itself. You want the triadic or hierarchical order in which the local parts are the clear product of differentiating relationships (or local symmetry breakings), and the global whole is the clear product of a collective integration over all those possible relationships (or the unity of the production of a generalised universal symmetry state ... the one that can be locally broken in ways that prove it in fact exists ... ).

So as philosophy, the problem is that monism is much simpler to think about than the holism of a triadic system of relations. One produces an ultimately simple stuff - call it mind, call it matter. The other produces only the "simplicity" of an irreducible relational complexity. The image in mind is of a hierarchical feedback loop of interactions - a simultaneity of local differentiations amid a global integration.

But in the end, if we want to understand nature, learning to visualise holism in this fashion is necessary. The only viable "monism" is the one that is the traditional Greek unity of opposites, the Hegelian synthesis, the Peircean semiotic, the modern systems science or hierarchy theory story of reality as a self-organising process.

Yes, or a signal standing out from the noise. — Olivier5

I nearly added that too. :grin:

We are on the same page. I was also going to remind of the formal duality that has been established between information and entropy. As signal vs noise, order vs chaos, message vs meaninglessness, we can see why information and entropy stand in relationship as the two faces of the same coin, the two dichotomous extremes of the one opposition.

I was also going to remind of the formal duality that has been established between information and entropy. As signal vs noise, order vs chaos, message vs meaninglessness, we can see why information and entropy stand in relationship as the two faces of the same coin, the two dichotomous extremes of the one opposition. — apokrisis

Yes yes, all well known and familiar. Piercian semiotics got me googling though. If you can explain in a few words, it’d be appreciated.

If you can explain in a few words, it’d be appreciated. — Olivier5

:gets popcorn:

If you can explain in a few words, it’d be appreciated.
— Olivier5

:gets popcorn: — bert1

Good one. I mean, i checked the corresponding wiki entry but fail to see the relevance to system thinking. It’s some kind of proto linguistic...

Half of us have no idea what Apo is talking about. He (it must be a he) regularly gets asked to put his stuff in more laymen's terms, but he never does. That's not to say it's not good stuff, just completely incomprehensible. I even bought a book once to try and help, but it didn't work. I read a bit of stuff on semiotics which helped a bit. Regarding consciousness, I still think Apo is a functionalist of sorts, but he disagrees. Who knows?

I was also going to remind of the formal duality that has been established between information and entropy. As signal vs noise, order vs chaos, message vs meaninglessness, we can see why information and entropy stand in relationship as the two faces of the same coin, the two dichotomous extremes of the one opposition. — apokrisis

This is classic Apo. Perfect specimen.

Thus what I point out is that panpsychism tries to make sense by smuggling in a triadic relational perspective — apokrisis

I think that's a compliment. Monism and dualism are bad, triadism is good.

If you can explain in a few words, it’d be appreciated. — Olivier5

That's a challenge and a half. But the central claim of a biosemiotic approach to the science of life and mind is that the mind~matter divide can be bridged by understanding that mind and world exist in a modelling relation.

Mind is not something passive and separate - an awareness - but a state of interpretance that arises through active engagement with the material potentials of the world. Mind and life exist as informational structure regulating the entropic physical goings-on of the world.

This means life and mind interact to impose constraints by way of mechanism.

Genes code for proteins. Proteins make enzymes, channels, membranes and all sorts of cellular machinery that control and stabilise chemical and energetic gradients.

Neurons likewise encode sensory and behavioural habits that impose a regulating machinery on an organism's general environment.

Words do the same again in encoding the sociocultural habits that are the regulating machinery of a complex human society. Words are the syntactic mechanism that underpins a collective social life and collective social mentality.

So the semiotic bit is about recognising that the science of life and mind boils down to the critical question of how there can be this "physics of symbols". How does a protein become a message rather than just a molecule? How does a neuron represent information rather simply some electrochemical chatter of noise?

To talk about biosemiosis is to say - as a scientist - that it is being recognised that symbols aren't explained by material physics. Symbols require their own branch of science - semiotics!

And semiotics is also then more than just "information processing" or "computation", as a modelling relation is all about a regulatory interaction with the real physical world.

A computer doesn't need the world. It lives in its own Platonic realm of mathematical pattern spinning.

But semiotics is information plugged into entropy. It is the science of life and mind plugged into the physics of thermodynamics and dissipative structure. So it is an approach to life and mind that never fractures the two halves of the equation while also never confusing the two halves either.

You can then go beyond biosemiosis to pansemiosis - which would be Peircean semiotics applied to the Cosmos in general. Even physics would have this informational aspect, and so count as a complex system of interpretance.

Peirce had that ambition. And modern physics has arrived there too with its information theoretic turn.

