• apokrisis
    6.8k
    I was referring to the imaginary stop sign I'm thinking of right now. Not a real stop sign.ZzzoneiroCosm

    Well if it ever materialises,you’ll know what to do.

    For now, that actuality is merely a potential.
  • Janus
    15.7k
    That is why a hollow slogan like "everyone just be nice!" is so problematic.apokrisis

    Right, except that is not what I was saying would make a difference. Caring about the community (including of course the environment) and doing something about it is what would make a difference.

    If you think small rural communities have a much greater degree of social cohesion, then why not analyse why that might be the case - and apply those principles to the larger world we all now live in.apokrisis

    It doesn't take much analysis. Small communities are like an extension of family, and people naturally care about family (or at least those who are not totally socially dysfunctional do). People don't have a sense of familial connection like that to the larger world. I think much of that is so because the financialization of the economic system has allowed a situation to develop where people think only in terms of use and profit.

    Anyway, as you say, what needs to be done is "bleeding obvious", and it is only caring about what needs to be done that will get it done.

    We get the lives we design, don't we? At least that was the Enlightenment project.apokrisis

    I don't know whether we get the lives we design, but we get the lives we allow. It starts with what we vote for, for example. Anyway we are now a long way off "The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness" track.
  • Deletedmemberzc
    2.5k
    For now, that actuality is merely a potential.apokrisis

    I agree it's a stop sign in potential.

    But in actuality, it's an imagined stop sign. Not only a potential.


    I want to try one more time:

    So in my dreams I can travel vast distances and inhabit what might be called the imaginary world or the dream world.

    What is the relation of matter, information and the world I seem to inhabit in my dreams?
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    The mind is an accumulation of habits of interpretance. Past experience is used to predict the future world in terms designed to deliver effective action. So the imagination is just this forward prediction of what it would be like to experience the known world from some other viewpoint.

    So you could generate the image of a stop sign just as you could generate an image of your missing keys or the deer you hope to shoot in the woods. The ability to hold a search image in mind is a meaningful and functional action. It speaks to a state of intent that is to be physically enacted at some future time and place. The image informs that material possibility.

    But such states of anticipatory imagery could be nonsensical - noise rather than information - as when you are dreaming.
  • Deletedmemberzc
    2.5k
    But such states of anticipatory imagery could be nonsensical - noise rather than information - as when you are dreaming.apokrisis

    Okay, I think I get it, thank you!


    I'm sure you're aware dreams have plenty of sensical content. But that's another issue.

    generate the imageapokrisis

    hold a search image in mindapokrisis

    So you agree the image in some sense exists and is non-physical, is held in the mind? Or is it more in the spirit of your schema to eschew the physical/non-physical dyad and focus on function?
  • Deletedmemberzc
    2.5k
    All signs, symbols, and codes, all languages including formal mathematics are embodied as material physical structures and therefore must obey all the inexorable laws of physics. At the same time, the symbol vehicles like the bases in DNA, voltages representing bits in a computer, the text on this page, and the neuron firings in the brain do not appear to be limited by, or clearly related to, the very laws they must obey. Even the mathematical symbols that express these inexorable physical laws seem to be entirely free of these same laws. — Howard Pattee, The Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiosis

    Putting this in my filing cabinet. Looks like a fascinating read.
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    So you agree the image in some sense exists and is non-physical, is held in the mind? Or is it more in the spirit of your schema to eschew the physical/non-physical dyad and focus on function?ZzzoneiroCosm

    I talk about images as that is the everyday jargon that you wish to employ. From a properly functional point of view, it is a perceptual anticipation - a prediction of a future sensory state uncorrected by any actual such sensory state. So it is something you thought was liable to happen, but it then didn’t happen. And you are left with the impression of what it might have been like if it did happen.

    So in broader terms, the mind is an intention-soaked forward model of the world. And an image is the start of that modelling cycle - the forming of a grounding state of expectancy and readiness.

    The ordinary Cartesian view of the mind is that is is a passive stage for the play of sensations. The semiotic view is the enactive or embodied view where consciousness is primarily active and intentional.

    So what explains the mind is the active way it does it’s best to predict the sensory changes - the physical energies - that the environment may be about to impose upon it. Then something that seems passive and off-line - like mental images - is just the brain striving after active meaning at a time when very little of interest is happening out in the world.

