And maybe the rejection is also right. — Fooloso4

This confirms that many atheists are not open to rational discourse -- even when the subject is not theological.

Perhaps he is concerned that if he make clear his theological grounds it would lead to rejection of his argument. — Fooloso4

My argument is based on the premises laid down -- none of which are theological. So, to reject my argument you need to show either that my premises are false, or that my reasoning is invalid. Rejecting them because I also think that there is an ultimate cause of reality is an act of prejudice, and so irrational.

Call it what you will, assumption, premise, conclusion, beginning or end, your ultimate answer to how and why is the same, God. — Fooloso4

Of course! God is the ultimate cause of reality. Darwin recognized that when he wrote of his belief in "designed laws." Still, being the Ultimate Cause does not mean that God is the proximate cause of phenomena. As scientist and philosophers, we want to understand proximate, not ultimate causes. That is why Darwin developed his theory. The same with Newton and many others.

What happens to God’s will if we determine the origin and nature of will, following in the footsteps of Nietzsche, Freud and embodied approaches in cognitive science, in terms of a differential ecology of drives? In a twist on Aristotle, Nietzsche suggested we could understand the “mechanistic world as a kind of life of the drives”. — Joshs

I am not quite sure what you are asking, but I will comment.

First, the idea of differential drives is simply wrongheaded. We desire food, water and air. If I asked, "How much food (or money) would you be willing to take for all your air?" you would think I was crazy. This is because our desires are incommensurate. We need a satisfactory, not a maximal, amount of food, water and air, and, indeed, of all the things we naturally desire. So, they cannot be traded off against one another. Accordingly, the idea of a maximal good or utility or anything of that sort is nonsense.

Second, our learning the nature of things in general, or will in particular, cannot change God, for, if God exists, it is as unlimited being, and nothing can change (add to or detract from) infinite being.

Third, the idea of a "life of the drives" seems to entail some kind of panzooism, in which everything is alive and has drives. But, to be alive is to be act to benefit the organism and its species. Clearly, inanimate things do not seek nutrition or reproduce to sustain their species. So, the idea seems to be more poetic than literal.

You are claiming a dualist ontology. The laws of nature as Platonic entities — Fooloso4

No, I am not. I am not saying they are separate, only that they are real because if they were not real, we could neither discover nor describe them, and we do both.

Do the laws of nature have such necessity? — Fooloso4

The laws of nature have physical, not metaphysical necessity. They could be different, and there might even be actual universes in which they are different.

I assume you mean that the laws of nature are physically necessary but logically contingent. — Fooloso4

Yes. Logically (wrt human knowledge) and metaphysically (wrt the nature of existence) contingent.

Upon further examination ontological commitments are with God — Fooloso4

Yes, I see the laws of nature as God's general will for matter. That is my conclusion, not my definition.

How can natural selection act on experience? — GrahamJ

Excellent question.

Here is some Academic material ... — Nickolasgaspar

Thank you.

You define consciousness as "awareness of intelligibility", to be aware of our ability to understand. What about our ability to be aware on the first place....known in Science as Consciousness!(the ability to be aware of internal or environmental stimuli , to reflect upon them with different mind properties through the connections achieved by the Central Lateral thalamus i.e.intlligibility" and thus creating conscious content during a mental state.) — Nickolasgaspar

You misunderstand the definition. I mean the "ability to be aware" in operation. I add "of intelligibility," because we are never aware without being aware of something intelligible. This is important because the carrier of intelligibility is a neural state. I thank you for showing me how my definition can be misunderstood.

Usually, the brain does not "create" contents, but processes contents coming to it from the senses.\

Its looks like we have the practice of cherry picking a specific secondary mind property known as intelligibility or Symbolic thinking or Meaning — Nickolasgaspar

What you call "cherry picking," I call "focusing." My work is no more cherry-picking than any study that focuses one aspect of a whole to the exclusion of others.

Also, intelligibility is not "Symbolic thinking." It is a property that things (mostly outside the mind) must have if they are to be known. In other words, know-ability. If they could not be known, we could not know them.

a specific secondary mind property known as intelligibility — Nickolasgaspar

Intelligibility is typically a property of objects in nature that may be neurally encoded, not a property of the mind. In the mind, it is actually known, rather than merely intelligible, for consciousness makes merely intelligible contents actually known.

s this the Hard problem for you? because if that is the case a simple search will provide tones of known mechanisms on how the brain uses symbolic language and learning (previous experience) to introduce meaning to stimuli (internal or external). — Nickolasgaspar

No, it is not the Hard Problem. You need only refer to my article.

Do any of these articles show how we become aware of the contents the brain represents and processes? If not, none advances the reduction of the act of (as opposed to the contents of) awareness to a physical basis.

Are the facts you raised the following.
(1) The Fundamental Abstraction of natural science (attending to the object to the exclusion of the subject);
(2) The limits of a Cartesian conceptual space. — Nickolasgaspar

No, those are explanations for the problems. The problems I was referring to are:
1. Problems with verbal reports of consciousness (p. 98).
2. No neural structures correspond to propositional attitudes (p. 98).
3. Dennett's arguments against a physical reduction of consciousness (p. 98).
4. A causally impotent consciousness cannot enhance reproductive fitness, and consequent failure of an evolutionary explanation of its genesis (p. 99).
5. The inability to explain the genesis of environmental knowledge (p. 99).
6. The failure of David Lewis’s Humean supervenience because of one-to-many mappings of the physical to the intentional (pp. 99, 107).
7. The inability to account for purposeful human behavior (p. 99f).

I am a Methodological Naturalist and like science my frameworks and gaps of knowledge are shaped by our Scientific Observations and Logic solely based on Pragmatic Necessity , not because of an ideology. — Nickolasgaspar

I am also a methodological naturalist, with no need to capitalize because it is a method, not an ideology. Nothing in my article transgresses the bounds of methodological naturalism. The actual problem is you seem to be a closet physicalist -- unwilling to admit that the intentional theater of operations is just as natural as the physical theater. If you were not a closet physicalist, you would have no difficulty in being open to intentional realities. So, you might as well come out of the closet.

