I think information is of extreme importance for consciousness. But I don't have a clear idea on various specifics. What do you mean by "consciousness is informational"?

I don’t know, I thought that was your position. — Punshhh

It is. But if you don't mean it the way I do, I wondered how you mean it. Although I'm not really sure what you mean, I guess "the higher (subtle) realms" is the answer.

I thought the idea was that mass and energy and everything else like charge and extension were all interchangeable in Einstein’s spacetime. — Punshhh

Could be? I don't know anything about that stuff. :grin:

A construction by a being or intelligence to carry out a purpose. — Punshhh

An intelligence wants to do something that it needs consciousness to accomplish, so it constructs consciousness?

The problem is that consciousness is informational, not physical. Explaining consciousness in physical terms runs into the same problem that explaining any informational process in physical terms does. Imagine starting with the notion of computation, or the notion of War and Peace,
and trying to leap directly to a physical explanation of these. You need to first construct an informational narrative, and only then explain how this narrative is instantiated physically. — hypericin

Do you think DNA is encoded information, and protein synthesis is an example of information processing? I would ask the same of many other things. Are the electrical signals that arrive at certain parts of the brain carrying information from the retina about a light source?

If you answer Yes to either, how does "You need to first construct an informational narrative" apply?

I would ask for more information about how that same part of your sentence applies to consciousness, but perhaps I'll gain some understanding from your response to the above.

I can relate to the idea that consciousness is everywhere, but not necessarily that physical material is conscious — Punshhh

Can you elaboate on what you mean by "the idea that consciousness is everywhere"?

It seems kind of crazy that a primary particle can have mass and charge. How can that be? What are physical properties that primary particles can have more than one? Brian Greene doesn't even know what mass or charge are.

There's no way to rule out the possibility that there is another property there. Not a physical one, but an experiential property.

That's obviously not evidence to support my position. It's just speculation. But it's not more speculative than something non-physical emerging from physical arrangements,

I regard it as an artificial construct. — Punshhh

What do you mean by artificial?

Right. I'm just saying that either scenario - two entirely separate things coming together, or one ground manifesting as entirely separate things - presents a yawning chasm.

Of course, many don't think the mind is non-physical, so don't think either scenario is what's going on.

[Technically, I don't think the mind is non-physical. I think there are minds much simpler than the human mind. And I guess it's possible for a living thing to have no mind at all? But I think consciousness is always present, and that is what's non-physical.]

This is the problem, or so they say. That if they are entirely separate, how do they happen to come together? I like you don’t see it as so much of a problem, but people who subscribe to the distinction between idealism and materialism see a yawning chasm between the two. — Punshhh

I would think it's equally difficult to explain how one ground could manifest in (at least) two different ways that appear entirely separate.

I tend to steer clear of the division between physical and non physical, because I don’t see why there is necessarily such a distinction. The so called non physical mind and physically existing things, though appearing entirely separate, may be part of the same external manifold that we are not aware of, which may be undiscoverable, but in which the two are grounded. — Punshhh

Otoh, they may be entirely separate. But even if you're right, if a common, external manifold is undiscoverable, it amounts to the same thing. As the saying goes: If you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make? Anyway, making distinctions is what we do. Liquid and solid are both physical, but the differences between them are clear, and important. The differences between the so called non physical mind and physically existing things are surely not less important.

Similarly, physicalism is successful at accounting for almost everything in the natural world - so it seems more reasonable to assume there's something we're missing than to dispense with the overall theory. — Relativist

I quite agree that, regarding consciousness, there's something undetectable we're missing.

There's no need to dispense with physicalism. It's phenomenally successful and accurate in many ways. But that doesn't mean it can explain all of reality, and we have no justification for insisting it must be able to. Nobody can even describe consciousness in physical terms, much less explain it. Many people who are leaders in relevant fields - people like Anil Seth, Antonio Damasio, Peter Tse, Brian Greene, Donald Hoffman, and David Eagleman - most of whom think physicalism must be the answer, say we don't have a theory, and don't even have any idea what such a theory would look like.

Yes, I understand. I didn't know where Relativist was going with the idea that there may be things with no detectable effect.

