All we're worried about is the details in how the brain generates it. — Philosophim

That is the Hard Problem. "Through our physical brain" is a where, not a how. "In the sky" does not tell us how flight is accomplished. "In our legs" does not tell us how walking is accomplished. "In our brain" does not tell us how consciousness is accomplished. The details are not insignificant. They are remarkably important. And they are unknown.

You may have misunderstood that point within the full context of what I was communicating, or I was unclear. It is not that we cannot communicate our subjective experience. Its that we cannot experience another's subjective experience. Meaning that there is no objective way to measure another's subjective experience. — Philosophim

I understand. But that is not what the Hard Problem is. The Hard Problem is explaining how subjective experience exists at all.

What you are talking about helps demonstrate why the Problem is Hard. Why can't we experience another's subjective experience? Using our senses, and all the scientific methods and devices we've discovered and invented, we can perceive, detect, and study matter and energy. We can measure things with incredible precision, and all get exactly the same measurements. And not only physical objects, we can do this with physical processes. We can measure aspects of flight, like altitude, speed, and direction. We can also see how things necessary for flight, like lift and aerodynamics, ultimately come from the micro-properties of particles.

None of that can be said about consciousness. We can't even detect it to the slightest degree in any way, much less measure any aspect of it. We can now detect brain activity, but that's physical processes. Understanding all of that to any degree doesn't touch on any subjective experiences taking place. We know certain conscious experiences are associated with certain brain activity. But having total knowledge of every aspect of that brain activity, if such was possible - which neurons are involved; which fire in which order; where all the signals each receives comes from, and where each signal each sends goes; etc. - tells us nothing about the subjective experience taking place. Total knowledge of all that doesn't even tell us subjective experience is taking place. How the physical activity produces consciousness is a mystery. As I said a post or two ago, a couple of the world's leading experts in relevant fields, Koch in brains and consciousness, and Greene in the properties of matter and laws of physics, do not know how it happens. It's a Hard Problem.

At 1:24, he says:

My own feeling, and there's no proof to this, but my own feeling is that...

And in my quote, he says nothing we know from our sciences even hints at it. I think he would agree with me that we don't have the answer.

I often cannot follow what you're saying. I'm always trying to read various books on all this stuff, but it doesn't come easily to me. I'm always looking up words, the definitions of which often lead me to other words I have to look up, and onto others, and then back to the original. If you can explain more about what you mean by design. When I think of design, it comes with a designer. If that is not what you mean, then maybe I can participate. we might say, snowflakes, in general, have a design, and each one has its own unique design. But I would use the word *cough* pattern, instead of design. is that the kind of thing you’re talking about?

You are not describing the HPoC. It's true that nobody/thing can experiences my subjective experiences. But the HP is not that we can't communicate subjective experience; it is how a clump of matter can have them at all. In The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers writes:

Why should there be conscious experience at all? It is central to a subjective viewpoint, but from an objective viewpoint it is utterly unexpected. Taking the objective view, we can tell a story about how fields, waves, and particles in the spatiotemporal manifold interact in subtle ways, leading to the development of complex systems such as brains. In principle, there is no deep philosophical mystery in the fact that these systems can process information in complex ways, react to stimuli with sophisticated behavior, and even exhibit such complex capacities as learning, memory, and language. All this is impressive, but it is not metaphysically baffling. In contrast, the existence of conscious experience seems to be a new feature from this viewpoint. It is not something that one would have predicted from the other features alone.

That is, consciousness is surprising. If all we knew about were the facts of physics, and even the facts about dynamics and information processing in complex systems, there would be no compelling reason to postulate the existence of conscious experience. If it were not for our direct evidence in the first-person case, the hypothesis would seem unwarranted; almost mystical, perhaps. — Chalmers

That's a good explanation of the problem.

The solution? In Until the End of Time, Brian Greene wrote:

And within that mathematical description, affirmed by decades of data from particle colliders and powerful telescopes, there is nothing that even hints at the inner experiences those particles somehow generate. How can a collection of mindless, thoughtless, emotionless particles come together and yield inner sensations of color or sound, of elation or wonder, of confusion or surprise? Particles can have mass, electric charge, and a handful of other similar features (nuclear charges, which are more exotic versions of electric charge), but all these qualities seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience. How then does a whirl of particles inside a head—which is all that a brain is—create impressions, sensations, and feelings? — Greene

And Christof Koch, a neurophysiologist who is the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, who has been trying to solve the mystery for decades, made a bet with Chalmers 25 years ago, because he's thought we would know how neurons explain it by now. He just paid off the bet, because the answer has not been found. While that's not proof that neurons don't explain it, it's certainly not proof that they do.

