In the same way flight is. I mean, sure, we can describe the function of a wing, but flight seems so different than anything else. Knowing everything about a wings structure doesn't explain what it's like to fly.

(July 5, 2025 at 11:29 pm)Paleophyte Wrote:

(July 5, 2025 at 8:12 pm)Ahriman Wrote: Not sure what kind of point you're trying to make.

An analogy demonstrating that you're clearly wrong on several wrong levels.

Well, your analogy wasn't clear enough, maybe use a different one?

(July 6, 2025 at 12:02 pm)Ahriman Wrote:

(July 5, 2025 at 11:29 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: An analogy demonstrating that you're clearly wrong on several wrong levels.

Well, your analogy wasn't clear enough, maybe use a different one?

Perhaps you need to take the cymbals away from your monkey.

Isn't it difficult, though, to tell the difference between a pol pot and an einstein without reference to their actions as products? We have every reason to believe that both mens brains were more alike than not. Some brains pol pot and some brains einstein - both are within the range of human brain function. That one example system or specific outcome expresses or more fully expresses one part of the possible range of that system or the set of potential outcomes than another is no more a demonstration of their fundamental difference than one vehicle being better than another in a turn or a straitaway or under load.

In this, and as any long term otr driver could intuitively know; all drives are, indeed, the same.... and it's all car stuff.

(July 2, 2025 at 5:42 am)Alan V Wrote:

(July 1, 2025 at 10:16 pm)Disagreeable Wrote: So if there is only one kind of substance, then is that substance conscious or non-conscious?

Consciousness is not a substance because it is abstract information processing.

So consciousness emerges from a non-conscious substance. At what point does the "abstract information processing" somehow become conscious qualia? This is the hard problem of consciousness.

Quote:We have evidence of both the experiential and the physical.  As you pointed out, that is a problem.

Not if by 'physical' you mean 'non-experiential'.

Quote:As I mentioned, consciousness did not emerge from non-living matter but from life.

I didn't say it emerged from non-living matter. I said life emerged from non-living matter. But life can be entirely explained in terms of its parts and how those parts interact. Thereby life emerges. It's not radical emergence. But when it comes to consciousness from non-consciousness it is radical emergence. It doesn't matter how you put together non-conscious stuff it doesn't suddenly become conscious. That would be a discontinuous leap, something very unlike how evolution actually works. Any other time we talk about stuff evolving it doesn't contain any discontinuous or radical leaps. Going from non-consciousness to consciousness would be a radical leap.

Quote:  Consciousness evolved gradually, along with life, from lesser forms of subjective experiences.

I agree that greater forms of consciousness evolved from lesser forms of subjective experiences (consciousness). But that's easy. That's not the hard problem. The question is not how higher forms of consciousness can evolve from lower forms of consciousness, the question is how any form of consciousness can evolve from zero consciousness.

Quote:Perhaps you and I can't, but scientists are making great progress in understanding consciousness.

They aren't touching the hard problem though. That's not something that can be solved by science. How consciousness or subjective experience could emerge from non-consciousness isn't something science can answer.

Quote:It's thought by some scientists that to store all possible reactions to circumstances in our brains would take much larger brains.  So consciousness evolved as an economical shortcut, a way to improvise reactions based on perceived circumstances.  In other words, just because something might be possible doesn't mean that was the way we evolved.

It makes a lot more sense for consciousness to have already existed and higher forms of consciousness evolved from lower forms of consciousness. You don't have any evidence of how lower forms of consciousness evolve from zero consciousness.

Quote:The brain activity which underlies consciousness is not in evidence when we are in deep sleep, in a coma, or under an anesthetic.

There is no reason to think that no consciousness is going on in such situations. Just that higher level consciousness isn't.

(July 1, 2025 at 10:17 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Correct me if I'm wrong, but p3 and p4 are actually one premise, no?  Radical emergence being the emergence of consciousness from total-non consciousness.  If I have that right, all of the rest before and after is non operative, and thus not necessary to the conclusion.

It's true that I could omit a lot of the premises. I just wanted to make things as clear as possible. So the entailments are all clear.

Quote:Does "total non consciousness" contain information, information processing, and information processing systems?  I ask because that, in general, is what theorists believe consciousness arose from (and continues to arise from).

But you can't leap from "information processing without consciousness" to "information processing with consciousness."

