Nice analysis Mr Apokrisis!

But it has a broader remit than science, because its concerns include the subjective realm, it doesn’t stop at (read: 'include') the analysis of objects and forces. — Wayfarer

That's why all that remains in the realm of groundless speculation and faith. I'm with you in thinking that this will always be an important part of human life, but I also think it's important to be intellectually honest enough to call a spade a spade.

If we want to entertain metaphysics that can be taken seriously as philosophy and not remain as just faith-based speculation, then we must look to science; it's the best we have.

That's why all that remains in the realm of groundless speculation and faith. — Janus

How about phenomenology? Does that belong in the realm of 'groundless speculation and faith'? Kant and Heidegger? Indian philosophy? All depicted as 'groundless speculation and faith' because they can't be accomodated in your procrustean bed of anglo positivism.

I'm inclined to agree that sentience won't arise in the sort of systems we see today, but I think it is highly likely that we ain't seen nothin yet. — wonderer1

I don't deny the possibility, but I don't think the evidence, even for the likelihood, is before us now.

Panpsychism is not the conclusion of the p-zombie argument. — frank

You are talking nonsense. Chalmers uses the the p-zombie argument to arrive at the precise variant of panpsychism which he holds as doing the least violence to his classical notion of "microphysics" – the notion that is now defunct since biophysics discovered what is actually going on in biology at that physical scale.

The conceivability argument is an epistemic argument against materialism, starting with an epistemological premise and proceeding to a metaphysical conclusion.

...Materialists do not just curl up and die when confronted with the conceivability argument
and its cousins. Type-A materialists reject the epistemic premise, holding for example that
zombies are not conceivable. Type-B materialists reject the step from an epistemic premise to an ontological conclusion, holding for example that conceivability does not entail possibility.

...If panpsychism is correct, there is microexperience and there are microphenomenal
properties. We are not in a position to say much about what microexperience is like.

...I think that constitutive Russellian panpsychism is perhaps the most important form of
panpsychism, precisely because it is this form that promises to avoid the problems of physicalism and dualism and to serve as a Hegelian synthesis. In particular, one can argue that this view avoids both the conceivability argument against physicalism and the causal argument against dualism.

https://consc.net/papers/panpsychism.pdf

I haven't claimed that phenomenology and metaphysical speculation is without value; the problem is we have no means to confirm any of it unless and until it becomes science. I'm not a positivist; I'm with Popper in thinking that groundless metaphysical speculations have contributed to advances in science.

Also, I fully acknowledge the importance of groundless metaphysical speculation and belief in human life: many people simply need something more to believe in, and their lives would be impoverished without that.

I don't know how many times I will have to tell you this before it finally sinks in, and you stop with the emotively driven knee jerk accusations of "that's Positivism". :roll:

Calling it a neural model doesn't explain anything, though? Its like when Dennet calls it an illusion. HOW and WHY are a bunch of atoms able to, together, create a model of the world that manifests itself as such a thing like the sensation of pain?

There is zero reason given our current understanding of physics and chemistry to believe such a thing would ever happen to matter how complex their behavioral pattern was.

But it has a broader remit than science, because its concerns include the subjective realm, it doesn’t stop at the analysis of objects and forces. — Wayfarer

Scientific method implements the pragmatist metaphysics that took the problem of subjectivity seriously. It starts by accepting the Kantian limits on knowledge.

So if we are "only modelling reality", then science is how we make the best of that situation by creating a general rational approach to the causal narratives we are wont to spin.

Science has the remit of working within the Kantian limits. Peirce fleshed that out as methodological practice.

That includes consideration of the human condition and its discontents, few of which are amenable to a strictly scientific formulation, and also where in the general scheme of things humanity belongs (from a broader perspective than is provided by evolutionary biology.) — Wayfarer

The human condition is perfectly explainable by systems science. Exhibit A would be Nate Hagens's superorganism work...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339604726_Economics_for_the_future_-_Beyond_the_superorganism

Thanks.

Calling it a neural model doesn't explain anything, though? Its like when Dennet calls it an illusion. HOW and WHY are a bunch of atoms able to, together, create a model of the world that manifests itself as such a thing like the sensation of pain? — Francis

Study the goddam theory.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2022.0029#:~:text=Bayesian%20mechanics%20involves%20modelling%20physical,are%20coupled%20to%20that%20environment.

