Thanks, that was clarifying.

I'm in Portland now, so I can readily imagine a coffee table book for hipsters called "13". In it are a collections of photographs of various forms of the token "13": "13" scrawled on a note, birthday candles in the shape of "13", "13" in gothic font, the sign of The Lucky 13 Saloon, and so on. These tokens are numerically distinct, and members of the same class of "depictions of the numeral 13". And this book reflects your conceptual model of the two "13" tokens on a page in our example.

We can treat other groups of material objects the same way: I have a bag of apples, some are red, others are pink, some are delicious, others are mealy. These are numerically distinct, qualitatively similar, and conceptually unified by the term "apple" (in my terms from before, the word "apple" carves reality in such a way that the contents of this bag all fall on one side of this conceptual cleavage).

This is in general how language, and therefore thought, treats the physical world. How else can we reason about the welter of similar and dissimilar objects that confront us every day? The word "a" betokens this kind of reasoning: by "an apple", the speaker asserts an object which belongs to the class "apple".

And I think we agree that these classes are ultimately human inventions, there is nothing of words in objects themselves. There is no "appleness", either in apples, or as some Platonic abstract, apart from the collection of traits by which apples are distinguished from everything else in the world. Thinking otherwise is the error of reification.

But this is not how we generally think about what I've been calling "informational objects". For these, we don't speak of them in terms of set membership, we treat them as proper nouns. You don't watch *a* "The Wizard of Oz", you watch "The Wizard of Oz". There is only one. This, in spite of the fact that you might have watched it on dvd, and your copy is one of 5 million extant in the world, each qualitatively (at least microscopically) and numerically distinct from all the others. We are not referring to the physical mediums when speaking of informational objects. We are referring to the information itself. Or maybe, the information in it's proper context, its meaning (the dvd in a dvd player).

Information also allows for categories, but across the dimension of informational variation, not physical variation. So, if you watched a copy of the movie dubbed in Spanish, or maybe even a stage production, you might say you watched "A Wizard of Oz". These would fall into the category "versions of The Wizard of Oz".

But, there are not as many "Wizard of Oz"es as there are copies of the movie floating around. If you accept this, then it logically follows that two copies of the dvd contain the same, numerically identical, information. This is not some esoteric, woo belief, it is just our common sense approach.

The dream person exists, but mistaken about its identity: it is in fact the dreamer.

Any of them.
"13" might mean the tokens, it might mean the integer 13, it might mean 13th day of christmas, or an order to buy 13 pounds of chicken fat. The meaning is totally dependent on context. This is the power and efficiency of symbolic communication, it abstracts away all the shared context. Information with no context gets you nowhere, the meaning of a message is a function of its information and context:

F(I, C) -> M
F("13", A child's writing exercise) -> The tokens 1, 3
F("13", A math exam) -> The integer 13
F("13", KFC kitchen restock order ) -> Buy 13# chicken fat
F("13", A christmas carol gone wrong) -> 13th day of Christmas

In all these messages, the information is not just similar, it is the same. Only the context varies.

I don't quite understand the choice of example. — bongo fury

Just consider the numbers "13, 13" as they appear on your screen. Are they two different numbers, both classifed as "13"? Or the same number?

I'm lost here. Please help. — bongo fury

You are probably aware that digital data is stored as 1s and 0s. These are interpreted as base-2 numbers, which are just like the familiar base-10, except at every digit only 2 values are possible, instead of 10 So, every file on your computer can be interpreted as an enormous number. In the case of a movie, if it is well compressed and HD the file size might be ~4GB. This is 2^32 base-
2 digits, corresponding to a single base-10 number of around 1.2 billion digits!

