One of the gists is that the emergence of organic life is also the emergence of intentional consciousness, even at very rudimentary levels of development. Like, nothing matters to a crystal or a rock formation, but things definitely matter to a bacterium, because it has skin (or a membrane) in the game, so to speak. — Wayfarer

All life has "drives". Viruses have "drives", to infect and reproduce. Roombas have "drives", to clean. This is not enough. What is relevant is whether these drives are experienced as such. We don't just have drives, our drives are sometimes (but crucially, not always) experienced as drives. We have this capacity, this does not remotely mean that to have a drive is intrinsically to experience that drive.

I would like to think that the sentience of beings other than human is not something for us to decide. Whether viruses or archai or plants are sentient may forever remain moot, but that anything we designate with term 'being' is sentient as part of the definition (hence the frequent Buddhist reference to 'all sentient beings'.) — Wayfarer

I thought that 'all sentient beings' was making a distinction between these and insentient beings?

I don't see why it is problematic for us to conceptually mark out what counts as sentience. For me, to be sentient is to have qualitative states. It is quite another thing (maybe impossible) to empirically know whether other species have qualitative states.

The claim is that in order for you to be conscious of anything at all, that consciousness must have a felt quality. — hypericin

Again, what is "having a felt quality", if not "being conscious of a feeling"?

Have you said anything more than that being conscious is being conscious?

Seems to me that such an approach seems profound, seems to be providing an explanation, until one looks closely.

I would argue that qualia is the bedrock of sentience. — hypericin

Here's the same thing again; to be sentient is to perceive or feel; and saying "qualia is the bedrock of sentience" sounds cool, as if "Ah! Now we know! it's qualia that explain consciousness!"

But look again. Qualia are perceptions and feelings. so "qualia is the bedrock of sentience" just says "perceptions and feelings are the bedrock of sentience"...

The feeling of having an explanation dissolves... We've just said the same thing with different words.

Roombas have "drives", to clean. — hypericin

But they don't heal, grow, reproduce, or mutate. Agree that it's very hard to determine what is or isn't sentient at borderline cases such as viruses (presumably not) or jellyfish and so on.

Somewere I once read the aphorism that 'a soul is any being capable of saying "I am"'. i rather liked that expression.

One of the gists is that the emergence of organic life is also the emergence of intentional consciousness, even at very rudimentary levels of development. — Wayfarer

Also the emergence of information processing.

I thought that 'all sentient beings' was making a distinction between these and insentient beings? — hypericin

Can you give me an example of an insentient being?

The second two examples use "aware" in its other sense, which is simply to know a certain fact.
To be aware of a mosquito bite, aware of a sunset, aware of a feeling of jealousy, are all qualitative states. There is something it is like to experience each of these. What each is like is quite different. What unifies them is that they are all varieties of qualitative conscious states, they each have a felt quality. "Qualia" bundles this property of having a felt quality into a conceptual bucket. — hypericin

IMO I don't even think that we can say that one can 'know' something without a qualitative experience.

For instance, I don't think that my computer 'knows' the information it processes and stores. Rather, it seems to me that qualitative experience is a precondition of 'having knowledge'. So, while I think the distinction you make is relevant, I believe that we should say that 'knowledge' is a specific kind of 'awareness' (in the general sense of the presence of a qualitative experience).

:lol: I didn't necessarily think I was blowing anyone's doors down! But I don't think I said nothing either.

Just look at all the ways consciousness has been defined in the past. You just said the term was up to us to define. Wayfarer just quoted:

Somewere I once read the aphorism that 'a soul is any being capable of saying "I am"' — Wayfarer

Consciousness has never been a clear, fixed concept. Whereas qualia, your feelings about the term aside, is much more precisely defined. If the unclear term can be defined in terms of the clear term, even seeming tautologously, then that is progress. At least we would know what we are talking about when we talk about consciousness. Does that explain consciousness? Of course not.

Agree that it's very hard to determine what is or isn't sentient at borderline cases such as viruses (presumably not) or jellyfish and so on. — Wayfarer

Viruses are a hard no. They don't even have volition, they make no decisions, they are essentially giant, extraordinarily complex, free floating molecules. Jellyfish seem to be the upper limit of what can be achieved with no central nervous system. Probably not, but as you say it is extremely hard to rule out entirely.

My hunch is that consciousness is the ultimate fulfillment of the engineering principles of modularization and abstraction. It is an extremely efficient strategy for abstracting and organizing information that would otherwise overwhelm the nervous system. We have to integrate all the physical senses, bodily senses, emotions, memories, thoughts. Based on this enormous mass of information, we are supposed to act, moment by moment. If there were no abstraction, if these were all just raw electrical inputs, the brain would be totally overwhelmed. So the brain's strategy is to transform these raw inputs into abstractions, and act based on them. Our lived experience is that of the brain's decision maker. Our world consists in these abstractions, qualia, and from them, we attend to the relevant subset, we predict, and we act.