Peirce fleshed that out as methodological practice. — apokrisis

But Peirce also includes idealist and vaguely spiritual sentiments that you yourself are inclined to reject (the subject of Thomas Nagel's essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, which starts with an analysis of Peirce's platonist musings on science).

I always appreciate your perspective on systems science and semiotics and have learned much from it, but I don't see it as the final word. And speaking of final words, I'm logging out for a month or two to concentrate on a writing project. Sayonara.

I've never denied his talent for climbing the greasy pole of popular opinion. — apokrisis

Nice image!

But Peirce also includes idealist and vaguely spiritual sentiments that you yourself are inclined to reject — Wayfarer

Schelling was even worse. But every generation of rationalists has to struggle to rise above the various irrationalities taken for granted in their time.

Folk used to have the cultural sureties of the Church to make peace with. Nowadays it is the physical reductionism you so bitterly detest.

And the Hard Problem is a reductionist thesis. For those in mind science, the Hard Problem is indeed just one of those social fixations you have to learn to get along with. It is easier if you seem to agree, and just get on with your own thing.

But actually read Schelling or Peirce rather than latch on to the odd phrase here and there.

Panpsychism is not the conclusion of the p-zombie argument.
— frank

You are talking nonsense — apokrisis

No, I'm not:

"Chalmers (1996) set out five arguments against the view that there is an a priori entailment from physical facts to mental facts — and so for the view that zombies are conceivable. ...the point being that his opponents ‘will have to give us some idea of how the existence of consciousness might be entailed by the physical facts’, when (assuming the other arguments work) ‘any attempt to demonstrate such an entailment is doomed to failure’ (1996, p. 104)." ---SEP

The conceivability argument is an epistemic argument against materialism, starting with an epistemological premise and proceeding to a metaphysical conclusiom.

He doesn't argue against materialism in this paper. He explains that the conceivability argument is a potential threat to a materialist view. In this paper, he's examining a Hegelian fusion of materialism and dualism. And please note the spirit in which you were supposed to examine the argument presented:

"In this article I will present an argument for panpsychism. Like most philosophical
arguments, this argument is not entirely conclusive, but I think it gives reason to take the view
seriously. Speaking for myself, I am by no means confident that panpsychism is true, but I am
also not confident that it is not true. This article presents what I take to be perhaps the best
reason for believing panpsychism. A companion article, “The Combination Problem for
Panpsychism”, presents what I take to be the best reason for disbelieving panpsychism."

...the point being that his opponents ‘will have to give us some idea of how the existence of consciousness might be entailed by the physical facts’, — frank

But it is Chalmers who owes us an account of why we should believe in his blithe assertions about “micro-physical facts”.

He treats these epistemic constructs - facts as understood from a classical physics perspective - as if they can indeed do real ontological work, as in proving p-zombies are conceivable.

But biosemiosis now has the better facts of biophysics.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/68661

This makes Chalmers’ entire argument obsolete - like debating angels on a pinhead. The micro-causes of life and mind have now been demonstrated to be micro-semiotic rather than micro-classical physical.

The Nate Hagens paper I linked to then shows how the argument pans out at the macro-biosemiotic level - the human fossil fuel-driven super organism currently consuming the planet.

It you want to try to re-run the Hard Problem when stacked up against a proper explanatory model of both the micro and macro, then be my guest.

What do you make of the emphasis on the 'first person' point of view that started this discussion?

Are you cancelling that as not germane to the methods available to us or saying that is a category mistake?

What do you make of the emphasis on the 'first person' point of view that started this discussion? — Paine

Semiosis says our pragmatic modelling constructs the self as it constructs the world. This is the essence of its notion of the Umwelt.

So in chewing my food, I manage not to chew my lips and tongue. At the level of subconscious neural habit, I am alive to this difference. I can forward model the muscular actions I make when chewing to know where my tongue should be at a microsecond and millimeters scale as my apparently unthinking molars and incisors come chomping down. Food is then the helpless “other” which is getting masticated with no such ability to self-preserve its state of material organisation.

