My contention is that consciousness is easy. Auto response to proto awareness to rudimentary awareness, to basic awareness to increasingly complex awareness to what we call consciousness, which relies on a brain and memory, and in the case of humans: the development of complex language which allowed for complex concepts like our search for the truth, and concept of self. — Ron Hooft

My understanding of consciousness follows a similar line of reasoning. It is generally thought that the how of consciousness is the easy problem to solve. What is hard to solve is the why? I have a theory that proposes a solution to this.

With all due respect, this is the main problem I have with your theory - by excluding what transcends this ‘boundary of life and death’, your understanding of reality is limited — Possibility

But at this stage I find the theory itself insufficient as an explanation of consciousness, because it cannot posit a perspective outside of consciousness itself. — Possibility

I was referring to the issue at hand. Of course my theory exists within a larger theory. As a philosopher you would like to see it in this context, understandably, but even in its cut down version my web site stats tell me nobody has read the theory completely - average time spent being 3mins. :sad:

My friend works in HR for a large corp. Most of her time is spent resolving disputes that arise due to the limitations of email communication, so we will inevitably incur similar difficulties.

As I devolve emotion in my imagination, it becomes just a bias to be one way rather then another. This is still fuzzy in my mind, but it seems to be linked to the first instruction in DNA - live and do not die. Emotions provide impetus to life, P-Zombies do not posses them, Emotions seem to be a force, and as such we cannot manipulate them, rather they manipulate us.
My philosophy is most closely aligned with monistic idealism, where information is fundamental. And the first bit of information informing the big bang was not entirely reasonable. A reasonable big bang would send particles in all directions and they would continue on to infinity away from big bang center to eternity never to meet again. The information had a flaw, or a kink in it, that created a biased information. And biased information is emotion.
The bias exerted a pull on the particles, much like a car pulling to the side, such that the particles curved in on themselves in orbit and developed spin. As the universe fell in on itself in this way it had to self resolve - self organize. This process of self organisation created consciousness. The universe became an evolving process of self organisation that has at its root a bias to resist the zero point energy state.
Word for word, this is also my definition of human consciousness.
The earth was thus determined. Life creating consciousness mutated from the universal consciousness that determined the earth. The domino fell with a skew to the side and life evolved, where consciousness drives evolution by mutation, and natural selection selects. Consciousness is always mutating - every instance is unique, as you also believe. But the flawed fundamental instruction, the first bit of information that informed the universe, and what caused the universe, and consciousness, is preserved in everything in the universe, it is fundamental. It may be the first instruction in DNA - live and do not die! and it is emotional information, in the form of a bias - and emotional information creates our consciousness - only, and always, but not how Barrett sees it.
Nothing dies in this universe, it just falls to a different level of consciousness.
Universal consciousness is a far cry from human consciousness, it is just evolving, and not aware of anything. The laws of physics describe a biased universe.
That is the big picture, in one breath, as I understand it. It is theory upon theory, there is little here that I can prove, it is a belief. and as a belief, I feel uncomfortable positing it. But you sort of asked.

So from this perspective I hope you can understand why I can not accept Barrett's interpretation. We should just disagree on this issue, and leave it at that.

I wanted to ask you about a thread about six months ago, where you posted : "The learner is the universe itself, and the learned is the universe." Given we are talking about a situation in consciousness / mind, how did you know this?

I kind of agree with what you said, and suspect that this information is buried deep in DNA information or somewhere. If the fundamental bit of information is preserved in everything, so might be other information. I understand this is all highly speculative stuff, if you would rather not go into it.

In this instance, the human mind that you are thinking about is a concept itself.
You are reflecting on a concept, in my opinion, it just so happens to be your mind.

If you are saying here that all inanimate matter falls to zero point energy without resistance, then we may struggle to reach an understanding. — Possibility

Yes, I will have to rephrase this. I was really referring to a low energy state - the boundary of life and death. Classical mechanics has no such theory. Ground state is inadequate. Zero point energy is good, but then people focus on quantum rather then classical matter - which is understandable.

