It is possible I have gotten a glimpse of your position. The human without language is good. But don't you think every human without language associated the moon with things? One might look at the moon and think of a wolf that attacked one night. Another might think of a sexual encounter that took place in a field one night. Another might think of owls hooting. On and on. Making associations might be a defining characteristic of humanity. Perhaps a living thing that doesn't make associations is, by definition, not human. Once there were living things that could make associations, they started developing language. Which further shaped the mind, which lead to the ability to make more obscure associations... I don't know the first thing about early humans or the birth and evolution of language. I'm just throwing ideas out there.

In others words the one DOES lead to the other, and you think it does not. — Chet Hawkins

I do not think it does not. It is, indeed, a matter of degree. A spectrum. Your dogs are a good example. Even different breeds of dog, though all are the same species, able to mate and produce fertile offspring, can vary noticably in their degree of awareness.

But the area of the spectrum a tree is on does not come with the capacity to be amazed by card tricks. That is not suggesting their awareness is zero. It is suggesting a matter of degree in a specific area. If your dogs are far beyond other dogs, is it not possible that other dogs are likewise far beyond trees? Le Guin mentions "the wisdom in a tree's root." A phrase I am very fond of. With regard to a tree's life, and needs, and being, a tree's root is certainly far wiser than we are. But we are far wiser than trees are in other ways.

:up:

Is consciousness the capacity to feel? Do we not need to be feeling to be conscious? What I mean is, if we're not feeling, are we conscious?

Also, if we have the capacity to feel, is it possible to not be feeling?

When I'm under general anesthesia, I don't have the capacity to feel, and I am not conscious. (I've heard of those who do not lose the capacity to feel. They only lose the capacity to move in any way, and remain conscious throughout the surgery. :gasp:)

I have a quote below from Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious, by Antonio Damasio. In short;
-"neither plants nor bacteria appear to have minds or consciousness"
-Bacteria and plants "respond to numerous anesthetics by suspending their life activities and turning to a sort of hibernation where their ability to sense disappears."
-He proposes anesthetics don't target the mind. They target the senses, and "minds are no longer possible once sensing is blocked."

As we discuss the mindless and non-conscious nature of sensing, we should introduce and reflect on an intriguing fact: bacteria as well as plants respond to numerous anesthetics by suspending their life activities and turning to a sort of hibernation where their ability to sense disappears. These facts were first established by no less a figure than the French biologist Claude Bernard in the late nineteenth century. Imagine the astonishment of Claude Bernard when he discovered that the early, inhalable anesthetics of his day would quiet plants down to a slumber.

The fact is especially noteworthy because, as we have just noted, neither plants nor bacteria appear to have minds or consciousness, the “functions” that, to this day, most everyone, commoner or scientist, associates with the action of anesthetics. You undergo anesthesia before surgery so that the loss of “consciousness” lets the surgeon work in peace and saves you from suffering. Well, I propose that what anesthetics cause—thanks to a perturbation of ion channels in the bilayer properties of cell membranes—is a radical and basic disruption of the sensing functions we have just described. Anesthetics do not target minds specifically—minds are no longer possible once sensing is blocked. And anesthetics do not target consciousness either, because, as we will propose, consciousness is a particular state of mind and it cannot occur in the absence of mind. — Antonio Damasio

Could that be correct? I would think that, if I lost all sensory input, I could still think about things I'd sensed in the past. Or do math in my head. Maybe anesthetics work different on us than they do on bacteria and plants.

Yes there is a Real moon and Dreams are real experiences. But both are, for Humans, displaced by our construction (about?) of them. — ENOAH

Not sure how you mean this. The moon exists outside of our heads. But our experience of it is a construction of it inside of our heads.

If that's what you mean, then I don't see how the same can be said about dreams. Our dreams may contain reconstructions of images of things we saw when we were awake. Even things we never saw may be conglomerates of things we did see. And we may construct things based on things we hear in the waking world as we are sleeping. But the dream is not displaced. It is unique (recurring dreams aside), and some people and places are, afaicat, also unique. In what way is it displaced?

I'm seldom more than barely awake. I would like to blame it on apnea, but that's probably a bit dishonest.

Chicks. Am I right?

Expanding on my answer.

My experiences are real in all cases, all scenarios. If I knew I was experiencing VR, I would have a real experience of a reality that I knew was V. I might act differently. I wouldn't intentionality break my grandmother's heirloom, but I'd probably break a huge window to see how it sounds. :grin:

Dreams are real experiences. I wake up and realize i was not in the physical world, and my thoughts and feelings of my experiences adjust to that knowledge. Dreams that feel more "real" are very interesting. Sometimes I don't just remember one, I continue to feel the emotions I had experienced long after waking up. Ever wake up mad at someone you know, even though you know it's ridiculous? Or wake up missing someone you were intensity in love with?