When we don't know, we admit we don't. We shouldn't go on and invent extra entities which are in direct conflict with the current successful Paradigm of Science. — Nickolasgaspar

On the other hand, when we do know, say by analyzing first-person experience, we should admit it.

The success of the current paradigm is impressive, but still limited. Note the seven unanswered difficulties above. Nothing I propose conflicts with any experimental fact, so please stop making such baseless claims. Instead, my suggested new paradigm increases the range of explained phenomena.

Yes a healthy functioning brain is a necessary and sufficient explanation for any property of mind known to us. — Nickolasgaspar

This is not the claim of a methodological naturalist, but of a dogmatic physicalist.

that's not a reason to overlook the huge body of knowledge that we've gained the last 35 years. — Nickolasgaspar

For me, it is not. For you, it seems to be reason to ignore all previous progress.

How can you be sure about the epistemic foundations of your ideas and positions when you are not familiar with the latest epistemology on the topic? How can you be sure that we haven't answered those questions when your philosophy is based on ideas and knowledge of the past? — Nickolasgaspar

All humans are liable to err, and no one can know everything. I opened this thread to allow people the opportunity to point out actual problems. My not knowing everything is not an actual problem with my work. If you find an actual mistake, please point it out.

All the knowledge we rely upon was obtained in the past. You seem to think it has an expiration date. Should I stop driving because the idea of wheels has expired? Can I still use counting? Thread?

IS it ok if I ask you to put all the problems in a list (bullets) so I can check them? — Nickolasgaspar

See above. The list is not intended to be exhaustive. It is just the problems I have identified.

yes they have been huge progress to the emerging physical nature of consciousness. — Nickolasgaspar

Please explain how neuroscience has come closer to understanding our awareness of (as opposed to the processing of) neurally encoded contents.

By default we know,can verify and are able to investigate only one realm, the Physical. — Nickolasgaspar

Congratulations on coming out of the closet!

Sadly, you are fundamentally wrong. We also know, and so can analyze, intentional operations. We know that we know and can speak of what we know.

In my academic links you can find tones of papers analyzing which(and how) mechanisms enable the brain to introduce content in our conscious states. — Nickolasgaspar

Again, the issue is not contents, but our awareness of contents.

Can you give me an example for every single problem? — Nickolasgaspar

I am not asking you to solve "every single problem," but to respond to my actual arguments. If you do not wish to do so, you are wasting my time.

Abstract concepts do not help complex topics like this one. — Nickolasgaspar

All science is based on abstract concepts, because it seeks to be universal, and universal ideas are abstract.

Plus you strawmanned me again with that supernatural first person data. — Nickolasgaspar

Not at all. I said that we are dealing with first person data, and you responded I was dealing with the supernatural.

Science tells us that the brain is necessary and sufficient to explain the phenomenon even if we have loads of question to answer — Nickolasgaspar

Science cannot possibly tell us any theory is sufficient to all phenomena, but only that it is sufficient for the phenomena for which it has been confirmed.

The fact that we're going back and forth on what consciousness is after I've read your paper should reveal to you that you didn't make a clear case of what it meant to you to your reader. — Philosophim

No, it only illustrates the difficulty humans have in letting go of preconceptions.

Can drugs alter our consciousness, yes, or no? If yes, then we can reduce consciousness to a physical basis. — Philosophim

Non sequitur. It only shows that there is a dependence (which I affirm), not that the particular dependence explains all the known operations.

A very simple definition of what consciousness means to you could help here. — Philosophim

Asked and answered.

We are agreeing here. — Philosophim

Good.

Your paper addresses consciousness. Consciousness is something attributed to beings besides human beings. Dogs for example. — Philosophim

Again, "consciousness" is an analogous term. The only organisms we know to experience awareness of intelligibility are humans.

If anything, that would be odd to limit consciousness to only the the human physical form while simultaneously denying it is linked to neurons, or any other physical basis. — Philosophim

You persist in misrepresenting my position. That is not a sign of good faith. I have said repeatedly that conscious thought depends on neural representation and processing.

If you want me to address other aspects of your work, you'll need to address the points I feel unclear or problamatic first. — Philosophim

I have. I am growing impatient with going over the same ground with you, as it wastes my time.

How is my experiencing the color red a particular way not my subjective awareness? — Philosophim

I did not say it was not an instance of subjective awareness. Still, experiencing qualia is just one kind of such awareness. Knowing that pi is an irrational number is another, and it does not have a quale.

You may have wanted to devote more time to it then. At least to the point where you would have understood my reference was not claiming to be a fact or evidence, and a perfectly reasonable thing to mention. — Philosophim

I suggest you read the section of my paper addressing information in computers.

As you say, they are distinct. Hence, dualism. — Fooloso4

Dualism does not mean that there is more than one way of thinking about reality.

I think you have it backwards. It is only when there is change, not when something remains the same, that there is a cause. — Fooloso4

No, even "staying the same" requires a cause -- first, because physical objects are not static, composed of Greek atoma, but dynamic, constantly oscillating at the quantum level and interchanging constituents; and secondly, because they have no intrinsic necessity and so need to be sustained in being by something that has such necessity.

You are adding one assumption on top of another. — Fooloso4

Perhaps you would give me your definition of "possible".

Again, you have it backwards. It is not that the laws of nature preclude a rock from becoming a hummingbird but rather there would have to be some cause in order for a rock to become a hummingbird. — Fooloso4

These are not mutually exclusive. There needs to be a cause both for remaining the same (e.g. conservation laws) and for changing. We live in a world of constant causation.

Self-maintenance, or entelecheia, does not mean immortality or self-sufficiency. The point again is that Aristotle's conceptual space is unburdened by dualism, yours is not. — Fooloso4

To see the world as filled with causal links is not to be a dualist.

Where did you hear of it, if you don't mind my asking? — frank

I read a lot of history of philosophy -- Copleston's and others as well as articles in various dictionaries, compendia and companions. German philosophy seemed to be largely misguided from Kant on, so it did not interest me until Brentano.

ndeed, I'm not sure how we could know it was a contradiction if it didn't feel wrong in some way, a sort of offence to reason. — bert1

I think we can react emotionally to intellectual discord, but I think the perception of discord comes first.

