A Conscious Universe

[Chas]

Bennyboy, to what do you attribute the consistency of experience across multiple minds?

Why is it that I can't access information on your computer, but we can both share information on the internet? It's context-- each of us is part of a whole, and some of that whole is available to us, and some is not.

I don't think that addresses the question - it is not a good analogy.

A better one would be that we are constructed from common hardware and running similar software.

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Bennyboy, to what do you attribute the consistency of experience across multiple minds?

Why is it that I can't access information on your computer, but we can both share information on the internet? It's context-- each of us is part of a whole, and some of that whole is available to us, and some is not.

I don't think that addresses the question - it is not a good analogy.

A better one would be that we are constructed from common hardware and running similar software. We are communicating our experiences, not sharing them.

[bennyboy]

How does that justify the leap that the ideas themselves and not the things they attempt to define have some primary status as the fundamental constituents of matter or a deeper reality?

It's like the value of i, the square root of -1. It is a meaningful idea, but cannot be manifested. We can't count that amount of things, and cannot manifest it in 3D space. And yet, we couldn't really model the universe without it. I believe that under the hood, all the building blocks of reality are like i in this way.

It's the advantage of idealism: nothing experienced is ultimately invalidated-- things are only brought into and out of context. So the content of dreams is not "false." It's a real experience inside the context of the dream, but not in the context of mundane life. And our mundane view of looking at the universe as a collection of volume-filling objects like desks and computers is not false, either; it's valid in the context of mundane life, but not in the context of QM. And quirky particles that evade our attempts to model them aren't invalid except in the context of our mundane view.

What do you mean "nothing experienced is ultimately invalidated"? No one would dispute that people often confuse experience with objects in the mind only with objects that also exist outside of it, in the real world, so as to think the one phenomenon truly exists apart from their imagination. Simply to divide the two into "contexts" that are both mental, dismissing the physicality of objects as no more a qualifier for what exists objectively than the wisps of a dream, seems unhelpful, unjustified, and utterly confusing.

I don't like the word "real." All experiences are intrinsically real. The difference is that some of them are consistent and sharable, making them worth organized study, and some are not. Experiences of density, color, size, momentum, etc. are sharable and worth organized study. Dreams about being a pretty, pretty dragon princess on planet Xargon probably are not.

[Surgenator]

Me doing the math isn't what make the ball fly. The ball flies because the bat interacts with the ball. Just because we can use math to calculate how the ball will fly, it doesn't mean the math is making the ball fly.

Nobody has asserted otherwise. Why are you arguing this point?

Idealism sounds like the math is making the ball fly. Explain in as much detail as possible on how this works, because I don't see understand how information moves, interacts, or has location. The baseball scenerio in idealism terms sounds like "an information packet moving through space, does some math with another information packet to decide where it would move next." And I'm guessing that time and space are real things in idealism and not another packet of information.

I frankly do not see what the problem is. Your brain takes in some sensory information and assosiates it with a memory. The consciousness (a byproduct of the brain) has access to these memories. So whenever you get the a similiar sensory data, the already existing memory makes you feel like you know what it is. This is subjective, because this is only your memory not anyones else.

The problem isn't the processing. It's the qualia. There's no good explanation for why physical processing should imply, require, or allow the existence of qualia. Nor is there any plausible mechanism described which would allow the supervenience of qualia on any physical system. In fact, you don't even have the capacity, given a given physical system, to determine IF it is capable of experiencing qualia.

I disagree that qualia is necessary. I don't believe it even exist. How do you know qualia is an illusion? Just because you experience something that doesn't mean your experiences reflect reality.

We can generate ideas, I do it all the time. These ideas do not manifest in reality unless I get up and impliment them. If ideas is what this reality is made out of, then there shouldn't be a difference between generating ideas in my head vs ideas in reality.

Why? That's like saying if matter is what this reality is made out of, there should be no difference between moving your hand and moving the moon. Just because things reduce down to ideas doesn't mean that nothing is different from anything else. Get this point-- idealism is not solipsism. I'm not claiming we are collectively co-creating the universe with our imaginations.

I'm not claiming we are co-creating anything. I'm pointing out that the source of the idea is not important for its existence like the source of the particle is not important for its existence. My mind is an idea generator yet my ideas do not manifest in reality. A partice generator creates particles in reality observable by all.

In physicalism, my mind cannot create physical objects. So me imagining physical objects have no affect on reality.
In idealism, my mind can create ideas. So I can create the idea of balls using my imagination. You couldn't see my created balls because of ...... umm ..... what is preventing you from seeing them?

lol what do you think idealism is? Apparently you haven't read the several posts in which I described what the word means to me.

I'm saying that "under the hood" of the universe, if things reduce down to conceptual relationships that cannot be expressed unambiguously in a space-time framework, then it makes more sense to think of these things as ideas than as physical objects. I've said that QM and the existence of mind make me believe this to be the case. I did not say that we are limited only by our imagination, or that dreams are the same as objective reality, or that anyone needs to balance their Four Psychic Winds.