So someone who knows a ton more about the properties of particles, laws of physics, and the forces, than the vast majority of people, and has put a good deal of thought into consciousness, says those things don't offer an explanation for it. And a guy who knows a ton more about neurons, the brain, and nervous systems, than the vast majority of people, has put far more thought into consciousness than the vast majority of people, and has done more experimentation and testing into how the neurons, brain, and nervous system produce consciousness, than the vast majority of people, says we don't know how it happens. With those two people in mind, I don't think we have the answer.

Consciousness certainly seems inextricably bound to brain activity. But that's not the same as explaining how it happens. How do the same physical properties and processes that explain the abilities to: perceive photons, differentiate different patterns and frequencies within a certain range of the electromagnetic spectrum, initiate action potentials that lead to bodily movements in response to the perceptions, store perceived patterns, and incorporate the stored information into the initiation of future action potentials also explain how those abilities have awareness of themselves, or awareness of their own awareness. If anyone can answer that, they are keeping it from Koch and Greene.

You have raised the central question: Where is the starting point of order? — ucarr

Perhaps cosmologists know the answer? They're always trying to figure out the math as close to the BB as possible, but they don't think it works within x billionths of a seconds? Something weird like that.

A second, central question: How did number and order pre-dating humans get internalized within the human understanding? — ucarr

We grew within the universe, which has consistent principles, and are made of the universe's materials, which are subject to those principles. Is there a reason to think an intelligence that developed in such a way would not be able to recognize these principles?

A third, central question: does the biconditional operator in logic link number with order? If N = number and O = order finds true expression as n ⟺ o, then finding the start of one entails finding the start of the other. — ucarr

What is the relationship between numbers and order? To what degree can you have one without three other? To what degree are they not the same thing?

Now we come to the hotly controversial topic of design and its location within the cosmic history.
If it’s possible to pinpoint the advent of design within the phenomenal universe, where in the timeline of events does it lie? — ucarr

You're on your own with the topic of design.

What I mean is, will thinking that objects 'possess an inherent attribute that can be labeled "number"' lead to a dead end? Will thinking it is not an attribute of objects, but of the universe's order, that we are recognizing lead to a dead end? After all, we might approach things differently, depending on which we take as our starting point.

You go on to declare that life wouldn't be possible without the designed and pervasive order of the universe as its ground. — ucarr

No. I did not, and do not, declare the order is designed.

You present a picture of naturally ordered life arising from pre-existing order. — ucarr

Yes. The order pre-existed the life that arose within it.

You acknowledge designed order is imbibed into human genome from the forces and materials from which it has arisen. — ucarr

Again, I did not, and do not, acknowledge design.

This is your description of cosmic mind meeting human mind. — ucarr

No, I did not, and do not, describe cosmic mind.

You don't believe numbers are a human invention: — ucarr

I think humans noticed an attribute of the universe's order. This attribute existed before any being able to notice did so. So no, we didn't invent it. We noticed it, and named it. Then we worked to understand it better. Then we expanded the field of study in ways that we never noticed - indeed, could not possibly notice - by observing objects.

But it seems, from my limited musings on the topic, that the attribute we named is of the universe's order, not of objects. But, serious question, does it ever make a differences? It we treat it as an attribute of things, do we run into trouble somewhere down the line? Same question if we treat it as an attribute of the universe's order.

Do you believe a brain confined to a vat will eventually start counting? — ucarr

Certainly not. I don't believe a human could come to any intelligence or consciousness under those circumstances. I believe sensory input is essential.

Just seeing this thread, and only read the first post. Hopefully not annoying everyone with stuff that's been discussed to death.

But what if what is right is what we find reprehensible? What if we ought to kill babies for fun? — Michael

How would it have been determined that it is right?

I've been saying math started when humans caught onto patterns based on numbers of physical things. Fingers, being a permanent and handy instance of countable things, launched human understanding of number. Two fingers look different from five fingers. Hah! Now we've started the process. Why do two fingers look different from five fingers? Is it not because fingers, and the like, possess an inherent attribute that can be labeled "number?" Different numbers of the same things look different because things possess the attribute called "number." When their number differs, they, as a group, differ. Indeed, if your piggy bank suddenly becomes possessed of fewer gold coins than yesterday, you become emotionally charged up by the numerical attribute of things. — ucarr

I have never thought about this topic to any degree. Now that I am, I think I disagree. I don’t think the things being counted have an attribute called "number."

The universe is consistent. Laws of physics, mathematics, and whatever else, are the same everywhere. (Maybe not in a black hole.) If they were not, we would have chaos, and I doubt life would have arisen at all. (Although I suppose there are any number of sci-fi scenarios…) We evolved, and exist, in this universe, with its consistent principles. Meaning they are within us. I think counting is our recognition of these attributes, these consistent principles, of the universe. It makes sense that we recognize the principles of our own existence when we see them outside of ourselves. It wouldn't make sense if we were surprised every time we added 2 and 2, and came up with 4.