Someone plugged into the Matrix for decades would not not have real experiences and a real life. Cypher understood, as did "nearly ninety-nine percent of the test subjects [who] accepted the program, provided they were given a choice - even if they were only aware of it at a near-unconscious level." If someone died of old age, knowingly or unknowingly having been plugged into the Matrix their entire life, they would have had a life.

Richard Bach also wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Illusions is excellent, and only takes me, a very slow reader, a couple hours to read.

Assuming our "normal" human experience is Real, and unknown to you, you woke up wearing a Virtual Reality head set. That day (ignore the details and niceties, bumping into tables etc) you experience everything in VR. It all happens, it's there, the experience exists. But the next day would you say your experience was real or an illusion? — ENOAH

Excellent!

If I thought I was operating in the Real world, my experience would be real. One of my favorite sigs I've seen is, If you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make?. (Another is, I spent a lot of money on booze and women. The rest I just wasted.). I would think and feel the same ways and things I would have if I hadn't had the headset on. From the standpoint of my consciousness, there's no difference. I would feel the same joys, angers, etc., I would have in the real world.

From the standpoint of the real world, of course, it isn't real. If I broke a mirror in VR, there is no real broken mirror. But, thinking it real, my grief over having broken my grandmother's antique mirror, given to her by her own beloved grandmother, is real.

After I learned I had been in VR, I would have some new experiences. I would be overjoyed that I hadn't broken my grandmother's treasured keepsake.

I wasn't actually saying your analogy is flawed (though I can see why you'd think I was). — ENOAH

Oh, no, I didn't mean that. I was just saying I wasn't going to try to pick apart your analogies. They didn't seem right to me, but I suspected the problem was my not understanding what you mean by illusions. I was just talking too much, confusing the issue further.

You are always (as theistic as this is about to sound) perfect in (your) Nature. — ENOAH

Here we are talking about illusions, and now you're reminding me of Richard Bach's Illusions.

I'll read your post a couple more times, and see if I can figure out what you're saying. I believe you're coming from a place I'm not familiar with.

I take it now that you are kind of a push-me pull-you of openness. You are open to the idea that ideas are real or let's say at least impactful. But you are not open to the idea that all the seeds of awareness (any level of awareness) are present in all things since the dawn of time as a law of nature. Is that correct? — Chet Hawkins

That is not correct. We could not be conscious if the possibility of consciousness was not present in all things, and from the beginning. We are, after all, made of the same particles everything else is made of. My guess is that all particles have the mental property of proto-consciousness, in addition to the physical properties like mass and charge. I think proto-consciousness is simple experience, which, when matter is arranged in certain ways, combines to form consciousness.

But that doesn't mean a rock or tree knows what can normally be done with cards, and is surprised when someone skilled at sleight of hand does something that makes it look like a card is floating in the air without any means of support, reforms after being torn into tiny pieces, or passes through a solid wall. They do not know such things, do not have the sensory apparatus to perceive things visually (necessary for visual illusions), and I'm not aware of any reason to believe they have the intellectual capacity to experience such illusions even if they did have eyes. Dogs have eyes, but they don't seem impressed by David Copperfield or Penn & Teller.

Second, an illusion needs a viewer.
— Patterner
No, it does not. — Chet Hawkins

If I am alone practicing a card trick, there is no illusion. I know and see exactly what is happening with the cards. The illusion only exists when there is an audience who does not see the way the card gets from A to B, and sees it seemingly do the impossible. The table and walls don't see the illusion.

Trees along the road do not see the heat waves coming off the road on a hot day and think it looks like water. The car I'm driving does not think it looks like water. You need a person to see the illusion of water. (Possibly other animals can see it. I don't know.)

You realize I too disagree, right? I'm not attacking. Just clarifying. — ENOAH

No worries. I didn't think you were attacking. I didn't even think you were necessarily expressing your own view. Just saying I'm not in that category.

It came about naturally, through nature, through natural processes. It couldn't be otherwise.
— Patterner

So did a beavers dam, but the beaver doesn't falsely identify it as a real extension of its body; but better, so did Mickey Mouse and Oliver Twist but we recognize they are Fictions. — ENOAH

I get very annoyed when I make an analogy, and people immediately point out its flaws. Of course an analogy is flawed. The only thing that could be a perfect comparison for x is x. The point of an analogy is not its flaws, as there certainly will be some. The point of an analogy is the common ground, despite the differences.

