You'd probably need to start with a definition of 'physical' which I suspect will be very difficult to derive. — Wayfarer

I wouldn't be approaching things from a foundationalist perspective. As an anti-foundationalist I'm fine with settling for, whatever passes for the consensus of physicists, as a definiton of physical. I think we could have an informative discussion while leaving the definition of physical a bit fuzzy.

Hence the requirement for noesis, philosophical ascent. The culmination of those states is in 'seeing things as they truly are', of arriving at an insight into the totality, an epiphany or a great 'aha' moment. This is not necessarily confined to mysticism. There are episodes in the history of science where individuals had sudden noetic insights into the nature of things which lead to great breakthroughs in scientific understanding. An example would be Copernicus' realisation that the orbits of planets were elliptical whilst searching for the Platonic ideals in his observational data; Nikolai Tesla's mystical vision of the Sun and the interchangeability of matter and energy which preceeded Einstein's discovery of the same fact. There are no doubt many other examples, at least some of which resulted in the overthrow of the current paradigm... — Wayfarer

Damn you! You are not going to allow me to escape having this discussion, are you? :wink:

So suppose I said I had such a "sudden noetic insights into the nature of things which lead to great breakthroughs in scientific understanding"? Now I admit that the "which lead to" bit, only fits with a bit of squinting. I didn't propagate my insight to any significant extent. So my insight only lead to relevant scientific breakthroughs, in the sense that other people gaining similar insight over the last 36 years has resulted in a lot of scientific progress.

Now suppose that insight was about how minds emerge from the physical interactions occurring in neural networks.

How would that discussion go?

Perhaps there is a mode of certainty that transcends discursive understanding. — Pantagruel

Some kind of "intellectual intuition?" — Pantagruel

I wouldn't say "intellectual intuition" so much as well "trained and tested intuition", though admittedly some might see those as fairly synonymous. Have you read Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow?

Isn't it past your bedtime?

All that being said, I think that's a whole different thing than what I typically call determinism. — T Clark

Yeah, I know I haven't taken the time to layout the the way I'm using terms, and it's unsurprising that we are talking past each other to some extent. So as some clarification...

1. I consider it quite plausible that the world is indeterministic in light of what I know of physics.

2. I have a lot of history of arguing for 'determinism' in the context of discussing free will. Undoubtedly that is coloring the way I've approached the discussion.

I should have pared down what I quoted.

My response was intended as allusion to, "not like selling drugs".

I got the wife comment.

No conscious invertebrates? Don't they have to deal with lots of information flowing in? — RogueAI

The article also says...

The arthropod eye, on the other hand, has one of the best-studied examples of selective signal enhancement. It sharpens the signals related to visual edges and suppresses other visual signals, generating an outline sketch of the world.

To expand on that, it's a way of saying that visual data is processed in the eye of arthropod to yield a relatively low data output stream, but data reduced in a way that preserves salient features of the visual field.

So, in the case of those arthropods and vision, their brains don't have to deal with nearly as much data as vertebrate species do. Information processing is expensive in terms of energy consumption. There are lots of niches in which an energy efficient 'design' can hold it's own against more intelligent but less energy efficient designs.

What do you mean? This place is full of people pushing all kinds of mind altering stuff.

What is the evolutionary benefit of consciousness? — RogueAI

See here. (Although that may require a subscription. If so, Google is your friend. I used "the evolutionary adaptiveness of consciousness".)

If I may interject a question as someone with only a superficial understanding of Kant...

Isn't it a bit of an overstatement to say we know *nothing* of the thing-in-itself? Why not a more nuanced view, in which we know a limited amount about things-in-themselves, but some of us know more than others, depending on the thing under consideration.

Here is the IEP entry.

Do you mean that determinists still blame others for their actions erroneously? Assuming it is, I would say that perhaps they can't help doing that, even if there might not be any rational warrant for it. — Janus

Yes, blaming reactions are naturally ocurring instinctive emotional reactions that have historically been adaptive for our species and are adaptive still. Being emotional reactions, they aren't particularly conducive to us seeing things objectively. They are evolutionarily adaptive because they are strongly motivating to action. So yes, we can't help doing that.

However, understanding the nature of blame reactions allows for nuance and skill in modulating how one behaves in response to a having a blaming state of mind - from philosophising - to unleashing the angry ape.

I don't understand what you are saying in your last sentence. — Janus

What I was trying to convey in saying, "Of course that's fallacious in all sorts of way. Not least, it's an appeal to consequences.", is that I don't expect people to see what I said prior as a rational argument. Just reinforcing that this is a matter of subjective preference on my part.