Seeing the stones does more than facilitate their counting; it affords it. — ucarr

My apologies. I just don't know what you're saying.

Whose awareness is greater: the monarch butterfly's,
— Patterner

The assumption would be that ours is. If by awareness we mean metacognition - which is generally the starting point from these sorts of discussions. — Tom Storm

You asked these questions:

Is the modern mind an improvement on the pre-modern? How would you measure improvement? More reason, more science, less superstition, less religion? — Tom Storm

Have you just answered them?

I'm not on sure footing in a lot of this. I don't know if intelligence must increase before awareness does. At least in the sense of the "loftier" kinds of awareness, as opposed to what I said about us having a greater body of knowledge than our cave dwelling ancestors. At what point did our ancestors not have the capacity for wisdom and understanding the true nature of reality? At what point did they have the capacity, but simply hadn't yet thought of it?

Whose awareness is greater: the monarch butterfly's, whose innate wisdom let's it live perfectly in its niche, and migrate 3,000 miles to a place it's never been; or ours, which allows us to have these thoughts and conversations, create art (as opposed to making something fictional that pretty beings perceive as art, and build all manner of things that would not exist in the universe if not for such awareness? I wouldn't trade mine for theirs, but that doesn't mean I think they got the short end of the stick.

I’m thinking math began when cave people looking at their fingers started seeing repeatable patterns. — ucarr

Math may have beginning because we noticed repeatable patterns in material objects. But math is not a material object. The mathematical writings in book or on computer screens are material things, but they are not math. They are how we share mathematical ideas.

Ok. For me this sounds more like a matter of quantity rather than quality. — Tom Storm

Yup.

I'm reasonably certain a lot of people will find this problematic. Is the modern mind an improvement on the pre-modern? How would you measure improvement? More reason, more science, less superstition, less religion? The die hard secular humanists will agree to this. — Tom Storm

I didn't say it's an improvement. Just that it's more aware. We are certainly more aware than our cave-dwelling ancestors were. Even if our brains are identical to theirs, we have learned much since then. Greater body of knowledge. We are aware of more things. And more kinds of things. Odds that improvement?

There may be things we are not aware of that other creatures are. How does the Monarch butterfly migrate from Canada to the exact same trees in Mexico that it's great great grandparents left in the spring? They're aware of stuff I'm not. But I'll bet they aren't aware of themselves, or their own awareness. With my awareness and intelligence, I can do what they do. And quite a few other things. But their awareness and intelligence do not give them many of the things I have. Not even the ability to not make that migration. So I'll consider my awareness greater than theirs.

I'm assuming this is intended as a joke and it is kind of funny. — Tom Storm

Well, I tried to present it inn a humorous way. But not really a joke. In that way, we are, unarguable, growing. It's entirely possible our population will continue to grow, and we'll spread out among the other planets, and maybe even the stars. Awareness may come to occupy a larger percentage of the universe.

But likely never a noticable percentage. Even if we came to occupy the entire galaxy, what percentage of the universe is that?

More arguable is the idea of the awareness, itself, growing. Our awareness is currently greater than that of our ancestors who lived at any point in the past, or any other awareness on the planet. But is it still growing? Can't really say. I don't even know what that would mean.

OK. But then why does it matter? What's your demonstration of 'growing'? — Tom Storm

There are quite a few more of us now than there used to be.

So are you saying subject to human judgment humans are significant? :wink: — Tom Storm

No. I'm saying we're a 'growing awareness'. Significance doesn't enter into it. Same with the growing plant in my yard.

However, as human judgement is the only kind of judgement there is, judging ourselves to be significant does, indeed, make us so. We are causing things to come into being that would not come into being anywhere in the universe if not for us.



I'm just talking about physical size. An unmeasurably small part of the universe contains billions of points of self-awareness. IMO, that immeasurably small part is, hands down, the most interesting part. Not simply because of its uniqueness. Rather, because of the way in which it is unique.

My own speculative tendencies wouldn't consider human life to be significant enough to be rated as a 'growing awareness'. — Tom Storm

How are we not? Regardless of how, regardless of whether or not it implies anything about anything, regardless of how incalculably tiny a fraction of the universe we are, we are, unlike anything else we are aware of, aware. Perhaps the only speck of awareness in the universe. Or maybe not even a speck, but growing.

It's from a review in a UK Buddist online magazine, of Thomas Nagel's 2012 book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. — Wayfarer

Ah. Yes, I've read the book. (Even understood it now and then.) I just didn't know what your quote was from.

— The Universe is Waking Up — Wayfarer

What's this?

