I'm somewhat inclined to reject essence. I think that we can speak of things in themselves, but that, when we do, we are really speaking of what they ideally are. The subjective aspect is necessarily present by that there is an ideal. — thewonder

"Essence", "in themselves", "ideally", "subjective aspect"...

For the modern nominalist, all of these notions deserve the same treatment as (and probably more urgently than) do properties, numbers and sets... that treatment being, ditching, or else nominalist reconstrual.

... which is to say, reconstrual in terms of particular objects and the words or pictures pointing at them (and thereby sorting them and classifying them and making patterns of them).

E.g. my favourite book.

You know that scene with the cinema queue in Annie Hall, where Woody is lucky enough to (ahem) marshal Marshall McLuhan against the bloke quoting him? I'm seriously tempted to ask Professor Mazur to see if he can read my previous post, which has so annoyed you, without recognising it as a passable expression of ideas to be found (to my delight and no surprise at all) in the first section of that pdf (for which I'm grateful).

I feel badly misunderstood, but hey, this is the internet...

Another reason to forego point by point corrections to your post here is that I wanted in the first place to shorten the thread, not lengthen it. As I dared to remark right away, between the vast magisterial tracts talking straight past each other,

shouldn't the mathematicians offer the finitist (especially since he objects to the identity of the 2's in 2+2) cardinal arithmetic and see if he is satisfied with that? — bongo fury

IOW, why not be...

a conceptual pluralist in that way. — fishfry

And, as @Terrapin Station deserves credit for often saying (and on this at least we should take notice), "one thing at a time, please".

What I originally said was that it's clear what "conscious experience" refers to. — Echarmion

And I said, that doesn't fit well with the claim that attempts to define and explain it are futile. I proposed, as a way forward, clarification of the reference of the term, from agreed clear cases towards less clear but more explanatory ones.

I meant to welcome your example and merely cast a preliminary glance at possible refinements (less clear cases) ahead. I don't blame you for not being impressed with those off-the-cuff suggestions.

Right, but uncertainties of memory aside, while we "recall" it, we are certainly consciously experiencing. — Echarmion

Yes, and the goal for me is to describe that experience accurately. Rightly or wrongly I sense a need to persuade against a defeatism about that goal. Hence the need to agree common ground.

I am not sure we can know when we are not conscious. How would we differentiate between not having been conscious and simply not remembering? — Echarmion

By the same token, though, popular assumptions about the "integration" of consciousness might be questioned. (E.g. Searle's idea of consciousness as a "field".) Again, I am opposed to defeatism about the prospect of knowledge about such things, even based on introspection. Perhaps we can learn to become less oblivious of the gaps in conscious experience. (Have you tried staying conscious whilst falling asleep?! :nerd: )

Anyway, thank you for hearing my objection to your defeatism, as I saw it, about the feasibility of explaining or defining consciousness.

Out of interest, for my informal survey... roughly at what point, if any, are you prepared to assume complete unconsciousness of a creature/device:

Mammal
Fish
Insect
Plant
State of the art AI
Smart phone
Pocket calculator
Rock
Molecule
None of the above

Thanks

If you are petting a cat right now, that's clearly a conscious experience. — Echarmion

Agreed, and it suggests several less clear cases that might be interesting. Like... me petting, or holding, the cat while drunk or asleep... or, Alexa the automatic cat-petter petting the cat... or, Alexa the autonomous neural-network machine self-trained to pet the cat... or, the cat's mother petting the cat.

If you remember petting a cat, that memory is also a conscious experience, — Echarmion

At least, it probably marks an occasion when consciousness happened, although not necessarily consciousness of the memory, except on the slightly question-begging interpretation of remembering as "recalling to mind". I might be trying and failing to identify the relevant word or picture (etc.) of the scene, or just curiously disturbed by an unconscious association with the scene or those symbols. But of course, my consciousness while petting the cat is not necessarily of the petting, either.

If you remember dreaming about petting a cat, that's a conscious experience that may or may not be based on another conscious experience, — Echarmion

Sure. Plenty of fascinating if potentially illusory data from introspection of transitioning into and out of "waking" consciousness. Man!