But in general, semiotics is the science of meaning, or meaning making. And that leads to seeing symbols as their own "unphysical" thing. Another basis of causality in nature.

But then the proviso. A symbol system or modelling relation can only exist in the context of there being material flows to regulate and organise in an organismic fashion.

So as a science, semiotics speaks to this duality of symbols and matter, and also to their mutual ontological dependence on each other - as each is the "other" of the other.

All the sciences had to somewhat smuggle in this complex arrangement. The life sciences talked of bodies as machines, and brains as computers. The physical sciences had to have universal laws and other abstract regulative principles.

But as ontologies, abstract laws and information processing are both pretty crude concepts.

Semiotics goes to the heart of the matter by being clear both about the general nature of the separation - symbols vs matter - and about the means of the interaction, the connection that is a modelling relation.

As said, that applies very straightforwardly to actual organisms - life and mind. It is more of a speculative stretch to apply it to inorganic systems like the Universe.

Yet still, physics itself is winding up having to make some such paradigm shift. And semiotics provides a well-worked out explanatory structure for doing that - for combining information and entropy, formal cause and material cause, in the one over-arching reality scheme.

He (it must be a he) regularly gets asked to put his stuff in more laymen's terms, but he never does. — bert1

I've made a good living putting complex stuff into the simplest lay explanations. I've even been commissioned to do such for the likes of Reader's Digest, Dorling Kindersley and New Scientist. So I certainly don't lack the skills.

And if you say I have tried frequently enough, and you have failed to understand just as often, well where is the issue likely to be?

I realise the difficulty though. We are all trained to think in simple cause and effect terms. And Peirce - as a process philosopher and systems thinker - demands a conception of causality that is complex in that it must construct its own ground of being.

It is not monistic, linear and one-dimensional. It is tri-dimensional and recursively holist - a complex entanglement never at rest but always developing. A squirming beast of causal interaction.

So to understand anything about a semiotic ontology, you have to establish a second brand of logic - of causal analysis - inside your own head.

The standard issue "cause and effect logic" you got taught is not wrong, just a corner of the larger story - the right way to think if the problem is the engineering one of regulating the world as if it were a machinery.

A holistic causal logic is then something you can only learn about directly in specialised education - an interdisciplinary "field" like systems science or hierarchy theory. Or of course, Peircean philosophy.

I learnt about it over many years progressing from biology to neuroscience to systems science and then Peircean semiotics. And at least I always knew roughly what I was looking for, so could recognise it when I found it.

But as I say, it is its own contrasting system of thought. You can't make sense of it from the standard cause and effect paradigm. And you only truly understand it in its own terms once it is obvious how mechanistic cause and effect thinking is in fact the formal "other" of it holism.

It is funny that way. Life and mind are seen as paradigmatically organic and holistic phenomena. Yet it is they that most perfectly employ machinery to regulate their worlds and bring order to chaotic physics.

Anyway, I'm not trying to baffle you. But it is a whole system of thought I am saying you would need to learn rather than some particular theory that ought to make more sense from a simple cause and effect perspective.

And if you say I have tried frequently enough, and you have failed to understand just as often, well where is the issue likely to be? — apokrisis

I don't know, and I still don't. It's a risk. I'll be pissed off if I go to a lot of trouble understanding your stuff and it turns out to be bollocks (at least in respect of the philosophy of consciousness). I might ask pfhorrest for advice on this. They seem to have studied everything so might have some useful advice.

Anyway, I'm not trying to baffle you. But it is a whole system of thought I am saying you would need to learn rather than some particular theory that ought to make more sense from a simple cause and effect perspective. — apokrisis

I appreciate that. Thank you. I don't know if I'm guilty as charged with the cause and effect monolithic thinking, but I might be.

What we want is not a stating of the obvious that we experience dark and light, but the distinction between "experiencing dark and light" and "detecting dark and light". What can we point as a property in our experiences that goes beyond "this is light" or "this is dark". — Kenosha Kid

This is where Chalmers has looked to IIT: a camera detects light and dark, but photo-receptors experience it, in their own way. That is, they are re-structured by the interaction. Experience is a function of consciousness, but not a definition of ‘consciousness’. The extent to which a system distinguishes “this is light” and “this is dark” as distinct experiences without fully embodying them I see as a function of self-consciousness, in which ‘conscious’ can be distinguished from ‘not-conscious’.

symbols vs matter — apokrisis

Matter is a symbol. It is symbolic of the process that created it. Therefore panpsychism, through the process of self organization. According to Fritjof Capra, the basic unit of cognition is a reaction to a disturbance of a state – I cant remember the exact words. So basic cause and effect at the most fundamental level is cognition. Hence panpsychism. No?