↪Patterner Something like that strikes me as highly plausible. I think that's roughly the Chalmersian take too - but he calls awareness without experience consciousness too - I find that a hard sell, but all else about panpsychism attracts me so .. I could just be wrong LOL — AmadeusD

I'm not sure about that. How can you be aware without experiencing?

It's all about molecules, atoms, proteins and electrons, but it's not just about those things. As proper parts of living organism, those constituents are caught up into functionally organized anatomic structures (such as cell membranes) and channeled through the finely tuned and regulated metabolic pathways that Brian Greene provides striking descriptions of. Those are indeed processes that arise in far from equilibrium thermodynamic conditions such that relatively low-entropy forms of energy (such as incident solar radiation or energy-dense molecules like glucose) get harnessed by the molecular machinery to produce work in such a way as to sustain and reproduce this machinery. What is being sustained and reproduced isn't the parts, but the form: that is, the specific functional structure of the organism. The parts, and the proximal interactions between them, don't explain why the organism is structured in the way it is, or why it behaves in the way it does. Rather, the high-level norms of functional organization of the organism, characterised in the higher-level terms of anatomy and physiology, explain why the individual atoms, electrons, protons, and organic molecules are being caught up and channeled in the specific way that they are to sustain processes that are geared towards maintaining the whole organism (at least for awhile) away from complete decay and thermodynamic equilibrium. — Pierre-Normand

Nicely said. So it's functional structure that is emergent? Top-Down causation?

↪Patterner I think you're not taking the emergent possibility seriously enough personally. The possibility that consciousness really does emerge from certain large scale physical arrangements and interactions. I think the idea seems alien to you - which is fair, it's by no means easy to grasp - and so your reflex is to go for something that's at least apparently more intuitive. — flannel jesus

Without having ever read anything on the topic, I was a physicalist up until several years ago. I had never heard of the terms physicalism or materialism, but that's what I was. Never occurred to me there was another option, so what was my default position. A guy on another site wanted to pull his hair out because of my stubbornness, but, eventually, turned me around. It wasn't intuitive. Everything is physical particles, and everything, even consciousness, reduces to particles, was intuitive.

But physicalism had nothing to offer. I have yet to hear a theory, or even a wild guess, about how Chalmers' Hard Problem is explained with physicalism. Nobody who believes physicalism is the answer knows what that answer is, and people like Eagleman, Hoffman, Greene, and Crick say we don't have the vaguest idea how to look for it. A lot of people, like Greene, say physicalism must be the answer, and, even though we have no clue at the moment, we'll figure it out at some (possibly very distant) point in the future. They say that as though it's proven that that is what's going to happen.

I don't know at what point of complexity I think an entity must attain before its subjectively experience can be casual
— Patterner

That's a pretty big problem. Everything else fundamental is also fundamentally causal. It's not fundamental now, causal later - it's causal at a fundamental level. If consciousness isn't causal at a fundamental level, but it is causal at a microscopic scale... I think the whole idea, in my opinion, crumbles — flannel jesus

Bad wording on my part. I think consciousness is always the same, and can always be causal. But the conscious thing in question has to be up to the task.

The thing is, consciousness is causal. It wasn't physics and interacting particles that wrote Beethoven's string quartets, flew people to the moon, manufactured computers, contemplated the nature of consciousness, built the Sphinx, on and on. None of that would have ever happened without the thoughts and intentions that come with consciousness.

That's what we have to explain. So how could it have happened? Let's say physicalism. Through purely physical interactions, life begins, and evolves. There's no such thing as consciousness. Then, a certain physical complexity comes into being. And, though consciousness was not planned, and consciousness had no role in bringing that complexity about, for no reason, that physical complexity just happens to be perfect for the existence of this entirely new thing that it has nothing to do with.

What an extraordinary, bizarre turn of events. And a happy turn, at that, since it is the thing that defines us all. It's the thing none of us would willingly give up. Want to become an automoton? Lose an arm, or your consciousness? Lose an arm and a leg, or your consciousness? How much if your physical self would you give up before thinking consciousness is no longer desirable?

That scenario is just too bizarre. One thing has nothing to do with the other. Then, holy cow, look at that!

