We don't know. We have guesses related to problem solving, or the brain "repairing" itself, but this is completely speculative.

The richness of the phenomena way exceeds the proposed explanations. Sure, one can see the appeal that a dream is often related to something we are thinking about, sometimes unconsciously - but the weirdness involved is quite striking (in my case anyway).

I suppose one could point out something similar, which is that if you are daydreaming, it's often the case that we do not notice the transition between daydreaming and being awake.

Maybe the differences we can describe when awake, are not so large as they seem. Perhaps there is something to that often-corny phrase, that life is a dream.

Certainly, the first instant of remembered conscious experience is quite dreamlike, waking from an eternal slumber.

So you are asking the big Why! — MoK

It wasn't a big why. It was admittance of the intrinsic unintelligibly of the world. And what was considered problematic by Descartes, Newton, Huygens, Locke, etc., was motion. That's way simpler that consciousness.

But it is unintelligible to us. We simply proceed to do science through theories, and we have dropped the expectation that the world will ever make (intuitive) sense to us. And as with motion, so with consciousness, as John Locke (certainly no pushover) astutely observed:

"Whether Matter may not be made by God to think is more than man can know. For I see no contradiction in it, that the first Eternal thinking Being...should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought... For, since we must allow He has annexed effects to motion which we can no way conceive motion able to produce, what reason have we to conclude that He could not order them as well to be produced in a subject we cannot conceive capable of them, as well as in a subject we cannot conceive the motion of matter can any way operate upon?"

Substitute "God" for "Nature."

We don't understand why gravity works as it does, but we know that it does work without material contact, through Newton's theory of gravitation.

We don't understand why matter could think, but we know that thinking depends on matter, as shown by the fact that no person lacking a brain can think.

Bohmian interpretation is paradox-free so it is the correct interpretation. — MoK

I suspect some physicists might disagree. But we can put that aside.

Then, the important problem is how we could have mental experiences where therein options are real while the the physical processes are deterministic. I think the solution to this problem is that we are dealing with neural processes. So I think the result of neural processes in the brain can lead to the existence of options as mental phenomena. Think of a situation in which you are in a maze. Although the neural processes are deterministic in your brain they can give rise to a mental representation in which options are real when you reach a fork. — MoK

But how can you say physical processes are deterministic? Some show regularity, others show randomness, and we see exceptions to rules quite frequently.

Free will is the ability to do or not to do something. That so called "physical processes" happen before we are aware of them only shows that most of our mental activity happens at an unconscious level, what we decide to do with that, is up to us. We can act on an urge or not.

No, I think we already agree that experience which is a mental phenomenon can not be considered to be physical. We also agree that the mental has causal power as well. That is all I need to make my argument. — MoK

You have asserted that the mental cannot be physical. There is no argument given as to why this has to be so. It's a semantic argument that "the mental cannot be physical, because mental phenomena are not physical phenomena".

But that does not solve a simple question: why can't mental stuff be physical stuff?

Seeing and hearing are extremely different from each other, but we don't assume these are metaphysically distinct things. We treat them as different sensations, even though, again, they are very different. So why should we assume that the mental is more radically different from the physical than seeing is from hearing?

If we can't give a reason why, then we are likely carving out a mistaken distinction.

An object whose motion is subject to change does so because it experiences a force. This force is due to the existence of a field, a gravitational field for example. — MoK

Yes. But the point is that we have no intuition as to how this is possible. That was Newton's famous "it is inconceivable to me" quote was all about.

To me, the De Broglie–Bohm interpretation is the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics since it is paradox-free. The universe evolves deterministically in this interpretation though. — MoK

That's personal preference, I have no issues with you choosing Bohmian interpretations as opposed to many worlds or relational interpretations. There's no evidence for any of them though, so we should not make arguments concerning freedom on the will on these things.

That is just a thought experiment. It seems paradoxical because it assumes that one can put a particle exactly at the top of the dome. This is however not possible since one in reality cannot put a particle on the exact point at the top of the dome. — MoK

Suppose that for the reasons you gave, that it is not possible in practice to do this experiment, then somehow, classical physics is deterministic. How does that say anything about free will? Sure, we are creatures of nature, but it's safe to assume that the laws of nature do not have imagination, yet no one doubts we do.

Physics is true in the sense that explains the changes in the physical world. It is however incorrect when it assumes that the only things that exist are physical. That is why I endorse a new version of substance dualism in which not only physical changes are explained but also mental phenomena are considered as well. — MoK

We are part of the physical world.

Saying that the mental is outside the physical world is like saying there is a distinction to be made between cows and animals. I think you'd need to say what is it about the physical that cannot lead to the mental, necessarily? Once the necessity is established or defended, there is little to do but accept it.

It's an especially hard problem for the generally-accepted forms of scientific naturalism, as they assume at the outset that whatever is real must be tractable in objective terms. The whole essay is a rhetorical argument against those assumptions. — Wayfarer

Some may assume that. It need not be accepted in these very terms. Naturalism can be taken as the view that all that exists is natural and no more.

The issue then, if such naturalism is not convincing, is to say why consciousness is either not natural or supernatural. The latter option is very questionable.

I don't see why one should take a view that consciousness is not a phenomenon of nature. Unless there are theological or metaphysical issues that must necessarily arise.

What is in motion that you cannot understand? — MoK

Not me, anybody - including Newton. How can there be motion without direct contact? We don't have this intuition at all. We assume that the only way a body can move is if another body contacts it.

we still have difficulty explaining how conscious phenomena, such as thoughts, feelings, etc., could have causal power. This difficulty is because the physical move is based on the laws of physics so there is no room left for the mental to contribute. — MoK

Ah yes. That's a good problem. It's utterly mystifying, way beyond theoretical understanding. Interestingly, according to quantum physics the universe is probabilistic, not deterministic. But classical physics is not deterministic either, as is proved by Norton's dome.

But probabilistic is not the same as willing at all.

