A definition should include a description of the Property(Phenomenon in question) plus the ontology (mechanisms, type of substance,process) of it. — Nickolasgaspar

That's not right, and it's really important. A definition sets the limit of the application of a term, and it enables you to be able to use a word in a conversation, hopefully. It picks out, as efficiently as possible, the thing you are talking about. A definition typically contains far less information than a theory. What you are asking for with this is a definition plus a theory.

Your 'definition':

Definition.
"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 "
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3722571/
So this the biological process that enables our ability to be conscious of stimuli(internal or external). — Nickolasgaspar

...is a theory. The reason I know it is a theory is because I disagree with it, YET I still know how to use the word 'consciousness'. There's few things that piss me off more than someone with a theory insisting that I must agree with them because that's what a word just means!

That's not to say that the line between theory and definition is always easily drawn, I accept that. I made a thread about it here:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11467/poll-definition-or-theory

OK, what are your "terms" for discussing a novel philosophical worldview? — Gnomon

That's a good question, thank you for asking it. I think on a philosophy forum like this, I'm looking for arguments. I want to know why a position is wrong, and why a proposed solution is better. The subject matter of your view is perfectly philosophical, it concerns the nature of substance. You say it is information, and you may be right. I don't think that's a particularly controversial view actually, and I have no opinion on it. I haven't read very many of your posts, and I have only briefly looked at your website, but what you seem to be doing is expressing your opinion. What's wrong with that? It's not very philosophical. Philosophy is about arguments and justification. We typically want to know why one answer to a problem is better than another. Indeed, before we get to that, we want to know what problem a particular view is an answer to in the first place. From your website, the main view you set up in contrast to yours you call 'materialism'. You characterise this in a very old-fashioned 'atoms in the void' way. Modern materialists don't usually think like that any more. That's one thing that puts me off reading further. What might be more interesting and fitting on a philosophy forum is if you looked at a topic, said why the existing answers are unsatisfactory, and narrowly and specifically say why enformationism is different and peculiarly suited to solving the problem. Maybe you've already done that and I haven't noticed. You also say that you are not proposing any new science or new concepts. I guess I'd like to know what it is you are contradicting with your view. What is it that we are all getting wrong exactly, and why is it wrong? If you can convince us there's a problem with a particular view, and show us how enformationism fixes it, that might be of more prima facie interest. Showing, not telling, I suppose. I suspect the hassle you are getting is not because of your view (which may well be right for all I know), but because you're not playing the philosophy game.

I think the predicate "external" in this context is assumed to be synonymous with "independent of any minds". I don't see in what sense you / idealists mean that an "external world" might not be "independent of any minds" — 180 Proof

You may be right, but to my mind 'external' could just mean 'not me'. On a Berkeleyan system, there is a world external to me, and possibly external to my mind, but not external to God's mind. On a Spriggean idealist panpsychist scheme (which may satisfy realist intuitions better), there is an external world, but the entities in that world exist by virtue of their own minds. There's a lot of possibilities that hold that there is a world out there that is independent of me, and perhaps independent of any one particular mind, but each thing in that external world is itself dependent on one or more minds in one way or another. So idealism, depending on how it is construed, can be consistent with the existence of an external world. I think it important to distinguish these two senses of external (external to me or a particular mind, and external to any/every mind) as I think idealism is sometimes wrongly dismissed because people think it rejects the idea of a world external to me. Not that I'm necessarily an idealist, I'm undecided.

Since he won't listen to me — Gnomon

You're not the only one he doesn't listen to, but nor is he the only one that doesn't listen to you. I struggle with your posts, and I suspect others ignore your stuff too. I briefly looked up Enformationism and it's just you as far as I can tell. Which is obviously fine, but you have to do a lot of work to get listened to. If you feel underappreciated on the forum, I'd recommend engaging with people on their own terms. Take this from your website:

"One thing that all of these examples of leading-edge science have in common is a prominent role for Information. Not the mundane stuff you get on Google, but the essential stuff, as defined by Claude Shannon. In his analysis of communication, he saw that ideas can be converted into abstract digital numbers. What he called Information2 was found to be equi-valent to potent Energy as opposed to depleted Entropy. Yet in a larger context, its power-to-enform also has the ability to give meaningful & useful & valuable Form or shape to some raw, unformed substance. Hence, Information is packed with Potential, as opposed to the emptiness of Entropy. Inspired by that compelling metaphor, along with some insights from Quantum Theory, I have concluded that Causal Energy actually consists of Elemental Information3. On the most basic levels, such as laws of physics, that invisible “en-form-action” is analogous to the numerical relationships we call Mathematics4."

