If the evidence were so overwhelming it would be obvious to all structural engineers, and the cat would be out of the bag. — Janus

It is, and it is. But that's not the primary focus of the thread.

Is it even worth it to engage with these people? — Xtrix

It depends what you want in life, I guess, but for me, yes. Sometimes people who you think are nuts turn out to be right. It's healthy and productive to see people as individuals, all with different unique constellations of views, some rational, others not. It can get a bit us-and-them if we group populations according to their views and dismiss individuals within that group because of their group membership.

Also, the things mentioned are all different. You don't have to pick a team here and accept them all or reject them all. I, for example, have not come across anything to suppose that the virus is anything other than what it appears to be, and that vaccines are probably broadly safe, at least safer than the disease, and we should probably all get vaccinated for the good of everyone. Regarding the ninth of November, on the other hand, I think the physical evidence for controlled demolition is completely overwhelming. To even begin to change my mind on that I'd need to see a plausible explanation for the collapse of building 8 minus 1 - office conflagration isn't plausible. This isn't even a conspiracy theory. It's a physical theory based on observations; I have absolutely no idea who, how or why someone would do that. And the kind of creationism that is based on taking creation myths and stories literally seems completely baseless and contradicted by evidence.

So while the populations that hold these views might overlap considerably, they are different views, and can, and I suggest should, be approached separately. However when I am tired and frustrated, I do fall into lazily grouping people together, and I do hate these groups when my head is fuzzy and they all look the same from a distance. If I had to pick a team, I'd pick yours, but I'd self-destruct it as soon as we won the game.

While Bartricks is right about the poor inference from correlation to identity, I do think it is probably right that the human brain is what does the thinking in human brains. But that's hardly surprising, as the brain is the brain. Just as what does the thinking in a rock is the rock. The grammar is very leading here, and hard to resist. Anything ending in '-ing' is doing something, carrying out a function. So it has to be the kind of thing that can do something. A brain is that kind of thing. Nothing follows from that about 'consciousness', which is a noun not a verb.

The very strong relationship between human brain function and what human beings experience is undeniable. However almost nothing follows from this regarding the philosophy of mind. It is consistent with even the most extreme of metaphysical positions, for example, substance dualism.

Bartricks is an annoying fuck, but I think he is basically right about this.

EDIT: however, the question of where thinking happens remains. And I think 'in the brain' remains a possibility, even if thoughts are not identical with some brain functions.

Why is this glob of matter reluctant to be at the full mercy of the universe around it? — Benj96

I'm surprised no one has given the standard answer yet. If I was an emergentist, which I'm not, I would say the following:

You have self-replicating molecules. These develop into systems that are better at self-replicating. Then something odd happens at a certain level of sophistication and a new kind of function is realised, and these self-replicating systems start to have feelings, desires, motivations, and also began to perceive and predict events in their environment such that they could direct their behaviour in response. The ones that had a self-destruct motivation, a primitive ennui, moved towards destructive environments and did not replicate. The ones that had a strong desire to preserve themselves did replicate. No micro nor macro teleology necessary. But medium-scale teleology may be acceptable on this view. Is that close to the standard story?

Since then most of the world has realized that you need a vehicle that can turn both left and right. — litewave

I think with a grid system, you can get anywhere on the grid just making left turns, as long as there are no dead ends. Could be wrong.

Cyclic relation between people in democracies and their government.

Gov't doesn't educate population, population elects gov't who continues not to educate population. This gov't then allows corporations to pollute.

Educated worldwide populations would vote for policies creating global regulation and governance structures which could curb the actions of corporations.

My rather simple analysis. It doesn't tackle the problem of non democratic systems.

Should be loads on Gutenberg.

Consciousness arises from matter in the same way that light arises from combustion. — Present awareness

Could you go into some more detail?

How can you even speak of them as the same person then? Either the unconscious peron is the same as the conscious person, or it is not. — Heiko

Because from the outside there is a continuity of body and legal status. But when the body is 'unconscious' it doesn't have a phenomenological unity (or not an interesting one that defined a person, anyway) because that depends on function.

I think I'm a panpsychist and a property dualist

When I asked 'what compelled you?' it was more an attempt to highlight the irony implied by your questioning of 'subjective intentional agency' i.e., if you, the subject, did not intend to write that post, then.... But, as they say, a joke explained is a joke lost. — Wayfarer

I don't know, I think in this case I'm finding it funnier and funnier. There's layers to it now.