The mental merely contributes the evidence for the theories that are used to supposedly prove that we have no free will, or that there is nothing but particles. It's a very poor approach to thinking about nature.

Why is it silly? We know that physics is true. — MoK

To deny consciousness, as Dennett does. If accepted, we have no reasons to suppose physics is true, as our evidence comes through experience of empirical phenomena.

What is mental to you? — MoK

Personal experience or "occurrent experiential episodes", as Strawson puts the issue.

He didn't say it was. In fact, the paper is called 'Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness'. It only came to be called THE hard problem later. — Wayfarer

He doesn't say it's a really hard problem? That leads to the natural reading that it is an especially hard problem. I would grant it with one crucial caveat. If mind coming from matter is incomprehensible, why is that harder than not intuitively understanding how gravity could possibly work absent direct contact between bodies?

At bottom most of these things are very hard, incomprehensibly so. Why is consciousness specifically harder than motion without contact? I sympathize with you in disdaining many aspects of Dennett and others, but I don't see why they should be engaged with in this topic. It's not worth refuting, because it is so silly.

Chalmers was contrasting his "hard problem of consciousness" with what he called "the easy problem of consciousness": finding the places in the brain that correspond to various subjective experiences. This, as we know, is indeed getting easier. — J

Some problems fit into science. Others are much harder. When it comes to the study of the will, we know almost nothing, no clue how the "strings are pulled".

The more complex a phenomenon is, the harder is to study in great depth. And the insights gained are arguably less surprising than what we compared to the consequences of the simpler sciences, like physics.

Within physicalism, the physical is believed to change on its own based on the laws of physics without any need for experience. Given this, I think we can agree that the experience is not physical since physicalism cannot accommodate experience as a physical thing. The existence of experience and mental phenomena challenged physicalists for a long time. Some physicalists even deny the existence of experience and mental phenomena! — MoK

I understand the usual monopoly on the term "physical", that's Dennett and the Churchlands. But there are others, like Galen Strawson (without panpsychism which I don't subscribe to) or even going further back Joseph Priestley, developing Locke's thought, that says that matter has powers inconceivable to me - like motion without contact. We cannot conceive it, but it must be true, because that's what theories show (Newton's theories, which he himself was in utter disbelief in).

If matter can produce effect like motion we cannot understand, why would we limit nature in supposing that it cannot combine matter such that it can be conscious?

Incidentally, Schopenhauer (a Kantian) says the very same thing.

If you take physical to mean whatever physics says, the point needs no discussion, for it is silly to argue.

But if you take physical to mean natural, then the physical is everything there is. The mental is the domain of the physical we know the best.

Because physical by definition refers to stuff that exists in the world, such as a chair, a cup, etc. The experience however is defined as a conscious event that contains information. For example, when you look at a rose you have certain experiences, like the redness of the rose, its form, etc. — MoK

Definition? I mean there is standard use "physical thing", sure, that usually means something we can touch.

But in epistemology it means "physical stuff", the stuff of the world. The mind is a part of the world, the part we know with most confidence, but I don't see the necessity of saying that physical has to be stuff you can touch.

s what David Chalmers describes as the problem of consciousness (usually called 'the hard problem') - that even though all of these processes can be described in physical terms, the experience of them - what it is like to see red, smell a rose, hear a sound - is not so amenable to physical description, because it has an experiential quality. — Wayfarer

As you know, calling it the hard problem is misleading, because it suggests every other problem is easy. So free will is easy, brain science is easy, physics is easy, sociology is easy, but we know that's not true.

Free will is a really hard problem. As was motion for most of the great 17th century philosopher/scientists. We never understood motion, we just proceeded to do theories about it without understanding it.

I think you can say that it is a hard problem, yes, but not the only one.

If by physical, you mean physicSal, then of course, the qualitative character is not described by physics or chemistry. But if you are biologist or an architect, you bet you are going to use qualitative character to explain the phenomena.

Because we have physical and experience of physical. These two are not identical. Physical exists whether you experience it or not. We have certain experiences when our subject of focus is on an object though. Therefore, the physical and the experience of the physical are not identical. What is the mind is subject to the understanding that the physical and the experience of the physical are not identical. — MoK

Why is experience not physical? I agree that things "outside the mind" - outside consciousness itself are physical things and hence mediated through experience. What I don't quite get is why experience is not physical?

What do you mean? — MoK

Why do you think mind cannot be matter or the opposite? This needs to be argued for, not asserted. If the argument holds, then we can talk about the issue in a more productive manner.

We have experience, we infer the rest, call it what you will. I don't see why they both can't have an underlying cause, outside stipulation: physical things only change physical things, mental things only change mental things.

Why leads you (or anyone) to say that we know enough of either (physical or mental) to conclude that they can't include each other?

It's a nice poem and a legitimate way to think about consciousness. If you want to refer it more specifically to philosophical discussion, then I think the means you use to do poetry tell us a decent bit about consciousness and thinking.

Namely, that whatever else thinking may be (and there is a whole lot that goes into thinking) the most precise way to know some of its structures is through language. We tend to ask, what is thinking or what is consciousness? And if you are asked specifically, what are you thinking about this moment, then you will reply I was thinking so and so.

So even if your conscious thoughts were about images and fragments, your expression of it was verbal. So there is a sense in which thinking and language (including aspects of explicit consciousness) are intimately related. As Richard Burthogge once said, "words are the clothes of thought".

As for poetry per se, well that's a very fascinating topic. I agree with Chomsky here (and almost everywhere) that ordinary language use is inherently creative. We use words that have probably never been stated in the exact same manner or order before, yet we understand what people are saying. And we don't know how we do it. So, speaking itself is often poetic in the creative sense of language use.

Once it gets to the arts, actual poetry, lyrics, novels, that's just a whole other level of depth. In my opinion far beyond human understanding. And thankfully we have consciousness to appreciate it.

