Which is better?

1. Hey, here's a judge, she's a black woman?

2. Hey, here's a black woman, she's a judge? — Agent Smith

I don't know but I do find it strange that Mrs. Jackson doesn't seem to have a problem defining "black" but does have a problem defining 'woman". Is Biden sure he picked a black woman for the Supreme Court?

In Jackson's befuddlement when asked the question she seemed at least understand that it has to do with biology as she she said, "I'm not a biologist."

If making consciousness primary is solipsistic, how is a naturalism that claims the existence of entities independent of awareness of them not also a solipsism? — Joshs

But that is what I'm trying to ask you. If consciousness/experience is all there is then are you only referring to your consciousness/experience? Where is your consciousness/experience relative to mine? If you're saying that consciousness exists everywhere are the boundaries of everywhere your own consciousness, or is there consciousness outside of your own? Do other minds only exist within the boundaries of your own consicousness/experience or are they separate from yours? If the latter, then what is the medium that divides one mind from another?

After all , this alleged ‘independence’ of things is always only perceived through conscious construal. There’s a certain radical connectness between the subjective and objective poles of experiencing which can never be transcended. It wouldn’t be a ‘substance’ we’re talking about, since that brings us back to the assumption of entities ‘outside of’ warner’s of them. — Joshs

Was my mind independent of yours before we started our discussion?

It would instead be be a relational point of view that is primary. — Joshs

Then relationships would be primary and not consciousness.

The why questions go to formal and final cause. — apokrisis

It seems to me that "why" questions could be just as easily asking about causality. Formal and final causes are illusory in that the goal in the mind in the present is what is causing something to happen. Goals don't exist in the future, but are visions of the future in the present moment and it is always the state-of-affairs in the present that determine the future, not the other way around. — Harry Hindu

How does a particle know which path between two points is the shortest, even before it sets out on its journey? How can nature be ruled by the finality of least action before anything has begun to happen? — apokrisis

Again you're simply making the case that knowledge causally precedes any use of that knowledge - that knowledge of the shortest path causes the particle to move a certain way and in a particular direction so I don't see how this could be an example of a final cause. It could be an example of a formal cause in that the knowledge some particle has is part of what it is to be that particle and that causes it to behave in certain ways, but we're still talking about basic causation of causes preceding their effects. Aristotle's four causes are merely multiple facets of the same thing.

But I talk of constraints and habits rather than laws and rules when I am speaking for my own particular pansemiotic position on the Cosmos. I emphasise the immanence and self-organisation of Nature and point to how talk of laws and rules indeed falls into the usual dualistic bind of transcendent accounts. — apokrisis

Constraints and habits = laws and rules.

He has elaborated a metaphysics for a radical neurophenomenology that is not a neutral monism placing consciousness and naturalism on an equal footing , but a grounding of naturalism in consciousness. Consciousness must be primary, since all our objective science are activities within and of consciousness. “…experience is not one node in an intellectual graph among other nodes; it is not one box in a functionalist diagram among
other boxes. Experience is the lived origin and byproduct of any process, including the
intellectual process. Experience is all that there is at this very moment when I am writing and you are reading. Indeed, experience is the lived background of the very
intellectual inference that there is something beyond experience.” — Joshs

I think we need to be careful as to not become a hammer that sees everything as a nail. I don't understand what it would mean to say that consciousness is primary. Consciousness seems to complex to be primary. What exactly do you mean by, "consciousness"? How is saying "consciousness is primary" or "experience is all there is" not simply implying that solipsism is the case?

I think that the substance of consciousness is primary and consciousness is a complex arrangement of that substance (neutral monism in that it is neither physical nor mental). Think of the substance as like an analog signal and consciousness as a digitization of the analog signal - like making particles/objects out of waves. A view (first-person) emerges from the way the information is organized and as a relationship between body and environment. As a relationship between the two we find it difficult, if not impossible, to separate the experience(r) from what is experienced.