To be discoverable, there needs to be some measurable influence on known things. So there could be particles, or properties, that have no measureable influence on particles or waves we can detect. String theory may true, but there seems to be no means of verifying that. If it IS true. there could be any number of vibrational states of strings that have no direct measurable affect on anything else. — Relativist

I can understand thinking something like dark matter must exist. Not directly detectable in any way we've thought of, but something is having a gravitational effect on things. But if there is no detectable effect, why suspect there is something undetectable present?

It may very well be that there are aspects of mental activity that are partly grounded in components of world that are otherwise undiscoverable. This is worst case, but it is more plausible than non-physical alternatives. — Relativist

I'm very interested in this. Can you explain? If a component is physical, why would it be undiscoverable?

I cringe at calling those abilities 'mental' since there's such a strong connotation of both life-form and dualism with that word. Let's just say I am considering the cognitive abilities of that roomba. — noAxioms

I think we already have machines with mental abilities. Also, I think the physical events that make up our mental abilities, like the physical events that makes up motion, are not consciousness, and don't involve dualism.

I wasn't a question. I was noting that Nagel concludes dualism from his musings, and I don't follow the logic by which he gets there. Maybe if I read his work, I'd know better, but maybe not even then since the only argument I ever see is incredulity. — noAxioms

I assume you mean incredulity regarding consciousness emerging from physicalism. If that's the case, I would say that no similarity between physical properties/characteristics and consciousness; no logic to physical matter arranging itself according to the laws of physics, then, for no reason, become conscious; and no theory of how this happens from anyone, is less incredulity, and more looking for answers to legitimate questions.

Not being a mathematician, I may be missing some of the nuances of what you're bringing up, — J

I'm not a mathematician either, so any nuances brought up are dumb luck.


Your musical analogy is interesting. nA is saying that I did know the number. It was 10110001100111. But, since that's meaningless before translating to base 10, my stance is that I did not know the number. I only know what string of 1s and 0s I get when following certain rules. I know it's a number, but that's all I know.

I don't have perfect pitch, either. But my relative pitch is just fine. I can sight-sing a melody, and, assuming neither of us has ever heard the tune or seen the sheet music before, understand the tune as well as someone who has pp does, even if I'm doing it in the wrong key.

But for someone who cannot sight-sing looking at the notes on paper, they know it's music, but don't know what it sounds like. Much like me looking at an equation of ling binary strings, I know it's numbers, but don't know which. Even when I can do the calculation, it's meaningless. Although binary is easy to translate. I can do long strings in my head. Far worse with, say, say base 17. If I teach myself how to multiply in base 17, and came up with a product C1,3F6,99D,GE7, to say figuring that out in my head is hopeless would be an understatement.

Thanks for all that. I googled and found out we have 60 siam and 60 miah because of the Babylonians, of all things. They used base 60. Still, we don't really. We count to 60 in base 10. And then we go and divide the day into 24 hours because of the Egyptians.

I hadn't thought about the Celsius:Fahrenheit thing. That's a very interesting example. I certainly don't think of temperatures as having anything to do with base 10. 180 degrees between freezing and boiling is useless. I don't know if 100 is useful. I've never heard anything about people using math in anyway on talking about Celsius temperatures. Still, it's definitely a different feel for things.

Yeah, I know what you mean. But using letters is just further proof that we're not actually thinking on another base. The only thing I can think of to make my point is that joke:
There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those who understand binary and those who don't.

I don't think anyone should be thinking in binary, Base 15, or anything other than Base 10. I just wonder how other areas of thought might be different if we did.

I would suggest doing some historical reading on the ways that different cultures used different bases. For example, "History of Bases used in Ancient Civilizations." — Leontiskos

Interesting. Thanks!

OK, re-reading, I think I see your point. — noAxioms

Which may not be a legitimate point. I go back and forth on it. but I kind of think that, when you run out of fingers, you have to move up to the next value.

The number had no meaning to me in binary. I could do the math, but there was no meaning.
-Patterner

Well that's mostly because you don't work with binary regularly, so you haven't learned the feel of what the numbers are. — noAxioms

I don't know if it's possible, though, between the length strings can be making it impossible for people to know what the number is, and the fact that we don't have a naming convention for anything but base 10. we always convert back to base 10, which means we're not thinking in base two. That would be the case with any other base. If we worked in base 11 a lot, we would quickly come to convert 23 to our 25. so 23×4 = 91. But that's doing the multiplication in base 10 in my head, then converting the answer to base 11.