The way I see it, your death pain / pleasure life spectrum is just a small part of this — Possibility

Yes - I am only interested in the matter that jumps to life.

I agree that each experience is unique, but NOT that each is unrelated nor self-contained. It is only possible to isolate an experience as a conceptual structure in the mind. — Possibility

Possibly I've overstated this, but you seem to agree with the general picture. The rest of your paragraph dose not disagree with me, however you characterize it idiomatically, very different to my own style, but I like it. I've steered clear of the computational aspects of consciousness as I believe they have been described quite well - as per your own description.

Barrett’s theory of emotions might surprise you. The body feels not emotion but affect - the brain processes this affect through the conceptual systems as an emotion concept by recognising interoceptive patterns from previous experiences — Possibility

summarised efficiently in the interoceptive network — Possibility

The problem that reason has with emotion is that it can not describe it. If the interoceptive network processes emotions then emotions would be describable by reason - they can not be. they must be experienced and their affect felt. - body wide. The other problem is that the end construction must be self interested - ie pleasurable. The interoceptive network is primed to construct self interested constructions because in the end they resolve to a pain / pleasure spectrum - in my view.

What gets forgotten here is that it is cellular complexity that has created all this stuff. It doesn't seem to use a reasonable means of self organistion - it had no brain. Through evolution it created a brain to facilitate the triangulation and mechanics necessary for hearing and eyesight, etc and subsequently reason grew. But the whole extracellular / brain system has to slot into the underlying biological system somehow, and inform the underlying system in terms it understands. What I postulate creates a model that dose this.

From the perspectives that you have characterized, the hard problem of consciousness can not be solved. For this reason the paradigm is likely false.

You would need to describe a self loading mouse trap - I think I have somewhat done that. It is far more energy efficient then what Barrett is describing ( but I'll continue my research ).

The beauty of my theory is that it is easily provable, or negated by the end user. In the OP is an instance of consciousness. I am postulating this is the state of consciousness roughly at all times - sometimes the information source is memory rather then external. There are many other things going on of course, and the mechanics of it are exceedingly complex, and as you point out, but essentially this is what is happening. The related qualia articulation, I take to be a sort of logic. I think everybody has the ability to introspect and reflect on this. Thus prove or negate the theory.

I don't expect many converts of course - it is a monism, and we are talking consciousness. But it is a viable contender, currently rough around the edges, but difficult to reasonably dismiss. Very easy to dismiss off hand as most people will, and as it predicts.

I like to make unassailable logical loops that describe real world situations, and one funny one is that it will be consciousness that decides what consciousness is :smile: If you can see the humor in this - regardless of the theory it will be the end user who decides.

FYI: much of this is still speculative, but interesting.

We have no solid reason to believe that there is anything happening in nature at all with no consciousness associated with it. — petrichor

Yep, this is how I understand it:

Zero point energy is the divide. Living matter resists zero point energy with consciousness, whilst non living matter falls to zero point energy to unconsciousness. Consciousness is a system of self organization with a bias to resist zero point energy ( death ) at its core . Every moment of life is a moment of self organization, for all of life - always!

Value spectrums such as affect (pleasure/pain), morality (right/wrong) or light (black/white) described in these binaries create false dichotomies that suggest little more than a linear complexity to the relation. — Possibility

Hi, thanks for your valuable input.
Consider this:
Inanimate matter falls to zero point energy, whilst life resists zero point energy. In death we fall to zero point energy. This resistance to zero point energy is uniform amongst living creatures. Given genetic information leads to life, it means DNA contains this common bit of information. The information is to resist zero point energy - live and do not die. This seems to be the first bit of information in DNA. Compare this to the Death Pain / pleasure Life spectrum.
I see it as something fundamental, not something relating to belief systems, or sanity only. However it also orients us in our personally constructed reality, belief system or sanity. It may be as you say:a sufficiently accurate relational structure that enables us to align our positions according to these value/potential spectrums, like we do with global time-zone