For me, "naturalism" is simply the idea that things exist and they exist in particular ways. Whatever is the case is natural and how it changes is natural. All explanations that attempt to describe or symbolize the way things are are natural explanations. Even god would be natural if one were to exist and has a causal influence on everything else. If solipsism were the case, then solipsism would be the natural state of affairs.

That is what quantum indeterminism describes - the impossibility of classically exact knowledge of a system's initial conditions, coupled to the possibility of also getting arbitrarily close. — apokrisis

So is quantum indeterminism describing knowledge of a system, or the system apart from any knowledge of it? If the former, then is quantum indeterminism in the field of neurology, or if the latter a field in physics?

How does a particle know which path between two points is the shortest, even before it sets out on its journey? How can nature be ruled by the finality of least action before anything has begun to happen? — apokrisis

I don't know how a particle knows anything. So again, is QM a theory of knowledge or physics?

I don't understand how nature is ruled by anything. Humans create rules as general descriptions of the basis of some observation. Rules did not exist before nature began to happen. Nature happens and humans use general rules to help them make predictions for similar circumstances.

You seem to be engaged in anthropomorphizing nature and particles.

Physics just plugs this global finality in as a law. And it uses integration - inverse differentiation - to make the calculation. It is then silent on how all this fits into a view of reality as being merely the sum of its mechanical (ie: material + efficient) causes. — apokrisis

Physics is also effectively silent on the role of the observer, or more specifically - the conscious observation of such things - as if physicists have direct access to the processes they are attributing laws to.

This is why the nonlocality in quantum mechanics, and the principle of least action that grounds physics in general, are such a metaphysical problem for the reductionist point of view. — apokrisis

Seems to me that reducing everything down to QM, thermodynamics, trinities and semiotics would have similar issues. QM also has the problem of not integrating with macro-style physics.

If you could set up exactly the same circumstances twice, the outcome ought to be exact. But because you can't, you can only get arbitrarily close to making history repeat. — apokrisis

Arbitrarily meaning based on the particular goal in the mind at the moment. In using generalities to make predictions of future outcomes we often aren't concerned with circumstances that don't affect the outcome that we are looking to use to achieve some goal. Like I said before, information exists everywhere causes leave effects. In interpreting your use of language, I could be interested in knowing where you are from, what your level of education is with the language you are using, or simply in what you are trying to say, depending on my goal. In trying to interpret what you are trying to say, I'm ignoring the causes of where you are from and your level of education has on the way you are using some language. I'm only focused on your idea that you are intending to communicate to me.


I remember this discussion I had with Marchesk a while back:
in talking about Sara Walker's ideas about the relationship between biology, chemistry and physics: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/01/13/79-sara-imari-walker-on-information-and-the-origin-of-life/

Thus the Standard Model is based on the emergent biological information abstraction. Sara mentions it being a loop between our probing regularities at tiny scales and the biology that produced the abstraction used to understand it. But this loop is not included in the Standard Model. It's similar in some ways to the observer problem in QM. It's a recursive problem.

She says the desire is to reduce biology to physics, but physics (as a field of human knowledge) emerges from biology. — Marchesk

Seems like you could say the same thing about biology. The question is whether or not the scales and levels of the universe are epistemological or ontological. — Harry Hindu

Yes. And both the changing of the metric and real particles moving asymmetrically (thermodynamically, irreversibly) constitute time. — EugeneW

Right. So change constitutes time. Measuring time involves comparing one change with another, like the change of a virtual particle's state vs the change of a real particle's state. Which change you choose to measure by is arbitrary, just as measuring length and mass.

They don't oscillate in time but constitute time themselves. If you hold a virtual clock beside it though, you would see the hand of that clock go back and forth. — EugeneW

Again, we're simply talking about comparing one change with another when measuring time. But you're not measuring time. You're measuring change. Just as length is a comparison of two objects in one dimension, time is the comparison of change in two objects (in another dimension).

Time cannot exist without change
— Harry Hindu

But only in space they can change. — EugeneW

Space changes too.

