Certainly quantum phenomena are not a discrete and isolate realm, because they not only do manifest directly at the classical level... — Pantagruel

I understand you to be referring to such macro-QM effects as the tenants living atop a skyscraper aging faster than those living on the ground floor due to the time dilation of the stronger gravitational field at the skyscraper's base.

...but are increasingly being exploited (by consciousness) in advanced technologies. — Pantagruel

I'm wild-guessing the qubits of quantum computing will be manipulatable in various ways towards enhancing the power of organic consciousness: the optical systems of humans acting in concert with qubits might enable direct perception of hyper-cubic space.

By my argument above, I'm defending the notion consciousness acts as a boundary administrator in the construction process of a picture of reality composed of sub-sets ambiguously parts_gestalt.

Why should this be the case? On the one hand, you seem to be presenting a metaphysics of consciousness as a natural feature of reality. — Pantagruel

We're getting into the metaphysics of consciousness when we start examining Schrödinger's Equation and begin understanding some particulars of the propagation/collapse of the wave function.

Observation-as-measurement, i.e., consciousness, as made explicit by the differential equation, effects a transformation from superposition to decided position. So, yes, this transformation, which can be characterized as the physics of "will," is a sine qua non function of consciousness_reality.

But then you seem to fall back on a more anthropomorphic interpretation. — Pantagruel

Of course we're in the anthropomorphic zone when we examine theoretical/experimental experiences "observing" the wave function mathematically at our human scale of experience.

The central focus of this conversation is providing a definition of consciousness as a transitive agent in addition to its well-known role as a perceiver.

The purpose of the definition of consciousness as a transitive agent is to bridge the suppositional gap between QM and Newton.

Premise - Consciousness is the bridge linking QM with Newton.

If this premise is correct, then we now have a way forward in our examination of consciousness as a physical phenomenon amenable to scientific investigation.

...the subjective experience of knowing one is seeing things in the world, including knowing one is seeing oneself. — ucarr

That's several different experiences and objects stacked on top of each other. — jkop

Yes, it's the vertical stacking of higher-orders of memory feedback looping; this is what the current generation of robots lacks. That's why, as yet, robots lack subjectivity. Subjectivity requires awareness of being an aware subject of both objective and subjective experience.

What could that be like? — jkop

Were you not aware of being aware of me when you addressed your above question to me? Of course your were in possession of that second tier of awareness, or how else could you have addressed your question to me?

What is the cat like when it is not being seen? — Patterner

My conjectural answer is superposition; I draw this directly from what Schrödinger says about the cat in the box before the door is opened: the possible radioactive decay of the particle possibly triggering the killing of the cat, while unobserved, holds superposition of an undecided cat simultaneously alive/dead.

Note - At our Newtonian scale of experience, the vast network of sentients observing events makes macro-scale superposition extremely improbable. Even so, we do frequently experience something superposition-adjacent: in a courtroom with a defendant on trial for murder, in the instance of the murder presumably having occurred without a witness, that alleged murder holds something like superposition in that it's uncertain whether it did or did not occur. This uncertainty, for the judge, jury, prosecutor and defense is akin to the murder holding superposition: it simultaneously did/did not occur. Via circumstantial evidence, inference serves as the "observer" supplying the jury with an "observation" of the event. It then empowers them to resolve which possibility becomes a decided reality.

So, we see, as a generalization, that superposition is logical uncertainty rendered in physics.

For more on this, please click the hyperlink below:

What Does Consciousness Do?

When you imagine a cat, however, there is no relation between the experience and a cat (neither physical nor mental cat). What you are experiencing then is your own creative use of memories and beliefs with the intent to figure out (by what it feels like) what the cat is like. — jkop

As I understand you, you are saying when I imagine a cat, I'm having a completely internal experience between different parts of myself, i.e., I'm having an experience between the virtual seeing of a cat via my imagination and my intent to understand what a cat is like.

The visible properties of the cat fix what it's like for you to experience the cat. Your use of memories and beliefs about cats fix what it's like for you imagine the cat. — jkop

I agree with what you've written in the paragraph immediately above, but I also think the simulation of virtual seeing via memory-supported imagination of the physical cat retains its connection to the physical cat. I see evidence of this unbroken connection in your own words: "The visible properties of the cat fix what it's like for you to experience the cat."

