(May 30, 2017 at 6:03 pm)bennyboy Wrote: This feels a bit like an appeal to ignorance-- we don't know exactly what/where that essential element of consciousness is so. . .

Well, in the view of eliminative materialists it's not that we don't know where "that element" is, rather..that what we do know rules out the notion that any such element could or -does- exist...and that no such element is required to explain the object or subject that we are discussing. That's the trifecta. Element x cannot be found. There are good reasons that no such thing as element x -could- exist, and element x is not required.

Quote:If you are saying that we are not conscious OF the past, but rather IN the past, then what does time even mean?  Obviously, depending on where various sensations are sourced, they may have been in process for billions of years.  Then the mind draws those sensations available to it at a given moment-- however old they may happen to be or how they were arrived that-- into a coordinated experience.

We don't need to know exactly how those sensations are drawn together.

-but we do know where, and when...and it isn't in a single place or time, and it certainly isn't the present...... despite seeming, itself, explicitly depending upon a present moment for a singular observer.  

Quote:Seeming can't be flawed, when we are talking about something which is defined by the fact of seeming.  The fact is that if I experience things together, there is at least one context in which those things are together.  If you can't find the specific processes or functions which bring them together, this is much less an indictment of the nature of reality than a confession that there isn't currently a good material explanation for consciousness-- something we already know.

If seeming can't be flawed, why does it seem flawed?  In any case, I'll say the same to you that I said to Ham, but elaborate. If you're comfortable with this "seeming" business as being, in actuality, a construct of memory rather than a description of some then-present or now present happening...you're already on the spectrum of what eliminative materialists propose about consciousness.

Quote:Really none of the things in this paragraph represent my ideas about this subject.  Certainly, I've said none of them in this thread or in the recent past.  Ergo, I cannot argue any of these points.

I could quote you saying that, over and over, and you know it, lol.  I wasn't trying to argue that point with you, I was trying to show you an area of agreement between you and eliminative materialists.  From that point, obviously, yall diverge from each other. Neither of you thinks that consciousness as-described fits within a materialist position.

I accidentally ninja-edited you. If you have time, you can check my previous post to see if you have anything to add or change.

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(May 30, 2017 at 6:09 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Well, in the view of eliminative materialists it's not that we don't know where "that element" is, rather..that what we do know rules out the notion that any such element could or -does- exist...and that no such element is required to explain the object or subject that we are discussing.  That's the trifecta.  Element x cannot be found.  There are good reasons that no such thing as element x -could- exist, and element x is not required.  

It's a nice collection of words, but there's a problem. When I watch a movie, the sounds and sights are coordinated in my experience, and my interest in mind is not to wonder IF, but to wonder WHY. Unless a theory actually answers the questions posed, then it's not really a theory at all.

For example, if you ask, "Why do solid objects transform energy to heat when they collide?" and my answer is that 99.9999% of a "solid object" is empty space, and that even the .000001% is so highly suspect that you should doubt that it exists in the classical sense, so you should consider the objects illusory-- then what of it?

You might be perfectly willing to concede the philosophical point. Then you'll wander off to find someone who has a decent answer to your question.

Quote:-but we do know where, and when...and it isn't in a single place or time, and it certainly isn't the present...... despite seeming, itself, explicitly depending upon a present moment for a singular observer.  

That's a pretty big can of worms. I could at this moment be reliving my life on my death's bed, or I could be God imagining an unfolding drama that exists nowhere in my mind. Time is relative, but if you are going to define a particular moment as "now," it would have to be the sense of awareness itself.

Quote:If seeming can't be flawed, why does it seem flawed?  In any case, I'll say the same to you that I said to Ham, but elaborate.  If you're comfortable with this "seeming" business as being, in actuality, a construct of memory rather than a description of some then-present or now present happening...you're already on the spectrum of what eliminative materialists propose about consciousness.  

I'm not talking about seeming of content. I'm talking about the seeming of coordination.

Quote:I could quote you saying that, over and over, and you know it, lol.  I wasn't trying to argue that point with you, I was trying to show you an area of agreement between you and eliminative materialists.  From that point, obviously, yall diverge from each other.  Neither of you thinks that consciousness as-described fits within a materialist position.

Fair enough.

(May 30, 2017 at 6:29 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Maybe the experience of qualia itself IS the element, then.

An element that cannot be found.  An element that good reasons™ suggest to us cannot exist, and an element that is not required.