Equally, I desire to establish a common ground of agreed cases of non-consciousness. The project is compromised if you (or whoever) has pan-psychist sympathies... How about insects?

Anyway, thanks for at least humoring me by putting aside talk of the data "only existing subjectively" etc. Even if that gesture is only for the sake of argument... which I anticipate with (conscious, if ill-advised) pleasure.

Or, failing that, but still usefully, finding a common ground of clear cases and clear non-cases, and working from there.
— bongo fury

The problem is that conscious experience is so basic that there is no way to give examples. — Echarmion

Not with that attitude...

If I gave you an example, like petting a cat, — Echarmion

Yes! Please! What kinds of cat-petting experiences are clearly conscious and which unconscious? Let's play...

that example would only exist within your conscious experience. — Echarmion

:sigh: Really? No common ground here.

epiphenomenon — fresco

Dualism worthy of Descartes.

It's very clear what we refer to when we use that term. It's just difficult to explain or define it using language. — Echarmion

I would be curious [...] to know how you reconcile the two claims. — bongo fury

I don't see how these claims require reconciliation. Is an explanation using language constitutive for knowing what something is? — Echarmion

I would have thought it constitutive (or required) for being "very clear what we refer to". For being able to show examples of what we do and don't refer to. Which would be explaining and defining it, I would have thought. Ideally, as I say, finding a dividing line between what we do and don't refer to by the term.

Or, failing that, but still usefully, finding a common ground of clear cases and clear non-cases, and working from there.

We might all know when we are thinking, but it doesn't follow that we know what thoughts are. — Janus

But judging cases of thinking and not thinking would be a perfectly good place to start finding out what thoughts are.

My question still stands...are we witnessing 'the demise of philosophy as we know it' ?
Or to put it another way, is 'neurophilosophy' any more iconoclastic than the issues raised by Wittgenstein, the Pragmatists, or the Post Modernists. — fresco

:lol: Obviously no and no.

It's very clear what we refer to when we use that term. It's just difficult to explain or define it using language. — Echarmion

The only way I can reconcile the first (to me inexplicable) one of these claims with the second (perfectly reasonable) one is to hope that you mean to observe, merely, that we can easily enough find clear cases and clear non-cases of conscious experience, while quickly enough failing to find any sign of a dividing line... cases (perhaps less clear) close enough to non-cases to explain what makes the difference.

That would be cool, though. If we could agree some clear cases of both conscious and unconscious experience. And then discuss the less clear ones. We would have common ground, despite having apparently contrary philosophies.

But if what I suggest is of no interest to you, I would be curious anyway to know how you reconcile the two claims.

More than ever I see that mathematical equality is the same thing as logical identity. The same morally and the same technically in any mathematical framework you like. — fishfry

Really? With a child, discussing how the set of 2 pens here plus the set of 2 pens there makes a set of 4?

Wouldn't you want to be ready to climb down from platonist notions or foundations ("2 on the number line", or "the class of all pairs" etc.) and agree that the two separate concrete pairs of objects were being compared and found "equal" in cardinality or size, just as two pens might be found equal in weight, or in length? In other words, equivalent, and in the same equivalence class by this or that mode of comparison (in this case cardinality)? But obviously not identical?

Or would you want to get them with the platonist program straight away, and make sure they understood that 2 on the number line "sends" with itself in a two argument function returning at 4?

Notice they will soon learn to equivocate anyway between identity and equivalence, like any good mathematician not presently embroiled in philosophical or foundational quandary.

Not that @Metaphysician Undercover will be happy with any cavalier embrace of equivocation.

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/67227/is-there-a-difference-between-equality-and-identity

Some interesting thoughts there. — fishfry

Yes, the irony... that competence in maths should not only involve easy equivocation imputing (with the equals sign) absolute identity here and mere equivalence (identity merely in some respect) there, but then also involve an "identity" (e.g. site menu) sign meaning only a batch-load (for all values of a variable) of cases of "equals", the latter still (in each case) ambiguous between identity and mere equivalence! (The ambiguity removed only by a probably unnecessary commitment to a particular interpretation.)