There is no way to evaluate two unrelated experiences other then as values on a common measure for qualitative information. Qualitative information is essential for reality orientation. Each experience is self contained, experienced only once, so unique and unrelated, To ascertain its quality we must compare it to other experiences, and the only way to do this is by assigning the experience a value on the PPS. Once the experience has a value, we can compare the experience to other experiences. From this process we orient ourselves in reality, via an emotional gradient.
A PPS value grounds us in reality by telling us whether the experience is ordinary or extraordinary, painful or pleasurable. Reason alone cannot do this – every moment would require a theory of the moment to resolve - can you imagine comparing every moment to every other moment in life reasonably? I don't think we would have the computational power to do so even once, let alone all the time.

also : Having faith in this construction, I realized that the qualia of a moment could not be stored in memory. We cannot recall an emotion any more then we can describe an emotion. We must recall the memory that gave rise to the emotion, and experience the emotion on the PPS afresh every time. Which is interesting - as this way the memory and associated emotion would likely be different, as present circumstances add their qualia to the moment of recollection. When I introspect and recall my first heartbreak and this time smile, this would seem to be true.

This view prejudiced my willingness to explore what Lisa Fieldman Barrett had to offer as she speaks of emotions being made by brains. I will check her out, but if you agree with the above statements, then you will understand that brains are not handling emotions - the emotions are being felt body wide via values resolved to a death / pain / pleasure / life spectrum - an emotional gradient.

Of course the PPS may well reside in the brain, but note how there are two languages of consciousness - Reason and emotion, they are not miscible. They are not languages that belong to one system. A computer could not work with two different languages unless there was something in between to translate the languages
Why would one system have two languages? It doesn't make sense. It makes sense that there are two systems each with their own language. A brain based extracellular consciousness using reason and a biological intracellular consciousness using emotion. With a PPS translating in between - this makes sense, to me at least. :lol:

Your input and scrutiny are really appreciated. But please understand you are dealing with a really stubborn sort of person. :smile: I'll look forward to your reply. Its beer o'clock here.

the mind is the limit of perception so you can't prove all is not mind. — Chaz

This is not solipsism, it is idealism, so long as you understand that others exist and there is a physical world, which everybody interprets slightly differently.

In my view, you go with the logic, otherwise you may end up in fairy land. There is a logic to your sentence, that is difficult to ignore.

I think there are facts such as 2 + 2 = 4 that do not rely on our emotional response to them. — Andrew4Handel

We still have an emotion - it is just a neutral one.

Now if 2+ 2 = 4 , was pleasurable - that would be the life! :smile:

"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do as well as to determine what we shall do."
Jeremy Bentham 1789

Thanks for getting back to me.
Are you using WIX? If so we are probably using the same template. :smile:

I realized very early on, that a theory of consciousness was a bit of a losers game. New knowledge on the periphery of consciousness can be adjusted to in time, but new knowledge of consciousness itself is very challenging indeed. It occurred to me that a smart cookie would leave consciousness alone and pursue something else . But by the time I understood this, I was already hooked and determined to reach some sort of understanding - at least for myself.

You seem to have taken a more sensible approach, by spreading the risk, and understandably avoiding hard and fast conclusions. I have stuck my head out as I have confidence in the pain / pleasure spectrum ( and I have nothing to loose ), as being something reason bounces off all the time.
It occurred to me that this was a necessary aspect of reality orientation, and thus something consciousness was involved in all the time.

There is no way to evaluate two unrelated experiences other then as values on a common measure for qualitative information. Qualitative information is essential for reality orientation. Each experience is self contained, experienced only once, so unique and unrelated, To ascertain its quality we must compare it to other experiences, and the only way to do this is by assigning the experience a value on the PPS. Once the experience has a value, we can compare the experience to other experiences. From this process we orient ourselves in reality, via an emotional gradient.
A PPS value grounds us in reality by telling us whether the experience is ordinary or extraordinary, painful or pleasurable. Reason alone cannot do this – every moment would require a theory of the moment to resolve - can you imagine comparing every moment to every other moment in life reasonably? I don't think we would have the computational power to do so even once, let alone all the time.

