Q1. Is it possible to build a theory that starts with fundamental non-consciousness and reaches consciousness without going through the classic weak emergent or strong emergent? — Eugen

Not on my understanding of the concepts of emergence. Even if we say that activities don't emerge, we can just rephrase to make the properties those activities depend on emergence. So if consciousness is something a brain does, then the capacity of a brain to do that thing would be an emergent property of the matter comprising the brain. To my mind, @180 Proof is an emergentist at least with regard to the properties necessary for a system to realise consciousness, but we may have different understandings of what emergence is.

Q2. Does any of the above theories (virtualism, computationalism, functionalism, etc.) manage to bypass emergence (weak or strong)?

I don't think so. It seems to me there are broadly three basic categories that theories of consciousness usually fall into:

Eliminativism (nothing is conscious)
Emergentism (some things, relatively late in the universe, are conscious)
Panpsychism (everything is conscious)

Most physicalist theories are either emergentist or eliminativist. But it depends on what concept of consciousness they are starting with. Some people are eliminativists regarding concepts of consciousness that they (usually wrongly) suspect of being fuzzy woo woo concepts, but emergentists with regard to what they think of as more modern scientific concepts of consciousness (usually defined in functionalist terms to begin with).

Some panpsychists call themselves physicalists (Galen Strawson) arguing that physical nature, properly conceived, has consciousness built in as a fundamental feature. It's just another physical property of the world.

Idealism I suppose is a kind of panpsychism.

Yeah, a non-reductive physicalist functionalist-enactivist :smirk: (if there's such a hybrid). — 180 Proof

There is now! I'll see if I can work out what that means.

That wasn't the one I was thinking of actually. I can't find it now, odd. No matter. You most often speak as if you a are a kind of functionalist, broadly, that consciousness is something that brains do.

@180 Proof Ill see if i can find it. I could be wrong. I asked 'strong or weak?' You 'said jury's out' or something.

I know you've never been a substance dualist, but emergence typically applies to properties, not entities, in the discourse. And properties can refer to actions as well. So if consciousness is the action or function of modelling the world and making predictions, then the capacity to do that is the corresponding emergent property.

Regarding vagueness, 'consciousness' is considered by a number of philosophers to be one if the few non-vague concepts we have.

@180 Proof Previously you have said you are an emergentist wrt consciousness. Have you changed your mind? If so, what precipitated the change?

Then why don't they just call it consciousness? — Eugen

I'm not sure. Maybe they want to avoid potential accusations of anthrpomorphization. They perhaps want to avoid being accused of saying that atoms fondly remember days of their youth in stars and regret they are now stuck in some cold asteroid a zillion miles from anywhere interesting. So instead of this kind of conscious experience we as humans are familiar with, they give the experiences of atoms, whatever they might be, a different name to distance them from us. I don't know. I haven't read much by people who are specifically pan-proto-psychists.

I don't know what the difference could be between proto-consciousness and consciousness. There's no conceptual space in between consciousness and non-consciousness for it to exist in.

Everyone on this forum is a bullshit generator. At least chatGPT is comprehensible bullshit written in clear measured prose

Moral realism is the idea that moral statements have a truth value - they are true or they are false. — Banno

I thought that was moral congitivism. Moral realism, surely, is the idea that morality exists independently of any minds.

In metaethics, it is exceedingly common to divide views into two subcamps: anti-realism (i.e., that there are no categorical imperatives) and realism (i.e., that there are categorical imperatives). Although I find this to be an intuitive distinction (as an approximation), I am finding the distinction blurring for me the more precise I analyze my metaethical commitments. — Bob Ross

I thought the categorical imperative wasn't a name for a type of view, by the particular view of Kant, namely something like "act only on those principles that, if universalised (acted upon by everyone) does not lead to contradiction." Or something, there are various formulations. I've always thought it was complete bollocks but perhaps I don't get it. It's an attempt, contra Hume, to ground morality in reason rather than sentiment. Is that really what you wanted to talk about? It seems like it may be that you are looking to ground morality in reason as well perhaps:

o the idea that “it is most rational to fixate upon what is implicit of one’s nature”--and this is by no means a concession that anyone must abide by that principle (i.e., that it is itself a categorical imperative). — Bob Ross

Are you getting at the tension between there being moral facts about the world, but the individual person is always able to say "So what? I don't actually give a crap bout that."?

Good stuff from Banno. I've never managed to form a strong opinion on knowledge. Still don't know what line to take.

The Secret Life of Minerals, David Attenborough

Given the premise of your question does not convey what I've stated — 180 Proof

So state it differently then so that your meaning is more transparent. You cant read for your readers, but your readers can't write for you either.

