As for biological explanations, maybe I should repeat what I recently said about that:
All human and other animal consciousness is biological. What else is new.. — Michael Ossipoff

But I'm not making a statement of identity (like type-physicalism as it is currently called).
I am discerning between evolutionary and sociological explanations. One of these is psychologically innate whereas the other is not. So what I'm saying there is possibility for this to occur even within raised on a desert island scenarios. What I am saying with that is that we often think of ourselves having a first person verdical perception of the world in front of us, but also we can see ourselves in third person terms and there is a really obvious evolutionary advantage for being able to do that. Like imagining what could be at the top of a hill before you get there.
Though I disagree specific things like "silver cords and stronger OBE mythology" can exist in desert island scenarios.

NDEs weren't in the popular culture or the popular mind before the publication of Raymond Moody's Life after Life. So NDE in popular culture doesn't explain the many NDEs described by Moody. — Michael Ossipoff

I honestly think ghosts floating above bodies has always been part of culture. Here's a really obvious one from Tom and Jerry: https://youtu.be/ofUzHtlil60?t=1m51s
You only have to also look at various mythology to see similar instances.

Once I reached the highest intensity, all of a sudden my body felt like it was doing back flips in zero gravity, faster and faster and there I was, in a dream and lucid about it, — Vince

Interesting, the way it is described is that you become lucid within the dream first and then move on to vibrations. I have plenty of lucid dreams and they are similar to how you describe, my phone is blurry, so are clocks ect and things often shift. I think this is what a lot of people are describing.
However there is a second (or third if you count normal dreaming as different from lucid) stage where if you then attempt to vibrate and leave your body within that lucid dream you move on elsewhere where things feel "more real than reality". It is a very stark difference in phenomenology between that and the lucid-dream.
Please note when I say second-stage or third I am meaning in reportable epistemic terms. I'm not committing to an ontological second-stage that is separated from normal sleep.

What does "AP" stand for? — Michael Ossipoff

Astral projection http://uk.iacworld.org/what-are-the-sensations-of-astral-projection/

As said before, I did experience some of this before I knew the term (electrical sensory vibrations and sirens). I googled because I thought it could be a type of illness and was surprised to find these symptoms had been pushed to the top of google. If you look into the communities they go further describing silver cords, otherwordly beings ect. These parts are what I think are probably memes that the brain then fills in. I think sensory deprivation is an unacceptable state for the mind so it uses underlying evolutionary fill-ins as a grounding then moves on to common ideas and then the higher level cultural ones are at the far end of the process.
It might be possible that the soul does leave the body for other dimensions but the more pedestrian explanations should be explored first.

The ideology explanation doesn't hold up, because people of vastly, entirely, different ideologies, religions, and philosophies have reported basically the same NDEs. — Michael Ossipoff

It wasn't really about ideology which is a complete structure but more meme based (as in an experience built out of tiny ideas which can some from anywhere). For example someone reads about the tunnel idea and then the brain constructs it because it seems to be a reasonable possibility. I also think the "ghost floating above a fallen body" is fairly universal in all cultures. There are ghost stories in every culture. Also there could be a biological/evolutionary counterpart, for example Dehaene claims his lab is able to trigger them by activating certain parts of the brain. Before I do something I always imagine myself in third-person vision doing it so perhaps it is an involuntary version of that mental process.
It would be interesting if the "silver cord" stuff has been reported by people unfamiliar with all the mythos behind AP/OBEs. I did reach the "vibration" stage long before I read any AP literature or knew anything about it.

Sam, what are your thoughts on the meme argument for the corroborating evidence?
The meme argument would say the "after life/ OBE experience" is within the public psyche and so the brain deprived of sensory input attempts to predict where it is now and uses cultural attributions to fill in the gap (similar to filling in phenomena except at a higher abstract level). I'm not sure where you stand on naive realism, but I don't think the Sam Parnia experiment worked out too well.

