What kind of process? A process involves a series of actions or operations. Does consciousness act or operates in any way? — Alkis Piskas

What I mean is, if we were able to freeze time around someone, or even if we literally froze them, we would be able to point to their hands, feet, eyes, hair, internal organs, brain, etc. But we could not point to their consciousness, respiration, digestion, etc.

Process or not, isn't what I said (in different words)? Didn't I say "Once it is attached to a life it will be there until life stops"? I think that "stops" and "ends" mean the same thing here, don't they? — Alkis Piskas

I'm suggesting it might not be there even though life has not stopped.

Consciousness is not something that can be created and then disappear, now be present and the next moment be absent.
Consciousness is connected to life. Once it is attached to a life it will be there until life stops. — Alkis Piskas

Not sure about this. I believe consciousness is a process. Some processes that are connected to life cannot stop without ending the life. Respiration, for example. The process of movement, otoh, can stop. I think consciousness is dependent on a lot of structures and other processes working together. Maybe it's possible to stop those structures and processes from working together, literally ending consciousness, without the body, or even those things and processes, dying.

From a physical standpoint, the experience is most certainly different from ours. — Philosophim

Right. And that's why Nagel choose the bat. Our experiences are different enough that we can't imagine what they experience. But, since we're both mammals, there is a lot more common ground than between us and, say, the fly, so we might feel safer thinking bats do have subjective experience.

But I'm wondering if, by saying

Thinking that subjectivity is experienced is a kind of reification, — Janus

Janus means our subjective experience is equivalent to the electric eye's. I'm just not sure what is meant.

Thanks. I was wondering what Janus meant when saying we don't experience subjectivity. I'm wondering if our experience of perception of the spectrum is different from the electric eye's.

Does the electric eye that distinguishes frequencies of the spectrum that we perceive with our eyes have the same subjective experience of colors that we have? Does it have a different subjective experience of colors than we have? Is light hitting its sensor, and its circuits distinguishing one frequency from another, a subjective experience?

Me too. And I ask it to word its responses as a human would, so that I feel like I'm talking to someone. Unfortunately, it doesn't really feel that way, because it just isn't up to the task. But maybe soon.

It seems like I'm always responding to you in particular, Patterner. I hope it doesn't seem like I'm picking on you. I guess you just say things in ways that get me thinking. — wonderer1

:D No worries!

The difference in arrangement of the components makes a difference, and no new physics is needed to understand that. — wonderer1

I understand what you're saying, but I don't agree. It's fine when we're talking about a physical process like flight. Physical properties of particles can build physical structures; which can interact in physical ways with other physical structures; on and on - all giving us the physical process of flight. All of the components of a rock are not arranged correctly to give it flight.

The same can be said about the functions of our bodies and brains. Particles build structures. Retina, neurons, whatever the heck the current theory of how memories are stored is, muscles, etc. Photon hits retina, signal travels via optic nerve to brain, memories are triggered, responses geared toward safety and health come out on top after all pros and cons are weighed against each other, action potentials to bting about something safe and healthy are initiated, we move in whatever way came out on top. Stimulus and response.

All of that is physical. An incredibly complex web of physical things and processes, but physical. But it is accompanied by subjective experience and awareness. Why is that? All of the physical processes would take place without our awareness of, and feelings for, them, would they not? Photon would hit retinal, signal would travel up optic nerve, etc. If it’s all just physical interactions, they are going to happen, regardless of our awareness of them. So what point that awareness? Why should we have preferences and feelings about anything if they are going to play out as they do because they are just physical interactions?

But that's just an aside. My real problem is that physical processes don't feel happy or sad, and don't contemplate concepts. Those things happen because of our recognition of patterns in the physical processes. If it's just the laws of physics, then the laws of physics built the Great Wall of China and constructed computers, wrote The Malazan Book of the Fallen and the Heileger Dankgesang, and are planning a colony on Mars. Laws of physics don't do such things. Without consciousness, those things wouldn't exist. There's something not laws of physics at work. But how did it come to be?