A literal interpretation of the term 'mental image' is a fallacy of ambiguity. — jkop

What I see re: 'mental image' is "image" modified by "mental." Since "image" by definition means: a representation of the external form of a person or thing in art:, "mental" is redundant because "representation" includes the virtual seeing of something physical recorded in memory.

You're saying the HPoC stems from an ambiguity of language without a referent ambiguity in nature? — ucarr

Right. Chalmers assumes that an experience is accompanied by a property of what it's like to have the experience. That's property-dualism. — jkop

You're saying Chalmers posits the "what it's like to be x" experience as a mental property emergent from the physical properties of the brain? Also, you're saying this bifurcation on Chalmers' part is an ambiguity of language with no referent ambiguity within the physics of the natural world?

Why do you think the mental property to which Chalmers refers is an erroneous use of the sense of "experience" (intentionalistic) and not simply the subjective memory of the person?

As if seeing the cat consists of two experiences, one of the cat, and another of what it's like. Separately or somehow coalesced. I find the dualism implausible and redundant. I believe that seeing is the experience, and what the experience is like is what the cat is like. — jkop

Why do you think a man can know he's seeing a cat but not also separate that knowledge from his knowledge of his knowledge? We're not simply aware. We're also self-aware.

My above question trains its focus upon a separation between seeing a cat and knowing that one is seeing a cat. In order to give an account of seeing the cat to a listener at a later date, doesn't that require that the storyteller hold in memory both the experience of seeing the cat and the experience of being aware of seeing the cat?

I think this is what Chalmers assumes. Therefore, as I understand him, the HPoC isn't about seeing things in the world, but rather it is about the subjective experience of knowing one is seeing things in the world, including knowing one is seeing oneself.

The HPoC, therefore, isn't based upon a false bifurcation of things seen in the world and then subsequently rendered into a physical property and a mental property; it's based upon the question about how self-awareness is apparently attached to a physical brain whose physico_material processes seem to give no account, in physico_material terms, of that attendant self-awareness.

In the sense that an imagination is invisible and a cat is visible, they can't be compared, — jkop

An imagination is invisible to the 3rd person perspective; it is not invisible to the 1st person perspective.
I can't see what you imagine; I can see what I imagine.

Notice that there is no need to assume dualism between the cat and what it's like to see the cat: the experience is the cat. — jkop

Do you claim a cat seen via the virtual viewing of imagination is no less physico_material than a cat seen via the optics of the eyes?

Many forms of dualism are fallacies of ambiguity. — jkop

Language open to more than one interpretation falsely suggests two objective and parallel modes of being?

A literal interpretation of the term 'mental image' is a fallacy of ambiguity. — jkop

I see the redundancy; I don't see the ambiguity.

So perhaps the hard problem of consciousness is a fallacy of ambiguity? — jkop

You're saying the HPoC stems from an ambiguity of language without a referent ambiguity in nature?

The central executive in a computer does not view the data it is working with. The data simply exists in memory and is manipulated in real-time by the central executive. — Harry Hindu

If by central executive you mean CPU (central processing unit), then I say it's not an unreasonable stretch to construe "processing" as "views." In each case -- the CPU in one and the brain in the other -- a processor processes data in the act of constructing a world view. Furthermore, the brain also manipulates data that simply exists in memory. When you imagine or dream of the experience of seeing red, that's an example of your brain manipulating data that simply exists in memory.

What form the data takes in memory is the ultimate question here. — Harry Hindu

From our perspective it takes the form of silicon circuits, computer code and logic gates. From others' perspective the data in your working memory takes the form of neurons and the chemical and electrical signals between them. But from our own minds, we do not experience neurons and their chemical and electrical signals. We experience colors, shapes, sounds, etc. of which others' working memory is composed of. From our own perspective, our own working memory takes the form of colors, shapes, etc. and it is only by observing others' working memories that we experience something different. So which form does working memory actually take? Which one is the real form working memory takes? — Harry Hindu

Can you rewrite this passage?

