You can define consciousness ostensively, that's what RogueAI was implying, I think. — Daemon

Yes, I agree. Do you understand what RogueAI means? Has this definition worked for you the way it worked for me, as far as you can tell?

Garrett, I'm sympathetic. It is indeed weird that we have the power, collectively, to fix everything, and to order the world in a sensible way. There are some unfortunate facts that make it difficult. Narcissists and psychopaths, who are clever and have lots of energy and ambition really can fuck it up for everyone, before everyone notices. Then there are systemic faults, like first past the post democratic systems which end up in voters not voting for who they want, but voting against who they don't want. Also the lack of a world government that can legislate and enforce ecological policy globally simultaneously. I like the EU as a project. Moving in the right direction. Gradual democratic Union of different states. UK took itself out because of Rupert Murdoch gaining undue influence in the UK.

Ok. I do.

I don't think we can define consciousness, other than we each have a private definition of it, which we assume everyone else has a similar definition (are you a P-zombie, 180???).

That. From this I know exactly what RogueAI is talking about, so for me it's a successful definition. It accurately picks it the bit of the world we want to talk about. But it's not much good for someone who doesn't share this reflexive perception.

I rather like Garrett.

Unfortunately I'm vaguely hoping we accidentally wipe ourselves out in some way that I can survive and father the next inbred human plague of cannibals and necrophiliacs. That's still a kind of love. Sorry Garrett.

Garrett, philosophers rarely dispute science. That's the whole point. Philosophy tackles questions science leaves open.

Anyway, your OP question is incoherent without you defining "conscious" — 180 Proof

He did define it

Made up assertion.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333802932_The_Unfolding_Argument_Why_IIT_and_Other_Causal_Structure_Theories_Cannot_Explain_Consciousness?_iepl%5BgeneralViewId%5D=kIPDJTnFJ1jtMG391GeRJBJ0XILeoGNXFMbS&_iepl%5Bcontexts%5D%5B0%5D=searchReact&_iepl%5BviewId%5D=xPTKXCJDhxoUdEQTTs0NbH0ptyvbHWXKpdG8&_iepl%5BsearchType%5D=publication&_iepl%5Bdata%5D%5BcountLessEqual20%5D=1&_iepl%5Bdata%5D%5BinteractedWithPosition5%5D=1&_iepl%5Bdata%5D%5BwithoutEnrichment%5D=1&_iepl%5Bposition%5D=5&_iepl%5BrgKey%5D=PB%3A333802932&_iepl%5BtargetEntityId%5D=PB%3A333802932&_iepl%5BinteractionType%5D=publicationTitle

is ubiquitous in philosophy and not just an issue for panpsychists
— bert1

No it isn't, just to mystics.

Mind cannot sustainably be 'attributed to' natural processes, in the sense of 'fully explained by' or 'reduced to' or even 'emerge from', in my view.
— bert1

It doesn't matter what your view is, dude. The evidence is present. Read the above research.

The 'hard problem', which exists for emergentists, has yet to be solved, or dissolved. The difficulties are conceptual rather than empirical.
— bert1

Solved has nothing to do with anything, it's about what all evidence suggests, which is that the brain controls all functions of the body. It is not conceptual. Conceptual views are what is stopping people from understanding what the evidence blatantly, and exclusively suggests. This is an argument from igorance. It is precisely the conceptual views that have solved no problem and provided no evidence, that is who you should be making claims of "solving" to. To do otherwise is completely dishonest, and you're just living in make-believe because you want to. — Garrett Travers

There is no philosophy in this post. Nor any indication of any awareness of the philosophical issues involved.

The thing that jumped out to me is the claim that causes can't be ignored, while hunger and red lights can. Made me think of positivism and the need for "if p then q" not to be conditional, to hold its status in logical notation such that "if p then always q." Predicate logic can tolerate conditionals ("just in case p and r and s, then q") to be sure, but it can't tolerate modality that well.