All that being said, I'm not going to try to pick apart your analogies. Reason being, I don't understand the point you're trying to make with them. I just cannot understand what you mean by illusion. I know you've tried to explain a few times, but I'm not getting it. I don't blame you if you decide you're done trying.

I will say two things about the idea that it is an illusion, both of which I've said in the past, here and there. I realize I may not be addressing the word in the sense that you mean it.

First, just because something does not have physical properties that can be touched, measured, weighed, does not mean it is not real. We are literally reshaping our planet because of our ideas. We want things to be other than they are, and act on the idea of what we think they should be. I don't know how we can view the ideas that are transforming our world as not real.

Second, an illusion needs a viewer. When a magician does a card trick, the cards and hands do not view what is going on as an illusion. The audience watches, and is delightfully surprised to see something happen that cannot have happened. The audience, of course, needs to be able to recognize an illusion. A tree doesn't recognize illusions.

If consciousness is an illusion, where is the viewer of the illusion? How can a consciousness be the viewer of its own illusory nature, fooled into thinking itself actually conscious?

All of that may be a clear sign that I don't know what you mean by illusion.

1. That it is the essence/substance of our bodies, — ENOAH

I do not agree.

2. That it is "real" as nature is Real, or worse, more real than nature — ENOAH

It came about naturally, through nature, through natural processes. It couldn't be otherwise.

3. That it is a thing worthy of deeper analysis than psychology — ENOAH

My opinion is that human consciousness is the most extraordinary thing known to us, and is worthy of any amount of analysis.

(I don't know whose post that quote came from, I must’ve erred) — ENOAH

You had not quoted me. I just jumped on. :grin:

I was saying that the self can be functional and still an illusion. The "illusion" is not intending that the self isn't actually existent, serving a function. — ENOAH

It exists, and serves a function, but is an illusion? What is the definition of "illusion" that it allows for that sentence?

The illusion is rather as to its nature and our identification with its fleeting and empty construction, as if it were not just real, but the most privileged among the real, maybe even immortal. — ENOAH

I couldn't say, not believing in what I assume you are referring to - an immortal soul that survives the body.

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. But I think a problem is thinking the self is not real, or is an illusion, if it is not a physical object. If I was frozen in time, or carbonite, or moments after I die, the physical object is there, but there is no consciousness. No self. I'm not that body, or the brain. I'm the activity of the brain. At least certain activities of certain parts of the brain.

I am convinced by the contents of the book that the self is an illusion. If you want to assess the contents of the book you will have to read it. I am not going to copy and paste an entire book into my posts - that would breach copyright laws. — Truth Seeker

The idea is, if you want someone to believe the things in a book you read are true, then you should give some specifics about what the book says. We can't all just tell everyone to read books x, y, and z. We can't all read every book there is. And we're not all going to accept the word of someone saying, "You will agree with me if you read the book." Quoting the entire book is not what I'm suggesting. But, since getting people to read the book, or at least agree with you, is obviously the point, a little detail would help.

We are not our body, but we appear to be embodied. I agree about the mind dying when the body dies.
— Truth Seeker

What do you mean by "we appear to be embodied"? Can you imagine yourself existing without your body? — Corvus

I suppose, theoretically, I could have my brain removed and put in a jar that keeps it alive, and is wired to sensory apparatus so I could still perceive what's near me. My guess is I would still be conscious, and still myself. My brain is where my consciousness lies. I can lose any number of body parts, and still be my self.

But if my brain had been removed at birth, and put in that jar, I certainly would not be the same self I am now, and I would not bet that there would be any consciousness or self at all. My body, every aspect of it, helps shape my self, even if that self is located in the brain. I would be an extremely different self if I had been born without arms or legs. I'd be different, though to a lesser degree, if I'd grown to 5' 10", instead of 6' 3". And different to a still lesser degree if I wasn't immune to poison ivy.

The body is a life-support system for the brain. Ultimately, everything does what it does in order to keep the brain alive, even if one things immediate job is to keep, day, there heart pumping. But the brain can't very well ignore everything all of that. It all goes into shaping the self.

The self feels like an entity even though it is not an entity but a process. This is what I mean by the self being an illusion. — Truth Seeker

Does the definition of "entity" not allow a process to be an entity? I really don't know, but I wouldn't approve of that limitation. The entities we call human beings are not nothing but physical objects. As I said in my previous post, that leaves out everything that truly defines - to ourselves and to each other - each of us.