You see, reason consists of arrows of the type p => q. — alcontali

The type represented by "=>" being, you assume, syllogistic and deductive? Then finite chains will start abruptly, as you say.

Disconcerting perhaps. Depending on the meanings of the p's and q's.

But Hume and Quine have taught us that reason links p's and q's into chains and webs using other types of link as well. Inductive, associative, habitual, holistic. On this more inclusive view of reason, a finite web doesn't need a clear starting point. Morality, science etc. are large going concerns with unclear sources.

Deductive means any token of some p is license to print unlimited tokens of various (according to the rules) q, r.

Inductive, say "-->", means a more restricted licence, wherein some disputable quantity of tokens (or cases in point or sub-types) of some p is licence to print (utter etc.) some disputable variety of tokens of (according to some habit or disposition) q, r.

Deductive means unfettered influence by any one token-printing agent on any other. Contradictions thereby create (under the rules) an explosive mess, whereas consistent chains or webs are orderly, though oddly lacking in initial stimulation (of production of axiom tokens), except from some external sources (suppositions or observation statements or commandments).

Inductive means fettered influence. Contradictions aren't necessarily catastrophic, but the web (and its rules and fetters) isn't easily and uncontroversially traced, nor are sources of activity (completely unlicensed tokens) identifiable.

Deductive systems behave themselves, or soon crash. This is an attractive feature. Non-deductive systems can be chaotic or dysfunctional. Many people have wished to improve them by rendering them deductive, but they are wrong if they assume that kind of improvement to be either necessary or adequate.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/309873

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/374811

As I say, though, at what point does arithmetic become a philosophical puzzle for you, or your child?

Have addition as union of disjoint sets. Is that ok?

There is nothing in "3+5" to take the place of "mother", there is just Jesus and James. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is (implicitly) "sum of". (Not that the analogy follows through completely, as @Zuhair points out.)

But anyway, instead of trying to clear up his actual or perceived misunderstandings about out-and-proudly platonic math concepts, shouldn't the mathematicians offer the finitist (especially since he objects to the identity of the 2's in 2+2) cardinal arithmetic and see if he is satisfied with that?

:ok: :cool:

What question, pray tell? :chin — Pattern-chaser

The OP. Google gives a more mundane explanation of the name. :sad: nvm

Still, it is a common (and to me reasonable) conjecture that evolution has endowed us with a general thirst for pattern.

And after all what right have you, the mere author of your name, to dispute that interpretation?

:joke:

Evolution, music and math — 3017amen

(... and poetry, science etc.)

I always assumed @Pattern-chaser was named in answer to this question.

:chin:

Thanks for reincarnating this thread. :wink:

Translation (or mapping or commensuration) from analog to digital (continuous to discrete, spectrum to alphabet) doesn't have to be AON, thankfully. Usually it is all-or-nearly-all vs none-or-hardly-any... with a no-mans-land in between. E.g. from light intensity to white vs black, separated by grey.

E.g., white and black then have borderline cases of light intensity that will be sometimes (e.g. for particular users of the language, or the same user on different occasions) white and other times grey (or sometimes black and other times grey). But no intensity ever taken (within the system) for a black is ever (persistently i.e. without correction) taken for a white.

And only practical considerations limit the number of shades reliably discriminated in this way, i.e. the number of characters in the digital alphabet.

We have semantic alphabets as well as syntactic. Sometimes. Often we can't agree on the mutual exclusivity just described, and fall into a slippery slope dispute in which each camp accuses the other of extremism, and teases the other that yes they are quite extreme... and would, for example, call snow black or coal white.

It might end in tears (or thread closure), but the motivation is often positive... to restore mutual respect for the neutral zone, and hence the feasibility of consistent discourse about (pattern-making with) the non-neutral 'characters'.