So qualitative identity of distinct physical objects is as I see it perfectly easily established, as in the example of distinct tokens of a digital signal, or of a notational text — bongo fury

But look at the examples you chose. These might be informationally identical. But physically? Is the signal comprised of the same number of elections, with the same energies and relative positions? Is the ink on the page perfectly identical, forming the same shape down to the molecular level? True qualitative identity of distinct physical objects is both statistically impossible and impossible to verify, due to the uncertainty principle. This is opposed to informational objects, where qualitative identity is trivial. Moreover I claim that with information qualitative identity *is* numeric identity. As in the example of "13, 13". Hence the woo assertion that two copies of "The Wizard of Oz" are qualitatively and numerically
the same information expressed in two qualitatively and numerically distinct physical media .

mystical about information — bongo fury

Not mystical at all (although to a true reductionist, everything must look like mysticism). I'm just taking information seriously, as something with its own nature and laws, and as something distinct from matter. Whether information is something fundamental in the universe, or emergent from (and so reducable to) matter, is up for debate. But either way there is more to be said than

Information is patterns. Facts. — bongo fury

Why the woo? Why not, here are two different things both classified as "apple"; here are two things both classified as "Wizard of Oz file"? — bongo fury

No more "woo" to say that two numbers, i.e. "13, 13", are the same number. Two different things, classified as "13"? Sounds woo to me. And consider that, in binary form, the movie is a single (beyond-cosmically large) number.

How — bongo fury

Two spatially distinct objects cannot be numerically identical, only qualitatively similar (even qualitative identity cannot be established). Two spatially distinct informational "objects" may be numerically the same object.

But you just pointed out that digital identity of symbols isn't affected by their physical diversity, so... — bongo fury

... whereas physical identity is not only completely dependent on physical diversity, but also impossible to establish anyway, and also impossible anyway (for two things to be physiclally identical, they must be coincident, in other words, the same, singular thing).

My point is that information operates under very, very different rules from matter, to support my woo claim that matter/information is the actual dualism in the universe.

Incidentally, let's distinguish between The Wizard of Oz the set of its plays or screenings (sound-and-light-events) from The Wizard of Oz the set of its recordings on reel or disk etc. — bongo fury

Such events of the first sort are where information interacts with, and drives, the physical, material world.
But consider that the light and sound is the same information as that in the reel or disc, just in another physical medium, and spread across time. This can be seen by the bootlegger who then records this and captures it back to disc, albeit with much information lost. Here you can meaningfully say that the bootleg "wizard of oz" is an object in the same category as an authentic "wizard of oz". But this is not an apt description of an authentic copy. An authentic copy of "the wizard of oz" is the very same "wizard of oz".

Using my own words against me? Rude!
Re: the Wizard of Oz, I'm not so sure the naming of it is just semantic (I'm also very sure I don't believe everything I say). In the case of lossless media, you can show, with mathematical rigor, that the information content of the movie on dvd, and on hard disc, is identical, bit by bit, in spite of the total dissimilarity of the physical medium. In a sense, the information is not just the same, but it is the same informational "thing" residing in two places simultaneously.

This is in contrast to physical objects, where this assertion of identity simply cannot happen. At best you can say that two things are very similar. And as is familiar, the more you increase the accuracy of this evaluation, the more you disturb the object itself.

This is one aspect of what seems to be a deep divide, which leads me to my own verbal cleavage of the world into matter and information. I assert that mind is far more information-like than matter-like, and so falls on the information side of this split. In order to reconcile mind and brain, one must first reconcile information and matter.

An ontological distinction - would you agree? — Wayfarer

No. You can divide things into groups on any basis whatsovever. These divisions may be more or less relevant, more or less salient, but thats a far as it can go.

Because 'appears' requires a subject, i.e. an agent to whom something appears. Nothing appears to a rock. — Wayfarer

Ergo, the rock is mental?
I don't follow your reasoning.

The issue I see with ‘vitalism’ is actually caused by the impossibility of taking the ‘elan vital’ to be an object or an objectively real existent — Wayfarer

The issue is that it is redundant. It has no explanatory relevance. Everything that can be explained about life can be explained without reference to "elan vital". The same will likely prove true of consciousness.

That is a very poor argument. Doing things to A affects B does not imply that B 'is' A — Bartricks

Not "A affects B". Rather, changes to A result in changes to B. When this relationship is observed, it provides evidence that either:
* A is B
or
* B is causally connected to A — hypericin

every impression of being immaterial — Bartricks

You keep referring to these appearances and impressions as if they had evidentiary status .

