Consciousness

[The Grand Nudger]

Because life can be wholly explained in terms of the parts of non-life. But qualia cannot be explained in terms of the parts of non-qualia. It doesn't matter how much non-qualia, non-experience, we put together ... it doesn't suddenly leap into qualia, or experience. That's a radical emergence. Life from non-life isn't radical but experience from non-experience is.

That's not actually true, or..if you prefer, no more true (or less false) of life than of qualia.  We don't even have all the steps of some of life's most basic and enabling processes down.  We're missing a step in photosynthesis.  Think about that, let it sink in.  Hearing that doesn't make you think that organic chemistry can't do photosynthesis, does it.

Why not?  Why are you not equally convinced that life cannot come from non life?  We can add up all the non living stuff we want and we still won't have life, right?  Why are you not equally convinced that photosynthesis cannot come from non photosynthesis?  Add up all the non photosynthetics and you still won't have a photosynthetic.  

That would be to beg the question against me though. Why are we assuming that we come from non-experiential stuff? Especially when there is zero evidence of non-experiential stuff in the universe. All evidence is empirical and empirical means experience-based. You can't get evidence of the non-experiential. Experience is all we have.

Against you....?  

Even if we can't explain how our consciousness (or life, or photosynthesis) arose - we do know that it did so at least once.  There was a time where there was no you, no me.  Then organic chemistry happened..and here we are talking.   Right now, right?  Is your experience different than mine in this regard?  

Wait what? The fundamentality of consciousness is where my argument concludes.

But how can information processing without consciousness possibly lead to information processing with consciousness?

What statements did I make about information processing?

You asserted that information processing cannot lead to information processing with consciousness, and are still questioning it's simple possibility.   Obviously..I think you're wrong, but that's not what I think is interesting.   Imagine a world of consciousness.  Fundamental consciousness.  Yes, and ofc information processing could lead to information processing with consciousness.  It's not just possible it's always happening.  Not just information processing either, eh?  Everything...literally everything...is whatever-with consciousness.  

I'm not saying that consciousness is scarce. I'm saying it's fundamental.

Because just because stuff is made of consciousness doesn't mean that every single perceptual construct of things are conscious. That's no more plausible than saying that because football players are consciousness that then therefore the football team is

More interesting ideas.  So it's not scarce, but not everything that's made of consciousness is conscious.  Have you ever wondered whether we might be just like that?  Made of consciousness, but not ourselves conscious?  Give me some examples of conscious things.

Well there is primordial consciousness and then there is more complex evolved consciousness. We can get the latter from the former. But it doesn't seem that we can possibly get the latter from non-consciousness.

-and that's what I find interesting, especially from a person who believes that consciousness is fundamental.   It seems to me when considering these things, that if I believed that, I would be far more surprised that things failed to instantiate consciousness.