What is "co-extensive" is other than what it is coextensive with. — Fooloso4

A reasonable point. I would say that "otherness" depends on how you conceptualize things. If you think of a rock as a unity, you can say it is attracted to the earth as a unity -- and that would be true. In a different conceptual space, you can think of the rock and the earth as masses subject to the very real law of gravity -- and that would also be true -- be adequate to reality.

A reason to think of laws as distinct is that they are not confined to individuals. Instead, the same laws seem to act throughout space and time, while the things they act on come and go.

All that experience tells us is that there are regularities. — Fooloso4

Experience also tells us that phenomena have causes. So, if there are regularities, they must have a cause.

That is a questionable assumption without evidence. — Fooloso4

It is not an assumption, but a conclusion. Possibility, per se, is only limited by the impossibility of instantiating contradictions. In order to limit possibility to what is physically possible, more constraints are needed. These are the laws of nature.

A rock does not become a hummingbird because it's a fucking rock. — Fooloso4

But, a rock can become sand or lava or a plasma. So, being a rock is not sufficient to preclude change, and it alone cannot prevent it from becoming a humming bird. That it can become some things, but not others, is a consequence of the laws operating in nature.

living beings that are, according to Aristotle, self-maintaining — Fooloso4

Aristotle is well aware of the possibility of death due to external causes, and of the need for nutrients. So, living things are not self-maintaining, by exhibit immanent activity -- i.e. self-directed activity to maintain themselves and their species -- something we continue to see today.

So you've never heard of the idea of starting with a unity that is subsequently divided into opposites? — frank

I have heard of it, but not read Hegel, or been inclined to. I do not see him as an influence.

The acceptance of a paper does not mean it cannot be written better. — Philosophim

I agree, but quick acceptance is a sign that the reviewers found merit in it.

This is just wrong. https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontopsychology/chapter/5-2-altering-consciousness-with-psychoactive-drugs/ At a very basic level humanity has been using drugs for centuries to alter our state of consciousness. Drugs are a physical thing. We can measure how the physical introduction of drugs changes the brain. — Philosophim

This does not militate against anything I said. Since the brain process the contents we are aware of, modifying how the brain operates by drugs, trauma or in any other way can modify the contents we are aware of. Aquinas knew this in the 13th c.

The problem again though, is that your information would not be able to be objectively compared to any other person's subjective experience because you cannot experience it. — Philosophim

This misunderstands the nature of scientific observation. Generally, it does not matter if one person or a whole group witnesses a phenomenon. What is important is the ability of others to replicate the same type of phenomena -- and that is just as possible with 1st person observations as it is with 3rd person observations. Of course, I cannot know if my quale of red is your quale of red, but we can and do know that humans have such qualia. So that is a scientific fact. So also is our awareness of intelligibility.

There are plenty of commonly known emergent properties that are not impossible to deduce from fundamental principles. — Philosophim

You are free to write an article with your preferred definition. I said what I mean by the term, which is all that clear communication requires.

Natural science has never found a soul, so it is not a problem to solve. — Philosophim

Then, why did you raise it?

We can know that a being has all of the mechanical aspects of what we would identify with a conscious being. However, we can't know what that actual personal experience of being a conscious plant is. So of course the definition of a reductive consciousness cannot describe the personal subjective experience of the plant. It doesn't even try to. — Philosophim

I am not sure what point, if any, you are making. In my paper, I am not discussing plant, but human experience. We know other humans are conscious because they are analogous to us, and they verbally confirm that they are self-aware. We do not know this about other beings, but we do know that we can explain all of our observations of them without assuming that they are aware of intelligibility.

There is no problem of what it is like to be a plant or a bat, just as there is no problem of what it is like to be in another universe. These are simply things we cannot do, and we know we cannot do them.

If you believe that consciousness is only defined as, "Having a subjective experience," you are not using a reductive definition of consciousness, which is what you are supposedly railing against. — Philosophim

I think that "consciousness" is an analogous term that can be defined in many ways. I never claimed to be using "a reductive definition of consciousness." I am not railing against anything, but offering some arguments against the physical reduction of subjective awareness, none of which you have commented upon.

And I never claimed it to be a fact or evidence. I would think you would have looked into the debate of consciousness in AI and this would not be a strange thing to mention. — Philosophim

I have concluded that it is not worth more time than I have already devoted to it in my book.

I'm curious on where you think this definition likes on the spectrum of theory to definition. How theory laden is this? Is this what people in general mean, when talking about the hard problem? Is this what Chalmers means, for example? — bert1

I think it is a distillation of experience. There are things that we could know, but do not (so they are intelligible), and when we come to know them when we turn our awareness to them.

This is theory in the sense of a reflective conclusion, but not in the sense of a hypothetical posit. There is nothing hypothetical about coming to know. We do it all the time. And, there is nothing hypothetical about intelligibility, as the things we come to know were capable of being known before we knew them.

What we know by abstracting from experience does not fit the "scientific" (hypothetico-deductive model). Instead of adding a hypothesis to a limited range of experience to generalize it, abstraction removes irrelevant elements. For example, we count apples and oranges and then realize that numbers only depend on the counting operation, not on what is counted.

I'm pretty sure that this is not what Chalmers would say.

I've got more work to do. — T Clark

I've found that being challenged helps me clarify my ideas.

This is a familiar idea. A number of philosophers have expressed the same sentiment. Like Hegel? — frank

I'm pretty ignorant of 19th c. German philosophy.

If they are coextensive with then they are not intrinsic to what they control. — Fooloso4

How can what is intrinsic not be co-extensive with what it is intrinsic to? If it was in one place and time, and what it is intrinsic to were in another, it would not be intrinsic.

The problem is, the ontological status of the laws of nature is not a question of experience. — Fooloso4

On the contrary, they are discovered via or experience of nature, and they could not be if they did not exist as an aspect of nature.