(July 2, 2025 at 12:05 am)Paleophyte Wrote: Ah, I see my mistake. You're simply assuming your conclusions in your premises. That isn't an improvement.

Where am I doing that?

Quote:You're a pattern recognition engine that can recognize itself.

But does that recognition involve consciousness or not? If it does, then how did the recognition become conscious?

(July 2, 2025 at 1:53 am)Deesse23 Wrote: Everything is physical
The number one exists
Therefore the number one is physical

I should perhaps point out that when I'm talking about everything that exists being physical I'm talking about concrete existences, and not abstract existences. I should say everything concrete is physical.

(July 2, 2025 at 5:22 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Since P1 is false, C4 is false (or at least suspect enough not to be taken seriously).

Boru

If not everything is physical you would still have the problem of how you get consciousness from non-consciousness.

If you put together non-conscious stuff, how can consciousness emerge from that stuff? Isn't that a radical emergence like getting concrete things from abstract things?

(July 6, 2025 at 1:47 pm)Disagreeable Wrote:

(July 2, 2025 at 1:53 am)Deesse23 Wrote: Everything is physical
The number one exists
Therefore the number one is physical

I should perhaps point out that when I'm talking about everything that exists being physical I'm talking about concrete existences, and not abstract existences. I should say everything concrete is physical.

Define "concrete". Does consciousness exist? Is consciousness "concrete"?

(July 6, 2025 at 1:47 pm)Disagreeable Wrote: But life can be entirely explained in terms of its parts and how those parts interact. Thereby life emerges. It's not radical emergence. But when it comes to consciousness from non-consciousness it is radical emergence. It doesn't matter how you put together non-conscious stuff it doesn't suddenly become conscious. 

(July 1, 2025 at 10:17 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Correct me if I'm wrong, but p3 and p4 are actually one premise, no?  Radical emergence being the emergence of consciousness from total-non consciousness.  If I have that right, all of the rest before and after is non operative, and thus not necessary to the conclusion.

It's true that I could omit a lot of the premises. I just wanted to make things as clear as possible. So the entailments are all clear.

Quote:Does "total non consciousness" contain information, information processing, and information processing systems?  I ask because that, in general, is what theorists believe consciousness arose from (and continues to arise from).

But you can't leap from "information processing without consciousness" to "information processing with consciousness."

I included a bit that wasn't directed at me because I think it speaks to our interaction - omitted the rest, just to keep it neater - the same impulse that guided me in recognizing that this one premise contains all that's necessary to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly.  If there's a problem with this premise, the entailments cannot salvage the conclusion, and that problem would, itself...ripple down through those entailments.  

You've expanded on your idea of what is or is not radical emergence and decided that the emergence of life does not qualify.  Life coming from non life is not it.  What, then, makes consciousness coming from non consciousness radical?  Further, your statement at the outset that no matter how we arrange nonconscious stuff it doesn't become conscious seems false on it's face, doesn't it?  Isn't there at least one way to arrange nonconscious stuff that does, then, become conscious?  Are we not exactly such a thing ourselves?  

For the latter bit - what if there is no leap?  If consciousness is fundamental then you're dead wrong just in the framing without any regard for the facts.  Information processing can lead to information processing with consciousness..and so can literally anything else. If consciousness is fundamental there's no way your statements about information processing and what it can or cannot do could be true. If your observations about the scarcity of consciousness however arrived upon are true, then there's no way that consciousness could be fundamental as described. The hard problem is not -then- why we seem to possess subjective experiences - but why drops of water do not. Knowing everything about a world of consciousness and the mechanics thereof could not explain -that-.

(additionally, it may be interesting to you to explore it-from-bit ideas. where it is information and information processing that are fundamental, not consciousness as a narrow and particular application thereof, that is fundamental. The same sorts of observations and inferences are employed - but in this view we and the drop of water are both information processing, though of the two, only one of us is consciousness)

(July 6, 2025 at 1:47 pm)Disagreeable Wrote:

(July 2, 2025 at 5:42 am)Alan V Wrote: Consciousness is not a substance because it is abstract information processing.

So consciousness emerges from a non-conscious substance. At what point does the "abstract information processing" somehow become conscious qualia? This is the hard problem of consciousness.

I discussed the hard problem in some detail with other posters above.