This strategy has probably coevolved multiple times in different evolutionary branches. To detect consciousness, we would have to understand the principle whereby the brain achieves this kind abstraction, and examine the extraordinarily complex nervous systems of the animals that might be using it.

So we accept a poor definition over contemplating that consciousness is an ambivalent notion?

In first aid we are taught to test to see if someone is unconscious by asking for a response - "can you hear me? Open your eyes! What's your name? Squeeze my hand!". Some folk tend to forget this sort of thing doesn't apply to jellyfish and rocks.

In extremis, people may be conscious but unresponsive, which has led to a body of work looking for "no-report" tests for consciousness. One suggestion is that medical folk look for the "neural correlate of consciousness", which face the problem of how to establish conscious experience without first-person evidence. No-report paradigms rely on eye-movement, neuro-imaging, or physiological measures as indicators of consciousness. The trouble with no-report approaches is that they tend to diagnose cases of consciousness as cases of unconsciousness, the “bored monkey” problem, in which a monkey appears unconscious because it fails to follow the red dot, when it's just bored. Perhaps the panpsychists are right, and we are attributing unconsciousness ot rocks that are simply bored.

At the other extreme, would it make sense to insist that someone was unconscious, despite their protests to the contrary?

Is it that we have not yet found a clean and clear definition of consciousness, or is it that consciousness is not one thing, with a clean and clear definition?

Should we shoehorn consciousness into a definition, or learn to work with a level of ambiguity?

Should we shoehorn consciousness into a definition, or learn to work with a level of ambiguity? — Banno

What you are describing is not conceptual ambiguity, but rather epistemic ambiguity. We pick and choose our concepts, and I think mine cleanly maps to that which we are talking about when we talk of consciousness. It is an entirely different matter to reliably apply this concept to other beings. Qualia, and therefore consciousness, is private, as third person observers we only have indirect access, through behavior and self report.

Is it that we have not yet found a clean and clear definition of consciousness, or is it that consciousness is not one thing, with a clean and clear definition? — Banno

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ('hard-core pornography'); and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligently doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." — Justice Potter Stewart

What you are describing is not conceptual ambiguity, but rather epistemic ambiguity. — hypericin

I don't think so. Rather what you see as epistemic - an inability to know if someone is conscious - is the result of thinking about a family of related notions as if they were a single notion.

It's a mistake to think of consciousness only in terms of having a particular object, some private quale. The very idea of a private definition of consciousness is a philosophical artefact born of misusing words like “experience” and “inner” together with a misguided notion of essential characteristics. A picture that holds us enthralled.

Now I think I've demonstrated that, over the last page or so. I don't see that there is an account of qualia that can hold it's own.

None of what I've said here is to claim that we are not conscious. That's a common error hereabouts. What is shown is the poverty of adopting only one account, the possession of quale, as the arbiter of consciousness.

You do realise, though, that the use of this term 'quale' or 'qualia' is almost entirely unique to a very narrow band of discourse, conducted mainly by English and American academic philosophers, in respect of a very specific set of arguments? I've always seen it as a way of re-framing the debate in analytical terms which allow for the designation of the qualities of conscious experience as a spurious object in the attempt to defuse the cogency of Chalmer's original argument.

I've always seen it as a way of re-framing the debate in analytical terms — Wayfarer

Analytic philosophy is a broad church.

But that last paragaph is somewhat ambiguous. You see qualia as a way of undermining Chalmers? But for him the “hard problem” relies on the reality/cogency of qualia.

You do realise, though, that the use of this term 'quale' or 'qualia' is almost entirely unique to a very narrow band of discourse, — Wayfarer

Only if modern analytic discourse on consciousness is a narrow band in its entirety.

allow for the designation of the qualities of conscious experience as a spurious object — Wayfarer

Only grammatically. I don't see the nounification of "objects of consciousness" as carrying any particular ontological commitments.

Like @Banno I don't see how this is deployed against Chalmers, as I recall he makes use of the idea, which predates him by quite a bit.

Only if modern analytic discourse on consciousness is a narrow band in its entirety. — hypericin

I think it is, rather. The 'consciousness studies' discipline that developed in the early 1990's around Chalmers and a few others was much broader ranging than analytic phiiosophy. It included perspectives from cognitive science, phenomenology, psychology and many other disciplines. I didn't have Chalmers in mind when I made that remark, so much as his legendary opponent, Daniel Dennett. Chalmers does reference it in his original Facing Up paper, though:

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of "consciousness", an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state. Sometimes terms such as "phenomenal consciousness" and "qualia" are also used here, but I find it more natural to speak of "conscious experience" or simply "experience".