It is not as if things are chaotic and require something else that makes sure they do not misbehave. A rock does not become a hummingbird and fly away because "something" makes sure it doesn't happen. — Fooloso4

If there were no laws operative in nature, anything could happen. In other words, there would be no difference between what was metaphysically possible (involving no contradiction) and what is physically possible (consistent with the laws of nature). It is metaphysically possible for a rock to become a humming bird, as there is no contradiction in being a at one time and b at another. Of course, this does not happen, as there are laws operative. Further, over time, and with difficulty, physicists have learned a great deal about what the laws actually are. For example, they are much closer to what Maxwell, Einstein and the quantum theorists proposed than what Newton thought.

Given your focus on Aristotle I am surprised that you import the notion of laws of nature. — Fooloso4

You should not be. I look in many places for insight. That is exactly what Aristotle did. In Plato's Academy, his nickname was "the reader," because he read whatever he could.

"Consciousness is an arousal and awareness of environment and self, which is achieved through action of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) on the brain stem and cerebral cortex — Nickolasgaspar

Unfortunately, "consciousness" is an analogous term, and using this definition, when I define consciousness differently (as "awareness of intelligiblity"), is equivocation. If you want to criticize my work, then you must use technical terms as I use them. In saying this, I am not objecting to ypur definition in se, only to its equivocal use.

the conclusion that brain function is responsible for human behavior and thought processes is way more than an assumption. — Nickolasgaspar

Then you will have no problem in explaining how this hypothesis, which I am calling the Standard Model (SM), conforms to the facts I raised against it. Please note that I fully agree that rational thought requires proper brain function. So, that is not the issue. The issue is whether brain function alone is adequate.

Now, Chalmers's attempt to identify the Hard problem of Consciousness had nothing to do with the actual Hard problems faced by the field. — Nickolasgaspar

That may well be true. I do not know what neuroscientists consider hard, nor is that what I am addressing in my article. As I made clear from the beginning, I am addressing the problem Chalmers defined. That does not prevent you from discussing something else, as long as you recognize that in doing so you are not discussing my article or the problem it addresses. In saying that, I am not denigrating the importance of the problems neuroscientists consider hard -- they're just not my problem.

In defining the Hard Problem, you quote a reputable secondary source (Scholarpedia), but I quoted a primary source. So, I will stick with my characterization.

Searching meaning in natural processes is a pseudo philosophical attempt to project Intention and purpose in nature (Agency) and create unsolvable questions. Proper questions capable to understand consciousness should begin with "how" and "what" , not why. (how some emerges, what is responsible for it etc). — Nickolasgaspar

There are many senses of "why." Aristotle enumerates four. I suppose you mean "why" in the sense of some divine purpose. But, I did not ask or attempt to answer that question. The question I am asking is how we come to be aware of neurally encoded contents. So, I fail to see the point you are making.

Stepping back, you are more than welcome to answer the questions you choose to answer and ignore those you choose not to deal with. The same applies to me. However, if you wish to call something "pseudo philosophical" or claim that it "create unsolvable questions," some justification for your claims would be courteous. Also, since I solved the problems I raised, they are hardly "unsolvable."

The current Working Hypothesis (SM) is more than adequate to explain the phenomenon. It even allow us to make predictions and produce Technical Applications that can directly affect, alter or terminate the phenomenon. It establishes Strong Correlations between lower level system(brain function) and high level systems(Mental states and properties). — Nickolasgaspar

I have never denied that the SM is able to solve a wide range of problems. It definitely is. The case is very like that of Newtonian physics, which can also solve many problems. However, I enumerated a number of problems it could not solve. Will you not address those?

the Hard Problem doesn't reflect a failure of the reductive paradigm because this paradigm (tool of science)is not that RELEVANT to the methods we use to study Mental properties. Complexity Science and Scientific Emergence are the proper tools for the job. — Nickolasgaspar

Again, this does not criticize my work, because you are not saying that my analysis is wrong, or even that reduction is not involved. Rather, you want me to look at a different problem. Further, with respect to that different problem, you do not even claim that the named methods have made progress in explaining how awareness of contents comes to be. So, I fail to see the cogency of your objection.

"Epistemological emergence occurs when the consequences of known principles cannot be
deduced. We often assume, but cannot prove, that system behavior is the result of isolated com-
ponent behavior"
-Thats not quite true. — Nickolasgaspar

It is a definition, specifying how I choose to use words, and not a claim that could be true or false.

First of all in science we don't "prove" frameworks, we falsify them and we accept them for their Descriptive and Predictive power. — Nickolasgaspar

I agree. I did not say that science proved frameworks, but that we use their principles to deduce predictions. That is the essence of the hypothetico-deductive method.

Strong Emergence is an observer relative term. — Nickolasgaspar

It is also a term that I did not employ.

In my opinion the whole "Hard Problem" objection is nothing more than an Argument from Ignorance and in many cases, from Personal Incredulity Fallacies. — Nickolasgaspar

I am not sure how a problem, of any sort, can be a fallacy. It is just an issue that bothers someone, and seeks resolution. It may be based on a fallacy, and if it is, then exposing the fallacy solves it.

I could go in depth challenging the rest of the claims in the paper but It seems like it tries to draw its validity from Chalmers' bad philosophy. — Nickolasgaspar

If you read carefully, you would see that I criticized Chalmers' philosophy, rather than basing my argument on it.

The Ascending Reticular Activating System, the Central Lateral Thalamus and the latest Theories of Consciousness on Emotions as the driving force (Mark Solmes, founder of Neuropsychoanalysis) leave no room for a competing non naturalistic theory in Methodological Naturalism and in Philosophy in general. — Nickolasgaspar

Then you will have no difficulty in showing how my specific objections about reports of consciousness, one-to-many mappings from the physical to the intentional, and propositional attitudes, inter alia, are resolved by this theory -- or how neurally encoded intelligible contents become actually known. Despite the length of your response, you have made no attempt to resolve these critical issues.

because we can not answer a "why" question. — Nickolasgaspar

This is baloney. I am asking how questions. The SM offers no hint as to how these observed effects occur. In fact, it precludes them.

IT takes us back in bed with Aristotle. Are we going to resurrect Gods, Phlogiston, Miasma, Panacea, Orgone Energy all over again??? — Nickolasgaspar

Obviously, you have never read Aristotle, as he proposes none of these. That you would think he does shows deep prejudice. Instead of taking the time to learn, or at least remaining quiet when you do not know, you choose to slander. It is very disappointing. A scientific mind should be open to, and thirsty for, the facts.