I'm sorry, I don't understand. If we observe reactions to the surroundings, which also prove perception of the surroundings, how do we know there is consciousness, as opposed to the simple stimulus and response that we can find in any number of mechanical devices?

Is consciousness more than the perception and response of an archaea, or the automatic door at the supermarket? Some will say not; that it is much more complex, due to many feedback loops, but is entirely mechanical.

Complaint aside, suggesting a game like this to a computer, and it being able to play st all, is incredible. — hypericin

It certainly is!

I wonder what it would have done different if you had said you were the master.

If we're going to start somewhere, I suspect it's not processes in human beings - that's a way down the road. The starting point is my awareness.
— bert1

That makes sense. Now I guess you're going to show us how what we experience as awareness can be observed in rocks. — T Clark

What birds experience as flight cannot be observed in a rock. But the properties of subatomic particles that give rise to flight in birds are present in the subatomic particles that make up rocks. Centuries ago, people might’ve assumed rocks and birds are made of different things. We know better.

if the properties of subatomic particles we are aware of cannot explain consciousness, then perhaps unknown properties are present. And a rock is made up of the same subatomic particles that we are.

I googled. No, I am not a mysterian. You never know.

Wikipedia says Thomas Nagel is a mysterian, but says citation needed. I'd like to see that citation.

So it's possible there are things our senses and devices can't perceive that are the foundation of this imperceptible macro-characteristic. It makes sense that we can't perceive the micro-properties.
— Patterner

Righto, OK, thanks. That sounds like you are open to the possibility of panpsychism. Is that right? It also sounds like you might be a mysterian like McGinn, perhaps: the idea that we can never know exactly how physical processes cause or constitute consciousness, while nevertheless accepting that they do. — bert1

I am definitely open to panpsychism. Although, if I understand the terms, I would say panprotopsychism. I don’t think every particle is conscious. But I think it’s possible that proto-consciousness is a property of every particle.

I will have to Google mysterian and McGinn.

Let's assume we have a being born with only one sense, touch. Is it going to be less conscious than someone with all five senses? Or is consciousness like a switch? You either have it or you don't? — RogueAI

If you mean a human, my guess (based on no education in these matters :D) is that such a person could become conscious. There is a lot of wiring that takes place in the brain for many years after birth. It happens as the person interacts with the world. The brain evolved with our typical perceptions, so maybe it easily wires when the interactions are through the full compliment of senses? That's just a guess off the top of my head. But that doesn’t mean many things aren’t taking place even without the full complement. And the human brain still has its DNA telling it to grow in particular ways, so it’s trying, even if only getting interactions through touch.

Maybe it has more to do with communicating than simply perceiving and noticing what you're perceiving? It’s probably easier to communicate more ideas with more senses. Maybe a person's degree of consciousness depends on how well you can teach them to communicate.

Look, I don't care. Its irrelevant so believe what you want. — Philosophim

Thank you. I believe that I cannot claim I am not thinking about crayons if I think, "I am not thinking about crayons."

The point is not that I'm trying to identify another consciousness, its that consciousness can be divided into subjective and objective parts. If there's something you don't understand about that, feel free to ask. — Philosophim

I did say I wasn't sure if I understood the op.

I can’t imagine consciousness, would develop without perception. An infant born with no senses of any kind would not develop consciousness.
— Patterner

Was Helen Keller less conscious than most people? — RogueAI

She was born with all her senses. She lost them when she was 19 months old, and perception begins in the womb. Also, she did not lose all of her senses. She lost her sight and hearing.

And yet you just did. — Philosophim

You can't observe that you're not thinking a particular thought.

Not sure I understand the op either. It doesn't seem like you're discussing two kinds of consciousness. It seems like you're looking for a way to objectively identify another consciousness.

But you can also be aware of the absence of thoughts!
— Alkis Piskas

Yes, an observation that you're not thinking a particular thought can be identified as not having thoughts. You're taking observation to mean that we are ascertaining the existence of something. Observation is just your subjective experience without identity. Identity creates differences within that subjective experience. — Philosophim

I may new misunderstanding both of you.

