A Conscious Universe

[bennyboy]

I don't know the exact chemistry of alcohol on brain function.

More generally, why does manipulation of the brain via substances result in manipulation of the experiences?

I think you are looking for an alternative to brain chemistry. However, there are no observable facts which are not also considered facts in an idealistic universe. The brain is the brain, brain chemistry is brain chemistry, etc.

The differences, so far as I can tell, only happen at philosophical boundary conditions: establishing the fundamental nature "underlying" QM (if there is such a thing), establishing cosmogony, psychogony, etc.

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The problem with "an idea" as the solution, one that exists solely in thought without any characteristic identifiable with a world where concepts are provided definition by sense data, is that it cannot, at least as I can see, be understood in terms of how this purely abstract existence could affect physical reality.

Because everything that exists, i.e. reality, IS the data.

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Information about its chemistry as it interacts with air.

So the subset of the information of paint (specifically the chemistry subset) interacts with the information of the air? How can information do anything?

Well, in one case, you are walking outside where other people walk, and in the other case, you are imagining walking, and other people cannot walk there, because it's in your imagination.

What seperates your imagination from the shared environment?

The subjective awareness of information.

Hmmmm. . . what does "exist" mean to you?

Something exist if it directly interacts with the shared environment.

Do consciousness and information "exist"? Then I think I can almost answer my question about how you define that word. Let me ask you-- do numbers exist?

A deliberate change of state in one's environment.

I don't understand this question.

e.g. to walk or to think of walking. You partically answered earlier, but you didn't specify how can such a seperation exist.

The interaction of ideas over time causes change of state.

What are the mechanics of the interaction?

So you think time exist, what about space? Or do you think time and space are also information?

The subjective awareness of information.

What is consciousness made out of? Information? If so, how can information create a consciousness?

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That's a lot of questions. Let me answer that, in general, I'd describe most things as you would: momentum is the product of mass and velocity, the speed of light is 300,000km/s., etc. In fact, in all observable cases of physical interactions, I'd accept current explanations: bat has momentum a, ball has momentum b, you do the math, and ball flies toward the outfield.

The main differences occur at philosophical boundaries. What, for example, is a photon: a wave, a particle, both, neither? As an idea, ambiguity is fine. I would not, however, accept that an ambiguous "particle" is real in a physical sense, because there's no way to map it to the dimension of space which is the framework in which physical monism works.

Another example is the mind. In a physical monism, subjective mind is a (very strange) "bonus" to processes which should be able to tick along just fine without it. And before everyone starts shouting about brain chemistry, consider this: how do we even know what physical systems have the capacity to experience subjectively? We don't.

It seems to me much simpler to explain all the universe in terms of an interaction of ideas, than to explain mind in terms of physical elements. This is because we already experience everything we know as a collection of experiences and ideas anyway.

[Mudhammam]

Because everything that exists, i.e. reality, IS the data.

Right but our conception of it, our idea of the external world, is not constructed upon pure thought, it is rather a means to interpret objects and the events that contain them, events that exist independent of whatever mental configurations are at this very moment in production due to a highly evolved system of physical stimuli, i.e. the human brain. When we discovery something new about the universe and revise old ideas or discard others, we are not creating the data, we are measuring it.

[bennyboy]

Because everything that exists, i.e. reality, IS the data.

Right but our conception of it, our idea of the external world, is not constructed upon pure thought, it is rather a means to interpret objects and the events that contain them, events that exist independent of whatever mental configurations are at this very moment in production due to a highly evolved system of physical stimuli, i.e. the human brain. When we discovery something new about the universe and revise old ideas or discard others, we are not creating the data, we are measuring it.

That's right. From our perspective, the observations we make are discoveries. We are experiencing information about things not of the self, via measurements, qualitative descriptions, etc. My argument is about what is "under the hood" of the universe, not about our personal relationship with the information we collect.

[Mudhammam]

My argument is about what is "under the hood" of the universe, not about our personal relationship with the information we collect.

Oh? I was under the impression that in explaining everything as "an interaction of ideas," we were giving ourselves and our relationship with the information a very special and discomfortable position with whatever is "under the hood."

[Chas]

Yes and yes.

So what is the position of a photon as it passes through a double-slit experiment?

Sorry, I misread as protons.

[Alex K]

If anything like the Many Worlds interpretation is correct, the particle indeed does not have definite momentum and position, because the rules of fourier analysis forbid it in principle - a wave function cannot be confined in an arbitrarily narrow space without parts of it representing different and arbitrarily large momenta. If something like Bohmian mechanics is closer to what nature does, particles do indeed have a definitite momentum and position, because the wave function is merely guiding the actual point particle. If you follow something like the copenhagen interpretation, you simply don't ask the question, I'd say.
Bohmian mechanics is hard to marry with modern particle physics, though.

[The Grand Nudger]

You can say that we don't experience people, but only the physical states of QM particles, but this isn't a very meaningful statement. We experience as human not a collection of QM particles, but the information encoded in their relationship to each other.