You have now claimed that material objects cannot interact with immaterial ones. That is absolutely not - not - a tautology. — Bartricks

Despite your bald assertion, it is in fact a tautology. If a ghost picks up a rock and throws it, by definition this is not the nonphysical interacting with the physical. Rather, by virtue of throwing a rock, the ghost enters the physical realm, and textbooks must now somehow account for the physics of ghosts, or be incomplete.


So in your odd world view, if a meteorite, undetected by anyone, fell from the sky and hit you in the head, in whose mind did this mental meteor exist before it struck you?

You also seem to overlook a basic asymmetry: the mental world is exquisitely sensitive to the "supposedly" physical one: a little electric current, a speck of hallucinogen, a leak in a blood vessel, can have dramatic impact on internal life. But if everything were mental, then you would expect the obverse to be true: powerful acts of mentation should have at least as powerful impacts on your supposedly physical world. But mentate as you like, you cannot alter the trajectory of even a mote of dust with thought alone.

Same. However you treat numbers, numbers are one thing, sets of numbers are another. You can't treat these the same either (even the degenerate sets {1}, {2}, {3} are not the same as 1, 2, 3)

Is the problem that "things" and "concepts" are being lumped together? The number of things is finite, and the set "universe" contains all of them. But there is no cap on the number of concepts that one can come up with. Concepts are second order wrt things, and cannot be treated the same way.

The linguistic distinction between alive and dead could prove to be questionable. Things are rather neither alive nor dead. — spirit-salamander

I'm not sure this makes sense. The word "life" cleaves reality so that some things fall on one side, some things on another. And there are things where the cleaving is ambiguous such as viruses. But you can't say, "well in reality things are neither dead or alive". This misunderstands words, they do not and cannot point to the true nature of things. Rather they carve the world into sets.

To your second sentence: I think that panpsychism need not be associated with vitalism. It is only about the sober and neutral attribution of conscious experience to material entities. — spirit-salamander

I think the thinking which lead to vitalism is identical to panpsychism. In both cases, it is supposed to be inconceivable that life or consciousness emerges out of matter without presupposing an additional element: either vital force, or an elemental psychic quantum, or some such thing.

The premise you've added to get to the conclusion is that there cannot be causation between different kinds of object. — Bartricks

You phrase it is as if I were saying bears and apples could not interact. I am saying that the material and immaterial; better, the physical and non physical, can not interact. This is a simple tautology: if the nonphysical interacted with the physical, then it would be a part of the physical description of the universe, and so be physical.

my mind does not appear to be material, yet does appear causally to interact with things quite dissimilar to it - a — Bartricks

Both of these "appears" may be in fact be mere appearances.

and even if it were true, the fact my mind appears immaterial not material would mean you should conclude that the sensible world is mental, not that the mental is material. — Bartricks

Why should I favor "the physical world is mental, and only appears physical" over "the mental world is physical, and only appears mental"?

I'm asking whence the idea that it can or should be. Is this just rebellion against religion, or is there something else to it? — baker

It seems simple enough. Religious claims are epistemologically invalid to the atheist. If moral claims only originated in religion, they would be similarly invalid. If they are considered worth keeping (most atheists do), then the atheist must find another foundation for these claims.

How would a panpsychist explain the incredibe fragility of our consciousness? All you have to do is apply a moderate blow to the head, or administer an anaesthetic, and consciousness disappears utterly. And yet these brain configurations are infinitely closer to conscious ones than a brain in a blender, or a brick. It is apparent that consciousness requires not just stuff, but stuff in a excruciatingly exact configuration.

Anything that appears suddenly and erratically is in itself a problem. But between the non-conscious and the conscious there seems to be an infinite gap. — spirit-salamander

Between the non-living and the living there also seems to be an infinite gap. Panpsychism is a modern vitalism.