I find it easier to believe that consciousness was always there, and, with the aid of consciousness at every opportunity, the system developed greater complexity to be subjectively experienced.

A particle can't do anything other than interact with other things according to the laws of physics. It doesn't have systems for movement. It doesn't have systems for choosing between options. It can subjectively experience, but what is that like for a particle?

An archaea acts. But it's entirely physics and chemistry. There's information processing, which is what I suspect is needed for groups of individual particles to subjectively experience as a unit. There is information processing in protein synthesis, in the series of reactions between photons hitting the eyespot and the archaella moving, and whatever other systems it has. The consciousness is of a much more complex thing than just particles. Still, there's no possibility of choosing between actions, or not acting. This may be the beginnings of thinking, but it's just the bare beginnings. There's not enough going on.

By the time we get to humans, we can choose between any number if things. We make choices between conflicting motivations. no longer purely physical factors determining which option you take. The subjective experience of our selves plays a role in our decision-making. As is evidenced in our creations all around us.

I think awareness and consciousness differ — AmadeusD

Perhaps the subjective experience of information processing systems of sufficient number and/or complexity is awareness. And when sufficient feedback loops are also present, the experience is self-awareness.

I wonder if you are seeing consciousness as being about the processes of being alive, as in that respect it is the same. However, rocks and crystals are not alive in the way we understand it. — Jack Cummins

No, that's not it. I don't see consciousness as being processes of being alive, mental processes, or anything. I see it as nothing but subjective experience.

i don't think rocks or crystals are conscious as a unit. Just a huge number of particles that are each subjectively experiencing their own existence. I don't think the conditions for a group consciousness exist in such things.

I would think it either is, or is not. I don't understand how it could be an illusion.

Saying that, I am not a dualist but am aware of the difference of objects and human consciousness, even though some even see human consciousness itself as an illusion. But, it is to speculate on different degrees of consciousness, ranging from minerals, plants animals and humans (possibly AI as a further development). — Jack Cummins

I do not see it this way. My thinking is that consciousness is always the same. It is subjective experience. Nothing has rudimentary consciousness. What really counts is the thing having the subjective experience. What is the subjective experience of crystals? How does the subjective experiences of a crystal, an archaea, a plant, a mouse, a chimpanzee, a human?

This really gets to the nub of the problem. What I'm saying is that the knowledge we have of our own consciousness is of a different order to the knowledge we have that others are conscious. To be conscious is to know of our own existence, in a direct and unmediated way. I know that I am in a different way to the indirect and mediated knowledge I have of other minds.

Chalmers’ “what-it-is-like”-ness is precisely about this direct, first-person givenness. That element — the qualitative feeling of being — is not captured by any third-person account, no matter how detailed. This is where the irreducibly subjective aspect of consciousness shows itself. — Wayfarer

Agreed.

This is why I think the panpsychist move is ultimately a misstep. By trying to objectify consciousness — to treat it as a measurable attribute of matter — it attempts to assimilate consciousness into the obective mode, from which it is essentially different. The first-person reality of consciousness doesn’t appear as an object in the world; it manifests as the point of view from which the world is experienced. — Wayfarer

I do not think it is a misstep.

Is it or is it not an objective fact that we're all subjectively conscious? Just because neither of our first-person realities of consciousness appear as objects in the world doesn't mean they don't both come into being for the same objective reason/when the same objective conditions are present.

Two telescopes made on the same machinery, seconds apart, can never have the exact same view of anything at the same time, despite being made the same way, out of the same materials, and working the same way.

We are, obviously, far more complex than telescopes. Our brains and bodies follow the same general plan, but there are many differences between our brains. We also have different experiences, which means different memories, beginning before we're even born. So, while we might argue that we could arrange things such that it's possible for two telescopes to have the exact same view of something at different times, even that's not possible for different people. It's not even possible for one person to have the same experience more than once.