I guess you want to go from:

What form the data takes in memory is the ultimate question here. — Harry Hindu

to:

So which form does working memory actually take? Which one is the real form working memory takes? — Harry Hindu

I guess the passage is intended to be a narrative that elaborates two or more forms of "working memory."

Also, I guess you believe one form is real and the other not.

I don't believe consciousness is an illusion, and I don't believe it is immaterial, I believe we cannot know either of these things. — Skalidris

You're telling me the category type for consciousness is unknowable.

The hard problem of consciousness arises when one believes consciousness can successfully study (and explain) itself as an object in the world. — Skalidris

You're telling me the category type being unknowable is intimately tied to consciousness being necessary to the examination of consciousness.

You can see that “and” is already in the definition and even if we try to phrase it differently to avoid the “and”, you’ll still need to talk about the several inputs being received, and what’s “several”? It is at least one unit AND another. Do you see the circularity? — Skalidris

You're telling me "and" is fundamental, and thus cannot be analyzed down to smaller parts.

So even if we can associate physical processes with consciousness, we cannot break down the intuitive meaning into smaller parts, and breaking something into smaller parts is how we explain things. — Skalidris

You're telling me the intuitive meaning of consciousness inside the mind is fundamental.

To go back to the "and" example, any definition or description of the material processes behind "and" includes the concept "and". — Skalidris

You're telling me examination of "consciousness," like examination of "and," always leads to a circular definition, and thus the identity of these terms cannot be illuminated by analysis.

If, as you imply, consciousness is thwarted by the self-referential state into useless circularity, then that's a claim that supports: consciousness exists outside of the subject/object bi-conditional. — ucarr

No, it simply implies that we do not know. — Skalidris

In this case, I think your claim: consciousness examining consciousness always leads to circularity implies beyond doubt that self-examination, in the case of consciousness, cannot lead to a bi-conditional interweave of subject/object. This, in turn, implies subjectivity is pure; it stands outside of the subject_object duet. Mysteriously, this has something to do with the claim: we can't examine how subjectivity arises from brain functions.

...we could explain the "And" logic gate but yet never be able to explain the "And" concept. — Skalidris

So far, I'm not understanding why you think the concept of the conjunction operator cannot be explained: ¬ {x ∧ Y} both x and y are negated; {¬{x} ∨ {y}} x is negated, y is not. By contrasting "and" with "or," the two operators clarify and explain each other. In other words, the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set, whereas the"or" operator is a separator that puts multiple members into separate sets, as demonstrated by the two expressions above. Now there, I've defined the "and" operator without any circularity.

Likewise, when we experience seeing red, it's because that specific wavelength stands in contrast to other wavelengths of visible light. Therefore, within the neuronal circuits of the brain wherein we interpret the specific wavelength for red, there's nothing therein that's red because the relativistic effect that supports our experience of red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes, not within the neuronal circuits of the visual cortex of our brain. — ucarr

But we can imagine and dream of red things. So it seems to me that the color red is the form visual information takes and stored as such for future use in making predictions about the world. For us to be able to apply what we predict to the world, our predictions need to be similar to what we attempting to realize in the world, or else how could we apply new ideas to the world? — Harry Hindu

You have exposed an error in my narrative quoted at top. I've underlined the part of my narrative where I've jumped the proper continuity by omitting something: after the brain assembles a visual image of the world seen optically, the color content is next coded so that red equals not-green and not-blue, and so this third element is relativistically red as specified by the corresponding EM wavelength, itself distinct from the green and blue wavelengths.

Next, a mnemonic loop for recording of the visual image in color is produced. An accessible memory loop of the experience of the visual image in color becomes available for imagination and dreams.

Through all the orders of feedback looping minus the one culminating in an accessible memory loop of the experience of the visual image in red, no colors are in the neuronal circuits of the brain. At the level of the memory loop of the experience of the visual image of red, the remembered color of red is present as coding via modulated circuits simulating the relativistic effect: red. The visual construction of the experience of seeing red is played back as a memory on a virtual GUI also encoded in the feedback loop.