Not "A affects B". Rather, changes to A result in changes to B. When this relationship is observed, it provides evidence that either:

* A is B
or
* B is causally connected to A

But if the mind is causally connected to the brain, then by virtue of its causal interaction, it too must be material. But if it is material, then what else can it be, but the brain? There is no room in the skull for anything else. Therefore, A is B, the mind is the brain.

That is, must consciousness always only occur, or exist, in a first person, present tense mode? — charles ferraro

This seems tautologically true: the notion of "first person perspective" is derived from the notion or experience of consciousness.

What is it about consciousness that it must always be personified, or require personhood? — charles ferraro

Just that persons are the only conscious things we know of?

Is there a Consciousness in General? — charles ferraro

Abstracting consciousness out of the limitation of personal perspective might be the essence of the concept of God.

I don't have a sophisticated understanding of what information is. That which can be encoded and transmitted, I suppose. Which rules out all the stuff: you can't send a dog in a message.

.I just think there's no evidence that minds are material things - and thus no evidence that consciousness is a property of something material - and stacks and stacks that they're immaterial things. — Bartricks

Damage the brain, damage the mind. Destroy the brain, destroy the mind. Alter the brain, with alcohol or LSD for instance, alter the mind.

it is motivated by the need to avoid having to suppose that matter which is not conscious can, in some combinations, somehow give rise to consciousness — Bartricks

My point is, if you treat consciousness as informational, then this problem dissolves: matter can manifestly serve as the substrate of information, and so there is no contradiction in informational consciousness coinciding in a material body.

nformation is not a substance, but a property of a thing. So, I have some information, but I am not the information. — Bartricks

I agree information is not a substance, it is something distinct from material substance. But calling information a property is inapt, it belies the independence of information from matter. "The wizard of Oz" is the same movie, whether it is stored on a film reel, a dvd, a magnetic tape, a hard drive, or an eidetic brain's memory: all completely different physical media. Certainly when we watch and later evaluate the movie, we consider it as its own thing, not as the property of a specific object.

Information is not matter, it has no mass, no energy, no extent. Nonetheless every time you visit a web page, information is driving the physical output of your computer screen and speakers.

Matter/information is the real dualism, and demonstrates how ontologically distinct entities nonetheless interact. Consciousness is a rarefied and complex species of information (or perhaps a species of information in motion, analogous to magnetism as electricity in motion). And the smallest particle is informational as well as material. No need to resort to implausible panpsychism.

What value do you put on a human life? — Wayfarer

Various countries have different estimates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Estimates_of_the_value_of_life

Who maintains the 'equality of humans and animals' - well, apart from fanatical animal liberationists? — Wayfarer

Reasonable people argue against anthropocentrism. Moreover the point of my post is that both answers to the question seem untenable

I think that rights are only meaningful to beings that are capable of exercising free choice. — Wayfarer

So then human rights rests on the philosophically very shaky foundation of free will? Becuase otherwise animals seem to move about as freely as we do.

So the Holocaust was ok so long as the Nazis felt nothing?

Humans are presumed to be equal in value. That being so, the basis of this mother's choice must come from personal preference.
Mother or no (imagine your poodle vs the live of someone else's child), the choice of the animal seems monstrous.

So might say an apologist for the worst tyrants of history.

So is the thought that the crucial auditory simulations that this neurological development facilitated were simulations of the organism's own vocalisations? — Welkin Rogue

Right

Prior to language, these vocalisations would have been, I guess, various emotive vocalisations. — Welkin Rogue

If you think about it, many modern words which can stand alone as a sentence could have served as primitive vocalizations: hmm. wow! huh. huh? awwww. yes! no!

