... trees need to be seen for there to be trees. — Michael

Do minds need to be experienced (not sure how we see 'em) for there to be other minds?

If not, then you admit of the existence of that which is not experienced. Which is equivalent to materialism - materialist's call it "matter", you call it "mind stuff". This is what HH is trying to make you understand.

To claim that "mind stuff" is different from "matter" is to claim knowledge of that which you can never know. It is base speculation, nothing more. In fact, by your own admission, if trees are "mind stuff" (i.e., experiences only), then it seems that they should be subject to the same persistence as other minds.

What of the person suddenly transported to the Nirvana Vat? Would they remember their old existence? If so, would they not then recognize the change? I mean, going from this life to a problem-free, pain-free, "perfect" world would seem rather jarring. And obvious.

Given that you have prepped us with this question, I guess now we will know when (or if) it occurs.

And due to the endless name-calling, people stop caring what you say. — tom

If endless name-calling were a fault, no one would have voted for your boy. Do you deny that Trump has ridiculed and slandered countless political opponents during his campaign? I can provide a list.

She should really be ashamed of herself - the person who wants to be President goes licking bankers, and hedge fund managers, and other rich folks — Agustino

Not like failing to pay - or file - taxes for at least 10 years. Or failing to pay your employees on a timely basis. Or going bankrupt numerous times (and using the US taxpayer to bail you out).

Any bets on how long it takes Trump to significantly reduce taxes on the rich? Six months?

Clinton-Soros sex scandal? You are drinking from the troth of Limbaugh/Hannity/Breitbart. (And I know what channel your TV is set to.) Is that baseless slander an attempt to deflect attention from the very real fact that Trump has admitted being attracted to his own daughter? Or that he is married to a soft-porn actress?

And who was Prez during most of the sexual revolution? Oh, yeah - Nixon. The country was SO far to the left.

Given the continued wage disparity and results of the recent election, we see how enlightened the US is regarding its attitude towards women. Look at your own post. You are so anti-woman that you can't stop yourself from writing "Crooked Hillary".

When abortion rights are repealed (I give it two years, tops) please come back and tell us all about the wonderful sexual revolution. (And if you think giving a woman the right to choose is wrong and should be repealed, then you know nothing about the sexual revolution.)

I find discussions like this generally quite bizarre. They are quickly high-jacked by righties who spout all the accepted Sean Hannity nonsense.

I'm old, but still politically left. Let me assure you that there is no political left in the US (I know because I have waited for one to show up my entire life). There has never been a viable political left in the US. The reality is that the US has a far-right party and a center-right party. Calling Dems "lefties" is a Fox News meme. Nice of you all to drink the Kool-Aid. (And notice, I am not calling anyone dumb. Just gullible.)

So in a single comment, you take the left to task for accusing the right of anti-intellectualism, then point out the right's "blatant" anti-intellectualism! Hilarious.

So your claim is that the right exhibits "blatant" anti-intellectualism. Are you a leftie?

LOL

Just taking a page from the Donald's own playbook. Didn't know you Trumpies were so sensitive to name-calling.

Well, of course you're drifting right. You're growing old. Change is painful (the music these kids listen to these days, jeez), and to stave off your impending mortality, you try to grab and hang onto as much stuff as you can. This inevitably results in politically conservative jerking of the knees. You suddenly realize that soon you will cease to be, so until then its, "Me, me, me!"

As an aside : For most in the US, the recent election had nothing to do with their political leanings. True, the hard right was never going to vote for a Democrat, but most folks just reacted without using their heads. I think that for most, Trump was a political cypher, and they projected onto him whatever they needed to believe. Unfortunately, that required ignoring the mountain of evidence that he is grossly unfit to lead a local PTA, let alone a country with nuclear weapons. How can anyone choose that evil oompah-loompah over a sober adult is beyond me. He is simply a spoiled-brat 15-year-old.

Who now controls the most powerful military on Earth.

How can transitory pleasure be a purpose if it is without meaning and doesn't stay consistent? — intrapersona

I do not think you understand the nature of a fetish. A true fetish (and not just an affectation) is decidedly not transitory.

Try it. What do you have to lose? (Apparently your life is meaningless anyway.)

Lol, What happens when the fetish goes stale?

It really doesn't though if you read my OP, fetish is like right pinky toe — intrapersona

It feels as though you have set up the problem so that no answer can ever be acceptable. Re the OP, everything is an "extension of the human experience".

Still, a healthy fetish can make you forget your ennui, if only for a little while.

This thread supports my belief that each of us should develop a fetish. Then we would have something to live for.

This, and some Mingus

But there is still widespread acknowledgement that the central mystery of how neural matter gives rise to conscious experience — Wayfarer

The part I have bolded is the issue at hand - i.e., the notion that neural activity causes consciousness. As if synaptic firing precedes the thoughts that occur. If this is so, then it should be possible to show consciousness existing without corresponding brain activity (perhaps in the moment following the synaptic firing). Is there any such evidence?

Neural activity does not "give rise" to consciousness. It is consciousness.

The difference between observing neural activity and experiencing that neural activity as thoughts is one of perspective. I am not fond of analogies, but it is somewhat akin to watching other cars drive down the street and sitting behind the steering wheel of your own car when you go on a journey. Its all point of view.

