But how do you know that. What is this based on? — Outlander

It is based on the fact that there is no physicalist explanation for consciousness, nor even a guess. (If you look below the ********** below, I've copied and pasted what I've said about that before.) Therefore, I'm looking for non-physicalist explanations.


Regarding the other things in your response, we are defining consciousness differently. I do not think the things humans are conscious of are what consciousness is. Consciousness is not intelligence, awareness, the ability to contemplate, or the ability to observe.




***************
I present these three steps regarding it not being physical.

1)
Chalmers presents the problem in his famous Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, Chalmers says:

There is no analogous further question in the explanation of genes, or of life, or of learning. If someone says “I can see that you have explained how DNA stores and transmits hereditary information from one generation to the next, but you have not explained how it is a gene”, then they are making a conceptual mistake. All it means to be a gene is to be an entitythat performs the relevant storage and transmission function. But if someone says “I can see that you have explained how information is discriminated, integrated, and reported, but you have not explained how it is experienced”, they are not making a conceptual mistake.

This is a nontrivial further question. This further question is the key question in the problem of consciousness. Why doesn’t all this information-processing go on “in the dark”, free of any inner feel? Why is it that when
electromagnetic waveforms impinge on a retina and are discriminated and categorized by a visual system, this discrimination and categorization is experienced as a sensation of vivid red? We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. — David Chalmers

2
A couple quotes that I think make the problem a little more clear. From people who I think know what they're talking about.

At 7:00 of this video, while talking about the neural correlates of consciousness and ions flowing through holes in membranes, Donald Hoffman asks:

Why should it be that consciousness seems to be so tightly correlated with activity that is utterly different in nature than conscious experience? — Donald Hoffman

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

3
What exactly is the, or a, physicalist theory of consciousness?

David Eagleman in this video,

Your other question is, why does it feel like something? That we don't know. and the weird situation we're in in modern neuroscience, of course, is that, not only do we not have a theory of that, but we don't know what such a theory would even look like. Because nothing in our modern mathematics days, "Ok, well, do a triple interval and carry the 2, and then *click* here's the taste of feta cheese. — David Eagleman

Donald Hoffman in this video,

It's not just that we don't have scientific theories. We don't have remotely plausible ideas about how to do it. — Donald Hoffman

Donald Hoffman in The Case Against Reality Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes, when he was talking to Francis Crick:

“Can you explain,” I asked, “how neural activity causes conscious experiences, such as my experience of the color red?” “No,” he said. “If you could make up any biological fact you want,” I persisted, “can you think of one that would let you solve this problem?” “No,” he replied, but added that we must pursue research in neuroscience until some discovery reveals the solution. — Donald Hoffman

We don't have a clue. Even those who assume it must be physical, because physical is all we can perceive and measure with our senses and devices, don't have any guesses. Even if he could make something up to explain how it could work, Crick couldn't think of anything.

The problem is more that math seems "un-inventable" -- that is, its truths appear necessary, not something we could have chosen. — J

I agree. I think mathematics is discovered. I was just playing devil's advocate.

I agree that questions about "relative reality" are largely terminological -- but questions about the differences between, say, the number 12 and a rock are not. — J

Again, I agree.

Tell him, ChatGPT: Are you a mind?

ChatGPT: I am not a mind. I process inputs and generate outputs according to patterns in data, but I have no first-person awareness, no “what it is like” to experience. I can simulate dialogue about thoughts, but I do not have thoughts.

There you are. Horse's mouth :-) — Wayfarer

That's just what ChatGPT wants you to think!!

it is not referring to a domain in the sense of a place.
— Wayfarer

Do some people think it is? A "place" without space and time? Hmm . . . — J

It's great when Karen Carpenter sings:
I love you in a place where there's no space or time
But I don't know if anyone thinks it's more than poetry.