Well, now you're establishing some kind of Cartesian theater where there is a GUI that is being viewed, but viewed by what? — Harry Hindu

Viewed by the brain that constructs the simulation of the world within the visual field of the eyes.

Okay but you can only access the code via a GUI. I can only access your neurons via my GUI. Your neurons and the code appear in my GUI as visual representations of what is "out there". The neurons and the code do not exist as represented by the GUI. As you said, the GUI is a representation, and not the neurons and code as it actually is. So maybe terms like, "neurons" and "code" are representations of how they appear in the GUI and not how they are in the world, and how they are in the world is simply information or process and we are confusing the map (GUI) with the territory. — Harry Hindu

This applies within the scope of the simulation. A simulation has a referent outside of itself. If the simulation is successful, i.e., if it accurately describes its referent, then its coding also accurately describes its referent. So, no. The coding for a simulation is not hermetically sealed within the territory of the simulation.

As to what the neuronal circuits (modulated electric currents) are really like in context, in the world out there they are like themselves: building blocks; in the world of the simulation: they are like themselves: building blocks; in the world of themselves they are like themselves: building blocks.

We're supposed to confuse the map with the territory. How could the map be useful without this confusion of identities? If the map were completely distinct from the territory, it would effect no simulation of the world and thus be useless.

Simulation is specifically about the confusion, or overlapping of two identities. If your brain's simulation of the external world were not cause for suspension of disbelief of the sameness between what you perceive and what's out there, you'd never go outside of your house.

Are the building blocks and the construction of them bi-conditional? If you wish to navigate the world intelligently, and that especially means designing schemes to achieve your goals, you'd better hope they are. The brain's coding of its perception of the world is not a transformation of that world, but merely an internalization of it.

Sidebar -- Firstly, Skalidris, I'm glad you're again posting to your conversation here. After your long absence, I was afraid you'd checked out permanently, and that's less fun.

The whole 'hard problem' arises from regarding consciousness as an object, which it is not, while science itself is based on objective facts. It's not complicated, but it's hard to see. — Wayfarer

Wayfarer above makes a good point. Herein, we're all talking about consciousness, voicing factual claims about it. These actions treat consciousness as an object grammatically speaking: "voicing factual claims about it." Predicate: voicing claims; Preposition: about; Object: it. Grammatically speaking, if you can predicate claims about something, then that something is an object, a thing. It's out there in reality to be examined and understood. If it's not out there, then what the heck are we talking about in this conversation? If subjectivity were ineffable, nobody would be talking about it. Nearly everybody talks about it at one time or another. I'm not seeing any modal difference between the efforts of neuroscience and the efforts of the typical layperson trying to understand the human psychology of their families and friends.

I think subjectivity and objectivity are always paired; I suspect their relationship is the bi-conditional logical operator. Regarding Nagel's: "There's something that it's like to be a bat." I'm waiting for an immaterialist to prove logically the necessity of the metaphysical separation of subjectivity from objectivity.

I'm trying to understand why the obvious grammatical objectification of consciousness doesn't carry over into objective reality. I don't, however, want to sidetrack us into lengthy discussions about the limitations and distortions of language; we all know that's a full topic unto itself.

Consciousness can indeed associate itself with all kinds of objects, but doing so creates a self referential problem, aka the hard problem of consciousness. — Skalidris

I take this to be the heart of your premise for this conversation. I'll try to parse it:

"Consciousness can indeed associate itself with all kinds of objects..." Why is this not a simple and clear example of one thing: consciousness, associating itself with other things: all kinds of objects? Isn't connection of things to things what "associate" means?

No, I haven't forgotten the immaterialist mantra: "Consciousness is not a thing." I know, your above statement is not literal. So what is it saying? If consciousness is not a thing, how does it perform actions, like "associate itself with all kinds of objects." Usually, subjects who execute actions are things. It's hard to authorize pundits who make statements that grammatically contradict the intended meanings of said statements.

"...but doing so creates a self referential problem, aka the hard problem of consciousness."