I like your idea of proto-consciousness. How would we test this idea? — Truth Seeker

I can't imagine. If it is true that particles have proto-consciousness, then there is no way to test anything in its absence. We can't try to create artificial consciousness without it, because we can't remove it from the material any more than we can remove the mass.

Also, while I don't think the physical properties of the structures and processes are sufficient to explain consciousness, I also don't think proto-consciousness can explain it without the structures and processes. Just as we can't try to explain a magnet with only the mass or charge, I don't think we can explain consciousness with only the physical properties or mental properties.

I'm not voting for any off those. The first should be reworded:
The self is generated by the brain. The self vanishes when the brain dies.

That's what the self is. A conglomerate of brain activity. Everything that is important about me is found in that. They are the things that define me. When people talk about me, they may describe me physically, but that's primarily to make sure everyone is talking about the same person. People don't say, "I never liked him, because of his height." Or, "I always enjoyed hanging around with him, because of his hair color."

They might say, "He annoyed me because he talked about genealogy all the damn time." Or, "I love his passion for Bach." Those are the things that are me. And that's all brain activity.

I should add that I am not at all convinced that all brain activity is purely physical. As I've said several times, I don't think physical interactions of particles and structures can explain consciousness. I suspect the answer is a form of panpsychism. I suspect particles have, in addition to physical properties like mass and charge, a mental property, called proto-consciousness. Proto-consciousness is absolutely necessary for the generation of self, as are the physical properties.

I can understand that. But I can see patterns without knowing their meaning. Without even knowing if they mean anything at all. Give me two ten thousand-digit strings of 0s and 1s, and I'll bet there are repeated patterns within each, and between them. Are they random patterns that just happen to repeat? Are they Morse code? If I hold the printout against the horizon, will it match the Alps?

Does an AI understand any of that? Or does it just recognize that the string of digits 110101100100000101101101011000.......000110100101101010 that it just "saw" matches a string of digits in File 1110010001010001000010110110101011010, Sub-File 11111110001100000, ... Sub-Sub-Sub-Sub-File 10111?

those of you who have been at this longer than I have, and know more about it than I do, correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.

At this point, it seems to me, no AI is anything but a very efficient Chinese Room. Humans programmed them so that, when a string of symbols is input, what we call words, it chooses the appropriate string of symbols to output. It doesn't have any capacity to know what those strings of symbols mean to us, or to assign them any meaning of its own.

Further, the AI doesn't "see" the strings of symbols we input. It "sees" the binary that is the basis of the symbols. When 1011101000101000 is input, it outputs 1110010010100011 (whatever). And even that has no meaning for the AI. Ultimately, it's nothing more than dominoes knocking each other down.

The meaning in the system is only seen by us. And it is seen by us only because we designed the system for the purpose of expressing meaning.

And that sure sounds like a Hard Problem ;-) — Wayfarer

Indeed! How is it we are capable of all that? How do we make AI capable of it?

Bottom right: Fred Alan Wolf. — Wayfarer

First glance I thought it was Marty Feldman. Which would explain the pronunciation of "Igor" in Young Frankenstein.

Yes, of course. But we can come to understand as much as we can. Newton didn't know how gravity came to be. Mendel didn't know what DNA is.

My interpretation of the issue is this. The fundamental puzzle of mind, is that it is never truly an object of cognition, in the way that physical objects are. Again, no metaphysical posit is required to prove that. Something nearer a perspectival shift is required: the reason the mind is not objectively graspable, is that it is the subject of experience, that to which or to whom experience occurs, that which cognises, sees and judges. But as Indian philosophy puts it, the eye can see another, but not itself; the hand can grasp another, but not itself. Again, no metaphysical posit required, but it does throw into relief the elusive nature of the subject and its intractibility to the objective sciences. — Wayfarer

Because mind is of the nature it is, I don't think the same limitation applies that does to eye and hand. A minds thinks, examines, theorizes. No reason it can't do those things about itself. No reason it can't be the object of its own examination.

Granted, there will be arguments about what thinking is "correct" or "legitimate" when going about this. but such arguments are not limited to the study of the mind. As in all fields, different groups of people will go about it in different ways. Some will contribute more than others to the growth of knowledge.

Odd that I didn't get a notification about you quoting me. Oh well, maybe just a one time glitch.

Note --- Are you familiar with Deacon's Incomplete Nature? — Gnomon

Me? I love the book. At least the half I've gotten through.

