OK, so please could you explain your point?

Think about it... — Amity

Ok, I just did. You seem to be suggesting that talk of consciousness outside of a this kind of medical sense makes no sense. So to wonder if, say, a tree or a rock is conscious is, by definition, meaningless. Is that right?

Very good OP.

I think the natural language use and philosophical (as in 'hard problem') use (if there is such a distinction) intersect in, for example, the following reasonably natural exchange between two people at the beach:

Jack: I wonder what it would be like to be a seagull?
Jill: Fantastic, I would imagine. The feeling of swooping through the air, the effortless traversing of long distances. Pecking people, nicking chips. I'd love it.
Jack: I dunno, it might not feel like how you imagine at all. We're very different from seagulls. It's like trying to imagine what it's like to be a snail, we're just too different.
Jill: Maybe, but even though I can't imagine what it is like to be a snail, I reckon there is still something it is like to be a snail, even though I'm not sure what. I think they have nerves don't they?
Jack: Sure. Not like rocks though, there's nothing it's like to be a rock. No nerves or even cells, so they couldn't possibly have experiences.
Jill: Agreed, there's nothing it's like to be a rock. Although some philosophers think there is according to my friend bert1.

They are discussing, I think completely intelligibly, about whether there is something it is like to be x.

Equivalently, to my mind, we can talk about the kinds of things that have experiences, and the kinds of things that don't.

Equivalently, to be aware of something is to be experiencing something, is to be conscious of something.

'Feeling' can be used equivalently, to feel x is to be conscious of x. Even to 'know' something could be used in this way, although that's less common.

'Sentient' can be used this way. To be sentient is just to be conscious, to be capable of experience.

There are other ways these words can be used, but I think all of this language can be used to talk about consciousness in the phenomenal sense. (I personally think it is important to make a distinction between consciousness and consciousness-of-something, as it is, for me, in principle possible to be conscious without being conscious of something, even if that never actually obtains).

Dictionaries typically identify this usage among other usages. Although interestingly, not all do! I think the Cambridge online dictionary misses it out. For example (I have bolded the phenomenal sense intended by the OP):

Dictionary.com
noun
1) the state of being conscious; awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.
2) the thoughts and feelings, collectively, of an individual or of an aggregate of people:
the moral consciousness of a nation.
3) full activity of the mind and senses, as in waking life:
to regain consciousness after fainting.
4) awareness of something for what it is; internal knowledge:
consciousness of wrongdoing.
5) concern, interest, or acute awareness:
class consciousness.
6) the mental activity of which a person is aware as contrasted with unconscious mental processes.

Banno only identifies one of these definitions (roughly no 3) and says it is 'the best' which is absurd. Dictionaries describe usage, it's a factual business not a normative one. Likewise this thread is concerned with facts of usage and meaning. People mean what they mean. Is Banno saying that people shouldn't use words in ways he doesn't like? That philosophers should stop talking about sense 1 completely? Or is he saying that sense 1 is really best thought of as sense 3? Or what?

What seems to be happening here is that some people have decided in advance that reincarnation is essential, rational and good, and that any criticism of the possibility should be suppressed by all available means. — Banno

However, supposing we accept reincarnation either as fact or as theoretical possibility, how would we convincingly justify it in philosophical terms? — Apollodorus

Certainly any criticism of the possibility of reincarnation should be suppressed in a thread which is only about philosophical justification of it.

Meddling or interfering. I feel I shouldn’t meddle in the lives of others. — NOS4A2

I'm just thinking that to meet your needs we'd have to clear an area for you, which you could farm or hunt and gather or whatever, so you could live unbothered by others and without bothering them. There's a decreasing number of spaces of dwindling size and resources, unfortunately. Perhaps colonising another planet would suit you.

Also brains and the ability to process non physicals would have been emergent at some point in history and evolved from simple to complex. — Mark Nyquist

Would it indeed? Hmph! If you manage to make the venn diagram no one is going to agree with it! Interesting idea though. It's making your philosophical views fairly clear in a way.

EDIT: one way to know you've made a good diagram is if people use it to clearly understand you view and start criticising your views, rather than focusing on the diagram.

You've set up the discussion nicely, but to be clear, is this thread intended to be about water, consciousness, emergence, or all of these?

I think the problem is pretty straightforwardly resolvable by adopting an meta ethical relativist view.

From God's point of view, there is no evil. Indeed there cannot be, because Xe (I'm woke now) is omnipotent.

From the point of view of a relatively impotent creature, like a human being, there are going to be loads of things that happen against their will. And that's just the definition of evil: x is evil if and only if it is against my will. "Good is that which is willed."

Adopting this view fixes the problem of the thread. Although many theists will want to keep the idea that some things exist that are against Xe's will. But I don't see how that is tenable.

Do you consider yourself an anarchist?

