Just because we might expect it in an infinite duration, doesn’t mean we have reason to expect it now.

I wonder how many Boltzmann brains think they are Martians. And how many think they are from sentient stars. And how many think they are in a universe with entirely different laws of physics than those in the universe I think I am from. And how many think they are God. And how many think they are…. Well, anything else we can imagine, as well as any number of things we don’t get around to imagining.

Is there any reason any of these things couldn’t happen?

Can't imagine the mind exists independent of the brain. Seems to me the mind is the brain, doing... mind things.
— Patterner

It's complicated. My heart pumps blood; I don't. My kidneys filter my blood; I don't. My muscles move my arm, fingers, legs; but I (and not my brain) walk and type and wave. My brain is clearly a key part of seeing and thinking, but I do those things, not my brain. — Ludwig V

The only part of you that you cannot lose, and still think of yourself as you (and, for that matter, still think), is your brain. If you could no longer walk and type and wave, and see and hear and taste, you’d still be you. (Though you might wish you were not.)

But with an infinite number of possibilities that are not works of literature, including an infinite amount of gibberish; an incomprehensibly large number of combinations of the same number of letters, punctuation, and spaces as Shakespeare's works that are not Shakespeare's works; and a rather large number of works of literature that are not Shakespeare's works... I'd bet against it.
— Patterner
So given a die with 1010000000 sides, one of those sides corresponds to the complete works of Shakespeare, and the rest other things, mostly gibberish. You're betting that if this die is rolled an unlimited number of times, most of those other sides will come up an infinite number of times, but the one side in question will not come up even once.
You're not a math major either I take it. Neither am I, but I can do simple arithmetic at least. — noAxioms

The die has an infinite number of sides. Not the finite number that the one you postulate has. It's not simple arithmetic. You could roll this die an infinite number of times, and you would never see every side. There are an infinite number of sides you would never see.

A single immortal monkey who never stops outputting random characters is all that is needed to eventually put out any finite work of literature, buried of course with gibberish on either side. — noAxioms

Anything's possible. But with an infinite number of possibilities that are not works of literature, including an infinite amount of gibberish; an incomprehensibly large number of combinations of the same number of letters, punctuation, and spaces as Shakespeare's works that are not Shakespeare's works; and a rather large number of works of literature that are not Shakespeare's works... I'd bet against it.

The video says:
"But if the universe exists over an infinitely long time, extremely unlikely events will happen."
I'm sure some will. But there are an infinite number of unlikely events. No reason to think all of them will happen. There are an infinite number of things those infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters could type. There are an infinite number of things they could type that do not contain the letter E.

In the mean time we are making a philosophical mistake that was first made by Plato - thinking that the latest scientific development is the answer to everything. — Ludwig V

Heh. I suspect not.

I don't think a disembodied mind can exist, although it seems that people can not only imagine such a thing, but believe in it. — Ludwig V

Can't imagine the mind exists independent of the brain. Seems to me the mind is the brain, doing... mind things.

Maybe someday we'll make minds in an electronic medium. And that mind won't exist independent of that electronic brain.

Now I'm rambling because I don't have anything coherent to say. — Ludwig V

Never stopped me. If I haven't already demonstrated that, it won't be long.

I think consciousness is casual.
— Patterner
I’m puzzled. I think “casual” here may be a typo. Is that right? — Ludwig V

Heh. Yes. Causal. Knowing the speech to text and swiping make a lot of errors, I try to proofread. I obviously do not always succeed.

Our consciousness, our awareness, is nothing more than lumps of matter noticing what’s going on.
— Patterner
I don't disagree. — Ludwig V

I do. We do more than notice.

But there are different kinds of lumps of matter. Some of them are conscious. Others are money. Others are people we love.

I’m still puzzled.

Are numbers, words, logical variables, musical notes, lumps of matter? What about shadows, rainbows, surfaces, colours, boundaries, sub-atomic particles?

Votes, contracts, insults, punches, all involve lumps of matter, but are they lumps of matter?

Pictures are lumps of matter, but are they just lumps of matter like any other?

Card games all involve lumps of matter, but does that mean there is no important difference between them? Banknotes are all lumps of matter, but it doesn't follow they all have the same value. — Ludwig V

There's a lot of territory to cover here.

I'm not sure how you mean some of these things. Printed numbers, words, musical notes, etc., are lumps of matter. Spoken words, audible musical notes, etc., are lumps of matter, since they are vibrating air molecules.