As a layperson, I can well imagine the ambition to discover some kind of secular and universal formula for morality. It reminds me of the alchemist's quest to turn base metal into gold. — Tom Storm

:up:

It's part of a larger argument, that I've tried to develop here and elsewhere. — Wayfarer

Thanks for the outline.

Part of me wants to dive into discussing it further, and another part is saying I should allocate my time better. So I'm going to pass on diving in. At least for now.

I stand by the basic claim that numbers, logical principles, and the like, cannot be explained in terms of the interactions of matter. — Wayfarer

Saying this unironically, in the process of posting on the Internet, is hard to fathom from my perspective.

Do you think that computers do not deal with numbers and apply logical principles, or do you think that the processes occurring in computers cannot be explained in terms of the interactions of matter, or...?

It seems that if sensory input isn't coming in to the brain, the brain will create it's own hallucinatory input to compensate. People in sensory deprivation tanks hallucinate fairly quickly when deprived of external stimuli. What is the evolutionary benefit of this? — RogueAI

Sensory deprivation tanks weren't part of the environment our ancestors were exposed to. There is no reason to think that there is an evolutionary benefit to how we respond, to an environment that played no role in the natural selection of our ancestors.

Did you happen to observe my recent demonstration, here on the forums, of how predictable people can be?
— wonderer1

No. I'll take a look if you provide a link. I'm skeptical that the level of prediction you are talking about is as rigorous as what would be required to claim strict determinism. I don't doubt that events in the past have effects in the present and future. That's different. — T Clark

I'm not claiming it "is as rigorous as what would be required to claim strict determinism", but it is a piece of evidence that I think makes the most sense on determinism.

Anyway, what I'm referring to can be found on this page starting with my post which is about the tenth one down on that page. (Sorry I don't yet know how to provide a more direct link.)

Yes, but it is oriented around a more 'expansive' understanding of what consciousness is. There is a long tradition of consciousness as an interior movie, an interior monologue, things going on "in the head." The whole layer of intelligence involved in the micro-coordination of our overt actions and behaviours is ignored by many people. — Pantagruel

I don't disagree with the notion that there is intelligence involved in the automation of our motor skills, but it seems likely to result in confusion to refer to that automation as consciousness. I think there is no avoiding a degree of fuzziness, in trying to consider consciousness in isolation from the rest of the causal web, but nonetheless it is still worthwhile considering how our brains instantiate consciousness. There is certainly no shortage of things to be learned in doing so.

Some proponents of embodied cognition would argue that the environment provides the body with all the stimulus necessary for navigation to food and shelter. So there's no need to assign inference to this navigation. — frank

That doesn't sound like a very well thought out way of modeling things to me.

Additionally, the embodied consciousness thesis is often bundled with that of embedded cognition (environmental factors are also integral to cognition). And there is extensive experimental evidence to that effect. If cognition isn't construed narrowly as just thinking, but is understood as a kind of enaction, then the theory of embodied consciousness really isn't that far-fetched. After all, think about how intimately the nature of our thoughts is entwined with the nuances of our physical form, the dexterity of our fingers, the nature of our other senses. Knowledge is the result of a "hunger" which is then satisfied. Imagine how different our thoughts would be if we were instead squid-like creatures who absorbed sunlight through an algae-symbiote living in our skin. — Pantagruel

I don't see the theory of embodied consciousness as far-fetched at all. From my perspective it seems pretty intuitively obvious.

It llooks like specificity about reference frames is not clear in someone's mind.

We've had a few threads here on the forum where I've made the case that the idea of causality is unnecessary and misleading. Admittedly, most people have found my arguments unconvincing. — T Clark

Did you happen to observe my recent demonstration, here on the forums, of how predictable people can be?

Perhaps you meant that it is meaningless in the sense that it is of no significance to us whether or not the Universe is deterministic, and I would agree with that. — Janus

Perhaps it depends on your preferences. Few long term determinists, that I have observed, fail to recognize the monkeymindedness of retribution. I think humans recognizing their nature is a good thing.

Of course that's fallacious in all sorts of way. Not least, it's an appeal to consequences.

I dunno if there is much point. Whatever I say will sound condescending. I presume you are at least aware of the discussion of is-ought in Ethics... what you call the "bottom-up" is an example of the naturalistic fallacy in which it is presumed that what we ought do is just what we have previously done. Gather whatever data you like and normalise it how you will, it does not tell us what we should do... — Banno

What it does do is tell us somewhat, about how to better understand our own natures, and the natures of others. I guess for someone like me, who sees no positive value in living in disharmony with my nature, it seems like valuable stuff to understand.

I find the hostility rather baffling.