I believe that you are referring to the joke. It's separated topic and you will find some of my answers there. So, please comment there... — Damir Ibrisimovic

Actually I was addressing the entirety of your post (including the free will stuff). But I will post in this thread since it was more active and it is what you want. :)
You mentioned how "dark matter" was proposed to resolve an issue while not necessarily being in existence. What I was suggesting was that by saying "free will doesn't exist" fails because it already assumed the existence of an intentional agent could be disputed.
A free will denier could say using "propositional attitudes" "all attributions of intentionality" is a social construct or an evolutionary illusion. This is common in constructivism. An eliminativist believes it is a placeholder until something better comes along. That is Churchland's view. Others like Dennett believe intentionality is indispensable as a scientific theory but ultimately (on a raw non-epistemic ontological level) it does not exist and we are just playing pretend.

I need a bit more to agree to disagree or agree on the existence of free will - without qualifiers... — Damir Ibrisimovic

Fwiw, I agree it exists. I am some sort of a dualist but haven't made up my mind on what type. But I want to make the eliminativist arguments known going forward.

So hormones don't count for anything? (All evidence suggests they change phenotype and alter the mental state).
https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001180.htm
(fwiw, surgery is the final stage of transition the hrt is more important).

The obvious argument behind transsexualism is that the brain is intersex. see causes of intersexuality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_transsexuality#Biological_factors Gender dysphoria is a diagnosable condition and there are bio markers involved.

Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: 'XY' and 'XX' are genetic markers of health, not genetic markers of a disorder. — Terran Imperium

Seems this is also disputed: https://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943

A couple of things, the first part seems similar to the argument that consciousness is epiphenomenal. Yet if it is without effects then how can we talk about it or have the introspection to talk about it.
However in the context of the free will argument couldn't the person say the "I" was a useful fiction existing only for sociological reasons until a better one is found. I've spoke with eliminativists before and they believe something similar to this regarding propostional attitudes. If you read Paul and Pat Churchland's conversations you can see what they intend it to be replaced with.
That may be the case with dark matter. It only exists to fill a current gap and may just be a useful fiction for that. The difference between them though is our intentions are experienced by us directly.

But if you ignore the differences and look towards their commonality you can discover their origin, from a tree which they both come from and then trace its antecedents.
does spot the difference achieve the same results?

You mean Freud played on Romanticism to turn it into a "scientific" theory? — apokrisis

Thanks.

Yes, much of it can be attributed to Freud but as said the unconscious mind contribution has stuck. Why Freud Still Matters, When He Was Wrong About Almost Everything
https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-freud-still-matters-when-he-was-wrong-about-almost-1055800815

"Okay, sure, Freud’s got some problems. But he also nailed a few things.
For example, Freud was startlingly correct in his assertion that we are not masters of our own mind. He showed that human experience, thought, and deeds are determined not by our conscious rationality, but by irrational forces outside our conscious awareness and control ...
Today, very few would argue against the idea of the unconscious mind."

You often see the statements: “on a subconscious level X believes” and then mental content usually applied to the conscious mind is applied to that level.

To be explicit on what I mean by intentional mental content take these statements.

Kevin robs a bank because he consciously wants to go to prison.

Kevin robs a bank, consciously he is doing it for the money but unbeknownst to him he is institutionalised and subconsciously he wants to return to prison.

Does the attention-habit model eliminate this dilemma? A person needs to know their own intent to be morally responsible in a legal sense after all.

This is probably why there are tons of Libet threads here and other philosophy forums because the experiment has the implication that the subconscious mind is making the decisions and the conscious mind is being fed lies/illusions. People already believe in the subconscious mind and things like this second pop-science article affirm it.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/5975778/scientific-evidence-that-you-probably-dont-have-free-will

So then the conversation becomes “does intentionality as we understand it really exist” is “consciousness epiphenomenal to action” and then the neo-dualist views from Libet himself and others.

And that causes it to generate anticipatory imagery - randomly associative hypnagogic images. — apokrisis

But hypnagogia is the process from wakefulness to sleep. A quick quote from the wiki page:

Individual images are typically fleeting and given to very rapid changes. They are said to differ from dreams proper in that hypnagogic imagery is usually static and lacking in narrative content.

