Perhaps the two are always paired. That would mean matter is always consciousness-bearing, and consciousness is always matter- bearing. The relationship is a biconditional. — ucarr

No, I don't buy that. We know that consciousness evolved long after the inanimate formed. We know that causation was working perfectly well during all that time, even though consciousness did not yet exist.

But I have to concede that we only know that because we've been able to assemble the evidence and formulate hypotheses and theories.

If you adopt a strong definition of existence, such as "to be is to be perceived" or, more gently "to be is to conceived", then your thesis would follow. But you have a big problem explained where we came from. Berkeley supplied that by positing God. How would you do it?

I do accept that anything that exists can be known, conceived, perceived and that there will always be more to know, conceive, perceive than we have discovered, conceived, perceived. (I think).

The pair are indeed closely linked. Consciousness or awareness is always consciousness or awareness of something - subject and object. The object can (usually) exist without a subject. I don't think that consciousness can exist without an object, but I'm not dogmatic about it.

If morals correspond to real things and thus they are objective, then the “what” of life, that is, the facts of life (ha ha!) can generate a type of science, the science of morality. This is what the world religious try to teach.

The enemy of morals is adaptation. Adjusting to a situation for sake of survival often scuttles morals.

Proceeding from the belief morals are objectively real, the morals and behaviors of the good are what the wise person seeks to own.

This argument is hard to sell because it’s so hard to concretize what is meant by goodness,

Interesting that you assume a world without consciousness is inanimate. I know you don’t mean a world without motion. I think you mean a world without self-willed motion.

In a world without consciousness, when the wind pushes a rock and it rolls downhill, is that causation, or is it a potential event among infinite possible events?

If we divorce consciousness from matter, does time lose its ability to parse infinite possible events into the intelligibility of distinct events causally sequenced?

With this speculation, I imagine time in the role of universal solvent. It dissolves unintelligible infinite possibilities into the world as we perceive it, and that world is real because of our presence in it.

Existence doesn’t exist without consciousness; without consciousness it is only potential existence.

This might tell us something about the “what” and its linkage to science: consciousness in its essence is measurement; it pairs with the existential solvency of time to render a realm of discrete things causally linked; this extracted from unintelligible infinite possibilities .

Where do we come from? The void, which, as I’ve been guessing, might be the infinite possibilities of potential existence.

With this conjecture, the origin of things, including humans, might be an irreducible mystery in its particulars: every discrete, causally linked thing might necessarily be incomplete because that’s the nature of being from uncontainable potential existence.

Continuing in this vein, the beginning and end of existence can only be approached, never arrived at .

The object can (usually) exist without a subject.

Can something be a self without consciousness?

Can something be an object without being an object to itself, which means it’s also a subject?

These questions make me wonder if there ca be discrete and real things without the consciousness of an observer.

Does causality exist in a world without consciousness? — ucarr

Of course. "Consciousness", such as it is, at least is an effect – output – of neurologically complex body-environment interactions. In other words, imo, mind is nonmind (i.e. causal nexus)-dependent, or causally emergent phenomenon. How can it not be (sans woo-of-the-gaps idealism (e.g. "disembodied consciousness"))? :chin:

With all due respect, man, you're confusing yourself with a buttload of semantic gibberish (i.e. mismash of epistemic and ontic terms) and pseudo-scientific assumptions (e.g. "observer" = "measurement" = "consciousness"). Bad philosophy derived from bad physics. :roll:

:up: :up:

Okay, mind is emergent from non-mind.

Is causation an emergent phenomenon? Or Is it just part of the physics of nature?

When the wind moves a rock, and it rolls downhill, and we say the wind caused the rock to roll downhill, are we describing another part of the physics of the event, thus making causation somehow physical (and teleological), or do we assemble a continuity, a narrative, that is strictly a cognitive event?

Is causation an emergent phenomenon? — ucarr

No, it is inferred (read Hume ...)

Or Is it just part of the physics of nature?

It could not be anything else (read Epicurus or Spinoza ...)

Might causation be mind dependent, and perhaps emergent thereof? In a world without consciousness, might there only be sequencing of events?

Does consciousness mandate causation as a part of the pattern recognition it can’t live without?