Never said anything about imagination's limitations. The problem is that the mind can create ideas. If the fundamental element of the universe are ideas, then our imagination can create reality. Like a flashlight creates photons, our mind creates ideas.

[bennyboy]

Why is it that I can't access information on your computer, but we can both share information on the internet? It's context-- each of us is part of a whole, and some of that whole is available to us, and some is not.

I don't think that addresses the question - it is not a good analogy.

A better one would be that we are constructed from common hardware and running similar software. We are communicating our experiences, not sharing them.

When I say, "share," I'm not talking about communication. I'm just talking about having access to the same experience. For example, if we're in a room together and I drop a ball, you also see it fall. That's all I meant.

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Nobody has asserted otherwise. Why are you arguing this point?

Idealism sounds like the math is making the ball fly. Explain in as much detail as possible on how this works, because I don't see understand how information moves, interacts, or has location. The baseball scenerio in idealism terms sounds like "an information packet moving through space, does some math with another information packet to decide where it would move next." And I'm guessing that time and space are real things in idealism and not another packet of information.

No, I wouldn't say that space is real, not in the sense that you view it. In an idealistic view, I'd view space as conceptual. It represents part of the way in which objects are related.

I disagree that qualia is necessary. I don't believe it even exist. How do you know qualia is an illusion? Just because you experience something that doesn't mean your experiences reflect reality.

Did I say qualia was an illlusion? That really doesn't sound like something I'd say. What I would say is that from the perspective of a physical monism, qualia is nonsense. You can't interact with it, manipulate it directly, or even know for sure it exists.

But it does. I know this for sure, because I experience it. Therefore, a system in which qualia is nonsense cannot be said to represent reality.

I'm not claiming we are co-creating anything. I'm pointing out that the source of the idea is not important for its existence like the source of the particle is not important for its existence. My mind is an idea generator yet my ideas do not manifest in reality. A partice generator creates particles in reality observable by all.

I think you are making an accidental equivocation of ideas as the building block of reality, and ideas as things people think about things. Your idea no more creates elemental ideas than your brain creates new matter.

I never said anything about imagination's limitations. The problem is that the mind can create ideas. If the fundamental element of the universe are ideas, then our imagination can create reality. Like a flashlight creates photons, our mind creates ideas.

First of all, I think it's a bit simplistic to say a flashlight creates photons. It releases them.

Anyway, the thing about ideas bringing forth something new into the universe is interesting-- but it happens not to represent my views on the universe.

[The Grand Nudger]

Why is it that I can't access information on your computer, but we can both share information on the internet?

...........you know that the answer to the question is physical machinery.....right?

It's context-- each of us is part of a whole, and some of that whole is available to us, and some is not.

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[Alex K]

First of all, I think it's a bit simplistic to say a flashlight creates photons. It releases them.

I think it is fair to say that it creates them. In your LED, an electron loses energy and a photon or two appear which weren't there before as real (in the technical sense) particles. If you want to argue that the photons were already there as virtual particles in the electrical potential, you can do that and call it a release, but then you abolish the notion of particle creation entirely.

[The Grand Nudger]

The problem isn't the processing. It's the qualia.

Right off the bat you assume a difference. Meh, I'm unconvinced.

There's no good explanation for why physical processing should imply, require, or allow the existence of qualia.

One fewer assumption - and there is no problem....not that I;m sure there's a problem even when you make this assumption. I've seen you make it often, but I've never seen you explain -why- you think this to be so?

Nor is there any plausible mechanism described which would allow the supervenience of qualia on any physical system. In fact, you don't even have the capacity, given a given physical system, to determine IF it is capable of experiencing qualia.

Then how have you determined that -you- experience qualia..praytell?

[bennyboy]

Then how have you determined that -you- experience qualia..praytell?

Because that's what qualia means. That I experience.

[The Grand Nudger]

thus begging the question of what and how, the question of the thread. However, can you see how convenient the statement you just made is for my position? If your qualia is your experience - by definition...and your experience is the operation of a machine, then what's the difference between the operation of the machine, the processing, and qualia? Why should there be a problem, what is left to account for?

[bennyboy]

Why is it that I can't access information on your computer, but we can both share information on the internet?

...........you know that the answer to the question is physical machinery.....right?

It's annoying that you guys are taking a Rain-man literalism to illustrative examples. Do you even know what point I was talking about, or did you just get excited about a chance to shout out the word "physical"?

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thus begging the question of what and how, the question of the thread. However, can you see how convenient the statement you just made is for my position? If your qualia is your experience - by definition...and your experience is the operation of a machine, then what's the difference between the operation of the machine, the processing, and qualia? Why should there be a problem, what is left to account for?

What do you mean my "experience is the operation of a machine"?