We don't have the evidence (yet) to use Supernatural Philosophy (reject the current Scientific paradigm of Methodological Naturalism) in our explanations just because we miss pieces from our puzzle. — Nickolasgaspar

Nor am I suggesting that we do. I am suggesting that methodological naturalism does not restrict us to the third-person perspective of the Fundamental Abstraction. That you would think that considering first-person data is "supernatural" is alarming.

Thank you for the time you devoted to reading my work and the effort that went into your response.

Read my post — Wolfgang

As one trained in mathematical physics, the use of equations in analogies grates on me. So, I have to put aside my distaste for the medium to find the message. Still, I largely agree with you.

You wrote: "From this point of view, it becomes obvious that thinking has nothing to do with any cognition of an 'objective' reality. It is nothing more than the (highly differentiated) process of perception of reality, which (for us and not in itself) has produced tools with which we are able to process nature in a highly complex way."
I almost agree. As I noted earlier in this thread, human knowing does not reveal objects exhaustively, as divine knowledge does. It reveals them as they relate to us. Still, it is objective, for it is informed by the object. Such knowledge can also be true, in the classical sense of adaequatio rei et intellectus -- for it can be adequate to our needs in relating to the objects we know.

"Since the philosophy of mind addresses consciousness as an entity in its own right, it fails to present it as an (emergent) consequence of life."
To me, emergence and consequence are radically opposed. Still, I see what you mean: that it is inevitable that life should lead to consciousness. Perhaps, but I see no reason that it should. Isn't that what "emergent" means -- that the consequence is unforeseeable?

The way I put it is 'sentient consciousness is the capacity for experience. Rational sentient consciousness also includes the capacity for reason'. — Wayfarer

Seeing knowing in as an essential characteristic allows me to connect to a rich tradition of epistemological reflection and bring new unity to the issues. For example, the Aristotelian-Thomistic identity of the sensible object informing the senses with the senses being informed by the sensible object ties in nicely with Damasio's theory of the evolution of sensory representation. It also allows me to discuss the way in which the identity theory of mind is correct.

Perhaps you could comment on that a little further? — Wayfarer

Eliminative materialists show by performance that they recognize that consciousness cannot be reduced to physical operations. If physicalism is to work, they realize that consciousness must be eliminated. In Consciousness Explained Daniel Dennett even offers strong arguments against the reduction of consciousness. Then, he violates the scientific method by rejecting the data of consciousness instead of the falsified hypothesis of physicalism.

The point about Galileo's observations, and Newton's laws, is that they can be validated in the third person. — Wayfarer

So? What makes third person experience privileged? We still have the same subject as in first person experience, subject to the same range of errors. What makes observations scientific is not their 1st or 3rd person perspective, but their type-replicability, as you argue:

In that vital sense, they're objective - the same for all who can observe them. — Wayfarer

Introspection, per se, has no such method of validation - this was the cause of the failure of the early psychological methods of Willhelm Wundt. — Wayfarer

I do not know Wundt's work. I do know that the behaviorists criticized the analogous introspection of other species. We are not another species and so there is a method of validation, viz. other workers engaging in the same type of introspection, just as other physical scientists perform the same type (but not the same token) experiment.

It seems to me that you need to show why performing the same type of observation and getting the same result is not "scientific" -- and to do so without assuming, a priori, that only 3rd person perspectives are acceptable.

Phenomenology introduces a disciplined method of the examination of the nature of experience — Wayfarer

Does that mean that William James, Franz Brentano and other introspective psychologists were undisciplined? I would like you to explain, for I really do not understand, the methodological differences you see (as opposed to differences in philosophic or interpretative assumptions).

Self-knowledge - insight into the nature of one's mind - often comes, not through introspection, but through life events. — Wayfarer

I agree completely. New challenges reveal potentials (for good or ill) that might otherwise remain hidden.

But I don't know if the anodyne term of 'introspection' really conveys that. — Wayfarer

Of course, it does not. The reason, I think, is that introspection is a scientific method, aimed at discovering universal truths, and human beings are individuals who only imperfectly conform to our abstractions. To know one's self is to know one's individuality, and that is discovered in life-experience.

You put yourself at the center of your considerations and start with the thinking. This is arbitrary and only works with logic. Why not start with things and follow along. — Wolfgang

I am starting with the experience of knowing, in which things and thinking are united. The Fundamental Abstraction takes this unity, divides it, and fixes on things to the exclusion of thought.

I've read most of the article. As I too am generally critical of physicalism and reductionism, then I'm onside with your general approach ('the enemy of the enemy is my friend ;-) ) - although there are a few specific points with which I will take issue, when I've spent a bit more time digesting it. — Wayfarer

I look forward to your comments.

To start, it's very well written. Clear and thorough. I don't think I've read a better one here on the forum. — T Clark

Thank you.

This indicates the problems with the scientific study of consciousness are philosophical, logical, not scientific. — T Clark

Exactly. Nothing in the proposed paradigm places any restriction on scientific work. I only seek to re-contextualize it.

You make a quick arm-wave to current cognitive scientific study of consciousness without showing you have given them a fair hearing. — T Clark

As you pointed out, I am not disputing any science. So, I saw no need to say more than what the studies conclude.

You talk about a Standard Model of neurophysiology which, as far as I can tell, is a concept you came up with yourself. — T Clark

It is my term. I define it. I think it is a fair description of a general, but not universal, view. If you think it is not, please say why.

Thank you for the reference to Merleau-Ponty. While I do not agree with all of what he says, I agree with much of it. Our knowledge is not "objective." It is human knowledge -- a knowledge of how reality relates to us as humans, and not a divine knowledge -- not one of nature simply as it is.

First, this paper needs more focus. About half way through I forgot what you were even trying to show. You jump from this idea, to that idea from this philosopher, to over here, and I don't see a lot of commonality between them. You could probably cut your paper by quite a bit and still get to the point that you want. — Philosophim

Thank you. I wanted to connect all the points I made because they build one upon another. The reviewers had no problem with that, accepting the paper in 12 days.