( by reality, I mean the personally constructed kind, that includes values, meaning, god, etc not physical reality. )

Having faith in this construction, I realized that the qualia of a moment could not be stored in memory. We cannot recall an emotion any more then we can describe an emotion. We must recall the memory that gave rise to the emotion, and experience it on the PPS afresh every time. Which is interesting - as this way the memory and associated emotion would likely be different, as present circumstances add their qualia to the moment of recollection. When I introspect and recall my first heartbreak and this time smile, this would seem to be true. :smile:

I would be very interested in your opinion on this and other matters if you are likewise inclined.

What's interesting is that it is easy to theoretically develop an organism that has a system built into its brain where it will move away from things which damage it, and move towards things which advantage it (lets say give it energy, such as food.) You do not need phenomenal experiences of pain and pleasure to perform this task at all. — Francis

We can build a mouse trap that something sets off, but what resets the mouse trap? As I devolve emotion, in my imagination, it becomes a simple bias akin to magnetism - a will to be one way rather then its opposite. Like the will to resist zero point energy - at this stage just a force, that later evolved in complexity to become an emotion.

For some reason, evolution found it better to do it with phenomenal experiences within humans and other mammals. I have my own theory — Francis

We share DNA with bacteria, microbes react to painful stimuli. All life is one?
Why choose mammals?

Thanks for taking a look.
My greatest frustration is articulating the ideas, and finding a balance between sufficient explanation and wide accessibility, which I don't feel i've achieved. I have condensed 90 pages into 9, and lost a lot of detail in the process which must make it sound a little glib and simple.

I will take another look at Lisa Fieldman Barrett, as you suggest, and see if I can interpret her understanding from my model. Thanks again.

I have focused on pleasure here but ironically pain seems to be a more powerful informant. — Andrew4Handel

They are part of a pain pleasure spectrum. It is an emotional gradient. I have a theory of consciousness here if you wish to read more.

:up:

But does pleasure have a value in itself? — Andrew4Handel

Absolutely! At every moment we have an emotional state that corresponds to the information creating our consciousness at any given time. The emotional state has a value of being either painful or pleasurable, or something in between. This value orients us in our reality.

Everybody has a slightly different personally constructed interpretation of reality. We do not calculate the quality of our reality rationally, and compare it to every other moment of the day to ascertain its value - rather we feel the emotional value of the moment, and this tells us whether our present reality is painful or pleasurable, or something in between. Thus we are alerted to, and oriented in our reality via an emotional gradient.

This is the value of pleasure and all other emotions - they form an emotional gradient, that orients us in our personal reality, and they also provide impetus for behavior. If the current moment is painful we do something about it, If it is pleasurable we keep going.

We are a pleasure seeking, pain avoiding animal. We can not do anything about this as this is precisely what provides impetus to our behavior and, I believe, ultimately to life.

I found your website - very nice. There is a typo in point 4, consciousness, evolution, and four ideas. You are an enemy dualist, but I come in peace in the hope of some information. :victory: :smile:

Dualism relies on emergence, but I can't see how a system can emerge and displace the already existing system of self organization. The way I have interpreted it is that the emergent system sits on top of the existing system, with an emotional gradient connecting them. You must have considered something like this? If so, what were your reasons for dismissing it?

I know what you mean. I just stay focused on the philosophy. I think the trick is to try to keep it fairly impersonal and reasonable. Its difficult to ignore strong reason.

There are good people here. Very good thinkers who are worth staying for.
I have learnt a lot in my short time here. Don't let a few bad apples spoil the exprience for you.

I think the moderators just need to be aware of the fact that philosophy offends people because it refutes their positivity, and not seek to ban people merely because other people are getting emotional and offended. That is not a good enough reason. A skilled debater doesn't need to call people names, he can dislodge his opponent from the basis of his own premises. But this is enough, people get super emotional when this happens. They just can't believe it, and so they do the first thing that comes natural, try to demonize the person who is refuting them, to cast them in a negative light, as a villain, as a fiend, as a fanatic. Anything to sustain their denial and sense of identity which is attached to their belief. — JerseyFlight

I agree entirely, and would add. Ideas form beliefs, beliefs form belief systems, and belief systems form a sanity. If this is threatened, the emotional response is similar to a physical threat, in that the fight or flight reflex is triggered, and then reason goes out the window.