He proposes habit/custom as one but, from your post, never claims that it's the only explanation for it. — TheMadFool

By employing that word, we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity. — Hume, 36.

My emphasis.

Indeed, but giving it another name does not give it a justification. Do you think you have done that? Or that someone else has? — unenlightened

I merely think I understand Hume to have pointed out that justification (or reason or logic or derivation or inference) is sometimes deductive but just as often inductive (habitual or associative).

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/331201

Or as we call it these days "conditioning." — unenlightened

... or induction, of course.

Pavlov's dog does not reason — unenlightened

... except by induction.

It is the foundation of learning, but has no logical basis — unenlightened

... if logic means deduction (as it usually does).

You cannot derive a 'will be' from a 'has been'. — unenlightened

... by deduction.

For some reason people who are happy to assent to the former often have difficulty with the latter. — unenlightened

Because they assume logic and reason are deductive?

"Useful"? - yes.

But no one here was arguing about 'useful'.

The claim was that neuroscience could not fully investigate consciousness, at all. — Isaac

I think you are simply confusing my posts with other people's? Not sure who's.

Not that neuroscience is using one definition but other definitions might prove equally useful. That is a claim I would entirely agree with. — Isaac

Good. I think they should use mine. :wink:

Are they using yours? Links welcome.

But this is begging the question. — Isaac

Or just checking agreement of premises / what we reckon.

you're saying we trust our (clearly disputed) instincts as to what does and does not belong in that category — Isaac

No, I'm just hoping some cases are clear and undisputed, as premises / what we reckon.

Is it ethical that we invent a sub-category of suffering — Isaac

I don't know, but I don't think we invent it. We find it delineated (vaguely, but with clear cases) in common usage.

For me, consciousness is simply a specific type of self awareness, the logging to memory of mental events for future use, the identification of a single processing unit with a history, and properties which apply to it rather than it's parts. — Isaac

I know, and I'm interested. And if "awareness" and "mental" don't beg the question but cover unconscious as well as conscious processing, then I can imagine you turning out to be right. One test would be whether your recipe can produce processing that we think could easily be unconscious. If so, then more work to do.

You see it differently, I appreciate that.

Yes, there must be something to distinguish, otherwise we'd have to argue that all that is the case was completely homogeneous and I can't reconcile that with the consistent role symmetry breaking seems to have in physical process. The point is two-fold. Firstly, the thing we actually do distinguish is not thereby any more real than alternative options we've chosen to overlook. Secondly, saying something is not the same as having a referrant for that something. We could both agree now to include the word 'Jabberwocky' in numerous conversations. We'd both be using the same term but it would be without an agreed referrant. — Isaac

Yes. And yet, couldn't someone have understood all of that perfectly well, and still wanted to ask whether you saw any use in the "conscious/unconscious" distinction: a division, however vague and provisional, among all of the potential (but actual, factual) referents of our discourse that are to be found moving about on the surface of our planet?

I suppose it's clear to me now (but do correct me) that your answer to that person would be no, unless the supposed distinction were reformed by smearing it out into a spectrum, a gradual scale of increasingly vivid consciousness, going by degrees from barely conscious at all at one end of it, along and up to (at least) the full consciousness of, say, a young adult human after morning coffee at the other end. My slight disappointment (though not total surprise) is that you would have the 'lower' end of the spectrum reach so close to my thermostat circuit as to virtually include it, and thereby undermine any clear intuition of complete unconsciousness, or zombie-ness, or nobody-at-home-ness. There would be no clear cases of such a state, as is indicated by your cheerfully feeble assurance about the thermostat:

None of these things are attributable to a thermostat, but if they were [...] — Isaac

Well I think I could persuade you that they are. Don't you think I could? (The circuit anticipates and conveys pain in the sense of being 'triggered' to send signals about damage and the cause of it, doesn't it?)

Or perhaps I couldn't, and your intuition of complete unconsciousness is firm after all. By the same token, your intuition of where consciousness begins, or what kinds of things (e.g. what kinds of feedback circuits or logging circuits) to call conscious in a minimal degree, will then also be relatively clear and informative.