Do you think the explanation for Abiogenesis will necessarily conform to the current dominant scientific worldview of Materialism? :nerd: — Gnomon

From the little I know of Complexity and Self-organization, I think it's plausible. I don't know enough specifics to defend the theory, though. And I don't think there's one specific abiogenesis theory that's considered more likely than others? Other than various creation stories, I don't know of other types of theories.

Gotcha.

Trying to understand the terminology. If full-on consciousness can be of not very much experience/very little content, is our consciousness also full-on, but with much more experience/greater content? Or is our consciousness called something other then full-on? I realize this is your term, not one found in books about panpsychism. But I want to understand your thinking.

There doesn't seem to be any intermediate stage between having an experience and not having one. — bert1

My thought is that there isn't any not having an experience.

We may have a conceptual disagreement, I'm not sure. I think you are suggesting some kind of phenomenality/proto-consciousness as a precursor to consciousness which isn't full-on consciousness, whereas I don't think such a thing is conceptually distinguishable from full-on consciousness. — Patterner

I don't know of any reason to believe most things are full-on conscious. How do you define "full-on" that allows particles, or rocks, or the vast majority of things, to fall under the umbrella?

Indeed. And the problems with trying to explain how it comes about leads to the idea that maybe it didn't come about at all, but was always there in the first place. — bert1

One way or another, the capacity for consciousness was always there in the first place. If the capacity wasn't always there, consciousness couldn't exist.

I guess I didn't explain myself very well. — Wayfarer

Your audience, in this case, is more likely the problem. :lol:

But biological information is very different from the information encoded in binary on a computer, or written content. — Wayfarer

Yes, very different. Our information is not compulsory. (I think I like active information better. But what is it actually called?) Have we created active information systems? That might help with making artificial consciousness.

But I'm still dubious that 'information' has fundamental explanatory power — Wayfarer

I've been thinking about something lately. I assume it's part of some field of study or other, but I don't know enough to know which. I only thought along these lines after learning about Barbieri when I came here, so I guess it's a part of bio-semiotics.

Some information is what I might call passive. Books are a good example. Books are filled with information. We know what the squiggles on the page represent, because we invented the information systems of language and writing. So when we read a book, we can take that information in, and learn many things.

But that can always be, and often is, the end of it. We can entirely ignore and disregard the information we've gained. We can think about it, but still choose to not do anything related to it.

DNA is a different kind of information. It represents chains of amino acids and proteins. It seems to compel action. Those amino acids and proteins are manufactured. The information is not interpreted by thinking beings like us, although we have come to be able to interpret this information system that we did not create. The things that interpret the information encoded in the base pairs don't seem to have a choice about whether or not to act on it. The information compels action. Instead of passive information, it is... what... Compulsory information? Whatever it's called, isn't that some explanatory power?

Gnever mind. I should have gnown better than to engage with gnarcissistic gnonsense. — wonderer1

Gnow gnow.

I wrote an article on this a while back for 1,000 Word Philosophy, although they weren't interested in the topic.

https://medium.com/@tkbrown413/introducing-the-scandal-of-deduction-7ea893757f09 — Count Timothy von Icarus

Hey! Your last name isn't von Icarus!!


:lol:

Yes, but, "could" is counterfactual. Are you aware of instances of Life & Mind anywhere except on the third rock from the sun? :wink: — Gnomon

I'm only saying there is a source of energy that can account for the energy that would be needed to decrease the entropy, if that's what happened.

Gotcha. Thanks.

We call it random, even though, no matter the size of the circle, we don't have to predict, we absolutely know what any digit will be?

Also, pi isn't random.

I have read a few descriptions of Shannon's work, and cannot get the gist of things. (Sadly, same with Godel. Very unhappy at my apparent inability.) But I believe the idea that you bring up is that the most random sequences CAN produce the most information. If you know a sources can produce only strings of Xs, you will get no information. You will never get anything other than what you expect, which is the only thing you CAN get.

But if the source can produce ANYTHING, then you can never know what you will receive, and what you receive will be full of information.

Note --- Planet Earth is the primary example of Negative Entropy in the universe, where Life & Mind have emerged against all odds (second law of thermodynamics). — Gnomon

I would suggest the system is the solar system, not just the Earth. The energy from the sun could have powered the increase in order.

"Answer 2: Because the number 7 is prime."

Yes. But only because the person who set the dominoes up did so so that they would end that way if they began falling in certain ways, then choose the way the dominoes would begin falling.

Which is the same reason a computer comes up with the answer it comes up with.

It's all because of what those numbers mean to humans.