The development of this increasingly complex subvocalisation must be informed by social and cooperative processes, as everyone is going through the same developmental process. — Welkin Rogue

Right. Before this neuroevolutionary event, there was only public "language". After it, there is public and private "language", each informing and contributing to the other, in a cycle. Individual innovations could e transmitted to the group, who would transmit their collective innovations to other groups, and to the next generation. I believe the expressive limit of prelinguistic vocalizations would be quickly reached.

but we all like an explanation in terms of adaptation. — Welkin Rogue

I think the key immediate benefit is improved general cognition, without spending too much neurally. Something like what we do with the visual feedback loop. At least for me, the visual loop is not nearly as developed as the auditory. It is non-linguistic. And yet, it is indispensable for thinking, if it were to disappear (as it does sometimes when I am under a lot of stress) I would be mentally crippled.

And even though I am linguistic and so I predominantly use the auditory loop for saying words to myself, I sometimes use it to think in other ways, for instance musically. Sometimes music will accompany my visual thinking, in such a way that the "logic" of the music is somehow analogous to the logic of the problem. There is more utility to playing sounds to yourself than words.

This advantage gives the trait breathing room before the point is reached when a female be seduced with savvy vocalizations. As soon as this is possible, vocal flexibility, linguistic ability, and general brain power along with it, explode like an atom bomb.

everyone's life is bracketed by the permanent, omnipresent possibility of death. Does that make it trivial?

One necessary condition is that there be a sufficient richness of vocalizations already present for thinking to be able to do anything at all. Otherwise as you say it would just be playing sounds in the head to no effect.

You can't subtract warmth from a fire and get something simpler.

Because it's not just playing sound, it's thinking! Proto-thinking, because it is prelinguistic, but thinking still. What more natural thing for an animal to subvocalize than what they vocalize? Once a cohort starts thinking, it is a natural conclusion that their communicative scope increases. For my theory to work it needs only to increase in scope enough so that "sophisticated" seduction becomes possible, meaning that it relies on verbal virtuosity.

I don't understand your objection that this development inclines us towards a verbal firm of language. All natural language is verbal. If the visual pathway has developed first we might all be signing.

We know we can think, and we know we have verbal language. I think the strength of my theory is that thinking is actually the simple part and so came first, and it plausibly suggests how language arose subsequent to thinking.

It's hard to imagine what thoughts sound like before language, insofar as those thoughts are not already auditory content — Welkin Rogue

Prior to language I would call these proto-thoughts. Strings of the noises that the animal makes in the world, noises which have innate, instictive meaning, played in the head. My intuition tells me that this ability enabled a greater communicative complexity, without yet arriving at language. Via rumination, play with onself and others, and expanded cultural transmission. But I haven't worked out the details.

I'm surprised this part is puzzling, since it is such an intimate part of human experience. The connection enables us to "play sounds in our heads". That we "play" sounds indicates they originate in central processing. That we play "sounds" indicates that they partake of the same neural machinery external sounds do.

Try the following exercises, which test the strength of the different perceptual feedback loops of this kind. I don't claim my results are universal, so ymmv.

Imagine the sound of wind chimes.
Easy. I can do this with seeming perfect fidelity.

Imagine a rose
A wispy, unstable thing. I'm sure many can do better than me here.

Imagine the taste of mint
I immediately visualize a sprig of mint. I'm not sure I can do this at all.

Imagine the smell of coffee
I visualize a cup of coffee. Not sure I can do this either

Imagine the feel of sandpaper
I visualize the sandpaper, in one of those tools. This one seems otherwise inconceivable.

According to my theory it is no accident that the auditory feedback loop is by far the most developed.

Poor @Brett is dazed and confused.

Now we all know, this is what fascism looks like in this country. It is so dangerously strong, even with the most dunderheaded leader known to history, they almost pulled it off. (I don't mean this recent nonsense, they came way to close to winning... or to the election being stealably close). What if they can come up with an intelligent trump next time?

It must be obvious to even the stupidest now, who these Trumpies are. For all their America this and Flag that, they hate this country, hate democracy. After 4 years of trashing this country, they literally trash our capitol! It amazes me how someone can wrap themselves in the flag, profess love for this country, while, at the very same time, shitting all over it.

I vote for a preemptive ban here. He's going to be looking for a new home to post, and I want to be proactive. — Hanover

I wouldn't mind dogpiling on the motherfucker.