This is the difficulty of debate on this forum, I believe. We personally construct these belief systems, and have faith in them, and when they get knocked down it is painful. We know how personally painful it is, but we cannot know how painful it is for another. Some people feel very little pain, whilst others feel the slightest pain. For this reason, I tend to back off once I see the check mate in a couple of moves, as it is difficult to gage the stability of the opposing poster in a public forum, as a result the point is often not sufficiently made.

For this reason some rules of engagement would be useful, or at least a warning for new members, or a policy that everyone can agree on. Personally this risk element is what I find attractive about this forum. It makes me cautious about what I post, and sharpens my thoughts. And, as others have mentioned, being subjected to this risk, can result in surprisingly good new ideas.

I feel it is extremely poor form however, and well out of order, to try to ban somebody because your personal philosophy cannot reasonably stand up to theirs. That would be school yard bullying, in my opinion, not philosophy.

Yes, I agree with you. Further, this "affect regulation" capacity and origin has been studied at length by psychology. Super important area of knowledge. — JerseyFlight

Yes it is . I have a philosophical take on it hereI would appreciate you opinion if you find the time.

Re the topic at hand. I don't know what can be done , other then instituting some rules of engagement or such. You are probably referring to a particular incident of which I am not aware. But I have been subject to such situations myself, so understand. If reason cannot prevail there is not much point being here.

I vote for reason.

I'll try again. A highly emotional state will illicit a highly emotional response. Not that it is a justified response, but it is a typically human response.

The difficulty, as I see it, is in separating emotion from reason.
Reasonable discussion requires a levelheadedness, which can not be experienced in times of high emotion.

One can be emotional, what one cannot do, is use that emotion as an argument against (or to evade) a valid criticism. — JerseyFlight

I totally agree with and empathize with your position - but you can see the difficulty?

:up:

C) Some people are not dinosaurs — Alexis Schaffer

A) Some dinosaurs are people
B) All people are dinosaurs
D No dinosaurs are not people = dinosaurs are people

that leaves C as the one that dose not fit.

The unspoken claim is that "the objector's criticisms are false because they are based on emotion." But the most extraordinary thing is that those who are leveling this characterization are actually the ones making use of an emotional argument (or at the very least, a formal fallacy). — JerseyFlight

This is difficult, as only a philosophical zombie could argue unemotionally, but they wouldn't argue or do anything for that matter, as they would have no emotional impetus to do so.

Peer review and a forum such as this is useful precisely to test our emotionally underpinned ideas, against emotionally underpinned counter ideas. So conflict and emotional bias is unavoidable , in my opinion. But I think the better thinkers can rise above this to some extent, if not entirely.

Philosophies time in the sun on matters of mind is outdated and quickly becoming obsolete as we learn more. — Philosophim

I think it is philosophy's role to explore and introduce new ideas. I think it is easy to forget that the philosophers we quote and reference today were radicals in their time - with what must have seemed like crazy ideas, that upset the establishment. Thanks again

Thanks for taking an interest, I think neuroscience is dong a great job of mapping the brain so I steered clear of computational aspects of consciousness, and concentrated on the hard problem.

What impressed me was that there are two languages of consciousness - emotion and reason, but only one consciousness. Why would a system of self organisation have two languages? The languages are non- miscible. One language cannot describe the other. I concluded that there are two systems at play.
The cellular / biological system, and the neural / computational system - both systems of self organisation, one internal, and the other external. An emotional gradient seems to link them.


When I think of reality - it is such a variable construct, but it seems to occur when emotion agrees with reason, and that would agree with my model, and this is the aspect of the theory that is most interesting to me.

I've always believed emotions are a digest, or quick summary of the mind's state that alerts the consciousness. — Philosophim

I agree absolutely, and have concluded that it would be impossible to orient oneself in one's reality with reason alone. With reason alone, every moment would require a theory of the moment, but with emotion one can cut right through this and arrive at a self interested emotional position that is real every time! :smile: And this is an absolutely essential ability to posses. :sad:

Research into gradients is still pretty edgy, but there have been some gradients identified in the cerebral cortex, and other ares of the brain, so If they turn out to be emotionally driven, this would validate my theory.