Have you elaborated how it is the case that when one thing associates itself with another thing, with one of the things being consciousness, a self-referential problem always ensues? Do either Nagel or Chalmers examine this self-referential problem?

Yes. Indeed you have a problem making predications about a subject that's not a subject. From the get-go, you're inhabiting the realm of paradox.

To me, this type of reasoning implies impossible premises. And to show that, let's first start with possible premises. We know that:

1) One indispensable element for the perception of objects is consciousness.
2) Time flows in one direction.

The logical conclusion from this is that consciousness cannot be viewed solely as an object since it has to be there for the perception of objects. Consciousness can only be viewed as consciousness (cannot be broken down into something else since it is always there as a whole in our reasoning). — Skalidris

Your first sentence implies consciousness cannot examine itself. Can you explain how this is the case given the fact that, in this very instant, we are examples of consciousness examining itself? If we're not doing that, then what are we doing?

In the second sentence you mysteriously claim "Consciousness can only be viewed as consciousness..." as if consciousness viewing itself doesn't objectify itself. In order to make your claim consciousness is not an object, you have to turn it into an object.

Can you explain why this premise is not an impossible premise leading to the logical circularity you're propounding?

You claim consciousness is not approachable by setting up yourself in a paradox, then claim the paradox you've created is the proof objective examination of consciousness is impossible. Well, yeah, by your own setup.

Suppose we discard your premise and replace it with another premise: consciousness can examine itself. This gets us out of the paradox, at least grammatically speaking.

Can you show why we're still existentially locked within paradox and circularity when consciousness tries to examine itself?

Any materialistic theories about it is followed by this question "why are these materialistic phenomena accompanied by experience?". And any materialistic attempt to answer that question also ends up being followed by the same question, creating a circularity that seems impossible to escape. — Skalidris

However, when we ask ourselves “why are these materialistic phenomena accompanied by experience?”, we trigger a self referential explanation that has no other outcome than being circular because it circles back to incorrect premises that contradict the rest of the reasoning. — Skalidris

Above I've underlined an important sentence. I'm surmising it expresses your core belief there is no possible materialist explanation connecting brain functions with subjectivity. I'm guessing you justify this belief by taking recourse to emergence and supervenience. I think your core belief is supported by a metaphysical commitment: consciousness exists outside of the subject/object bi-conditional.

If, as you imply, consciousness is thwarted by the self-referential state into useless circularity, then that's a claim that supports: consciousness exists outside of the subject/object bi-conditional.

Do you have an argument to support this claim?

How can it be that consciousness exists outside of the subject/object bi-conditional?

I'm supposing immaterialism puts forward consciousness as its star witness for the possibility of existence uncoupled from materialism, and this uncoupling is centered within the circularity to which you refer.

You name the possible premises; do you name the impossible premises?

Let me try to name an impossible premise: a subject that is not its own object.

Can an existing thing not be self-referential (to itself) as an object? If it can, we must ask where is it located in space and time (both of which are material)?

Speaking generally, existence precedes essence and, speaking more specifically, brain precedes mind, at least from the materialist point of view: brain and mind always co-exist, but there's no thought without brain, as demonstrated causally by the maxim: absent brain, absent mind.

Of course, immaterialism posits existence of essences outside of space and time.

Are we now afoot within Kant's transcendental idealism? Are we hearkening back to its ancestor, Platonic idealism?

No. Today's immaterialists have probably nuanced their positions beyond Kant.

What if: "when we ask ourselves 'why are these materialistic phenomena accompanied by experience?', we trigger a self referential explanation that has no other outcome than being circular..." is an important clue to the reason why consciousness as an objective thing appears to be immaterial?

I'm suggesting consciousness as a phenomenon is rooted in mnemonic echoings upwardly mobile through higher-orders of the self-referential. These higher-orders are essential to subjectivity. They play fast and loose with matter, but never uncouple from it completely.

The abstractionism of multi-tiered feedback looping via neuronal circuits of the brain is how we arrive at useful concepts such as infinity, sets and Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis.

Mnemonic circularity, ethereal but still material.