The objective as you have described it has no meaning, it may exist and have existed but that existence is meaningless without us. It was all meaningless until we came along and gave it meaning. It more a question of how we play into the schema of things, since there is no schema without us. — Cavacava

To say "it was all meaningless until we came along and gave it meaning" is to admit that something (the "all" being referred to) existed before human consciousness. And the advent of human consciousness simply tagged this existence with "meaning". Fine, but that still seems to imply a mind-independent existence. (By the way, what "meaning" does existence have? Or, what are you implying when you use the term "meaning"? Is it simply that we give labels to things, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden naming all the birds and beasts? Or that somehow our minds imbue existence with purpose?)

The notion that "there is no schema without us" has always struck me as a bit of navel-gazing. Or perhaps elevating one's self to the position of god. "Existence is nothing without me, so I must be awful important". Such thinking leads - logically - to belief in one's own immortality ("existence began with my birth, and ends with my death"), and omniscience ("I know all there is to know").

[brain] states ARE activity, they are dynamic, they are processes. No static things exist. — Terrapin Station

The reason I emphasize activity over state is that I think "brain state" is usually interpreted to be a snapshot of the brain at a given moment. I do not think your definition of brain-states-as-process is shared by most - and can lead to confusion. When the state of any process is talked about, isn't the implication one of what the process is like at a given moment?

Similarly, I think that to many folks, a static thing is implied when talking about "the brain". (I could be wrong.)

[Just as an aside, I do accept the notion of static things. An irrelevant point to this discussion, however.]

No one is saying anything like "thoughts are secretions of the brain," and no one is saying anything like "thoughts are energy output of the brain." — Terrapin Station

It seems very close to your often-repeated assertion of the identity of experiences and brain-states. — Wayfarer

Identity is different than saying that something is a secretion or output of something else. — Terrapin Station

I think it is important at this point to say something about identity.

Definition : A and B are said to be identical if : whenever it is the case that A, it is the case that B, and whenever it is the case that B, it is the case that A.

This is the notion of identity at work when we say, "Bachelors are unmarried men". [Note : As has been pointed out, identity cannot be as trivial as "x = x", which is true of everything.]

I was briefly pursuing the following idea on another thread before the ugly real world interceded and pulled me away : It is not brain states (i.e., particular arrangements of neurons) and consciousness that are identical. Rather it is brain activity and consciousness that are identical. Or more properly, it is a particular subset of brain activity and consciousness which are identical (since there is some brain activity not associated with thought).

"Bosh!", you say. But are either consciousness or the corresponding set-of-brain-activity ever encountered without the other? If not, then by the definition of identity given above, they are identical. It would seem that the only objection to this argument would be to disagree with the given definition of identity, or to show the existence of brain activity without consciousness, or to show the existence of consciousness without brain activity.

What of my argument (above)? The reason that none of the cited examples are analogues for mind/brain is that they are static, and mind/brain is dynamic.

It is also important to understand the level of complexity represented by our brains. Estimates for the number of synaptic connections in the human brain are roughly 100 trillion, which is many orders of magnitude above the number of stars in the Milky Way! And those connections are highly plastic. Thus the human brain is a massive, mutable structure that incorporates feedback loops. No computer that currently exists (or that will exist in the foreseeable future) even comes close.

One structure that does come close to the complexity of the human brain is the internet. But here, the mutability is controlled by outside agents (i.e., users), so the internet will probably never attain consciousness either.

jkop came closest to the answer when the word "interact" was used.

The reason that DNA/DNA info, computer hardware/rules of GO, and notes on paper/symphony are not comparable to brain/mind is because all of those examples are static, whereas brain/mind is dynamic. This is not a small point. When a computer wins at GO, the game it plays is comparable to mind, not the information stored in the circuitry. And that exact game (which is dynamic) can never be reproduced simply by transferring the stored (static) information to another computer or device. Thus it is not the arrangement of neurons that is identical to a mind, but rather the synaptic activity that is identical to mind.

... as long as you allow that there is something real outside you, then this reality acts to separate what's within you from what's within others. It is only if you insist that there is absolutely nothing outside of your own conscious experience, that you would have the problem which you describe. But why would you think that your conscious experience comprises all that is? — Metaphysician Undercover

Ah, but then you are a physicalist. I suspect dukkha is not. And therein lies the rub.

Since other consciousnesses cannot be experienced, it is logical to doubt their existence. Sure, I experience qualia suggestive of other minds - text on a screen, voices, the movement of other bodies, etc. - but these may be nothing more than illusions produced by Descartes' demon. Or the actions of a clever computer program. The existence of other minds can never be more than speculative.

And what is not experienced does not exist, does it? — Real Gone Cat

Why would you believe that? — Terrapin Station

Um, you mean when I turn my back on the moon, it still hangs in the sky? That's the gonest, Dad!

The negation of solipsism is just as impossible to refute.

- Terrapin Station

True, but the negation of solipsism was not in question. The existence of other minds was in doubt - which is tantamount to solipsism - and by pointing out that solipsism cannot be refuted, I was lending support to the OP. If the existence of other minds could be established, then solipsism would be refuted.

What of my other point? I stand by the claim that I am omniscient. What I experience, I know. What I do not experience, I do not know. And what is not experienced does not exist, does it? Thus I know all that there is to know. This (seemingly odd) claim touches on the question at hand because the existence of other minds is ultimately unknowable. And if knowledge, experience, and existence are equivalent, then other minds cannot be said to exist. Unless one admits of the existence of that which is unknown (i.e., unexperienced), then other minds are speculative only.

Isn't this exactly why solipsism is notoriously impossible to refute?

It is correct to say that no other conscious experience can exist. An interesting aside : You are, in fact, omniscient - all there is to know, you know. Existence and experience and knowledge are one and the same. What can there be that you do not know? If you do not know a thing, it is because it has not been experienced, and therefore does not exist. Crazy!