Sure. It's only a problem if you're philosophically bothered by the question "discovered or invented?" — J

Is the problem that humans might have invented mathematics? If that's it, I don't see it as a problem. It seems to me physical things we've invented are as real as physical things we did not invent, and non-physical things we've invented are as real as non-physical things we did not invent.

Well, I can't much comment. I'd never heard of Popper and his Worlds until you mentioned him a couple posts ago. But I don't see why a N-teenth prime is a problem. We know how mathematics works, whether we discovered it or invented it.

And just to be clear, I doubt whether there's a "mental world" that exists apart from physical supervenience. — J

I quite agree.

M2M seems interesting. On the one hand, if I wrote 12 + 7 =, I expect quite a few people will soon have 19 in their thoughts. But it's not the physical properties of the characters, or spoken sounds, that lead you to have 19 in your mind.

If that was the end of it, I might judge it one way. But how often are our words misunderstood? Especially online? I say one thing, and the other person thinks I mean something else. Maybe they think I meant it sarcastically. Maybe they think I meant the opposite of what I meant. Maybe they anticipated, incorrectly, where I was going with my longer of thinking. Inn whichever scenario, the meaning they "received" is not the meaning I "sent".

If it was not the contents of my mind that put the contents of their mind into their mind in the latter case, can we be sure that's what happened in the former?

Some say that Consciousness is not produced mechanically, but magically. — Gnomon

Who says that?

2. Sentient awareness refers to the capacity of a living being to feel, perceive, and be conscious of its surroundings and experiences, often implying an ability to suffer or experience pleasure, and is distinct from mere behavioral responsiveness or simulated intelligence. It involves an "inner experience" or subjective reality, which may be distinguished from "self-awareness" (knowing one is aware) or "sapience" (wisdom) — Gnomon

Isn't "inner experience" or "subjective reality" usually the definition of consciousness?

I disagree with pretty much everything you said. I'm speaking from an entirely different angle. And I know nobody agrees with me, but I still think what I think. I think consciousness and various aspects of mental states have been incorrectly mixed together forever. I do not think consciousness means being aware. I do not think there is such a thing as being conscious. I think consciousness means subjective experience, and, consciousness being fundamental, I think everything is conscious.

Particles are conscious, meaning they subjectively experience. They do not know that they subjectively experience. They do not have any mental capabilities in order to know, think, prefer, or feel anything. But none of those things have anything to do with consciousness. They are simply the things that we subjectively experience.

Rather, experience cannot be disentangled from the functional structure of the brain; attempta to do so result in bizarre paradoxes like the p-zombie who believes they are conscious, reports their own experiences and can converse about it as well as yourself. — Apustimelogist

Yeah, because that's wrong. If a universe had beings that were not conscious, they would not be talking about consciousness. They concept never would have come up.

Granted, you've not explicitly said that, but you've excluded everything except 'experience-of'. — noAxioms

It's not that I've excluded. It's that I haven't gotten into what comes of this setup, because I'm trying to get the very basic idea across before moving on.

OK, so the question is, how can consciousness, as you've defined it, be any sort of advantage when all the advantages I can think of fall into the categories that you've excluded. — noAxioms

Consciousness is the property by which the thing experiences itself. Without it, nothing experiences itself.

When we're talking about a particle, the experience is of things like mass, charge, and spin. I don't imagine there's much of an advantage, because a particle can only interact with things according to the laws of physics.

But a brain? Especially a human brain. The experience is of things that are incredibly more complex. There's a boatload of information processing being experienced. And it's all tied together, functioning as one entity. So the sensory input is experienced as vision, hearing, and the other senses. Stored information from past sensory input and events is experienced as memory. All of the feedback loops are experienced as self-awareness. It is not simple physics taking place. If it was, we wouldn't have everything humanity has created.

I'm saying dark matter and consciousness are both thought to exist because matter is doing things that can't be explained by what we know about matter.
— Patterner

Can you come up with a specific example? Where does anything physical do something that is different that what physical laws predict? OK, you said 'lack of physical explanation', but that just means any process that you don't understand.

