Compare it with this: say that we're human resources employees looking at candidates' job experience. We say the following two sentences:

"Joe's experience is less than Frank's."

"Joe's experience is less than Joe's experience plus Frank's experience."

What information would we need to say whether each sentence is true?

Yes it's a different sentence. I'm saying both are true — khaled

Okay, but the point was that I was addressing what the first sentence says, because that's what you had written. I wasn't addressing the different thing that the second sentence says.

No we wouldn't need some way to compare the two because: Jane's child will ALSO want to have children presumably to the same or similar extent — khaled

Man this is frustrating because it should be such a simple discussion. I'm saying if you write "the degree to which the people that really want to have children is harmed is much smaller than the degree to which their children are harmed." That sentence says something different than "the degree to which the people that really want to have children is harmed is much smaller than the degree to which those people are harmed PLUS the degree to which their children are harmed."

AI have qualitative experience but it's not aware. — Basko

How would it have qualitative experiences if it's not aware?

I was trying to differentiate conscious activities - experience/qualia - and awareness of that activities. Awareness was defined above as "Having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge" so i was thinking that someone could have qualitative experiences and at the same time not realizing what is happening ,not knowing what is all about and not having perception .. not being aware.
* Perception = organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information, or the environment. - Wiki.

Imagine we understand what consciousness really is and how it works, then we proceed to create a artificial life form with our understanding. As we build we realize we don't have enough money to build it like we wanted so we chose to decrease dramatically the cognitive abilities, the memory storage and the capacity of our AI to form a new structures.
Once we finished, we decide to study it, by various tests, to see how our AI work. As we test our AI we remark that it can't realize what is happening due to very low cognitive abilities, it cannot form enough knowledge too bcs of very low memory storage, and bcs of low capacity of forming new structures it perceive - organization of sensory inputs - very little about the world. Our AI experience - the rough sensory inputs - without realization of experiencing and without realization of oneself identity, our AI is not aware - at least by the definition above.
Ofcs is an imagined scenario, maybe what we call consciousness need some good level of cognitive abilities, memory, perception and maybe more .. — Basko

So it's not something that you think actually happens with creatures that are conscious?

How would AI have a qualitative experience of something if it's not conscious?

Being is some way(s) rather than other ways, no?

Logic is as it is because, to be salve veritate (truth preserving), it has to reflect the nature of being. Being is not a constraint, because being only excludes non-being -- which is to say being excludes nothing. What excludes nothing is not a constraint. — Dfpolis

What determines the nature of being--God, or.something else?

An explanation of the consciousness in my book would explain how certain brain states are conscious and others are not. It would tell us whether a machine would be conscious. We would understand how the philosophical zombie argument goes wrong. We would know what a bat experiences when it uses sonar, at least in the same way Mary knows what blue is while she's still confined to the black & white room. — Marchesk

You're missing the point that this isn't just about explanations of consciousness. If we're critiquing something in terms of whether there's an explanation, then we'd better have a general account of what explanations are, what they can and can't do, how they do it, etc.

This keeps getting longer and longer and I hate when that happens, so let's do one thing at a time. I do want to get to the rest, but I don't want posts to keep getting longer and have to keep addressing more and more issues.

How so? They sound like the same statement to me — khaled

??

So, say we have Jane, who really wants to have children, and who suffers because she can't have children for whatever reason.

But let's say that either in some other possible world, or in the same world where something has changed so that Jane can now have a kid, she does so, and for some reason the kid suffers.

"the degree to which the people that really want to have children is harmed is much smaller than the degree to which their children are harmed"

So that's saying that the degree to which Jane is harmed is much smaller than the degree to which her child is harmed. That's a comparison between Jane and how much she is harmed on the one hand, and her child and how much the child is harmed on the other hand. We'd need some quantification method to compare the two, to compare the amount of their suffering.

The other option is to instead say "the degree to which the people that really want to have children is harmed is much smaller than the degree to which those people are harmed PLUS the degree to which their children are harmed."

In that case we dont need a quantification method. We simply know that x is less than x + y, where both x and y are some positive, non-zero number. (Of course, we don't know that it's "much" less, but we can ignore that part.)

Shit or get off the pot Terrapin. Socrates would be murdered here just as in Greece for being an annoying shithead. — bert1

You're certainly safe for William Tell purposes.