It was a rhetorical question on my part. — noAxioms

Ok. Wasn't sure if I had said something that seemed like a challenge. :lol:

Duh... Count the fingers. — noAxioms

You don't understand my point. which is darn likely my fault, since I never tried to express it before.

I multiplied it correctly in binary. But I had no idea what the numbers were.
— Patterner
You did know what the numbers were since you had the answer. You just didn't know the base-10 representation of that answer any more than you knew the base-13 representation of it, but none of those representations is 'what the number is'. — noAxioms

The number had no meaning to me in binary. I could do the math, but there was no meaning. I find that an odd situation. Whenever I do math in Base 10, I know what the numbers mean. When I do math in binary, I'm just like a calculator, or like the Chinese Room, or the Game of Life, simply manipulating things according to rules.

Never mind that. You want a debate? — noAxioms

I do not. I wasn't aware I said anything that would invite debate. I'm just wondering how much of our thinking that isn't about math is, nevertheless, affected by math, and how different it would be if we thought in binary.

OK. I don't think anybody would suggest that a roomba has the complexity needed for human awareness/experience, but neither does a bat. The bat gets closer. — noAxioms

Yes, different things have different mental abilities. Many things have no mental abilities.

But at some point, he goes so far as to conclude the necessity (does he? or just he possibility?) of these mental properties that don't supervene on physical properties, — noAxioms

Sorry, I don't know what you're asking.

As an illustration, try finding somethings that explores which quantum interpretations are compatible with the Bible or one's theology of choice. — noAxioms

That'd my point. There isn't anything about mechanics, or classical physics, that's suggests such things.

If you think rocks are conscious (just not very) — noAxioms

I don't.

I think consciousness is fundamental because the "experience (if a binary thing) suddenly turned on, something its immediate ancestor lacked" idea seems too fantastic.
I also find that too fantastic, but I never considered it a binary thing that you have or don't. — noAxioms

Neither do I.

Just rambling thoughts. Probably already posted here. I was just thinking that intelligence is intelligence. It can't be artificial. That sounds like pretending to be awake.

Artificially Produced Intelligence or Artificially Created Intelligence would be more accurate? Of course, Human Produced Intelligence would be better.

What then does the hyper-compressed vehicle look like if not letters, words, and sentences? How does that shrug look prior to my shoulder shrugging? — Hanover

I imagine "I don't know" or "I don't care". It something on the table catches my eye, reaching for it can't be a reflexive action. Maybe sometimes. Particularly when there is danger. but usually, I suspect thinking in words is so fast, and commonplace but I don't much notice thinking something like "I want to pick up that pen."

I've never heard it looked into in great depth, but I suspect two instruments could play the same tone, and produce the same overtones, and we would be able to tell them apart from the timbre. Maybe cello and bassoon, or violin and clarinet.

Nagel discussed this in What is it like to be a bat?
— Patterner
He should also discuss 'what it is like to be a roomba' (my choice of X). Answer:We cannot know. That not knowing includes us not asserting that there's nothing it is like to be a roomba. — noAxioms

As I think consciousness is fundamental, a property of matter just as things like mass and charge are, and I think information processing is what makes a system conscious as a unit, I think a Roomba is conscious as a unit. However, it does not have the complexity of multiple integrated information processing systems for it to experience the kinds of thinking and awareness we do.

I know Nagel is famous for the bats, but I've actually never read any of the famous works by anybody. Most of them were published before modern physics and its implications were known, and so they all lean on classical assumptions, assumptions we know today to be false. Not saying Nagel is wrong. Just that I'm uninformed. I appreciate the quotes. — noAxioms

I have never read any of the old classics, either. But I've read, or am reading, a few newer things. Anyway, the implications of physics don't include anything about consciousness. The physical is what is experiencing, to be sure. We are physical, after all. But how that can be is not implied by physics.

I assume we all believe that bats have experience.
— Nagel
Some don't even believe that of their mothers, so Nagel is perhaps assuming a less solipsistic audience here. — noAxioms

Certainly. He is trying to examine consciousness. His audience isn't anyone who doesn't believe anything other than themself is conscious.