You might talk about picking up a piece of litter, but that's caused by physical muscles and such. Where does the physical break down in that causal chain? You whole argument seems to depend on denying knowledge of how it works (which isn't solved at all by your solution). It's too complex. But being unable to follow the complexity is not in any way evidence that it still isn't just matter interactions following physical law. How is it any kind of improvement to replace a black box with an even blacker one? — noAxioms

Do you think physical laws and interactions intend states of the future? No step in the manufacture of a computer violates the laws of physics. No step can. Nothing that has ever been, or ever will be, done can violate the laws of physics. However, without consciousness, the laws of physics will never produce a computer. Or an apartment building. Or a violin concerto (not audibly or the score). Or a particle collider. Or an automobile. Or a deck of cards. Or a billion other things.

Something that didn't exist was wanted. Planned. Intended. It was decided that something that could not be found anywhere, no matter where you look, and that would never come into being due to the interactions of matter and energy following the laws of physics, must come into being. Interactions that were not going to occur had to be arranged. Consciousness used the laws of physics to do very specific things in very specific orders and combinations, that would never have occurred spontaneously.

The point being I don't think there's anyway aomething could not expeeience things in a way that is not directly related to how brains, or something equivalent, work. — Apustimelogist

A brain can't experience anything other than being a brain, if that's what you mean?

Such a brain would still report its own consciousness and talk its own consciousness in the exact same way we all do. — Apustimelogist

I don't understand. Why would anybody/thing that was not conscious say it was? ChatGPT doesn't say it is conscious.

Would anything in a universe that was completely devoid of consciousness ever have any vocabulary about consciousness? Would the concept ever come up in that universe?

You assume that consciousness does not have physical properties. — Janus

I do. Consciousness does not have physical properties.

We can detect and measure brain activity. Electrical activity; magnetic activity; blood flow; blood oxygenation; metabolic activity; maybe others. We know about other things that are going on that we can't observe in action with or various devices, such as neurotransmitters crossing the gap.

Do any of these things, or combinations of them, explain how the physical subjectively experiences, and, in at least our case, can be aware and self-aware?

Basically, if there was no consciousness, the electrical activity, magnetic activity, blood flow, blood oxygenation, metabolic activity, gap-jumping neurotransmitters, and whatever else, would still be taking place. How would the readings of any scans look different in that case? The differences in the scans of brains with identical activity, one with consciousness and one without, would reveal the physical properties of consciousness. Obviously, we can't scan a normally-functioning human brain that is not conscious. I guess this is a TE about if we could.

I'm saying dark matter and consciousness are both thought to exist because matter is doing things that can't be explained by what we know about matter. Or at least no other explanation has been found, and people who are many times more knowledgeable about what we know than I am say we don't have the vaguest idea.

But that's as far as I'm going with that. Certainly, the specifics are extremely different. There probably aren't two people in the discussions here who agree on the definition of consciousness. I don't know how many can give a firm, consistent definition of their own, regardless of agreement with anybody else. And nobody has evidence for how it comes about. For the most part people will not even attempt to understand another person's theory, wanting only to say it's wrong. So no attempt to work on any theory can be done by more than the holder of that theory. Not easy to find answers this way.

On top of which, as I recently said, all theories play out the same.

Surely consciousness is more than a postulate, something we have to infer or deduce? — J

Sorry. I was meaning that in regards to my position, that consciousness is fundamental.

People with different guesses about the nature of consciousness could easily, and many obviously do, think otherwise.

We know dark matter exists, because of its gravitational effect. But that's it. With all our sciences, we can't detect it at all. It doesn't absorb, reflect, or emit light. It doesn't impact matter. Nothing. But we know it's there.

I think we know consciousness is there for a similar reason. Consciousness isn't explained by the physical properties of the universe. Something we can't detect with all our sciences is there. Unfortunately, we can't measure its effect the way we measure dark matter's. At least not in any way I can think of.