I'm a bit pissed off that panpsychism and idealism are leading the way. Time for me to pause and reflect.

It's a gross equivocation of the meaning of both. I have faith and trust in science, insofar as I accept that it is conducted by people of integrity who have both the education and access to the resources to investigate and validate these kinds of theories. I presume that, if I undertook the same training and viewed the same research, then I would probably arrive at the same conclusion. — Wayfarer

Amen. Apollodorus is heading for a ban. Shouldn't have to say this stuff.

What compelled you to say that? — Wayfarer

He was supposed to say 'consciousness' wasn't he?

Anyway, I don't really see the circularity, not a vicious one anyway. Consider an analogy with DNA. Our knowledge of DNA is a product of the activities of DNA. *shrug*

EDIT: you might have an interesting insight here. But I'm not sure you've brought it out.

I don't think so. Energy is always working, no? But God spends eternity not doing anything.

I was born as "Corvus", and Cheshire was born as "Cheshire". — Corvus

Sure, but that's not what Cheshire would say. Cheshire would say "I was born as Cheshire, and Corvus was born as Corvus." What accounts for these different perspectives? They are different. In the first, the 'I' is Corvus, but in the second the 'I' is Cheshire. Yet there is but one reality. So are these statements in conflict? Is there a trick of language? What's going on?

I'm happy to follow where the logic goes. If that's mysticism or Wooga Wooga-ism, so be it. What does your spirituality say?

Anything pertaining to metaphysical or ontological questions such as why were you born, why are you you, why am I I, this type of WHY questions cannot yield meaningful answers

What is the casual story that resulted in you being corvus and not Cheshire?

By your definition comatose patients would still be "conscious" and jelly fish and humans would share similar mental experience. — prothero

Only if comatose patients retain a unified identity, which arguably they don't. When, in medical terms, someone loses consciousness, how is that to be distinguished for them losing a coherent functional identity? What phenomenologically, is the difference?

And if 'conscious' just means 'capable of experience', then yes, anything that is capably of experience is, by definition, equally conscious. The difference in complexity and richness is in what they are conscious of.

Ok, let it be so, brain in vat time again and all aboard for the ride. But if my brain is a brain in a vat it would not be a brain as I understand brains because what I now understand to be a brain is (I'm imagining) an illusory brain. And it would not be a vat as I understand a vat because I only know illusory vats. So I would not be a brain in a vat. I would be something and I would not be able to say what that thing is because all I seem to perceive now is some kind of psychological trickery and I have no experience of reality. So it turns out that I cannot coherently state the situation that I am supposing to be possible. And that makes me pause to think whether it is a coherent supposition at all. — Cuthbert

I like this. This is a far more satisfactory answer than "It's just silly lets not think about it." It takes the problem seriously and suggests a genuine solution. And this analysis seems right to me. It seems like Cuthbert has correctly articulated a niggling feeling of 'there's something wrong with the thought experiment, but I'm not quite sure what'.

But, the correlation is strong enough that we can establish a relationship. This relationship is strong enough that we even have drugs that treat imbalances in the brain of neurotransmitter levels. So, what's wrong with that? — Shawn

Oh, sure. I misunderstood, I thought you were suggesting a simple identity.

what is wrong with assuming that moods are really just neurotransmitter levels working in the brain? — Shawn

Because they're different. A mood is a background state of feeling. A neurotransmitter doing its thing is a neurotransmitter doing it's thing. The fact that they occur together suggests a relationship, sure. But a simple identity is not quite right. The two things have different properties. More needs to be said.

A. Does materialism have a particular handicap compared to other types of metaphysics that do not consider fundamental consciousness, and if so, what is this handicap? — Eugen

Materialism is very poorly defined. As a theory of mind, what people mostly seem to mean is nothing other than emergentism. Emergentism is more clearly defined and informative a word. All materialists, I suggest, think that consciousness only came into being relatively late in the universe, perhaps with the development of brains. And the hard problem applies very much to emergentists: how do we get consciousness from interactions of severally non-conscious systems exactly?

B. Are there rational arguments to circumvent the hard problem in other types of metaphysics, or does neutral monism / panprotopsychism collapse into mysterianism?