In other words things change relative to each other. The relationship between one change and another is time.
— Harry Hindu

In other words, things can oscillate in time, like virtual particles in the vacuum, or have a timelike direction, like virtual particles turned real. — EugeneW

I don't know what "in time" means. Oscillations are changes. How fast (how much time) does one thing oscillate? You have to compare it to another change to find out. Time is the comparison of change. The direction of some change only manifests itself when comparing the change to another change.

Yeah. The how questions are questions about material and efficient causality. The why questions go to formal and final cause. — apokrisis

It seems to me that "why" questions could be just as easily asking about causality. Formal and final causes are illusory in that the goal in the mind in the present is what is causing something to happen. Goals don't exist in the future, but are visions of the future in the present moment and it is always the state-of-affairs in the present that determine the future, not the other way around.

It's the search for a causal account. Every particular must be the product of something more general. — apokrisis

The general is the illusion that other events can be the same as another event and therefore lead to the same effects. Similar states-of-affairs lead to similar effects, not the same effects.

There’s a reason why we have two words.
— Possibility

What’s the reason? — Xtrix

For what reason does a language have synonyms?

Can you be conscious without being aware of anything? Can you be aware of anything without being conscious as well? Can you report anything that you are not either aware or conscious of?

Some will use examples of dreaming and hallucinating to distinguish between being aware and being conscious, but it seems that the distinction isn't between being aware or being conscious, rather the distinction lies in the interpretation of what it is that you are both conscious and aware of. Interpreting a hallucination to be an awareness/conscious of something outside of your head vs inside your head. In hallucinating you are aware/conscious of something but not sure if what you are aware/conscious of is located outside of your head or inside.

This argument fails if time is assume to go forward only. If it goes up and down, as before the unidirectional inflation, spawning the real from the virtual, time can have a beginning. As it must have a beginning. If this weren't the case, we would observe chaos only. — EugeneW

In other words things change relative to each other. The relationship between one change and another is time.

Time can't exist without space. — EugeneW

Time cannot exist without change.

Obviously, time had a beginning. If not, the universe would be in the chaotic, fleeting state of chaos, accelerating away towards infinity. — EugeneW

What if there is more to the universe than there appears to be? What if there is more than one universe?

Warren Weaver: The word information, in this theory, is used in a special sense that must not be confused with its ordinary usage. In particular, information must not be confused with meaning. https://www.panarchy.org/weaver/communication.html — Daemon

So maybe you can summarize or quote the part of the article that information and meaning are not the same thing because the way people use the terms indicates that they are the same thing. In saying that tree rings mean the age of the tree, we are saying that the tree rings carry information about the age of the tree. And when we ask what something means, we are asking about the causes of the effects that we observe. In asking what someone means by their use of words, we are asking what their idea is that they are trying to communicate (the cause of the words appearing on the screen).

Information isn't everywhere in the universe, it's in minds. It isn't in the tree stump. Your own example partly acknowledges that, in the way you have the observer come along and look at the tree rings. The information is in the mind of the observer. In the tree, there are only the rings.

If you think the information is doing something in the tree, tell us what it is. — Daemon

Right, so it's not that I didn't understand your argument. You didn't understand mine.

As I said, information is the relationship between causes and their effects. Do you agree that causes and effects are mind-independent? Do you agree that when we say that the tree rings mean the age of the tree, we are saying that the tree rings carry information about the age of the tree. And the tree rings carry information about the tree not as a result of what some human did, but what the tree did. The tree rings would mean the age of the tree even if no one looked at them, because tree rings exist as a result of how the tree grows, not because someone looked at them.

Information is not what comes about as a means of interpretation. It is what is interpreted, and what makes some bit of information valuable (values being a mental object and not something that exists apart from minds) is the present goal in the mind.

So you don't understand my point?

I thought I made my point. If you would like to make another argument, go ahead.

I argue in my link that reality is necessarily not contradictory (i.e. an impossible world). And our maps certainly can and do contain contradictions, some of which I mention in the first sentence of my previous post. — 180 Proof

Contradictions are a misuse of language, or if you want to use maps, are a misuse of maps.

