Would you agree if I said ''consciousness is a brain process"?

I do have some sympathy toward a part of what you're saying there. — Eugen

Couldn’t wish for anything more.

What's your point?

My point is that I don't understand you. So please answer my questions so I can make sense of what you're saying. I'm really making a strong effort to take you seriously. So help me!

First of all, thank you for your beautiful answers! But again, I need your help on the following matter.
I am not trying to criticize anyone, but I need you to help me understand something. Every time I open an OP containing the words ''consciousness, emergent, fundamental", there's this weird pattern. Basically, comes and says ''This OP is nonsense." It's like this all the time. None of you or other people on my other OPs seem to have this issue except him.

He rarely gives arguments, and when he does he's very vague and uses a complicated language.
From what I understand, his argument against my question is that I somehow presuppose consciousness is ''ontic entity", like brains and chairs. As far as I'm concerned, I don't presuppose anything.
I even changed ''consciousness" with ''anything you could think of". So, my questions for you are:

1. Does ''anything you could think of" presuppose "ontic entity"?
2. If ''anything you could think of" presuppose "ontic entity", does this make my question nonsense?
3. Be super-honest guys: is my question nonsense or opinion is simply wrong?
I really need to know that, so I can fix things.

Thank you!

It's okay not to understand. We ask questions and make of the answers what we can based on what we each bring to the exchange. We move on once we realize there's nothing more to be gained from discussing further.

Since all you are capable of is misrepresenting replies you do like or cannot comprehend, I'll move on to other less incorrigible, better informed interlocators.

I don't like obscurantism. I don't need to be enlightened or inspired. I want ''spoon-feeding" with clear, logical, and concrete answers. If you can respect that, I can take you seriously. If you're here to troll me, I lose my respect very fast. From now on, I want you to answer my questions clearly or ignore my OPs. It's a matter of respect.

I want ''spoon-feeding" — Eugen

Sorry but I'm not a spoon-feeder. Do your own thinking (or homework).

I asked you clear questions. You ignore them, or you deviate. It's a lack of respect. You're not inspiring, you're annoying and ridiculous. So I'm still waiting for your answer. Is consciousness a brain process?

You ask mostly uninformed, nonsensical, and often trivial, questions. Go do your own homework

Every time I open an OP containing the words ''consciousness, emergent, fundamental", there's this weird pattern. Basically, ↪180 Proof comes and says ''This OP is nonsense." It's like this all the time. None of you or other people on my other OPs seem to have this issue except him. — Eugen

This is a bad rhetorical strategy. Trying to get us to back you up with @180 Proof won't work. He's a pain in the ass, but he's our pain in the ass. We've all had to figure out to work around his... idiosyncrasies. You will too.

Here's the right approach - write a good, well supported OP. Layout what you want to discuss. Have good arguments at hand. Listen to what other people have to say and be responsive. Then, if people try to take the discussion off on an irrelevant tangent, ask them to stop. That will usually do the trick.

:up:

Trying to dissect consciousness is like trying to cut a river with a knife.

I’d say on appearance it seems emergent and a way for the organism to navigate its environment move eat etc.

But if it’s emergent wouldn’t it also be fundamental? In the sense that its existence was inevitable.

You ask mostly uninformed, nonsensical, and often trivial, questions. Go do your own homework — 180 Proof

I ask these questions on mulptiple forums and you are always the ONLY ONE who has this opinion. It might be the case my questions are wrong and you're smarter than everyone else, or it might be the case you're an imbecile. Both options are possible, I don't know which one is right.

It seems to me you live under the impression that you have some kind of mission here to intrigue people. I don't need that.

Trying to get us to back you up with 180 Proof won't work. — T Clark

Trying to make it look like I'm asking you to back me up against him is a serious one. So where do I exactly try to do that?

He's a pain in the ass, but he's our pain in the ass. — T Clark

Well, if you like pain in the ass, go for it. I personally don't have this kind of fetish.

write a good, well supported OP. — T Clark

Who decides what's a "good, well supported" OP?

If he says your questions don’t make sense that’s most likely because his understanding is limited on the subject so focus on forum users who offer more substantial input and better understand the nature of such inquiry.

But you’re right some people can seem like they’re smarter than you with their abrupt replies, but really they’re not they’re just condescending fools.

Also watch out for his bum chum universeness I have no doubt they’ve been fantasising about future robots in their PMs so they’ve really started to get close.