Panpsychism is also subject to the 'combination problem' - the question about how primitive, conscious units of matter are able to combine in such a way as to give rise to the unitary sense of self that characterises actual conscious experience. — Wayfarer

What guess about the nature of consciousness doesn't have to deal with the combination problem? Does it somehow make more sense that consciousness is nothing but the physical activity of the brain, and the activity of these neurons over here are all somehow combined into one subjective visual experience, the activity of those neurons over there all somehow combine into one subjective aural experience, and the activity of both groups of neurons, as well as that of still other groups of neurons, somehow combine into one subjective experience that is visual, aural, and whatever else?

I don't know anything about your idealism. How does that avoid the combination problem?

If my position is correct, then the combination problem is obviously not a problem. No matter what guess is actually the correct one, the combination problem clearly isn't a problem.

I could not find any, so my assertion above stands. A counterexample is required. — noAxioms

Not sure what you mean. What example of yours would I be countering? Just curious. I'm not looking to counter you. I'm just wondering how you would measure such a thing.

Effects are measured in physical change. You measure a physical change, how do you determine that it was fundamental consciousness that caused that rather than something else? Some other physical cause? — flannel jesus

I don't know about fundamental consciousness. I don't think we can be conscious of the things we are conscious of without some kind of fundamental consciousness. But I don't think the subjective experience of a particle is causing anything. I don't know at what point of complexity I think an entity must attain before its subjectively experience can be casual, any more than any physicalist can say at what point they think the physical complexity of the brain causes consciousness to emerge.

But, eventually, consciousness is causal. I think what Hofstadter says about the comet approaching and hitting Jupiter at the beginning of I Am a Strange Loop makes a good case for this. What he talks about can't be explained by physical causes.

You're looking at the question as if it is an objective matter - a question of 'what is really there'' and whether 'consciousness' is a constituent of the objective domain. But I'm saying that this is the wrong way to look at it. — Wayfarer

And I disagree. I'm willing to believe we are all conscious. Just because I can't know your instance of consciousness doesn't mean I won't accept that you are conscious. I do. I can't prove that any consciousness other than my own exists, but I don't care about proof in this instance. If I didn't accept your consciousness as fact, I wouldn't be participating in the conversation. So my starting point is that subjective experience is an objective fact. And the explanation is (maybe) that consciousness is a fundamental part of reality.

That's what panpsychism does, though. Mass, charge and other physical properties are observable and measurable, whereas the idea that matter possesses properties of consciousness is purely conjectural. Again, it is an attempt to rescue the credibility of materialism by saying it must be a property in all matter - instead of questioning materialism itself. That is explicitly what Galen Strawson says about it, mine is not a straw man argument. — Wayfarer

You interpret it that way. I interpret it that physical is not all there is to reality.

I understand the physical we experience every moment isn't exactly what it seems. However, whatever the explanation for what is not exactly physical seeming to be physical, it does seem to be physical. How many seeming forms could whatever is really there take? Why did it take this one? It seems bizarre to me that the nature of reality would assume a false nature that is so unlike its true nature that there's no way to detect that true nature within the system of the false nature, and it's impossible to prove that true nature's existence. I must consider that, somehow or other, the physical, imperfect though our understanding of it may be, is, in some sense, true.

But it's not all there is. It's not the full story.

.

If consciousness is fundamental, then we can't measure it in the ways we measure everything else.
— Patterner
Sure you can. You can measure its effect on everything else. — noAxioms

Can you elaborate? How do you measure the effect consciousness has on everything else? What's the method, or procedure? Which sense, or what tool, is used?

Careful with this 'we'. I've looked at philosophy of mind from many perspectives. — Wayfarer

Sorry. I didn't mean you. I meant people in general, as a result of "Galileo's Error".

For those actually interested the Causal issue here is a snippet from Davidson expressing something akin to what I am getting at: — I like sushi

I like the snippet. Wish his books didn't cost so much.

Property Dualism in a nutshell? It does get confusing when people use differing terms to describe the same idea.

Another example would be physicalism and materialism. People tend to use this as synonyms while others do not. What is important is to clarify your position and use of terminology. — I like sushi

Ain't it the truth. Materialism. Physicalism. Naturalism. Nagel even says 'I will use the terms “materialism” or “materialist naturalism” to refer to one side of this conflict...' I can't imagine there will ever be a consensus on the exact meaning of these words, and anything less than exact can only lead to discussions of definitions. Which takes away from the more important discussion. I think the best solution is probably to not use any of them, and just spell out what you mean every time.