Well then, just spell out the real problem. — Marchesk

I did. That's what started this tangent.

Give your analysis of what an explanation is. — Marchesk

I didn't give one. But my analysis would stress the subjectivity of counting/not counting as an explanation. However, I'm not hinging any argument on whether there's an explanation for something. You (and others who accept the "hard problem" at face value) are hinging an argument on that. Hence you should have some plausible demarcation criteria--demarcation criteria that do not stress subjectivity in the way that my analysis would--for what counts as an explanation, why, etc. (it would need to differ from mine in that way otherwise we're really just saying something about relative psychological dispositions, etc.--that's what my analysis would be about, because that's what I believe is really going on when it comes to explanations when there might be an objection that something descriptive "isn't really an explanation").

You don't need to measure in this case. The harm of "wanting to have children" HAS TO BE greater than the harm of "wanting to have children" + every other harm. It doesn't matter how you choose to measure it — khaled

Did you mean that the other way around? At any rate, what I was questioning re quantification was what I quoted: "the degree to which the people that really want to have children is harmed is much smaller than the degree to which their children are harmed." That's different than the "plus" statement.

But it would be very unreasonable to assume that the desire for having children for one particular parent is so great that one can conclusively say it will be greater than all the suffering his child will ever experience don't you agree? — khaled

I've not made any statements with respect to quantifying such things aside from asking how they could be quantified.

You know there is a chance that your child will be severely harmed AND that he will hate it — khaled

I'd say those two things are inseparable if they're not the same thing, by the way. But sure, there's a chance of that. I already commented on that above, by the way.

AND that he will not employ some morality that helps make meaning out of it — khaled

This part I don't think I get, though. Insofar as I get it, I don't think there are humans who don't employ morality or meaning, but maybe you have something in mind that's not clear to me.

Then why do you take the risk when you could just adopt a child if you so want to be a parent — khaled

Wait, but people have to be giving birth in order to adopt kids. With antinatalism, no one would be giving birth. At any rate, I'm fine with either option folks want to choose.

Also I seem to have lost where you were trying to go with this argument. Are you seriously suggesting that the reason having children is ethical is because the harm to the parents outweighs the harm to the child in every case? — khaled

I didn't say anything like that and I wasn't making an argument per se. You had said that not having kids doesn't harm anyone. I merely pointed out that that's not categorically the case.

It does not dent the argument of antinatalism in any way. That is because you don't know how your CHILD will interpret improving and deteriorating states of affairs, so it doesn't matter how you or others interpret them that is no excuse to risk creating someone that might interpret them in ways that cause him severe suffering. — khaled

It doesn't seem like you realize that there's no way to make this stuff not subjective. That there are no correct arguments when it comes to this sort of stuff.

And further many people do not value just in terms of pleasure and pain. Most life, as far as I can see, in humans and elsewhere, decides with great passion to protect their lives, even if they are tough lives. They confirm over and over that they want life for other reasons: meaning, expression of self, curiosity, some subtler underlying passion. So to evaluate in terms of pain and pleasure alone means that antinatalists are deciding how we all should evaluate life, despite how we do evaluate life which is more complicated. Any antinatalist is risking that his or her rhetoric will be effective and manyr or even all future human lives do not come to be. How can they take the risk that this is imposing their values on what would have been future life that cannot consent to these values being applied. (I realize that the consent of the not yet existent is a tricky thing, but since the ant-natalists often talk in those terms, they have to live with the downside of this for their act of arguing for anti-natalism also.) Risk abounds. — Coben

Good points.

Yes, but the degree to which the people that really want to have children is harmed is much smaller than the degree to which their children are harmed. — khaled

How would we measure such things?

For the obvious reason that their children will also really want children. — khaled

There's no way to know this for any person until the person is around to ask them.

You're not assuming that everyone's harm in something is equal are you?

A purported explanation should make what it purports to explain clear, otherwise it is no more than a purported explanation. Terrapin Station is being slippery in order to evade admitting that he cannot give an explanation. I have seen him employing this tactic many times. — Janus

What I'm rather doing is highlighting what the real problem is when it comes to the "hard problem." A real problem that no one wants to address.

when it should have led to a story about the difference between being awake and asleep. — Banno

So explanations of how automobile engines work, for example, or how to make toast, etc. have something to do with the difference between being awake and being asleep?