Emotions have evolved into a complicated thing. I imagine that If one could devolve emotion, to their original state one would find a simple bias - to be one way, and not another. At their simplest, they seem like something reminiscent of a magnetic force, and this seems to be an essential component in the making of biological machine.

What are the predictions of your theory? — Francis

I've tried to put things together so as to explain how emotion provides impetus to behavior.
The theory would seem to predict that we can have greater control of our emotions, and to some extent this would seem to collapse the theory, but we cannot override emotions totally, we would then become P.zombies, and fall to zero point energy. Whether we are already at an optimal mix of emotion and reason I don't know.

In eastern philosophy ( yogic logic ), happiness and joy is not dependent entirely on external events.
Having a knowledge of a pain / pleasure spectrum that may be malleable if not entirely controllable, could be a benefit to many, in many different ways.

Apparently we can choose not to follow a gradient. — debd

Sorry i had something to attend to. I believe that is true - once we become aware of it, all the more so. Reason is still evolving and it may be more evolved in some people then others. In the case of the white blood cell, reason is not a possibility. Emotion may be a possibility as the impetus to behavior.

We are only aware of reason and emotion, as languages of consciousness. This dose not exclude other languages,in other organisms, but we do notice a response to painful stimuli even in the simplest of microbes.

it cannot choose whether or not to follow the gradient. — debd

This is true, but there is a system of information processing going on that is independent to some extent. We also are constrained in our ability to choose - do we have complete free will?

The issue is not whether I think a pack of blood is conscious - The issue is what provides impetus to life?

Hi, Your theory states that some animals are conscious, but not others. I wonder where you drew the line? How and why ? I also have a theory of consciousness, but could not draw this line. So I'm interested in your reasons for doing this.

exactly - it senses the presence of something and reacts appropriately. How do you sense without consciousness?
— Pop
Chemical stimuli. — Relativist

This is the typical nonsensical cliched response - kindly articulate how chemical stimuli processes information?

There is information processing going on.
Consciousness is a process of self organisation relative to sense mediated information.
This is true for an amoeba, as well as a human being. The only thing that varies is the complexity of information sensed and processed, and the mechanism doing it ( consciousness ).

The brains of all complex animals engage in this integrative function. I think it's a stretch to call it "consciousness" at every step of the way - but at any rate, you'd need define exactly what you mean my the term - specify specific functionality. — Relativist

As is stated in the theory that you skimmed: Consciousness is an evolving process of self organisation that has at its root a bias to resist the zero point energy state In humanity this is the fear of death, and I believe this evolved into the pain pleasure spectrum that I posit. Consciousness is endlessly variable and open ended - this is evident in it's expression - life and all of life's activities being its expression.

All living creatures are self learning and programming - all living creatures are involved in a process of self organisation - always! For this to occur there must be an information processing system to facilitates this, and It must have always been present - otherwise how could they self learn, program, and self organise in the first place?

We are getting into abiogenisis now, and of the many theories posited,all ( except god), agree that self organisation led to life. This is where I get my definition of consciousness from. This and the observation that life is biased to resist zero point energy. I have tested this definition against all moments of life, for all creatures, that I can think of and concluded it works. All moments of life are a process of self organisation. In humanity these moments are described in the instance of consciousness in the OP.

Reason could not exist at the beginning of life, reason requires a brain, but emotional gradients could exist and may be the foundation of self organisation. By emotional, I do not mean emotional as we know it - I'm referring to a simple bias to be one way as apposed to another.


You previously mentioned an amoeba. A white blood cell is a very similar organism featured in the video above.It uses a gradient to track down pathogens. The process is described here

.

How does a computer sense when I hit the space bar? — Kenosha Kid

In this instance it is you who are hitting the space bar, and initiating a programmed mechanistic process.
Conscious creatures process information independently, and choose when to press their own buttons.
In order to do this there must exist an information processing system, no matter how primitive it may be.