First, are you a neuroscientist? This is an incredibly bold claim — Philosophim

No, I am a theoretical physicist by training, a generalist by work experience, and a philosopher by inclination. I am aware of the boldness of my claim. For that reason I needed to I needed to start from the ground and build up, dealing with logically successive topics.

A neuroscientist will tell you, "We don't yet understand everything about the brain yet." — Philosophim

I neither expect nor assume that they do. I do assume that they will not abandon the view that the brain represents and processes data. The need for representation and processing was seen by Aristotle, and the fact that the brain is the data processing organ was established by Galen. So, it is unlikely that further discoveries will change this fundamental fact after all this time.

There is more than enough evidence that consciousness results from a physical basis. — Philosophim

There is no such evidence. There is lots of evidence that the contents of awareness depend on physical processing, but contents are not our awareness of contents (which is what subjective, not medical, consciousness is).

The hard problem really boils down to "What is it like to be another conscious being?" — Philosophim

I suggest you re-read the section of the paper in which I quote Chalmers on the Hard Problem. There is no problem of what it is like to be a bat, because problems are about understanding experience, not about having experiences we cannot have.

Does that mean that we don't need physical medium for consciousness to exist? No, we do. — Philosophim

This is a different problem -- that of "immortality of the soul." It is one that natural science does not have the means to resolve. I do agree, however, that rational thought requires the physical representation of data.

The hard problem reflects the failure in our ability to experience what it is like to be another conscious being. — Philosophim

You do not understand what the Hard Problem is. Chalmers said, "The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect." This is not a problem about the experience of others, but of subjectivity per se. To be a subject is to be one pole in the subject-object relation we call "knowing" -- the pole that is aware of the object's intelligibility.

This is not what emergence means. — Philosophim

The point that contextualizes my definition is that "emergence" is ill-defined. You quote one definition, but there are others. I say what I mean by "emergence" to avoid confusion in what follows. We are all allowed to define our technical terms as we wish.

And yet we find plants react to the world in a way that we consider to be conscious. — Philosophim

This is equivocating on "consciousness". There is medical consciousness, which is a state of responsiveness, and this is seen, in an analogous way, in plants. That kind of consciousness need not entail subjectivity -- the awareness of the stimuli to which we are responding. You made the point earlier. We cannot know what it is like to be a bat or a plant, or even if it s "like" anything, instead of something purely mechanical -- devoid of an experiential aspect.

Almost certainly AI will inevitably, if not somewhere already, be labeled as conscious. — Philosophim

This non-fact is non-evidence.

I appreciate the time you spent in reading and responding to my work.

Well, that is one opinion. Law of nature are not some outside force that acts on nature. Surely you are aware that not all physicists hold to your concept of laws. It is because things behave in an orderly way that formulating laws is possible. — Fooloso4

First, the laws of nature are not "outside." They are intrinsic -- coextensive with what they control. Second, the existence of alternate opinions is not an argument against a view. The question is what is required to explain the facts of experience. Third, the question is: why do "things behave in an orderly way"? Surely, it is neither a coincidence nor because we describe them as doing so. Rather, it is because something makes them do so. The name given to that something is "the laws of nature."

Why do you think it is? — Fooloso4

Because nature has an intentional, law-like aspect.

Perhaps consciousness does not transcend the bounds of physics either, only our current understanding of physics. — Fooloso4

It depends on how you define physics. That is the point of the article. As long as you limit physics by the fundamental abstraction, it cannot explain the facts that abstraction prescinds from.

Surely you know that some physicists hold that the laws are the descriptions of the behavior of matter. — Fooloso4

The laws of physics are such descriptions. Still, if there were not some reality (the laws of nature) making matter behave that way, the descriptions would have no predictive value. Suppose I accurately described your behavior on a particular day. I could only use it to predict your future behavior if the description revealed some consistent dynamic -- perhaps a habit. So my ability to predict would not be based on having a description per se, (for most of it would not be repeated), but on the dynamic the description revealed. In the same way, without the assumption of universal laws of nature guiding the behavior of matter, theoretical physics would be inapplicable to new cases.

When I say physical I mean that consciousness is not given to or added on to beings that are conscious. They are physical beings that have developed the capacities of knowing, willing, hoping, etc. — Fooloso4

Yes. Yet, that is saying what is, not why it is. The idea of reductionism, which I am opposing, is that we can deduce consciousness by applying the laws of physics to the physical structure of human beings. I am saying that we could only do so if physics predicted intentional effects, and it does not.

I have but you rejected it. The theory is that matter is self-organizing. At higher levels of organization capacities that were not present at lower levels emerge. — Fooloso4

Let's put aside how matter comes to be organized (whether by itself, or by the laws of nature). We can agree that over time, more complex structures have evolved. Most people (including me) would agree that evolution is fully consistent with physics. I agree also that new capacities, such as nutrition, growth and reproduction, have resulted.

These are physical, not intentional, capacities. So, there is no reason to think that they transcend the bounds of physics. Consciousness is not physical, but intentional, and so it is beyond the capacity of physics to explain. This does not tell us how consciousness comes to be. It only tells us that however it comes to be, physics is inadequate to explain it. Consciousness is correlated with a high level of physical organization, but correlation is not causation. So, complex organization is not an explanation either.

So you want to say something like that the source of the concept "the rock is hard" is not a predication but an identity? — Banno

I said what I wanted to say in my article: One and the same reality must be the source of both the subject and predicate concepts for the judgement to be true. If one reality elicits <This rock> and a different reality elicits <hard>, the judgement (not concept) <This rock is hard> is unjustified.

You keep saying, despite the text of my article, that I am claiming the subject and predicate are identical. They are not. Perhaps you believe that concepts can only be different if the object eliciting them is different. That is a misconception. One and the same object can elicit many concepts: e.g. <spherical>, <red>, <rubber>, <soft>, <elastic>, etc., etc.

Nor is it at all clear what the source of a concept might be. — Banno

Again, reading my article resolves this: "If we are aware of feeling a stone, we can abstract the concept <hard>. Then, being aware that the identical object elicits both <the stone> and <hard>, we link these concepts to judge <the stone is hard>, giving propositional knowledge." (p. 110) Clearly, the stone we are feeling is the source of the relevant concepts.

