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Good read on consciousness
#11
RE: Good read on consciousness
I know what you mean, but that wouldn't be a good example. Free will (and c free will) only state that something about volition is meaningfully free - the outcomes of our volitional ability are in no way guaranteed.

A person can freely will to quit drinking, and remain an alcoholic. -if, there's free will, ofc.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#12
RE: Good read on consciousness
We have free will. It just isn't what we think it is. If will is not caused by anything, then it is a random event -- hardly the same as personal volition. It will is caused by previous events, then it is determined. Determinism or not-determinism says nothing about what free-will is.

Free will is the ability for a conscious entity to choose (or think it is choosing) a path that is usually useful to itself. Whether it actually chooses anything is not the point -- it thinks it does. The fact that we cannot predict the choice makes the illusion of freedom more complete. One could argue that any response that is 90+% predictable is more of a hard-wired reflex and not really a choice, but even then we "think" we've made it if it involves cognition.
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#13
RE: Good read on consciousness
That would be a view that made realism and illusionism false, on it's face. If that's what free will is, if free will is, ofc.

In illusionism, there is no conscious entity to choose and there is no conscious entity to have a phenomenal experience of being fooled into thinking it has a choice.

In realism, where there is really a free will..it cannot be a user illusion or an item of strictly subjective apprehension.

-and to repeat, the trouble isn't that we can't come up with credible ways that free will or consciousness -might- be a real thing in a meaningful way, the trouble is that we can't find anything that matches that description in our brains. That we can explain the process of "seeing something' without ever once referring to any inner eye or I, which is good, on account of how we can't find one, I guess? That a specific kind of machine which absolutely does not possess this thing (if it's a thing) would be expected to report exactly the sorts of things we report, in exactly the way that we report them. That it would be expected to be ignorant of exactly the kinds of things we're ignorant of, and fail to report those, just as we fail to report those. That all of these explanations have the weight of observation and theories behind them lending credence..whereas I and free will just have us totally reporting that we do too possess these items.

I want to tend towards a kind of compatibilism, personally, but so long as compatibilism is essentially saying that the illusionists are right and we'd just like to keep the folk psy terms to discuss this other thing, well....hard to maintain.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#14
RE: Good read on consciousness
There is only one reason why consciousness exists. Evolution required it.

Some have seen consciousness as an inevitable thing once a neural network achieves a certain level of complexity, but I disagree. Yes, a mode of operation is going on that is a high order of complexity, but the nature of the experience IS the operation going on. We experience it the way we do only because the brain is designed that way, not because it is inevitable. We have a sense of "self" because our bodies need us to.

The qualia and experience of an alien might be nothing like ours (unless evolutionary pressures always end up with the same end result). "We are Borg" is going to be a completely different existence that doesn't include much sense of the self.
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#15
RE: Good read on consciousness
In the context of the discussion between illusionism and realism, you're begging the question.

In the sense that a realist needs the terms consciousness exists to mean what they report and be true...so that the phrase "the reason that consciousness exists" has meaning and is true..as far as an illusionist contends...it is -not- true.

The reason that pixies exist, is because evolution required them.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#16
RE: Good read on consciousness
Of course consciousness exists. It just isn't a "thing". Not being a thing, it doesn't need to be described in terms of dualism or illusionism. Consciousness is a process. Processes are real.

There is no consensus among physicists about the preferred basis for reality. Some think of reality as information-based. Some think of it as particle and/or field-based (i.e. tied to things and geometry). Both seem to be true, or could be two sides of the same coin.

I think of QM reality in terms of state and events. Those are the two building blocks. I don't know what state "is", but it is some sort of persistence of reality that allows us to map the probability of future events. Events are just change, or process.

So, state is persistence, but reality is measured and seen only because of process. That consciousness is a process and not a thing is not surprising. Things are just a description of fixed state. They are dead without process.

Most processes are not consciousness. One type of process is. Could there be other types of processes that could be consciousness-squared, that we can't even conceive of?
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#17
RE: Good read on consciousness
If it's not a "thing"...then it doesn't exist in the sense of that term relevant to their disagreements.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#18
RE: Good read on consciousness
(January 5, 2021 at 2:36 pm)Apollo Wrote: Think of consciousness as a weakly emergent phenomenon, not dissimilar from the wetness of water.

I disagree with this analogy. The author adds:

"Individual molecules of water have a number of physical-chemical properties, but wetness isn’t one of them. They acquire that property only under specific environmental circumstances (in terms of ambient temperature and pressure) and only when there is a sufficiently large number of them."

Wetness exists solely within consciousness. You don't get wetness by adding lots of water molecules together. You get wetness by adding a conscious being with sensory nerves that tranport the information into a brain and creates the perception of wetness.

I'm not sure the analogy still holds given that it is comparing consciousness to itself.
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#19
RE: Good read on consciousness
The illusionists, for their part, contend that you can get "wetness" with just the nerves™. That what the nerves are reporting is not an accurate description of itself, or anything apprehended. A part of the machine, not something observed by the machine.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#20
RE: Good read on consciousness
(January 8, 2021 at 12:25 pm)Jehanne Wrote: That our brains create our minds (hence, no brain, no mind) is the simplest explanation of reality.

Perhaps so, but this view nevertheless does not deal with the hard problem very well, and so despite explanatory strengths that may come with the emergentist view, the fact that this view has no conceivable (atm) solution for the hard problem while other views regarding the mind do (apparently) suggests that perhaps we may need to reconsider the soundness of this view.

Of course, if we go with the view of panpsychism (or anything similar to that), we do run into a different problem, which is the combination problem (how can a whole appear to have its own consciousness whereas the parts appear to not?). And if we go with the illusionist problem, well, depending on what brand of illusionism we're talking about, it seems to deny something that we (or I at least) clearly am experiencing, so how can the experience that I'm experiencing be "not a thing"? I still don't know what illusionist mean by illusion here, do they mean the brain tricks us into seeing a world that does not correspond well to the objective "out-there" world? Or do they mean that what we claim to experience isn't really what we're experiencing? The latter doesn't make any sense. If I'm vividly seeing stuff in front of me (for example), what part is the illusion?

And of course, classical dualism has its own problems as well.
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