If I can force a materialist, through argumentation, to admit brain states ARE mental states (and not wuss out like most do and say brain states cause mental states, but they're somehow not the same thing) I'm pleased, because that to me is an absurdity (I also don't think it's that popular anymore, but I could be wrong on that), and the more absurd I can make materialism the better I feel because it's a horrible belief system. But I would like it to be false on the merits, and I think it fails catastrophically with regards to consciousness.

This is the argument I just thought up.

If a materialist/physicalist admits that experiences are real, in any sense of the word, they have to admit experiences can be compared, else you get the existence in a physical universe of two incomparable real things (that would seem to be a problem, maybe not?). So then how would a materialist explain how experiences can be compared? Can we compare experiences by talking about them? But how can I ever verify what you mean when you refer to your own experiences? That referent is closed off to me. Measuring brain states? But then doesn't that commit a materialist to a strict reductionist view that mental states are identical to brain states?

Our exchange was very productive. I like this little argument. Maybe it crashes and burns.

It's not a grammatical nitpick. You're either defining what a particular experience is or you're not talking about experience at all, you're talking about something that causes an experience.

Hitting your toe against the floor causes the experience of the pain of stubbing a toe, yes. I think that's what you meant. But when I ask you how experiences are compared and you say, "One hit her left foot, the other her right." you are not talking about experiences, you are talking about the causes of experiences. I have no problem with the idea of comparing causes of experiences. There's no tension there. But I would like to know how experiences can be compared. I don't think we can use language, because there's no way to verify what another person means when they refer to their own expereinces.

Unless you mean the physical act of hitting your toe on the floor is an actual experience. Are you a reductionist? That's one way to compare brain states: wire the two people up and see what's going on, but then that commits you to "brain states = mental states". Is that your view?

"One hit her left foot"

Are you saying that "hitting her left foot" is an experience or causes an experience?

How?

Can those two experiences be compared, yes or no?

Can those two experiences be compared?

Now, lets stipulate that there are two experiencers, A and B, and they are both experiencing the pain of stubbing a toe. Still with me?

...and those experiences are then subjective.
— RogueAI

What does that mean?

Let's start simple. You admit there are experiences. It follows there must be experiencer(s). Agreed?

Are experiences real? Yes.

I'm puzzled that you need to add "subjective". It's a term that carrie so much baggage. Drop it, and get on with doing stuff.

If experiences are real, then there are experiencer(s), and those experiences are subjective. There's no avoiding it- subjectiveness is contained within the meaning of "experience".

Also: if experiences are real, who's doing the experiencing? Something must be. If there is more than one experiencer, can we talk about comparing their experiences? Why not?

Banno, are subjective experiences real? If so, are they only real in the moment, or is a past experience "real" in any sense? What about a future experience?

It's rather that we cannot even determine if there is a something that it is like to be a bat.

You've admitted that dolphins feel pain, so there is something that it is like to be a dolphin in pain: namely, a dolphin in pain. The question then naturally arises: is a dolphin in pain similar to a human in pain? Is your claim then that that's a nonsensical question or simply one that can't be answered?

Only if "there is something it is like" makes sense. And it doesn't make sense for "there I something it is like to be RogueAI", because what it is like to be you changes.

That's a copout. The Banno of five minutes ago is still you. Questions about your subjective experiences are sensical: what is Banno's experience of pain like? Is it like mine? What about his (her?) experience of red? Same as mine or slightly different? Those are questions that make sense and have answers (even if we'll never be sure of them). Agree so far?

Well, let's explore this. Do you think dolphins experience pain?

Could Mary discover what it's like to see red just by studying it? Or does she need to experience it? If the latter, then something like what is it like to be something that can echolocate? is only discoverable through experience.

Nagel's point is trivially true: there are other creatures, they have different ways of experiencing the world, and we can't know what that's like just by studying those creatures.

That's totally non-controversial (or should be).

Is there? How could you possibly know this?

Are you denying the existence of the subjective experiences of, say, dolphins? That's implausible.

External things won't make you happy.

You're expecting binary answers from a relativist about a noun named 'consciousness'

You should be able to articulate your points clearly, no matter what belief systems you have.

That materialism should explain consciousness.

I'm confused about whatever point you're trying to make. Are you saying materialism shouldn't explain consciousness?

If that's required then I have no particular problem with jettisoning consciousness.

Required for what?