Why 'more natural?' Because 'qualia' is academic jargon for something we are all intimately familiar with, namely, our experience of existence.

Been traveling, and the topic has once again run away from me.

"The universe is not composed of true statements" is also an indexical — noAxioms
I don't think so. — Banno

You do think so.

By definition, the actual world is the one we are in. — Banno

By this very idealistic definition, this particular universe is the actual one due to your presence in it, and possibly due to your perception of it. It depending on the context of your perceptions, this universe's actuality is an indexical.

Notice that we manage to name the smell of coffee and the shade of red in the paint shop, despite supposedly not being confident that your smell of coffee and your sensation of red has anything in common with mine?

How's that work, then. — Banno

It works in that the referent (especially with the coffee, not so much the paint) is the private sensation that evokes the public concept of coffee. It is not a referent to coffee. It being a reference to a private thing, it bears no implication that your personal experience of the scent is similar, but it can still be a reference to the personal experience of another.

I do agree that qualia has no place in a paint shop since orders for a very specific color ("match this swatch") can be (and very much is) done entirely by machine.

If you and I both smell coffee, it cannot be a reference to an indexical private thing, since we both smell it. — Banno

That usage has both of us detecting the same public actual coffee. That usage is not a reference to the experience of the scent, only to the action of detection of the public substance.

We can give someone who can see all colors but red all the information that can ever be given, and they will not know what red looks like. No description or data will help. — Patterner

I said as much in the OP. It's why we cannot know what it's like to be a bat, but given that, we also cannot go around asserting that there is or is not something it is like to be X. If you're not X, then this cannot be known.

I think if someone was going to strip away your qualia, you would object. Probably strenuously. — Patterner

Hence 1) my falsification test mentioned in the OP, 2) the inconceivability of a p-zombie acting undetectably the same, and 3) I suspect that the ability to object at all would be stripped away with the qualia gone. Such actions rely on continuous feedback, feedback which is now gone.

But are qualia real without consciousness? Qualia are first person as a matter of definition. — Wayfarer

Definitions don't tell you how things work. They're not metaphysics at all. They just indicate how language is to be used. I can't prove my solipsism by defining existence to be confined only to that which I directly perceive.

It's also not a 'brute fact' - being consciously aware is prior to the knowledge of any facts. — Wayfarer

Great, so since the roomba knows where it has been and where it still needs to go (knowledge of a fact), then it is only via its consciousness that it can come by this knowledge.

But [roombas] don't heal, grow, reproduce, or mutate. — Wayfarer

Nobody claimed they were life forms. But I know. You're leaning on your proof-by-definition again, which as I just said above, just shows how language is typically used, and doesn't prove anything about the roomba not doing as much and more than many 'sentient' life forms.
The same tactic is employed by racists to 'prove' that moral obligations don't apply to the race of choice.

IMO I don't even think that we can say that one can 'know' something without a qualitative experience. — boundless

Well, 'qualitative' apparently is a word reserved for life forms, and since non-living things can know stuff (see roomba example just above), I must either disagree with the statement or disagree with all the definitions that are confined to life forms.

"The cold mountain is to the left" you labeled an indexical despite it not being dependent on who says it. — noAxioms

Well, yes it is. If we face each other, then if it is to my left, it is not to your left. It matter who says it. That's why it is called indexical. — Banno

It's actually a matter of coordinate system choice, and not on who says it. Any person can choose whatever coordinates he likes. For a given person, the coordinate system would be loosely suggested more by which way he faces than who he's with.

The problem with eternalism is: are those experiences (i.e. that 'time flows', the appearance of 'free will' etc) compatible with eternalism? — boundless

Again, the experience of both interpretations is identical, so if it isn't compatible with eternalism, then it isn't compatible with presentism either. Both have you experiencing flow of time. I have a hard time with free will since there's no way to detect it one way or another. It also seems to make no predictions.

In fact, as I said before, if we deny those 'raw' experiences, can we trust empirical knowledge?

Since the two interpretations are empirically identical, you cannot have knowledge of which is correct. So there's no empirical knowledge to trust when it comes to anything interpretational.

IIRC, Goedel's theorems showed that even in relatively simple mathematical structures you get true yet unprovable (within the structure) propositions.

Yes. It's really easy to show this. But our universe isn't composed of statements or determinations of halting or whatnot. It's simply run by rules, none of which seem to contradict its operation. A counterexample would help a lot.