Some people claim that contradictions follow the rules of some language, but only when you forget the rule that language refers to things or events in reality (which includes our minds) (which like you said is necessarily not contradictory).

Can you please tell me what exactly goes through your mind when, for example, I tell you to conceive (is this even the right word/concept?) the following:

1. Square & Not square (easy)
2. A quark & Not quark (hard) — Agent Smith

To me both are impossible. In trying to imagine a square & no square I picture a square and then picture a circle, but they both cannot appear in the same instance and in the same mental space unless they overlap, but then aren't the same object. The same for quark/not quark.

Why is it a different matter? If the neural impulses are not information until interpreted, why isn't it the same for DNA?

And where is the interpreting subject in each of these cases? Interpretation is something carried out by minds. Instructions, information and interpretation are metaphors when we are talking about DNA. The genetic process is carried out mindlessly. — Daemon

Yes, genetic processes are carried out mindlessly, but information is mind-independent. Information exists everywhere causes leave effects. Take tree rings in a tree stump. The tree rings develop over time as a result of how the tree grows throughout the year. When an observer comes along and cuts down the tree and observes the tree rings and investigates other trees and forms a theory about what the tree rings are they discover that they are a result of how the tree grows and that each ring signifies a year in the tree's age. The observer did not make up the information. It is there in how the tree grows, and is there independent of any mind. Minds only come along after the fact and either correctly or incorrectly interpret the information that is already there.

This works for objects of perception, for real objects in the world which affect our sensibility. We know this from the fact we sometimes are affected by objects but don’t know what that object is. So....we are aware of an actual sensation but also conscious that what we are aware of, could be anything, so has a level of potentiality. — Mww

To vague to be useful. Give an example of being affected by an object but don't know what that object is.

I can think of blind-sight patients but the sensation they are aware of is their own reaction to something that they are neither aware of nor conscious of. They are never aware of the object, only their reaction to it, which goes back to my description of causation - that they conclude by the process of thinking that their reaction indicates that something is there, but they don't know what it could be, which is different than something appearing in consciousness in which you have no prior experience of, which comes back to the type of thinking that is interpreting sensations that are in consciousness. You can only think in sensory forms, so if there is no form in consciousness (as in blind-sight patients) then there is nothing to think about. The only form (sensation) that appears is their own reaction to something that isn't there. Tree rings are the effect. How the tree grows throughout the year and how many years it has being growing is the cause. Information is the relationship between the two.

Can someone please contradict himself/herself and tell us what's going on inside his/her head? — Agent Smith

No one can as it would require one to hold something in the mind while at the same time not holding it in the mind. Contradictions are essentially a misuse of language.

That which sees can't itself be seen. Ergo, that which sees doesn't exist. — Agent Smith

Then there is no such thing as seeing? Let's forget about minds for a minute. Colors and shapes exist, right?

Minds exist. Minds are not perceivable and thus, as far as Berkeley is concerned, cannot be conceived of (for our imaginations can work only on what our sensations provide). But they exist and Berkeley affirms their existence. We know of them by reason, not sense. — Bartricks

How do you know when you are reasoning and when you are not if not by sensation? What form does your reasoning take as opposed to being irrational if not some sensation?

Different things. You can be aware of conscious experiences. This awareness is not a conscious experience. Awareness is conscious, but consciousness is conscious being. You can be aware of a conscious being without the awareness being a conscious being.
So I can be aware of red. That awareness is not an experience but an observation of. The observation of red has no color. The consciousness of red is red. — EugeneW

Thanks for moving the conversation past what is intellectually capable of.

Red only exists in your head. Color does not exist in the world. So by being aware of red, are you not being aware of the contents of consciousness? How does being aware of red allow you to be aware of apples that are not red, but ripe? Causation - the relationship between causes and their effects is information.

So you are aware (informed) of the ripeness of the apple by being conscious of a red apple. You can be aware (informed) of other people's thoughts by being conscious of their behaviors (which includes making verbal utterances and drawing scribbles).