What is the use of any such clarification, though? As you point out, things are looking circular...

if we allow a definition of consciousness to be so embedded in human forms of life, then we cannot imbue with any awe the revelation that it is unique to [in this case, feedback loops (or similar circuits)]. After all, we have just defined it thus. — Isaac

So I won't be surprised if your assurance about the thermostat was disingenuous, and you soon admit that you don't really care whether we call it conscious or not.

I, on the other hand, don't see the clarification as arbitrary, such that it might as well show consciousness beginning anywhere, or indeed nowhere and be just an all-inclusive spectrum. I share with many ordinary folk and dualists too the assumption that ordinary usage of "conscious" correlates with other important distinctions, one such being the question where to and where not to strive to prevent suffering - the answer being, usually, where the suffering would be conscious suffering, and not where it wouldn't. Obviously a car in a crusher suffers catastrophic damage, and quite possibly processes "pain" signals about this; but just as obviously (to some of us) it doesn't suffer consciously (nobody is home), and so it isn't a cause for ethical concern.

Since your intuition of nobody-at-home-ness is so fragile you may want to question my carelessness about the car's plight. On the precautionary principle I may concede. If I resist, though, and get involved in a tug-of-war about whereabouts on a rough scale of processing-complexity we can surmise that consciousness begins, it won't be for lack of sympathy towards lower creatures but because, unlike you, I take ordinary usage of "conscious", aided and abetted by near-synonyms, to be capable of marking important distinctions in human psychology: so that defining consciousness isn't an arbitrary matter.

Searle's Chinese Room, for example. For you (but correct me?), it's an arbitrary matter, merely one of definition, whether the Room is conscious, depending simply on whether or not consciousness is so defined as to apply in that case. For me, we learn from the example that language use can be conscious, as for us, or unconscious as for the Room (despite Searle's role as syntactic clerk). So the example serves by requiring a refinement of the supposed model of conscious processing. (To have it include a genuine semantic component.)

I generally expect to find unconscious as well as conscious examples of all manner of cognitive and behavioural tasks. And I assume the contrast will point in the direction of useful theoretical revision. I don't think I could have any such expectation if, as you apparently do, I found the very idea of a sophisticated but completely unconscious machine to be problematic.

If the positioning of the holes was not random, it was measured. And it couldn't have been random or the sound wouldn't be musical. Don't you agree? — Metaphysician Undercover

You could (and probably still do) have limitless fun with identifiable melodies on scales of randomly spaced pitches that were nonetheless identifiable: as e.g. low-high (a 2-note scale) or low-medium-high (3 notes). (You could use randomly spaced holes in a flute, or randomly sized bongos etc.)

Don't be in too much of a hurry for society to learn to identify performances of melodies on one of the particular spacings... requiring them to access a particular flute / bongo-set, or to produce new instruments the same size and with the same particular spacing... or... where the new identification of melody according to spacing were indifferent to choice of starting pitch: access new instruments with the same spacing relative (scaled in proportion) to the size of the whole instrument.

Even then, when spacing is scaled in proportion for each instrument, don't expect many of the proportions to have gravitated to producing arithmetically nice frequency ratios. More likely they combine one or two arbitrary (and arithmetically non-nice) pitch intervals (frequency ratios).

Yes, the sequence of proportions (step-intervals) might eventually repeat at the octave on the same instrument, but even then there is no reason for the musician or instrument maker or musicologist to assume that any arithmetically nice ratios are crucial to their art, in any obvious way.

A lot of them have done so, of course, ever since Pythagoras. With the result that we are taught to assume the octave to be aesthetically more fundamental than other strikingly consonant intervals. Or that perception of consonance depends on approximation to nice ratios - a notion somewhat challenged by equal temperament, to say nothing of folk traditions.

So I would guess the 40,000 year-old flute was crafted in careful imitation of previous models, with a keen sense of proportion but also in enviable ignorance of theories of arithmetically nice ratios.