Most people report that dreams are not static and usually there is a clear story to it. Freud's dream interpretation was more or less what was written in the Bible where dreams are symbols and have to be decoded by a conscious mind. This is probably false but it is evident there is some level of preparation for the dream scenarios with the attentional mind lagging behind.
See also, https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/psychoanalytic-excavation/200911/the-meaning-dreams-and-do-dreams-have-meaning

. But then they mentioned the idea that once they got to a certain level of growth, the robots would get bored and shut itself off. — schopenhauer1

But this is just speculation, as I mentioned before if opening one door opens up a thousand other doors it could be it never is shut off because there will be an infinite amount of doors being opened. And this is what we've seen happen so far with our science. Answering one question opens up many more and we're able to do much more too.
Btw, by introducing AI are you making it about something able to exist in practice? Because silicon beings will have their material limits too like us. Even if there is a finite amount of things to accomplish they wouldn't be able to do everything.

Do you understand the neurological difference between attentional processes and habitual or automatic ones? Is there something further to be explained after those? — apokrisis

I think the discussion has always been whether or not the subconscious mind/ habitual/ the autonomic has intentional mental content in competition or subduing with the conscious/attentional mind. The whole brain is a living thing so it's not like the habitual processes are in anyway static like computer functions. I've read Baars and others and think the actual answer is something more complicated than that.
The best example I have of a sort of competition is that in dreams the subconscious mind (whatever you want to call it) subjects the attentional mind to weird experiences it isn't requesting. There are also tricks in dreams as if one part of the brain is anticipating the other.

Yes, something quite perplexing to me. That means perfection isn't perfection... still more need.. the need for need. — schopenhauer1

I rushed that last sentence out. But I thought about what you said.

So yes, maybe, though it could also be us anthropomorphizing an abstract state. The description of acquiring perfection may just be part of our earthly language games and on acquiring it no longer applies. A need for a need just may then occur in the same way 3 lines connecting become a triangle.

I'm content with sitting in silence or sunbathing for hours but I'll tackle the OP.
There's an assumption here that there is a highest capacity possible. That unlocking one thing wouldn't unlock a thousand others things. However we have seen with the invention of the telephone this may not be the case.
Marchesk also makes a good point that something would be able to modify its cognitive structure to have indefinite goals or make things harder for itself. Also some people believe human souls exist in a state of perfection and choose to inhabit bodies as a form of challenge.

I can't speak for others, but as I understand physicalism, it is the view that all of our experience of reality can ultimately be explained by physics. — Dfpolis

Isn't this more universal mechanism/ reductive materialism/ atomism than physicalism. For example, most people attribute the breaking of the window to a ball striking it. Though taking modern physics as having all the ontological facts would strip the ball of this causal power. It would also strip all the higher level sciences above it as simply being useful fictions or amenable to eliminativism.

As far as I can see there are three arguments a physicalist can make against it.

a) common sense- if we accept a ball breaking a pane of glass is an illusion. Then the understanding of there being "causes" at all is in question. And if we are to argue the concept of "cause" is a priori then the empiricist/physicalist is admitting defeat.
b) spooky action at a distance (QM) - this is covered in this thread by Apo and others who say holism is necessary to resolve it.
c) the binding problem, consciousness - how things appear together as a connected reality is obviously not reconcilable with reductionism which identifies everything in atomist interactional terms (Leibniz's gap).
So a physicalist may take an instrumentalist approach to the standard model but also admit consciousness and the higher level things they interact with are all physically real.

Thanks, I still think the generic properties like "brick" to its earlier visible state as "mud" "clay" would be formal causes though. The division of the efficient cause seems to be when mind is introduced into the picture.

Btw, the whale was a fairly good example and explanation for Aristotelian realism. So were the hierarchical constraints in existence prior to the big bang or were they accidents that occurred with the development of the universe?

I'm not sure what particular clarification you seek here. — apokrisis

Thanks, really what I was asking after was what is the core difference (if any) between "material" and "efficient" cause. The classical difference would be the material is bronze and the efficient is how the artisan uses his tools to fashions it into a statue. But it seems the "material" cause isn't necessary to the metaphysics because all its (constrained) forms from atoms, to visible elements, to planets, and organisms, are already covered by formal and final cause.

Also, and this fits more with the discussion with this thread and is not really addressed to you, but if the top-down constraints , formal causes do not exist when they are not in use how is it they can be repeated at future points? I've read some Aristotleian realism and it doesn't seem to come up with an adequate solution. For example if "redness" can be manifested multiple times, then when there are no red things can it occur again at a future time?