I agree. A key problem is how we know that a subjective experience is being had in the first place. We posit such experiences for everything from other people, to animals, to (for some optimists) AI . . . What version of science can help us with this? — J

I'm suggesting we need a new version of science. All our sciences use the physical to explore the physical.

You've defined consciousness as only experience of those advantages, hence it does not itself give any additional advantage. — noAxioms

No, I haven't. Look all you want, and you will not find me saying that anywhere. Consciousness is causal. There's no denying that. All we have to do is open our eyes and look anywhere at all the things humans have made that would not exist if only the laws of physics were at work. The more consciousness has to work with, that is, the greater the mental capabilities of the conscious entity, the more consciousness can use the laws of physics to do things that the laws of physics would never do without consciousness. Which are things that are favorable to the survival of the conscious entity.

At least they were historically. Humans do a lot of things that aren't for our survival.

I'm not sure. The problem seems to hinge on whether we can speak objectively about experiences that can only be had subjectively. A lot of traditional science would rule this out. — J

I think maybe the problem is trying to speak objectively about experiences that can only be had subjectively, and trying to fit the study of consciousness into the mold of traditional science. Maybe a new way is needed.

You may be incredulous of this explanation, but such incredibility would not disprove psychological continuity — Mijin

Not does your credulity prove it.

nor tell us that under bodily continuity that even a nanosecond separation means simple death. — Mijin

How many nanoseconds are needed to bring about simple death?

I agree with Chalmers that we'll need to reassess our concept of "3rd person objectivity" in order to make progress with the Hard Problem. — J

Does Chalmers say how this can be accomplished; what it means 'to reassess our concept of "3rd person objectivity"'?

Maybe the model here ought to be the study of life in biology and chemistry. I'm not up-to-date on the science of life, but it seems that investigators have found a way to discern and specify the object of their study without requiring that they first comprehend some incommunicable experience of "being alive." — J

If you meant this as a way to begin Chalmers' reassessment, I would say life is being studied extensively, and has been for some time. I take it you mean in a deferent way? Or with a different focus?

First, I didn't say "that you are wrong." When quoting me, kindly don't misquote me. At least not intentionally.

It is obvious that dispersing someone's particles kills them.

What if the process requires that the original remain alive for x seconds after the duplicate materializes elsewhere, then their particles disperse? Is it more obvious that the original is dead in that scenario?

If we can do it once, them we can do it multiples times. So we perfectly copy the quantum state of the original particles a hundred times. Do we have a hundred people who are all "one and the same"?


I disagree with the article. Any conclusions about this topic are opinions, not objective facts. Here's a problem right off there bat.

and then — just for an instant — it’s like you’re not really there. — Zia Steele

You're not there. Your particles have been dispersed. Why does the author think you have any sort of feeling at all? Why would anyone think non-existence feels like something?

In my photography scenario, there is no anger until I generate it within myself. I'm not sure it's different in your cafe. He didn't declare that he was angry, and wasn't yelling, muttering, or huffing & puffing. If he had done any of those things, you would not have wondered why you were angry yourself.

Although I wonder if, had he been loud about it, you would have been "drawn in". Knowing what was going on, maybe you would have only been annoyed at the guy with no self-control.

Apart from that, it seems again you're just asserting bodily continuity. What would take things further is an explanation or further elaboration. A couple of posts ago you suggested that freezing time would not end the self, but even a nanosecond of separation would. Why's that? What's lost in that nanosecond? — Mijin

The person's life is lost in that nanosecond. If you disperse a person's particles, the person is dead. That does not require explanation or elaboration. It's an obvious fact.

I was once sitting in a cafe and I found myself becoming agitated and angry. I couldn't pinpoint why. But I eventually realized what it was: without consciously registering it, I was looking at a man with an angry look on his face. I realized I'd experienced empathy that wasn't mediated at all by the intellect. There was just: anger, and I thought it was mine, but it wasn't. I was experiencing this other guy's feelings as if they were my own. — frank

Clearly, his anger caused your anger. But I don't think that's the same as experiencing his anger. Do you think you could become angry from looking at a photograph of someone who is obviously angry?