I don’t want isolation. By “leave me alone” I mean I want them to quit meddling in my life. That’s what you fail to recognize. — NOS4A2

How do you feel about you meddling in the lives of others? (Whatever meddling means in this context)

I'm not sure of the topic, but it seems that individualism is likely contrasted with the morally imperative global-co-operation in order to solve worldwide climate problems, resource management problems, biodiversity threats, etc. Whatever the evils of that co-operation might be, surely they can't be any worse that not so co-operating.

NOS, I may have missed it, but did you give some kind of definition? This is interesting but I can't get a firm grip on the concept. What are we discussing? Is individualism a value, attitude, belief, social policy, practice or what?

And a process has parts. — Banno

Indeed, and that is one objection to consciousness being a process. We seem to agree that consciousness being a process and consciousness being indivisible are incompatible. We have to ditch one option before settling on a view.

EDIT: do you have a view on the binding problem in relation to consciousness? (I haven't defined the binding problem tightly here, there are a number of slightly different ones I think, but I'm interested in any/all of them)

Our minds are strongly indivisible. Half a mind makes no sense. As our minds are strongly indivisible, they have no parts. An object that has no parts does not come into being - for there is nothing from which it can be formed - and thus if it exists, it has always existed. Thus our minds have always existed. As our lives here had a beginning, we - the minds undergoing them - must have existed previously, for we have always existed. — Bartricks

I think this is the most persuasive of your three. It contains the fewest assumptions perhaps, or at least the assumptions are intuitively self evident on reflection.

That's all very true Un. I'm not condemning myself in a particularly self-hatey way I don't think, and I don't mean to advocate that. I should try being a bit more positive occasionally. Historically when I've thought very positive things about myself I tend to immediately humiliate myself, fall into holes, step on rakes, upset women, and generally fuck everything up. So the negativity is a method of self-regulation a bit.

Realisations of my own evil were for me a relief. Sometimes an awakening. Generally a positive experience. Catching glimpses of my own pretentious foolishness is far worse. Cunt or wanker? I'd rather be a cunt I think, but I fear I may be both.

Undemocratic governments are worst. Corporations next worst. Democratic governments least worst.

At least you can periodically fire the last category.

One huge advantage to some kind of field theory of consciousness is that it solves the binding problem.

Is there something it is like to be a man?

David Packman is the perfect male I think.

What is it like to be David Packman?

Also, what if transhumans, or post humans, don't do what we want them to do? Then transhumanism becomes an evil, and joins the long list of species-level fuck-ups we have since regretted.

Why not try for it in case its possible, right? — Shawn

I'm just not convinced it's a desirable end. I'm new to the concept though an there are lots of variants and complexity. I often think we should have stopped at horse and cart technology. And sailing ships.

Pearce is sticking around for an impressively long time. Most guest speakers do a runner after a few posts.

I'm finding transhumanism to be a very interesting idea. I'm oscillating between thinking it's a very good idea and it being complete horseshit.

Surely, it would be rather futile to try to 'force' agreement. — Jack Cummins

The scientific method forces agreement without trying. Philosophy does not have a method that can do that, except perhaps in very tightly defined logical contexts.

There are several mysteries which seem essential to the philosophical quest; the existence of God, free will and, life after death. These seem to be central to philosophy. Endless books have been written on these subjects. However, no one seems to have come up with any clear answers, and it seems to me that they remain as unsolved mysteries. We all contemplate these aspects of life, but it does seem that there are no definitive answers. Perhaps the whole aspect of mysteries is central to philosophy and what keeps us searching. Are they unfathomable mysteries, beyond human understanding? — Jack Cummins

I think they've probably been solved. We just lack a method to publicly force agreement unlike science. I know people still keep denying scientific findings way beyond what is reasonable doubt, but by and large there is such a thing as reasonably settled science.

Many thanks for your excellent answer. It's taken me a while to get back to it.

If you repeat a measurement under the same conditions in an experiment, the goal of that is usually to take an average; establishing concordance and forming a variance reduced estimate of the true value you're measuring. — fdrake

:nod:

If you repeat a measurement under different conditions in an experiment, in part that's trying to find out how the measured response varies with the stimulus/treatment, in part that's trying to find out how that response varies with contextual factors, in part (nowadays) that's trying to assess whether and how the stimulus/treatment's response itself varies with contextual factors. On this level, "repeating a measurement" is pretty much the core of a controlled experiment. — fdrake

Indeed.

If you're repeating an entire experiment, there's some wiggle room in practice regarding what counts as a repeat. There's the hypothetical "exact replication", which is where you do literally everything the same, the "conceptual replication", which is where you try to ape the experimental conditions to be the same but can't do it exactly. I doubt those are an exhaustive typology of replication results, but the purpose of both isn't easily reducible to confirming or testing a previously held hypothesis in most cases, and that follows just because the overall set up in the initial experiment isn't identical, or necessarily even equivalent in all relevant respects, to the replication attempt. — fdrake

I hadn't thought of that specifically, thanks.

That "lack of identity" (arguably) shows up in the difference in replication rates between papers where the initial researcher group is represented in the reproduction team and where they are not. — fdrake

That's interesting.