Of course, all of these things are only lumps of matter if they are not being perceived and interpreted by a human. Only consciousness makes things more than lumps of matter.

However, the thought of these things are not lumps of matter. The medium of the thought, a human brain, is. But the brain is not the number, word, or logical variable. A particular arrangement of all the constituent parts of the brain is not the number 7. The printed 7 means what it means because we assigned it that meaning. Could the arrangement of the brain's constituent parts have that same meaning? Are the arrangements, and progressions of arrangements, of the brain's constituent parts symbols representing numbers, words, thoughts...? Is this system of symbols and meanings an objective system that is built into the laws of physics, such that the arrangements progress one after the other, as they must, due to the laws of physics; and, at the same time, those arrangements also have objective meanings such that they are our thoughts progressing one after the other, and the logic that connects one thought to the next is due to these law-driven arrangements?

Let me try an analogy. There used to be a popular philosophical theory – sense-datum theory. This argued that everything that we know, including our concepts, comes from the senses. Many people took this to mean that everything can be reduced to sense-data. Hence, physics can be reduced to sense-data. So what would you say to them? — Ludwig V

I would tell them I disagree. I do not think our thoughts are the result of nothing but the arrangements of the constituent parts of our brains that come about due to the laws of physics. We certainly need sense-data for our brains to form connections and pathways, and for consciousness to form. (Anybody think an infant born with no ability to sense anything will become a thinking person?)

But it's not only the sense-data and physics. We can give machines sensory apparatus far superior to ours, program them with the totality of the rules of mathematics as we currently understand them, and give them all the feedback loops we want. That's a head start we didn't have. In I Am a Strange Loop, Hofstadter said: '..."having semantics" (which means the ability to genuinely think about things, as contrasted with the "mere" ability to juggle meaningless tokens in complicated patterns...)' Despite any head start we give them, making them superior to us in any way we can, do these machines "have semantics"? Can we program consciousness into them, because consciousness is nothing but particles following rules? Why are we not as they are, collections of particles following rules, not noticing, and thinking about, what we're doing?

Love your quartets, btw.
— Patterner
I'm glad to hear it. I love them too. I wish I had written them, but glad I don't have to live that tortured life. — Ludwig V

I've had Op 127 in my head since your first response to me. Finally listening to it right now.

I'm referring to the idea of a category. Physics explains everything in the category of the physical and nothing in any other category. So most radical reductionists are making a category mistake. The best way I can think of to explain this is by quoting the Wikipedia entry "Category mistakes":-

The term "category-mistake" was introduced by Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind (1949) . . .
The phrase is introduced in the first chapter. The first example is of a visitor to Oxford. The visitor, upon viewing the colleges and library, reportedly inquired "But where is the University?" The visitor's mistake is presuming that a University is part of the category "units of physical infrastructure" rather than that of an "institution". Ryle's second example is of a child witnessing the march-past of a division of soldiers. After having had battalions, batteries, squadrons, etc. pointed out, the child asks when is the division going to appear. "The march-past was not a parade of battalions, batteries, squadrons and a division; it was a parade of the battalions, batteries and squadrons of a division." (Ryle's italics) His third example is of a foreigner being shown a cricket match. After being pointed out batsmen, bowlers and fielders, the foreigner asks: "who is left to contribute the famous element of team-spirit?" He goes on to argue that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body rests on a category mistake. — Ludwig V

Thanks for this. Although the concept is familiar, I hadn't heard the term before.

Love your quartets, btw.

I highly recommend Peter Tse's The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation. — wonderer1

Thank you! I just bought it. I hope I'm up for it.

Let me try again. The physical events in our brain - let's say - cause (or maybe underlie) our awareness, so although they are not dependent on our awareness, they can't take place without our awareness. I can't imagine why you think our awareness has no causal ability. — Ludwig V

Well, I don't think that. I am speaking from my understanding of the reductionist view. Again, the idea that everything is reducible to physics. Our consciousness, our awareness, is nothing more than lumps of matter noticing what’s going on. As Annaka Harris put it:

Surprisingly, our consciousness also doesn’t appear to be involved in much of our own behavior, apart from bearing witness to it. A number of fascinating experiments have been conducted in this area, and the neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga describes some of them in detail in a wonderful chapter aptly titled “The Brain Knows Before You Do” in his book The Mind’s Past.