(July 6, 2025 at 1:47 pm)Disagreeable Wrote:

(July 2, 2025 at 5:42 am)Alan V Wrote: As I mentioned, consciousness did not emerge from non-living matter but from life.

I didn't say it emerged from non-living matter. I said life emerged from non-living matter. But life can be entirely explained in terms of its parts and how those parts interact. Thereby life emerges. It's not radical emergence. But when it comes to consciousness from non-consciousness it is radical emergence. It doesn't matter how you put together non-conscious stuff it doesn't suddenly become conscious. That would be a discontinuous leap, something very unlike how evolution actually works. Any other time we talk about stuff evolving it doesn't contain any discontinuous or radical leaps. Going from non-consciousness to consciousness would be a radical leap.

I also mentioned that this is a problem for reductionist materialists.  It is not such a problem for emergent materialists.  I am an emergent materialist.

(July 6, 2025 at 1:47 pm)Disagreeable Wrote:

(July 2, 2025 at 5:42 am)Alan V Wrote: Consciousness evolved gradually, along with life, from lesser forms of subjective experiences.

I agree that greater forms of consciousness evolved from lesser forms of subjective experiences (consciousness). But that's easy. That's not the hard problem. The question is not how higher forms of consciousness can evolve from lower forms of consciousness, the question is how any form of consciousness can evolve from zero consciousness.

Emergence.  And it happens all the time in our day-to-day experiences, when we wake from deep sleep.  That is evidence.

(July 6, 2025 at 1:47 pm)Disagreeable Wrote:

(July 2, 2025 at 5:42 am)Alan V Wrote: Perhaps you and I can't, but scientists are making great progress in understanding consciousness.

They aren't touching the hard problem though. That's not something that can be solved by science. How consciousness or subjective experience could emerge from non-consciousness isn't something science can answer.

I disagree.  If you understood the concept of emergence, you wouldn't so easily jump to such conclusions.

(July 6, 2025 at 1:47 pm)Disagreeable Wrote:

(July 2, 2025 at 5:42 am)Alan V Wrote: It's thought by some scientists that to store all possible reactions to circumstances in our brains would take much larger brains.  So consciousness evolved as an economical shortcut, a way to improvise reactions based on perceived circumstances.  In other words, just because something might be possible doesn't mean that was the way we evolved.

It makes a lot more sense for consciousness to have already existed and higher forms of consciousness evolved from lower forms of consciousness. You don't have any evidence of how lower forms of consciousness evolve from zero consciousness.

On the contrary, you are the one maintaining that consciousness always existed.  You are the one without evidence.  The theoretically economical assumption is that consciousness evolved with life, and also that it is on-again-off-again, just as it appears to be. If you are denying appearances, you have the burden of proof.

(July 6, 2025 at 1:47 pm)Disagreeable Wrote:

(July 2, 2025 at 5:42 am)Alan V Wrote: The brain activity which underlies consciousness is not in evidence when we are in deep sleep, in a coma, or under an anesthetic.

There is no reason to think that no consciousness is going on in such situations. Just that higher level consciousness isn't.

Sure there is.  According to the book Consciousness and the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene, certain "patterns of neural activity are exclusively associated with conscious processing."  Others are unconscious stimuli processing.  The signatures of consciousness include:
1) "a sudden ignition of parietal and prefrontal circuits" which is similar to a phase transition between unconscious and conscious processing,
2) a P3 wave, a late slow wave, 1/3 to 1/2 second after a stimulus,
3) "a late sudden burst of high-frequency [gamma band] oscillations,"
4) "a synchronization of information exchanges across distant brain regions."

This information was gathered by multiple experiments, with consistent results, comparing subjective reports from experimental subjects with their brain scans, during tests playing with threshold conditions, i.e. those which in various ways were right on the edge of awareness for various reasons.

Consciousness studies have become a real science which is beyond mere philosophical speculations at this point.

(July 3, 2025 at 7:29 am)Paleophyte Wrote:

(July 3, 2025 at 2:13 am)snowtracks Wrote: The way the most atheists explain it: An amoeba hatched a dinosauric, then birds evolved. Then there was a series of advantageous mutations for bipedal locomotion & brain organ development, then alas, consciousness.

Cute strawman from a nut who believes that goddunnit.

Unconsciousness cannot cause consciousness. The Principle of Causality states that the Cause is always (yes. always) greater than the Effect.