Maybe it would help if you gave a definition of the will as expressed by a philosophy that rings true for you. The concept has been approached many different ways and those ways have prompted very different 'psychological' perspectives. — Paine

Would you point at one or more of the psychological perspectives that you see see as most worthy of consideration? I'd be interested in looking into some of them.

I have my own neuropsych perspective on the subject, and would be interested in what others who have thought seriously about the subject have to say.

To take a step back, I see the whole issue of determinism as a metaphysical one, not subject to empirical verification or falsification. It's a matter of point of view, not fact. I don't see it as a very useful way of thinking - it's misleading. — T Clark

I don't see it as misleading, but I do recognize that people often jump to wrong conclusions about determinism and equate it to fatalism. I've described my view in the past as "interactive determinism", in an attempt to head people off from jumping to simplistic conclusions. In any case, I'd be interested in hearing more about what you see as misleading.

For that matter, I think the idea of causation can be misleading except in the simplest cases. — T Clark

I don't see the idea of causation as misleading. However, I do think humans are extremely susceptible to jumping to simplistic causal explanations, as a consequence of the fact that we can't grasp the full causal web, even if we recognize it exists and want to grasp it.

So you would agree that if "embodied consciousness" refers to the belief that consciousness arises from the whole body, then it must be wrong, since the human body doesn't adapt to diverse earthly environments, but we adapt psychologically. You're saying all that's left is to assert that consciousness is associated with brain states. I agree with that. I don't think any serious philosopher would object to that. — frank

I think it would be a matter of simplistic thinking to assert either consciousness comes from the whole body, XOR consciousness comes from the brain. The brain plays a central role, but other parts of the body play a role in how the brain is functioning as well. Hormones, blood flow, and the oxygen and glucose content of the blood, are some of the aspects of how parts of the body outside the brain have an impact on consciousness. Then of course there are the sensory and motor nerves, with paths all over the body, which play a big role in how our consciousness develops.

Yes. And my claim is that the idea of determinism is meaningless if prediction is not possible, even in theory. — T Clark

I suspect that what people typically mean these days when saying the accept determinism is that they accept it as a corollary of accepting physical causal closure. So I don't see it as a meaningless idea inasmuch as it conveys such a perspective at the very least.

I would think a better objection might be that, in light of the predictive issues, a hypothesis of determinism might not be falsifiable. Does that maybe get more at your objection?

If consciousness is strictly a bodily function, we'd have to explain how it is that the body doesn't adapt, but the mind does. — frank

The body does adapt, in that the strength of connections in your brain changes every time you learn something. It's simply a matter of us not being able to see and note the microscopic changes in brains hidden behind skulls. The changes to our bodies are there, and can be measured under the right circumstances, but it is easy to overlook such changes because they are hardly obvious.

I don't pretend to really understand it, but if I am not misinformed, as jgill pointed out, from the standpoint of the ship, as you approach the speed of light, the distance traversed approaches zero and the time to cross it also approaches zero. It takes a million years for light to cross a gap of a million light years only for an observer stationary with respect to it. For the photon, no distance and no time. — petrichor

I'm not a physicist, and it has been 40 years since I took a course discussing special relativity and QM, so take this with a grain of salt...

The above sounds right. I'll point out some things to consider about the following:

If, from the photon's perspective, there is zero distance between its origin and destination, maybe in some sense, rather than there being an actual photon crossing a distance, it is rather a matter of the two electrons on either end just interacting and transferring a quantum of energy from one to the other. One loses an energy level and the other gains one, maybe like a billiard ball transferring its energy to another ball. How it is determined which electron will interact with which other one halfway "across" the universe though is beyond me! It makes me wonder if we really understand what is going on with space and time at all. The model of a photon as a thing that passes through space works as a model, but maybe thinking about it like that gives the wrong intuition about what is actually happening. — petrichor

One problem I see with such a view is that photons do seem to travel through the intervening space between the initial and terminal electron. If that was not the case, I don't know how gravitational lensing could be explained.

Closer to home we can consider shadows. From our frame of reference it takes eight minutes for light
to travel from the Sun to the Earth. Yet our shadows on the ground move 'instantaneously' when we move. If it was "a matter of the two electrons on either end just interacting and transferring a quantum of energy from one to the other, how would the electron on the Sun know which electron on the Earth to interact with, such that shadows appear as they do when we are walking along?

And it is the same dichotomistic logic down at the level of sensory receptors or enzymatic regulation. You have to be able to make a choice, and indeed not choose that in the most definite sense by doing its very opposite, to in fact have choices, and thus what we think of as creative agency or freewill. — apokrisis

As I said earlier, trying to explain way too much, way too simplistically.