Quote:That's a pretty big can of worms.  I could at this moment be reliving my life on my death's bed, or I could be God imagining an unfolding drama that exists nowhere in my mind.  Time is relative, but if you are going to define a particular moment as "now," it would have to be the sense of awareness itself.

-which would be unfortunate, since the sense of awareness can't possibly be happening "now".....because, at the very least, information processing takes time.  It could -only- have happened "then", unless "now", like consciousness, to us..is just a post processing narrative.  Eliminative materialists have no problem with post processing narratives as-consciousness.  That;s what many of them think the perception of now, and seeming in the now, is. A compelling story about a then, chock full of error, chock full of illusion.

Quote:I'm not talking about seeming of content.  I'm talking about the seeming of coordination.

Does seeming seem coordinated, or does seeming seem present?  It can be one, and not the other.  I also think that seeming is coordinated. So do eliminative materialists, sort of.  Coordinated by what, however?  The seeming singular entity of consciousness that exists in the present moment, or the actual process which is distributed throughout space and time?

(I'll go back and check, but I don't make any bones about edits, lol..you know that)

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(May 30, 2017 at 6:03 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Even an illusion needs a host, since an illusion is a malformed perception.  Tell me, who/what is experiencing the illusion?  Does the illusion experience the illusion?  This starts to sounds like philosophical Buddhism or Hinduism, and very much not like a material monist view of mind.

People sometimes get things somewhat right for the wrong reasons. Other times, people interpret a bad guess as something it isn't, likening it to good research only because it conforms to what they count and they don't mind much what is omitted.  

"The ancients got it right" is an industry.  They didn't...but people keep thinking they did, or that something we know now sounds alot like something they thought then.  

Eliminative materialists -do- think that the illusion has a host, as it were..  They are, after all, still materialists, still looking to explain experience by reference to the brain.  

Quote:I'm willing to take it as brute fact that mind is real.

So are eliminative materialists.  After all...that's what they're trying to explain.


There you go. Pretty much all I had to add.

(May 29, 2017 at 8:35 pm)Khemikal Wrote: This would be to equate memory with experience, and, in this case, consciousness.....which I'm fine with (dennet would be fine with that too)...though you might want to rethink it.......

Of course all memory is experiential and conscious. No I do not wish to rethink that. It doesn't make it an illusion.

The whole disagreement you and Jor have with me is just the two of you's repeated failure to grasp the fact that when the mechanics behind how consciousness works is commonly misunderstood by most people that doesn't fucking mean that conscious itself is an illusion. For starters you're both confusing delusion with illusion. People are deluded about the way consciousness works and they don't realize that what they are experiencing now is in fact something that went on in their brain a moment ago. But the whole point is that what they seem to be experiencing now they seem to be experiencing now and there's no distinction between what they seem to be experiencing now and what they are experiencing now because seeming to experience is experimentally identical to experiencing. Q. E. D.

(May 30, 2017 at 7:40 pm)Hammy Wrote:

(May 29, 2017 at 8:35 pm)Khemikal Wrote: This would be to equate memory with experience, and, in this case, consciousness.....which I'm fine with (dennet would be fine with that too)...though you might want to rethink it.......

Of course all memory is experiential and conscious. No I do not wish to rethink that. It doesn't make it an illusion.

Oh, well then........all false memory must be false experiential and false consciousness?  No sweat off an eliminativists back.  They do, though, think that more of what you call consciousness is of the false memory/experience/consciousness variety than you might imagine.  Like, how it feels to feel, for example.  

Quote:The whole disagreement you and Jor have with me is just the two of you's repeated failure to grasp the fact that when the mechanics behind how consciousness works is commonly misunderstood by most people that doesn't fucking mean that conscious itself is an illusion. For starters you're both confusing delusion with illusion. People are deluded about the way consciousness works and they don't realize that what they are experiencing now is in fact something that went on in their brain a moment ago. But the whole point is that what they seem to be experiencing now they seem to be experiencing now and there's no distinction between what they seem to be experiencing now and what they are experiencing now because seeming to experience is experimentally identical to experiencing. Q. E. D.

Seeming to experience is the same as experiencing to an eliminative materialist, as well.  They just don't think that this consciousness is what it seems to be.  A point that's been made to you so many times it's almost painful to reiterate.

What's the problem?

(May 30, 2017 at 6:45 pm)Khemikal Wrote: An element that cannot be found.  An element that good reasons™ suggest to us cannot exist, and an element that is not required.