And it is a dialectic non-starter to fail to grasp that talking about a thing is the only way to objectively represent it. Of course I talk about thinking in terms of nouns. How else would I?

As for the rest....(Sigh) — Mww

Sigh. Thoughts are nouns. Thinking is a verb. I fail to see how scribbles that are experienced just like everything else are objective representations of things that are experienced.

If I can't understand your position because you are being inconsistent and intellectually lazy then your objective representations probably aren't objective at all but a result of the bubble you've chose to live in.

Being conscious of thoughts is not the same as being aware of objects, hence being aware of thoughts says nothing more than being conscious of them. — Mww

You seem to be confusing imagining with thinking. Imagining is a type of thinking. Interpreting sensory data is also a type of thinking which is the type I was referring to when making my point.

I is strange that you talk of thoughts and awareness as if they are objects (nouns). Are you aware that you are aware of objects? You must be aware of the thing you are talking about (awareness or objects) or else what would you be talking about?

If you know that objects are made of atoms but you never observe atoms are you aware of atoms? What about being aware of another person's thoughts by means of their behaviors? If we can be aware of objects by how light reflects off them and how they vibrate air molecules that we hear, then why not atoms and thoughts?

Then you're a naive realist?
— Harry Hindu

No. — Philosophim

But you described a world as it appears in consciousness - as if the world is as it appears for you - that the objects you perceive have all the properties that you perceive them to have (like being physical).

What does it mean to be physical?
— Harry Hindu

To be made up of matter and energy. And I will return the question. What does it mean to be non-physical? What evidence do you have of it existing? — Philosophim

I don't use those terms, "physical" and "non-physical" because they don't make any sense. What we currently understand to be "matter" is the states or processes of "matter" on ever smaller scales. You can never point to a particle when particles are described as being the relationship or interaction of smaller particles ad infinitum. It's process, or relationships, or information all the way down.

You've made a common mistake of equating the outside observation of something, to the experience of being something. Find any other person in the world. Do you know what it is like to be them? No, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Do you know what it feels like for them to hear the beating of their own heart? No, but that doesn't mean they don't have a heart, that it doesn't beat in their body, and that they can't feel what that's like.

If I open up a brain and look at it, I don't know what its like to BE that brain. You seem to think there should be a picture show going on in there, which is silly. What we imagine in our heads isn't light. Its the communication of hundreds and thousands of electrons at incredibly high speeds. — Philosophim

Why would you think that I would think that there is a picture show (of all things) going on inside a brain if you don't have a picture show going on inside of yours? How would you have come to that idea that there might be a picture show in someone's head, or that others might think the same if there wasn't something like a picture show going on in someone's head?

This is the point I've been making: That there appears to be a distinction between "being" (the term you used) and how "being" is observed. I don't know if I really find that term, "being" useful because I believe that I am being more than just my brain. I can feel my toes maybe more intimately than I can see them. After all, feeling my toes as opposed to just seeing them is what makes me identify them as my toes.

It seems to me that the "being" in your sense of it, is the same as the act of observing, as if being is the act of observing. This would also explain why you believe that others might think that a picture show is going on inside brains. If "being" has an ontological existence, then why can't we observe it in others? Maybe because naive realists believe that the properties that are perceived are the properties that really exist independently of your observation (your being). In other words, naive realists are confusing the map with the territory, or the measurement with what is measured.

How the computer works is much the same. If I open up a hard drive, do I see windows running? If I open up the ethernet wires, can I see youtube and sound being streamed over? And yet if you told a programmer that this is evidence that the computer's functionality is a non-physical process, they would laugh at you. — Philosophim

I wouldn't say that it is non-physical. I'd say that it is information. Since information is the relationship between cause and effect, the information in the ethernet wires is different than the information that displays on the screen because it requires further processing to appear on the screen. What information is relevant to your goals at any moment will be the cause of the effect that you focus your attention on. So when you see Youtube on your screen, you are more interested in the video itself and it's cause (what the video is about (when and where it was recorded and what was recorded), not how it came to appear on your computer monitor). Information exists everywhere causes leave effects. Your present goals is what determines what information is useful at any given moment. I could glean from your use of language what you are currently thinking or where you might be from and your level of education in the language you are using, depending on my goal at the moment. All that information is there as a result of those causes, but what information I deem valuable is the bits that promote or inhibit my present goal.