That people can distinguish it does not mean it is distinguished in reality — Isaac

No, sure. Do you think there is anything to be distinguished, however vaguely? I might have lost track and missed that you are a zombie-denier / pan-psychist? So that you think that the "suffering" of an overheating thermostat circuit deserves some (presumably tiny but non-zero) degree of human sympathy?

Please excuse the incredulity and name-calling, but I guess my suggested glossary is intended to establish common ground by excluding zombie-denial as well as consciousness-denial. If we (or anyone) can agree some clear cases of zombies as well as of consciousness then our discussion of how to characterise the transition is less likely to polarise and end in mutual incredulity. Is always my hope.

I had assumed we had that common ground, but maybe not. So... do you see any clear cases at all of nobody-at-home?

I think "somebody-at-home-ness" is an entirely fabricated story we tell ourselves post hoc to string together our disparate desires and actions into a coherent whole, and people are (perhaps quite rightly) frightened that neuroscience will find this out. — Isaac

Yep, and the danger is that dualists would sense mockery in this glossary. But maybe the eventual scientific story (e.g., dare we suppose, yours about logging of logging, or mine about pointing at pointing) needn't simply disappoint, and 'find us out' to be zombies. It could explain our conscious states so that we understand our experiences more exactly.

Not in terms of homunculi, obviously. And I guess most people have always sensed the potential absurdity (as well as the genuine puzzle) of the somebody-at-home talk, anyway. So they wouldn't be in as much danger of disappointment as you (perhaps) suggest. I.e., we aren't necessarily beholden to a persistent error or illusion. That (alienating and polarising) assumption is unnecessary. Haha, sorry if that is holier than thou. I can't help spreading peace and goodwill. :Saint Homer of Hippo:

Where this system goes wrong, the problems of philosophy Wittgenstein was trying to dissolve, is when people reify words. They make a word (like consciousness) and then say because we have that word, there must be an accompanying concept. They search for the pure concept attached to the word, but there is none, the word was just doing a job, and a different job in different contexts. There's no sublime concept attached to it. — Isaac

You have to hand it to "consciousness", though... it keeps getting up and distinguishing itself from near-synonyms.

How about glossing it as "somebody-at-home-ness"? And unconsciousness as "nobody-at-home-ness"?

As a way of reassuring the dualists (who are legion) that we (if you can excuse the presumption) do at least share their intuition of something going on, something deserving of proper description and explanation. And of that thing not going on, crucially, with rocks and calculators.

(Even if we can't yet define what is going on precisely and uncontroversially. And even though we shall decline the invitation to dualism which is implicit in these glosses.)

I appreciate that users of self-aware might complain they already had this idea. But I tend to think that version fails, since I can easily enough imagine calling a thermostat aware and a larger system containing it self-regulating or (at a pinch) self-aware, even though I also see both as unquestionably unconscious (i.e. clear cases of nobody-at-home).

As regards attempting to define the something-going-on more precisely... I love this,

the logging is of the fact that some logging of sensory data has occurred. Ie logging the logging event. If a computer did that, then, yes, I would say it was self-aware. If it could make use of those logs in its computation I would say it was conscious. — Isaac

... but mainly because of this,

Logging and storing are two different things. Memory is not like a hard drive. A lot of the confusion around consciousness, I think, arises from this. — Isaac

Me too. (And ideas aren't inner words or pictures...)

Still, you set the bar too low, for me. I can easily believe that nobody is at home in any state of the art neural network. I'm waiting for them to start playing the social game of pointing (actual) words and pictures at things in the real world, and I assume that will be a long time coming, e.g. well after they've started playing at pointing sticks and balls at things in the real world.

You were comfortable with denying that consciousness is a thing, or things. Great. Gloss 'mind' as 'mentalness'.

So a MIND is an object — Bartricks

"So" in the current idiom, or as an inference? From what?

No, to everyone. — Bartricks

What do you mean?

So you think wetness can just exist? Wetness is a property of liquids. — Bartricks

Exactly.

But you can't just have wet.

Likewise, you can't just have conscious states. — Bartricks

Exactly.