↪Terrapin Station explanation is like pornography. You know one when you see it. The dictionary definition you gave is very generic and simple. Say for example I asked for an explanation of water. There are simple explanations one would give a child, and there is chemistry, which explains the properties of water. The second one is what I would expect for consciousness. — Marchesk

Unfortunately, "you know it when you see it" won't cut it for something highly disputatious where we're trying to avoid biases/prejudices that folks have.

I didn't suggest the dictionary definition that I did because I thought it was good or that it would work for our purposes.

Re chemistry, you say it "explains the properties." How, exactly? Figuring that out will help us figure out what explanations are, what they can do, how they can do it, etc. We need to figure that out if we're going to forward philosophical critiques based on whether something is an explanation. Simply intuitively saying "I don't feel this is an explanation" sets up a non-winnable situation if someone is not intuitively inclined to believe that consciousness is physical.

He was always posting stuff that read like newspaper editorials from 30, 40 years ago.

So, first let's make clear then that you apparently don't even have a view about just what counts or doesn't count as an explanation in general, including why it counts or doesn't count, yet you're offering criticism on the grounds of whether something is an explanation.

If we're going to criticize something on the grounds of whether it's an explanation, we'd better have some idea of what counts/doesn't count as an explanation and why.

One conventional dictionary definition of "explanation" is "a statement or account that makes something clear." Does that seem good, or would you say it's problematic for some reason or another?

There is no situation in which no person is harmed. But there is a situation in which harm is minimized and ceased altogether for humans.

The pain people may feel by not having children can easily by topped by the pain created by having children. One couple having children can lead to generations of harm to people and, animals etc. — Andrew4Handel

I was just pointing out that it's not the case that no one might be harmed when no one has kids.

You've pointed out before that the "calculus" you'd use simply ignores the "pleasure" side of the equation. So sure, if you do that, what you're saying follows. But of course, many people aren't going to adopt that calculus, and they will figure in pleasure, too.

Course of action B: don't have children
Result: No one is harmed or risked harm — khaled

What about the people who really want to have children? Aren't they affected by not having them?

Does or should Hotelling's Law apply to potential democratic candidates-who would want to win, quite obviously-against Trump in 2020? — Wallows

For someone to have a chance against Trump, among other things, they need to be different enough from him to be appealing--they have to depart from the crazier aspects of Trump, but they need to not be so fringe that they'll only get a very niche vote. So saying things like they're going to give free healthcare to all illegal immigrants--which apparently candidates said in a recent debate--isn't going to cut it.

I also think that a viable candidate wouldn't get into mudslinging/flame wars with Trump. Trump is going to do that, but I don't think that anyone would beat Trump by playing along. The opposition would have a better chance by hammering in messages of "What I want to focus on is how we can make Americans' lives better, easier." And then they're going to need real ideas for that. If they do that everytime Trump tries to troll them, they could win, if their ideas are good enough, and not too fringe with respect to mainstream American opinions.

Sure, so let's start with how you'd characterize explanations in general. What are they? What do they do?

Explain why only certain brain states are conscious? — Marchesk

I can. but we're going to go over (so that we agree on) what explanations are and what they can and can't do first, so that you don't just say, "That's not an explanation" afterwards. Are you prepared to do this?

Remember that the second part of why there's a so-called "hard problem" is " bad analysis of what explanations are and what they can and can't do in the first place"

Then attention is a type of awareness? — Harry Hindu

Yes, there's often a connotation to it that it's directed awareness, rather than not being directed.

You can be aware that the radio is on, for example, but not really be paying attention to it. You're awareness isn't directed, it's not focused on the radio. But you're aware that it's on.

Or, if someone is talking and you say, "Wait--could you repeat that? I wasn't really listening." You are/were aware that they were talking (otherwise you couldn't ask them to repeat what they said), but your attention wasn't on their talking, it wasn't on what they were saying. Your attention was elsewhere (like maybe on a bee flying near you, especially if you have a bee phobia).

That's fine that you think that, but that you do is a combo of the reasons I explained. Including that you are confused in thinking that it's a category error. That was part of my explanation.

If it wasn't, there wouldn't be a hard problem, — Marchesk

Goddammit man, I just explained why there's a "hard problem."