    As in dreams, states of sensory expectation just drift through the mind in a loose associative flow. The engine on idle.
  • Deletedmemberzc
    2.5k
    As in dreams, states of sensory expectation just drift through the mind in a loose associative flow.apokrisis

    Okay, that's an interesting cadence. Thanks for answering my questions. I'll have to think about all of the above and read the bit from Pattee.

    I know about Peirce. I have a book called Four Ages of Understanding that seems to be up your alley. Do you have any other (math-free) books or articles to recommend?
  • Deletedmemberzc
    2.5k
    I talk about images as that is the everyday jargon that you wish to employ. From a properly functional point of view, it is a perceptual anticipationapokrisis

    If you're interested in clarifying a point.

    Here I see you've distanced yourself from the word 'image.' You want to talk about the dream or the imaginary stop sign but you eschew ownership of the word 'image.' But I think you have to accept that this perceptual anticipation takes, in part, the form of an image. (It can be perceptual anticipation and also be an image.) And if it takes, in part, the form of an image what is the motivation for distancing oneself from the word 'image'?

    To me this has always been the puzzler for any physicalist schema - short of going hogwild reductionist - reducing talk of the imaginary to talk of neurons and meiny.

    There before me I see: the dreamworld, the imaginary stop sign. I am as certain that it is there (aspatial, locationless) as that I am here (spatial, locatable at XYZ).

    It is there before me and it is chiefly imagic. What is this imagic substance? Of course it has a neural correlate, cause, mechanism. But when physicalists try to find language for the image, I hear them: 1) reduce talk of the imaginary to talk of neural processes (monism; nigh-monism); or 2) avoid couching talk of the imaginary in terms of images.


    If we allow talk of images how do we avoid the Cartesian divide?
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    2k

    Aren't there at least implied dualisms in biosemiotics? Between symbol and matter, between self and other?

    I'm not sure I see why this would be the case. DNA is a code, it contains symbols that refer to proteins. The interpretant is the transcription RNA during cellular replication. The DNA does not contain the proteins it refers to, it passes along instructions (meaning/information) that are interpreted by another system. Similarly, in computers, APIs form a full semiotic triangle, with one program being the referent of a string of symbolic code, and a another program acting as the interpretant.



    AAt the same time, the symbol vehicles like the bases in DNA, voltages representing bits in a computer, the text on this page, and the neuron firings in the brain do not appear to be limited by, or clearly related to, the very laws they must obey. Even the mathematical symbols that express these inexorable physical laws seem to be entirely free of these same laws.

    Now this quote seems to be implying some sort of dualism, but I have no clue what phenomena it could be referring to. Does he have examples?



    If you want a rough distinction, life is an organism's model of its body - its metabolic existence - and mind is an organism's model of the environment within which that body must persist.

    How is life a "model of an organism's body?" That sounds interesting, but it's getting by me.

    I've generally seen "the body" framed in terms more similar to the nervous system, i.e., as storing information about the environment.

    Physical complexity, a measure based on automata theory and information theory, is a simple and intuitive measure of the amount of information that an organism stores, in its genome, about the environment in which it evolves...

    Darwinian evolution is often described as a mechanism that increases the fitness of a population. Such a portrayal is problematic because the fitness of a population can depend on many parameters and is difficult to measure. It is probably more appropriate to say that evolution increases the amount of
    information a population harbors about its niche (and therefore, its physical complexity). The only mechanism necessary to guarantee such an increase is natural selection, acting in a single niche, on asexual organisms adapting to a constant unchanging world.

    As we saw above, information is revealed, in an ensemble of adapted sequences, as those symbols that are conserved (fixed) under mutational pressure. Imagine then that a beneficial mutation occurs at variable position. If the selective advantage that it bestows on the organism is sufficient to fix the
    mutation within the population,(24) the amount of information (and hence the complexity) has increased.

    A beneficial mutation that is lost before fixation does not decrease the amount of information, nor does this happen if a neutral mutation drifts to fixation. A deleterious mutation that occurs at a fixed site could lead to an information decrease, but such a mutation can only drift to fixation in very small populations (Muller’s ratchet) or if the mutation rate is so high that the population undergoes a mutational meltdown.