They are states - the clue is in the name - of a thing. What thing? — Bartricks

Why, a person, of course.

Conscious states are states of an object called a....wait for it....MIND. — Bartricks

To a dualist, of course. Don't expect a physicalist to agree with this premise. They can be quite happy pointing "conscious" directly at people, just as they point "wet" directly at tea.

Now that you know that I'm not reifying consciousness, — Bartricks

Then why do you refer to your mind as though it were an entity?

Yes, you can mean them metaphorically - and that's how a charitable person would interpret you if you said "how heavy is Beethoven's fifth" or "what does the pizza think like?" — Bartricks

Haha, yes but I meant I agree that the dish is literally unconscious (non-conscious if you prefer), while the music is metaphorically heavy.

Anyway, human animals (brains, at the cost of distorting the situation) are among the things we can rightly describe as literally conscious. 'Mind' is best dropped in careful discourse, or glossed as 'conscious object' (e.g. person).

the point is that sensible objects cannot literally think anything, just as Beethoven's fifth cannot literally weigh anything. — Bartricks

What about human animals i.e. persons? Are they not sensible objects? I can't gloss 'sensible objects' as 'things'?

I'm not a zombie-denier, by the way. I'm not calling any dishes (or even e.g. insects) conscious.

I'm just inviting you to refrain from turning a property (or class of objects) into a thing. I.e. turning consciousness into a thing, or things.

A premise I find unattractive and unnecessary is that a 'mind' is a thing or substance at all. 'Mindful', 'mental' or (more to my taste) 'conscious' is a property of things, most obviously human animals.

What things to call conscious is the problem.

I came here to be insulted, so feel free. :wink:

You may wonder what the dish thinks like, but your reason - or at least, the reason of most of us - declares loud and clear that such wonderings make as little sense as wondering how heavy Beethoven's fifth symphony is. That is, they reflect category errors.
4h — Bartricks

I disagree, I think they are analogous. 'Heavy' is of course applied to music only metaphorically, but that doesn't matter here. The point is that in both cases (dish and piece of music) we are trying to classify correctly. It's pretty clear that the dish is unconscious, while the music is (in this particular case) heavy.

I cannot be sure my body exists. — Andrew4Handel

Fine... if, this means you want to ergo less, after all.

But of course you want to ergo more. Unquestionably a mind and questionably a body.

I don't see the ergo.

I accept Descartes's cogito ergo sum. — Andrew4Handel

I accept cogito ergo something, just not ergo the whole Cartesian theatricals.

I know for certain that I exist — Andrew4Handel

Agreed, if "I" refers to your bodily person. Seems to me that a zombie robot could well make the same inference from detection of its own unconscious processing. (Insisting that cogito or pense implies specifically conscious processing would only beg the question.) But probably "I" gives a free pass to all manner of "subject" woo?

but I can doubt the content of my experiences. — Andrew4Handel

That's beside the point if we are trying to understand consciousness. Obviously the content can be real or imaginary. The problem is what sense can be made of calling it "content".

I don't think homunculi or mental images are a problem — Andrew4Handel

Neither do most people/homunculi. :wink:

Theories often say nothing about homunculi but you know they are required for the theory to be coherent. — Andrew4Handel

Yes, sounds plausible... examples?

when you people mental representations. — Andrew4Handel

Clarification? People as a verb, is that?

the requirement for a perceiver or homunculi — Andrew4Handel

Not forgetting entirely the option of glossing 'perceiver' as 'perceiving bodily person'?

Reading your link to your previous post that appears to be a form of behaviorism. I think strictly mental content like dreams and concepts are inexplicable that way. — Andrew4Handel

I'm a (amateur) behaviouristic consciousness-explainer, not a behaviouristic consciousness-denier. I want to understand what makes some of my cogitations - dreams included - conscious. Why behaviourist? Only in reaction to the age-old assumptions about inner words and pictures. When what really accounts for consciousness may be better understood as social skills with actual words and pictures.

Yes, but you're encouraging a fair deal of witting and unwitting dualistic woo.