That might not be where he is coming from, but it seems related as an issue when you talk about showing cause.

But I'm not sure what he's saying either.

I do see how such claims could work though. If you take a (somewhat) nominalist view of material entities' attributes, then names for complex phenomena will invariably be imperfect constructs, maps instead of the territory itself. The idea of signaling is protean in the sciences and comes in myriad disparate physical forms that are simply not the same thing.

You have the flip side of Kant's transcendental: cognitive models of cause are always filtered through faculties and abstraction, and so don't reflect the reality of actual entities. You're not getting to the real causes when you use imprecise stand-ins for entities and their behavior such as "signaling."

The problem I see here is that this issue is equally true of all scientific/factual statements. Every claim requires auxillary hypotheses for its premises to hold and they all use such stand-ins. That and physics doesn't work without the ability to arbitrarily define systems. It also requires an observation point that represents a physical system itself to avoid violating its own rules (magical observers that can move faster than light, access information without having to store it physically, etc. have caused all sorts of problems for the field but are incredibly difficult to avoid).

We probably shouldn't worry too much about our observational biases. If external objects are real, we must be getting information from them somehow, and we have to be storing that information physically. Recursive representations of the enviornment are the only way a system is knowable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks, that's interesting. A bit too abstract for me though. Not sure I understand you.

No, that's just objective material phenomena. I mean evidence for your claim of: the mind or a mindlike aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. — Garrett Travers

Yes, something happening. The only causes we know about are psychological, I suggest. |We know we do things because of how we feel. Laws of nature, if reified at all are inferred. Or else identified with what just happens.

Where do you see this mind?

I only 'see' my own mind. The problem of other minds is ubiquitous in philosophy and not just an issue for panpsychists. Indeed panpsychism might be a conclusion resulting from an examination of the problem of other minds.

Any evidence of this mind that 1. cannot be attributed to natural processes, and

Mind cannot sustainably be 'attributed to' natural processes, in the sense of 'fully explained by' or 'reduced to' or even 'emerge from', in my view. The 'hard problem', which exists for emergentists, has yet to be solved, or dissolved. The difficulties are conceptual rather than empirical.

[/quote2. can be attributed to mental processes? You'll need both to make this claim, if you don't have both, you are playing make-believe.[/quote]

I take it as self evident that mental process can be attributed to mental processes. I suspect I have not grasped your point.

Except as idle speculation – no. "Panosychism / cosmopsychism" (is) just woo-of-the-explanatory-gaps —

I love the mysterious brackets around 'is'.

Sure, anything happening at all

able to verify claims and assertions — Garrett Travers

Panpsychism is verifiable

I'm still trying to work out what @180 Proof is actually saying.

I gave hunger as an example of an explanation for behaviour. 180 said that hunger was no more a cause of eating than a traffic light is a cause of hitting the brakes, it being a signal.

But it seems like a bad analogy to me because a traffic light is absolutely critical in the chain of events leading to hitting the brakes. And if the analogy is good, then that means that hunger is absolutely critical in a full explanation of why I eat. And hunger is a feeling. So we have phenomenal experience causing physical actions, in some sense of 'cause' at least.

So I'm struggling. I'll read over the conversation again when I get to a proper computer in case I'm misinterpreting (again).

I'm not sure what maps and territory have to do with anything. If someone could explain I'd be grateful.

In the first instance the event happens 'because' of the signal, or at least the signal plays a role, in the absence of which the event would (likely) not happen. But in the second, we have no signal, but the event happens anyway. In the first you are saying that the signal plays a (likely essential) role in the event's occurrence, in the second, the event happens anyway even though there is no (likely essential) signal. That's where I'm perceiving a contradiction.

Are we managing to talk to each other? I think it's going rather well so far, for us.