This is the crux of the so-called "hard problem": how consciousness could possibly emerge from wholly non-conscious components. But note the implicit assumption — that a configuration of matter and forces gives rise to inner experience. What if this assumption is itself misguided? — Wayfarer

It certainty is.

In other words, instead of questioning the conceptual framework that makes consciousness seem alien to materialism, Strawson redefines matter to include it — which looks suspiciously like moving the goalposts. That's the sleight-of-hand that panpychism tries to get away with. — Wayfarer

Another way of looking at it is that I don't think we have any justification for saying reality contains only the things we have discovered, or can discovered, with our senses and the devices we've built. Consciousness is proof of this, and there's no reason to rule out a building block, as it were, for the consciousness we're familiar with. Everything else we're familiar with is built up from some kind of building block, after all.

Hence the various contortions in contemporary philosophy of mind — from eliminativism and behaviourism to panpsychism — all share a desire to naturalise consciousness, but without challenging the presuppositions of naturalism itself. — Wayfarer

How can it be that thinking consciousness is a fundamental property of reality is not challenging the presuppositions of naturalism?

rather than grafting mental properties onto matter
...........

Consciousness isn’t simply another puzzle to be inserted into a pre-existing picture of the world
...........

not of matter with consciousness as a puzzling add-on — Wayfarer

I don't see it as "grafted", "inserted", or "added on", any more than properties like mass or electric charge are. Everything is just a part of what is. As such, consciousness is not "puzzling." The problem is that we are so used to thinking of things in only one way that it's difficult to consider there might be other ways.

Philosophim does not believe there is a Hard Problem.
— I like sushi

Incorrect. We cannot know what its like to have the subjective experience of another individual, and while this is the case, the hard problem will be unsolvable. — Philosophim

But what is the Hard Problem?

I agree. But I don't think all properties are physical.
— Patterner
That's another tack, suggesting properties of trivial parts (atoms say) that have never been measured by anything studying atoms. — noAxioms

If consciousness is fundamental, then we can't measure it in the ways we measure everything else. It's not physical, and all of our methods of detecting and measuring are physical.

We can clearly see brain states influencing behaviors and responses from individuals that demonstrate altered brain states alter the person's subjective experience. — Philosophim

The HPoC is explaining why the altered brain states alter the person's subjective experience. Why do brain states have subjective experience at all? There is no physicalist theory, or even a guess. As Hoffman and Greene said about the physical properties off the universe:
"is utterly different in nature than conscious experience".
"there is nothing that even hints at the inner experiences those particles somehow generate."
"seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience."

That it happens in the physical brain is the answer to where it happens. The Hard Problem is how. If I rubbed two sticks together and a geyser of water shot out of it, you would ask how that happened. You would not be satisfied if I answered that it came from the wood. That's not an explanation. Neither is brain activity an answer to how subjective experience comes about.

Why does hydrogen and two oxygen in combination at a certain temperature become a water? This question applies to the entirety of existence. Why is a rock hard? Why from carbon can we construct graphite and all living things? — Philosophim

We can answer these questions. We can explain these things, at least in terms of properties of particles. Negatively charged electrons, electron shells, positively charged protons, etc. Because of all that, atoms are formed, molecules are formed, graphite is formed... We can't explain how/why electrons have negative charge, protons have positive charge, electron shells have the specific numbers of atoms they have... But we can explain down to that level.

Here I just posted an incredible description of party of what's going on in our cells, on the molecular level, the explains how we are powered. Beyond fascination, and detailed description of what happens.

We cannot do any of that with consciousness. Nobody has any idea how it can come about from the properties of particles. There's nothing. What does it have to do with mass, charge, the nuclear forces, gravity, or any other physical thing that can be named? There aren't even guesses. Nobody can make any connection.