I don't see how neutral monism helps - as other posters have pointed out. The natural antithesis of emergentism is panpsychism. And I don't think panpsychism is a form of mysterianism at all. Mysterianism is, perhaps, sometimes even a form of emergentism - "We'll never know how consciousness emerges from brain activity, but somehow it does - all the evidence suggests so."

So on reflection the notion of primitive forms of non-conscious experience should not be too hard to entertain. — prothero

As you know my views are somewhat similar to yours in some ways. I know you like to reserve the word 'conscious' for creatures with brains, and use some other term 'experiential' perhaps, to refer to the fact that, perhaps, there is something it is like to be a molecule, or some kind of simple system or process. You think this is more consistent with typical usage and is less confusing. Is that right? I think the exact opposite. In philosophy 'conscious' is typically used to refer to that faculty (whatever it is) the possession of which is necessary and sufficient for that thing to have an experience. So I object to your usage as not being consistent with standard usage in the literature. You have adopted a more typically scientific/medical usage which obscures the relevant philosophy.

This is a great OP. I disagree with most of it, but I am able to disagree with it because it is so clear and transparent. I'll reply in greater length another time. In short, your definitions do reflect some usage, but crucially not other important usage. Sometimes (indeed, perhaps most often) 'consciousness' is not used to describe a set of anything. It is something like 'the capacity to experience'. It is that concept that is often the subject of philosophical discourse, including in discussion of the 'hard problem'.

I'll challenge your focus on brains. If the structure and function of brains determine, in a strong correlative way, the experiences of that brain, why does not the structure and function of a rock similarly determine the experiences of that rock? Or does it? What is the relevant difference (if there is one) between the two cases?

The (mind)ing is what the brain does. — 180 Proof

But not (consciousness)ing

In this paragraph only I found the following rather exotic philosophical.scientific terms/concepts: pluralistic monism, quantum dynamics, superpositions or blended wavelengths, panpsychism. And then you pretend all this is your opinion and ask from people to tell you what they think! — Alkis Piskas

It's possible for one's own opinion to overlap with that of others. I don't think Enrique is claiming he came up will all this completely by himself. Not that I understand it particularly.

"A process of integrating information for the purpose of self organization" — Pop

Is that what you think an experience is?

Prothero, is x conscious if there is something it is like to be x?
Is x conscious if x is capable of experience?

I think neurowhatsits have a lot to say on what we experience, but nothing at all to say on how experience came to be. I just haven't heard anything remotely convincing.

I think discussions on your threads on self, evil, consciousness, mystery, etc more than most(?) other threads illustrate a metaphilosophical problem: how one can use philosophy (instead of science) in order to generate a "theory" which purports to explain – over and above describing (or stipulatively defining) concepts for – facts of the matter. The assumption that, in other words, 'philosophy is (like) a science' is what's problematic, and many conjure-up eclectic "theories" which are incomprehensible to others trying to clarify how the concepts at issue can be used more consistently and coherently, in effect, talking past each other philosophically. I've yet to be persuaded that philosophy is theoretical (vide Witty et al). — 180 Proof

Philosophy itself is an interesting case. I could have put as one of the sentences: "Philosophy is not theoretical" Definition or theory? I guess 'definition' can be further subdivided into a number of categories. As can 'theory'.

The idea is that there could be some kind of loosely structured discourse where people who think they might have new philosophical ideas (either new possible positions, or new arguments for existing positions) can say what those ideas are, and then the responses should only be either affirming that that actually is a new idea so far as the respondent knows, or else, a link to or quote of or other brief educational presentation of someone else who has already had that (supposedly) exact idea, and why (if) not everyone is on board with it already. — Pfhorrest

It's a nice idea but it requires quite a lot of discipline from all concerned. :)

It shows just how complex the relationship between theories and definitions are. — Jack Cummins

Yes, I think that's right. I was very struck by how divided the responses are. There's only one where everyone agrees. It seems, however, that people do recognise an intuitive difference between theory and definition, even if, with some concepts/ideas they are perhaps difficult or impossible to separate completely.

I'd be interested in @Pfhorrest and @Banno's views, and anyone else's.

A definition is used for identification while a theory is used for prediction. — Harry Hindu

That seems quite good to me. With regard to consciousness it works well. Some definitions (but not others) of consciousness are completely neutral as to which objects can have it. It takes a theory to then predict which things can have experiences and which things cannot.

Brain waves are closely related to states of awareness — Enrique

In humans, no doubt. But not in rocks, because rocks don't have brains.