It is thought AI will become conscious via programs that are self learning and programming.
All living creatures are self learning and programming - this is the issue that needs to be addressed!

Let's say you go on to donate blood. Your blood is then packed with appropriate preservatives and stored until needed or till the cells degenerate. The RBCs and WBCs present in the pack of the blood sense their immediate environment and reacts to maintain their internal homeostasis as long as they can (about a month for RBCs). Will you consider this pack of blood to be conscious? — debd

Red blood cells are the only human cells that lack DNA, so not conscious . White blood cells however are a whole different story. They act independently in the body chasing down pathogens via a process of gradient tracking, as per this video:

Please note the multiple stages of information processing and action.

it senses the presence of nourishment and consumes i — Relativist

exactly - it senses the presence of something and reacts appropriately. How do you sense without consciousness?

This reflects biochemical reaction, — Relativist

Of course there is biochemistry going on, just like in our own consciousness

More complex life-forms have more sophisticated sensory apparatus that enable more effective interaction with the environments — Relativist

This is true but they all started with a simple consciousness, which evolved.Or are you saying consciousness is something that just pops into existence?

At what point can you say something becomes conscious? Where can you draw the line? I don't think you can - life and consciousness evolved together. The philosophical zombie argument tells us so - without consciousness it could not be alive. If this is true for a philosophical zombie - then it is also true for an amoeba.

:up:

It was from a thread I was going to post, but I noticed this. Please translate your comment?

Descartes: I think, therefore I am
Lichtenburg: Thinking is occurring.

George suggested that Rene went 'too far' with the Cogito and that he presupposed that the 'I' exists. Who is right? — Tom343

Neither.
I am consciousness - trumps them both. :cool:

I will check out your version. My version also varies from the mainstream view, there is too much to unload here, but I believe the laws of physics describe a biased universe that wants to be just so.The universe has the freedom of infinite possibility including the freedom not to be, but in the local universe, at least, it insists on one way of being - fortunately for us. However this seems to display a bias, and a bias is emotional information. I have also come to the understanding that consciousness is always composed of emotional information, and to be a consciousness can be composed of nothing other then emotional information. So this leads me to question whether unemotional information can even exist? I have written information is fundamental - but I strongly suspect emotional information is fundamental.

Information is completely mental — Gregory

What is DNA other then information? How dose a causal chain work?

At least panpsychism has the existence of qualia assumed just unkown how it combines — khaled

The way I understand it : information determines matter, and subsequently the matter expresses the information that determined it - this we call qualia. Put another way : information informs matter how to be, so what matter expresses in its form is the information that determined it.

Information is absolutely fundamental.
Information entangles energy to create matter, and subsequently all that the matter can do is express this information via its form, and qualia.
Everything exists as a pattern of entangled information, energy, and matter. And it seems, the more complex the entanglement the more conscious the matter is.

This is a difficult question to contain to a short post. Emotions are an element of consciousness, and my best bet is that consciousness exists on a substrate of quantum entanglement - perhaps in the patterns and permutations of quantum arrangement - maybe in cellular microtubules as proposed by Roger Penrose and co. I dont believe it can exist as some mystical property separate from materials somehow floating in the ether, but can it be said that the quantum world is material? With tunneling, superposition,entanglement, etc - this is not the behavior we normally associate with materials. We are limited to the words available to describe it, so perhaps immaterial fits best, but perhaps it should have its own separate category?

The neurotransmitters you mention are not in themselves an emotion, but rather signalers of emotion, in my opinion.

I suppose emotions add another layer to experience, over and above basic comprehension. I don't see how it's related to empiricism though? — TheMadFool

Empiricism dose not acknowledge emotions role in experience whatsoever.
In light of the philosophical zombie argument, where emotion is essential to consciousness and experience, this seems incoherent.

Edit:
Empiricism posits that all knowledge is derived from experience, but it dose not understand experience. It fails to take into account the role of emotion in experience.

We are talking about empiricism. Back then they did not know about the Philosophical zombie argument. They didn't understand that emotion is an essential element of experience. They didn't take emotion into account. Not at all - as if it were possible to have an experience without it.