I view the objects and phenomena of pretty much all the special sciences (e.g. biology, ecology, psychology, economics, etc.) to be strongly emergent in relation with the the objects and phenomena of the material sciences such as physics or chemistry. Some, like our apokrisis argue (and I would agree) that even within physics, especially when the thermodynamics of non-equilibrium processes is involved, many phenomena are strongly emergent in the sense that they aren't intelligible merely in light of, or deducible from, the laws that govern their smaller components. — Pierre-Normand

We cannot account for every molecule of air in a room, but we do fine measuring things like temperature and air pressure. And the temperature and pressure are, and are specifically what they are, because of individual molecules.

Other things might be the result of, or dependent on, the properties or behavior of some kind of structures, rather than individual molecules or atoms. But those structures have the properties they have to the atoms and molecules that they are comprised of.

Does anything you have in mind not fall into the category of either directly dependent on/caused by the particles, or due to structures that have their properties because of the particles? Here is what, for me, is a great description of some of the awesome stuff that's happening in our cells. I think it's truly mind-blowing. One aspect of metabolism, from Brian Greene's Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe:

Evidence for the unity of life grows even more convincing as we follow the subsequent journey of the energy released by electrons hopping from one redox reaction to another. That energy is used to charge up biological batteries that are built into each and every cell. In turn, the biological batteries power the synthesis of molecules particularly adept at transporting and delivering energy wherever and whenever it is needed throughout a cell. It is an elaborate process. But across life, it is the same process.

In broad outline here is how it goes. As an electron jumps into the outstretched molecular arms of a given redox receptor, the receiving molecule twitches, causing it to shift its orientation relative to other molecules closely packed around it, much like a gear ratcheting one step forward. When the fickle electron subsequently jumps to the next redox receptor, the first molecule clicks back to its original orientation, while the new molecular recipient experiences the twitch. As the electron executes further jumps, the pattern continues. Molecules receiving an electron twitch, ratcheting their orientations forward; molecules losing an electron twitch too, ratcheting their orientations back.

In a living cell we encounter an analogous situation, with pent-up protons replacing pent-up electrons. But it’s a distinction that hardly makes a difference. Protons, like electrons, all carry the same electric charge, and so they also repel one another. When cellular redox reactions pack protons closely together, they too stand at the ready waiting for the chance to rush away from their enforced companions. Cellular redox reactions thus charge up biological proton-based batteries. In fact, because the protons are all clustered on one side of an extremely thin membrane (just a few dozen atoms wide), the electric field (the membrane voltage divided by the membrane thickness) can be enormous, upwards of tens of millions of volts per meter. A cellular bio battery is no slouch.

What, then, do cells do with these mini power stations? Here’s where things get yet more astounding. Attached to the membrane are a great many nanoscale-sized turbines. When the packed protons are allowed to flow back across specific sections of the membrane, they cause the tiny turbines to rotate, much as flowing gusts of air cause windmills to rotate. In centuries past, such wind-powered turning motion was used to crush wheat or other grains into flour. The cellular windmills undertake an analogous grinding project but instead of pulverizing structure the process builds it. As they turn, the molecular turbines repeatedly cram together two particular input molecules (ADP, adenosine diphosphate plus a phosphate group), synthesizing one particular output molecule (ATP, adenosine triphosphate). Forced together by the turbine, the constituents of each resulting ATP molecule are in a tense arrangement: mutually repelling charged constituents are clasped together by chemical bonds, and so, much like a compressed spring, they strain to be released. That’s extraordinarily useful. Molecules of ATP can travel throughout a cell, releasing that stored energy when needed by snapping the chemical bonds and allowing the constituent particles to relax into a lower energy, more comfortable state. It is that very energy, released by the dissociation of ATP molecules, that powers cellular functions.

The tireless activity of these cellular power stations becomes clear when you consider a few numbers. The functions that keep a typical cell alive for just a single second require the energy stored in about ten million ATP molecules. Your body contains tens of trillions of cells, which means that every second you consume on the order of one hundred million trillion (10^20) ATP molecules. Each time an ATP is used, it splits up into the raw materials (ADP and a phosphate), which the proton battery-powered turbines then cram back together into freshly minted, fully rejuvenated ATP molecules. These ATP molecules then hit the road again, delivering energy throughout the cell. To meet your body’s energy demands, your cellular turbines are thus astoundingly productive. Even if you’re an extremely fast reader, as you scan through this very sentence your body is synthesizing some five hundred million trillion molecules of ATP. And just now, another three hundred million trillion more. — Brian Greene

It's all about the molecules, atoms, and proteins and electrons.