Amazing work. :up: — fdrake

Could have been a lot better, but thank you! The results so far are fascinating.

It seems that most of the "is" statements are definitions. The theories are more vague and require definitions to make them less so. — Harry Hindu

This was the only one I wasn't torn over when I voted. — fdrake

That's interesting. I thought it was perhaps the most straightforwardly definitional one.

I'm surprised the sentience one is unanimous so far. And I'm surprised some of the others are split nearly half each. Very interesting.

The association of numbers with different states of consciousness seems definitional, but the ordering of them seems theoretical. — fdrake

Hadn't thought of that. :up:

Hmmmphh! Don't we need to define "defintion" and "theory" first? — Harry Hindu

Inevitably! Go ahead. Maybe we should also have a theory of definition and theory as well.

Most are definitions, or descriptions, and a few are, it seems, in/direct explanations aka (testable) "theories". — 180 Proof

:up: Did you do the poll?

Either all are simply definitions or are fragments of theories. Speaking for myself, single sentences are definitional in almost all cases and if not express, clarify, expand upon concepts that are part of a theory, a theory being a set of ideas that are interrelated and designed to provide an explanatory framework for observed phenomena. — TheMadFool

Sure. You can still give a glib summary of a theory in a sentence, no?

You must look up these words in a standard dictionary — Alkis Piskas

Consulting a dictionary is never bad advice. Thank you. :)

Well you can’t even be listening to what I’m saying then. — apokrisis

Listening =/= comprehending. The former is our responsibility. That latter is mostly yours.

I guess my pet theory is that waves and wavicles throughout nature combine as readily as a body of water whether we directly witness this or not, and these hybrids comprise both image qualia (dimensional) and nonimage qualia (feeling). But this matter is also extremely quantized, at least on the microscopic scale, which significantly disassociates it, so only specific, very complex and hyperorganized arrangements can give rise to complex qualitative experience, yet the possibilities are vast and far exceed the bounds of biological taxonomy as we currently define it. So that is why my view is a version of panprotopsychism: the actual substance of perception is present at the nano and micro scale, much more fundamental to matter than the level of organization that gives rise to either biological form or humanlike sentience. I regard human sentience as the somewhat arbitrary standard for what is conscious, just as the visible spectrum is our standard for what light is, corresponding to the brain and eye respectively. — Enrique

This is is the closest you've come in this thread to giving a theory, as far as I can tell. It's far too unclear for me to engage with. I originally thought you were talking about the Penrose-Hameroff stuff about microtubules, which I don't understand, as that's the only well-known theory of consciousness involving quantum stuff I know of. But that's not what you are talking about is it? And even that can hardly be called a paradigm, it's just one theory among many.

In very general terms I'm always somewhat sympathetic to field theries of consciousness as these intuitively feel faithful to the phenomenology of consciousness and attention. Our attention seems stretchy, and spread over and through many things at once, like a field. And I think that's important evidence.

I'll ask you the same question I ask any reductive theorist: why can't all the stuff you talk about happen in the dark? Why does that necessitate consciousness?

Is any of what Apo said relevant to your theory? I am in no position to judge that at all (as I understand neither of you), but you may be able to tell.

Consciousness is a state of integrated information - is the most coherent definition that I have come across. — Pop

That's really not a definition. Definitions are about what people mean and how words are used. People don't mean "I'm in a state of integrated information about this rose" when they say "I'm conscious of this rose". (Not that normal people would even say that to be fair.) The IIT is a theory, NOT a definition!

It's something to do with nano tubules I think. Whatever they are.

EDIT: sorry, microtubules. I'm getting the wrong jargon.

Definitions are over-rated. — unenlightened

I think he is as much asking for a theory of evil as a definition. Although exploring what people mean by the word is interesting in this case. Definition and theory blend I think with this concept.

@Apokrisis,

I read Pattee's Cell Phenomenology: The First Experience

It was interesting. Have you looked at that one?

The following is a description of what I think is the most valid framework for modeling consciousness that currently exists. Tell me what you think! — Enrique

I've never really understood it, but I haven't tried to study it in earnest. Whatever its merits, I don't think it can be a 'paradigm'. The field of consciousness studies is too fractured and divergent to have any paradigms as yet. A paradigm is a kind of wide reaching set of assumptions that is nearly universally accepted. We're nowhere near that with consciousness. Although many people seem to be convinced that biology is relevant.