So, you can't derive all mathematical truths by a set of arbitrary axioms.

Agree. How is this relevant since I'm not suggesting that all truths must be derived?

This clearly suggests that mathematics isn't 'invented' IMO

If it was invented, it wouldn't be fundamental, but rather supervening on this inventor. So no argument here either.

MUH can also be a non-realist view. — noAxioms
Interesting, however I'm not sure how to conceive it. — boundless

2+3 sums up to 5. That works whether those values are real or not. Some disagree.

I do believe that MUH is defective, however. Other than the problem of change, I also believe that things like consciousness, ethics, aesthetics and so on require more than just 'math'.

You mean you think those things require more than just 'particles'. You are incredulous about physicalism. I suppose MUH is typically spun as a foundation for physicalism.

since the roomba knows — noAxioms

begs the question i.e. assumes what needs to be proven.

I said as much in the OP. It's why we cannot know what it's like to be a bat, but given that, we also cannot go around asserting that there is or is not something it is like to be X. If you're not X, then this cannot be known. — noAxioms

You're right. Even even in regards to other humans, we can only assume. And if we assume, how far are we willing to go? Nagel discussed this in What is it like to be a bat?

I assume we all believe that bats have experience. After all, they are mammals, and there is no more doubt that they have experience than that mice or pigeons or whales have experience. I have chosen bats instead of wasps or flounders because if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at all. Bats, although more closely related to us than those other species, nevertheless present a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the problem I want to pose is exceptionally vivid (though it certainly could be raised with other species). Even without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life. — Thomas Nagel

I think if someone was going to strip away your qualia, you would object. Probably strenuously.
— Patterner
Hence 1) my falsification test mentioned in the OP, 2) the inconceivability of a p-zombie acting undetectably the same, and 3) I suspect that the ability to object at all would be stripped away with the qualia gone. Such actions rely on continuous feedback, feedback which is now gone. — noAxioms

I agree. I think experience is feeling. I think "What is it like?" Means "What does it feel like?". Not necessarily physical feeling. I think the experience of redness is a feeling. Although anyone would object if they were told all of that was about to be stripped from them, once it was stripped, once they had no feelings, there's nothing to complain about.

You do think so. — noAxioms

"The universe is not composed of true statements" contains no indexical expressions. It contains no indexical terms (no “I”, “here”, “now”, “actual”, “this world”, etc.).

"The actual world is the one we are in" is indexical. It contains "we".

...this particular universe is the actual one due to your presence in it — noAxioms

On this account, any possible world in which you exist would be an actual world.

This all seems a rather odd thing on which to focus.

That usage has both of us detecting the same public actual coffee. That usage is not a reference to the experience of the scent, only to the action of detection of the public substance. — noAxioms

Pretty much.

since the roomba knows — noAxioms
begs the question i.e. assumes what needs to be proven. — Wayfarer

What is being demonstrated ('proven' as you put it) is an implication of the assertion that "being consciously aware is prior to the knowledge of any facts". I don't buy that assertion, but I am not begging what follows from it.
The roomba empirically demonstrates the knowing of where it has been and where it yet needs to go. This constitutes empirically obtained facts. Therefore, by your assertion, the roomba is conscious. I would suggest that the example falsifies the assertion rather than the example demonstrating that the roomba is conscious.

"The universe is not composed of true statements" contains no indexical expressions. It contains no indexical terms (no “I”, “here”, “now”, “actual”, “this world”, etc.). — Banno

Given your "By definition, the actual world is the one we are in", how is "The universe" in any way distinct from the form: "this world'? You label the latter indexical, but apparently deny that of the former.

"The actual world is the one we are in" is indexical. It contains "we".

So does 'the universe', since it means "the actual universe" which has, by your definition, a 'we' in it.

...this particular universe is the actual one due to your presence in it — noAxioms

On this account, any possible world in which you exist would be an actual world.

You never said 'an actual world'. You said 'the actual world'. That's your wording, one that implies that your being in it makes it the one and only world that is actual.

This all seems a rather odd thing on which to focus.

You brought up indexicals. I brought up the fact that almost everybody's definition of 'exists' is essentially an idealistic one, which your definition illustrates quite nicely.


As for the 'smell of coffee', my usage of that language is a reference to the mutual private experience of the scent, carrying no implication that the experience is entirely similar between two people. It is neither a reference to the coffee nor a reference to my public reaction to the scent, which may well be no reaction at all, despite very much noticing it.

Nagel discussed this in What is it like to be a bat? — Patterner

He should also discuss 'what it is like to be a roomba' (my choice of X). Answer:We cannot know. That not knowing includes us not asserting that there's nothing it is like to be a roomba.