I have chosen bats instead of wasps or flounders because if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at all.
-Nagel

But that shedding of faith is important, since it implies that somewhere on our walk up that tree, experience (if a binary thing) suddenly turned on, something its immediate ancestor lacked. — noAxioms

He isn't saying that. He's just trying to find something close enough to us that those who believe things other than us are conscious will agree is conscious, but different enough that we can't really imagine what it's experience is like. For all the similarities you mention, we can't know what it is like to exist with as creatures who have echolocation as our primary sense every waking moment, and to fly and capture our food and eat it while doing so. As he says, our imagination can only get us so far:

Insofar as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. — Nagel

It's like empathy. The goal isn't to think of how I would feel in that situation. The goal is to try to understand how the person in that situation is feeling.

I think consciousness is fundamental because the "experience (if a binary thing) suddenly turned on, something its immediate ancestor lacked" idea seems too fantastic. If there is no consciousness present, and nothing is guiding physical evolution toward configurations that produce it, how is there suddenly a physical configuration that has this new thing which is so very different in nature, that was never the point or purpose, yet which it (the physical configuration) apparently is perfectly suited for?

But Chalmers apparently thinks otherwise, that the thing stripped of feeling would behave undetectably the same. A lot of his argument hinges that unreasonable assumption. — noAxioms

Perhaps Chalmers is not always right.

Are we sure this will reveal anything about consciousness itself? No, but in the absence of a traditional scientific apparatus of inquiry, we need to be open-minded and optimistic about what we can learn. — J

That's the attitude we need. If anything exists that cannot be found with our physical sciences, but we refuse to use any tools other than our physical sciences...

Meanwhile, I would add (though you probably don't agree) that the scientists should go full steam ahead in their efforts to explain consciousness from a biological perspective. If it keeps failing, that will be informative. — J

No, I quite agree. Not only because I might be wrong, but also because we will doubtless learn all kinds of other things while looking for this answer. Things that are, in the grand scheme of things, more important than solving this mystery. For me, nothing is more fascinating than this. But if an attempt to solve this that has no hope of succeeding helps with Alzheimer's?

But I do think there's no hope of finding any biological/physicalist answer, so I think more thought should be put into other approaches.

I said as much in the OP. It's why we cannot know what it's like to be a bat, but given that, we also cannot go around asserting that there is or is not something it is like to be X. If you're not X, then this cannot be known. — noAxioms

You're right. Even even in regards to other humans, we can only assume. And if we assume, how far are we willing to go? Nagel discussed this in What is it like to be a bat?

I assume we all believe that bats have experience. After all, they are mammals, and there is no more doubt that they have experience than that mice or pigeons or whales have experience. I have chosen bats instead of wasps or flounders because if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at all. Bats, although more closely related to us than those other species, nevertheless present a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the problem I want to pose is exceptionally vivid (though it certainly could be raised with other species). Even without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life. — Thomas Nagel

I think if someone was going to strip away your qualia, you would object. Probably strenuously.
— Patterner
Hence 1) my falsification test mentioned in the OP, 2) the inconceivability of a p-zombie acting undetectably the same, and 3) I suspect that the ability to object at all would be stripped away with the qualia gone. Such actions rely on continuous feedback, feedback which is now gone. — noAxioms

I agree. I think experience is feeling. I think "What is it like?" Means "What does it feel like?". Not necessarily physical feeling. I think the experience of redness is a feeling. Although anyone would object if they were told all of that was about to be stripped from them, once it was stripped, once they had no feelings, there's nothing to complain about.

This, perhaps, is where consciousness really reveals itself as unique, and uniquely unlike any physical structures. — J

I think this is huge.

Consciousness does account for the rules of baseball. There can't possibly be another explanation for the Infield Fly Rule, the rule about hitting a foul ball when you have a full count, four balls is a walk, nine innings in a game, three outs per side per inning, and endless more.

But, certainly, as you say, the accounting is not the same as physical accounting. It's not the same as the way micro properties account for liquids and solids. Even if we can't, at least can't always, predict what physical things will happen under specific conditions, we can understand it after the fact. And, if we have the same circumstances, we will get the same results.

There's no way anyone could have predicted or calculated what the rules of baseball would be before the game was invented, or even what the rules would settle on after people were already playing it. And there's no looking at the rules now, and seeing how they couldn't have turned out any other way.