The formal principle is then the order that regulates this chaos of fluctuation. Tames it, channels it, gives it structure and intent. It limits and imposes a unity. It is also an active principle in a sense. But active in imposing a form, a limitation, that keeps all the action organised and heading in a shared direction that is intelligible and so persists. — apokrisis

you've said before your metaphysics supports the four cause model.
if you have to be more analytic about it how would you frame the four causes?

Since all causation is physical, physicalists must hold that consciousness is epiphenomenal -- along for the ride, but without causal power. — Dfpolis

So all forms of physicalism are bottom-up?

Therefore, wouldn't a p-zombie notice its lack of consciousness and experiences and comment on these, thus not being completely similar in its actions to a human being? — BlueBanana

yeah you're right. The closest thing we have are people with Aphantasia who lack a "mind's eye" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia however during interaction with other people they are able to comprehend they are lacking something the others have.

The p-zombie argument is built on the idea that consciousness is epiphenomenal. So you can have a zombie that relates every detail but has no phenomenal version of events. In that sense it's stupid but works well as an argument against mechanism. If anyone thinks it can be true besides being a philosophical thought experiment (sort of like the Socractic dialogues) then they are nuts.

And the reason that empiricism debunked it, is because there is no evidence of there being such a 'vital force',as something over and above the cumulative effects of the processes of all living organisms;[/ — Wayfarer

I get that. When I say debunked by empiricism I'm meaning something direct. In order to claim a strong victory for mechanists shouldn't life be reproduced by mechanistic forces? There is the reproduction of urea by non-organic compounds but that's all I can find. That's fine from a scientific perspective but I don't think it would close down the philosophical project in the way the project on the classical four elements (fire, air, earth and water) is now closed.
You don't really see vitalist arguments in the same way we continue to get arguments for idealism or the hard problem of consciousness. Threads like this one seem rare.

That's Rupert Sheldrake's theory, but Sheldrake is regarded as a maverick (or worse) by the mainstream. — Wayfarer

A morphogenetic field is a theory of how organs are formed. The gist of it is that there is a cardiac field for constraining cells to heart tissue or a limb field constraining cells to limb tissue.
As mentioned on its wiki talk page, it appears to be accepted in embryology unlike Sheldrake's which is considered pseudoscience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Morphogenetic_field#Merging_of_the_two_morphogenetic_field_articles_proposed

Hi Mike, welcome back. :) I remember your threads were fairly interesting.
As far as your field hypothesis goes, there is something called a morphogenetic field posited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphogenetic_field but I think you were thinking something more fundamental than some form of 'emergent' causation.

I do wonder how exactly "vitalism" is said to have been debunked from an empirical perspective. It's something I heard repeated a lot in lectures but I never really chased it up. Surely life has not been deconstructed completely into its raw inorganic building blocks and then restructured back together as it was and worked as a machanical thing. Otherwise why is abiogenesis not a regular reocurring thing that people do regularly in labs and then unleash onto the world.

I liked some of their posts. But I do think they could have tried a little better to engage alternative ideas and sometimes it seemed trollish.
For bans who aren't spammers, could there be a timeout period? Like a 30 day ban which gives people time to rethink their behavior and maybe longer if they repeat it.
We live in a very all or nothing period where people are held to account for remarks they made years ago and I'm of the opinion people can change overtime and alter their attitude. I agree with Tiff it does not need to be public.

she can still control those probabilities by means of the prior set up. — Pierre-Normand

I'm over my head here. But I've seen MWI described as superdeterministic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism
The future of all measurements is already known it's just that you happen to be in the one where the train of thought has completed. Presumably the worlds where your train of thought gets completed are the ones that are relatively normal with the illusion of the higher level regularities (breathable atmosphere ect). In that sense notions of identity and control are eliminable or instrumental.
I understand some say that it is not true and the state of things are that there are more (normal) worlds which is why when you think: "I raise my arm" the arm does go up rather than say your leg because there are more of the former than the latter. But I'm not sure why that is (more worlds of a certain kind than others).
The constraint based physics being posted by Apokrisis here makes more intuitive sense to me but what seems intuitive might not be true.