    Thus, natural selection can be viewed as a filter, a kind of semipermeable membrane that lets information flow into the genome, but prevents it from flowing out. In this respect, the action of natural selection is very much akin to a device known as a Maxwell Demon in physics, which implies that natural selection can be perfectly well understood from a thermodynamics perspective as we

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/bies.10192


    And in biosemiotic, what is being stressed is that switches are where the action happens as they mediate (as signs) between the informational and material aspects of the system.

    Does biosemiotics posit that information is non-physical? If so, that seems like it would be a violation of Landauer's principle, which would be tough to get around.
  • Wayfarer
    20.9k
    Does he have examples?Count Timothy von Icarus

    Well, that passage you quoted gives four examples: DNA, bits, text, neurons.

    The paper itself can be found here.

    But you're answering your own question:

    The DNA does not contain the proteins it refers to, it passes along instructionsCount Timothy von Icarus

    So, there's the coding, then there's the proteins which are subject of - informed by - those instructions. Right there, there's a distinction between the instruction, and the material form. How is that not dualist? Pattee's paper explicitly discusses but rejects Descartes' dualism because although it's clear about the distinction of matter and mind, it consigns their relation to 'metaphysical obscurity' - which I think is true. But there's another type of pre-modern dualism, namely hylomorphism, which seems more congruent with this approach. Matter and form, rather than matter and mind. (But, where does form originate? :chin: ) Anyway - Pattee's paper asks many intriguing and rather open-ended questions.

    Does biosemiotics posit that information is non-physical?Count Timothy von Icarus

    I don't think biosemioticians would use that terminology. But bear in mind, Landuaer's principle is specifically about recording and erasing information in physical media so naturally it is concerned with physical principles. It's not about the metaphysics of meaning or the nature of information generally. Given that you wish to encode some information in bits via magnetic media, then it stipulates some rules about the amount of energy required to do that.
  • bert1
    1.8k
    That's all great, but why can't all that happen in the dark?

    I'd be happy with your account if you didn't market it as an explanation for consciousness. Even if you have correctly identified the point in the development of a system at which consciousness emerges (assuming emergentism is true), i.e. when systems model their environment and predict the future, it's still a mystery why this is the point when systems start having experiences. Why can't they model their environment and predict the future without experiencing anything?

    My irritation with your postings on this forum is not a dislike of your general knowledge and expertise on systems theory, which is really interesting, if a bit impenetrable most of the time. The forum is lucky to have you here as an expert on these ideas. It's the irrelevance to the problem of consciousness that I find annoying.

    Mind clearly has a huge array of functional aspects, what Block calls access consciouness, and your account may very well be highly relevant to that, I don't know. But that is not the relevant sense.
  • EugeneW
    1.7k
    That's all great, but why can't all that happen in the dark?bert1

    That's the best counter argument! There is something inside of matter that gives light. Why don't we move without consciousness?
  • bert1
    1.8k
    It's a question to ask of any kind of functionalism I think. Although previously Apo has said he isn't a functionalist, but maybe that's just a terminology thing.

    As @Wayfarer has been reading up on this stuff, more so than I have, I'd like to ask him the same question. I think I'd find his writing easier. He writes instruction manuals I think for money, if I remember correctly, so maybe that will help.

    There is a move available, which I don't think will help the situation, and that is to say that consciousness emerges at point X because consciousness is necessary for X. That might be what Apo thinks, I don't know.
  • EugeneW
    1.7k


    I can't imagine myself doing all I do without consciousness. But to say that's the explanation? It is necessary maybe for a "matter-system" to do what it does, but that doesn't mean it is just an emergent property. It might as well be the other way round (matter an emergent property).
  • Wayfarer
    20.9k
    Why can't they model their environment and predict the future without experiencing anything?bert1

    If that's the question you mean to ask me when you say 'the same question', I would say a couple of things. First, I don't think that the existence of life is something that can necessarily be explained. One of the other really useful essays on I read on biosemiosis What is Information?, refers to the work of Hubert Yockey who attempted to apply Claude Shannon's information theory to living organisms. He says
    Yockey has tirelessly pointed out that no amount of chemical evolution can cross the barrier that divides the analogue world of chemistry from the digital world* of life, and concluded from this that the origin of life cannot have been the result of chemical evolution. This is therefore, according to Yockey, what divides life from matter: information is ontologically different from chemistry because linear and digital sequences cannot be generated by the analogue reactions of chemistry.