Should we expand the way we think of "accounts for"? Should we use a different phrase, since it's a different kind of accounting? "Conscious accounting"? "Variable accounting"?

One of the gists is that the emergence of organic life is also the emergence of intentional consciousness, even at very rudimentary levels of development. — Wayfarer

Also the emergence of information processing.

I thought that 'all sentient beings' was making a distinction between these and insentient beings? — hypericin

Can you give me an example of an insentient being?

Let's go over the other argument again. It's that qualia - such things as seeing colours - are essential to consciousness. But the very example you give shows that someone who cannot see colours - someone without qualia - would nevertheless be conscious.

What follows is that seeing colours - having qualia - is not constitutive of consciousness. — Banno

I can't imagine anyone's guess as to the nature of consciousness and how it comes into existence is such that the loss of the perception of color, or even vision entirely, would result in the loss of consciousness. I would not be surprised if most people think that you could lose all your senses, as well as your arms and legs, yet retain your consciousness.

But whether or not you, or anyone, think it would result in a total loss of consciousness, it is still in need of explanation. I think everyone in the world should watch all the Ninja Nerd videos that can. Here's one on The Phototransduction Cascade.. Just to give an ideas of the very beginning of the process, I wore a little from Michael Behe's in/famous Darwin's Black Box at the end. Agree or disagree with his conclusions or religious beliefs (I happen to disagree with both), he knows the science.

Nothing anywhere in these things suggests or hints at our experience of redness, or anything regarding consciousness. Colors aren't in these physical events. Yet we see colors. They are what is more important to us, and you would not willingly give them up.

When light first strikes the retina a photon interacts with a molecule called 11-cis-retinal, which rearranges within picoseconds to trans-retinal. (A picosecond is about the time it takes light to travel the breadth of a single human hair.) The change in the shape of the retinal molecule forces a change in the shape of the protein, rhodopsin, to which the retinal is tightly bound. The protein’s metamorphosis alters its behavior. Now called metarhodopsin II, the protein sticks to another protein, called transducin. Before bumping into metarhodopsin II, transducin had tightly bound a small molecule called GDP. But when transducin interacts with metarhodopsin II, the GDP falls off, and a molecule called GTP binds to transducin. (GTP is closely related to, but critically different from, GDP.)

GTP-transducin-metarhodopsin II now binds to a protein called phosphodiesterase, located in the inner membrane of the cell. When attached to metarhodopsin II and its entourage, the phosphodiesterase acquires the chemical ability to “cut” a molecule called cGMP (a chemical relative of both GDP and GTP). Initially there are a lot of cGMP molecules in the cell, but the phosphodiesterase lowers its concentration, just as a pulled plug lowers the water level in a bathtub.

Another membrane protein that binds cGMP is called an ion channel. It acts as a gateway that regulates the number of sodium ions in the cell. Normally the ion channel allows sodium ions to flow into the cell, while a separate protein actively pumps them out again. The dual action of the ion channel and pump keeps the level of sodium ions in the cell within a narrow range. When the amount of cGMP is reduced because of cleavage by the phosphodiesterase, the ion channel closes, causing the cellular concentration of positively charged sodium ions to be reduced. This causes an imbalance of charge across the cell membrane that, finally, causes a current to be transmitted down the optic nerve to the brain. The result, when interpreted by the brain, is vision.

If the reactions mentioned above were the only ones that operated in the cell, the supply of 11-cis-retinal, cGMP, and sodium ions would quickly be depleted. Something has to turn off the proteins that were turned on and restore the cell to its original state. Several mechanisms do this. First, in the dark the ion channel (in addition to sodium ions) also lets calcium ions into the cell. The calcium is pumped back out by a different protein so that a constant calcium concentration is maintained. When cGMP levels fall, shutting down the ion channel, calcium ion concentration decreases, too. The phosphodiesterase enzyme, which destroys cGMP, slows down at lower calcium concentration. Second, a protein called guanylate cyclase begins to resynthesize cGMP when calcium levels start to fall. Third, while all of this is going on, metarhodopsin II is chemically modified by an enzyme called rhodopsin kinase. The modified rhodopsin then binds to a protein known as arrestin, which prevents the rhodopsin from activating more transducin. So the cell contains mechanisms to limit the amplified signal started by a single photon.