The problem is, sometimes people believe that if they don't understand how something fully works, they can make up things about how it works. You can't. You can't introduce things that don't exist into a system. You can't say, "I don't understand how youtube can be on my screen, yet not be in my computer when I look at it," and think your made up idea that it must be a non-physical process has any merit. — Philosophim

You're conflating two different processes (Youtube being on your screen and being in your computer). Looking at one is not looking at the other so I would never say that. What I have been saying is more like why I see Youtube in your computer as electronic boards and circuits, but the computer sees it as a picture show.

Back to the brain for a second, when we physically and chemically alter the brain, people's experience of BEING a brain changes. We've confirmed that time and again. Go get drunk, then tell me that your consciousness exists on a higher level beyond what physical alcohol can touch. Go read the evidence of anti-psychotic drugs, hallucinegens, and amazing records of brain damage like loss of long term memory, the inability to mentally see colors, comprehend words, etc, then tell me their consciousness exists on some plane beyond the physical. — Philosophim

But that is my question: why there is such a stark difference between observing brains that are drunk vs being a brain that is drunk. If I am being my brain, then why don't I experience the visual of neurons firing electrical signals at slower rates rather than feelings of dizziness and reduced inhibitions?

Putting it simply, semiosis is the construction of a meaningful relation between a self and world using a (meaningless) code. — apokrisis

I don't know if I would say it was "meaningless". It seems to me that natural selection found survival and mating benefits in the ability to construct this meaningful relation between organism and environment. The phenomenological sensory symbols that are part of the construct would be similar across multiple species as brains evolve from pre-existing brains.

Phenomenology is socially constructed. It is a modelling exercise using language to externalise the internal in a socially pragmatic fashion. — apokrisis

If language is used to externalise the internal that means the internal is prior to the externalizing of it. Therefore it can't be socially constructed. The internal constructs the external. It doesn't even make sense to talk about it in terms of "internal" vs. "external". Where and when does the external become what is internally constructed? It seems that this type of language-use creates a problem of identity.

It seems to me that the externals are just other internals so internals are prior to externals and externals only come about by internally recognizing that you are one internal among many.

Object permanence comes about in toddlers not by any social design because you have to first be internally aware that other objects exist independently of you and don't share the contents of your own internal states to then go on to understand that language is used to communicate your internal states to others.

So the code can act as a code because it stands outside both sides of the equation. It is neither material, nor informational - as much as that is actually possible. — apokrisis

Then how does the code exist if not materially or informationally? In saying that there are states of being either material or information that the code is not, you are implying that there are other states of being that are not material or information that the code is. This appears to be just more word salad. It seems to me that "code" is synonymous with "information". Interpreting the code/information is determining the actual cause of the symbol to exist.

Information/meaning is the relationship between cause and effect. Information exists wherever causes leave effects. The mind is the effect of prior causes (evolution (evolutionary psychology), life experiences stored in long-term memory and the type of senses (measuring devices) one possesses).

Neurons are like genes in being essentially costless in terms of their physics. Humans can afford trillions of synaptic switches. And they are like genes in that each switch is essentially meaningless. The connections have no meaning until the pattern that is a functional regulatory model has been evolved, developed, learnt, habituated, remembered. — apokrisis

Genes and neurons and their states are not meaningless in that they are effects of prior causes. Genes and neurons evolved from prior states with natural selection promoting those states that allows persistence of those states through time and space. The things that seem to be able to exist for extended periods are those things with a cohesive resistance to external changes. It seems to me that the "randomness", which you seem to mean when you say, "meaningless" is just a state that evolved in response to the "randomness" of the external world. Adaptability (having multiple switches providing multiple responses to external stimuli) is meaningful in a changing world.