I would make the claim that the function of reproduction attempts/replication attempts in science isn't to check the reliability of any individual result; most results are false and over-simplifications and everyone knows this; the overall function is to make the process of scientific discovery in the aggregate not spend too long on "clear" falsehoods and inaccuracies, it's a quality control thing. What counts as a "clear falsehood" only makes sense in light of reproducibility. — fdrake

Sure. I think by 'results' you mean conclusions/interpretations rather than data?

Another angle on repeatability is that if you're repeating the experiment, manage it exactly, and the effect doesn't show up the same as before, that doesn't necessarily mean the conclusions of the initial experiment were false - it might be that the response is contextually variable, it might be a contextual interaction - both experiments could be samples of a distribution associated with the "true effect" indexed by contexts and their variables. The latter approach, to my understanding, is the one favoured by Gelman and his group. — fdrake

Another very good point I hadn't thought of.

I think that depends too, the role of a non-repeat, if you see it in the context of a contextually variable interaction, it's not a refutation but evidence that the effect is contextual if it exists (and that starts a process of compensation of making it smaller compared to context induced imprecision, "exaggeration factors" "the garden of forking paths", and analysing true power of the study/broader scientific endeavour), if you see it in the context of everything's really set up exactly the same, the effect's probably not there as it was theorised - but if the "exact replication" must reproduce the contextual ambiguities of the initial one? It still doesn't mean the effect's not there/is 0* if the second one comes out, it could be that the ambiguities realised differently in both experiments.

In that kind of case, if the ambiguities are enough to swamp the signal, it's reasonable to say the treatment as intended or the effect as theorised has little to no evidence that it exists... Probably. — fdrake

Yes, I completely glossed over all that nuance. My initial post popped into my head by considering vague memories of my philosophy of science on falsificationism and confirmationism. I found all that really interesting at the time but forgot most of it.

Thank you, that was really interesting and helpful.

It is aware of itself. — Benj96

That's the contentious one, and the one that either potentially justifies or rules out God-talk. Without consciousness, energy (or the quantum field or whatever) can't be called God or any other god-term that implies agency and will and consciousness etc.

Almost all attempts at this question seem to miss the mark by a huge margin. — Dale Petersen

Your view is a pretty commonly held view as far as I can tell. Looks like a kind of functionalism to me.

Phenomenologically, consciousness does seem very field-like. I think this is prima facie evidence that it is a field, or a property of physical field(s). This fits well with a panpsychic conception of consciousness.

Not at all. Had you been silent we would not have had from you such a gem. — tim wood

Oh! Thanks. I didn't understand. I process what you said when I can.

I can give an example if that would help.

I also think that repeatability in science is to check the results we got previously in our analysis. But, even further than this, repeatability could also help us to improve the hypothesis itself. If you want to make a solid statement I guess you should repeat a lot until you believe is enough proven. — javi2541997

I see, thanks.

The only improvement on these just being silent. — tim wood

Do you mean I should not have posted? Mods can delete if they want.

I wonder if we had given people a choice, how many in the over 50 group would have asked children and teens to give up their freedoms and happiness? — dazed

That's an interesting empirical question. The answer is not to be found on this forum.

So far as I can tell, which is the most certain anyone can ever be about anything. — Pfhorrest

Fantastic! I think you've earned your philosopher badge!

I want to believe only things that are true, and avoid believe things that are untrue. — Pfhorrest

That's bold! Is it true?

Any American will be glad to tell you what his rights are, likely more than you would want to hear. The problem is that most Americans, on the topic of their rights, know as much about them as they know about whether they have an itch to be scratched, or less, but certainly no more. That is, most Americans are uneducated on rights, theirs or anyone else's, but that lack of knowledge and understanding does not slow most of them down even a little.

I, myself, like to think that rights in America are mainly at first cut reasonable and sensible. That is, common sense is a pretty good first guide. Which will get you exactly nowhere with people who lack that basic capacity for common sense, which, alas, is most of us. — tim wood

Thanks, I did wonder if that was what is going on but didn't want to assume.

If there was any real concern that requiring masks, social distancing, and lockdowns were in violation of some rights guaranteed by the constitution, the issue would have been considered by the Supreme Court by now. If there were any cases, I didn't hear about them. — frank

Thanks frank, that's interesting.

I don't know! I'm trying to make sense of claims that covid protection measures breach people's rights. According to UK and EU law, there is demonstrably no such breach. I don't know the legal situation in America. I did a very brief google just to see if it was obvious what rights were being engaged, but I did not spend much time on it. I'm interested to know what rights people in America think are being engaged and perhaps breached.

Do you have a view on this?

Just had a very quick google about American HR law. It seems human rights have found a home in the US constitution via various amendments, is that right? These are based on the UDHR.

I'd be interested in what legal rights, specifically, mask wearing, lockdown and social distancing (as the main covid responses apart from the vaccine) are engaged by these measures? Anyone know?