I agree that we know that there are things that we know that are not available to the direct access of introspection. If we know that, we have access to at least one fact about them - that they exist. If we know that we must have indirect acess to them. — Ludwig V

If we discover them. If not, trivially, they remain in the dark.

If we knew that there are some things that are not available to consciousness, they must be available to conciousness. — Ludwig V

That's almost a panpsychist claim, that everything is experience-realizing or experience-involving. That's not clear. We know that animals have sensations we cannot experience, like dogs will smell or squid with vision, etc.

You could say that since we know about it, it also involves our consciousness. But that's not the same as us experiencing it, which I take to be the important part of having consciousness.

Lastly, unless we are an evolutionary miracle such that we so happened to evolve to experience everything and know everything, it logically follows, that there are things we cannot understand or even experience, it is beyond our capacity to "latch on to", as it were.

How do we distinguish between mental reality and other kinds (such as physical or abstract reality) unless we have access to those other kinds? — Ludwig V

Mental reality refers to those things that appear to our minds which need not have a corresponding object of which the mind is referring to.

Physical reality refers to those things that exist absent us, but which we can experience as well.

Mathematical reality is about taking mathematics to be existing entities or things which exist somehow.

And on and on. This is a matter of emphasis; these are not metaphysical distinctions.

My expectation is that it will be dealt with. But the process will be messy and only partially effective. — Ludwig V

I hope you are right, but I see reasons for skepticism.

Indirect access to reality is still access to reality. I suppose that introspection counts as direct access? But there, the distinction between reality and appearance collapses. — Ludwig V

Introspection is limited, we don't know how our ideas arise, nor do we know how thoughts connect to one another. It is a mistake in modern philosophy of mind to believe that everything (or almost everything) must be accessible to consciousness. It's not.

But you do have a good point, in so far as we are going to speak of the "in itself", I do believe that we know some fundamental aspects about mental reality in merely having consciousness.

It's not clear to me how much this says about anything else about the world at large.

Doesn't this show that happiness and unhappiness are not necessarily mutually exclusive? — Ludwig V

Yes. The irony or strange aspect about this here is that Schopenhauer does not mention much these happy moments, choosing to speak about art, which is fine and important. But it may overplay his pessimism.

I agree with you that the world seems in a particularly bad way at the moment, There are many good reasons for being fearful, even alarmed, about the state of the world order these days. But one may reflect that it is not unusual for there to be good grounds for fear and one's worst fears may well turn out to be excessive. (Most of my childhood and youth was overshadowed by the threat of a nuclear holocaust.) — Ludwig V

That's a good point. Today we add climate change and even less controls than before on the nuclear issue. As Bertrand Russell pointed out: "You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years."

One day the boy who cried wolf will be right. Hopefully not soon, but, sobriety ought to make us see we are not doing good as a species at all. It could change, absolutely. But it's yet to happen.

It seems to me that while appearances are, indeed, all that appears to us, that the distinction between reality and appearance is available to us, not only within appearances, but also behind or beyond them. — Ludwig V

This framing is fine. I do think something like us being "indirectly" aware of whatever IS mind independently is probably what we do. The exact mechanism involved in this will depend on your own philosophy.

It's still an important step removed from direct access.

Apparently, he did do quite many things that brought him joy, walking his dogs, eating sausages in a tavern, going to the theatre and listening to music, and lots of other small details along this line.

You're right about the asceticism part; he never took it that far. But I suppose he just had some form of depression. It's not that his pessimism per se is wrong, one can view the world that way, but it's a particularly gloomy way of looking at the world, which is not necessary.

But given the state of the world, maybe his pessimism was in many respects, severely understated. We are running towards extinction, with enthusiasm.

Still, life's small pleasures, empathy and of course the arts, are now more important than ever. Keep looking at those majestic mountains.

That’s not something I postulate, and something that I question in Schopenhauer; I’m much more drawn to the ‘idea’ aspect of his philosophy, than the ‘world as will’ aspect, which I'm frankly sceptical of. — Wayfarer

As far as metaphysical ideas go, his is not bad. But it has problems which you also feel. Obviously a very hard topic to talk about in general.

Incidentally I went to an open-air social gathering yesterday, a out-door ‘Philosophical Symposium’, the subject of which was 'The Suffering of the World: Schopenhauer's Christian Buddhism.' I hadn't attended before - it was held in a park near Sydney Harbour, convened by an informal group organised by the main speaker (picture below under the Peroni sign.) — Wayfarer

Very cool! You have no idea how jealous I am that I've never been to Sydney. My dream city to visit. Very interesting topic to discuss and seeing such a crowd attending is just fantastic.

I felt the actual lecture concentrated too much on the familiar 'Schopenhauer as pessimist' meme, and not at all on the idealist side of his philosophy, but never mind, it was enjoyable to sit around a table and talk about philosophy with actual people. :wink: — Wayfarer

Yes, personal dynamics alter the conversation quite a lot. Being able to emphasize or make facial or give certain looks can be persuasive and enriching. Nice to be able to find such groups.

As for the speaker emphasizing pessimism, yeah, it's a problem with Schopenhauer, it's easier to talk about than his version of transcendental idealism, which can be either hard to get across, or if people are told, they don't (I think, at least in my experience) realize the implications such views have, which are just radical.

I suppose one needs a bit of the philosopher gene to be utterly dumbstruck by what others take to be too obvious to even mention. On the other hand, the more variety, the better I suppose.

Thanks for sharing! :cool:

On the same grounds as Descartes’ ‘cogito ergo sum’: even if you suffered complete amnesia and forgot your identity, you would be aware of your own being. That’s the point about *any* being: on some level it is aware of its distinction from what is other to it. It knows that it is. — Wayfarer

Of having experience yes. On being able to distinguish between willed action and mere reflex, also. On some metaphysical postulate about some blind drive the universe follows (as well as us), that's further steps more advanced than experiencing or "willing" (in the common usage of the term).

our grasp of reality is inversely proportional to our degree of attachment. — Wayfarer

And they may be right. This doesn't get us closer to the thing in itself. At least, I don't see how at the moment.