So I'm experiencing my brain? Here I thought I was experiencing the world the whole time. Is your post in my brain or in the world that my brain accesses? — Harry Hindu

Any externally originating experience is both the experience of the world, and a phenomenal event generated by your brain. And, you can experience the brain from the third person, by looking at one, even your own with the right instrument. As well as your everyday experience of the brain in the first person.

Sounds like dualism is presupposed to me. — Harry Hindu

But only the dualism of perspective presupposed by everyone: the world out there vs the world in the head.

The first person experience is a manifestation of the way in which sensory information is presented. — Harry Hindu

This is not what I had in mind.
You can regard a brain as a lump of grayish, convoluted tissue. This is the third person perspective of the brain.
Or, you can experience it as a rich internal universe. This is the first person perspective.
The hard problem is to reconcile these two perspectives. In particular, it seems that no matter how much you elaborate the working of the brain scientifically, from the third person, there is no conceivable way to make the leap to explaining the first person experience.

The answer may somehow involve substance dualism. But posing the problem certainly does not presuppose it.

At least NOS4A2's cognomen honestly represents his hero: a malignant, undead parasite, draining the lifeblood from his host. 2021 America is looking awful pale.

No, there is no presupposition of dualism.
There are two perspectives, first person, and third person. The brain, uniquely, is an object that can be experienced from either perspective. Simultaneously, with the right equipment.
Science is the endeavor of explaining third person facts with third person facts. But to explain consciousness, science must make the perspectival leap, and explain first person facts with third person facts. This required leap is unique to this problem, and is what makes it the Hard Problem.

I don't know about that. I was glued to the screen during the impeachment trial, and I think they did as well as they could — Wayfarer

Really? We have President High Crimes and Misdemeanors himself. After two years of dismissing impeachment entirely, Pelosi finally consented to one of innumerable impeachable offences Trump had committed. Not only did they not get him convicted. They couldn't even get the Republicans to bring witnesses!

After the sham trial, Trump emerged completely unscathed. pathetic. But they did get some screen time, provided you some political theater. This, to you, is an effective response?? This just proves that you are already conditioned to expect zero from the "opposition party".

And I don't buy the 'they're all crooks' narrative, that is a corrosive form of cynicism — Wayfarer

Kleptocracy is also apt, but I will stick with oligarchy. They are not all crooks, only by virtue of the fact that the bribery they receive is (bizarrely) legal. But they are all rich, their friends are rich, their connections are rich, their donors are rich. The ruling class is all rich. This is an oligarchy, and it is it in none of their interests to destroy the most oligarchic party, even though they could have easily chosen to do so, against the most ludicrous world leader we have seen.

And, where's the outrage? — Wayfarer

A question that has been fairly asked countless times this century, starting with W's outright theft of the election. (Just imagine if the roles had been reversed there!)

I think there are many factors. Two salient ones, IMO:

First, the relationship of Republicans to the rest of the country has become outright abusive. Trump is the perfect incarnation and avatar of this, he could not be a more archetypical American bully. (This I think is the true source of his popularity). But the trend hardly began with him. We have been lulled into accepting more and more outrages, hoping to forestall the bully's wrath, in the pattern of the abused everywhere.

The second is where the "both sides" chestnut really is relevant. Not only is the funding of both sides from monied interests, both sides are themselves, monied interests. There is never one "-archy" that exclusively characterizes any state. But among all the "-archies", oligarchy most strongly characterizes this one, at this point in time. This is homogenous across both party's leadership, indisputably. Therefore, the Democrats really do agree with the Republicans more than they disagree, their core ideology is the same.

This best explains the incredibly muted and ineffectual reaction of Democrats to all of Trump's outrages. It is really a cozy relationship, playing Blue good cop to Red's bad, in an ironclad two party system. If crazy Red wins again and imposes yet more extreme wealth redistribution to the top, ultimately they win too. They are at the top as well.

For a machine to do work it must be in direct contact with reality. Otherwise it won't do anything. But the information processing component of machines can be abstract as you like and comprise of many layers of symbolization.