I reserve awareness in reference to sensibility, but consciousness in reference to understanding. To be aware is to sense; to be conscious is to think. — Mww

What purpose is being aware if not to think (to process the sensory information for some purpose)? It seems that both awareness and thinking are integral parts of consciousness.

For example, a parent has two children and the parent has a favorite. She is not a bad mother because she has a favorite she loves both her children equally but she has a deeper connection with the youngest. The daughter and the mother have more in common and this has allowed the daughter to become the mom's favorite. But if the mother began to love the youngest daughter more this would be a problem. It does seem that God would have favorites not because God is a bad deity, but some humans seem more likable than others. — stressyandmessy

But unlike the mother, God has complete control over the qualities that define and are part of each of its "children" that it creates. God has favorite qualities that define a person and then goes about purposefully making people that possess these qualities to some degree or another. Why would God do that if he loves us all? Why would God purposefully create beings that lack those qualities that he favors?

But God showing favoritism does seem to be a problem. — stressyandmessy

Especially when those God favors happen to be the creators of the religion the God is a part of. Odin favored the Norsemen. Osiris favored the Egyptians. Allah favors the Arabs and God favors the Jews (chosen people).

Base level consciousness is the neurosemiosis. The modelling is the attending. — apokrisis

It seems to me that neurosemiosis, or mental processes involving signs, or producing meaning, is the act of modeling itself. Signs are types of models. Symbolizing is an act of modeling. Language is modeling of our conscious lives - our phenomenology - for others to bear witness to. Our language use is laced with phenomenological terms and projections of our phenomenology onto the world as if light is colored and ice cream is good and brains are physical outside of our own model.

Then you're a naive realist?

What does it mean to be physical?

How are brains perceived if not via consciousness? How is it that when I observe your mental processes I experience a brain but when I observe my own I experience a mind? When I look at you walking I see legs moving, and when I look at me walking I see legs moving. Why is it so different when looking at other's mental processes vs our own as opposed to looking at our running process? How does a "physical" brain create the feeling of empty space and visual depth?

In saying that brain processes correlate with, instead of cause, consciousness, I am saying that brain processes are conscious processes, just from different views.

When looking at a drop of blood in a microscope, it isn't the cells that cause the drop of blood to exist. They are the drop of blood just from a different view.

I think that information, as the:
1) process of informing, is becoming (being acquisition).
2) product of informing, is being (actuality and/or potentiality).

And that in both cases it is the effect of Aristotle's Four Causes (material, formal, efficient, and final). — Galuchat

I consider Aristotle's Four Causes different facets of the same thing - information. Information is the relationship between cause and effect. Effects are also causes and causes effects of prior causes, therefore any example of Aristotle's four causes are really effects of prior causes themselves, all of which is information. Information, or relationships, or process is fundamental - not physical particles, like atoms, neurons and brains.

It is uncontroversial that it happens from physical processes. Those who dispute that are properly marginalized.

The controversial part is how. — hypericin

If you can't explain how it happens then there is a problem with the theory that says that it does happen. Until you've explained how it does happen then it's still quite possible that you have a problem of correlation and not causation.

And using the word "information" in a variety of descriptions at different levels of abstraction, without providing a unifying general definition, is equivocation. — Galuchat

Information is the relationship between cause and effect. The mind is information in that it is the relationship between body and environment.

It is what people think they mean when they say "consciousness" that is the controversial bit. What they usually mean is that somehow the world is "represented" as an "image" in some kind of Cartesian theatre. — apokrisis

But a Cartesian theater is what you are implying in talking about models that are attended.

Can't we turn our attention back on itself in attending the attention? If not how is it that you can even talk about attention if that isn't what you are attending? It's why we can know that we know and think about thinking.