My mouth operates with a first person subjectivity even when I feel I am at my most thoughtless, eating lunch while reading a book. It is only when this forward model - the one that anticipates the world as flashing teeth crisply othered from masticated food - breaks down do I find that I am indeed in sudden pain and having to pay attention to the torn skin of a bitten tongue tip or side of the cheek.

The pain is a useful semiotic sign. It forces me to be careful until the damage has had some chance to start to heal.

So again, even in the most mundane of cognitions, the othering that separates self from world is an intrinsic part of the model itself. The division into first person and third person is the very basis of how the Bayesian Brain “computes”.

It is not a tacked on Cartesian representation that leaves the self as the mysterious experiencing homunculus of dualism. It is the enacted model of a semiotic relation where world and self co-arise as our experiential condition.

Self starts where the world leaves off, and vice versa. One is characterised by its goals and anticipations. The other is characterised by being the third person subject to this first person sense of intentionality.

Very interesting. I need to ponder before attempting a reply.

The free energy principle and Bayesian probability does NOTHING for the Mind/Body problem. It explains why perception would be evolutionarily beneficial, but this is obvious. I plan on making a more detailed explanation but it might take an entire new thread.

It would be nice to have an argument rather than a bald assertion.

Yes, absolutely. Its late where I am and there is a quite a lot of to unpack regarding this theory. It the next couple of days I should have a detailed response either in this thread or a new thread.

The reason it feels like something to be conscious is that we are busy modelling the world - a world in which our self is the enactive anchor of that model. — apokrisis

The self isn't consciousness. Again, why can't this self-anchored modelling happen without consciousness?

So now you have to give a good counterfactual reason for why it wouldn't "feel like something" to be modelling the world from a point of view. Where is the scope for reasoned doubt. — apokrisis

It does feel like something to do that, but not because doing that peculiarly necessitates feeling like something. It feels like something because panpsychism is true.

Nice analysis Mr Apokrisis! — Janus

Could you explain Apo's point to me?

It does feel like something to do that, but not because doing that peculiarly necessitates feeling like something. It feels like something because panpsychism is true. — bert1

The usual assertions sans support. :yawn:

Could you explain Apo's point to me? — bert1

It is almost certainly impossible to explain @apokrisis's point to his satisfaction, but I might manage to provoke him into saying something more, just to put me right.

The fundamental unit of consciousness is the 'fuck given', or as Gregory Bateson put it, "a difference that makes a difference". The negative space of this is a difference that doesn't make a difference. Thus for example one might say "I don't mind whether the cheese in my sandwich is cheddar, or cheshire." It makes no difference to me. So the beginning of mind is not the particle that doesn't mind what happens to it, but the living cell, that for yeast, say, tells the difference between sugar that it ingests and alcohol or CO2 that it excretes. The difference makes a difference to the cell response, which is an active one rather than the inanimate passive reaction that happens differentially between molecules.

should have a detailed response either in this thread or a new thread. — Francis

Cool, thanks! Looking forward to it.

Self starts where the world leaves off, and vice versa. — apokrisis

That's convincing as it stands, certainly, but could you say something about D'Amasio? I've only just started the book, but the summary is that not everything has a mind, and not every mind has a self, that "self" is a particular sort of process found in some minds but not others. He's talking about self-consciousness, the kind of self you can be aware of and introspect, I believe. Jibes with your general approach or heading in some other direction?

The usual assertions sans support. — apokrisis

I've set out my own views numerous times on the forums over the years, but I'll do so again at some point if you really want me to. I'm also aware that both you and 180 have asked me what evidence I have for, say, a rock to be conscious. That's of course a perfectly good question and I haven't answered it yet. Starting a thread is a considerable commitment for me, so I can't do it too often. My next one may well be on evidence for consciousness, and the criteria for admission as evidence, and whether that criterion is necessarily theory-laden. It'd be interesting to get your views on that. It's way easier to do brief criticisms and questions about other people's views than set out one's own. Probably a bit anti-social, but I think that's inevitable for this kind of format to an extent.

I think that's a very interesting point, and I think we've talked about it before. It may well be that a change that matters is a necessary condition for a conscious system to undergo an experience. That seems intuitively very plausible. If that's all Apo is saying then I agree, probably.