Mental processes are different in kind from biological/neurological processes in the same way biological processes are different from chemical processes. — T Clark

At the risk of splitting hairs, but in aid of countering all of the witting and unwitting dualistic woo flying about...

Mental processes are different in kind from information-technology processes (and will be re-conceived as, I dunno, social-semiotic processes) in the same way that vital life force processes are different in kind from chemical processes (and have been re-conceived as bio-chemical processes).

Late edit:

I mean that "mental" processes need re-conceiving in (something like) social-semiotic terms, so that we don't have to regard them as fundamentally different in kind from IT processes, even though we should beware of underestimating their complexity relative to ordinary (and of course non-mental) IT processes.

In the same way, vital life force processes were eventually re-conceived as bio-chemical processes, so that we don't have to regard them as fundamentally different in kind from chemical processes, even though we are well aware of their complexity relative to non-biological chemistry.

I am beginning to sympathise with the idea that perceiver might be the soul and some form of dualism. — Andrew4Handel

There is a lot of that about. Even skepticism about a soul or homunculus munching popcorn in the Cartesian theatre doesn't seem to imply skepticism about the images on the screen in the theatre (or wherever, but it looks like the same theatre to me). Here's me continuing in that vein... I'll try and find some better literature for to save your non-soul...

This and this.

However the story seems much more problematic when we talk about retrieving memories, accessing word meanings, dreaming and having ideas. Who is accessing this mental content and from where? — Andrew4Handel

Is it that you don't mean this is any more problematic at all as regards the "homunculi problem", just that it comes with a "where is it all coming from" problem, to boot?

the evolutionary trait of 'tribalism' which humans have in common with other primates. — fresco

Then why is exotic erotic?

To me - those are not logically unacceptable consequences. — simeonz

Maybe not, but see the quagmire up ahead?

I suggest the choice, eventually, is between a physical binary distinction of conscious vs unconscious on the one hand, or a metaphysical binary distinction of mind vs matter on the other...

Which of these seems to you potentially the more enlightening?

The analogy was, "when does a vehicle become truly automotive i.e. a true automobile?".
— bongo fury
I see now. First, let's agree that a vehicle and a vessel have some similarities, such as that they carry cargo and passengers. Of course, their method of transportation differs. Let's say that this aspect is fundamental for the purposes of the analogy. — simeonz

Ah, thanks for trying to get on board with my rickety analogy. But no, that difference is a red herring, or misunderstanding. I did say (although mention of horse-drawn in that sentence may have muddied things) sail-powered vehicles, not vessels. I appreciate sail-powered vehicles never were a common sight on the road, but in my story they are the nearest that the society has come to building their own cars - which they have inherited, ready-built, in plenty. So my point is the same as yours when you suggest,

Then, for me at least, a human brain is to an insect brain, or to a plant's perception, more like a ship is to a boat, or a raft. — simeonz

Yes!... if you mean motor-ship. Then that's parallel, because I was equating the human/insect comparison to the automobile/sail-powered go-cart comparison. But there was no vehicle/vessel comparison for me.

One could re-tell it as being about both (or either) vehicles and vessels, except there isn't a ready-made extension of "automobile" for that purpose (that I can think of, although there could have been).

That said, I must agree to some extent. The spectrum of sentient qualities may have a sharp slope at some point. Even with a lot of structural complexity. I do not consider this likely - sophisticated information processing structure suddenly being vastly less aware when compared to a somewhat more complex different one. But I cannot fully disregard the possibility. — simeonz

Yes, a tempting compromise! My sharp slope, parallel to the progression from top-notch sailing to motorisation, is the journey from chimp or dog to human: from ability to follow the pointing of sticks or balls at targets to the ability to follow the (usually not actual) pointing of words or pictures at targets.

Any interest shown in this positive matter and I'll happily roll over and tolerate what strike me as more or less unacceptable consequences of an unbounded spectrum... e.g. conscious phones, insects etc. at one end, and literal talk of mental pictures, concepts, beliefs etc. at the other.