I know Nagel is famous for the bats, but I've actually never read any of the famous works by anybody. Most of them were published before modern physics and its implications were known, and so they all lean on classical assumptions, assumptions we know today to be false. Not saying Nagel is wrong. Just that I'm uninformed. I appreciate the quotes.

I assume we all believe that bats have experience. — Nagel

Some don't even believe that of their mothers, so Nagel is perhaps assuming a less solipsistic audience here.

I have chosen bats instead of wasps or flounders because if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at all.

But that shedding of faith is important, since it implies that somewhere on our walk up that tree, experience (if a binary thing) suddenly turned on, something its immediate ancestor lacked. If this 'experience' is more of an analog thing (X is more conscious than Y), then we entertain that notion that we may very well still be incredibly low on that scale.
I find bats (being a fellow mammal) to be unreasonably close to humans, a safe call that suggests an unwillingness to explore something far more alien like the roomba.
And bats are awfully similar to humans. We can get around by echolocation except we lack the hardware to emit the sharp sound pulses required. They've fitted babies with these and they learn to run through a forest at full speed in complete darkness.
Dolphins are closer to us in intelligence, and they also use echolocation.

Anyway, your quote kind of dies there. Nagel indicates why 'bat' was chosen, but says little more.

anyone who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life. — Thomas Nagel

I did pull out of the woods in a canoe, at twilight. A cloud of mosquitoes came out with us and tracked the canoe (laden with firewood) across the lake. Two bats emerged, flew around us for about 5 seconds, and then the cloud was gone. I was impressed.

I agree. I think experience is feeling. I think "What is it like?" Means "What does it feel like?". Not necessarily physical feeling. I think the experience of redness is a feeling. Although anyone would object if they were told all of that was about to be stripped from them, once it was stripped, once they had no feelings, there's nothing to complain about.

But Chalmers apparently thinks otherwise, that the thing stripped of feeling would behave undetectably the same. A lot of his argument hinges that unreasonable assumption.

The roomba empirically demonstrates the knowing of where it has been — noAxioms

Well, I hope you and it can form a meaningful relationship.

Well, 'qualitative' apparently is a word reserved for life forms, and since non-living things can know stuff (see roomba example just above) — noAxioms

'Knowing' something seems to imply having an awareness of such a knowledge. My calculator can perform the operation "5+3=8" by processing the data I'm giving to it but it seems to me too far fetched to claim that it 'knows' the information it is processing. Of course, if 'knowledge' can mean merely 'storing data', then yeah, the calculator might be said to 'know'. But at a certain point, one should wonder if one isn't equivocating language.

Again, the experience of both interpretations is identical, so if it isn't compatible with eternalism, then it isn't compatible with presentism either. Both have you experiencing flow of time. I have a hard time with free will since there's no way to detect it one way or another. It also seems to make no predictions. — noAxioms

Yes, the experience is identical. But the interpretation is different. In one interpretation, the experience is taken as veridical. In the other it is taken as illusory. In both cases, however, one should be able to explain how the experience occurs.
Regarding 'free will', the evidence comes from my own immediate experience and, of course, the view that moral responsibility seems to require it.

Of course, both free will and the experience of 'flow of time' might be illusory. But I do not deem the grounds of taking them as such to be compelling. YMMV.

It's simply run by rules, none of which seem to contradict its operation. — noAxioms

One however might ask the ontological status of these 'rules'. If they are 'real' (and not just an useful 'construct' that *somehow* help us), what is their status? Can they be explained in purely physicalist terms? And so on.

Indeed, it seems that they are real (in some way). Otherwise, we would be unimaginably lucky in (falsely) believing that they are real.

If it was invented, it wouldn't be fundamental, but rather supervening on this inventor. So no argument here either. — noAxioms

:up:

2+3 sums up to 5. That works whether those values are real or not. Some disagree. — noAxioms

Not sure of your point. MUH asserts that all mathematical structures are 'real'. If the mathematical structure of 'natural numbers' is real, how is it possible that the numbers aren't real?

You mean you think those things require more than just 'particles'. You are incredulous about physicalism. I suppose MUH is typically spun as a foundation for physicalism. — noAxioms

Again, I believe that in this discussion we agreed that mathematical truths do not seem to be 'physical' as they seem to be independent from the existence of the universe (or the 'multiverse'). MUH asserts that reality is made of 'all mathematical structures'. So, I wouldn't call it a form of physicalism.

And yes, I believe that MUH errs precisely because it can't account for 'those things' in a satisfactory way.