But if it’s emergent wouldn’t it also be fundamental? In the sense that its existence was inevitable. — invicta

Everything emergent is bound by fundamentality. All existants sit atop a universal "floor" - a singularity, or law or constant that dictates the potential to emerge into various things, behaviours and phenomenon. And this dicatation is reflected by the hierarchy of physical laws, principles and formulas, chemical bonding rules, types of bonds thus types of molecules, DNA etc - the instructions or dicatation is the relationships between the fundamental and its products - the emergents.

The laws and numerical values of physics are very specific and precise in a universe with complexity/ life. One doesnt require to "know" or "set up" physics beforehand, but merely needs run from potential through natural selection alone. As that in itself is an intelligent and logical process. Trial and error is a means of "perfecting" relationships in a cooperative/non contradicting or rational way, without self-violation, whilst always remaining dynamic, always changing/propagating further.

When an error occurs in the system, it is contradictory to what had previously become stable/set up, and thus is a "self violation" and leads to pause, cessation or decay of that particular pathway. But because change must continue, the system has no other option but to steer away from that error and towards another possibility, or begin another "trial" and hope this one is less erroneous/self violating.

That way logic can permeate through all processes. The system can be consistent and stable as it evolves.

You can imagine it like a tree that must grow outward without any if its branches blocking another or being blocked itself by a different branch. If a block occurs, the branch struggles, weakens or dies off or must alter course navigating elsewhere where it wont compete with ither factions.

In that way physics begins vague and with liberty in possible behaviours and relationships (the trunk of the tree) and emerges ever more specifically, complexly, restricted and defined as it branches upwards into chemistry, then biology and the kingdoms of life.

As for consciousnesses. There is human consciousness. There are other forms of consciousness also. What it is like to be complex and intelligent - aware of the external surrounding system, and a specific thing (agent) .

We usually associate consciousnesses with an "agent" - something small and objective with clear intent and behaviour, going about its business. So we associate consciousness as related to lifeforms. But how large and how complex must an agent be before we assign it consciousness? I think it is emergent from the get go. "God" or the universe, or whatever you want to call it, is a simple being, a singularity, whos intellect permits the logic, coherence, certainty, the stability necessary to establish memory, thus time perception, thus observation, thus knowledge of the system, thus control and behaviour, thus agency (self).

But if it’s emergent wouldn’t it also be fundamental? In the sense that its existence was inevitable. — invicta

- I see two options:
1. it can be emergent but not fundamental - a chair
2. it can be both - if consciousness is fundamental and human consciousness is emergent from the fundamental consciousness

But you’re right some people can seem like they’re smarter than you with their abrupt replies, but really they’re not they’re just condescending fools. — invicta

It seems to me he has a rich philosophical vocabulary, this is why I'm tempted to give him a chance, maybe I can learn something from him. The problem is that I simply don't understand him and he doesn't help me with that.

I wouldn't care about @180 Proof.

1. Does ''anything you could think of" presuppose "ontic entity"? — Eugen

For me, it doesn't presuppose anything. It's quite generic and can include anything: any thing whatever, something, no matter what. You can even break "anything" it into its components: "any thing". The meaning will be the same.

(The word "thing" does not necessarily refer to a physical object, or anything in particular for that matter. It can be used in a generic sense. Dictionary.com offers a nice definition for it (among other 5): "anything that is or may become an object of thought". And for anyone who might think this is a circular definition because the word "thing" itself is included in "anything", let him think that these are two different words with different meanings; spelling and etymology are of secondary importance when it comes to semantics.)

2. If ''anything you could think of" presuppose "ontic entity", does this make my question nonsense? — Eugen

(See above)

3. Be super-honest guys: is my question nonsense or ↪180 Proof opinion is simply wrong? — Eugen

(See my comment at start.)

I can perfectly understand what you're saying. Complex, but not obscure.

Thank you two for your answers! I'm not trying to form an alliance here or to be against anyone. I only need sincerity. I don't want to lie to myself, this is why I am truly interested in different opinions, especially in those that contradict what I believe. But when one claims I'm wrong but isn't willing to show me exactly where I'm wrong and clarify, I'm starting to think that person's trolling me. This is why I'm asking your help.

I.