The reason we can't know what its like to experience it, is we have no way of knowing what a 'thing' experiences without being 'that thing'. — Philosophim

The answer is simple. We are not the particles. We don't know how to have the experience of those particles without being those particles. — Philosophim

It's not a matter of not being able to experience what someone/thing else experiences. The puzzle is why anything has any subjective experience at all. That's the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Why does the physical activity of moving ions, signals moving through neurons, neurotransmitters jumping the gap between neurons, and any and all other physical activity, have a subjective experience?

But Brian Greene's point is, the physical properties of an electron can be measured with precision. — Wayfarer

His point is that, although the properties can be measured with Precision, but we do not know what that are. We could not know what proto-consciousness is, either, even if we know what it does. Of course we won't be able to measure it with our physical ways of measuring things. What are the measurements of consciousness according to your idealism?

I don't think we're all that separate from one another. I just view subjective experience as the experience of being physical being over time. In other words, its simply an aspect of the physical, not something separate.

I am curious in terms of motivation, what is the push to make consciousness something non-physical? — Philosophim

I am not trying to "make consciousness something non-physical." Consciousness is non-physical. I'm interested in this particular hypothesis.

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 not 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.

Lets say for example that consciousness was something non-physical, but it could never be separated from the body and would cease to be forever when your brain dies. Would you accept that! Or would there be no an insistence that consciousness had some other aspect that made it last beyond bodily death? — Philosophim

I think proto-consciousness is a property of matter, just like mass and electric charge are. When the body dies, mass and electric charge are still in the particles. So is proto-consciousness. But there is no longer a thinking brain experiencing itself.

I'm asking if anyone has an example of strong emergence. For those who think consciousness is, I'm wondering if there are others.

The only avalaible properties are the properties of parts though. — MoK

I agree. But I don't think all properties are physical.

For those who think consciousness is an example of strong emergence, are there any other examples?

Mental causes are really physical causes so I see no real difference in them than any other cause.
— Philosophim
Is there any need for the word "mental"?
— Patterner

Absolutely. We can't go around calling everything 'physical' all the time in normal conversation. It is a great way to compartmentalize a certain set of physical existence and processes that are different from other physical sets and processes. We need some type of categorization, and we're not going to change the use of the word anytime soon. The issue is that mental processes are still physical processes. As long as you realize that, talking about mental processes is fine. Its when you start to think they exist apart from physical processes as some independent entities that you run into trouble. — Philosophim

I gotcha. And I agree, although I don't suspect you would agree with the reason I agree. I think consciousness and thinking/mental are entirely different things. I think consciousness is simply subjective experience, and thinking/mental is something humans are conscious of. So we can talk about mental being a physical process without touching on consciousness.

Don't forget about property dualism. :grin: Matter has a non-physical property.
— Patterner

Which nobody can specify. — Wayfarer

I don't know how you mean by this. In what way can anyone specify what they think is the answer to the HPoC? Surely proto-consciousness is not far less specified that it shouldn't be mentioned with the other guesses.

Also, as Brian Greene writes in Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe, Brian Greene writes:

If you’re wondering what proto-consciousness really is or how it’s infused into a particle, your curiosity is laudable, but your questions are beyond what Chalmers or anyone else can answer. Despite that, it is helpful to see these questions in context. If you asked me similar questions about mass or electric charge, you would likely go away just as unsatisfied. I don’t know what mass is. I don’t know what electric charge is. What I do know is that mass produces and responds to a gravitational force, and electric charge produces and responds to an electromagnetic force. So while I can’t tell you what these features of particles are, I can tell you what these features do. In the same vein, perhaps researchers will be unable to delineate what proto-consciousness is and yet be successful in developing a theory of what it does—how it produces and responds to consciousness. For gravitational and electromagnetic influences, any concern that substituting action and response for an intrinsic definition amounts to an intellectual sleight of hand is, for most researchers, alleviated by the spectacularly accurate predictions we can extract from our mathematical theories of these two forces. Perhaps we will one day have a mathematical theory of proto-consciousness that can make similarly successful predictions. For now, we don’t.

