On naturalism and consciousness

[bennyboy]

Therefore, the most primitie building block of sentience has to be rooted in a kind of atomic consciousness (by which I mean an indivisible minimal consciousness, not any relation to a physical atom, which is misnamed anyway)

Because the system has it in some example of "entity" that means that all (or the vast majority) of the particles in the system must have "consciousness" as an attribute? How hard do you want me to unpack this?

I don't know what hardness and unpacking mean together, so however hard you want.

You might misunderstand me, so let me rephrase. I wouldn't say a human mind supervenes on the brain (or anything else) as a whole. I would say that the most fundamental components of mind are assembled into the whole.

This is not really incompatible with your model, anyway, because you're arguing that logic gating is the fundamental element of mind. That would mean that you could theoretically map the functions of a brain part to an electronic circuit, integrate the two, and do a transplant with no effect on the experience of the person.

My position is not that different in this regard, except that I don't look for a (to me at least) arbitrary structure or function, but to the exchange of energy, probably at the subatomic level, as that fundamental element.

Just being minimally conscious, for example, wouldn't allow you to see meaning in people's behaviors. It's definitely possible, through reflection or drug use or meditation, to arrive at a mental state in which you can see light and hear sound, and perceive no deep meaning in any of it.

I'd wonder whether being "minimally conscious" really raises up to whatever bar we set for "sentience"? Is it possible that something could be minimally conscious - but not sentient?

It certainly wouldn't raise it to what we think of as human sentience. This can be studied with Buddhist meditators and such, who reach states they describe as "eternal not-being" and the like.



All this is interesting, but I have to say, we're still not talking about the same things when we say words like "conscious" or "mind." I do not accept any definition of mind or consciousness which excludes a specific reference to the subjective experience of qualia. You do not accept any definition which cannot be coined in purely mechanical/physical terms.