This is diving straight in with no thought for the reader. Why would anyone be interested in this? It's inviting being ignored at best, and being gadflied (twatted) and mocked at worst. What are the Random Capitals doing there? We're assholes on this forum, we've heard a lot of bullshit, and this, at first glance, just looks like more. Give us a reason to read it.

I'm not sure why idealism is on there. Idealism is not a position on whether or not there is an external world, but about whether that world (external or not) is independent of any minds.

If you think the answer is yes, then do you think that the following is emergent:
In the future we will
1. 'Network' our individual brain based knowledge.
2. Connect our brain based knowledge, directly, to all electronically stored information and be able to search it at will, in a similar style (or better) to a google search.
3. Act as a single connected intellect and as separate intellects. — universeness

Regarding 1 and 2
I have no idea what humans will manage to do or not, but I'm not sure if the idea of emergence is quite the right idea to capture such developments. There are several concepts of emergence, but taking it as the idea that complex systems instantiate properties that were not present in the several components of that system, then arguably what you suggest does not constitute emergence. People's brains have always been linked together through communication, then there was the explosion of shared information with the invention of printing, then again with the internet. But I suggest that this is an evolution of degree and not of kind. What novel property do we see now that we didn't when, say, the printing press was invented? Isn't the difference just one of degree?

Regarding 3
This might be a case of emergence, depending on what you mean. It's conceivable it's already happening I guess. Are you suggesting the barriers that individuate people dissolve, such that we become one person, with pooled experiences and thoughts?

No, they wake sleepwalkers (or disturb their 'dreaming'). — 180 Proof

Sophists are sleepwalkers? And you're awake presumably in this metaphor?

Gadflies hassle the powerful, no?

Gnomon is hardly the establishment though is he? But you're right, I haven't read it all.

Don't mind me, though, I'm just another one of those persistent gadflies buzzin' around this agora – swat me away if you can. — 180 Proof

Do you really think that's what you are doing? That's so weird.

Why do you think that? — Isaac

That's a hard question to answer. I suppose it's partly because I'm a panpsychist, and I think that an experience happens when something undergoes a change (@unenlightened helped me with that idea a bit). Any act of perception involves a change to the perceiver's body (I'm taking that as a given - counter-examples are welcome if you can think of any), that change constitutes the perception in the most direct and visceral way. Of course we can then go on to model a world based on these, I don't doubt that. And then we talk about perceiving in its more usual sense, like me perceiving a tree, in which the perceiver is separate from and largely conceived to be independent of and unaffected by the object of perception - we build a model of the world that isn't the world. And out aquaintance with those objects, if they can be called objects, is mediated by this process of construction. Questions of consistency, illusions, object permanence and so on that bedevil various realisms are then reducible to how useful and accurate our models are. Not sure what that makes me really, apart from a wanker. Does this view have a name? I'm not totally convinced I'm right, but it seems the most coherent line to take to me at the moment.

I typed all those

Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur.

Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur. Non sequitur.

Atoms which make up strawberries don't taste like strawberries either. Biology emerges from chemistry, Smith, not "sorcery". — 180 Proof

Non-sequitur

EDIT: pointing out that emergence occurs under one set of circumstances says nothing about whether or not it occurs in some other set of circumstances.

For me, a thing only perceives modifications of itself. And as the self is self-identical, there is no intermediary. If a bomb goes off two feet away from you, but it doesn't alter your body in any way, you haven't perceived it. That's my suggestion anyway.

EDIT: Is this a version of the 'extended mind' idea? Don't know. I should probably DuckDuckGo it.

For perception to occur at all, something direct has to happen somewhere, otherwise we get an infinity of intermediaries, no? I think that's what @NOS4A2 might be challenging the non-direct realist to tackle. Could be wrong.