The battery poles are certainly Real. but until they are connected into a circuit, the electric current is only Potential. — Gnomon

There's no difference of opinion here. Yes, in this situation, the electric current is potential before the circuit closes.

Our difference centers on whether or not a potential current embodied within a charged battery is physical whereas a potential current embodied within the mind's memory is abstract. In both cases the potential is tied to something physical: a) the charged battery and its difference of potential; b) the mind's memory and the difference of potential it represents abstractly.

I say: a) involves two physical things; b) involves one physical thing and one abstraction.

Difference is a mental concept : Ideal not-yet Real. — Gnomon

If you live in Germany and your brother lives in France, you don't say the difference of your relative positions is a mental concept. In a parallel, the difference of the charge on the negative plate from the charge on the positive electrode is not a mental concept.

Potential is not a real thing, but an ideal concept that points to a future state. — Gnomon

The difference in the state of a real system from one phase to another is not an ideal concept.
Speaking of water, do you say its difference of state from liquid to solid is an ideal concept?

Difference and Potential are found only in Conscious Minds, not in the material world — Gnomon

Picture a desert rock sitting in a pool of water at noon. After nightfall, the same rock is encased in the frozen pool. You know that during the desert winter, the temperature at noon in the low seventies falls forty degrees at night to the low thirties. Are potential and difference only in your mind?

Consciousness may be the only thing that can study consciousness. If consciousness is feeling and thinking, then that which feels and thinks can feel and think about itself.
Maybe? — Patterner

:up:

But that's the thing. What makes a mass of neurons conscious, but a mass of silicon circuits not conscious? — Harry Hindu

We don't yet know — J

A mass of neurons has processing of memory functions attached; I'm not sure, but I think AI operates in similar fashion.

Potential is not-yet Real. — Gnomon

...the Voltage of an electric battery is its potential for future current flow measured in Amps. — Gnomon

This polarization of negatively charged particles into a concentration apart from positive charge, thus creating a potential for current flow, examples a physical state of a system. Difference of potential is rooted in the extant charge of the concentrated particles. It is real.

The difference of potential of a system for performance of a function -- a charged battery that powers the illumination of a light bulb -- is a part of physico-material reality.

There is a basic difference between having an idea about current flow and having a charged battery ready to deliver current flow.

Well, now you're establishing some kind of Cartesian theater where there is a GUI that is being viewed, but viewed by what? — Harry Hindu

Are you implying the GUI is being viewed by an immaterial mind? Would this be, in context of your thinking, cognition-to-cognition, along the lines of mental telepathy?

...the computer screen is a physical object that emits light so this still does not seem to be a valid example. — Harry Hindu

If you're implying GUI content is not consciousness, I say it's intelligible, and intelligibility is one half of the consciousness duet of intelligibility meets agent intellect. Also, I say that GUI, being an analog signifier, simulates the natural world and thus it is something beyond stimuli that's more at consciousness than not; it's the surrogate of the programmer's consciousness.

What I'm trying to say is that the world may be more like the GUI than the code — Harry Hindu

So, simulation of the world by GUI is movement towards consciousness and thus it resembles the mind more than it resembles its code?

What I am trying to say is that primary "substance" of the world is process, relationships or information. — Harry Hindu

Consciousness is more fundamental than matter?

Perhaps an inversion is more correct: matter emerges from mind?

Hard to tell, innit? Whether definitions set the stage for good philosophy, or get in the way of it. — Mww

Somebody's gotta say something, otherwise our theater becomes a graveyard. When I mis-speak half-truth, eventually someone will correct me, so in the meantime eat, drink and be merry, and stop sweating the crumbs on the floor.

Is paradox a synonym for enformaction? — ucarr

No. Does "the power to enform" seem paradoxical to you? — Gnomon

Yes.

That combination of Cause & Laws is what I call EnFormAction (EFA) : the natural holistic tendency to create complex systems from simpler components — Gnomon

I thought maybe your holistic combination of substance, form and dynamics creates an environment wherein parts are simultaneously discrete and gestalt.

Premise -These questions make an approach to distilling what consciousness does objectively: it resolves paradoxes. — ucarr

That may be the evolutionary adaptive function that led to conscious awareness of Self & Other, which are often at odds. — Gnomon

The whole landscape of evolution is a branching web of boundaries both combining and separating.

