I see what you mean. I wonder what differences in brain activity brain scans would reveal in various situations. No, I cannot flip my awareness in your scenario. But I would say the same when comparing being aware of something on the desk, and choosing to pick it up. Have I flipped my awareness in that scenario? Not that I am, uh, aware of. But I have clearly done something different. Something brain scans would surely pick up. I wonder if brain scans would pick anything up in your scenario.

I did not understand that scenario at all. The field is black, but yesterday it was painted white? I... don't understand

Edit. I understand. You're saying, in a very hard to follow way in my opinion, that the previous day it was painted as if the person painting it knew exactly the path this guy would take - he predicted it perfectly so the guy would only see black.

I don't really see what this has to do with free will at all tbh. The scenario tells me nothing about it the guy had free will or not. Knowing how other people answer this question doesn't really tell me much about what they think of free will either. — flannel jesus

Thank you for echoing my confusion, and for figuring out what was going on. I was lost.

How did painter know the path shoveler would take?

For example when I think of some specific item of information my brain is in the same functional mode as when I'm aware of my own consciousness. — Mark Nyquist

Can you elaborate on this? I would think two very different things are happening when you're thinking of, say, the structure of language and when you're aware that you are conscious. But I don't know what you mean by functional mode.

Smallism and reductionism are in decline. I would say they are more popular in the general lay conception of "how science says the world works," then "how physicists and philosophers of science tend to think the world works." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Many theories in fundamental physics aren't smallist either. These are very popular with eminent physicists, and have the benefit of giving us new ways of looking at the metaphysics of free will. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I suspect everything studied by physics other than individual primary particles, their properties (things like mass, charge, and spin), and the forces (things like gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetism) are the products of the interactions of the particles due to their properties and the forces. Are you saying there are physicists who say that is not the case? Who say there are things other than the individual particles, their properties, and the forces that are not products of them?

Fair enough. Good posts.

Do you think there is a "core" brain state for an apple? (See what I did there?) Perhaps a certain number of neurons are in the same state for every person thinking of an apple, while other neurons are in a different state, due to the fact that no two people are thinking the exact same thing when they think of an apple?

Different individuals may have different neural activations for the same thought or proposition. This variability makes it hard to pinpoint a universal brain state corresponding to a specific thought.
— Wayfarer

I've never understood this to be a problem. I mean, you can say the same things about ai. ChatGpt 3 has different array matrices activations for "a cat in a hat" than ChatGpt 4 does. If that makes human minds not physical, then does it also make chat gpt not simulatable? Not digitally encodable?

I don't think so. I think it's completely normal that neural networks encode the same (or similar, anyway - it's never really the same) ideas in drastically different ways. I don't find that problematic at all for physicalist ideas of the mind.

In fact I think it would be incredibly surprising if all humans encoded all learned information in exactly the same way. That would be more weird than what we do see. — flannel jesus

I think that's the problem. If any given thought can be the result of many different arrangements of matter, then how can it be that the arrangement IS the thought?

This is different from our systems of symbols and meanings. Whether the binary of computers, spoken language, written language, or any other system we have. No symbol has any objective meaning in any system we invent. They only have the meanings we assign to them.

But if brain states = thoughts, then that means the symbols - that is, the arrangements of matter - objectively mean those thoughts. But to whom or what? The laws of physics that are responsible for every arrangement? Further, the idea that many different arrangements objectively mean the same thing seems odd.

Science says humans are mechanisms and what we think and feel are products of that mechanism, — Restitutor

Although many people believe this, and have been trying to prove it, they have not succeeded. Christof Koch, a more than fair neuroscientist, paid off his 25-year old bet to Chalmers because of this lack of success. Many say it must be the case, and science will eventually prove it. But that is not evidence that it is there case, or that science will prove it.

There are no properties of particles, states of matter, laws of physics, physical processes, or anything else known to science, that explain how the matter and energy of the universe can be conscious under certain circumstances. There's no logic or science behind the idea that, if you put enough physical things together, they will, by virtue of nothing but their physical characteristics, become conscious.

I just meant it sounded like you'd found a type of awareness that is more impressive than the human kind.