Sure it can be found. . . in consciousness. Saying "We can't find it, so it doesn't exist" isn't very useful for things that obviously exist. . . like my consciousness.

Quote:-which would be unfortunate, since the sense of awareness can't possibly be happening "now"

That's what happening means-- a change of state occurring now.

Quote:.....because, at the very least, information processing takes time.  It could -only- have happened "then", unless "now", like consciousness, to us..is just a post processing narrative.  Eliminative materialists have no problem with post processing narratives as-consciousness.  That;s what many of them think the perception of now, and seeming in the now, is.  A compelling story about a then, chock full of error, chock full of illusion.  

Post-processing by what? There's your mechanism of consciousness. Post-processing when? There's your time.

Quote:Does seeming seem coordinated, or does seeming seem present?  It can be one, and not the other.  I also think that seeming is coordinated. So do eliminative materialists, sort of.  Coordinated by what, however?  The seeming singular entity of consciousness that exists in the present moment, or the actual process which is distributed throughout space and time?

Seeming is present, but the content of seeming may be from disparate times. I think your stance is predicated on consciousness-as-information: you think "I'm conscious," but the thinking, and the feeling of awareness, take time to process.

I don't think consciousness is that, though you have to coin it in those terms when you try to form ideas about it or to express them.

Quote:So are eliminative materialists.  After all...that's what they're trying to explain.

Calling brute facts illusion isn't much of an explanation.

I think that you're pretty much falling headfirst into the same pit that Ham did, Benny.  

Your consciousness as described, in the view of eliminative materialists, does not and cannot exist.  That they seek to explain consciousness strongly suggests that they think that -consciousness- exists.  Dennet, for example, in this thread, quoted ala "ofc consciousness exists, it;s just not what you think it is". What is there, in any of this, to be unclear about?

If happening means now, then your consciousness is not happening.  It happened.  It still -seems- like it's happening though, doesn't it?  This is one of the illusions to which eliminativists refer. 

Post processing by a brain, they're materialists, that's the mechanism of consciousness they refer to.  Post processing all the time, they're materialists, they seek to explain consciousness in spacetime.  Nevertheless, they maintain, and nuerology confirms (hell..positively basic physics confirms), that this post processing is a "happened" sort of thing, not a presently happening thing...and that the mechanism is not as it presents itself to us.  SAeeming, itself, seems to be a way that it is not, and cannot be. They call that an illusion, pretty straightforward, right?

Eliminative materialists -don't- call the brute facts of consciousness an illusion, they call some descriptions of those brute facts illusory...such as the feeling of feeling in the now, the feeling of being a singular entity in the now, in there, etc. They propose, for example..that you didn;t actually feel that way at all -in the sense of a present happening, a present seeming discrete in space and time-, that you tell yourself a compelling story about feeling that way, then...regardless of whether or not you did, regardless of whether or not there was a then, and regardless of whether or not there is a "you" as-such. That "you"...to "them", is a center of narrative focus, not a mental state, not a discrete process or structure in the brain.

(May 30, 2017 at 8:38 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Your consciousness as described, in the view of eliminative materialists, does not and cannot exist.  That they seek to explain consciousness strongly suggests that they think that -consciousness- exists.  Dennet, for example, in this thread, quoted ala "ofc consciousness exists, it;s just not what you think it is".  What is there, in any of this, to be unclear about?  

If happening means now, then your consciousness is not happening.  It happened.  It still -seems- like it's happening though, doesn't it?  This is one of the illusions to which eliminativists refer. 

Consciousness IS the happening.  The rest is just content.

(May 30, 2017 at 8:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote:

(May 30, 2017 at 8:38 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Your consciousness as described, in the view of eliminative materialists, does not and cannot exist.  That they seek to explain consciousness strongly suggests that they think that -consciousness- exists.  Dennet, for example, in this thread, quoted ala "ofc consciousness exists, it;s just not what you think it is".  What is there, in any of this, to be unclear about?  

If happening means now, then your consciousness is not happening.  It happened.  It still -seems- like it's happening though, doesn't it?  This is one of the illusions to which eliminativists refer. 

Consciousness IS the happening.  The rest is just content.

But then, when you say you experience your consciousness directly, what do you mean? You experience its happeningness?

(May 30, 2017 at 8:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Consciousness IS the happening.  The rest is just content.

This is exactly the issue. The eliminative materialists do not distinguish between consciousness as-such and the contents of consciousness, intentionality versus that towards which intention is directed.