I'll try and work through this. :)

I know that everything I will present from 1 to 4 is debatable, but, for the sake of the argument, let's assume that we all agree that everything up to 4 is proven to be false. — Eugen

Understood.

Therefore, if I were a materialist.

1. Strong emergence - I would accept that it is logically impossible and that it is not pure materialism anyway.

If I were a (materialist) naturalist/physicalist I might try and make something of strong emergentism in order to keep my concept of phenomenal consciousness. But we're assuming it's false, so that's OK. No strong emergentism.

2. Therefore, I would adopt weak emergence. That would force me to adopt the identity theory.

I would adopt weak emergence. And I'd jump straight to functionalism. I didn't think functionalism was a subset of identity theory. I thought Identity theory was that the mind is the brain, or something like that. But I could be wrong. Anyway, weak emergence is rejected too, fair enough.

3. Type-Type Identity can be refuted by multiple realization.

So a type of mind is identical to a type of physical system? I guess that can be refuted by multiple realisation. But multiple realisation hasn't been proven. However it is intuitively plausible and is arguably entailed by functionalism. So we ditch that as well, fair enough.

4. So, the next step is to adopt Token-Type. Here the problem arises: depending on what we categorize an emotion?

Token-type identity? Which side is the physical, which the mental? I don't think I've understood this one. I did a quick search and nothing immediately came up.

4.1. The only way here is represented by functionalism, which can in turn be refuted by inverted qualia or multiple realization.

If I were a physicalist functionalism is an attractive option. It has a number of virtues. Inverted qualia may be a problem for functionalism (but it hasn't been shown as far as I am aware), but I thought multiple realisability was one of its features, not a bug.

Unfortunately, I have noticed that most materialists stop here. But, if I were a materialist, I would go further and eliminate the notion of Type altogether.
There are no types of experiences, only experiences. Toothache and leg pain are classified as pains only because they are similar, so it is for language purpose, but in reality they are two different things. Similar does not mean identical,...

I disagree with you here. In principle one could have two identical brains realising the same function. In that way we would have two experience of the same type, assuming functionalism. They would be qualitatively identical, but quantitatively distinct. Have I misunderstood you?

so:
1. We don't need the same physical structure - multiple realization solved.
Having no categories, but simply experiences, I don't need a justification for fitting an experience into a category, so:

I don't follow you here, sorry

2. I don't need to equate an experience with a function. There is no law of nature that prevents the existence of an experience without it fulfilling a specific purpose.

I agree with you. So we're ditching functionalism here?

I realize that this position is very weak in terms of explanatory power, but I don't see any logical argument that invalidates this exact position. So feel free to hit me with counterarguments. Thank you!

I'm unclear what your physicalist position is that you have arrived at. So what is an experience in this view?

EDIT: I sense logical thought in the OP, but there is too little concession to the reader to clearly discern it.

EDIT: the psychology of the materialist is odd here. He's decided to be a materialist, and then set about finding a coherent line. I guess that's what someone who isn't starting out as a materialist would do to charitably try to find a coherent materialist position.

Well along in my 60th year, I find myself even more cognitively isolated from my peers (and family) than I'd felt in previous decades. — 180 Proof

Do you live in a very religious social environment? I find one person I can talk to freely is enough, but less than that is rough.

@Michael

Back to basics!

I guess non-emergent monistic property dualism would be one unbroken circle with a P and an M in it. Is that right?

Emergent property dualism would be the same as the pysicalism diagram I suppose. So I guess physicalist emergentism divides into two, weak emergentism (no property dualism) and strong emergentism (property dualism). We should do another more complex diagram to include more positions. I think it's useful. Might head off a lot of pointless exchanges if we could all see the map of the various positions. @Nickolasgaspar Where are you in this scheme? Outside it throwing rotten eggs?

Any age is too young. At no point is a person's potential exhausted. On the other hand people need to get out of the fucking way and die.

I enjoyed this disproportionate response.

Yes, according to Deleuze.

The world is an egg, but the egg itself is a theatre: a
staged theatre in which the roles dominate the actors, the spaces dominate the roles and the Ideas dominate the spaces. — Joshs

That doesn't mention chickens. Consider:

"The world is an egg, but the egg itself is a theatre: a
staged theatre in which the chickens dominate the actors, the spaces dominate the chickens and the Ideas dominate the spaces."

Straw poll: who else participating in this thread accepts that rocks are beings? — Wayfarer

I do, but coming from a panpsychist that doesn't help does it?

But even if rocks weren't conscious (which they most definitely are) I'd still say they are beings, sorry. But I know what you mean, 'being' often is used they way you use it. In philosophy I'd say 'things that exist = beings.'

Words can have a meaning even if nothing exists which satisfies the conditions of that meaning. Nothing is "supernatural", but the difference between the natural and the supernatural doesn't dissipate — Michael

That should be pinned somewhere

Good stuff from @Michael. I agree with the characterisation of idealism.