It is conceptually incoherent to even ask whether or not embodied mind (synonymous with "consciousness" in the absence of any shred of dis-embodied minds) is "fundamental" if only because embodiment is composite and perdurant. This nonsense – the OP – is what you get, Eugen, from trying to reduce a scientific problem (re: seeking a hypothetical explanation for 'how things are or work') to a philosophical question (re: positing a categorical idea or supposition). — 180 Proof

In your opinions, did my OP presuppose an ''embodied mind"? I definitely didn't intend to do that.

II.

Interpreting (explanations of) e.g. "consciousness" is, at best, philosophical; using testable models in order to explain "consciousness" is, also at best, scientific. However, conflating them, as too many contributors to this forum tend to do, is bad philosophy (i.e. obscurant nonsense (e.g. idealism)) and often pseudo-science (i.e. untestable and/or unparsimoniously explaining "too much").

I think, Eugen, one should seek adequate grounds for ontologizing "consciousness" (or any idea) before, as you do in the OP, interpreting "consciousness" as this or that kind of entity. In other words, what do we know (or do not know) about "consciousness" that presupposes it is an ontic entity? Nothing as far as I (& neuroscientists as well as e.g. Hume, Spinoza, Buddhists) can tell but I'm open to be shown otherwise. — 180 Proof

Could you guys help me on that one? I simply don't get it. What's his point here?

Thank you for your effort, I truly appreciate!

I feel that emergent properties must already be dispositions of reality.

For example water is never going to spontaneously turn into chocolate because it does not have that disposition or possibility.

So I think things can only emerge if a prior disposition is exists. Which does suggest reality is complex from the begining.

Otherwise emergent properties would seem like magic emerging from something formless and causally inept.

I can perfectly understand what you're saying. Complex, but not obscure. — Eugen

That's great :) Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad I executed/articulated what in wanted to communicate well.

But when one claims I'm wrong but isn't willing to show me exactly where I'm wrong and clarify, I'm starting to think that person's trolling me. This is why I'm asking your help. — Eugen

Very astute/wise assessment Eugen. People who cannot support their beliefs/views through rational argument and/or are unwilling to/dismissive is a red flag for me also.

It suggest to me that either A). They are unable to organise and articulate a cohesive logical answer, in which case why believe their view as defacto, or B). because they dont want to explain (in which case its probably based on personal hangups/bias, touchy/sensitive or traumatic topics for them, feeling attacked, prejudice or intolerance to free thinking/pursuit of knowledge.)

Neither case is much reason to say "you're wrong, im right. Because i said so!" This of course is arrogance.

I wouldn't care about 180 Proof. — Alkis Piskas

- I do trust my own logic, but I'm also trying to remain open because I don't want to lie to myself. So I have a particular interest in those opinions that contradict my views. 180 Proof doesn't contradict my view, he contradicts my questions! Firstly, he calls them nonsense. Secondly, after a long insistence, he says my question presupposes this or that and he uses language against me. I don't think I presuppose anything and I also think words like ''anything or everything" imply concrete things, like tables and chairs. Thirdly, and this is important, he has a totally different view. I've never heard philosophers (materialists, panpsichists, idealists, etc.) saying that a question like ''Is consciousness fundamental or emergent?" is nonsense. Never!
Anyway, there's more than that.
I just want to make sure that I'm not labeling him as ''troll" because I wouldn't want to miss a good argument. This is why I'm asking people here to explain to me his arguments, because I don't understand him.

All in all, I truly appreciate your effort and you deserve my gratitude. ευχαριστώ!

I feel that emergent properties must already be dispositions of reality. — Andrew4Handel

Yes i agree.

So I think things can only emerge if a prior disposition is exists. Which does suggest reality is complex from the begining. — Andrew4Handel

And what prior disposition is more potent and capable of producing emergents than "potential". Potential energy is the fuel on the fire of creation. It hasnt become anything specific yet, omnipotent, but "must" become something, an imperative to change, in order to be determined/proven to actually be potent/have potential.

In that way its a self fulfilling dynamic. Energy certainly is incredibly complex in what it can do (emerge into) but also extremely simple in its perogative (to be indestructible yet change/transform).

Neither case is much reason to say "you're wrong, im right. Because i said so!" — Benj96

The problem for me is that I don't understand him. And when I don't understand something, I don't want to label it.
So I don't want to label 180 Proof as ''troll" (at least I'm trying my best not to), because he might have some good arguments, but it might be the case I don't understand him. I wouldn't want that.