The teleology of human consciousness inserts causation into a neutral glob of things?

I'm pretty sure I've directly or indirectly answered these already .

I’m wondering if conventional wisdom thinks causation a part of physics, and if it’s thought causation directly the report of empirical experience.

It’s hard to think about the world without consciousness or causation, and that’s why this thought experiment is fun.

Consciousness and existence being linked biconditionally is radical conjecture.



You don’t allow that causation is a part of the physics of nature.

What might it be a part of?

When hydrogen interacts with oxygen and water is the result, that this is a chemical reaction that is not also a case of causation as a part of the physics of chemical reaction gives me something to think about.

Consciousness and existence being linked biconditionally is radical conjecture. — ucarr

Yeah, that's ancient neoplatonism ... subjective idealism (Berkeley), monadology (Leibniz) or absolute idealism (Hegel). This anti-realist thesis is conceptually incoherent (like 'panpsychism'). Read Hume & Q. Meillassoux/R. Brassier.

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/584/what-are-the-major-points-of-meillassouxs-critique-of-correlationism

Also, this "conjecture" is, like teleology, without modern scientific significance, imho.

You don’t allow that causation is a part of the physics of nature.

I've neither claimed nor implied this.

I’m wondering if conventional wisdom thinks causation a part of physics, and if it’s thought causation directly the report of empirical experience. — ucarr

Pinpointing a previous event that would be the cause of a next one, the effect, is often too restrictive.

The next state in a system may be predictable from the previous state without resorting to such precise pinpointing.

I think that the notion of causality fails to allow for complex system-wide inputs leading to a particular output.

I think that the notion of causality fails to allow for complex system-wide inputs leading to a particular output. — Tarskian

The notion of causality or simplistic thinking about causality?

I’m trying to say you think causation a part of nature, but not a part of physics. I understand this to be the meaning of: the physics of

You do think state changes of a system are tied to complex dynamics?

You think complex dynamics include multiple causes for a specified effect?

If so, has it been observed that sometimes increasing complexity generates to much info to account for all of it within the parameters of the complex system?

If so, can we say entropy sometimes blocks us from making a determination of causality?

In the case of dynamics with an axiomatic system logically incomplete , is causation thought to be in effect, but its info too complex for measurement ?

If a dynamical system evolves to a level of complexity beyond measurement within its parameters, does that mean it can’t be cyclical?

Regarding existence and consciousness being biconditional, I’m thinking about early earth. Is it that we assume early earth was inhospitable to life and therefore we also assume a long period of earth history devoid of life?

So then the assumption is life arose from non-living earth dynamics.

This takes us to a pivot point transitioning earth from being devoid of life to being life-bearing.

Next we have scientists discovering physical evidence of life’s evolution from non-life.

If it’s logically sound to think humans, being conscious, cannot experience and thereby know a world devoid of consciousness, then there’s the question whether we can certify the existence of a world devoid of consciousness.

Can we then generalize this uncertainty to conjecturing whether the presence of consciousness anywhere precludes a world devoid of consciousness anywhere?

This argument stands upon the foundation of the standard model being universal physics.

To clarify, the question is whether a consciousness-bearing natural world anywhere necessitates all other worlds be consciousness enabled.

At the very least, there’s the appearance that conscious beings are conditionally confined to a biconditional link to existence because their presence perturbs consciousness-devoid spacetime out of existence.

Even thinking about consciousness-devoid spacetme perturbs its ontic status as no object of consciousness remains unperturbed.

This because consciousness is uncontainable.

So the presence of consciousness makes existence of consciousness-devoid spacetime undecidable.

I’ve been wrong in claiming existence and consciousness are biconditional.

They are linked, but they remain distinct. They are not interchangeable.

Your "physics of nature" is redundant (unless you believe there is "physics of" something other than "nature", which doesn't make sense).

I’ve been wrong in claiming existence and consciousness are biconditional.
They are linked, but they remain distinct. They are not interchangeable. — ucarr

I think that's right. But the links are complicated. Language is our clue (in philosophy), but it is our only clue and it itself tells us when something is consciousness-independent and when it isn't. Unfortunately, sometimes it is ambiguous, so sometimes the question is undecideable. Even more unfortunately, sometimes its clues are misleading. But there you go, that's life.