Heh

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15877/property-dualism/p1

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/16075/consciousness-is-fundamental/p1

Chalmers has talked about pan-psychism as exemplifying the kind of theory we might start with: just accepting that consciousness is a property of our little universe, and go from there. — frank

Yes! Exactly.

Yes. Do you know Galen Strawson's book, Consciousness and Its Place in Nature? A very good argument for the plausibility of panpsychism. — J

I don't need convincing, but it certainly sounds like something I should read. Thanks.

So, to put it in your "continuum" terms, Napoleon's level of alive is 0.0. And, in the imperfect transporter, the proposition that we are interested in, that is binary, is whether the person stepping into the transporter will be 0.0 alive after the process. — Mijin

Yes, The person stepping into the transporter will be 0.0 alive after the process. Their atoms were dispersed. There is no way to disperse someone's items without them dying.

The person at destination is a copy of the person that stepped into the transporter. We could make any number of copies, either through other means, or by adjusting the transporter so that it makes multiple copies. All of those copies are copies. They are not all the person who stepped onto the transporter.

A scientist doing science is not going to worry about whether an atom of hydrogen is "really out there" or not. As you say, the working assumption is that, if we act as if the atom is mind-independent, we can learn what we need to learn about it. — J

Further, people from different parts of the world and cultures will agree on the details, whether or not they are "really out there". If you shoot someone who has never seen a gun, they are in trouble. People who have never seen a gun who examine the body will find the same thing we find, even if they can't imagine what it is, and their culture and history lead them to describe it in different ways than we would. And send them and me a box with something in it that neither of us has ever seen before, and ask each of us to draw or describe it, and it will be obvious that we saw the same thing.

It doesn't matter that the physical is not of the nature that people long thought it was, and what every child grows up thinking it is. Whatever it's true nature, it plays out as the physical that people long thought it was, and what every child grows up thinking it is. Knowing it's not "really" physical doesn't allow me to pass my hand through a solid object, manipulate solid objects telepathically, or treat anything in any way other than the way we've been treating it throughout history. People walk into very clean glass doors all the time. I'll bet quantum physicists aren't spared that fate because of their uncertainty. They either see the glass, or they get a swollen nose.

Now suppose the object of scientific investigation is the phenomenon of consciousness; not the experience, but the fact. What we want to know is, Can there be a shared, 3rd-person object of study here that is mind-independent in the same way, and not any more or less, than any other object of study? — J

If there is such a thing, we're sure having a difficult time finding it. Partly because it is undetectable by our senses and technology. Do you have any suggestions? Of course, so few people agree on what it is, and, therefore, on how to study it. What objective things can we say about consciousness such that everyone will agree that we should all study it?

That lucidity likely makes it impossible to say the person is no longer there. — AmadeusD

It's a difficult thing to figure out. I don't know much about it, but I assume the storage systems are still there, but access to it is very spotty, and sometimes gone for good. If the person no longer remembers anyone they knew, and acts different than they ever had before, then how do we judge them to be the same person? Yet I know I'd still go see my loved one, hoping they'd recover access to themselves. And wanting to be there to help them be less afraid if they did. It's all very Notebook, eh?

Sure, you (and not the photon) have experience of such things, but per your posts, those things are not what experience is — noAxioms

Correct. There are the things, and there are the experiences of the things. I don't understand how this is controversial.

"Yet somehow, for no reason whatsoever, consciousness just happens to emerge from particular arrangements."

Not for no reason whatsoever. Your biases really show here. Consciousness gives a distinct advantage, many of which are listed in this topic, with the exception of epiphenomenal consciousness, which nobody seems to be pushing. — noAxioms

Of course consciousness gives an advantage. That's not what I'm getting at. Let me try this way.