A human is so much more than that. Being aware is so passive.
— Banno

Yeah. Besides, I'm generally not all that impressed with human awareness. It's pretty hit and miss. — Tom Storm

What alternative impresses you more?

I was thinking about this yesterday. From a panpsychism point of view. Think of consciousness like we think of height. I don't think height evolved. I think height is a characteristic, and it exists in different degrees along a spectrum, depending on how the matter is arranged. Plants and animals evolve with different heights. It's not the height that evolves. Even inanimate objects have different heights.

If panpsychism is the answer, then consciousness didn't evolve. Things evolve with greater or lesser consciousness, depending on how the matter is arranged.

The reason the arrangement of matter is important to consciousness may be along the lines of IIT. The way it's arranged in a rock, there's not much information processing, so not much consciousness. More information processing in bacteria > worms > bats > humans. A thermostat? What about AI? Maybe there is a degree of consciousness. But they don't process as many kinds of information as we do, even if they can process the kind they do much better than we can. We have a whole lot of different kinds of information processing all the time. Our brain is always working on our biological functions; different kinds of unconscious information; different kinds of conscious information... Maybe the variety is important.

This could be why we can't say when consciousness first appeared. It would also help with the question of what possesses consciousness and what doesn't.

The Church had issue with its followers handling money in various ways. The Jews didn't have that prohibition. Consequently, Jews loaned money to Christians, charging interest, and the loanees didn't like it. Lies started spinning, the Church joined in, becoming more hostile, and on we go. In 1290, Edward I kicked the Jews out of England, largely in exchange for being granted a huge tax to pay for his war debts. Iirc, he also "acquired" some of those loans, so now the loanees owed *him* the money.

Is my response to X ... how to word it ... the biological equivalent of the robot's mechanical/electronic response to X? And is it possible, at least on theory, to build robots that make the same mistake (if that's the correct word) we have always made, and come up with thought experiments that are exercises in dancing around the facts of electronics?

Well yeah. I resurrected this thread after 2 years to say I think they're inconceivable.

But you said this:

Until the fact of conscious experience is proven... — NOS4A2

After several exchanges, I believe you're saying conscious experience doesn't exist because it's not a thing that someone can have. It's an act, but our language treats it like a physical thing. While I agree that language could be more precise, in everyday usage and in discussions of language, I don't know why considering a conscious experience to be a response instead of a thing means they don't exist, or we don't have them.

Sorry for the silly jargon. By ontology I mean our beliefs about "the nature of being" or "that which is". It's like a list of that which exists, and accordingly, that which demands consideration.

It’s quite simple, in my mind. The act and that which acts are the exact same thing. So when you observe the act of a punch or a kick, for example, you're observing a particular person moving in such a fashion. Despite our use of two or more nouns which imply that we are considering two or more things, there are not two or more persons, places, or things that we are observing. We can observe only one.

So in my opinion only one deserves a place in the pantheon of being while the rest, like acts, abstract objects, fomrs, qualities, properties, are merely conventions of language. — NOS4A2

Thanks. That's about what I was thinking you meant with the word.

I'm entirely on board with your second paragraph. Our language doesn't differentiate between nouns of different ontological types. I really don’t know if it’s true, but the story has always been that an Inuit language has twenty different words for "snow." Which makes sense, since snow has played such a huge roll in their lives and culture. They literally needed the specific information, so the language has it. We don't need different words for nouns of different ontological types, or we'd have them. Still, it would be nice. Not just q because it would be interesting. Our language plays a role in how we think. Change the language, and you never know what will happen.

But that's only how we label things when discussing language. The sentence "I had a conscious experience of the song" remains the same, regardless of how we analyze the sentence, and label "conscious experience" and "song." Both things? Both acts? Whatever. The important thing is that something different happens when the vibrations in the air envelop me than when they envelop a rock. Or when they envelop a robot that we have programmed to dance, emit drops of liquid from the structures we gave it that resemble human eyes, or reproduce the vibrations in the air if the patterns of those vibrations have been previously stored in the robot's memory.

