Consciousness

[Disagreeable]

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.

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'.

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.

 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Ah, I see my mistake. You're simply assuming your conclusions in your premises. That isn't an improvement.

Where am I doing that?

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?

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.

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?