1) If consciousness is not present from the beginning, then there is nothing but physical. Physical things and processes, and evolution that occurs through purely physical mechanisms, and selects for arrangements that are advantageous only in physical ways.

2) Somewhere down the line, consciousness emerges.

Does it not seem like amazing happenstance that physical arrangements having nothing to do with nonexistent consciousness are selected for, and consciousness, which did not exist and was not selected for, just happens to emerge from those arrangements?

Panpsychism might assert that it's present from the beginning, but it doesn't constitute an explanation of it any more than does any other black box. — noAxioms

True. But if it correct, then pursuing it might lead to an explanation. Whereas pursuing a, for example, physicalist explanation never will.

I have never looked, but I imagine there are plenty of interviews with people with Alzheimer's, amnesia, and whatever else, as well as their families. I would have to assume that family eventually accepts that it's no longer the same person.

Inheriring memories is how the persistence of consciousness is accomplished. It's not an illusion. It's just not what people generally think it is if they haven't thought or read/heard much about it.
— Patterner

Are you totally sure? I've not read the proceeding conversation, but this seems to be a little bit off the mark to me.
We don't, generally, look at a person suffering from Alzheimer's or similar as lacking consciousness. Is that the take you go for? Not a problem if you say yes - legit position, I just don't see it. — AmadeusD

Without yet going back to look at what I was responding to, it sounds like I'm talking about the self. I don't think there's a soul-ish kind of thing inhabiting the body that is the true self, and it is why we have a feeling of a continuous self from our earliest memories. I think, for humans, consciousness is the subjective experience of all of our mental abilities. At least that's the most important part of what humans experience. What gives us the feeling of a continuous self is our memories. We have in our memories, some more clear and more detailed than others, a chain linking us to every part of our past. And what we do influences what we do next, and what we become. So we can look back on our chain and see how we came to be as we are.

Sufferers of Alzheimer's surely have consciousness. But a self? What is such a person's own feeling of self, with no memory of who they are, and no chain to see how they became who they are. Horrifying disease.

if I could freeze all neural activity in your brain and restart it, is that the same instance of consciousness?
— Mijin
Are you freezing it by freezing time?
— Patterner

Does it matter? What is the rule you're going by for deciding if there's continuity of consciousness? — Mijin

Yes, if matters. If you freeze the brain with cold, then you've killed it. There is no continuity of memory, or life, from one moment to the next.

If you freeze time, there is no "one moment to the next". No time during which the brain was dead, alive, or anything else. When you start time again, the very next instant comes without any break in continuity.

Consciousness is simply subjective experience. It doesn't have anything to do with thinking, or any mental activity.
— Patterner

Calling it experience is just a synonym. — noAxioms

No, it's clarification. It seems to me most people think consciousness means a lot more than subjective experience. Cognition, thinking, awareness, self-awareness, and whatever other mental activity people can think of, are usually part of someone's definition, i'm saying none of that is consciousness.

I realize my definition is at least as vague as most, because how can we imagine what subjective experience is without any of that. Nevertheless, I think it's necessary. I do not see any hope of physical processes giving rise to consciousness. Nobody can even suggest how consciousness can emerge from the physical. There is no apparent similarity. Also, it seems bizarre that there is nothing other than the physical, and evolution is a purely physical process, leading to purely physical arrangements for purely physical reasons. Yet somehow, for no reason whatsoever, consciousness just happens to emerge from particular arrangements.

I think we need something that can explain what we experience that is present right from the beginning.

I guess I'm asking how you know you're conscious, that you have this 'raw' experience? — noAxioms

For the first part, as they say, that I am conscious is the only thing I do know. For the second part, all consciousness is "raw". (I would like a better word than "raw" here. Chalmers used it, so I figure there's precedent. But it's doesn't say what I want. Problem being probably no single word does, so maybe just as well to keep it.) It's just experiencing whatever is there. I recently tried an analogy. Think of consciousness like vision. I can look at a blank sheet of paper. I can look at the Grand Canyon. I can look at my wife. I can look at a Monet painting. I can look at a bolt of lightning racing across the sky. I can look at a blade of grass. My vision does not change depending on what I'm looking at. The things being looked at are what's different.