Though if God acts in the interest of Himself and not for us in general, I’d argue that isn’t what we intuitively grasp as benevolence. — Astro Cat

Indeed, it needs an unintuitive reinterpretation of omnibenevolence. I've never really thought of that as one of the traditional omnis anyway. There are four knocking about, but people tend to choose three: omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence and omnipresence. I tend to collapse omnipotence and omnibenevolence into one, as I think what is good is what is willed. But that's not a popular move. When ditching one of these, most choose omnipresence, in order that God may be transcendent and non-spatial. But I like omnipresence for exactly that feature, it gets rid of problematic dualist interaction problems. I'm talking like I'm a theist aren't I?

Though as you note, the PoE isn't really a problem on Divine Command Theory since by definition, anything at all that God does on DCT, even torture for torture's sake alone, is "good." — Astro Cat

Sure, although adopting this horn of the dilemma does not commit us to DCT. DCT says that what God wills is Good. Period (full stop). One could, instead, simply say that what God wills is good for God. This leaves human beings with the interesting and burdensome problem of what is good for us, or for me in a world of finite opposing wills. Meta-ethical relativism is maintained, which is good.

Very nice clear OP. It does assume that one horn of the Euthyphro dilemma is accepted, that God wills what is good, because it is good. That's an assumption in the OP. There's a reason all this suffering is good that we can't see but God can.

Embracing the other horn of the dilemma, that is to say that x is good because God wills it, is much more defensible in terms of intelligibility without recourse to special pleading. However this horn almost certainly involves disagreeing with God. It's all very well for God to will earthquakes and god knows what - it doesn't affect Them (my God is woke). But from our point of view these things are shit, so fuck God, you Divine Cunt. This conclusion should be embraced by theologians, but it's not a message that sounds well from a pulpit, no matter how philosophically satisfactory it is. This conception of the good, as that which is willed by a subject (even if that subject is God), and thus entailing the subjectivity of the good, nicely allows for God to be omnibenevolent (everything They will is good from Their point of view), and for us to violently object, saying that's all very well for God but from my point of view a whole bunch of stiff is shit. The human condition is very much about coming to terms with reality, that is, a world that does not obey our finite will.

I'm trying to get how a fact about reality is supposed to be implied by a fact about language. — Isaac

I think this would be a good topic for a thread. Don't have time to start one.

Thanks, I should get into the habit of using that.

Of course I believe that you think that @Banno understands the problem. It's just not evident to me that he, nor even @180 Proof does most of the time. However @180 Proof's recent gloss on it seems apt, so maybe I'm wrong.

So you have never been unconscious? — 180 Proof

In the sense of asleep or under anaesthetic, yes. What's happening there is that bert1 as a coherent subject ceases to exist. It's not that bert1 remains a constant that gains and loses consciousness, although that is how we ordinarily speak. It's that bert1 as a coherent functional identity, with memories, desires, beliefs etc ceases to exist. what is lost is identity, not consciousness.

I know I have and that you do not have any grounds to doubt my subjective account of having been unconscious.

How did you feel when you were unconscious?

Would you believe me in saying Banno and @180 Proof understand the problem? — Moliere

Maybe they do. 180 seems to having asked him.

So while unconscious one "lacks the capacity to feel"? — 180 Proof

Yes. But this never obtains.

Btw, is it even possible for a panpsychist to be unconscious?

No. It's not possible for anything to be unconscious in my view.

My charitable reading of Chalmer's notion is, in my own words, 'the difficulty of scientifically demonstrating that human beings are n o t zombies'. — 180 Proof

OK, thank you.

I think that this is an odd tactic. — Moliere

It's not a game. This is a thread about the hard problem. Banno and 180 think it's bollocks. But I'm not sure if they even know what it is.

Can you state what the hard problem is, in your own words?

↪bert1 I'll wait for you to state clearly your "concept" which you claim I and Banno lack and then I may further elaborate on what I've already written here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/771417 — 180 Proof

Consciousness is the capacity to feel.

What is the hard problem, in your own words?

What Olivier5 said.

↪Tom Storm It reeks of the No True Scotsman fallacy. Only true Scotsmen will understand Bert.

↪bert1 has yet to provide us with anything like a definition of consciousness. But he says he is a panpsyhist, (↪bert1), so if he thinks rocks are conscious then it would be best for him not to provide such a definition. — Banno

I've offered synonyms. That qualifies as a definition. I have invited you to be aware of your awareness, which you haven't yet done. If you had, that would be a kind of ostensive definition. Unfortunately I don't think it is possible to provide a definition in terms of things other than the thing defined. That's just how it is with foundational concepts.