Concepts are sometimes erroneously conceived of as mental furniture, as things inside the mind to be pushed around, repositioned in different arrangements. Concepts are sometimes better understood as abilities than as abstract objects. There then need be no discreet concept of "hard" situated somewhere in the mind, or in the brain, but instead a propensity to certain outputs from a neural net, which includes the construction of certain sentences such as "this rock is hard" - along connectionist lines. — Banno

I have taken none of these positions. I said, "the concept <apple> is not a thing, but an activity, viz. the actualization of an apple representation’s intelligibility." (p. 109). Surely, you will agree that we have neural representations and are aware of some of their contents.

Indeed, I'll offer connectionist models of representation as far superior to a regression to Aristotelian models. — Banno

You seem to think that connectionism is an alternative to my analysis. It is not. I have no fundamental problem with connectionism. In fact, I invoked it to make one of my points (p. 99). What connectionism tells us, if true, is how representations are generated, instantiated and activated. It does not even attempt to explain how we become aware of the contents they encode -- how their intelligibility becomes actually known.

Are you claiming that those laws are not simply descriptive? That matter is somehow made to conform to laws that exist prior to and independent of it? — Fooloso4

If there were no laws of nature in reality to describe, then the descriptions of physics (call them "the laws of physics") would be fictions. Further, the laws are not invented, but discovered, and you cannot discover what does not exist.

As for priority, there can be no actual laws without matter for them to operate on, and matter would be formless without laws to specify its forms. So, they have to be concurrent.

it does not become whatever it becomes haphazardly and randomly. — Fooloso4

We agree. It is informed by the laws of nature.

Neither does it rule out the possibility that the physical system has the capability for consciousness. — Fooloso4

Obviously, whole humans are normally conscious beings, and they are physical. Still, the concept <physical> is an abstraction, and generally what is abstracted away is intentional reality. So, the question is: does your concept <physical> contain intentional notes of comprehension? In other words, when you say "physical" do you mean to include intentional realities such as knowing, willing, hoping, etc.? As "physical" is used in the context of physics, intentional realities are excluded. That is what I meant when I wrote that physics has no intentional effects. Since human life includes such realities, "physical" does not exhaust human nature. So, we are more than "physical" in this sense.

So, to say that a purely "physical" system can preform intentional operations, you have to redefine "physical." If you do not, you are equivocating.

So what is "identical"? — Banno

The source of the concepts <This rock> and <hard>.

"the rock is hard" sure looks like a predication — Banno

I am not denying that it is a predication, only your reading of what is identical.

An excellent essay. — Paine

Thank you. I look forward to your further comments.

I agree with this too. — RogueAI

I am glad we are of like mind.

Although a heap of building materials is not self organizing, matter might be. If so then to have sufficient knowledge of the parts is know the ways in which they can form higher orders of organization, including organisms that are conscious. — Fooloso4

I see some problems here. First, matter is not self-organizing. It is organized by laws of nature, which are logically distinct from the matter whose time-development they control. Those laws are immaterial, for it is a category error to ask what they are made of. Second, knowing what matter can become is insufficient to say what it will or does become. The matter that composed the primordial soup could become a brain, but that does not mean that it will, any more than a pile of building materials will become a Swiss Chalet. Finally, even if we could predict which atoms of the primordial soup will come to compose my brain, that does not reduce consciousness to a physical basis. As I note in the article, physics has no intentional effects, and consciousness is the actualization of intelligibility -- which is an intentional operation.

it is quite another to argue that there has always been wholes such as human beings. — Fooloso4

I do not argue or believe that.

Declaring the failure of reductionism seems premature. Explanations of why "you can't get there from here" are common and occur before it becomes clear how to get there from here. — Fooloso4

I did not just "declare" the failure of reductionism. I showed why it must fail -- first in biology, where physicists (I am one) ignore the very data that biologists (such as my brother) study, and second in the intentional realm, where we do the same thing. If you think I am wrong, it would be helpful to say why my arguments fail. I am not proposing that you accept my views on faith.

Also, I how long do we need to wait before it is not "premature" to say reductionism fails? Materialists have been around for about 2500 years and have yet to devise a viable theory of mind.

It's too early to claim that the "Standard Model" fails. — Banno

Then you should be able to use it to outline how consciousness can be both causally impotent, and reported by those who experience it. Didn't the causal efficacy of Jupiter's moons play an essential role in Galileo's reports of them?

"The rock is hard" is not an identity. It's not "Rock = hard". Nor "Rock ≡ Hard". — Banno

I suggest you reread the text. "The copula, <is>, betokens identity – not between subject and predicate, but of their common source. Indeed, ‘a is b’ is unjustified if a is not identically an object which elicits <b>."

If I've understood the article aright, the mooted failure of the "Standard Model" supposedly can only be remedied by a return to Aristotelian concepts of the mind. — Banno

I would not dare say "only." There may well be other approaches, but I have yet to find one in ancient or modern authors, and I have read many of all persuasions. I only say that it can be so remedied.

2. Realize that subjective experience from the first person perspective cannot be scientifically investigated — Wolfgang

Why would you say that? Can't we type-replicate introspective reports to reach general conclusions, as we type-replicate any other kind of observation?

Consciousness is a property of the individual, more precisely, of the brain. — Wolfgang

Consciousness is not physical in the sense that the objects studied by physics are. It cannot be defined using concepts such as mass, energy, momentum, charge, and extension. While we can say that thought depends on the brain, that does not mean that it is a property of the brain. Thought also depends on adequate blood flow and respiration, but it is not a property of the heart or lungs. So, dependence of y on x does not make y a property of x.

Biologically, consciousness can be described as the orientation performance of a (central nervous) living being. — Wolfgang

That would be what I call "medical consciousness." It is not what my article is about. I am discussing the subjective awareness -- that which makes the merely intelligible actually understood.

So whoever tries to explain consciousness physically commits a category error. ... Conclusion: the hard problem of consciousness is a chimera! — Wolfgang

We agree.