Ever read any quotes from Yogi Berra, the NY Yankees manager — ucarr

More important, their catcher for a career that included three MVPs and ten World Series rings.

If there's gonna be a formal ceremony, "include me out." — ucarr

"Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical."
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
The guy is genius!

I agree. Which is why I think mental illness is the only way.

A person who doesn't believe anything doesn't willingly eat, because they have no belief that eating will sustain their life, end their hunger, or bring pleasure.

A person who doesn't believe anything doesn't communicate in a shared language with other people, because they have no belief that their words will be effective or even understood. — flannel jesus

A person who doesn't believe anything would not believe in eating, life, hunger, pleasure, other people, themself, words, effects, or understanding. I assume such a person could only exist because of mental illness. It reminds me of Cotard's syndrome.

I agree with most of your post. Yes, maybe real, maybe not. But, as you say, don't step in front of a bus. "If you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make?"

At a height beyond what I’ve experienced lies an ecstasy which the mystics describe as supreme, surpassing anything imaginable. “It shines with the brightness of 10,000 suns.” Critics say the mystics’ ecstasies have a sexual element; some go so far as to describe the ecstasies as the result of suppressed sexuality. I believe there’s a fundamental difference. Belief in material bodies existing in an external material world seems prerequisite for sexuality. In sexual experience, the body is experienced as real. Can the ecstasy of someone who clearly realizes that they consist of awareness, along with a constantly changing stream of physical, emotional, and mental sensations, be genuinely sexual? Perhaps not. Perhaps the ecstasy of the mystic can be described as sexual ecstasy without the sex. It sounds paradoxical. But much that the mystics say is paradoxical. Why? Critics say because the mystics are saying nonsense. Others say it’s because the mystics are trying to describe a reality for which words fail. — Art48

This paragraph is a different topic, which I have no experience in, so I won't speculate.

Thank you!

Things act; acts are not themselves things. We can see this empirically.

Though we treat acts as things in language (and it’s extremely difficult to do otherwise), we ought not to include them in our ontology as existing things because we risk reifying them. So though it may be necessary for linguistic purposes, acts are unnecessary and even confusing for any species of ontology. This applies also to the qualities, properties, characteristics, or attributes of things, which often take the form of adjectives. — NOS4A2

I really don’t know how you mean this. It sounds like you’re saying we shouldn’t acknowledge them. That they don’t exist. I don’t know much about ontology. It seems there is not agreement on what categories of ontology there are, or even if there are different categories. So I couldn’t argue what species of ontology acts are in. But here we are, talking about them. And, as you’re posting in TPG, I assume you put a lot of thought into these things. I I would think they have some form of existence?

Yes — NOS4A2

Music is vibrations in the air, over some period of time. Certainly an action. How do you know under which circumstances actions are nouns?

Most people have conscious experiences, and so take that as a given. Do you have conscious experiences?

Experience is an act, not a thing. So while people are conscious and do experience, they do not have conscious experiences. There is no need to invoke other things and substances with noun phrases. — NOS4A2

I sang a song.
I went for a run.
I had a thought.

Are song, run, or thought nouns in those sentences?

No, I do not mean physicalism. I'm saying that all behaviour, including language, can be predicted from physics.
— GrahamJ

As far as I'm concerned, that is physicalism pure and simple. Sorry, but I don't rate Carroll as a philosopher. — Wayfarer

What is physicalism, if not everything coming from physics?

If you can't establish that they're impossible, then I think that establishes that they are conceivable, if by conceivable we mean things we can imagine that could possibly exist. — GRWelsh

That’s my point. They can’t possibly exist.

How would p-zombies develop a language that refers to consciousness and/or mental states? — RogueAI

That's the neat part - they wouldn't!
— flannel jesus

Right. So then we can't conceive of beings like us, who have the same vocabulary as we do, but with no mental states. They're impossible. — RogueAI

Exactly.

Strong argument against the conceivability of p-zombies?

How can there be one, when successful arguments affirming such conception have been given? — Mww

I freely admit that I am not well-versed in a lot of the things I’m trying to talk about. The definition of the word conceivability, for example. Let me try to explain what I mean.