Agree, but the awareness of will is not an appearance. We may not know what it is, but that it is, we can have no doubt. — Wayfarer

Well, if we don't know what it is, how can we say that it is? We could be wrong. But let's be somewhat more permissive:

This is tricky. It depends on how you define "will". It it's the ordinary use of will, such as willed action, this doubtful. If it's Schopenhauer's, then one has to see what merits it has. It's not trivial. I constantly go back between Hume and Schopenhauer here.

I think we can have (almost) no doubt that we have experience. Beyond that, I think we should be careful in ascertaining certainty in almost anything, outside maybe mathematics.

But the uncertainty principle shows that there’s a limit to how exact we can be. — Wayfarer

Yes. At least, this is what our theories at the moment show, which may indeed hold up to future discoveries.

I tend to agree but I guess that depends upon what we mean by appearance - in recent history we have certainly devised instruments that allow us to go beyond (ordinary) appearance and these tools seem to tell us that solid matter is almost entirely empty. And let's not get into quantum speculations.

And in a separate vein, is it not the case that people who claim to be enlightened are able to see beyond appearances, at least in part? Is this not a goal of mediation, etc? I'm not personally in the higher consciousness business but I am curious about the framing of these things. — Tom Storm

But physics is also appearance too, just a much more refined attempt to make sense of the data of sense. Remember physics is mathematical because it tells us about the structure of the things that make the world, but the inner nature of these things is not revealed, we probably can't reach the "bottom level".

As for enlightened people, no, at least I don't think so. It doesn't have anything to do with lack of training or practice or perceptiveness, it's related to the nature of our faculties. We can't step outside what we see to verify whatever it is we see.

Likewise, we cannot leave our experience to see what may be behind it.

Not necessarily what it is but how it appears - and it's an important distinction.

Neils Bohr: “Physics is not about how the world is, it is about what we can say about the world”.

Werner Heisenberg: “What we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” — Wayfarer

I agree.

But we do reach better approximations. And that's what we continue to do.

I'd be careful there, it's a big statement! — Wayfarer

Even Schopenhauer, someone who one might think would disagree that we cannot know the thing in itself says:

"Meanwhile it is carefully to be noted, and I have always kept it in mind, that even the inward observation we have of our own will still does not by any means furnish an exhaustive and adequate knowledge of the thing in itself. For even in self-consciousness, the I is not absolutely simple, but consists of a knower (intellect) and a known (will); the former is not known and the latter is not knowing, although the two flow together into the consciousness of an I. But on this very account, this I is not intimate with itself through and through, does not shine through so to speak, but is opaque, and therefore remains a riddle to itself."

(WWR V.II p.196)

The above is a mix of the classic translation with a newer one. The meaning is the same in both, however.

Doesn't epistemology rely upon metaphysical commitments for it to make sense? I'm not sure one can meaningfully talk about what we can know unless we have resovled what there is and somehow we continually end up in a tail chasing discussion about whether an external world exists outside our perception and what it is. Not to mention the quesion of time and space - are they products of the cognitive apparatus of human minds, or do they exist? Don't scientists subscribe to a massive metaphysical commitment, that reality can be understood? — Tom Storm

They do - there is a world to which epistemology aims to establish knowledge claims of. But if we take metaphysics to mean, narrowly, the nature of the (mind-independent) world, then making claims about ordinary objects like tables or chairs are not metaphysical claims.

These pertain to the mode of our cognition.

Yes, science is metaphysics - in large part, not entirely - because it tries to tell us what that nature is.

In any case, we do not - and cannot - go beyond appearance.

that Meta-physics can bridge with reasoning & imagination*1. — Gnomon

I've read Eddington's book, it's very good and very much readable even today.

But I'd say this is more closely associated with epistemology than metaphysics. There is always going to be a metaphysical component in epistemology, but it's quite small.

One of the two tables is certainly a part of metaphysics. They everyday table, less so.

That's fine and you are right that the matter we have now is just extraordinarily removed from our common conceptions of it. This is true and sure; I do agree the world is a construction of the mind. We don't even need metaphysics to establish this, I think it just follows form facts of the matter.

The issue is that our everyday image of the world is not and probably cannot, be exhausted by whatever physics says about it. From an "everyday" perspective, you can "think away" all sensations and maybe most conceptions, but I, that is me specifically, have trouble removing solidity from this, it seems to me that based on manifest world terms, we still would bump up against something, even if we can't feel it.

This is different that speaking about the micro-constituents of matter, as I see it,

Solidity and the notion of 'hard matter' does not exist independently of mind and so kicking the rock, breaking a toe are mental experiences. It is how consciousness appears when experienced from our perspective. The solid stone and the foot's impact upon it are examples of the ability of consciousness to create a coherent world of experience - held together in the mind of God. Or in the case of Kastrup - we are all participants or aspects of a 'great mind' which is the source of all reality. — Tom Storm

Yes. And that is an argument that can be given. I don't disagree with some varieties of idealism by the way, like Kant's, or Burthogge's or Cudworth's.

But that aside, I can think away everything I can about an object, including my concepts, my sensations, everything I can think of. I still have the intuition that even if I don't feel it, I cannot pass through walls, something is there that is not solely mental.

But as you say, this can be explained by being a content of consciousness. It's nebulous.

Fair enough. We seem to agree that understanding, like intelligence, comes in degrees. When someone wakes up during surgery there is something different about the situation than what we currently understand is happening, and figuring that out gives us a better understanding. Although, there is the old phrase, "You only get the right answer after making all possible mistakes", we should consider. — Harry Hindu

Quite. I suppose my "mitigated skepticism" always forces me to say that's the best explanation we have for now. But it could be quite wrong or it could be replaced given newer theories. But sure, we are getting closer and closer on these things.