But we don't have to go to such a deep virtual reality to see this. We can just experience a video game. There's Mario, jumping around the screen. Does he "exist?" Not in the sense that we normally mean, no.

Yes, he does, and precisely in the sense that we normally mean. Mario is a collection of tiny physical machines doing work.

Information about him exists and is encoded in memory,

A physical thing

CPU,

a collection of physical things

and GPU.

A collection of physical things

But Mario isn't there.

Yes......he is, and you just described precisely where Mario was and what he was.

If you want to insist that Mario IS a collection of binary states in the hardware, then I disagree with you--

Then that's the point where you've gone off the rails.

Mario is a little red-clothed dude with a hammer jumping around the screen. I know, because I observe him. See? There he is.

Yep, and what you see is also a collection of physical things interacting with one another, your TV is part of the user interface. The space between you and the tv..physical, your eyes, physical, the nerves sending signals, physical, and the brain that recieves them, physical. Describe the function of all of this "Mario" business and you will be describing both the source of and the "qualia" of Mario - and it will all be done in physical terms.
(it is precisely -because- of all of these dependable interactions between physical objects that "Mario" is even possible, and can exist as a shared experience between many individual parties)

You say QM particles "really" exist. But a photon has no mass or volume. Where, then, is this mythical physical medium in which information about the photon exists?

A photon is the smallest unit of light that can be detected. It is energy, and as such mass-energy equivalence applies. The "physical medium" is the machine capable of detecting photons. Hardly mythical...since they exist in many implementations both mechanical and biological.

Is there another layer of physical reality which carries information about "things" which have zero size?

You're trying to extend our workaday concept of "size" -ala tables and chairs- to photons as though that would be meaningful. Approached from the context of the field of study, yes, photons have "size". Try not to let your let your poor resolution qualia get in the way.

I'll only accept this argument if you sing it.

I was totally singing this for the rest of the day. It's catchy.

If you're asking about the drying paint, I did answer it.

But I'll answer it again (maybe inaccurately as I'm not an expert in drying paint): the heat from the sun or another source excites the water molecules,

Hit the brakes batman, you're stealing concepts.

causing them to break free of the paint and be absorbed into the air.

Air is physical

The other molecules in the paint remain behind on the wall, leaving a solid shell.

"Molecules"...."solid"...."wall"...wtf?

See, the thing you guys don't seem to be connecting with is that there's nothing described in a physical monism which isn't describable in an idealistic monism, usually in almost the same terms.

Unsurprising.....since descriptions offered from one human being to another are ideas to begin with (again, a red car won't fit in my head, nor will it exit my mouth when I speak to you about it..nor could it fit through your earholes to it's final resting place in -your- head, thankfully, there is another, equally physical way to transmit what I propose is an equally physical object - by vibration (each step from the car to your mind through the air to my mind you will find a that a physical process is at play which adequately explains the entirety of the phenomenon with no need to propose any hidden variables)...I keep pointing this out, you don't seem to understand the significance. What happens when your descriptions...like Mario above...have a definite place, when they have mass...when they are physical things - between your ears, as evidence suggests?

I think this is the crux of it, for some odd reason, you think that mario -is not- precisely what mario is....this is, to me, inexplicable on the one hand (you're a smart guy, you have an idea about how this stuff works) but predictable on the other( you're a human being, these machines were designed with this experience in mind) - and reeks of an intuitive but ultimately baseless assertion. Sure, Mario doesn't -seem- like a bunch of small binary machines.....but the air between you and "Mario" -seems- empty, and he seems to be "over there" rather than in the machine or in your head, so you should know better. Your equipment has tolerance and performance limits (somewhat sadly, this isn't actually beyond those limits..."Mario" as he actually -is- is big enough to see with your eyes, if you know where to look - I can give you all of his IO addresses if you're talking about an oldschool NES platform - I can give you his IO addresses in any platform, would just take some research on an snes or emu or any of the newer systems - and you can crack open a platform, cartridge, or disk and touch the little red fucker provided that you have access to the schems! I think that you could do the same with the "Mario" in your mind....though I'd advise against it.....).

[bennyboy]

You're trying to extend our workaday concept of "size" -ala tables and chairs- to photons as though that would be meaningful. Approached from the context of the field of study, yes, photons have "size". Try not to let your let your poor resolution qualia get in the way.

Great! Tell me the size of a photon. I've been trying to google it, but couldn't get an unambiguous answer. Then, while you're at it, tell me its geographical dimensions, because that's how "stuff" is defined is space-time coordinates. I look forward to drawing a photon and putting a picture up on my wall.

[The Grand Nudger]

Will the explanation dissuade you from your assumption any more competently than an explanation of Mario's size and existence? Or will this turn into an endless litany of "prove this difficult thing, checkmate! / I disagree like a fucking loon!" episodes?
(also, do you have a sub to Nature?)

[bennyboy]

Will the explanation dissuade you from your assumption any more competently than an explanation of Mario's size existence?

I don't know. Explain how you know the size of a photon, and I'll tell you. Will a repetition of the difference between information and the arbitrary medium which carries it dissuade you from yours?