We can say the words “square circle.” Does that mean we conceive of square circles? I don’t believe so. We are only saying words. But there is no such thing as a square circle, and there is no possibility of such a thing. I don’t think being able to string together any combination of words is the same thing as conceiving of the thing represented by every particular string of words.

However, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we are conceiving of square circles when we say the words “square circles.” In which case, I disagree with the idea that conceivability implies possibility. A square circle is not possible.

As I said, “My understanding is…” In our universe, I don’t see the possibility of p-zombies, regardless of the nature of consciousness, in the same way I don’t see the possibility of square circles. But if we are supposed to be imagining universes that operate under different principles, then sure, I guess there could be p-zombies, and there could be square circles.

Hmm. I started to read this thread, but too much bickering. So hopefully I’m not repeating.

My understanding is the test subjects were told they were supposed to move their finger. And they were to pay close attention to a clock, and note when they actually made the decision that it was time to move the finger.

So they went into it with that understanding. Then, they went about it. They thought about moving their finger. Contemplated when the right time would be. Then, finally, moved it.

After all that, I don’t find it very reasonable to say their body, or subconscious, or anything other than their consciousness, made the decision to move their finger. We do things reflexively and unconsciously, but this doesn’t seem to be one of them to me.

I’d be very interested if, while consciously deciding when to move a finger, the person’s body or subconsciousness made the decision for the leg to kick out.

My understanding is that a p-zombie, despite not having subjective experience/being conscious, would act exactly like a person who does have subjective experience/is conscious. Behaving as though they feel pain, and see red, and hear music, instead of simple, or even extremely complex, stimulus and response. Though there is not something it is like to be one from its point of view, because it has no point of view, it behaves exactly like someone who does have a pov, and for whom there is something it is like to be.

I do not find the idea conceivable. No more than a square circle. Yeah, I can say the words “square circle.” But that doesn’t mean I can actually picture one. Nor can I picture a p-zombie. I do not believe our consciousness is a result of nothing but the laws of physics, and we just haven’t figured out the equations yet, or spotted the neuronal activity responsible. I’m leaning toward panpsychism. But even if it’s not that, something else is happening. And without that something else, why would a thing that looks like us, and has all the physical we have, act as though it has that something else? Why would it say the things it would have to say to make us think it was conscious if it was not?

We can give a robot equipment to detect all the things we detect with our senses, and to act in different ways when it detects different things. But it would not say it has subjective experience, is conscious, and behave in ways that would convince us. We would have to give it programming in addition to what it already has in order for it to say those things and behave in those ways.

Why would a p-zombie say those things and behave in those ways? It would need something else to actually be conscious, or to say those things and behave in those ways despite [/i]not[/i] being conscious.

OTOH, if physicalism is the explanation for our consciousness, and we simply haven’t figured out the math or spotted the neuronal activity responsible, then, again, p-zombies could not exist. Because there is nothing that could be missing from their entirely-physical existence that would make them less conscious than we are.

Hopefully explaining my thinking clearly enough.

Are Boltzman brains more likely than Boltzman anthing else? Automobiles, trees, pencils, boulders that look like octopi, buckets filled with water, buckets filled with oil, buckets filled with gravel, 55 gallon drums filled with those and other options, Empire State Buildings, bodies that look like Jean Luc Picard, bodies that look like Kirk, octopi, septapi etc., etc., etc., etc… ALL things are as likely as Boltzman brains, aren’t they? And an infinite number of all things.

How do we calculate the density of any of it?

And how do we calculate the possibility of the necessary number of particles being in the necessary positions at the same time for any of them to be formed?

In Incomplete Nature, Thomas Deacon writes

This reliably asymmetric habit of nature provides the ultimate background with respect to which an attribute of one thing can exemplify an attribute of something else. The reason is simple: since non-correlation and disorder are so highly likely, any degree of orderliness of things typically means that some external intervention has perturbed them away from this most probable state. In other words, this spontaneous relentless tendency toward messiness provides the ultimate slate for recording outside interference. If things are not in their most probable state, then something external must have done work to divert them from that state.