If we are throwing around metaphysical potentialities, why couldn't the universe be entirely self-aware? Could it not be that it's humans alone who are in the dark? I don't understand how we get to arrive at something so specific as the universe is gaining self-awareness. — Tom Storm

Everything we see other than us lacks what we have. The only awareness the universe ha is through/in us. (Of course, maybe there are other pockets of it out there in other parts of the universe.)

What exactly does self-awareness consist of when it comes to a universe (I am assuming by universe you mean something more like cosmic consciousness)? — Tom Storm

Speculation. Sure, maybe, anything is possible I suppose. But we only know what we know. And that is, we are self-aware, and not much else is.

Is there an end result - all meaning is assimilated and converges and 'bang' a new stage in consciousness commences? — Tom Storm

I like it!

The question of 'meaning' is an interesting one. My intuition is that meaning is something pertaining to human beings and sense making. How does the notion of meaning apply outside of contingent beings?

I sense a fresh thread on this. — Tom Storm

I hope so! I don't know much about meaning, from any formal, educated pov.

Not a criticism or poke in any way, but is there any reason you can posit for why the universe would need to become self-aware? What does 'self-awareness' mean when it comes to the universe? This formulation seems like a human projection: the Delphic injunction, 'know thyself' applied at a cosmic scale. — Tom Storm

I wouldn't say "need." It's simply what's happening.
-We are a part of the universe.
-We are aware of the universe and ourselves.
-Through parts of itself, the universe is becoming aware of itself in a way the immensely vast majority of itself is not.

:grin: My pleasure.

For the very simple reason that if numbers are real, but not material, then there are real things that are not material. — Wayfarer

The problem is in viewing only material things as real. The reasons the Taj Mahal, Mona Lisa, Beethoven's String Quartets, and King Lear exist are not material. The most sublime things humanity has created were not for material readings. King Lear isn't even, itself, material, even if it's recorded in a material medium.

That feeds into the meme you will sometimes encounter that conscious sentient beings are the Universe become self-aware. — Wayfarer

Exactly right.

Christ; sorry, for whatever reason I thought neomac's response was part of yours. Doh. Rookie move. — AmadeusD

Ah. No worries.

Not for me because the “greater good” is unknown, and as such, could never be met. In the end, and at its core, the act would amount to sacrificing or torturing a living being based on a hunch.

In any case, I would do justice though the heavens fall. I would protect the potential victim from the aggressor’s advances and deal justly with the consequences however they turned out. — NOS4A2

Good answer. It doesn't matter if it's for the greatest good, even if we objectively know what that is. It is immediately not the greatest good if it requires us to sacrifice someone. We would no longer deserve anything good.

The universe operated just fine during the billions of years it existed before there were any minds around to grasp, reason,or understand anything about it. Those physical relations among objects and phenomena were present in them, despite the absence of them being described as formulae. — Relativist

They were. But those relationships, and the laws of physics, are not why or how we are communicating. Computers and the internet would not have spontaneously come into being. They would not exist if we had not come to describe those physical relationships in formulae, and then developed/expanded them in ways that are far beyond those relationships. Primes are not a relationship. They are the lack of relationships. There is no formula that produces them. Yet they play a vital role in how we do so many things. Yes, the universe operated just fine without us. But we have begun shaping it in ways it would not have become shaped without us.

And I will argue that our new ways are the best of it. A sunset; the rings of Saturn; a supernova; so many indescribably beautiful things everywhere. But they are not beautiful without us to recognize their beauty. They are simply particles and clumps, doing what the laws of physics determine. It all had beauty only because of us. Because we noticed the physical relationships, and found beauty simply in them. Then we developed it far beyond what we found. And developed so many other things, like painting, music, and literature, with and because of the real things that are not physical. The things that are absent from the physical, but present in our consciousness.

All off this is the HPoC. It is not the physical. The physical doesn't do what we have done. What we have done is because of what is not seen in, or defined by, the physical. Deacon's absential features.

But if you take mathematics as merely a naming of those aspects of the world that necessarily are attending by the former description, i'm unsure this can be said. — AmadeusD

The point about numbers and arithmetical principles is that they are not the product of thought, but can only be grasped by thought. This is the general area of Platonism in philosophy of mathematics, which is a big and contested question. — Wayfarer

I believe what I just said to Relativist is also largely a response to both of you. I believe we have produced a few mathematical things that were not merely names for, or grasped from, the things we are able to observe.

I've only read the op so far, so don't know what you mean regarding "must's." I'll read later.

I'm something of a newbie, so bl not sure how these definitions work. I would say there are things that exist that are physical, and things that exist that are not physical.

I'm not sure how the non-physical things would/should be divided. Mental things, like thoughts. Does every non-physical thing come down to that? Is mathematics a mental thing? Like any thought, mathematics doesn't exist if nobody is thinking about it. If nobody is reading the book about mathematics, it's just physical paper with physical ink. It doesn't have any mental content on its own.