Chalmers accepts consciousness as fundamental and universal. — Fooloso4

That is not my position.

Ethically, each thief is required to return what was stolen, if it was taken unjustly. So, there is no paradox. Thinking that there is a paradox implies that one subscribes to consequentialism, which is untenable.

Note that stealing, while against the law, might not be unjust.

I might start a thread on it if that's OK with you. — bert1

Sure. Let me know.

What I mean is more that these scientists, because of their religious beliefs, have a religious mindset, and therefore all of them have to actively fight the filter of religious belief in order for it not to undermine their own scientific and philosophical findings. — Christoffer

This misunderstands the "religious mindset." Recent scholarship has shown that the medieval church, not merely tolerated, but actively encouraged, scientific inquiry. (E.g. James Hannam, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution (2011).) The rationale, the doctrine of the "Two Books," was that God not only reveals Himself in Scripture, but also in the Book of Nature. Thus, the medieval religious mind was convinced that a true understanding of nature inevitably led to a deeper understanding of God. This tradition continues in Catholic circles. For example, early on the dominant interpretation of Genesis was literal. (Exceptions included such notables as Sts. Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas.) However, late 19th c. geology convinced theologians that a literal interpretation was wrong, as the actual age of the earth was too great. Consequently, the dominant Catholic interpretation of Genesis became non-literal to better conform to scientific findings.

Darwin did not think it necessary to reject God to do science, but instead followed a line of thought advanced by Suarez, viz. that science deals with "secondary causes." The idea is that God is the ultimate cause, continually keeping everything in existence, but that what is kept in being has real causal efficacy, namely, secondary causality. (Look at the quotations opposite the title page of the 1st ed. of On the Origin of Species.)

This is not to deny the existence of religious literalists. We all know of creationists and so-called "intelligent design" advocates. (ID is really unintelligent design, because it assumes that God is not smart enough to create initial states and laws of nature adequate to His ends.) Still, literal belief is not universal, and so it is not an essential characteristic of a faith commitment.

Congratulations for your publication! — javi2541997

Thank You

My article is now published. Polis, D. F., "The Hard Problem of Consciousness & the Fundamental Abstraction," Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research. (14) 2, pp. 96-114. https://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/1042/1035

Mind/body should be examined together with the 'what is information' question..

Brain information is in the brain only.
Genetic information...I don't think it exists other than a shorthand for the people who study it and a pop culture concept.
Signal information...of the Claude Shannon type seems to reduce to physical matter only.
Physical information...such as distant galaxies, stars and planets having physical information associated with them...shorthand by practitioners but migrated to pop culture. — Mark Nyquist

To quote from my paper:

Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory, defined information as a reduction of possibility, but there are many kinds of possibility. Imagine a binary message transmitted over such a distance that it is entirely transmitted before any of it is received. As each bit is received, the number of possible messages is reduced by one half, but physical possibility is not reduced, because the signal already exists. What has changed is logical possibility. Before reception, it is logically possible for a bit to be an a or a b, but not after reception. Thus, information is a logical, not a physical property.

We may speak of physical processes that bring us closer to understanding in terms of sending and receiving ‘information,’ but not univocally, because logical possibility is not reduced until the received bit is known. What exists before then is intelligibility, not knowledge. So, it is equivocating to say that both computers and minds process ‘information.’ — Dennis F. Polis

I'm not trying to get too focused on information other than observing that brain information and consciousness are inseparable.

So my view is brain information is the only information that should be relevant to mind. — Mark Nyquist

First, I agree that the information we are conscious of is neurally encoded, and so concepts are inseparable from neural representations. Aristotle and Aquinas both recognized that rational thought is impossible without a sensory representation (their phantasm). Galen saw that brain trauma alone could lead to cognitive disease. Still, there is nothing about a neural representation that entails our consciousness of it, and we are unaware of most neural representations. So, while concepts are inseparable from representations, they are not identical. Something needs to be "done" to a representation to make us aware of it -- its intelligibility must be actualized if it is to be known. The aspect of us that does this is what Aristotle and Aquinas called the "agent intellect." Daniel Dennett represents this as a homunculus in his Cartesian Theater, but shows it cannot be physical. That is also the conclusion of Aristotle and Aquinas. It must be non-physical because physics has no intentional effects, and knowing what is represented is an intentional act. So, actually knowing neurally encoded information requires us to have an immaterial aspect, the agent intellect.

Second, if all we knew were "brain information," then external reality could not inform us, and "knowing" would be imagining. Any theory of mind worth its salt needs to show how nature can inform us. The Aristotelian-Thomistic view does. It notes that an object informing our senses is identically our senses being informed by the object. In other words, the sensed object's modification of our neural state is identically our neural representation of the sensed object. So, neural representation is shared existence. It is both the object's modification of our neural state, and our representation of the object. The same is true when we actualize the intelligibility latent in the representation. Our awareness being informed by the neural representation is identically the neural representation (and so the object) informing our awareness.

Christopher,

Yes, although the idea of conceptual spaces and subspaces is not limited to science and religion. I'd say that cognitive biases are embodied in limited conceptual spaces and that there is a feedback loop linking them. Because we conceptualize reality in a certain way, we tend to look for evidence consistent with that framework, ignoring or minimizing evidence that would undermine the framework. In the other direction, as selected evidence confirms our conceptual framework, it becomes more embedded in our neural net, and so more habitual and less reflective. The rejection of Wegner's views on continental drift exemplifies the selective use of evidence.

Representational artifacts are structures that must be constructed to bridge the gap between a limited conceptual space and reality. In pre-relativity physics, we have absolute time. In the rejection of continental drift, we have infinite forces holding the continents in place. In the representation of physicality and intentionality, we have dualism with its so-called problems (mind-body and free will). In the supposed conflict of science and religion, we have the constructs of "the scientific mind" and "the religious mind." This ignores the fact that some of the greatest scientists (e.g. Galileo, Newton and Laplace) were faithfully religious, and some deeply religious people (e.g. Bishop Robert Grosstesta, who defined the scientific method, and St. Albert the Great, the greatest botanist of the era) were excellent scientists. Even Darwin believed in God and "designed laws" of nature.