We are conscious, not all causes are physical, and consciousness evolved by natural selection.

Which I’m surprised is currently leading.


What about you?

Indeed. I’ve been familiar with the Tao Te Ching for many years, and was glad to see the quote at the beginning of Chapter 1.

I love this book. I started reading it a few months before I found this thread. Unfortunately, I’m not educated enough in a lot of things to be able to follow it entirely. Sometimes I think he’s just making the same point many times, when it’s probably just that I can’t pick up on the subtleties.

Maybe it's not so much not believing the truth that you can't deny as it is not caring. The Architect told Neo that the Oracle "stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly 99% of all test subjects accepted the program as long as they were given a choice. Even if they were only aware of the choice at a near unconscious level." For a more real-world example, how many happily married people would say they do NOT want to be told if their spouse is cheating, because they would rather have the blissful lie? As Cypher said, ignorance is bliss.

It's one of the main themes of Mind and Cosmos. As I mentioned, it's a very short book and more than pays back the time invested to read it. — Pantagruel

Holy cow, what a difference between you and me. This is one of the many books I've started, and am soon in over my head. I keep going as best I can for some time, hopefully absorbing little bits here and there. Then I move on to the next book, and do the same. Regardless of the difficulties, I absolutely love the book.

Parts of this conversation remind me of Two-Part Invention, the intro to Chapter II of GEB.

Thank you very much. I'll try these kindle version.

Possibly no ebook of Davis. We'll see what happens.

Not quite. What is your original sentence? — tim wood

Ok, I guess that's not referring to itself. Maybe, "This sentence is referring to itself." Or, in a more informative way, "This sentence has five words." Incorrectly, "This sentence had eighty three words."

The answer is just 30-odd pages away, actually in the first five pages, sec. 1, in sketch form, with some effort on your part. And not some three- or four-hundred page book. — tim wood

I assume you mean his original paper? Any particular translation?

How do you get a sentence to be inside of itself? — tim wood

That's easy. Our language allows for sentences to refer to themselves, as Hofstadter demonstrated:
'“Is white” is white.'
'"Preceded by itself in quote marks yields a full sentence” preceded by itself in quote marks yields a full sentence.'

Or, what Godel did, was to get a number to refer to itself while at the same time referring to propositions and arguments. — tim wood

This is what's tripping me up. Take the number 144. It doesn't refer to itself. Although it is the square of 12, it doesn't mean the square of 12, or refer to squares in general. 144 is also the sum of the the primes 47 and 97, but it doesn't mean the sum of those two primes, or refer to the idea of even numbers > 2 being the sum of two primes. And it doesn't refer anything else.

Fibonacci numbers are be derived from a certain process. But that doesn't mean they are about that process. How are Godel numbers otherwise? Yes, a given equation can only produce one specific number. But that doesn't mean that number is about that equation, any more than 25 is about 4!+1.

What am I not understanding? How did Godel make numbers self-referential?

It is, indeed, a great read. At least the few hundred pages I managed to read many years ago.

As to why, he wishes to "encode" propositions and proofs as numbers so that he can say, e.g., x B y, meaning that there is a relationship between the variables x and y — tim wood

Why is this a reasonable idea? I can assign numbers to anything. "Leaves" is 3. "Are" is 4. "Green" is 5. "Leaves are green" is 3 4 5. Now apply those numbers to the first primes, and multiply:
2^3 x 3^4 x 5^5 = 2,025,000.
Now I have a relationship between leaves and green.

Why would I think I've done something useful or significant? As the saying (adjusted for inflation) goes, that and $3 will get me a cup of coffee.

And why would I be surprised if something weird, like Gödel's incompleteness theorem, shows up? I would expect any number of inconsistencies and oddities to show up when I'm doing something unnatural like this. Why is it not equally unnatural for Gödel to assign number values to things like "and", "negation", and "all"?

I guess there's no hope for me in this.

Thank you very much for your effort. I'll read that many times, and see if I can understand. But, honestly, the very first step makes no sense to me. I could say automobiles are 1, bicycles are 2, airplanes are 3, etc. Why would I think that makes any sense?