This would be a good starting point — apokrisis

Thanks a lot I'll look through them tomorrow :smile:

And QM is moving towards that kind of interpretation with the quantum information or quantum reconstruction projects. — apokrisis

Any links where I can read about this? (QM moving towards this view as opposed to MWI or alternatives?)

So quantum indeterminism definitely challenges the Newtonian/LaPlacean paradigm that gave the freewill debate all its sociological charge. — apokrisis

Good post.

But I think the many worlds stuff renews it though. Since that is completely (super?) deterministic and people have no will over which worlds they find themselves in. Consciousness trailing behind and the bottom up processes well ahead in front.

He's basically talking about Dennett, — Wayfarer

Dennett has since responded to the article here: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/04/03/magic-illusions-and-zombies-an-exchange/

"We say consciousness seems (to many who reflect upon the point) to involve being “directly acquainted,” as Strawson puts it, with some fundamental properties (“qualia”), but this is an illusion, a philosopher’s illusion. "

If this is Dennett's issue then I have no problem with that (and I say that as a quasi-dualist). I don't think reductionistic qualia (red, taste of coffee, ect) aka Locke's classical secondary properties are fundamental. The way they are united and the reasons why are is what is important. So far science has not touched this:

From scholarpedia:
"Because consciousness is a rich biological phenomenon, it is likely that a satisfactory scientific theory of consciousness will require the specification of detailed mechanistic models. The models of consciousness surveyed in this article vary in terms of their level of abstraction as well as in the aspects of phenomenal experience that they are proposed to explain. At present, however, no single model of consciousness appears sufficient to account fully for the multidimensional properties of conscious experience. Moreover, although some of these models have gained prominence, none has yet been accepted as definitive, or even as a foundation upon which to build a definitive model. "

In Aristotelian metaphysics, The heart was originally the ultimate thinking organ. When you hear: "I know if off by heart." They are referring to cognitive faculties in the heart. Sociologically, these ascriptions never entirely went away. Aristotle's ultimate organ where sensory perception is binded together might be considered the original binding problem.

Can the heart think? — TheMadFool

Probably not, but some heart transplant recipients have claimed gaining new memories. I'm not sure if that is given any credence at all though. There are 40,000 neurons in the heart but I'm not sure if they have any relation to thinking, like at all. (Searle didn't think so in one of his lectures).

Brain B in Human B. Brain B is in exact same state S in 1967 - every neuron, every chemical reaction identical Brain B in Human B. Brain B is in exact same state S in 1967 - every neuron, every chemical reaction identical. Human B is not wondering where his phone charger is. — Cuthbert

why not though? You can imagine both these brains and humans being in 2160. Why wouldn't they both still be thinking of phone chargers?

Hi Tiffany, sorry if this seems slightly long.

If I rewound back time, repeated the exact same experiment, given the exact same configuration of atoms in your brain, your current mood and personality and character, would there be any chance that you chose the carrot instead? If so, what changed? Is it just quantum luck? — tiffany

I think the core issue with the free will debate is that you assume a mechanist philosophy where everything can be described as mechanical and then quickly notice that our higher level vocab (folk terms et al) quickly feel out of place. Which is why compatibilist philosophers see free will as a type of language game and it is the underlying physical processes that allow an action to be possible. The stuff about your heart might be said to be impeding your will since you are physically aware it is. Someone who lacks a will might not notice their personality has altered or their actions are being restrained.
And they (the compatbilists) do have a point (even if I do not necessarily agree), it's easy to control your personality on demand. I can act differently depending on the people I'm with (like I can behave differently at a work function than I am with my family or boyfriend ect). You don't need knowledge of biology, chemistry physics et al to complete these actions. The stuff about your heart you posted seems that you have knowledge of it impeding your actions or ability to have full control of your personality. A lack of free will would show ignorance of these issues.

In free will experiments, people are demonstrating their free will by consciously volunteering to do with the experiment anyway. Someone without the ability to do this due to brain injury or whatever could be describing as lacking the same freedoms others have.
So when when you assume everything is mechanical you can't ever get any sort of freedom (whether it be compatibilist or metaphysical) because you only have mechanical descriptions including schotastic (random) events.