In his book, Gazzaniga says:

We human beings have a centric view of the world. We think our personal selves are directing the show most of the time. I argue that recent research shows this is not true but simply appears to be true because of a special device in our left brain called the interpreter. This one device creates the illusion that we are in charge of our actions, and it does so by interpreting our past-the prior actions of our nervous system.

I think consciousness is casual. But I'm hoping someone who agrees that it is, indeed, nothing but physics, but also thinks it is causal, can explain how they believe both things, since they appear to contradict each other. Because, otherwise, I'm looking at panprotopsychism. Which is an awkward ideas. Even if true, it doesn't seem to be anything about which we can do more than speculate.

That's all there is,
— Patterner

I don't know what that means. — Ludwig V

I'm thinking of my Kurzweil quote. (Hofstadter also discusses it in I am a Strange Loop, but that's a longer quote.) Although it's easier to work with things at higher levels, everything reduces to physics. Ultimately, everything is the interaction of particles and the four forces.

If our consciousness is nothing but the interactions of particles, then the interaction of particles is what produces computers.

I can only address a little at the moment. Must sleep, and that's not conducive to coherent thought.

The physical events - which we think of in terms of neurons and brain structures, but which are ultimately reducible to particles movements and interactions - would still take place without our awareness. And our awareness doesn't add anything, because awareness has no causal ability. It's all physics.
— Patterner

You misunderstand. What goes on in our brain is the physical basis of awareness, so if what goes on in our brains were any different, we would not have awareness. As to the causal effects of awareness, it would be contrary to physical laws if there were none. We just don't know what they are yet. — Ludwig V

I don't know what you mean here.

"...Yet the basis of human activity is physics. But physics left to itself does not produce computers."
↪Ludwig V

I'd say physics left to itself produced stars, which produced the elements of which the Earth is composed. Physics occurring on the Earth through evolution produced brains, and brains can reasonably be considered computers. (Though not digital computers.) The operation of brains is still physics and resulted in the production of digital computers. So in a roundabout way physics left to itself did produce digital computers. We just don't tend to think of ourselves as being aspects of "physics left to itself". — wonderer1

I was going to say much the same thing. If all of our consciousness and awareness, thoughts of the future - all of our mental characteristics - are reducible to the laws of physics, then how do we say physics doesn't produce computers? That's all there is, if that's all our consciousness is. And that's all our consciousness is, because the laws of physics cannot produce something that is outside of itself.

If something other than physics is producing computers - if something other than physics exists at all - it had to have come about other than by physics.

Where do I go wrong with this train of thought?

We understand how the properties of particles that we are aware of give rise to the macro properties.  Physical properties like liquidity, as well as physical processes like flight. There is no macro property that is not, ultimately, due to properties of the micro, even if we don't think about it that way.
— Patterner

That's true. The problem is that physics defines itself in such a way that it cannot recognize anything else. So friendship, love, hatred, tyranny, democracy cannot occur in a theory in physics. One can sometimes "reduce" things to physics, like the aurora borealis or heat. But the beauty of the aurora borealis is not reduced, but eliminated, and there is an argument about whether heat is the motion of molecules or a sensation, which is not something that can be recognized in thermodynamics. That doesn't resolve the problem, but perhaps does something to explain why it exists. — Ludwig V

If I understand physical reductionists (and that's an "if", and I guess not all agree with each other), physics' recognition of the things you mention is irrelevant. The physical events - which we think of in terms of neurons and brain structures, but which are ultimately reducible to particles movements and interactions - would still take place without our awareness. And our awareness doesn't add anything, because awareness has no causal ability. It's all physics.

I that's correct, the question is, why do we have this awareness that accomplishes nothing? Why would evolution have selected for it?

Hi everyone.  This is my first post, and I thought a disclaimer would be a good idea.  I think consciousness is the most fascinating thing there is.  We are the universe waking up to itself!  (Maybe it's the very beginning of a process of one consciousness that encompasses the entire universe.  I know, I know. Lol.  But I like fantasy/sci-fi. Once the Borg get involved...)  I have a good deal of trouble reading about it, because I have no background in these things.  It gets complicated pretty quickly, and I'm soon lost.  So I have to look things up, often things I've already looked up, even multiple times.  And I try another book, hoping for an easier approach.  Which means I've read the beginnings of a lot of books.
But I keep going back, to one after another, and try to get a but further. Bit by bit, perhaps I'm getting there.