This is why I'm asking you guys to help me understand him. Maybe you decipher him better than me and explain to me what he's trying to say.

Anyway... thank you, I truly appreciate!

what do we know (or do not know) about "consciousness" that presupposes it is an ontic entity? Nothing as far as I (& neuroscientists as well as e.g. Hume, Spinoza, Buddhists) can tell — 180 Proof

I broadly agree with this. In the field of Computing science, ontology is used all the time, to name and categorise data types and data structures, that will be employed in a particular system, at the analysis and design stages.

From Wiki:
In computer science and information science, an ontology encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definition of the categories, properties, and relations between the concepts, data, and entities that substantiate one, many, or all domains of discourse. More simply, an ontology is a way of showing the properties of a subject area and how they are related, by defining a set of concepts and categories that represent the subject.

I would assume that neuroscience can 'categorise,' using an 'ontic' approach as most academic fields can make use of 'ontology' to 'categorise.' BUT, I do agree that so little is known about what causes consciousness, that naming and defining categories, properties and relations between such as neurons, synapses, dendrites, microtubules etc merely offers a beginning to solving the hard problem.

1. Does ''anything you could think of" presuppose "ontic entity"?
2. If ''anything you could think of" presuppose "ontic entity", does this make my question nonsense?
3. Be super-honest guys: is my question nonsense or ↪180 Proof opinion is simply wrong?
I really need to know that, so I can fix things. — Eugen

For 1. Yes, because whatever 'anything' you choose, you will need to go on to "encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definition of the categories, properties, and relations between the concepts, data, and entities that substantiate one, many, or all domains of discourse." to provide any kind of logical argument, that your 'anything' is fundamental, emergent or indeed, an emergence that is a 'by-product'/emergence, due to fundamentals interacting as combinatorials.

For 2. No, not nonsense, but due to impatience, or due to becoming a little jaded, based on what a very knowledgeable person, in a particular field, might be faced with time and time again, I can understand why such a knowledgeable person might blurt out 'NONSENSE!' I have done so myself on occasion, especially against such as the old, ad nauseum, repeated BS claims of theism or antinatalism.

For 3. I have found @180 Proof's posts to be very rarely, wrong, in any of the academic points he makes, or definitions he cite's. I may not agree with some of his personal interpretations he employ's, but he has consistently demonstrated prowess, in the knowledge he has, regarding the topics he choses to post on.
You have not yet gained such accolades imo on TPF. I would take @T Clark's advice if I were you.

Here's the right approach - write a good, well supported OP. Layout what you want to discuss. Have good arguments at hand. Listen to what other people have to say and be responsive. — T Clark

You are taking @180 Proof's critique of your efforts too personally. In the world of on-line public debate, You need a thick skin, and plenty of personal humility.
Don't break, bend and contort, to better protect yourself from stormy weather.

:up:

Thank you for your answer!

For 1. Yes, because whatever 'anything' you choose, you will need to go on to "encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definition of the categories, properties, and relations between the concepts, data, and entities that substantiate one, many, or all domains of discourse." to provide any kind of logical argument that your 'anything' is fundamental, emergent or indeed and emergence that is a 'by-product' of fundamentals interacting as combinatorials. — universeness

So is he suggesting that assuming ''anything you could think of" has properties is wrong? Does he want me to formulate a question about something with no properties? I don't really understand. Of course we're talking about properties.

repeated BS claims of theism or antinatalism. — universeness

What does my question have to do with theism?!?! My question is about a simple model that people use to debate consciousness. My question is if there are alternatives to this model. I can't see how this simple question can make no sense.

Here's the right approach - write a good, well supported OP. Layout what you want to discuss. Have good arguments at hand. Listen to what other people have to say and be responsive. — T Clark

I believe my question was good. If one disagrees, he must offer clear arguments and answer questions in order to clarify things. Otherwise, is a lack of respect. I have personal humility, this is why I'm offering anyone a chance to express themselves and bring arguments to the table. One of the best examples is you. The two of us disagree in many places, but we don't play ''cat and mouse". You've always offered your perspective in a clear manner. For that, thanks again!

Also watch out for his bum chum universeness I have no doubt they’ve been fantasising about future robots in their PMs so they’ve really started to get close. — invicta

I think the mods should keep an eye on your postings, you are such a bitter wee sweetie.