The fact that consciousness arises from brain processes is utterly uncontroversial. The philosophically interesting question that remains is how can it be that such a thing can arise from brain processes... A question to which science remains largely silent. — hypericin

If it were uncontroversial then how is it you are questioning how it happens? I'm with you on the questioning it, just not with you in saying it's uncontroversial.

We can conclude very easily from the evidence that changes in brain function in humans alters the content of experience in humans. Of course it does. No one is denying that, not even the most extreme substance dualists. — bert1

I thought that is the very thing you are questioning Apo on - how a brain alters, influences or causes changes in experience - essentially why there is an experience to be had at all given the states of brains.

I've moved on from the part of the emergentist claiming that certain physical states begat experiencing states. Now I'm asking how exactly does a mass of neurons create an experience or model of the world that is not a mass of neurons? Neurons only appear in my experience when observing other people's experiences. That must mean there is a distinction between my view of my own mental processes vs. a view of other people's mental processes - of how my modeling models other people's experiences.

Do brains cause experiences - if so then you're left with the task if explaining how that happens. If it has nothing to do with causation but with views, then there is no need to explain how brains cause experiences. Brains and minds are just different views of the same thing - not much different than looking at a macro-scale object only with your eyes vs looking at it through a microscope - different views of the same thing makes it appear like we are talking about two different things.

I'm always saying "life and mind". The two are pretty synonymous given that they are both about the special thing of a semiotic modelling relation.

If you want a rough distinction, life is an organism's model of its body - its metabolic existence - and mind is an organism's model of the environment within which that body must persist. — apokrisis

This talk of models is strange considering that we understand models as a smaller scale representation of what is being modeled. Model cars are made of metal and plastic - the same as the real thing. The only difference is scale and detail.

The model that is the mind is not made up of neurons. It is made up of something totally different. I'm really looking forward to an explanation as to how neurons model visual depth and the feeling of persisting in an environment surrounded by empty space.

It seems to me that empty space that is experienced is just information or a model of other information (in light that passes through the air without being reflected just like a glass window appears transparent), just on a smaller scale and with less detail.

Doesn't the experience of bent straws in water and mirages and darkness and being surround by empty space show that we model the world using light?

So in talking about physical brains that are only observed with the presence of light you are confusing the model with what is modeled.

First-person models are composed of informational relations. A sensory information processor can only process information acquired by its own senses, not by the senses of another. The point of view that develops is a relationship between the organism and the immediate environment that the organism uniquely occupies. Even computers have first-person perspectives in that they occupy a unique area of space and time store and work with different information acquired by its inputs. So first-person perspectives are really just possessing and working with information that is unique to the organism or device that possesses it. It is why we can never know what it is like to be another because we would have to be that person to know what it is like.

Past experience is used to predict the future world in terms designed to deliver effective action. So the imagination is just this forward prediction of what it would be like to experience the known world from some other viewpoint.

So you could generate the image of a stop sign just as you could generate an image of your missing keys or the deer you hope to shoot in the woods. The ability to hold a search image in mind is a meaningful and functional action. It speaks to a state of intent that is to be physically enacted at some future time and place. The image informs that material possibility.

But such states of anticipatory imagery could be nonsensical - noise rather than information - as when you are dreaming. — apokrisis

Yet the dream appears just like the model in your description of "life and mind". How can one be a model and the other just noise when you can't tell the difference in the moment you are dreaming, and even after the fact as memories of what was dreamed are no different than the memories of "real" events?

We can imagine a past that would make the present we live in very different. People can dwell on what could have been. Dreams can cause people to change the way they live or to look at the world differently. These "imaginary" things have real impacts on peoples' behaviors.

Why they don't go forwards or backwards in time? They even fluctuate in time. — EugeneW

What does that even mean - as if time is a container in which things fluctuate? Fluctuation is a type of change. They don't fluctuate forwards and backwards in time (whatever "in time" even means). They simply change relative to each other.

Virtual particles form a clock, — EugeneW

If everything is made of virtual particles, then what use is the term, "Virutal"? The virtual only makes sense in light of the real. It doesn't make sense to say that all particles are virtual.