Nagel discussed this in What is it like to be a bat?
— Patterner
He should also discuss 'what it is like to be a roomba' (my choice of X). Answer:We cannot know. That not knowing includes us not asserting that there's nothing it is like to be a roomba. — noAxioms

As I think consciousness is fundamental, a property of matter just as things like mass and charge are, and I think information processing is what makes a system conscious as a unit, I think a Roomba is conscious as a unit. However, it does not have the complexity of multiple integrated information processing systems for it to experience the kinds of thinking and awareness we do.

I know Nagel is famous for the bats, but I've actually never read any of the famous works by anybody. Most of them were published before modern physics and its implications were known, and so they all lean on classical assumptions, assumptions we know today to be false. Not saying Nagel is wrong. Just that I'm uninformed. I appreciate the quotes. — noAxioms

I have never read any of the old classics, either. But I've read, or am reading, a few newer things. Anyway, the implications of physics don't include anything about consciousness. The physical is what is experiencing, to be sure. We are physical, after all. But how that can be is not implied by physics.

I assume we all believe that bats have experience.
— Nagel
Some don't even believe that of their mothers, so Nagel is perhaps assuming a less solipsistic audience here. — noAxioms

Certainly. He is trying to examine consciousness. His audience isn't anyone who doesn't believe anything other than themself is conscious.

I have chosen bats instead of wasps or flounders because if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at all.
-Nagel

But that shedding of faith is important, since it implies that somewhere on our walk up that tree, experience (if a binary thing) suddenly turned on, something its immediate ancestor lacked. — noAxioms

He isn't saying that. He's just trying to find something close enough to us that those who believe things other than us are conscious will agree is conscious, but different enough that we can't really imagine what it's experience is like. For all the similarities you mention, we can't know what it is like to exist with as creatures who have echolocation as our primary sense every waking moment, and to fly and capture our food and eat it while doing so. As he says, our imagination can only get us so far:

Insofar as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. — Nagel

It's like empathy. The goal isn't to think of how I would feel in that situation. The goal is to try to understand how the person in that situation is feeling.

I think consciousness is fundamental because the "experience (if a binary thing) suddenly turned on, something its immediate ancestor lacked" idea seems too fantastic. If there is no consciousness present, and nothing is guiding physical evolution toward configurations that produce it, how is there suddenly a physical configuration that has this new thing which is so very different in nature, that was never the point or purpose, yet which it (the physical configuration) apparently is perfectly suited for?

But Chalmers apparently thinks otherwise, that the thing stripped of feeling would behave undetectably the same. A lot of his argument hinges that unreasonable assumption. — noAxioms

Perhaps Chalmers is not always right.

Given your "By definition, the actual world is the one we are in", how is "The universe" in any way distinct from the form: "this world'? You label the latter indexical, but apparently deny that of the former. — noAxioms

Mixed domains. "Universe" is a metaphysical notion, while "world" is a logical notion. They do not have the same use. "Universe" is a term used by physicists for a particular physical structure. "World" is used by logicians, more or less for a group of consistent, true sentences - a use that probably comes from the Tractatus.

'Knowing' something seems to imply having an awareness of such a knowledge. — boundless

OK, but the roomba acts on the knowledge, and it couldn't do that if it lacked awareness of the knowledge. Contrast that with a book, which contains information, but lacks that awareness of what it holds, and does not act on it at all.
The calculator indeed does not know it's doing math, just like the roomba. At best it knows what is stored in its limited registers in such a way that it can act upon those contents when requested, and even then, it just knows digital bits, not that those registers represent numbers.

But at a certain point, one should wonder if one isn't equivocating language.

But language should be used in situations where it is appropriate and not just places where it used to be used.
I'm claiming the roomba knows where it's been. I'm not claiming it has qualitative experience (but I also not claiming it doesn't).

On presentism:

Yes, the experience is identical. But the interpretation is different. In one interpretation, the experience is taken as veridical. In the other it is taken as illusory. — boundless

Yes, the intuition is false in the latter case, but if the experience is identical, one has to wonder why the intuition for something undetactable is there at all, regardless of which is the case. The answer of course is that the intuition makes one (any being that predicts) more fit. Being fit scores points. Knowing the truth about something that cannot matter does not.

In both cases, however, one should be able to explain how the experience occurs.

Why? This has come up countless times in the topic. Why do the dualists hold physical monism responsible for an explanation of something complicated when 1) it is clear that no explanation will ever be accepted, and 2) their view is even less explained?
So I reject this requirement. Sufficiently complicated things (like the sun rising each day) have been physically processes despite lack of physical explanations for them over the centuries. To falsify one, one must show that it cannot be the case, not to show that there isn't currently a full physical explanation.

Regarding 'free will', the evidence comes from my own immediate experience and, of course, the view that moral responsibility seems to require it.