Trans-retinal eventually falls off of rhodopsin and must be reconverted to 11-cis-retinal and again bound by rhodopsin to get back to the starting point for another visual cycle. To accomplish this, trans-retinal is first chemically modified by an enzyme to trans-retinol—a form containing two more hydrogen atoms. A second enzyme then converts the molecule to 11-cis-retinol. Finally, a third enzyme removes the previously added hydrogen atoms to form 11-cis-retinal, a cycle is complete. — Michael Behe

Rather, something seems to be added to all this activity (and thinking) which comes from a different category; it's not the same as putting enough molecules together in the right way so as to get liquidity. — J

I agree. But I'm thinking the "kind of" is key. Lower level properties account for higher level properties. At least they play a big role in the higher level properties, and the specific higher level properties would not exist if the lower level properties were different.

Micro properties can account for various higher level properties, such as liquidity and solidity.

Solidity can account for higher level properties, such as height and sharpness.

Consciousness can account for higher level properties, such as games with rules and mathematics.

What lower level properties account for consciousness, of course, is hotly debated.

Then qualia do not act as advertised; they are not private and ineffable. You have defended qualia to such an extent that they are no longer qualia. They are just colours and smells. — Banno

I have been explicitly saying qualia are colors and smells this whole time.

But your parable is cute. What it shows is that what matters for colour-talk is functional discrimination, not a private qualitative feel. You preserve the entire public language-game of colour, nothing is lost except the internal “what it’s like.” And crucially: nothing about the language-game depends on the missing qualia. You've shown that qualia do not do explanatory work. Cheers. "Colour experience” is a role in a language game, not some private essence. What we call “seeing blue” is just discriminating this from that, and responding appropriately in action and speech. — Banno

My thought experiment is about you/someone who has
known color your whole life. If you lost your ability to see colors, and that little doohickey became your only way of identifying things by color, you would know something was missing. And you would not think it was unimportant, even though you would still be able to have the conversations. Think of the times you would use it if you were alone. If you point it at a sunset, you would learn which areas of the sky are red, orange, yellow, and still blue. Point it at a painting or photograph of a field of flowers, and learn which are which colors. Would you bother?

And would you wish you could see colors again?

If people never had color vision, there woods be no concept of, or word for, color. And if we were all given this device, we would never use it. It would be meaningless. We would have no idea what its taps were for. Even if it was given to us by aliens who tried to explain it, it would be meaningless. We never would have been, and would not now start choosing paint by color. We wouldn't even have vans of specific colors. As we would have been up until then, we would be concerned with how it held up to the weather, to having our children's crayons washed off of it, and whatever other kinds of wear and tear. But there would be no aesthetics involved.

Notice that in loosing all my qualia, I did not loose consciousness. You should find that odd, if being conscious is having qualia. — Banno

People who go blind or deaf are still conscious.

I'll adopt everyone else's views on consciousness for the moment, and say that an entity that had no capacity for qualia would not be conscious. Do you think a machine that can differentiate frequencies in the range of the spectrum that we call visible light knows what red is? Do you think it knows what vision is? Do you think it's conscious? Do you think if we gave ChatGPT a device that can differentiate these frequencies it would experience read the way you do?

Being conscious is not possessing a certain metaphysical item, a quale. — Banno

This is correct.

Being consciousness is being a creature that lives, reacts, expresses, interacts, and speaks in certain ways. — Banno

Much of that can be explained by the physical things and events that make us up. But some aspects of some of those things would be different without consciousness. For example, there would be no conversations about color if we did not subjectively experience the physical events of photons hitting retina, voltage gates opening, ions flooding neurons, electrical signal moving through optic nerve, etc. That is, if we did not see colors.

And that embeddedness is what is in danger of being lost by the simplistic expedient of treating consciousness as a thing. — Banno

Consciousness it's not a thing. It is subjective experience.

I think if someone was going to strip away your qualia...
— Patterner
Oddly irrelevant. — Banno

Tell me you would not object to living with no color.

Let's take it away, and hook up an electronic eye that can differentiate wavelengths, and tap your skin in certain patterns to indicate to you what color you used to see. Go to the paint store, and you'll be able to have the same conversations. *tap tap tap* "Three taps. That's sky blue. But I'm looking for royal blue." Scan another can. *tap tap taaaaaaap* "There it is! I love royal blue."