No more than, for example, traffic lights "cause" drivers to step on the breaks or the gas. Simply put, they are only signals which inform habits, and when circumstances warrant they can be overriden (ignored), unlike "causes" which cannot. — 180 Proof

This^ contradicts this:

The "chain of events" would be unbroken but otherwise, that is, it'd remain first-order (i.e. meta-free). — 180 Proof

In the first quote, the signals do play a significant role in the story of how the brake gets pushed; or in the eating example, hunger plays a significant role in the story of how we come to eat. Whereas in the second quote, it plays no role at all. Distinctions on the meaning of 'cause' or appeals to meta levels don't help you it seems to me. I think you think the phenomenal affects the physical.

EDIT: I'm actually quite interested in what Apo has to say about this. He'll give us some stuff about downward causation no doubt. Anyway, let's attempt a summons.

*casts Protection from Evil*
Throws giblets on the brazier

@apokrisis, you are needed

Hola Apo. What say you?

Thanks 180 that's helpful. From what you say it seems to me that these signals are part of the 'how', not just post-hoc rationalisations, teleologoical 'why-answers' with no causal role in the process at all. If you took out the signal, the chain of events is broken, no?

No more than, for example, traffic lights "cause" drivers to step on the breaks or the gas. Simply put, they are only signals which inform habits, and when circumstances warrant they can be overriden (ignored), unlike "causes" which cannot. — 180 Proof

Thank you. Can this be analysed as follows:

In the case of traffic lights, the traffic lights going red are a necessary condition for stepping on the brakes. It's not a sufficient condition because it can be overridden, and for other reasons as well. You can drive through the lights anyway. Is that right?

So, to do your work for you, applying this to the hunger example, feeling hungry is, sometimes, a necessary condition for eating. That is to say, were it not for you being hungry, you wouldn't eat. But it can be overridden. This falls short of a cause in your thinking, yes?

On the other hand, the causes of your eating cannot be overridden. Is that right? Are they necessary and sufficient for eating?

What are the causes of eating? Is it, say, low blood glucose levels, which gets picked up by some bodily mechanism (excuse my ignorance), then the brain consequently initiates motor movement. I know that's skipping all the detail but you get the idea. Is that what you have in mind as the cause? This is both necessary and sufficient for eating to occur?

What if there is food readily available, but there is another factor, an intruder with a knife just enters the kitchen, and threatens you. You run from the room, presumably through some similar causal story about biological processes, without eating. Has the cause of eating been overridden by another cause?

I just want to see how you analyse all this. I invite you to talk about this particular situation, rather than in general, as I find that easier to understand.

Anecdotes (i.e. correlations at most) do not "compete" with Experiments (i.e. causal / stochastic relations) in truth-making. — 180 Proof

Do you think that feelings never play a causal role in human behaviour?

@180 Proof Apply that to the example

We are not talking past each other. These different kinds of explanations compete.

It explains why I eat. I eat because I'm hungry.

That's a description of motivated behavior, not an explanation of how it happens. — 180 Proof

No, it's a an explanation. Physical explanations are derivative on descriptions, ultimately ending in 'that's just what happens'.

Does anyone philosophically assume that liquid comes from solid or gas vapor comes from liquid or ... digesting comes from guts? — 180

Obviously. So what?

No doubt, but what does a "phenomenological explanation" actually explain — 180 Proof

I eat because I feel hungry.

It is a projection from my brain being produced from stored memory data in the hippocampus. — Garrett Travers

Your account is metaphorical, my spunky young friend. What screen is the apple projected onto?

As in the exact same way it produces sight, smell, taste, heart beat, blood circulation, etc. — Garrett Travers

Does a brain 'produce' sight? A brain (in a body) might see. Isn't that more accurate?

Does a brain 'produce' smell? Only if you extract it and give it a sniff, it seems to me.

A brain causes a heartbeat, perhaps. The heart itself beats. I'm not sure any production is going on.

What exactly is the relationship between the functioning of a brain, and, say taste? Is taste nothing other than a brain functioning in a particular way, perhaps? Would you want to say that?