Note that people who already have the concept have no trouble at all knowing what I'm talking about.

EDIT: can you make sens of my claim: "Rocks have experiences". Does that sentence have any intelligible meaning for you (regardless of whether you think it is true or false)?

Yeah, which we can, of course. Hence my invoking the Glasgow coma scale earlier. We can (and do) use the term sometimes in a perfectly 'physical function' kind of way. There's no one thing 'consciousness' is. It's just a word. Like most words, it's used in all sorts of ways with all sorts of degrees of success. — Isaac

Indeed. Banno insists the Glagow coma scale is the only definition. Or at least all definitions are really aspects of one sense of consciusness, and that is a public, functional one.

We all know what each other is talking about to some extent in each case (enough to get by) but it doesn't require any of those objects to correlate with something empirical science might reify. — Isaac

Sure, that';s true with things except consciousness. To put it in Cartesian terms, it is coherent to doubt the existence of pixies, God and phlogiston, but it is incoherent to doubt consciousness. Because doubting itself (arguably, I guess) entails consciousness. To doubt is the act of a conscious thing. So there is certainty attached to consciousness in a way that doesn't attach to invisible unicorns.

Do we know there's something by virtue of which we have experiences? Can't we just have them, does some additional factor need to 'allow' it? — Isaac

No particularly, I was just trying to relate the words 'consciousness' and 'experience' in a sentence such that they are linked in meaning, which I think they clearly are.

The hard problem has, as a foundational axiom, the notion that the things we talk about - experiences, awareness,... - ought to be causally connected to the objects of empirical sciences. — Isaac

Yes, I think that's sort of right. Of course, people who like to go on about the hard problem (me for instance) tend to use this a sort of reductio:

1) Assume that consciousness is caused/realised/instantiated/whatever by some physical processes
2) Figuring out exactly how seems impossibly hard
therefore 3) It's probably not the case that consciousness is caused/realised/instantiated/whatever by some physical processes

But this only has any force if we have a particular definition of 'consciousness'. If we define consciousness as a physical function, for example, the hard problem disappears. That's why definitions are absolutely crucial.

You seem quite adamant that the concept is there, but some are 'missing' it, yet you don't seem to be able to provide the necessity that would set it apart from, say, ether, or humours, or phlem...loads of concepts which we made use of at one time, but turned out just not to refer to anything at all. — Isaac

That's a good question. Ether was proposed to solve a problem, namely a medium to carry electromagnetic radiation, or something. Humours were a way of explaining illness. These were crappy scientific theories, but scientific and somewhat testable, so were eventually abandoned for better theories. Consciousness isn't like that. It's just a name for something we know exists, namely whatever it is in us by virtue of which we can have experiences. And this definitely exists, unless you want to deny that we have experiences, which you might. The concept of consciousness in this sense is non-committal. It might turn out to be a ghostly ectoplasm. Or it might turn out to be a brain state. It might turn out to be a brain function. It might turn out to be integrated information. It might turn out to be a soul. It might turn out to be space. It might turn out to be a property of the quantum field. It might be an illusion caused by how we use language. Whatever. The point is, before we can start disagreeing about these theories, we have to agree on what it is these theories are theories of. That's the definition part. That's what, as usual, we are stuck on.

Concepts, unhelpfully, often contain a mixture of theory and definition, which makes things harder. It's helps if we ca separate them out.

If that's what you mean, bert, I admitted that I don't. — 180 Proof

What we have is different theories. I'm a panpsychist. You, at various times have been a functionalist, enactivist, probably one or two other things I forget. The question is, do our theories compete? Are they theories of the same thing? That's what I'm trying to get at.

I'll put the question another way that doesn't involve you reading my mind, or even reading any of my posts (I gave my definitions a few posts ago in reply to Banno).

Please state, in your own words, what the hard problem is. I know you think it's nonsense, but that doesn't stop you stating it. I think that the flat-earth theory is wrong, but I can still state what it is.

What is my concept?

No. It's a perfectly simple question. If you have the same concept I have, even if you think it's incoherent or whatever, you should be able to explain, in your words, the concept I have.

Banno and 180,

What do you think I mean by the word 'consciousness'?

I think you've just illustrated my point.