I italicized the two instances of "I don't know" because Greene emphasizes them in his reading of the book. So if a fairly competent physicist doesn't know what a couple of important physical properties are - properties that we know certainly exist because of the effects they have on things, effects that we have measured with incredible precision - then I'm not going to worry that we can't do more for a non-physical property.

Non-reductive physicalism
...........
The alternative seems to be dualism - that mind is one kind of substance and matter another.
............
Or idealism - that mind is somehow fundamental, which is hardly accepted by academic philosophy at all. — Wayfarer

Don't forget about property dualism. :grin: Matter has a non-physical property.

Mental causes are really physical causes so I see no real difference in them than any other cause. — Philosophim

Is there any need for the word "mental"?

I'm interested in how you see this issue. Are you more inclined to grant an agent-like status to the AG program and others of similar sophistication? — J

No, I am not. I think there must be quite a bit more to an entity than just the one kind of mental ability for it to have an agent-like status, regardless of how advanced that ability is. How do we even describe all that is going on in the human brain and body? How much information is being processed within us every second? How many different kinds of information? I don't suspect we could come up with an actual number. And most of it is routed through the brain, which, as it's coordinating all that, trying everything together, is processing an immense amount of its own information.

To get to that point, we, as soon as we're born, learn to manipulate the world around us, giving meaning to everything.

What does the most advanced program do in comparison?

It’s not a digital computer, but it’s a device used for calculations. But the rhetorical point, was simply that computers no more intend than does the abacus. — Wayfarer

My point was that an abacus does not process information, and is therefore not a unit in regards to consciousness (according to the idea I'm discussing the last couple weeks). It is only a physical unit to our eyes, and a tool that we use to help us process information.

By the way - I might draw your attention to an AEON article from a few years ago - now a book - The Blind Spot. It is a relevant criticism of the form of panpsychism (of the Harris/Goff variety) that you’re pursuing. — Wayfarer

Well, I am the unlearned one, so I often don't get what most of you are saying. I don't see how that article criticizes what I'm pursuing. I think the physical and experiential are inseparable. The article seems to be saying the same.

not sure what I'm doing wrong with that. The link is:
https://meridian.allenpress.com/aplm/article/141/5/619/194217/AlphaGo-Deep-Learning-and-the-Future-of-the-Human

The authors are:
Scott R. Granter, MD; Andrew H. Beck, MD, PhD; David J. Papke, Jr, MD, PhD

↪Patterner Yes, would need all of that - but the point being, computers are still physical systems. — Wayfarer

Yes, computers are physical systems. But an abacus is not a computer. It can't process information unless you give it a power system and add the rules so it manipulates the beads correctly. IOW, unless you turn it into a computer.

(Notice my careful avoidance of the term "learn"! :wink: There is no entity here that can learn anything.) — J

Do you think they use "learn" and "teach" inappropriately in this article?

In March of last year, Google's (Menlo Park, California) artificial intelligence (AI) computer program AlphaGo beat the best Go player in the world, 18-time champion Lee Se-dol, in a tournament, winning 4 of 5 games. At first glance this news would seem of little interest to a pathologist, or to anyone else for that matter. After all, many will remember that IBM's (Armonk, New York) computer program Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov—at the time the greatest chess player in the world—and that was 19 years ago. So, what's so significant about a computer winning another board game?

The rules of the several-thousand-year-old game of Go are extremely simple. The board consists of 19 horizontal and 19 vertical black lines. Players take turns placing either black or white stones on vacant intersections of the grid with the goal of surrounding the largest area and capturing their opponent's stones. Once placed, stones cannot be moved again. Despite the simplicity of its rules, Go is a mind-bogglingly complex game—far more complex than chess. A game of 150 moves (approximately average for a game of Go) can involve 10360 possible configurations, “more than there are atoms in the Universe.”  As complex as it is, chess is vastly less complex than Go, and chess is amenable to “brute force” algorithmic computer approaches for beating expert chess players like Kasparov. To beat Kasparov, Deep Blue analyzed possible moves and evaluated outcomes to decide the best move.