You cannot be aware of the absence of all thought. If you are aware, you are thinking. If you are thinking, you are aware.

And you cannot be aware that you are not thinking a particular thought. That would be thinking, "I'm not thinking about crayons right now."

As I said elsewhere, I'm not aware of any macro-characteristics that cannot be reduced to micro properties. We aren't dumbfounded by the existence of liquidity, solidity, flight, pressure, etc., etc. When we break things down, big structures to smaller structures, eventually to particles - or processes to sub-processes, eventually to the particles involved in the smallest processes - we understand how the properties of the particles are the foundation of the specific macro we're looking at.

I don't have reason to think the macro-processes of consciousness is not reducible in the same way. But we can't figure out what the responsible micro-property is. I don't see how any combination of physical processes become aware of anything, much less their own awareness, or have subjective experience, due to the various properties of particles and fundamental forces. The existence and function of the physical processes can be explained, but how it is that they are something other than physical processes can't. Feedback loops are physical processes, and we can explain any of them with physics. We have created countless feedback loops in our inventions. There's no reason to think adding more of them to any system would make the system other than a physical system simply because it now has more physical feedback loops.

We cannot detect consciousness with our senses, or the devices we've built to enhance our senses. We can detect parts of the brain that correspond to various aspects of consciousness and various types of thinking. But we don't look at those brain scans and see consciousness. No physicist would look at them and say, "What the heck is this??? Above and beyond the physics taking place, something else is going on!"

Yet the consciousness is there. It is not detectable or explainable by the particles and forces we can perceive with our senses or devices. So it's possible there are things our senses and devices can't perceive that are the foundation of this imperceptible macro-characteristic. It makes sense that we can't perceive the micro-properties.

I can’t imagine consciousness, would develop without perception. An infant born with no senses of any kind would not develop consciousness.

If we do not assume “inner lives”, like Chalmers does, consciousness can be reduced to biology. In fact consciousness and biology are one and the same. The hard problem disappears and all that remains are the easy problems. — NOS4A2

I do not "assume" an inner life. I experience it. It is, in truth, the only thing I know is a fact. I don’t know that you have an inner life. I am willing to assume that you are like me in various ways, including being a human with an inner life. But you may try to prove me wrong if you want.

Why jump from arguing that a flesh and blood person could in fact be a secret zombie to the conclusion that fundamental particles must therefore have the feels? — apokrisis

Because macro characteristics/properties emerge from micro characteristics/properties. Whether we're looking at a characteristic (like liquidity) or process (like flight), we can see how it reduces to the micro. It doesn't seem reasonable that the macro characteristic of consciousness is not also reducible to micro characteristics. But what micro characteristics are things like subjective experience and the different types of awareness reducible to? Mass? Charge?

The pressure of a gas in a container is literally determined by the billions of individual particles bouncing into the walls. Of course, we don't calculate pressure particle-by-particle, because that's far too unwieldy. Still, that's what's happening.

We can explain why we reach for things in the same way. Vastly more unwieldy, since we have photons hitting retina, signal traveling along optic nerve to brain, triggering of physically stored information from previous instances of the same patterns of photons hitting the retina, action potentials, muscle contractions, and a million steps I didn't write down.

But none of that suggests why that system has a subjective experience of the event. And that's not at all the same question as why that system is aware of the event, of itself, and it's own awareness. Lacking the subjective experience and awareness would not stop the photons from hitting the retina, the signal from traveling along optic nerve to brain, from the triggering of physically stored information from previous instances of the same patterns of photons hitting the retina, from creating action potentials, from muscles contracting, or the million steps I didn't write down.

The answer doesn't have to be something like panprotopsychism. But particles interacting in the only ways they can, according to their properties and the four forces, don't have these characteristics, and don't need them to bring about those interactions.

↪Patterner

Perhaps it should be called the hard problem of biology, but then it wouldn’t have that nice spiritual ring to it. — NOS4A2

You may pursue a spiritual route if you wish. Not my cup of tea. I don't have a problem with that new name, but it doesn't help explain what I just said above.