    At this point, one would expect to hear from Yockey how did linear and digital sequences appear on Earth, but he did not face that issue. He claimed instead that the origin of life is unknowable, in the same sense that there are propositions of logic that are undecidable.'

    *'Digital' because information is transmitted by DNA.

    Philosophically, I think as soon as living organisms appear, then that is also the most rudimentary form of experience, of being - which is why living things are called 'beings'. But the nature of being is itself unknowable, or inscrutable. And that's because it's not an object to us - it is always the 'knower', it is what appears or manifests as the subject. (This is where it ties into the Vedantic idea of the 'unknown knower'.) But then, I'll freely admit I'm approaching the question through a philosophical (and somewhat mystical) perspective - not from the perspective of bio-sciences. However, I can't help but think that the bioscientists have found themselves bumping up against this mystery, although they don't necessarily know what to make of it (and besides are often temperamentally averse to mysteries.)

    Second,

    The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

    So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory.
    Thomas Nagel, The Core of Mind and Cosmos

    That's about how I see it.
  • Daemon
    591
    I'm not sure I see why this would be the case. DNA is a code, it contains symbols that refer to proteins. The interpretant is the transcription RNA during cellular replication. The DNA does not contain the proteins it refers to, it passes along instructions (meaning/information) that are interpreted by another system. Similarly, in computers, APIs form a full semiotic triangle, with one program being the referent of a string of symbolic code, and a another program acting as the interpretant.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Good morning Count Timothy.

    DNA does not pass on meaning or information. Everything it does can be described in terms of biochemistry. When you've described the biochemistry, you've said everything. There isn't anything left for "information" to do. Information is a concept in our minds, it's something we think about DNA.

    Computers do not process information. Everything the computer does can be described in terms of electrical currents, microscopic bumps on CDs etc. The information, software, encoding and decoding are all concepts in our minds and are not intrinsic to the machine.

    Brains do not process information. What they do can be exhaustively described in terms of neuronal activity and so on. Of course we say things like "the optic nerve carries information", but what it actually carries is electrochemical impulses. There isn't any "information" you can point to in addition to those electrochemical impulses.

    If you think "information" does something in addition to what the biochemistry/electrical currents/electrochemical impulses do, can you say what it is?

    You're the fourth person I've asked in this discussion. The other three have simply ignored the question. I think that's because they don't have an answer. Can you do any better?
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.5k
    So, there's the coding, then there's the proteins which are subject of - informed by - those instructions. Right there, there's a distinction between the instruction, and the material form.Wayfarer

    It's not actually the proteins which are "informed", it is the matter, which after being informed becomes a protein, which is informed. Notice the suffix "ed", which puts the act of information, the carrying out of the instructions, into the past, as causal.

    There is a relationship between the instructions, and the informed matter (which is the protein), but the matter itself escapes this relationship. And this was how "matter" was defined originally by Aristotle, what is left out from the formula, and is therefore not changed in the act of being informed. This is essential to the nature of "change", that there is an aspect which is not affected (matter), and something which changes (form). The aspect which does not change (matter) is proven to be unintelligible. That is why there is a distinction to be made between the instruction and the material form The matter is an unknown aspect, not properly accounted for in the instructions, hence the reality of accidents.
  • Galuchat
    809
    If you think "information" does something in addition to what the biochemistry/electrical currents/electrochemical impulses do, can you say what it is?Daemon

    I don't think information does something in addition to what any physical or mental process does.

    I think information is the process and/or product of informing, or providing particular definition (a definite, delimited, condition to a particular), so; it is a general description of any process which imparts, and/or product which has, form.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    I'm always saying "life and mind". The two are pretty synonymous given that they are both about the special thing of a semiotic modelling relation.

    If you want a rough distinction, life is an organism's model of its body - its metabolic existence - and mind is an organism's model of the environment within which that body must persist.
    apokrisis
    This talk of models is strange considering that we understand models as a smaller scale representation of what is being modeled. Model cars are made of metal and plastic - the same as the real thing. The only difference is scale and detail.

    The model that is the mind is not made up of neurons. It is made up of something totally different. I'm really looking forward to an explanation as to how neurons model visual depth and the feeling of persisting in an environment surrounded by empty space.