What does it mean for you to be tired if not having a lack of energy? What are you doing when you go to sleep and eat? What would happen if you couldn't find food? Wouldn't you "shut off" after the energy stores in your body were exhausted? — Harry Hindu

Here's the thing, which is tricky I admit, but a real issue. We can say we "shut down" when we go to sleep. Just as we can say the rocket went to the heavens, or we are recharging our energy when we eat.

That's fine. But it's verbal. If we want to be literal, we'd have to put say, the technical bio-chemical explanation of what sleep encompasses. Then we would have something like a scientific definition of sleep. But then we have to see if the scientific explanation exhausts everything about sleeping. I am doubtful that we can reduce everything to scientific terms.

We are borrowing words we use for computers and applying it to ourselves. This computerizes us and in turn we begin to think machines share in what makes us people. We break down the machine/human barrier using these words and it merits caution.

I have been using computers and robots. What does that say about what intelligence is? — Harry Hindu

I think one can say that a person does calculations ("computations" if you will) or engages in processes or reasoning or even inference to the best explanation. But what we do and what computers do are not the same thing. It's superficial. We can say that a person kind of uses a "search engine" when it is looking for a word he can't remember. But it's not a literal search engine, it's something else, related to linguistics and psychology.

Again, I don't think copying something is at all the same as being the same thing. The end results may look the same, but the ways we get the information are very different. Involving concepts, folk psychology, semantics, neurology and who knows what else. Computers work with programs made by people.

We don't have programs like computers have them. I mean you could use the word "program" if you want, but it does not seem to me to be the same thing at all.

A brain functioning in isolation is a mind without a person, and is an impossible occurrence, which is why I pointed out before the distinction between empiricism and rationalism is a false dichotomy. The form your reason takes is sense data you have received via your interaction with the world. You can only reason, or think, in shapes, colors, smells, sounds, tastes and feelings. The laws of logic take the form of a relation between scribbles on a screen which corresponds to a process in your mind (a way of thinking). — Harry Hindu

I mean, you can see brains in isolation in jars in many laboratories all over the world. But would people say there are minds in jars? A mind needs a person (with a brain of course), and a person can be in isolation from other people. Look at the phenomenon of feral children, for instance.

Natural selection programmed humans via DNA. Humans are limited by their physiology and degree of intelligence, just as a computer/robot is limited by it's design and intelligence (efficiency at processing inputs to produce meaningful outputs). — Harry Hindu

I partially agree. I do believe that humans are limited by physiology and degree of intelligence, sure. Computers are "limited" in the sense that the programs we add to them are limited by the limitations we have due to our genetic makeup.

I just don't see how we can claim intelligence to a computer because it looks like (the data given out) it. Again, for me, this is akin to saying that submarines really "swim" and that airplanes "fly". Yeah, you can say that. But it's verbal. In Hebrew airplanes "glide", in French, submarines "navigate". These are ways of speaking, not factual matters.

Berkeley sometimes gets a bad rap. I know very little of him, having opted for Locke and Hume instead.

But if any "idealist" merits some teasing (if this is warranted at all) it would be Arthur Collier. He didn't even have God as a guarantee of stability or existence of external objects.

The biggest issue here is that, for whatever reason, we have some trouble (at least I do) in understanding how concretely existing things could be solely ideas.

Seems to me to be the one thing you can't think away from objects in some form or another.

I think you are confusing how anesthesia works with how the brain and mind are related. Those are two separate issues. If you Google, "how does anesthesia work" you will find many articles that do not seem to exhibit any kind of doubt about how anesthesia works on the brain. How the brain relates to the mind is a separate and hard problem. How anesthesia works is not a hard problem. If it were we would be having a lot more issues with people going under. — Harry Hindu

Sure, I am agreeing that anesthesia works. We also know how to replace limbs, like arms, and get people having a hand "functioning" again, despite not having a clue how willed action works.

But you have perspective like these, which are not uncommon:

https://www.sciencealert.com/for-over-150-years-how-general-anaesthesia-works-has-eluded-scientists-we-re-finally-getting-close

Now we are closer to getting a better understanding of how it works. So, we've used for 150 years without knowing why is works as it does.

The point is that people do things without knowing how they are done. This includes acts of creativity, aspects of intelligence, willed action, etc.

Are you saying that it is sensible to call, "intelligence" a thing, or an object, instead of what things do? When you point to intelligence, what are you pointing at - a thing or a behavior or act? — Harry Hindu

If I am pointing at something, it could be an act, it could be an idea, it could be a calculation. I wouldn't say that a program is intelligent, nor a laptop. That's kind of like saying that when a computer loses power and shuts off, it is "tired". The people who designed the program and the laptop are.

Not behaving like a person, but behaving intelligently. Does every person behave intelligently? If not, then being a person does not make you necessarily intelligent. They are separate properties. What are the characteristics of an intelligent person, or thing? — Harry Hindu

Behavior is an external reaction of an internal process. A behavior itself is neither intelligent nor not intelligent, it depends on what happened that lead to that behavior.

What characteristics make a person intelligent? Many things: problem solving, inquisitiveness, creativity, etc. etc. There is also the quite real issue of different kinds of intelligence. I think that even having a sense of humor requires a certain amount of intelligence, a quick wit, for instance.

It's not trivial.

I don't see a difference between brain and mind. I think we both have similar brains and minds. My brain and mind are less similar to a dog or cat's brain and mind. Brains and minds are the same thing just from different views in a similar way that Earth is the same planet even though it looks flat from it's surface and spherical from space. — Harry Hindu

No difference? A brain in isolation does very little. A mind needs a person, unless one is a dualist.

That doesn't sound strange at all. Is not part of studying humans studying what they created? Humans are calling it artificial intelligence. Are we to believe them when studying them? The other examples are nonsensical. Again, the inventor of the radio and mirror-makers are not claiming that their devices are intelligent.