NO: one cannot torture a child nor kill a child even if it saves the entire human species. — Bob Ross

Correct.

You make my life difficult, Patterner. :smile: Couldn't you give me just the link of that post? — Alkis Piskas

I usually do. But this one was only a scroll up several posts. Nevertheless, I will do better in the future.

Anyway #2, I have "filtered" that post, keeping only what you youself are stating. — Alkis Piskas

I'm making your life difficult?? :D

But you are bringing up extrenal referenses there too (Skrbina, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, "Journey of the Mind" book). — Alkis Piskas

Indeed. I often quote others when they say something I agree with. I believe the more ways a thought is expressed, the more likely it is someone else will understand it. Something I think I've worded well doesn't always make it clear to someone else. Different wordings are often helpful.

But I just gave you a reference about that, the definition of "Panpsychism". Do you reject it, as well as all references with a similar description, on the ground that you have not heard any panpsychist say that any inanimate object has a mind? Or do you have another definition of P according to which objects are not conscious or do not have consciousness? — Alkis Piskas

My apologies, but I don't know which post of yours provides a specific definition. (Feel free to tell me how many posts upstream it can be found. :D) But, regardless, I have never seen a definition of panpsychism, or even consciousness, that I think is absolute. I may or may not agree with someone else's definition. If someone else's definition says all things, animate or inanimate, have a mind, I disagree. I do not consider what I am calling proto-consciousness to be a mind. I think a mind must have characteristics/abilities that proto-consciousness does not.

OK, but how can something physical have a property that is not physical, call it "mind" or whatever else?
I believe you start with a hypothesis that cannot stand, it's not grounded. You are trying to build a theory on the air or from air. Anyway. — Alkis Piskas

A couple possibilities come to mind. First, a solid building may contain running, or a pool of, water. So just because it's solid doesn't mean every aspect of it is solid. Likewise, physical things may have non-physical aspects.

Second, calling particles "physical" is problematic. When we call a particle "physical," we are only referring to its physical properties. We are not referring to the particle itself. I don't even know if it is known whether or not there is a difference. Is an electron a thing that has a negative charge. Or is an electron the negative charge itself? Either way. we don't know what those properties actually are. In Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe, Brian Greene writes:

If you’re wondering what proto-consciousness really is or how it’s infused into a particle, your curiosity is laudable, but your questions are beyond what Chalmers or anyone else can answer. Despite that, it is helpful to see these questions in context. If you asked me similar questions about mass or electric charge, you would likely go away just as unsatisfied. I don’t know what mass is. I don’t know what electric charge is. What I do know is that mass produces and responds to a gravitational force, and electric charge produces and responds to an electromagnetic force. So while I can’t tell you what these features of particles are, I can tell you what these features do. In the same vein, perhaps researchers will be unable to delineate what proto-consciousness is and yet be successful in developing a theory of what it does—how it produces and responds to consciousness. For gravitational and electromagnetic influences, any concern that substituting action and response for an intrinsic definition amounts to an intellectual sleight of hand is, for most researchers, alleviated by the spectacularly accurate predictions we can extract from our mathematical theories of these two forces. Perhaps we will one day have a mathematical theory of proto-consciousness that can make similarly successful predictions. For now, we don’t.

Greene emphasizes the words "I don't know" in the two sentences.

I do not think we are nearly certain enough of things to say, "This is physical, and it can only have physical properties."

Re "A particle with proto-consciousness (if there is such a thing) would be indistinguishable from one without it (if there is such a thing). It’s just a building block.":
Now, you doubt about your basic assumption, i.e. the existence of something you have initially postulated as existing. — Alkis Piskas

No, it's not doubt. I'm saying that, either way, we couldn't tell the difference. If there is no proto-consciousness, then particles do not have any degree of subjective experience. If one somehow did, it would be indistinguishable from the rest. And vice-versa. At the level of one particle, there's no outward measure that could tell us which is which.

And what do you mean by a "building block"? Is that something physical or non-physical? Is the particle with proto-consciousness such "building block"? — Alkis Piskas

It's an expression. A Lego is a building block. An atom is a building block. A single singer is a building block of a chorus. a tree is a building block of a forest. Proto-consciousness is the building block of consciousness.

Yes, a particle with proto-consciousness is a building block. In at least two possible ways. One way is that their physical properties combine to form solids, liquids, and gasses. And, if I'm right, their property of proto-consciousness combines to give some of those solid objects (us, for example) consciousness.

Re "A rock has... quite a few particles. All of which are experiencing their instantaneous memory-less moments.":
What do you mean by "memory-less moments"? I suppose you are implicitly, silently adding another hypothesis or postulate, which is the existence of something called "memory-less moments" and which is experienced by particles. That is, you postulate that particles have a memory but there are moments that this is absent. Like a person who suffers from amnesia after a hard blow on the head. Right? — Alkis Piskas

Not Right. That's one of the quotes you removed. In this case, Skrbina's. That's why I had it in quotes. It is part of the whole hypothesis of proto-consciousness. Particles do not have memory. Their subjective experience is of "instantaneous memory-less moments."