Yeah, that was a good movie. Shades of things to come.

If I think the statement "there are no possible worlds where matter causes mind" is probably true, that means I think that theories that posit the existence of some mind-causing non-conscious stuff (i.e., materialism) are probably false. Ergo, I think materialism is probably false. Which I do!

It's easier to just talk about this in plain English. Materialism has not explained consciousness. I don't believe materialism ever will explain consciousness. Dualism might be true, but here I think there's an interaction problem between the physical and the non-physical, so I think idealism is probably true. Also, the building blocks of idealism (minds and thoughts/ideas, sensations, impressions, etc). are things we know for certain exist. That is not the case with dualism or materialism.

State the positive conclusion, please.

Some [consciousness/mind] is [exist]. a=x.

Some conscious mind *must* exist.

I would prefer modal logic: there is no possible world where there's no conscious mind. I would assign a high subjective probability to: there is no possible world where matter causes mind.

Like human beings. (Metzinger) Prohibitions against murder would either have to be based on something other than "defenseless killing of persons" since we would not be persons after all or we would have to radically update / redefine our folk psychological definition in the law of a "nature person"

I think when these Alexas and Siris can start passing the Turing Test and become companions to a lot of people there will be a sea change in what constitutes a "person". There's a story of a Colonel come to watch a mine-clearing robot at work. It gamely goes from mine to mine, losing pieces of itself until the Colonel can't stand to watch anymore. I think we're naturally sympathetic creatures, and that will extend to machines.

Wouldn't it be odd if a consensus emerges around IIT, and it's agreed that harming/deactivating systems with X amount of information integration is a crime, and then we discover such systems were never conscious? Of course, for practical reasons, we're going to carve out protections for advanced AI's. I think.

Are you an IIT proponent?

I read it a long time ago to win an argument.

I stumbled across this: "We examine the hypothesis that consciousness can be understood as a state of matter, "perceptronium", with distinctive information processing abilities."
https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.1219

The existence of a paper like this from a genius like Tegmark says a lot about how little progress science has made on the Hard Problem.

"Our approach generalizes Giulio Tononi's integrated information framework for neural-network-based consciousness to arbitrary quantum systems"

There's no evidence for IIT. It's impossible to verify if any external information-integrating system is conscious. And there are other problems with it.

Yes, I merely need a list of every object you think does, can, or must exist.

Pardon me for butting in, but I'm going to take a stab at this. At least one conscious mind must exist. Everything else conceivable *can* exist. A causal connection between matter and mind does not exist.

Tegmark is pretty out there. He thinks the universe is made of math. That's pretty idealistic.

We will continue merging with machines until we hit a technological wall or destroy ourselves.

Technological innovations are more shadows on the wall.

right around the time that humankind has reached epistemic and technological maturity.

We're in the same epistemic situation Plato's prisoners were in the Allegory of the Cave.

You should be able to articulate your position in your own words. I'm not reading 55 pages of Wittgenstein.

Your position is a lot like property dualism.

By physical phenomena, I mean the story I teach my 6th graders: light hits the back of the eye, a signal is sent to the brain, and the brain interprets the data as "seeing". And, of course, it's taken to understand that eyes, brains, photons, and nerves are things that are outside the mind.

If that's what you're proposing, then I'm going to demand proof that there exists anything outside the mind, and of course you won't be able to provide any, and I'll assert that the only thing we know for sure is that at least one conscious mind exists and the rest is speculation. But I'm curious: why are you so sure physicalism is true? Because that's the way the world appears? What do you think is physicalism's strongest argument? It's predictive accuracy?

What thread were you posting in?

Are you claiming that colors are physical phenomena? If so, what proof do you have?

The topic of "the physical" is very problematic. Why assume that mind is not a wholly physical phenomena? One would have to show why physical stuff leaves no room for mind.

I don't see good reasons to assume otherwise.

Aside from the various "how much does your mind weigh?" objections, let me give you my favorite argument:
If brains and minds are the same thing, then necessarily, if two people are talking about their minds, they're talking about their brains (and vice-versa). Ancient peoples were able to meaningfully talk about their minds and mental states, however, ancient peoples had no idea how the brain worked. The Greeks thought it cooled the blood. If brains and minds are the same thing, it follows that those ancient peoples who were meaningfully talking about their minds and mental states were also meaningfully talking about their brains and brain states, which is an absurdity.