None of what you have said explains what makes organic matter special in that it has intelligence and inorganic matter does not. — Harry Hindu

But if they claimed it then it would be true? No. We program computers, not people. We can't program people, we don't know how to do so. Maybe in some far off future we could do so via genetics.

If someone is copying Hamlet word for word into another paper, does the copied Hamlet become a work of genius or is it just a copy? Hamlet shows brilliance, copying it does not.

I think Tallis is awesome, probably my favorite contemporary philosopher actually. But as with anything, he has good stuff and less good stuff.

What's kind of surprising in many of these conversations is that people don't bother to spell out what they mean when they say "materialism", "immaterialism", "Idealism", "mentalism", "neutral monism", etc.

He simply assumes people will know what he means. I can only surmise that he thinks that "materialism" implies solidity. Why is this so self-evident given how much more sophisticated out understanding of matter is.

And as others have pointed out, that something is solid does not imply anything about the ontological status of the object.

It is known how it is done, or else they wouldn't be able to consistently put people under anesthesia for surgery and they wake up with no issues. The problem you are referring to is the mind-body problem which is really a problem of dualism. If you think that the mind and body are separate things then you do have hard problem to solve. If you think that they are one and the same, just from different views, then you are less likely to fall victim to the hard problem. — Harry Hindu

That's what many anesthesiologists say. Yes they can put people to sleep, clearly, but the mechanism by which this works is not well understood. They can do something without understanding very well how the body reacts the way it does. No, I'm not a dualist. I'm a "realistic naturalist" in Galen Strawson's terms.

. Function does not imply that it does one thing. A function can include many tasks. What if I said that the brain's function is to adapt one's behaviors to new situations? That function would include many tasks. Both terms are used to refer to behavioral expectations. — Harry Hindu

So what's the benefit of using "function" instead of process or what a thing does? Saying it's one of the processes of the brain does not carry the suggestion that it does a few main things, and then some secondary things which are less important somehow. Sure, no term is perfect, but we can then start believing that function is something nature does and attribute it to things that fit these criteria, including computers.

Many people in this thread are saying that you can observe someone's behavior but their behavior can fool us into believing they are intelligent, implying that behavior is not intelligence, but symbolic of intelligence. So it seems to me that intelligence is a process of the mind, not the body. Which is it? — Harry Hindu

I agree. I personally think that it is more beneficial to think in terms of "this person" has a mind like mine, than a brain like mine. We deal with people on a daily level in mental terms, not neurophysiological terms. We could do the latter if one wanted, but it would be very cumbersome and we'd have to coin many technical terms.

It is not difficult to image a computer-robot that can be programmed to do the same thing. — Harry Hindu

Imagine yes. To actually do? I think we're far off. The most we are doing with LLM's is getting a program to produce sentences that sound realistic. Or mesh images together.

But a parrot can string together sentences and we wouldn't say the parrot is behaving like a person.

Sounds like what humans do when communicating. You learned rules for using the scribbles, which letter follows the other to spell a word correctly, and how to put words in order following the rules of grammar. It took you several years of immersing yourself in the use of your native language to be able to understand the rules. The difference is that a computer can learn much faster than you. Does that mean it is more intelligent than you? — Harry Hindu

Here I just think this is the wrong view of language. It's the difference between a roughly empiricist approach to language "learning" and a rationalist one. We can say, for the sake of convenience, that babies "learn" languages, but they don't in fact learn it. It grows from the inside, not unlike a child going through puberty "learns" to become a teenager. But let's put that aside.

Ok, suppose I grant for the sake of argument, that computers "learn" faster than we can. Why can't we say the same things about mirrors? Or that cars run faster than we do? Or that we fly more than penguins? If you grant this, then the issue is terminological.

Then, for you, there is a distinction between organic and inorganic matter in that one can be intelligent and the other can't. What reason do you have to believe that? Seriously, dig deep down into your mind and try to get at the reasoning for these claims you are making. The only question remaining here is what is so special about organic matter? If you can't say, then maybe intelligence is not grounded in substance, but in process. — Harry Hindu

No. Not in principle in terms of results. The point is, that I believe we are astronomically far away from understanding the brain, much less the mind (and emergent property of brains). The brain is organic. Doesn't it make more sense to understand what intelligence and language is from studying human beings that from studying something we created? I mean, it would strange to say that we should study cellphones to learn about language, or a radio to learn about the ear.

If neuroscientists can connect a computer to a brain in such a way as to allow a patient to move a mouse cursor by thinking about it in their mind, it would seem to me that they have an understanding (at least a basic understanding) of both. — Harry Hindu

A basic understanding yes. Some structural understanding probably. But notice that these things tell us little. For instance, an anesthesiologist can make someone lose consciousness, but it is not known how this is done. Some liquid enters the bloodstream does something to the brain and we lose consciousness. It's functional in the sense you are using it, and it says something but it's not well understood.

What are the primary and secondary functions of a brain? What are the primary and secondary functions of a computer? Are there any functions they share? If we were to design a humanoid robot where its computer brain was designed to perform the same primary and secondary functions as the brain, would it be intelligent, or have a mind? If not, then you must be saying that there is something in the way organic matter, as opposed to inorganic matter is constructed, (or more specifically something special about carbon atoms) that allows intelligence and mind. — Harry Hindu

Again with function. Why not just say capacity? Function implies it does one main thing, but it does many things. We'd consider the capacity to be conscious to be primary, but that's from our own (human) perspective, not a naturalistic perspective, which I think ought to treat all things equally.

A computer does what the coding is designed for it to do. But here we do become bewitched by terminology. You can say that a computer "processes" information, or "reads" code or "performs calculations". That's what we attribute to it as doing.

With people, the difference is that we are the ones categorizing (and understanding) everything, so we have a quite natural bent to interpret things in ways we understand. As for organic matter, it's a difference, billions of years of evolution and a complexity that is mind-boggling. It goes way beyond crunching numbers and data. The capacity to recreate a human brain in non-organic stuff, may be possible, but the engineering feats required to do so are just astronomical.