There are many definitions of 'free will', so not sure which one you are using, or how you would distinguish the experience of not having it. I mean, my definition is pretty loose: Physics does not prevent one from doing what one wants, and I don't have that kind of free will since I desire to levitate, and gravity prevents that.
The suggestion that moral responsibility requires free will seems to stem from a lack of distinction between choice and free choice. You have the former (and thus bear responsibility), else you'd not have evolved this nice brain to make better (more fit) choices. The latter requires a definition that yields a distinction from mere choice, and most distinctions actually seem to hinder making a better choice, but it's quite definition dependent.
Also note that eternalism is quite compatible with non-deterministic quantum interpretations like Copenhagen. Not sure if you're aware of that.

A good starting point is also pinning down 'moral responsibility'. Responsible to what? Responsibility is a relation. One can be help responsible to physics, or to the law, or to society, or to a god. Only responsibility to something outside our universe seems to require some sort of external volition. The rest doesn't. I've given several examples earlier in this topic of responsibility to the former things, and how classical deterministic process are best at implementing choices in those contexts.

Of course, both free will and the experience of 'flow of time' might be illusory. But I do not deem the grounds of taking them as such to be compelling. YMMV.

Opinions are fine, but you cite 'evidence' a lot, and there cannot be any if there's no empirical difference. I hold intuitions very low on the likely-to-be-true list. so my opinion tends to go with the simpler model, not with the suggestion of a known liar (intuitions, not you).


On the 'physical laws of our universe':

One however might ask the ontological status of these 'rules' — boundless

To me it's a relation. These laws describe the outcome of the particular nature of the mathematics that describes (or is) our universe. It's a relation between emergent effects (matter say) and the mathematical structure in question.
Whether any of that 'exists' or not seems to be irrelevant to it being a relation. The realists need something to have 'exists' stamped on it, but those same realists often define existence (or 'actual') in idealistic terms.

If they are 'real' (and not just an useful 'construct' that *somehow* help us), what is their status?

The universe supervening on mathematics is different than the mathematics being objectively real or not. Of course you might not be talking about objectively real here, but more the relaties-to-me kind of 'real' that most self-described realists use.

Can they be explained in purely physicalist terms?

No. The physical comes from the laws, not the other way around. Physicalism does not explain the laws of physics. That's backwards.

Not sure of your point. MUH asserts that all mathematical structures are 'real'. — boundless

Yea, I have a real problem with that. How would the structures differ in any way if they were not real? That's why I think declaring them 'real' is pointless. By my main issue is with giving all structures the same status, which means all the uninteresting structures exist as much as the interesting ones, and there's so many more of the former, to the point where you are probably part of one of those instead of the improbable interesting structure you think you're part of.

If the mathematical structure of 'natural numbers' is real, how is it possible that the numbers aren't real?

Does anybody suggest that? One of the rules seems to be "real stuff comes from other real stuff", so if I'm real, so is my child or anything else I cause. If I'm not real, I cannot create or interact with something real. Likewise, it seems that natural numbers share the same ontology (whatever that may be) as the set of natural numbers.

Again, I believe that in this discussion we agreed that mathematical truths do not seem to be 'physical'

Yes, we agree on that. I cannot find a physical natural number anywhere in the universe. Collect them all!

I also don't think the mathematics that is the universe is a set of 'truths'. It's a structure, not a truth. A typical example is the Mandelbrot set, which is simply a set of numbers in the complex plain with a certain property. There's nothing true or false about it. It's just what it is. It doesn't need to exist to have certain properties (like being fully connected). It's ontology seems utterly irrelevant to what it is. That's how I see our universe. It being objectively real or not seems totally irrelevant, which is why most people's notion of being 'real' isn't an objective one.

as they seem to be independent from the existence of the universe (or the 'multiverse'). MUH asserts that reality is made of 'all mathematical structures'. So, I wouldn't call it a form of physicalism.

No, but the universe thus described by some mathematical structure typically is suggested to obey physical law. It isn't necessary. Perhaps the mathematics can be more complicated and include mental properties as well. It's just that nobody has ever observed such properties, let alone modeled them.

As I think consciousness is fundamental, a property of matter just as things like mass and charge are, and I think information processing is what makes a system conscious as a unit, I think a Roomba is conscious as a unit. However, it does not have the complexity of multiple integrated information processing systems for it to experience the kinds of thinking and awareness we do. — Patterner

OK. I don't think anybody would suggest that a roomba has the complexity needed for human awareness/experience, but neither does a bat. The bat gets closer.

Anyway, the implications of physics don't include anything about consciousness.