    It seems to me that empty space that is experienced is just information or a model of other information (in light that passes through the air without being reflected just like a glass window appears transparent), just on a smaller scale and with less detail.

    Doesn't the experience of bent straws in water and mirages and darkness and being surround by empty space show that we model the world using light?

    So in talking about physical brains that are only observed with the presence of light you are confusing the model with what is modeled.

    First-person models are composed of informational relations. A sensory information processor can only process information acquired by its own senses, not by the senses of another. The point of view that develops is a relationship between the organism and the immediate environment that the organism uniquely occupies. Even computers have first-person perspectives in that they occupy a unique area of space and time store and work with different information acquired by its inputs. So first-person perspectives are really just possessing and working with information that is unique to the organism or device that possesses it. It is why we can never know what it is like to be another because we would have to be that person to know what it is like.

    Past experience is used to predict the future world in terms designed to deliver effective action. So the imagination is just this forward prediction of what it would be like to experience the known world from some other viewpoint.

    So you could generate the image of a stop sign just as you could generate an image of your missing keys or the deer you hope to shoot in the woods. The ability to hold a search image in mind is a meaningful and functional action. It speaks to a state of intent that is to be physically enacted at some future time and place. The image informs that material possibility.

    But such states of anticipatory imagery could be nonsensical - noise rather than information - as when you are dreaming.
    apokrisis
    Yet the dream appears just like the model in your description of "life and mind". How can one be a model and the other just noise when you can't tell the difference in the moment you are dreaming, and even after the fact as memories of what was dreamed are no different than the memories of "real" events?

    We can imagine a past that would make the present we live in very different. People can dwell on what could have been. Dreams can cause people to change the way they live or to look at the world differently. These "imaginary" things have real impacts on peoples' behaviors.
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    That's all great, but why can't all that happen in the dark?bert1

    What supports your contention that all that neurology - by far the most extreme kilo or two of functional complexity in the known universe - could happen “in the dark”?

    How do you get drunk if the neurology has nothing to do with there being a state of experience in your noggin?
  • bert1
    1.8k
    What supports your contention that all that neurology - by far the most extreme kilo or two of functional complexity in the known universe - could happen “in the dark”?apokrisis

    I don't think it does, but that's not because I think the complexity is relevant, it's because I'm a panpsychist.

    I'm trying to understand the position of the emergentist, who typically thinks there is no consciousness in the universe at all except when and where there are brains (or perhaps functionally equivalent things). I take it that is your position. So we have a situation in which for the vast majority of the lifetime of the universe, and for the vast majority of places in it, there is no consciousness. Then something happens, and there is consciousness. But why? This is crying out for an explanation, even assuming this emergentist story is true. Why can't all the processes keep going on just as before, regardless of the complexity, just without the experience? What's the difference? And you've already told us what the difference is, which is great, you've said the difference is entering into a modelling relationship with the world. And my reply is, sure, but what is it about that that means it feels like something? We all know it does feel like something, I'm not denying that, obviously. What I'm asking is why does that explanation work, and not others. What is it about that particular function that constitutes an experience, but not the function of, say, an internal combustion engine?

    How do you get drunk if the neurology has nothing to do with there being a state of experience in your noggin?

    Well this is just about the distinction between consciousness and content. We can conclude very easily from the evidence that changes in brain function in humans alters the content of experience in humans. Of course it does. No one is denying that, not even the most extreme substance dualists. But how do we get from that to the very general conclusion that consciousness, regardless of the content, only occurs when brains do a certain type of thing? If I was 180, I might say that this was a hasty generalisation, but I'm not so I won't.
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    ...it's because I'm a panpsychist.bert1

    A theory that is not even wrong as it offers no measurable difference.

    Yet you demand such evidence from others....

    I'm trying to understand the position of the emergentist,bert1

    Well there's two types. The reductionist and the holist.

    One argues that qualities simply "pop out" due to a sufficient quantity of complexity - the supervenience approach. The other argues that the emergence is a self-organising semiotic relation where both the local stuff out of which a system is made, and the global constraints that inform the organisation, are emergent from a vagueness or firstness of unformed potential.