Re "all in all, there's not enough going on to raise "instantaneous memory-less moments" up to something more.":
How is "instantaneous memory-less moments" raised? — Alkis Piskas

The idea is that the proto-consciousness of all the particles of an entity in which enough different things are happening, particularly (according to my hypothesis) processes involving information, actual consciousness comes about. The potential of what I might call the "raw material" is realized.

I believe, the whole scheme lacks something very basic: A definition or description of "memory" in the context or level of a particle. That is, what does memotry mean for a particle? What kind of "memory" do particles have? Do you see what I mean? — Alkis Piskas

Hopefully, I have made clear that I am not positing any sort of memory in regards to particles. Their subjective experiences are memory-less. I believe Skrbina used, and I am definitely using, that wording so people won't think there is any memory at the level of particles.

I'm stating the opposite. Most of the contents of consciousness cannot be described in physicalist terms. But it doesn't follow from this that inanimate objects possess consciousness (whether to a greater or lesser degree). It's a non-sequitur. — JuanZu

Ah. Ok. I am but an egg.

I believe it follows because macro-characteristics come about due to the specific micro-properties. The micro combine, and the result is the macro. That's true whether it's a simple matter of amount, like something getting taller as more is added; or an emergent physical property, like liquidity; or a physical process, like flight.

I do not see how physical micro-properties can combine to give something a non-physical macro characteristic. I think non-physical consciousness needs a non-physical micro-property as its ground.

To argue that consciousness exceeds all possible physical description is not to argue in favor of an extrapolation of consciousness over the rest of what exists. That is, what I am asking for is a type of inference or deduction according to which an inanimate being would have any kind of consciousness. — JuanZu

If I understand you, I disagree with your premise. I believe you are insisting consciousness be explained by the physical. I believe it can't be, so I'm looking for something from which it can be built.

The reasoning is this..
— Patterner

Totally agree with what you’re saying, but it seems to miss the point that it was intended to address, i.e. whether it makes any sense to say that ‘rocks have consciousness’. I for one think it doesn’t. — Wayfarer

I don't think rocks have consciousness. I think they may have proto-consciousness.

I don't quite understand the reasoning that leads to saying that an inanimate object, like a rock, can have consciousness or some degree of it. — JuanZu

The reasoning is this... Physical properties do not explain how a clump of matter can have things like subjective experience and self-awareness. We can see how physical properties, like mass and charge, build atoms. We can see how atoms build molecules. We can see how molecules build physical objects. We can see how physical objects interact, giving us physical processes, like flight and metabolism. We can deconstruct flight and metabolism, down further and further, until we get to physical properties like mass and charge.

Starting with physical properties, we can build up and up until we have things like perceptions; signals of damage to the skin traveling to the brain, and signals traveling from the brain to the muscles, moving the part of the body being damaged away from the cause; patterns stored in the brain; on and on. But we don't arrive at the subjective experience of those things. And we can't go in the other direction, either.
Subjective experience of things and events is not the same thing as those things and events. So we don't get to say we are breaking consciousness down to impulses traveling along nerves when we break muscle movement down to impulses traveling along nerves. They are different things, so one explanation doesn't satisfy both.

The problem is we do not have an explanation for consciousness. To repeat a lot of a post I made a few months ago, neurophysiologist Christopher Koch, the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and someone's who believes consciousness can be explained in physical terms, paid off his bet to Chalmers, because, if it is, they haven't figured out how.

Brian Greene wrote:

We have yet to articulate a robust scientific explanation of conscious experience. We lack a conclusive account of how consciousness manifests a private world of sights and sounds and sensations. We cannot yet respond, or at least not with full force, to assertions that consciousness stands outside conventional science. The gap is unlikely to be filled anytime soon. Most everyone who has thought about thinking realizes that cracking consciousness, explaining our inner worlds in purely scientific terms, poses one of our most formidable challenges.

and

And within that mathematical description, affirmed by decades of data from particle colliders and powerful telescopes, there is nothing that even hints at the inner experiences those particles somehow generate. How can a collection of mindless, thoughtless, emotionless particles come together and yield inner sensations of color or sound, of elation or wonder, of confusion or surprise? Particles can have mass, electric charge, and a handful of other similar features (nuclear charges, which are more exotic versions of electric charge), but all these qualities seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience. How then does a whirl of particles inside a head—which is all that a brain is—create impressions, sensations, and feelings?

