I'm sure you recognized that English is not my native language. — Jack2848

Your command of English is leaps and bounds better than my command of any language other than English. Well done.

I think it's unlikely that there are other intelligent life forms near enough to us, for them to impact us. But we clearly have different perspectives. — Relativist

If there are any, they obviously aren't near enough to have any impact on us. We have seen no sign of them, after all. But, if there are others, as we all go farther from home, we will interact. All speculation, of course.

The mind is an irreducible substance with the ability to experience, freely decide, and cause. — MoK

My views are similar in ways, and different in others. I say consciousness is an irreducible property with the ability to experience and cause.

I think consciousness has the ability to decide free of the laws of physics. That is, we can make decisions for reasons other than succession of the arrangements of the particles in our brains. I don't know if it's entirely free, though.

Unless you are wrong, and mental events within the property dualism do have causal power.
— Patterner
Mental events are not substances, so they cannot have any physical properties to affect the brain. — MoK

Mental events are not substances, but the mind is?

Mental events within the property dualism do not have causal power, so the property dualism is not acceptable. — MoK

Unless you are wrong, and mental events within the property dualism do have causal power.

There is an interaction between two substances. The mind is a light substance, so it affects the matter slightly. So it is difficult to measure the contribution of the mind in the process in the brain. — MoK

Yes, that's how I see it. (Although I'm on the property dualism side instead of substance dualism.)

If I tell an AI that 2 + 2 = 3, it would say that's not accurate. If I tell it candidate X said something during the debate, the AI can review the video or transcription, and say whether or not it's accurate. If it's not a situation where it can be proven, the AI can say it is unable to verify the accuracy. Isn't that what we do to verify truth?

The deaf person that suddenly hears. Will learn something new about the song when it hears the music. — Jack2848

A person who is deaf from birth and suddenly gains the ability to hear would learn something new about the song that was never present in its written or coded forms. — Wayfarer

True. To add another dimension... Yes, that person would learn something right away. But they would not understand the song until they hear enough music to become familiar with the tonal system, and learn the spoken language. Until learning those things, those aspects of the song would by gibberish.

In any event, I very much like this thread. (And nice work, Wayfarer.)

Even if I grant that the experience can one day be explained, then we still have the problem of how the experience can affect physical substance. The second problem is a serious issue since the experience is a mental event only, and it lacks any physical property, so it cannot affect the physical. — MoK

Do you have a solution to that problem with substance dualism?

It's obvious that you have a different view of things than I do, but that does not constitute either an explanation or a justification for your views. — Janus

I have frequently said why I think what I think. Most recently, a few posts above, I explained why I think :
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1012079
But that was not to you, and I guess I can't expect you to read every post everyone makes. Anyway, all of that is why I don't think consciousness is physical. And if it's not physical, I have to wonder what it is, and how it all works.

Currently, my thinking is that consciousness is fundamental. A property that is in all things. Because there isn't anything special about the particles we are made of, so the same thing could happen anywhere in the universe.

I haven't said that what people are conscious of is what consciousness is — Janus

You said "Being conscious means being aware." I'm saying it doesn't. Awareness is just what we subjectively experience/are conscious of. Awareness is not consciousness. Some things that are conscious are not aware.

I've asked you what the difference is between consciousness and being conscious. To give some analogies sleeplessness just is being sleepless, restlessness just is being restless and sexlessness just is being sexless. Or, closer to home, unconsciousness just is being unconscious. — Janus

I don't think of "being conscious" the way I think you do. I don't think it's particular mental states, or complex brain activity. I don't know how you would word it.

I think consciousness is subjective experience. I think being conscious is subjectively experiencing. Pretty much the same thing?

You also say that you don't think being conscious means being aware, and yet you offer no explanation of what you think the difference is. — Janus

A couple people said they appreciated that I tried to be clear about what I think consciousness is here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/16075/consciousness-is-fundamental/p1

I don't understand why you talk about subjective experience of various functions of our brain, when I think it is obvious that we have no in vivo awareness of brain functions. Perhaps you meant to say that our subjective experience is a manifestation of certain brain functions. — Janus

No, I very much do not mean that. I mean there is activity in the brain. Ions crossing barriers, neurotransmitters jumping synapses, signals running along neurons. Etc. Etc. That is all just physical activity. More complex and intricate than pool balls banging around on the table, but physical just the same. Photons hit retina, setting off a chain reaction of physical events in the brain. Vibrations in the air enter through the ear, setting off a chain reaction of physical events in the brain. A molecules of NaCl touches the tongue, sitting off a chain reaction to physical events in the brain. We are able to distinguish various frequencies of protons and vibrations in the air, and distinguish between different molecules that hit our tongue.