Your conversations with the store clerk and your spouse will be exactly the same as they would have been when you could see color. It's all irrelevant.

It remains for advocates of qualia to explain what qualia add to the conversation that is not already found in our talk of sensations, colours, odours and sounds. — Banno

Those things are qualia. The physical is the body's interactions with the environment, which causes various electrical signals to go from various parts of our exterior to our brain, where they are compared with stored information from previous exposures, etc. Talk about that all you want, and it will never hint at sensations, colours, odours and sounds.

My slant is more like: The demand may or not make sense; all we can say is that, as of now, we don't know how to think about it; our conceptual scheme creates a roadblock that might prove decisive, but we can't say. — J

You are certainly correct. However, if I'm putting thought into this puzzle, I'm not going to focus it in a direction that doesn't make sense. I don't think I can't possibly be wrong about consciousness being fundamental, or physicalism being impossible. Maybe a third alternative is the actual answer. If someone has evidence for anything, I'd love to see it. But they don't. Neither do I.

I'm underlining the reasons for positing this kind of consciousness (call it Ur-consciousness) because I want to see if there are any other, independent reasons for thinking the thesis might be true. I myself don't see any, but tell me what you think: Is there any evidence for Ur-con? Is there a physical theory that can include it? What would be our research program, to find out if Ur-con did or did not exist? Is it, in short, the result of a transcendental argument alone? Something like the cosmological constant used to be? (And there's a lesson there, because the CC now has new conceptual arguments to back it up, so the transcendental arguers were right all along!) — J

I can't see a way to validate any hypothesis, or rule out any. Nobody has come up with a way. All scenarios play out the same. We can't study, or even detect, consciousness with our sciences, so we can't see it come into being. We know it exists, because it's us. But we can't

Is there a physical theory that can include it? Not a physical-only theory. We're physical beings, and we're conscious. One way or another, it happens together.

The question I'd want to reflect on is, Are we being too parsimonious in our description of the "lower levels"? Must it be a matter of properties, exclusively? On the analogy with liquidity, then yes, it must be. But what about the analogy of the football game? What is the "property" which, added to the properties of the players and the field, creates the game? Two answers spring to mind: It's the intentions of the players; or, It's the rules that humans have put in place. I'm not sure which of these is right, but they both have the feature of bringing in something from an entirely different category of being, something that really can't be considered a lower-level property. Food for thought, perhaps. — J

Whether it's the intentions of the players or the rules that humans have put in place, football would not exist without consciousness. Football's lower level is consciousness, but we don't know what all of consciousness' lower levels are yet.

Sure, all that. But how do qualia help here? I think that they are a red herring...

And I think I've made a good fist of showing that they are not well understood. — Banno

I think if someone was going to strip away your qualia, you would object. Probably strenuously. You are going to the paint store for some specific color, or deliberating once you get there. I'm sure there's a color that is best, on the whole, for vision. Is every wall, ceiling, and floor in your home is that color? Sunsets and the Grand Canyon serve absolutely no purpose for humans. still, people go crazy for them.

Qualia are absolutely not well understood. I do not think trying to understand them is a red herring. But, to each their own. if the fact that you and I can look at objects of various colors and agree on which is red, which is blue, and which is green is all that is important to you, that's perfectly fine.

What I mean is, why is the form it's in not the form that it can most easily process and act upon?
— Patterner

As the brain receives a sensory signal, it is just a signal, presumably without any qualitative content. The brain has to do the work so that the signal can be interpreted by (the conscious subset of) itself as qualitative.

The key insight is that the sensory manifold we experience is not accidental or epiphenomenal. It is a highly efficient way of organizing information that would otherwise overwhelm the nervous system. — hypericin

I guess I'm wondering about the timeline. Were the brain's ability to do the work so that the conscious subset could interpret the signals and the conscious subset always both present? Or came into being at the same time?

If not, which came first? If the ability to do the work came first, then why was it doing that? If the conscious subset came first, then what did it do before there was an interpretable signal for it?

I want to understand consciousness. Science has allowed us to come to know our reality to a degree that allows us to measure both the fantastically huge and fantastically small to degrees that are as fantastic, to understand the things and forces at work father away than we can comprehend outside of mathematics, and create wonders. We can communicate all of this information to others in various ways, giving them the ability to measure, understand, and creater the same things. And all this knowledge grows every day.