Is consciousness nothing other than a kind of brain function? Is that what you mean by 'produce'?

As in the exact same way it produces sight, smell, taste, heart beat, blood circulation, etc. Literally just like that. — Garrett Travers

The brain is not the same thing as its products, then?

That's why when your brain stops working, you stop being conscious. Very straight forward, mainstream neuroscience.

What's the empirical difference between my temporarily ceasing to be conscious, and my mind temporarily ceasing to exist?

The brain produces consciousness... — Garrett Travers

In what sense does it 'produce' consciousness? Like a snail produces slime? Like a producer produces a film? Like a magician produces a rabbit? Like a computer produces an output on a screen? Like a radio produces sound? Or some other sense?

I like it! I really do. I know it's funny as well, but panpsychists are going to have to start talking like this at some point. I eagerly await when Strawson and Goff start publishing this kind of thing in respectable journals.

What Tobias said. Diversity improves the quality of the decisions.

Let me give it a try. If I hold two magnets in my hands I imagine them to be elementary particles (the micro world is really not that different from the micro world). The particles long for each other or want to get away from each other. What exactly this will is, I can't tell. I mean, it can't be explained materialistically. You can describe it with charge, three kinds even (electric and two color), but what it is...? You can feel it though.
Like the hate felt towards Wilhelm Reich (a scientific outcast, who made a very astute observation of the drives in Nazi Germany and whose books were burnt in the US, in the fifties! How can you not love the man, who died after a year in prison...).
(I just had to mention it.) As we all are combinations of these charged particles, we are conscio⁸us, with a will, with faces, arms and legs, etc. Our consciousness is derived from these basic longings (+ and -). We have not evolved according to what people like Dawkins claim. It's just love and hate we are, or driven by.
God is love. God is hate. — Cornwell1

I'm certainly very sympathetic to your emphasis on the continuity between the basic properties that determine the behavior of matter and whatever it is that determines our behavior as complex living organisms. And there are several, in my opinion, very good arguments for panpsychism. But you haven't quite explained how you know what particles feel. You are speculating that charge is will, and that the subjective aspect of positive and negative charge is love and hate experientially. But why isn't it, say, more like hot and cold, experientially? I'm already thinking of some responses, but you have a go.

We know though what it feels like to be a particle though. — Cornwell1

That's interesting. I'm a panpsychist, and whenever someone asks me what it feels like to be a particle or a thermostat or whatever, I reply I don't know. I speculate that perhaps the simplest feelings are like/dislike, love/hate (as you say), positive and negative. The latter is just a coincidence that this is how we describe charge. Your knowledge claim is a strong one. Can you justify it? Or at least explain it?

This sounds like an inverted quora question. :)

I have no idea of the answer

emergent — 180 Proof

Strong or weak?

I'm not a reductionist, so why do you ask? — 180 Proof

I thought you thought that thinking, feeling, consciousnessing, etc, were things that brains do? Just like digesting is what guts do and walking is what legs do. That is to say that thinking, feeling, and other mental functions are nothing other than the actions of brains. That's a reduction isn't it? You're not reducing to structure, I get that, but you are reducing to function, no?

As it pertains to philosophy of mind, materialism is, I think, most accurately construed as synonymous with emergentism. That is, consciousness, just is (or arises from) interactions of severally non-conscious events. I think that's what every materialist probably has in common.

You've misread my post — 180 Proof

It's tragic how you are so clear in your writing, yet are so often misread. I'm glad I am not so misunderstood, it must be a burden for you.

We might say a philosopher is someone who engages in the philosophical method.
I've tried to articulate exactly what that is, and I'm having trouble. How about:

"The philosophical method is an investigation of the world (in the broadest sense of 'world') by the examination of concepts and their relations."

Does that work?

So by extension a philosopher is someone who does that.

Well worth it. The Ghost Stories for Christmas are generally good. Old, but still creepy. Michael Hordern does a nice job as Professor Parkin.

...