Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[emjay]

They would ?perceive? them physically, in the sense of all the physical interactions and changes that correspond with it, both inside the brain and outside of it with the environment. But even using the word perceive there still doesn't feel quite right to me; to you it seems perception means information processing in a certain way, which is both the low level description in terms of the purely physical interactions in the environment and brain, and a higher abstract level of description at the level of information or processes... basically an aggregate or summary level of description, which consciousness could in some sense be said to be.

It's a bit of a paradox for me; on the one hand I appreciate the analogy of a computer when looking at the concept of different levels of description being one and the same thing... ie at the lowest level you have the physics and matter, through storing only zeroes and ones, then through progressive layers of abstraction and transformation... just as neurons in the brain hierarchically transform and abstract information... through low level languages, to high level languages, all the way up to the 'shiny', to use a similar metaphor to the one you guys have been using, bells and whistles of a multimedia experience on your computer. But as useful as that analogy in showing the identity/equivalence of different levels of description, I still feel it misses the mark somehow where it comes to consciousness. On the one hand, all the levels of abstraction there are equally physical and represented by the same underlying physical state, but on the other, the bells and whistles of a computer (in this case ultimately represented physically by a screen with LEDs in a certain configuration of electrical activation as part of this computer system), still seem to require an outside observer/perceiver to have any meaning.

So I guess my question is this; in the case of a running computer, in the absence of an observer to give it meaning, in your opinion what sort of existence do those abstract levels of information/processing have? Granted I accept that that computer analogy, though good for elucidating identity of different levels of description, might not be the best basis for asking about consciousness, since a) it's not assumed to be conscious itself, and b) the interaction of observer observing any level of it from the outside, is not, necessarily, the same thing as it being perceived from the inside as it were... not sure either way on that. But if the computer analogy is bad here, I'll just try and apply it to the brain itself; you have the underlying physical state, and then through the complex, dynamic, and ever-changing structure and connectivity of the brain, neurons do what they do best and encapsulate, abstract, and transform information... many to one relationships of neurons allowing complexity of information represented to increase exponentially. But where do you draw the line, where phenomenal consciousness is concerned? Any of those levels of abstraction could be considered information by an outside observer, but I think it's fair to assume that not all abstractions/information in the brain, nor levels of those abstractions, become what we think of as phenomenally conscious, so given that lack of a one-to-one correspondence between information processing and subjective phenomenal awareness - not just selectively in the brain but also in say the computer example, where there is information processing and abstraction, but not even assumed subjective phenomenal awareness.

The computer analogy is bad mainly because a computer doesn't interact with the environment to meet conditions for survival.

Suppose instead that we have a robot that must supply itself with fuel found int he environment. It has to deal with challenges from that environment to do so and the computer
that is processing the data has to react to a wide variety of different situations.

Yes, at a certain level of complexity, I would say that robot is conscious. it has to get information from the environment, use that information to 'make decisions' and react appropriately.

When it comes across a piece of information that is relevant to its goal (getting fuel), that piece of information is *meaningful* to that robot.

This is in the same way that detection of a chemical is meaningful to a bacterium and it responds by moving closer or farther away from it.

It seems to me that the line is crossed into phenomenological consciousness when an internal state is compared to incoming information in a continuous way.

I would say the difference is in perspective, like for that computer analogy above, you saying molecular motions and temperature are identical, just different levels of description of the same thing, makes perfect sense just as it does for that computer example... it makes sense for anything we can objectively observe in the physical world... but those assigned meanings come from an outside perspective looking in, which to me seems to be a categorically different thing from what we're trying to explain which is subjective phenomenal awareness. Ie using your example, the molecular motions would be the underlying physical state, and temperature or any other informational interpretations/abstractions, at any level of description, would be akin to the different types and levels of processing in a computer, but from the outside, none of them saying anything about, as Thomas Nagel would put it, what it's like to be any of those states. Indeed for most of them we don't think there is anything that it is like to be them... not temperature, not the different levels of informational processing in a normal computer... but for one thing in the entire universe, we do think there is something it is like to be it, and that is subjective phenomenal awareness... consciousness. Basically it just seems to be a different thing that 'mere' information processing/abstraction alone cannot encapsulate.

Well, one of the reasons biological entities have 'goals' is that they are programmed for survival. That means they have to evaluate information from the environment and determine how it relates to survival (and reproduction). That is where meaning ultimately comes from  initially, I think.

As for the 'what it is like'; no single molecule has a temperature. The concept of temperature only makes sense in systems of molecules. In the same way, only certain types of neural networks would have the feedback necessary to maintain an analysis of an internal state. The evaluation of the internal state is 'what it is like' to be in that state.

So, for example, it is pretty clear that a bacterium doesn't maintain a subsystem modeling its internal state and using that model to determine what it does next. But, for example, a dog clearly does. So the dog is conscious and the bacterium is not.

Again, it seems like an information processing issue and not something beyond what is physical.

Don't get me wrong, I wish I could see it as you... and presumably GN also... do, that phenomenal consciousness is the absolute and inextricable complement of certain underlying physical configurations of matter, ie the neural correlates of consciousness, as well as the different levels and types of information processing/abstraction it represents. In practice I certainly have a similar, identity- ie mirror- based view of the brain and consciousness, but I just cannot take the same leap that you guys have taken to consider them completely inseparable from each other, even conceptually/hypothetically. I accept that that may be largely due to 'dualist baggage' distorting my view, but I've said that from the start. Put it this way, I'm still having great trouble wrapping my head around the Buddhist idea of non-self... it's not the same thing as this I know but it does similarly require fighting against deep dualist intuitions about the nature of the self and consciousness. I guess maybe I have been arguing the 'zombie argument' against physicalism all along without realising it, inasmuch as having these dualist assumptions that there is something fundamentally different between subjective experience and physical reality, the seemingly immaterial and material to put it bluntly. I guess to you, there is no distinction; subjective experience is just as much a part of physics as material reality? It's food for thought for me, and always has been, so please don't think I don't respect your/that viewpoint, it's just something that let's say from a Buddhist point of view, requires 'deep penetration' to truly understand and internalise, something I have not yet done, but maybe in the future I'll come round to that viewpoint.

And I respect your contributions here. it is always interesting to see alternative viewpoints in these matters.

Ultimately, it boils down to what I would consider to be an 'explanation' of consciousness. And, I would be satisfied by a translation process between neural correlates and conscious states that is predictive and reasonably universal. I'm ok with some flexibility around the edges (just like with temperature), and I admit there may be borderline cases (is a plant conscious? how about an earthworm?).

I guess if we have that, I see no need to postulate a dualistic metaphysics since all that we can observe is explained.

This seems like a natural stopping point for the conversation if that's okay with you? In these long conversations I'm just not very good at either disengaging or pacing myself, so just in the space of writing in this thread over the last few days, I've managed to get myself totally out of sync and barely sleeping, so I really need to disengage, relax, and chill... just go back to reading rather than partaking... til the next time.

But I think we're at the point where we understand each other now, and as I said I appreciate your viewpoint as expressed, especially in this post, but also throughout our conversation, and also like I said, it's definitely food for thought. I really mean that. So yeah, thanks for the chat and the insight