I can say the world is like a square circle, and you can rightfully tell me that's a contradiction. — Marchesk

Ohhhhkay . . . and?

(That trope is typically a misunderstanding of something, by the way--it's not actually about the words "square" and "circle" as in the definitions of the shapes. It's about a geometry problem re area instead.)

I'm saying that your ability to make an identity claim of consciousness to brain states is based on ontological talk. — Marchesk

Ability to make a claim is "based on talk" in the sense that it's talk and one has to use recognizable language to make an intelligible claim.

What's being claimed, however, is in no way based on talk. It's based on what the world is like. Talk is secondary to that.

Category errors are not about conventional language usage. The idea that anything should conform to conventional language usage rather than conforming to what the world is like is ridiculous.

I'm saying our making ontological arguments does. — Marchesk

You're saying that what ontology is about, what it's addressing, somehow hinges on the conventional language used in the ontological arguments we make?

They're not conceptually the same sort of "things" at all. — Marchesk

They're not conceptually the same things when your concepts on this issue are confused or based on confusions, incorrect and incoherent beliefs, etc. Sure. And plenty of people have confused concepts about it. The solution to that is to make those people no longer confused.

not being able to say whether some physical system different from our biology is conscious. — Marchesk

We can and do say that for plenty of things. Do you mean with certainty or something?

What do you think? Does the possibility of psychosis prove that there is an objective reality? — Purple Pond

Prove that there is an objective reality? No. Empirical claims are not provable.

But yes, obviously reality is a certain way regardless of how one perceives it.

The vast majority of philosophers aren't idealists by the way. There's something weird about this board that leads to there being a lot of idealists here, though.

Does consciousness = Awareness/Attention?

Awareness, yes. Attention, no, since "attention" connotes directed awareness.

Re this:

I can be conscious of something, having some qualitative experience and at the same time not being aware of my conscious experience, therefore i don't realize, know or show persception of my conscious activities .. — Basko

You'd have to try to give an example of how you think that's possible.

The problem is that identifying the mental with the physical is a category error, since they are are two different domains. — Marchesk

The problem is that it's not a category error. The mistake is thinking that they're "two different domains." That's very addled thinking that has no justification aside from ancient confusions that should have long been abandoned.

If you're talking about different conventional ways to talk about things, surely you're not suggesting that ontology (or more importantly what ontology is about) in some way hinges on how people normally talk about things, are you?

it doesn't explain — Marchesk

"bad analysis of what explanations are and what they can and can't do in the first place"

Mentality cannot be seen as "something physical", — Janus

You're not being an Aspie about the word "seen" there, are you?

Everything you encounter in the world has meaning to you, because you see all things as somethings — Janus

The point is precisely that you don't see all things as "somethings." There's no way that you perceive hundreds of things at the same time as "somethings." Most things you simply see, hear, etc. , without any thought, awareness, etc. of what you call them, what you might use them for, etc.

There is, but better mapping/measurements could lead us to clues and reduce the explanatory gap. — Marchesk

As it is, over the last few decades we have a wealth of mapping a la, for example, fMRI correlations with mental events and general mental status (it can help predict mental future mental health issues, for example). Has that helped anyone who buys into the "hard problem" and who thinks there's an explanatory gap come any closer to believing that that's not the case? I don't think so.

The "hard problem" arises due to a combination of (a) a bias against seeing mentality as something physical and (b) bad analysis of what explanations are and what they can and can't do in the first place, and (c) sundry other ontological misconceptions.

Sure. So consent is an issue with respect to people who exist as they go into a park and what they encounter there.

3 billion years ago there were only single-celled organisms. So how would anything be already interpreted then?

it is knowing what kinds of things they, what uses they have, what they look like and so on. — Janus

That's referring to one's concept of the thing in question, one's interest in it, etc. Again, that's thought about it, and that's not at all necessarily attendant with perception. It certainly won't be attendant with hundreds of things at the same time. It's also not the same thing as perception when it's attendant with it, just to make sure that that's clear (for anyone reading this, not just you).

The bowl has meaning for the dog insofar as it recognizes it as the place food will be presented. — Janus

Insofar as the dog thinks in an associative way about the bowl, sure, it will have meaning for it. Otherwise no.

No, it isn't. — Banno

Yeah, it is.