I beg to differ. So much of the old works rest on classicality (one world, one identity, presentism, and yes, all effects have a cause), and all that has been tossed out the window by 20th century physics (starting pretty much at 1900). It's why I got into these forums in the first place, since so much of the philosophical literature (even 20th century stuff) was written by people who don't know their physics.
So here I am, an armchair physics guy (moderator of a science forum), working out my own philosophy with little help from the pros.

As an illustration, try finding somethings that explores which quantum interpretations are compatible with the Bible or one's theology of choice.
For some reason, the free-will discussion seems to care about this, reasoning (incorrectly) that apparently randomness is required for moral responsibility, thus favoring only interpretations with, as Einstein put it, 'God rolling dice'.

[Nagel] isn't saying that. He's just trying to find something close enough to us that those who believe things other than us are conscious will agree is conscious, but different enough that we can't really imagine what it's experience is like.

It seems pointless to belabor the point when you don't worry about a cutoff like I described. If you think rocks are conscious (just not very), then it isn't something that just 'turned on' with one thing. There are those that believe otherwise (the jellyfish, lacking a brain, isn't conscious), and the comment was only applicable to that suggestion.

For all the similarities you mention, we can't know what it is like to exist with as creatures who have echolocation as our primary sense every waking moment, and to fly and capture our food and eat it while doing so. As he says, our imagination can only get us so far:

No argument there. But at some point, he goes so far as to conclude the necessity (does he? or just he possibility?) of these mental properties that don't supervene on physical properties, and being admittedly ignorant of his work, I cannot assert if he finds a valid reasoning for this, or just the usual incredulity that so many lean on.

I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. — Nagel

Sorry Thomas, but not going to happen. It not happening is not proof of anything. As was said, imagination only gets you so far. It certainly fails to get to the roomba.

I think consciousness is fundamental because the "experience (if a binary thing) suddenly turned on, something its immediate ancestor lacked" idea seems too fantastic.

I also find that too fantastic, but I never considered it a binary thing that you have or don't. Like I said, it a point only relevant to those with such a view: probably substance dualism, where something has an immaterial 'mind' object when it's parent did not.
I had the Adam/Eve thing explained that way. Two people cannot breed all of humanity, and the story as taken literally contradicts evidence. So the idea is that the area was full of these near-human apes, and Adam was somehow a mutation that utilized this immaterial object to call his shots rather than using his own brain. It worked better, and the mutation propagated as he (and his offspring) bred with the almost-humans, and most of the descendants of Adam were conscious after that, when the ones without this mutation (ancestors, early spouses) were not. Of course bats wouldn't be either. It's this mind/soul thing that God judges, not the physical body. All this requires that classicality.

All kinds of holes in that. The mind taking over like that is akin to possession. Why do we have these huge expensive organs (a whopping 20 watts, a power drain that has killed plenty of people), when the other animals do it for far less. If this immaterial object is doing all the hard work, a walnut size brain should suffice for the rest just like it did for dinosaurs.
And then there's the whole bit about how the not-conscious ones (zombies, just like the bats) managed to do what they do without any 'experience', which I find preposterous.

And then the Bible kills off everyone a 2nd time (so much for the last of the zombies) and has Noah & co (4 couples) repopulate the planet so fast it would require something like 50 kids per breeder. I digress...

Mixed domains. "Universe" is a metaphysical notion, while "world" is a logical notion. They do not have the same use. "Universe" is a term used by physicists for a particular physical structure. "World" is used by logicians, more or less for a group of consistent, true sentences - a use that probably comes from the Tractatus. — Banno

Perhaps this is our disconnect, given my physics background. "World' means that which relates to us, or that which has been measured by a given entity. Think the W in MWI. Hence our world is essentially confined to the visible universe, the rest being totally unmeasured by humans.

OK, so you're using a modal logic meaning of the word when you say "The actual world is the one we are in", I think you saying that this particular world is the only one that corresponds to the facts of reality as we experience them, which is not a strong statement since I don't see how it could be otherwise. It's just a stipulation: actual to me. The designation seems to correspond to idealistic or relational thinking: actual to me, not objectively actual (as I had mistakenly interpreted your comment). Empirical truth vs objective truth.

Tell me where I'm getting this wrong, since I'm sure I mucked up the meaning from a modal logic domain.

The roomba empirically demonstrates the knowing of where it has been — noAxioms
Well, I hope you and it can form a meaningful relationship. — Wayfarer

An evasion. Have I pointed out an inconsistency then? Knowing your methods, you'd likely deny that a non-living thing cannot know something since the dictionary doesn't have any examples of that usage, a denial despite the roomba clearly not being able to do what it does without such knowledge, and knowledge that it obtain on its own, not something fed to it. You can teach it stuff, like define a no-go zone to protect a place it cannot handle.