So serious scientific minds that are dedicated to the idea that it is explainable in physical terms say we cannot do so. While that is not evidence that it is not explainable in physical terms, it is certainly not evidence that it is. The Hard Problem is hard, and unsolved, according to the experts on opposite sides of the fence.

In addition, what's going on physically doesn't suggest consciousness. As Chalmers says:

Why should there be conscious experience at all? It is central to a subjective viewpoint, but from an objective viewpoint it is utterly unexpected. Taking the objective view, we can tell a story about how fields, waves, and particles in the spatiotemporal manifold interact in subtle ways, leading to the development of complex systems such as brains. In principle, there is no deep philosophical mystery in the fact that these systems can process information in complex ways, react to stimuli with sophisticated behavior, and even exhibit such complex capacities as learning, memory, and language. All this is impressive, but it is not metaphysically baffling. In contrast, the existence of conscious experience seems to be a new feature from this viewpoint. It is not something that one would have predicted from the other features alone.

That is, consciousness is surprising. If all we knew about were the facts of physics, and even the facts about dynamics and information processing in complex systems, there would be no compelling reason to postulate the existence of conscious experience. — The Conscious Mind

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You could explain all the behavior, all the structure, all the function you like, in the vicinity of consciousness.  The things I do, the things I say, the amazing dynamics of the human brain. And it will still leave this further open question: Why is all that accompanied by first person, subjective experience of the mind in the world? — https://youtu.be/PI-cESvGlKc?si=AzE5wvKURbif6rcE

What about a ball? Or a pencil? :smile:
"Stone" was just an example, Patterner. Any object would do. And surely you must have heard about matter having consciousness in a panpsychist context. — Alkis Piskas

Of course, the specific object is not important. I have not heard any panpsychist say any inanimate object has a minds. Although I guess the exact definition of "mind" might need to be agreed upon.

But I would like better to hear about your own ideas and position on the subject. — Alkis Piskas

You can get a pretty good idea of my own ideas and position on the subject in the last post I made before that one, looks like eleven posts before it.

Simply, I cannot imagine how a stone can have a "mind". — Alkis Piskas

I have never heard of anyone why thinks a stone can have a mind. Here are a few quotes that give a more accurate idea of panpaychism.

In this article, Goff writes:

Panpsychism is sometimes caricatured as the view that fundamental physical entities such as electrons have thoughts; that electrons are, say, driven by existential angst. However, panpsychism as defended in contemporary philosophy is the view that consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous, where to be conscious is simply to have subjective experience of some kind. This doesn’t necessarily imply anything as sophisticated as thoughts.

Of course in human beings consciousness is a sophisticated thing, involving subtle and complex emotions, thoughts and sensory experiences. But there seems nothing incoherent with the idea that consciousness might exist in some extremely basic forms. We have good reason to think that the conscious experiences a horse has are much less complex than those of a human being, and the experiences a chicken has are much less complex than those of a horse. As organisms become simpler perhaps at some point the light of consciousness suddenly switches off, with simpler organisms having no subjective experience at all. But it is also possible that the light of consciousness never switches off entirely, but rather fades as organic complexity reduces, through flies, insects, plants, amoeba, and bacteria. For the panpsychist, this fading-whilst-never-turning-off continuum further extends into inorganic matter, with fundamental physical entities – perhaps electrons and quarks – possessing extremely rudimentary forms of consciousness, which reflects their extremely simple nature.

In this Ted Talk, Chalmers says:

Even a photon has some degree of consciousness. The idea is not that photons are intelligent, or thinking. You know, it’s not that a photon is wracked with angst because it’s thinking, "Aaa! I'm always buzzing around near the speed of light! I never get to slow down and smell the roses!" No, not like that. But the thought is maybe the photons might have some element of raw, subjective feeling. Some primitive precursor to consciousness.

In Panpsychism in the West, Skrbina writes:

Minds of atoms may conceivably be, for example, a stream of instantaneous memory-less moments of experience.

So, i'm not entirely sure I'm grasping what you mean — AmadeusD

Primarily because it’s a half-baked idea that I haven’t figured out how to put into words. :D

Yes, i would think if there are multiple systems interacting that would constitute a network, right? So that's just a more complex system which, to my mind, comports with the theory in the sense it would give rise to higher levels of consciousness. — AmadeusD

Does consciousness have a sliding scale of lesser and greater? I think it's like an on/off switch. One is either conscious or not, although the things one is conscious of can be said to be "richer" or "fuller" than the things a bat is conscious of, although that might be wrong too. Who's to say the conscious experience of a vft catching a fly is less than my conscious experience of seeing a sunrise? — RogueAI

I don’t know if I can separate my responses to you two. I think I’m addressing both. (And my apologies. I seem to have gone to some length.)

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that there is a property of matter called proto-consciousness. A mental property, rather than a physical. Here are some thoughts from that starting point.