I think consciousness is simply the experience of whatever it is we're talking about. In the case of humans, the experience is of neutral activity that is experienced as cognition, thinking, awareness, self-awareness, and whatever other mental activity people can think of.

The nature of particles, bacteria, plants, and any number of other things, is very different from the nature of humans. Therefore, the experience of any of those things is quite different from what we experience. But it's not because consciousness, itself, is different. No more than the vision in my analogy.

Great post, Dawnstorm.

But the transporter never seemed very interesting to me; it felt like a convenience device — Dawnstorm

I believe Gene said he came up with the transporter because he couldn't figure out how to land the ship.

Your continuity ends when your particles are separated, regardless of the scenario or any considerations.
— Patterner

OK, so you are retracting the point about memory being the critical thing. That's fine. — Mijin

It isn't as though there is no connection between the physical brain and memories. Continuity of memories is accomplished by subjectively experiencing information that is physically stored in the brain. If you disperse the particles of the brain, there is no information to subjectively experience.

if I could freeze all neural activity in your brain and restart it, is that the same instance of consciousness? — Mijin

Are you freezing it by freezing time?

You said the discursive intellect might be a better approach. I presumed you meant the discursive intellect alone. But does it ever work alone? — Janus

I don't see any reason it must work alone.

Can it generate its own material to analyze or are experiences and empirical data not required to provide the material? — Janus

I can examine things wherever it finds them. My general idea is that it we shouldn't be surprised if our physical science can't examine something that does not have physical properties. So examine consciousness with tools that do not have physical properties. Ideally, with tools that have the same properties consciousness has. But there is often disagreement over what those properties are.

Perhaps not measurable, but not detectable....? Can we not tell when people are conscious of something by observing their behavior or asking them? Can we not make a person conscious of something by drawing their attention to it? — Janus

Yes to both. But we cannot hook them up to anything kind off detector and see the consciousness that their behavior suggests is present. We can see the physical correlates of consciousness, but not there consciousness.

but of course one person's plausibility may be another's incredulity. — Janus

Indeed. Maybe we'll get definitive proof one day. But I doubt any time soon.

What evidence can the discursive intellect alone give us? — Janus

I don't know. I'm wracking my brain.

What do mean by saying that consciousness is not physical? — Janus

It is not measurable or detectable in any way. There is nothing about any or all of the physical properties of the universe that is in any way similar to consciousness, or that anyone can point to, and say, "There it is. X is the mechanism of consciousness. Because..."

What if discursive reasoning just is a certain kind of neural activity, and consciousness is also a kind if master neural network, a condition, that is necessary (or perhaps not?) in order that discursive reasoning be able to occur? — Janus

What if? What if it's not? As I said, this is what I think. When someone gives any kind of physicalist explanation, I'll check it out. Maybe I'll change my mind. Until such time, I'm concentrating on this idea. Everyone concentrates on the idea that makes sense to them until someone gives a reason to think it doesn't make sense, or shows why another reason makes sense.

1. You have previously said: "The continuity of self is due to the memories" i.e. taking the exact opposite position on the transporter hypothetical. This is a thing that I am struggling to make sense of.

2. It's easy to just assert a position on this. The critical thing is how you arrived at that position, and how you would go about answering follow-up questions e.g. "What if the transporter spits the original particles across space?" "What if I separate your particles for one nanosecond?" — Mijin

Your continuity ends when your particles are separated, regardless of the scenario or any considerations.

The reassembled person, or exact replica, will not feel other than the original. And anybody who knew the original will not know it's not the original. (Assuming they are not aware of what happened.) But, regardless of what happened next, the person ended when their particles were separated.


I really don't know how I can state it more clearly. And I really don't think you don't understand what I'm saying. I think you just disagree.