Go's much higher complexity and intuitive nature prevents computer scientists from using brute force algorithmic approaches for competing against humans. For this reason, Go is often referred to as the “holy grail of AI research.”  To beat Se-dol, Google's AlphaGo program used artificial neural networks that simulate mammalian neural architecture to study millions of game positions from expert human–played Go games. But this exercise would, at least theoretically, only teach the computer to be on par with the best human players. To become better than the best humans, AlphaGo then played against itself millions of times, over and over again, learning and improving with each game—an exercise referred to as reinforcement learning. By playing itself and determining which moves lead to better outcomes, AlphaGo literally learns by teaching itself. And the unsettling thing is that we don't understand what AlphaGo is thinking. In an interview with FiveThirtyEight, one computer scientist commented, “It is a mystery to me why the program plays as well as it does.” 5 In the same article, an expert Go player said, “It makes moves that no human, including the team who made it, understands,” and “AlphaGo is the creation of humans, but the way it plays is not.”  It is easy to see how some viewed AlphaGo's victory over Se-dol as a turning point in the history of humanity—we have created machines that truly think and, at least in some areas like Go, they are smarter, much smarter, than we are. — Scott R. Granter, MD

An abacus can be used to process information - it's a primitive computer. There's no real difference in principle between the abacus and a computer. The difference is one of scale. The NVidia chips that drive AI have billions of transistors embedded in a patch of silicon. You could in principle reproduce that technology with the abacus, although it would probably be the size of a city, and it would take long periods of time to derive a result. But in principle, it's the same process. — Wayfarer

Could you do that without giving it a power system and adding the rules so the abacus would manipulate the beads correctly?

A Paul Davies quote seems appropriate, although I don't know if it helps any. From The Demon in the Machine:

Like information, energy can be passed from one physical system to another and, under the right conditions, it is conserved. So would one say that energy has an autonomous existence? Think of a simple problem in Newtonian mechanics: the collision of two billiard balls. Suppose a white ball is skilfully propelled towards a stationary red ball. There is a collision and the red ball flies off towards a pocket. Would it be accurate to say that ‘energy’ caused the red ball to move? It is true that the kinetic energy of the white ball was needed to propel the red ball, and some of this energy was passed on in the collision. So, in that sense, yes, energy (strictly, energy transfer) was a causative factor. However, physicists would not normally discuss the problem in these terms. They would simply say that the white ball hit the red ball, causing it to move. But because kinetic energy is instantiated in the balls, where the balls go, the energy goes. So to attribute causal power to energy isn’t wrong, but it is somewhat quixotic. One could give a completely detailed and accurate account of the collision without any reference to energy whatsoever. — Paul Davies

What might an abacus be conscious of? — Wayfarer

I don't suspect an abacus is a conscious unit. While I suspect consciousness is everywhere, in all things, I don't think everything that humans view as physical units necessarily are conscious units. I think the unit must be processing information in order to be a conscious unit. That is, I think experiencing information processing is what unifies all the parts of a physical unit as a conscious unit.

An abacus does not process information. It is just a tool we use to process information, and reveals the information processing we are doing.

A possible reply to this is that "ineffable" may be one of Chalmers' "temporary" obstacles, as opposed to a permanent one like biological composition. Even your chatty friend only goes so far as to say "ineffable at least in part." We should acknowledge the possibility that, in the future, this will become effable :smile: . I know that right now "irreducibly first-personal" seems like the end of the road, but let's wait and see.

Another reply is that consciousness will "just kinda happen," along the lines of a sketchy emergent property, if we put together the right ingredients. Therefore we don't need to know what it is or how to synthesize it -- it'll happen on its own. — J

Yet another reply is that consciousness is fundamental, already there in the LLM. But the LLM does not have enough information processing systems and feedback loops to experience itself with the awareness and self awareness worry which we experience ourselves. It can only experience its own abilities, not ours. And it does not have our abilities to experience, it can't very well demonstrate that it does.

A collection of electronic switches being conscious is no different than a collection of neurons being conscious. — RogueAI

Indeed. It is a matter of what the electronic switches are conscious of.

Or Beethoven composing music after going deaf.