And yet, keeping with the paint store for an example, we have no idea how we experience redness. We know about photons of certain wavelengths, the retina, cones, optic nerve, neurons in the brain, and more other things than I can guess. But we have no idea why all of that physical activity is accompanied by our experience of redness. No idea how to even beginning looking for the answer.

We can give someone who can see all colors but red all the information that can ever be given, and they will not know what red looks like. No description or data will help.

To me, consciousness is the most fascination topic of all, and qualia is a big part of it.

we cannot know that what you experience as red is the same as what I experience as red
— Patterner
...and this makes no difference. The qual - the private experiences - do not have a place at the paint shop. — Banno

It makes no difference in the paint shop. If that is your only concern, then you're good.

Am I right that the major reason for proposing this ontology is to avoid needing to have consciousness emerge, or arise, or be caused by something physical? — J

The reason is more that it doesn't make sense to think that consciousness can emerge, or arise, or be caused by something physical, so we need another explanation.

I'm open to hearing how consciousness does emerge from purely physical things. But people like Greene, Hoffman, Crick, and Eagleman say they don't have any clue as to how that can be.

If there is a reason for the emergence of consciousness, then wouldn't that mean it was intended?
— Patterner

Not sure I follow that. Intended by whom? I'm using "reason" here in the sense of "What's the reason the seasons change?" But if that's confusing, we could, if you like, reserve the term "reason" for situations involving rationality and intention, and instead speak here of causes. So: "If this picture of consciousness as emergent turns out to be the case, we will understand the causes of its emergence very well." Is that less objectionable? (And mind you, neither of us is necessarily buying the "if" part. We're looking into what the hypothesis would entail.) — J

I gotcha. And yes, that's fine. But wouldn't that have to mean there are lower level properties? How do we understand liquidity? How do we understand that solid H2O floats in liquid H2O? That plants thrive in sunlight? Where the bulk of trees comes from?

We know the micro properties that are responsible for the structures the next level up; the properties of those structures that are responsible for the structures the next level up; etc.

If we understand the causes of the emergence of consciousness very well, can it be possible that it will not involve the properties of the lower levels?

But people do experience colours. The problem is that some folk want now to talk about ineffable private experiences of colour, instead of yellow. — Banno

IYou specifically said "...an illusion of language and introspection" and "What is spoken of as "the sensation of red" is not a thing at all, so much as the illusion of a thing.". But fine, let's not talk of illusion.

It is an objective fact that we see colors. It is a subjective experience in that we cannot quantify the experience, or transfer the knowledge of it to someone else. We can't tell a blind person what sight it, much less color. We can't tell someone with complete color blindness what color is. We can't tell someone with deuteranopia or protanopia what red or green are, even though they see other colors just fine. Color is not objective.

Which is why we say we cannot know that what you experience as red is the same as what I experience as red. We both experience whatever it is we each experience consistently, so we agree on what things are red. (For the most part, anyway.) But we have no way of objectively demonstrating that we experience it the same way. I would bet we do, but we'll never know.

Perhaps that “something left over” is an illusion of language and introspection, and since all evidence comes from publicly observable criteria, no extra metaphysical object is needed. — Banno

Not sure how you mean this. If people did not experience colors, why would they begin referring to the colors of things in order to distinguish between them when communicating? How would that have been successful if people were not actually experiencing color?

Also, how are we imagining an experience that we're not actually having? How is it that we can consistently identify things? How would I be able to identify spheres off different colors, you rearrange them while my eyes are closed, and I correctly identify them by color when I open my eyes again? And you and I agree on which color they all are?

Can we start referring to things by a characteristic that nobody has ever mentioned, and bring that new characteristic into illusory existence, which people will soon be claiming they are experiencing?

But either way, you are now a long way from that private, ineffable sensation. — Banno

If it was not private, if it was quantifiable and able to be studied, the way the molecules and noses are, we would know whether or not your experience of red and my experience of read was the same thing.

We got us a homunculus? Somewhere inside the feedback loops of neurons there's a tiny “observer” that experiences redness and smells coffee? — Banno

I don't suspect that. I suspect the entire system (each of us) experiences its own existence in a way that cannot be studied, or even detected, from the outside, and cannot be explained by physics.