In dreams, we are merely spectators of actions we do. — tiffany

Dreams seem to be a good example of conscious control, since you can separate the parts you did not volunteer to to the parts you do volunteer to. EG: in lucid dreams you can voluntarily complete acts which is contrasted with the dreams where you don't.
You might be interested in reading about Wilder Penfield's brain experiments for more on this.

Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer — darthbarracuda

why though? Do you actually agree with everything he wrote about the will and how it manifests overtime including all the supernatural implications eg the animal magnetism essay ect.

This is awkward for me since I'm secretly a determinist with a predilection for bottom-up explanation wherever possible (Occam's razor etc.). Yet, no Zombies for me! — Kym

sorry to get back late,

so what's your answer to Leibniz's gap?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz%27s_gap

Technical language when it's needed, but clear and conversational when it's not. Also, many of the people on this forum are good writers. I know that my writing has improved during the year I've been here — T Clark

I agree. I've learned a lot reading Apokrisis' posts and he's one of the more philosophically technical writers here. I really only use technical jargon to try to be specific with what I am talking about since I see philosophy as being about refining mind and clarifying concepts.
I notice she said she did her master's on Heidegger who deliberately made his work impenetrable. On the whole, when I read something from a modern philosopher I can usually understand what they are getting at. One popular philosopher I did struggle with though was Dennett who has gone out of his way to call philosophy self-indulgent.

Hi Jess. Do you mean to imply there are actually women on this forum? I was wondering. — Kym

I guess so. I mainly stick to PoM threads so don't know the demographic. There is a dearth of us in philosophy overall, especially analytic philosophy. There are more in continental philosophy I believe.

At first sight, consciousness seems redundant. Seemingly a person or animal could react to the world 'normally', without the intervening step of internal consciousness. Kind of like a machine following an algorithm, or the Behaviourists’ black-box model of stimulus-in / response-out. — Kym

Okay so to subscribe to the logical possibility of zombies you have to subscribe to strong anthropic mechanism first? As in it's all bottom up cognition and you can have a complete mechanistic description like billiard balls colliding with each other.
I've always suspected the zombie argument is really an argument against reductionism where if the argument was rephrased to allow for top-down causation the problem would vanish. That's really why Descartes mental substance exists because he had already decided that mechanism was sufficient to describe everything else, including the other animals.

I don't think the zombie argument has ever been expressed to my satisfaction so I'll put how I understand the hard problem in explicit terms.

The hard problem is reconciling mechanism with the idea that consciousness is a unified phenomenal experience.
The best explanation in cognitive neuroscience is the global workspace model which identifies consciousness as a collapse of neuronal coalitions in order for the brain to focus on a single decision. So granting consciousness the necessary identity as a functional (attention) description may solve the problem. You have a scientific description for it as well as a first person description.
However within the materialist/physicalist/mechanist paradigm this model is just a useful fiction that describes the higher level property of attentional spotlight/ consciousness. The real (efficient) work is being done by electrons and quarks and yet there is a phenomenal experience for the higher level attentional description. Either everything is mechanistic or there is ontological dualism (mental and physical) or pluralism .

Hi Wayfarer thanks for making this thread.
Isn't Strawson advocating neutral monism with this 'review'. I place that within scare quotes because I'm not sure which books he is reviewing.
I'm a little suspect on what denialism entails since it changes from philosopher to philosopher. If we are talking about qualia as atomized sense experience existing separtely from their neurological substratum then I can see why someone might deny that.
If we mean how the senses are grouped as a single first person unity then it would be difficult to argue against that. I've read quite a bit of Dennett and he doesn't appear to argue against that. Being physical should mean having physical effects on the world so consciousness should be physical in that sense because of the thousands of books about it.
I take issue to this statement in the 'review' btw : "When you reduce chemical processes to physical processes, you don’t deny that chemical processes exist."

This sounds fairly presumptuous. Because I believe many reductionists may deny that... [EDIT] well that they do not exist ontologically (everyone agrees they exist in epistemic terms).

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum! — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Thankyou. :hearts: I came back because I have an interest in philosophy again. :)

. Consciousness is often described as something like a projection by the brain anyway so I don't think it differs from normal waking experience whatever it is.

I agree with it, that's why my main interest has always been philosophy of mind. All the other branches are uninteresting for me until we get what we are sorted. I see why they have to exist though.