1) Every particle has what Skrbina called “a stream of instantaneous memory-less moments of experience.” It amounts to nothing at the level of individual particles. A particle with proto-consciousness (if there is such a thing) would be indistinguishable from one without it (if there is such a thing). It’s just a building block.


2) A rock has... quite a few particles. All of which are experiencing their instantaneous memory-less moments. They are all experiencing the same thing, which isn't anything to write home about. There's nothing going on. Particles on the surface might experience more light, warmth, physical contact with things that are not part of the rock, and other things than particles in the interior are experiencing. But they aren't doing anything. There is no information processing. No processes of any kind. Not even any movement relative to each other. I suppose erosion is a process that the exterior experiences but the interior does not. But all in all, there's not enough going on to raise "instantaneous memory-less moments" up to something more.


3) This is from Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos, by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam:

A mind is a physical system that converts sensations into action. A mind takes in a set of inputs from its environment and transforms them into a set of environment-impacting outputs that, crucially, influence the welfare of its body. This process of changing inputs into outputs—of changing sensation into useful behavior—is thinking, the defining activity of a mind.

Accordingly, every mind requires a minimum of two thinking elements:
•​A sensor that responds to its environment
•​A doer that acts upon its environment

Some familiar examples of sensors that are part of your own mind include the photon-sensing rods and cones in your retina, the vibration-sensing hair cells in your ears, and the sourness-sensing taste buds on your tongue. A sensor interacts with a doer, which does something. A doer performs some action that impinges upon the world and thereby influences the body’s health and well-being. Common examples of doers include the twitchy muscle cells in your finger, the sweat-producing apocrine cells in your sweat glands, and the liquid-leaking serous cells in your tear ducts.

A mind, then, is defined by what it does rather than what it is. "Mind” is an action noun, like “tango,” “communication,” or “game.” A mind responds. A mind transforms. A mind acts. A mind adapts to the ceaseless assault of aimless chaos.

The simplest hypothetical mind would have one sensor and one doer. That's it. But I guess such a mind doesn't exist. (At least they can't find one.) The simplest existing mind is that of the archaea. It has two sensors (molecules of sensory rhodopsin) and two doers (flagella).

Archaea "is an example of a molecule mind, the first stage of thinking on our journey. All the thinking elements in molecule minds consist of individually identifiable molecules."

Archeae moves toward light. Compared to a rock, that's a significant thing. Different parts of the critter are doing different things. I'm not knowledgeable enough of definitions to know if this is considered information. The rhodospin changes its shape in different degrees of light, "which triggers a cascade of molecular activity that activates the" flagella. It isn't "trying" to move toward the light. It doesn't "know" it is doing so. There is no intent. Still, there is a good deal of stuff going on. Many particles are experiencing many different things. A big step up from a rock.

Is it all that different from a thermostat? Or a tiny machine that we might make that acts exactly like the archaea?


4) Journey of the Mind is a very cool book. It moves up several stages of mind-complexity. It compares things like the history of cities with consciousness. It speaks about Stephen Grossberg, who I had never heard of, but seems to be an amazing person. I would like to know more about the steps between the stages of complexity that are discussed, but I can understand the need to keep the book at a manageable size. The problem is, without those between steps, I'm not able to follow it. It seems pretty important to discuss, for example, the stages of development of neurons.

Regardless, I don't know at what point actual consciousness is present. Where is the point at which different kinds of activity being experienced within an entity in a proto-consciousness sense become a "what it's like" kind of consciousness? Nagel chose the bat because we literally cannot imagine what it's like to be a bat, experiencing the world through echolocation, flying and catching bugs while flying to eat. OTOH, it's a mammal like us, with a neo-cortex like us, so we might reasonably think it has subjective experience; that there is something it is like to be a bat. But when did that happen? How many different processes, and how many processes containing information, were needed for consciousness to exist? (I would say this question applies whether or not something like proto-consciousness exists.)

But I think information is essential. Proto-consciousness might experience any number of purely physical things without leading to consciousness. But information is not physical. It's not a physical property, like mass or charge. It's not a physical process, like movement or flight, which we can see depend on the physical properties like mass and charge. So proto-consciousness experiences something entirely different when it experiences systems built on information. And that non-physical property experiencing non-physical processes is consciousness.

That's my story, vague though it is, and I'm sticking with it.

In the Chalmers/IIT type of sense? — AmadeusD

I don’t know what combination of the two has been suggested, but yes, I am thinking of a combination. I don’t think IIT explains consciousness by itself.

Otoh, if proto-consciousness gives anything like consciousness in the presence of only stimulus and response, without too much in the way of information, like if there is something it’s like to be a Venus Flytrap…. Well, whatever. Maybe more information systems within one entity give the proto-consciousness more to experience, and, therefore, greater consciousness. Like ours.