Right now I’m going with the notion consciousness independence cannot be certified from within consciousness. It seems to me that knowledge can have no relationship with consciousness independence (CI) because knowing keeps the observer walled-in on all sides by consciousness (cons), so non-cons is forever inaccessible to cons.

This argument applies largely- but not wholly- to language, with the possibility of thinking and knowing outside of language acknowledged.

Why do you think cons-embedded language can interact with a non-cons world without perturbing it fatally?

To ask it another way, why do you think an unknown world can persist as unknown once you’ve observed it?

You’re right. The wording is redundant. I used the modifier because I was trying to reckon with whether you think causation natural and physical. This attempt was made in the wake of your statements about formalisms.

If morals correspond to real things and thus they are objective, then the “what” of life, that is, the facts of life (ha ha!) can generate a type of science, the science of morality. This is what the world religious try to teach. — ucarr

That's big if. I think the real point is that if we are not absolutely sure that they do and which preferences are moral and which are not, we should not pretend we know.
(PS I wrote the above yesterday and forgot to post it!)

Right now I’m going with the notion consciousness independence cannot be certified from within consciousness. — ucarr

It depends a lot what you mean by "independence" and "from within". If you mean something like "Can we know whether our consciousness is independent of a non-conscious world, I think that's just the old question whether we can know whether or not there is an external world. If we can know there is one, I suppose we are dependent on it. If we can't know whether there is one, we can't know whether we are independent of it.

Why do you think cons-embedded language can interact with a non-cons world without perturbing it fatally? — ucarr

I don't thin k language can interact with anything; language is something we do. We can interact with the non-conscious (for the most part) world, so we clearly observe it without undue damage to either side.

To ask it another way, why do you think an unknown world can persist as unknown once you’ve observed it? — ucarr

I don't think an unknown world can persist as unknown once it is observed, since once it is observed, it is not unknown.

Humans will forever fight over morals because adaptation is ruthless and desires are dictatorial.

The social contract is a necessary prerequisite for a peaceable society, so an effort towards moral standards is also necessary.

For me, independence = distinct things running on parallel tracks that don’t intersect. The tracks might converge and diverge at points along the way.

Regarding “from within,” knowing, i.e., cons, is insuperable. As for the question of the existence (ex) of an external (ext) world, this conversation is deeply concerned not with the question of an ext world , but with the deep interweave connecting the two. This translates to the question of the two great modes: subjective/objective.

I suspect what QM has done, in essence, is manipulate quantity, i.e., discrete measurement, towards existential ambiguity. That’s fascinating because scientific discovery of discrete particles for seeming continuities like radiation and vice versa for seeming things like elementary particles was a drive toward definitive boundaries, with opposite result of real boundary ambiguity affirmed.

Is a purely objective world out there? The answer to this question is ambiguous, and cons plays a central role in the fact of existential ambiguity instead of discrete boundaries being the picture on the scientific view screen.

Part of the difficulty of The Hard Problem is the global question whether cons is insuperable. If it is, then the “what” of experience is forever compromised by subjectivity who partially contradicts and nuances it.

Is a purely objective world out there? — ucarr

Are you asking whether or not the world lacks subjects? or lacks subjective aspects? Insofar as subjects are self-reflexive, adaptive objects (which are 'entangled' to varying degrees with (all?) other objects), the unambiguous answer is 'the "objective world" also has subjective constituents'. Anyway, perhaps you can clarify precisely what you mean by "objective" – are you using it as an epistemological concept or a metaphysical concept?

Your definition: “ln so far as subjects are self-reflexive… also has subjective constituents.” does a good job of describing what’s on my view screen as I try to examine the differences between science/humanities.

I now see that science is bounded by the cons of the scientist.
Since an insuperable subjectivity never grants access to things-in-themselves independent of observation, the omnipresence of cons limits science and epistemology to the human narrative, and this tells us why narrative can be generative.

Every human individual has a generative narrative of sincere beliefs. These beliefs construct the individual’s world. If you believe humans are individuals, then you see why warfare can never be eliminated; there can never be a utopian social contract.