I've come to realise the cogency of the 'philosophical zombies' argument, having always dismissed it up until now. The point of the argument is that if there were a creature that looked and acted like a human being, there would be no empirical way of telling whether they were subjects of experience or not. It shows that consciousness cannot be solely explained by physical processes because the physical processes that can were exhibited by those creatures the absence of subjective experience would provide no way of telling whether they were really subjects of experience or not. I still don't like the argument much, but at least I think I get it. — Wayfarer

There is no empirical way of telling that we are subjects of experience. No empirical explanation for why we are. No empirical explanation for why the physical things and processes that we see are not p-zombies.

I cannot assume inner lives because whenever we take a peak inside there is nothing of the sort in there. What we can see and what we can confirm is that there is biology in there, and this biology, its complexity, and the whole range of movements it makes are largely imperceptible to everyone involved. The fact that the phenomenology and the actuality differ so much suggests the one is unable to grasp or comprehend the other. — NOS4A2

Indeed. Which is why it's called "the hard problem of consciousness."

Now, you can attack my argument by claiming either belief in brain consciousness doesn't commit one to belief in machine consciousness, or that machine consciousness is not an absurdity. Which option do you like? — RogueAI

Another option is to ask for the proof that machine consciousness is an absurdity. Matter is conscious. We don't know how it is accomplished, so can't know in which mediums it can and cannot be accomplished.

The simple reason why I cannot know what it’s like to be a bat is because I am not a bat. — NOS4A2

The point isn't that you cannot know what it is like to be a bat. The point is that there is something it is like to be a bat. And, while we are not aware of any consciousness that is independent of a brain's activity, knowing everything about a bat's brain's activity doesn't give us any insight on the bat's inner experience. It doesn't suggest the bat has any inner experience. It's all just physical processes.

we should also stop short of concluding that matter cannot think. — Manuel

We certainly should stop short of that, since we are matter, and we think.

I'm just confused by the statement that "there is something it is like to be such-and-such". It refers to the same thing too many times for me. There is something (the football) it (the football) is like to be the football (the football). It can be applied to literally anything, is all I'm saying. — NOS4A2

You can, in theory, learn everything there is to know about a football. You can learn about its aerodynamics; the way it absorbs heat from the sun; the elasticity; the frequencies of the visible spectrum that it reflects, etc., etc. And you can learn all there is too know about the particles that the football is made of, and how their properties gave rise to all those other things you learned about. In the end, you will know everything there is to know about the football.

You can do the same for, the famous example being, a bat. You can learn many of the same things that you learned about a football. But, of course, there are other things. And other kinds of things. It has life processes. Respiration, metabolism, circulation. You can learn about its wings, body shape, and everything else that gives it the ability to fly. You can learn about its echolocation. What frequency it uses, how its ears work, etc., etc. And you can learn all there is too know about the particles that the bat is made of, and how their properties gave rise to all those other things.

However, in the end, you will not know everything there is to know about the bat. You will not know what it is like to be a bat. A bat has consciousness. It has an inner life. None of your learning will have told you what those things are like. And he chose the bat because we really can't imagine what it's like to be a bat. As he put it:

It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one’s arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in one’s mouth; that one has very poor vision, and perceives the surrounding world by a system of reflected high-frequency sound signals; and that one spends the day hanging upside down by one’s feet in an attic. Insofar as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. — Nagel

All of that is what is meant by "There is nothing it is like to be a football to a football" and "There is something it is like to be a bat to a bat."

You can shake a bag of hydrogen and oxygen, but you won't make water.
— Patterner
Actually, that's pretty much how most of the water gets made, so I very much beg to differ. — noAxioms

That is not how any water was made. Simple physical contact does not combine the atoms. A Google search will bring up any number of sites about it. Energy is required. A spark.