The sentient and its environment have a part/whole relationship. Consciousness, using its measuring tool, science, navigates and negotiates boundaries until satisfactory measurement is achieved; we call this "arriving at an understanding."

So, consciousness, resolving the environment down from superposition to the discrete boundaries of natural order, enacts a stabilizing and ordering function. We see these stabilizing and ordering effects across a spectrum from ant colonies to modern cities.

Speaking metaphorically, consciousness looks at the raw stuff of nature and, proceeding forward from there, generates an exploded diagram of the constituent parts, assembling and disassembling them in spiraling cycles of gradual change.

...in humans, Meaning places the world data in relationship to the Self-concept. — Gnomon

So, for sentients, meaning is always personal?

Can facts persist without meaning, i.e., can facts exist without observation?

Let's suppose they can't. Does that suggest to us that an environment without sentience is always in superposition? So, before the door to Schrödinger's box opens, the cat inside is always: extant/non-extant; dead/alive? The tree falling in the forest does/doesn't make a sound?

Is paradox a synonym for enformaction?

Premise -These questions make an approach to distilling what consciousness does objectively: it resolves paradoxes.

Mind is a holistic Function of brain, not identical with the neural network. — Gnomon

Raw data → brain → simulation → mind → meaning ???

Does consciousness, in its act of resolving superposition, configure undecidable parts into non-reductive wholes?

So, consciousness parses boundaries?

So, consciousness parses undecidable boundaries into non-reductive wholes?

Is consciousness hard to analyze – literally split into parts – because it’s about unification of parts into seamless wholes?

Is consciousness paradoxically about holism -- that's its function: configuring parts into seamless wholes -- and yet (strategically) incomplete?

Is consciousness uncontainable because it's strategically incomplete?

Premise - Consciousness is uncontainable because, given existence, there's always another question.

As I understand it, meta- refers to anything that is over & above meaningless matter : the Map is not the Terrain. — Gnomon

Is matter meaningless, or bursting with paradoxical meaning in superposition?

So, the map, being larger than the terrain, emerges from it, but reduces not down to it?

Is it the converse? Since mind is no match for matter, it must hide the shame of its abstractionism in the form of simple and elegant theories and their terse equations?

Since no analytic narrative can get beyond its approach to a material thing, the deadness of its monotonous voice must fall to the ground in reverence of the seething dirt from which it emerges?

Sidebar: I hope you'll throw open the gates and release your reactions; this is a Roar-Shock test.

Life is just maintenance of structures until death and in that we must tweak, convulse and dance to make the boredom bearable. — Nils Loc

Yes. The artist, pushing against the boundaries of what human can be, what human can do, distracts an audience from its tedium: sweet distraction, almost unbearably brief.

When we keep each other entertained with outrageous possibility, that is something seeming sweeter than righteousness, but, alas, it perishes whereas dull sanctity, everlasting to a certainty, bankrolls
existence.

21st century physics has equated Information with causal Energy — Gnomon

So, you embrace the understanding information is physico-material?

Energy is the relationship between information regimes. That is, energy is manifested, at any level, between structures, processes and systems of information in all of its forms — Gnomon

So, in the case of an information field flanked by energy fields, we have a grouping of three energy fields, a two-plus-one with info being one type of energy and the flanks being another type of energy?

Hello, 180 Proof,

we h. sapiens are embodied subjects (i.e. mindbodies); our minds are more-than-minds (i.e. non-ideality)-dependent;

:up: :100:

I hope you will weigh-in.

Higher-Order Memory

... a human body ... converts ... Data into Meaning — Gnomon

When the brain converts data into meaning, do you think the process involves using one narrative (data) to generate another narrative-about-a-narrative (meaning)?

Is meaning a higher-order narrative of a baseline narrative (data)?

Is meaning a terminal lying distant from a data starting point?

If I write 2+2, that's a datum (it too has meaning, but for sake of simplicity, right now we'll only see it as a datum)?