So is my idea of ‘7’ different to yours? (Better not be, else it might be hard to do business.) — Wayfarer

It is unlikely that for practical purposes of doing business, my idea of '7' is substantially different than yours. However in terms of more subtle associations we each make with '7', certainly. Perhaps you consider '7' to. be a lucky number. One of us might even have not so subtle differences in our associations with '7', as are seen in synesthesia.

The answer is networks of neurons. This wikipedia page on artificial neural networks might help with further questions you might have.

So there is what Ned Block has characterized as the "Harder Problem of Consciousness." This speaks to Philosophim's point about experiencing other consciousnesses.. the problem as I understand it is: how can I know what it's like to be you, without actually being you. The physicalist rejoinder may be: well the brain stuff is the same, so the mental states must be the same.. but the brain stuff is only approximately the same, not exactly the same, and the difference in brain states means different mental states, and these mental states are simply not accessible to another, at least, not in an "experiential" way. — NotAristotle

My physicalist rejoinder is... Of course we all have unique brains and that is of some relevance. However the more important matter is that consciousness is a process that occurs in a specific brain, and therefore it's illogical to think that one could experience, experiences that only occur in the brain of someone other than you. So no problem.

In other words, what is it about this arrangement of physical matter and energy that allows consciousness, and how is it different from some other assortment of physical matter and energy that does not allow consciousness? That is, if we think consciousness arises from a physical substrata, what about that physical substrata gives rise to consciousness? — NotAristotle

Information processing. This physical arrangement of matter allows consciousness, because it is structured in a way conducive to being able to do a massive amount of information processing.

It is an argument from ignorance because you are basing your belief that determinism is false on your ignorance of what determines Ned's behavior. You haven't observed Ned behaving contradictory to the predictor's output. You are just sticking with your unjustified assumption that Ned could act contrary, despite having never observed such a situation.

However, there seems to be no reason Ned could choose not to follow the prediction... — NotAristotle

But if determinism is true, then Ned will not act contrary to the prediction. Furthermore understanding the details of how the prediction was made should demonstrate that Ned will not act contrary to the prediction, and therefore if you fully understood how the prediction was made you would have a reason to think Ned could not act contrary to the prediction. The fact that you lack a reason to believe the prediction, when you don't know the details that went into making the prediction suggests you are relying on your ignorance of the determinitive factors as your basis for your conclusion. IOW, you are making an argument from ignorance.

1. With sufficient information about Ned’s internal states and sufficient information about the surrounding environment, Ned’s immediate actions could be predicted.
2. There is sufficient information about Ned’s internal states and sufficient information about the surrounding environment.
3. Therefore, Ned’s immediate actions can be predicted. — NotAristotle

I probably should have been more explicit as to what I saw as question begging. Earlier you said:

the concern is whether in principle, if this information were acquired, could Ned act in opposition to it. And the answer to that seems to be yes. — NotAristotle

On the other hand the conclusion of your argument at the top of this post contradicts your earlier claim that Ned could act in opposition to the prediction. So I am unclear about what you are arguing.

The SEOW is everywhere.
:wink:

Jabberwock has been busy in the Ukraine thread.

Think of it this way, although a crude and oversimplified example, if you flick a domino to start a 1,000,000 domino chain of them hitting each other one-by-one, there is nothing it is like to be those dominos hitting each other. They just hit each other: they are unconscious.

An “unconscious experiencer”, like an AI, is just a more complex version of this: it is mechanical parts hitting each other or transferring this or that—it is quantitative through-and-through just like the domino’s hitting each other. There is nothing it is like to be an AI in the sense like there is something to be like a qualitative experiencer: qualia (in the sense of instances of qualitative experience) have a “special” property of there being something it is like to be it (or perhaps to have it). — Bob Ross

Strings of dominos performing calculations.

This is some disappointing reasoning Bob. Different complex systems have different emergent properties/qualities. Trivializing and then ignoring the complexity of physical systems doesn't make for serious thinking on the subject IMO.

Yes, he has a deep understanding of the workings of biological organisms, and many clear thoughts. However, his speculative theory of biosemiotics is deficient for the reasons I described. When you study biosemiotics further, in the future, keep in mind the issue I mentioned, and now that it's been pointed out to you, it ought to become evident that it's a very real problem, indicating that biosemiotics is quite insufficient. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree. It seems like a mix of scientific understanding and pseudoscience that is trying to explain way too much, way too simplistically.

I suppose we could stipulate that Ned has enough information about his immediate environment to make an accurate prediction about how he will act. It doesn't really concern us whether this sort of information can, as a matter of practicality, be acquired; the concern is whether in principle, if this information were acquired, could Ned act in opposition to it. And the answer to that seems to be yes. — NotAristotle

I'd like to see your reasoning for that layed out. It appears to me that you must be begging the question.