Our subjective experience of all that is seeing red, hearing a C major chord, and tasting salt. We could put salt on our corn flakes in the morning. Physically, the activity in our brains would be able to distinguish that from putting sugar on them instead. But that's not the same as tasting corn flakes with salt on them.

I'm not being contrarian. I have a different view of things than you do. I do not think the things humans are conscious of are what consciousness is. You say "Being conscious means being aware." I disagree. I think awareness is our consciousness of - our subjective experience of - various functions of our brain. Entities without the same brain functions cannot have the same subjective experience.

I don't think that's perverse.

Our activities are concentrated around one out of the 10^23 stars in the observable universe, during a period of maybe 1 million years, in a universe 13.7 billion years old. Of course our activities are significant to ourselves, but I see no basis to consider them of cosmic significance. — Relativist

Sure, assuming we're the only ones in the universe. We certainly don't have evidence that there are others. But the same laws of physics are operating around those 10^23 stars, so it seems reasonable that there are.

Also assuming our activities never break free of that one star. Which is surely going to happen, if we manage to survive ourselves.

Mental activity can change the universe in ways that cannot be calculated or predicted. Who can say if it will? It's done a job on this planet. Maybe it will on the cosmos.

Why not? Incredulity again, or something actually valid? Is this the best you can do? — noAxioms

No doubt there is a perfectly functioning iPhone lying on a planet somewhere out there, the result of avalanches, volcanic activity, and meteorites. Amazing how such things happen. Metals naturally refine and fall into exact shapes, plastics form just so, tectonic activity bounces all the parts so they happen to land in exact configuration, the tiny screws even jiggling until tight. All I need to do is charge it. Ah, but I'm sure a tiny flicker from a distant lightning strike reached over and did that for me.

Needing to believe physicalism so badly that you are willing to embrace that degree of gullibility is surely as bad as incredulity.

Goodbye.

But this falsification is narrow: it applies exclusively to mind (mental activity). — Relativist

That seems very significant to me. Mental activity has done extraordinary things than would never happen without it. And how far will it go? Will there be Dyson Spheres scattered across the universe one day? Will we have FTL travel? Physicists could probably do a pretty good job off predicting what the universe would look like in 10B years if all life on Earth ended right now. But there is no possibility of predicting what the universe will look like in 10B years if we remain in it.

Nobody, not even your clone, will ever know it is a copy.
— Patterner
The OP says you know. It was a voluntary procedure. — noAxioms

Somehow, I missed the part that the clone saw what was going on. I was thinking he didn't know, so would live thinking he was the original. And there would be no reason anybody who ever met him would think otherwise.

But the original had been murdered.

So now I realized the clone knows he's not the original. That's bound to have an impact on him.

It is a conundrum. Hence 300 threads here debating it. :rofl:

You are dead. Your clone is alive. Your clone is indistinguishable from you. Nobody, not even your colone, will ever know it is a copy.

But what if! What if they fixed your body, and made a clone that had the problem you went in for? Then it would be you who thanked the doctor, and the clone who was murdered in the back.

There are those of us that say a human can only interact with things according to the laws of physics, despite your assertion of "It is not simple physics taking place.". No demonstration otherwise has ever been made. — noAxioms

Billions of human-made objects are a demonstration of things that did not come about due only to the laws of physics. The interactions of particles and collections of particles that were following nothing but the laws of physics - that were acting only as gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces dictated - are not how the cell phones I have used to post here came into being. Or particle colliders, Saturn V rockets, the Snow White movie, indoor plumbing, every book, every pen, and more thanks than we could ever make. Do laws of physics come up with the idea of something that did not exist, the desire to make it exist, a plan, and then do the work to make that future goal a reality? That's not a non-sequiter. That's a key point.

How does a mysterious/unknowable unphysical aspect of mind help us understand our nature or that of the universe?

Certainly, it opens up possibilities - but they are unanalyzable possibilities. — Relativist

They are unanalyzable by our physical sciences. But if enough people decide it's worth thinking about, some people might come up with some good ideas. It is not an established fact that the only way we can learn of anything is through our physical sciences.

How is any non-physical aspect of mind relevant to the advance of science? It's irrelevant to physics, so what aspects of science will be improved by acknowledging there's some unknown aspect of mind that is not consistent with the physical, and therefore beyond its own boundaries? It would be a mistake to assume where the boundary is; progress is best made by pushing forward from a physicalist/scientific perspective. To whatever extent something beyond science is involved, it will simply prove to be an unfruitful avenue. — Relativist

It might not help "science", if science can only be physical. But I would say coming to a better understanding of our nature, and possibly a better understanding of the nature of the universe, is relevant and fruitful. and if such understanding cannot be complete using science only, then it is even more relevant and fruitful.

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?