I just want to make sure that you're not exhibiting a bias in that only human beings are intelligent without explaining why. What makes a human intelligent if not their brains? Can a human be intelligent without a brain?

If you want to say that intelligence is a relationship between a body that behaves in particular ways and brain, then that would be fair. What if we designed a humanoid robot with a computer brain that acted in human ways? You might say that ChatGPT is not intelligent because it does not have a body, but what about an android?

The point of my questions here is I'm trying to get at if intelligence is the product of some function (information processing), or some material (carbon atoms), or both? — Harry Hindu

Brains make people intelligent... I mean yeah that's one way to phrase it. But so does education, culture, learning, etc. Yes, that gets "processed" in the brain, but we cannot reduce it to the brain yet, in principle it has to be there, but in practice, I think we are just massively far from realizing how the brain works with these things.

Also, a kind of trivial example: a person may have a brain and be completely "stupid". They could be in a coma or brain dead. There's something kind of off in saying this person is stupid, because his brain is not working. There's something to work out in this.

Take ChatGPT, how does it work? It goes through a massive data base of probabilistic words to give the most likely outcome of the following word. But look at what we are doing now. You don't read (nor do I read you) by remembering every word you say. It would be a massive headache. We get meanings or gists and respond off of that. That's the opposite of what ChatGPT does.

Yeah, I think other animals are intelligent. No doubt, but in so far as I am saying that about them, it's related to the usage of them having capabilities that allow them to survive in the wild. That's kind of the standard as far as I know. But there are other aspects we may want to include in intelligence when it comes to animals.

Let's be patient. I think trying to do much in one post will cause us to start talking past each other. Let's make sure we agree on basic points first. — Harry Hindu

That sounds good to me, I'd propose we take the ordinary usage of the word "intelligence" as the starting point. What people tend to say when they use the word in everyday life. Unless you have something better which I'd be glad to hear.

It is only when we approach the boundaries of what it is we are talking about (which is typical in a philosophical context) that we tend to worry about what the words mean. — Harry Hindu

Yes, correct.

We have developed the ability to connect a computer to a person's brain and they are able to manipulate the mouse cursor and type using just their thoughts. Does this not show that we have at least begun to tap into the functions of the mind/brain to the point where we can say that we understand something about how the brain functions? Sure, we have a ways to go, but that is just saying that our understanding comes in degrees as well. — Harry Hindu

"Understand something", yes. This would be activity in the brain. I don't, however, see this having much to say about the mind. We could, theoretically (or in principle), know everything about the brain when we are consciously aware, and still not know how the brain is capable of having mental activity, which must be the case.

The issue here, as I see it, is how much this "something" amounts to. I'm not too satisfied with the word "function" to be honest. It seems to suggest to me a "primary thing" an organ does, while leaving "secondary things" as unimportant or residual. This should cause a bit of skepticism.

Which of your organs involved with reasoning? Your brain. Your brain is a mass of neurons. Your mass of neurons reasons. Does a mass of silicon circuits reason?

Let's start off with a definition of intelligence as: the process of achieving a goal in the face of obstacles. What about this definition works and what doesn't? — Harry Hindu

I don't want to sound pesky. I still maintain that reasoning (or intelligence) is something which people do and have respectively, not neurons or a brain. Quite literally neurons in isolation or a brain in isolation shows no intelligence or reasoning, if we are still maintaining ordinary usage of these words.

You say neurons are involved in reasoning. But there is a lot more to the brain than neurons. Other aspects of the brain, maybe even micro-physical processes may be more important. Still, all this talk should lead back to people, not organs, being intelligent or reasoning.

What if we were to start with the idea that intelligence comes in degrees? Depending on how many properties of intelligence some thing exhibits, it possesses more or less intelligence.

Is intelligence what you know or how you can apply what you know, or a bit of both? Is there a difference between intelligence and wisdom? — Harry Hindu

It may and probably does come in degrees. However, notice, that neither you nor I have defined what "intelligence" is. I think real life problem solving is a big part. And so is reasoning and giving reasons for something.

But this probably overlooks a lot of aspects of intelligence, which I think are inherently nebulous. Otherwise, discussions like these wouldn't keep arising, since everything is clear. Wisdom? Something about it coming as we age, usually related to deep observations. Several other things, depending on who you ask.

That's even more subjective than intelligence.

So what else is missing if you are able to duplicate the function? Does it really matter what material is being used to perform the same function? Again, what makes a mass of neurons intelligent but a mass of silicon circuits not? What if engineers designed an artificial heart that lasts much longer and is structurally more sound than an organic one? — Harry Hindu

We can replace hearts and limbs. If function - whatever it is - is the main factor here, then aren't we done studying the heart or our limbs? I doubt we'd be satisfied by this answer, because we still have lots to discover about the heart and our limbs.

And these things we are still studying say, how the heart is related to emotion or why some hearts stop beating without a clear cause, are these not "functions" too?

I don't understand what it means to say that a mass of neurons is intelligent.

What these points convey to me is that we need a definition to start with. — Harry Hindu

I don't have a good definition. Problem solving? Surviving? Doing differential calculus? Tricking people?

It's very broad. I'd only be very careful in extrapolating from these we do which we call intelligent to other things. Dogs show intelligent behavior, but they can't survive in the wild. Are the smart and stupid?

It's tricky.

How so? If we can substitute artificial devices for organic ones in the body there does not seem like much of a difference in understanding. — Harry Hindu

Sure, we have a good amount of structural understanding about some of the things hearts (and other organs) do. As you mentioned with the Chinese case above, it's nowhere near exhaustive. It serves important functional needs, but "function", however one defines it, is only a part of understanding.

And of course, thinking, reflection is just exponentially more difficult to deal with than any other organ.