    So we have a situation in which for the vast majority of the lifetime of the universe, and for the vast majority of places in it, there is no consciousness. Then something happens, and there is consciousness.bert1

    What's the problem? A planet formed. It had self-organised entropic flows, like warm sea floor thermal vents where alkaline fluid bubbling up from the crust had to flow past acid seawater, creating a natural proton gradient. Life could then evolve a proton gradient existence by packaging it up as a cellular metabolism. The smarter life got at this - using a genetic code to produce a rate-controlling enzyme machinery - the better it did. It could move out of the vents and take over the planet.

    Evolution continues to act as an informational filter on this metabolic complexity and eventually you have a vast variety of organisms of all sizes, living in all niches. The creation of a complex environment like this then favours the evolution of nervous systems as a way to navigate the world that biology is so busy making.

    You surely agree with this emergentist view so far? The more complex you make your own world, the more complex you must evolve to be to remain in this world.

    Eventually nervous systems evolve to the point that they are living models of an individual organism surviving and thriving in their particular evolutionary niche. What emerges is a way of seeing the world that is functional for the kind of organism they are.

    So all I see here is a continuous story where knowledge of the world develops as an evolutionary arms race. The more complex organisms make their world, the more selection there is for the complexity of neural modelling required to flourish in that world.

    At what point did consciousness "pop out" exactly? All large brain animals are surely conscious and not operating "in the dark". Even jumping spiders can spot their prey, circle around through a maze of foliage to find a spot to pounce on their target. With a pin-prick of neural matter, they show the basics of selective attention and short-term memory.

    To honestly hold to the Hard Problem of consciousness requires a vast amount of ignorance about the biological and neurological facts. There is so much you need to avoid knowing to find a philosophical zombie story convincing.

    And you've already told us what the difference is, which is great, you've said the difference is entering into a modelling relationship with the world. And my reply is, sure, but what is it about that that means it feels like something? We all know it does feel like something, I'm not denying that, obviously. What I'm asking is why does that explanation work, and not others.bert1

    Why would modelling a self in a world not feel exactly like that? If an organism is successfully modelling itself in the world then how could it also be unsuccessfully modelling itself in the world?

    All you are doing here is showing your willingness to stick with an endless regress of skepticism. If any fact is claimed to be true - bang - there is your chance to voice your doubt. A pointless and irritating habit.

    But how do we get from that to the very general conclusion that consciousness, regardless of the content, only occurs when brains do a certain type of thing?bert1

    So there is consciousness even when it is empty of content? News to me. Where's your evidence for this?
  • hypericin
    1.5k
    The fact that consciousness arises from brain processes is utterly uncontroversial. The philosophically interesting question that remains is how can it be that such a thing can arise from brain processes... A question to which science remains largely silent.
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    The fact that consciousness arises from brain processes is utterly uncontroversial.hypericin

    It is what people think they mean when they say "consciousness" that is the controversial bit. What they usually mean is that somehow the world is "represented" as an "image" in some kind of Cartesian theatre.

    Consciousness is a word with Cartesian dualism baked into it. And that is why those who bang on about "consciousness" find that its usage leads to a feeling there is some unbridged explanatory gap.

    It is not a philosophical problem as such. Just a linguistic snare. A trap for the unwary.
  • bert1
    1.8k
    Apo, you asked me a lot of questions but didn't answer mine. I'm happy to discuss panpsychism in another thread. Your post is blusterous and insubstantial. You still haven't said why modelling, selective attention, and all the other things you take as hallmarks of consciousness cannot also happen without consciousness. You are unclear on the relationship between these functions and consciousness, are they identical with experience, or are they evidence of experience, or do they cause experience, or what?
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    If you don't care to defend your claim that consciousness can exist without a content then I accept that you quietly find that an indefensible leap of rhetoric yourself.
  • bert1
    1.8k
    You still haven't said why modelling, selective attention, and all the other things you take as hallmarks of consciousness cannot also happen without consciousness.bert1
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    Your position depends on consciousness being able to exist without these kinds of contents - modelling, selective attention, etc.

    All of biological and neurological science speaks to my position. You have made zero argument in favour of yours. All you rely on to mask your embarrassing nakedness here is panpsychism - a theory that is not even wrong.
  • bert1
    1.8k
    This isn't about me. Look at the title of the thread. I don't feel embarrassed! No doubt I'm wrong in all kinds of ways, but we can talk about that another day, indeed we already have. So, back on topic:

    You still haven't said why modelling, selective attention, and all the other things you take as hallmarks of consciousness cannot also happen without consciousness.
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