Descartes’ dualistic ontology is fairly standard, I’d say. Even on the forum. — Mikie

That's interesting. I'm definitely not a substance dualist. I don't think @Wayfarer is, he's an non-dualist, although he might not identify as a monist exactly. Bartricks definitely did seem like a substance dualist. So is @Hanover I think. I can't think of any others off the top of my head. Maybe a few of the overtly religious members. But I'd say generally substance dualism is very non-standard, even on the forum, for good reason.

One motivation for suggesting that mind or consciousness precedes being is the view that it seems impossible that consciousness emerges from systems the components of which are severally non-conscious. However it seems to me there is a similar problem with putting consciousness as primary, namely his hard to see how extension, locality, differentiation and so on can emerge from consciousness alone. I think we need more than one property at base. At least two it seems to me, maybe more, I'm not sure. So I'm a substance monist but probably a property dualist, possibly triplist or more, depending on how few we can get away with. Is consciousness plus spatiality enough? I don't know.

interesting article, thank you

I picked phenomenological as the subject to which philosophy has the most relevance, but logic and conceptual cleanliness is perhaps the next. And then all of them.

This thread isn't about Dfpolis's paper any more is it?

"conscious experience appear to be magical"! — Nickolasgaspar

Literally nobody ever says that. Not that I've heard anyway.

ok bert........... — Nickolasgaspar

Hi!

Lectures - talks
Alok Jha: Consciousness, the hard problem? - Presentations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=313yn0RY9QI

Anil Seth on the Neuroscience of Consciousness, Free Will, The Self, and Perception
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hUEqXhDbVs — Nickolasgaspar

These talks don't seem to support what you're saying. For example, Anil Seth defines 'consciousness' just in terms of subjective experience, at least to start with.

but I see no reason to rule some notion of God in as a matter of principle. — Fooloso4

Dfpolis says he concludes God, not assumes God. In any case it's not particularly relevant for this thread.

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

...maybe, and if so it seems he'd likely be right!

The idea is logically no different than the idea that all things are in the Universe...in which case not everything is in the Universe...or the Universe is just a thing in the Universe...can't see how that works either. — Janus

Thank god you got there before me. I was dreading having to make this very simple point.

Idealism says, one way or another, that to be is to be related in some way to some mind. If you hold there to be a "human-independent nature of reality" a part of your metaphysics, you are not an idealist. — Banno

That's wrong Banno, as I thought you'd already agreed. There can be non-human minds that underwrite the existence of human-independent bits of the world. Have I missed your point?

Always happy to help!

Whatever. I don't see a point to this conversation. — Banno

Righto. I haven't offended you have I? Just unsure of tone.

Cite evidence of "minds other than human minds" that does not beg the question of 'what is "mind"?' whether human or not. — 180 Proof

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking for, but I'll offer this. As other minds are not directly perceptible (I suggest) they have to be inferred, if we are to rationally think they exist (or maybe there are other methods to know, but I'm offering one here). We can make an analogy based on similarities with my behaviour, perhaps. So the behaviour of other creatures might count as evidence. Consider:

1) I yelp when stuck with a pin and run away from the pin-sticker (one half of the analogy)
2) I do this because I have a mind and find the pain unpleasant and want to get away from it (assumption - I know you think this is false)
3) The dog yelps when stuck with a pin and runs away from the pin-sticker (the other half or the analogy, this constitutes the evidence)
4) (Optionally list a whole load of other ways dogs and humans are similar, to support the similarity)
5) therefore, the dog yelps and runs away because it has a mind and it wants to get away from the pain

Within the context of that inference, does the dog's behaviour count as evidence? As evidence that does not beg the question of what is mind? (I haven't actually done this experiment, but I hope the dog's behaviour is sufficiently plausible. Maybe I should pick an example that actually happened instead of making one up.)

A silly argument. Let "Humans" include aliens if you want. Or dogs. Whatever. As I said,
Anyone you wish to include. — Banno

We are talking at cross purposes, it may have been my fault. When I asked you who you were thinking of, I meant which idealist philosophers.

Also, when you said 'us' I assumed you meant human beings. You meant anything with a mind.

Is that all cleared up now?

Yeah, maybe

OK, so even on your own conception of idealism, this criticism fails because idealists don't just believe in human minds.

Are you now going to say that the same skepticism about the external world from a human point of view must also apply to non-human minds as well, on pain of contradiction or special pleading or something?

EDIT: that's a perfectly good point to make, but you have to be explicit about it if you want to actually succeed in making an argument against idealism rather than an argument against, say solipsism, or human-mind-only idealism. Most Idealisms are not solipsism or humanocentric.