This is a pretty big thread, and I've only read the first couple pages.  But I wanted to address this post. My apologies if it's all covered later in the thread.

I'll ask you the same as I ask everyone who asks this question...

Why does any of this constitute or necessitate subjective awareness. or consciousness, or the capacity to experience?"
— bert1

... What would an answer look like? Give me an example answer. It's doesn't have to be the right answer, just an example of what sort of thing would satisfy you.

Like if I said "no one has yet answered the question of what is 567,098,098 * 45,998,087" I could clearly tell you what sort of thing I would accept as an answer - I'm expecting some big number - even though I don't know what that number is. Without that framework, I don't see how I could possibly claim that no-one's answered the question yet.

So what's the sort of thing you'd be satisfied with? If I went into my lab tomorrow, had a really good look at some brains, and came back to and said "Brain activity requires consciousness because..." What would you accept? — Isaac

I don’t think the question is: What answer will we accept?  I think the question is: What have you got?  
In What is it like to be a bat?, Nagel says:

It is not captured by any of the familiar, recently devised reductive analyses of the mental, for all of them are logically compatible with its absence.

At https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2022.767612/full, Peter D. Kitchener and Colin G. Hales say:

The approach the majority of neuroscientists take to the question of how consciousness is generated, it is probably fair to say, is to ignore it. Although there are active research programs looking at correlates of consciousness, and explorations of informational properties of what might be relevant neural ensembles, the tacitly implied mechanism of consciousness in these approaches is that it somehow just happens.

According to these two quotes, physicalist/materialist/materially reductivist (What term is currently being used?) approaches do not address consciousness, and they explain things nicely without it.  That seems like an important question to me - Why is it happening at all?  If behavior is the result of stimulus & response, even vastly complex webs of S&R, then what use is any awareness of it all, or qualia?  There are machines that can differentiate frequencies of the visible light spectrum to much greater detail than we can, and perform actions based on which frequency they are detecting at any given moment.  There can also be other criteria involved in figuring out which action to take.  

But they don't experience red, and they aren't thinking about what they're going to do.  They just do it, mechanically.  What value is our awareness of, and preferences for, certain perceptions and responses if we are going to respond to all stimulus mechanically anyway? If our awareness of and feelings about anything don't matter, then why do they exist? Why would evolution have selected them?

But none of that answers your question.  I don't know what kind of answer would be satisfactory.  I don't know that we could distinguish a good answer from a bad one.  The problem is hinted at as Peter D. Kitchener and Colin G. Hales continue:

This reliance on a “magical emergence” of consciousness does not address the “objectively unreasonable” proposition that elements that have no attributes or properties that can be said to relate to consciousness somehow aggregate to produce it.

In How to Create a Mind, Ray Kurzweil said:

Although chemistry is theoretically based on physics and could be derived entirely from physics, this would be unwieldy and infeasible in practice, so chemistry has established its own rules and models. Similarly, we should be able to deduce the laws of thermodynamics from physics, but once we have a sufficient number of particles to call them a gas rather than simply a bunch of particles, solving equations for the physics of each particle interaction becomes hopeless, whereas the laws of thermodynamics work quite well. Biology likewise has its own rules and models. A single pancreatic islet cell is enormously complicated, especially if we model it at the level of molecules; modeling what a pancreas actually does in terms of regulating levels of insulin and digestive enzymes is considerably less complex.

We understand how the properties of particles that we are aware of give rise to the macro properties.  Physical properties like liquidity, as well as physical processes like flight. There is no macro property that is not, ultimately, due to properties of the micro, even if we don't think about it that way.

It does not seem reasonable that consciousness would be an exception. The exception.  The mystery is, if the micro properties are not any we are aware of, what are they?  But we can't answer that.  We aren't aware of what we aren't aware of.  And we can't study what we can't study.  If the answer is some kind of panpsychism or panprotopsychism, we can't detect it with any of our senses or devices we've invented to expand our senses. If it was, possible, we'd be studying it, and it would be part of the laws of physics. (Not sure I've worded that very well. But you folks have been dealing with all this far longer than I have, and probably know what I mean.)

If consciousness does not arise from the physical properties we know, and it does not arise from something like panprotopsychism (and I'm sure many here do not believe it does), then what?

Well, I've probably rambled on more than I should have. I only said a couple basic things, but I said them with a lot of words. I sometimes do that. :D If I get any responses, I will likely not understand a good deal of what they're saying. But I'll try.