Dr. Manhattan can say, "Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible,
— Patterner
Astronomical odds are still finite, so when multiplied by infinite time, they become not just probable, but certain. I don't think you realize the size of the numbers they talk about when discussing these sorts of probabilities. — noAxioms

What are the odds, and how are they determined? How is it known that it is effectively impossible, rather than impossible?

The point is that there is nothing it is like to be a football to a football. There is not something it is like to be a football, because a football does not have a point of view. All we can do is think about what we would feel like if we, with our consciousness, were made out of the materials of, and shaped like, a football.

That's not at all the same thing as what it is like to be a bat.

Can you back that assertion? It sure looks an awful lot like a collection of matter to me. — noAxioms

It is. But it didn't come into that arrangement when a quintillion (whatever) particles all happened to bump into each other in the exact right arrangement. You can shake a bag of hydrogen and oxygen, but you won't make water. Something more than their physical contact is needed. You can't shake a bag of protein and fatty substances, and pull out meylin sheath. You can't add iron, proteins, and lipids to a bowl, stir, and have a bowl of blood. Physics and Chemistry can tell us how X and Y can be joined together in any given case.

Dr. Manhattan can say, "Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold." If there was a way to prove it, I'd bet the ends of two pieces of wood have never fused together simply by being touched together. Some help is needed. The assertion that needs backing is that an incomprehensibly large number of the exact right mixture of particles can happen to come together in exactly the right arrangement, and fuse together in ways such particles are not known to fuse together, and become a living brain. "A lot can happen in a really long time" is not supporting evidence.

And especially why should we accept it when it hasn't even been established that a disembodied brain -- simply appearing in space and time with false memories and lacking any sense organs -- is possible. — GRWelsh

Now you're the one making a claim. Has it been established to be impossible? If not, what's left? — noAxioms

I don't see that Gar is making a claim. GR is asking how's it had been established that such a thing can be possible. And that cannot be established. As for "What's left"! A universe in which life came came about on Earth, and we evolved.

I am. You can't put the hundred trillion atoms that would be needed to make a single living cell right next to each other, and get a living cell. Just as you can't place two pieces of wood end to end, and have one long piece of wood. That's not how long pieces of wood come about. And it's not how brain cells come about, much less entire brains.

The issue isn't life-support for the brain. It's the assembly. It's not a simple matter of assembling the pieces. The particles that make up a brain can't be assembled like a jigsaw puzzle. Put all of the (good lord, how's many?) atoms exactly where they would be in a functioning brain, and you would not have a functioning brain. They don't simply bond to all of those they need to bond to because they are touching.

A brain isn’t a bunch of pieces that can be put together like a puzzle. Even if all the necessary particles happened to bump into each other at the exact same instant, they would not be a working brain for even that instant.

The physical processes would work fine without being aware of themselves. They do so in many other life forms.
↪Patterner

It is a hasty generalization to go from, "The behavior of many lifeforms occurs without consciousness." to, "All of the behavior of humans could occur without consciousness." — wonderer1

I quite agree. But, if my understanding is correct, this is the position many have that Chalmers is arguing against. As is William James.

I wonder, do we shift realities, never realizing? — jgill

I'm certain I switch realities almost daily. I get red lights like you can't imagine. Even as a passenger I can affect the lights to the point that a driver said, "What the heck is going on?!? I can't believe how many red lights in getting!" Of course, I apologized, and explained it was because of me.

Another person folds me of a light he knew of on his 15-mile commute to college that was always green, asked even I couldn't get red. When I drove to the town his college is in some days later, as we were sitting at the red light, he said, "Wow. You're good."

I don't generally explain that God gets a laugh out of screwing with me by switching me to alternate realities where the lights I'm approaching will be red when I get to them.

To rub salt in the wound, the traffic facing me at the red light gets a green arrow to turn in front of me before I get my green light. But when I make the return drive, and am at that same red light, but facing the other direction, the people in the same position I was in earlier now get the green arrow to turn in front of me before I get my green light.

So yes, I, at least, shift realities. And when I'm dead, God and I are gonna sit down and have a little chat.

Well, yes. It would, off course, depend on people/beings outside of time. Superobservers.