You were talking about people that attribute terms like "intelligence" to LLMs as being deluded. My point is that philosophers seem to think they know more about LLMs than AI developers do. — Harry Hindu

No, they do not. But when it comes to conceptual distinctions, such as claiming that AI is actually intelligence, that is a category error. I see no reason why philosophers shouldn't say so.

But to be fair, many AI experts also say that LLM's are not intelligent. So that may convey more authority to you.

What is understanding? How do you know that you understand anything if you never end up properly mimicking the something you are trying to understand? — Harry Hindu

Understanding is an extremely complicated concept that I cannot pretend to define exhaustively. Maybe you could define it and see if I agree or not.

As I see it understanding is related to connecting ideas together, seeing cause and effect, intuiting why a person does A instead of B. Giving reasons for something as opposed to something else, etc.

But few, if any words outside mathematics have full definitions. Numbers probably.

We can mimic a dog or a dolphin. We can get on four legs and start using our nose, or we can swim and pretend we have capacities we lack.

What does that tell you though?

AI developers are calling LLMs artificially intelligent, with the term, "artificial" referring to how it was created - by humans instead of "naturally" by natural selection. I could go on about the distinction between artificial and natural here but that is for a different thread: — Harry Hindu

Yeah, it is artificial. But the understanding between something artificial and something organic is quite massive.

Why? What makes a mass of neurons intelligent, but a mass of silicon circuits not? — Harry Hindu

Masses of neurons are intelligent? People are intelligent (or not) and we try to clarify the term. Maybe you use an IQ test, or "street smarts", the ability to persuade, etc.

To say that AI developers and computer scientists are deluding themselves you seem to imply that AI computer scientists should be calling philosophers to fix their computers and software. — Harry Hindu

We are talking about LLM's not problems with software.

Cardiologists do not use a computer to simulate the pumping of blood. — Harry Hindu

That's the point.

You seem to think that mimicking something is the same as understanding it.

Then are we deluding ourselves whenever we use the term "intelligent" to refer to ourselves? — Harry Hindu

We could be. We use these terms as best we can for ourselves and others, sometimes to animals. But of course, we could be wrong.

We have to deal with life as it comes and often have to simplify extremely complicated actions to make sense of them.

The point is that mimicking behavior does nothing to show what goes on in a person's head.

Unless you are willing to extend intelligence to mirrors, plants and planetary orbits. If you do, then the word loses meaning.

If you don't, then let's hone in on what makes most sense, studying people who appear to exhibit this behavior. Once we get a better idea of what it is, we can proceed to do it to animals.

But to extend that to non-organic things is a massive leap. It's playing with a word as opposed to dealing with a phenomenon.

You are correct to say that it is not that the idea of artificial intelligence doesn't really reach 'intelligence' or consciousness. The problem may that the idea has become mystified in an unhelpful way. The use of the word 'intelligence' doesn't help. Also, it may be revered as if it is 'magic', like a new mythology of gods. — Jack Cummins

I can understand that. But again, why aren't we mystified by human lungs? You can make the same argument, since we can't replicate it on a computer it is now mystified.

Magic, I mean, sure we are the only creatures with the capacity for self-reflection (so far as we know).It makes sense that we would want to understand it, but to do so you should proceed with human beings, not computers.

Transhumanism is a lot of hot air, imo. But I may be wrong.

I don't think it does raise any questions about intelligence or consciousness at all. It is useful and interesting on its own merit, but people who are taken by this equaling intelligence I think are deluding themselves into a very radical dualism which collapses into incoherence.

To make this concrete and brief. Suppose we simulate on a computer a person's lunges' and all the functions associated with breathing, are we going to say that the computer is breathing? Of course not. It's pixels on a screen; it's not breathing in any meaningful sense of the word.

But it's much worse for thinking. We do not know what thinking is for us. We can't say what it is. If we can't say what thinking is for us, how are we supposed to that for a computer?

So sure, engage with "AI" and LLM's and all that, but be cognizant that these things are fancy tools, telling us nothing about intelligence, or thinking or consciousness. Might as well say a mirror is conscious too.

We can't.

The best we can do is to get better approximations, while acknowledging that the "ultimate" nature of reality is beyond us.

Absolutely, such experiences very much can mark one's life and create special memories.

It's tempting to say that beauty is an objective thing "out there", which we have the privilege to access to on occasion. But I don't think it's quite right.

At its most basic, what's beautiful is what strikes as being beautiful at a given occasion. For whatever reason some occasions happen to be far more profound than others. But I don't think we can universalize from ourselves to the world at large.

We see examples of animals finding certain things at least attractive (if not beautiful, then close to it) which we can't make much sense of. How dogs greet each other, or how certain birds look for mating partners etc.

We find it puzzling to see such behavior, but I'd wager other creatures can't find beauty or attraction, in many of the things we find them in. Maybe there's some overlap somewhere, but it's hard to know.

LLM's become even more complex too, because if one believes that the words it uses to make sentences refer to things, then naturally some can believe this indicates such things have some kind of "inner mental life".

But yeah, in this case statistical correlation makes sense. I'd wager it's different with biological systems, like ducks or tigers or foxes.

The issue, I see it, becomes significantly harder the more complicated a model is.

If the model is about a particle, well, there's is only so much tinkering you can do, beyond a point, given the simplicity involved, the thing described by the model, is probably a very good approximation to the thing itself, again because it is so simple.

And much to our great Suprise, the model in simple systems show quite mind-boggling behavior, that we are still debating the foundations of such experiments 100 years later, apparently no closer to a resolution now than back then.

But this complexity just becomes overwhelmingly difficult with things like insects, much less ducks.

We have very little reason to believe that just because a thing we create walks like a duck and quacks like one, is actually a duck (famous phrase aside).

At best, if we get the physiological properties more or less right, then we could say something about flying or ability to withstand environmental conditions.

But whatever is going on "behind the eyes", well, models will tell us almost nothing. What matters to understand a duck, is how the creature is interpreting the world. Behavior tells us almost nothing, especially is the duck is a mechanical construct, we are leaving out way too much.