The Grandfather paradox is the biggy. Here's my take on the subject: You go back in time and kill your grandfather before he procreates. Instantly the world you came from vanishes and is replaced by an alternate reality in which you don't exist. So you disappear and there is no way to tell time travel has occurred. It's a suicide mission. — jgill

The paradox is that, if you do that, and are therefore never born, you cannot go back and kill your grandfather before he procreates. So he does procreate, and you are born. So you do go back and kill him. So he doesn't procreate...

On the other hand, suppose you go back in time and don't do any real damage. Then the minor alterations you might cause in the time stream are absorbed and normalized. I don't subscribe to a butterfly chaos, rather what Stanislaw Lem saw as a series of effects that peter out and vanish over a time. — jgill

I never considered this. It seems to me it depends on how long after your visit you look for alterations. The shorter the time, the less likely you'll see alterations. If the fate of a butterfly that lived today was reversed, that one lost butterfly wouldn't be noticable tomorrow. Even it one animal that survived by eating it ends up dying today instead, that wouldn't be noticed.

But that butterfly is going to be responsible for offspring. And it's offspring will have offspring. Go a few thousand years in the future, and quite a few butterflies that existed in the original timeline no longer do. And quite a few animals the should have lived didn't. And others that shouldn't have lived did, because the predators that killed them never came into being, because their parents didn't get to eat the things that ate the butterflies that should have lived but didn't.

At point does the altered food chain become noticable? When and where are the lives and deaths of people changed? Sure, overall, things will have the same balance. But there will be differences that are noticable to people who know what it should have looked like.

In his article Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995), David Chalmers posed the (hard) question: "Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel?"
↪Luke

I think Dennett suggested that it was an evolutionary "neat trick". In other (anthropomorphising of evolution) words, it is a means evolution stumbled upon which achieved an adaptive end. Perhaps a more adaptive end could have been reached by neurological processes evolving differently with no consciousness evolved, and perhaps not.

I see consciousness as a function of our brain's innate tendency to develop a model of physical reality based on our sensory and motor interactions with reality. Qualia might be seen as the symbols various parts of our brain present to 'modeling central' to represent the state of things in reality - the marks on the map, so to speak. Consciousness may simply be, what happens when some parts of the brain are outputting symbols in the form we associate with qualia. while simultaneously other parts of our massively parallel processing brains are monitoring the cloud of symbols being presented.

I don't see why it would be unreasonable to answer Chalmers with, "That's just the way evolution went." Unfortunately succinct perhaps, and I could suggest reasons to think that's the case, but I think this post is long enough. — wonderer1

Chalmers isn't wondering about the purpose, or the benefit, of consciousness when he asks that. He's wondering about the mechanism.

The physical processes would work fine without being aware of themselves. They do so in many other life forms. Damage is being done, the sensory system detects the damage, and it pulls away. How many other species even learn from the experience, and avoid the thing that caused the damage whenever they sense it?

There are machines that can perceive different frequencies of the visible spectrum with much greater accuracy than we can. They can perform actions based on which frequency they perceive. They can choose between actions if there are multiple perceptions.

If all off our mental activity is entirely physical, how is it we are not like those other life forms and machines? We aren't like them. How is what makes us different accomplished?

BTW, there is another angle on this: if some AI passes the Turing test, meaning that it can convince anyone that it is conscious, would it necessarily follow that it is, in fact, conscious? In other words, if to be conscious is to experience, would an AIs ability to convince us that it is conscious prove that it experiences anything?
— Janus

I don't think it could convince us that it's conscious. We would always wonder if it really is conscious. Passing the Turing Test is just a milestone, it doesn't confer consciousness. — RogueAI

It's true that we will never really know. We can't prove we are conscious to each other. Many will never believe a machine is conscious. If a machine became conscious today, many would still not believe it a hundred years from now.

I wonder what will happen. Will the law be that nothing not human can be conscious, so there will be no rights? Knowing humanity, I don't expect we will give them the benefit of the doubt, and treat them like fellow sentients; like equals.