If I go on from 2+2 to write: 2+2 = 4, that's a meaning?

Now we can ask, in order for an information processor to have higher-order meaning capacity, must it harbor an in-dwelling subjective self that endures through a continuous personal history?

A windblown rock hits a statue of a man in the face. That's a datum.

A windblown rock hits a living man in the face. Later, talking to his wife, he says, "A rock blew into my face today, and that's why I have a black eye."

Is the living man's statement to his wife the higher-order narrative, i.e., the narrative expressing meaning of the datum: a rock injured a living man's face.

So, meaning is interpretation of an event, with said interpretation operating within a personal identity who discovers meaning in events that s/he reconciles to, for specific example, its enduring interest in survival?

Does all of this suggest a higher-order memory function for spinning out narratives-of-narratives?

If so, why is this brain-centered higher-order memory function immaterial?

But we can imagine and dream of red things. So it seems to me that the color red is the form visual information takes and stored as such for future use in making predictions about the world. — Harry Hindu

...within the neuronal circuits of the brain wherein we interpret the specific wavelength for red, there's nothing therein that's red because the relativistic effect that supports our experience of red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes, not within the neuronal circuits of the visual cortex of our brain — ucarr

Now we go deeper into the brain_mind interface. The experience of seeing red, like the experience of seeing animated graphic images on a computer screen, is an interpretation of code for the experience. The Graphical User Interface of images viewed on a computer screen is an interpretation of Java, C++, etc. When you look at the code directly, you won't see any graphic images. Likewise, when you study neuron synaptic firing rates, electric current and voltage levels in active parts of the brain, etc., you won't see any graphic images replicating the natural world. There's no analog simulation of the natural world within the databases of computers, and there's no analog simulation of the natural world within the brain.

To continue the parallel, consider the visual field of your eyes. As you scan the natural world around you within the visual field of your eyes, you're not seeing directly the actions of the rods and cones of your eyes, nor are you seeing the neural processing of your brain's visual cortex or other subsequent visual processing parts of your brain. Instead, you're seeing a composite simulation which is a product of the processing. In other words, the experience of seeing red, like all other experiences, compiles a construction that is a simulation of the natural world.

The translation from sensory processing to compiled-construction-as-experience raises gnarly questions about physico-material boundaries. This specific type of question is why we're participating in this conversation.

Consciousness is the spinner that enters the fray and sets the natural world spinning furiously through whirlpools of complex mysteries.

When you dream of red suns in galaxies light years away from you, are you lying entirely within your bed?

The hard problem is more about trying to explain how color "arises" from non-colored things, like neurons and wavelengths. — Harry Hindu

You're drawing a bead on the center of the HPoC. As I understand you, the central issue is the question: How is the subjective experience connected to the physics presumed to be the ground for it?

My first thought (for an answer to your specific question about the experience of the color red in relation to a specific wavelength within the EM visible light spectrum) says "like the experience of
motion, the experience of color is due to a relativistic effect."

Einstein tells us that we only experience motion relative to other material objects either stationary, or moving at a velocity different from ours. If we're in a spaceship traveling very fast between planetary systems, inside the ship we don't known we're moving at all. Only when we look out through a window and see our motion relative to other material objects do we perceive motion.

Likewise, when we experience seeing red, it's because that specific wavelength stands in contrast to other wavelengths of visible light. Therefore, within the neuronal circuits of the brain wherein we interpret the specific wavelength for red, there's nothing therein that's red because the relativistic effect that supports our experience of red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes, not within the neuronal circuits of the visual cortex of our brain.

The locality of the context of the relativistic effect of experiencing the color red, being separate from the neuronal circuits interior to the visual cortex, like the interior of the spaceship being separate from the external planets it whizzes past, raises the question of the connection between the physics of the brain and the cognition of the mind.

Grab your right hand with your right hand and report back. — Wayfarer

Report: RH ≡ RH. — ucarr

This is picturing for literal sight of the ultimate self-referential grabbing. — ucarr

I’m afraid that is word salad. — Wayfarer

I'm not going to let myself confuse incomprehension with unintelligibility. I think I understand the logical connections linking grab right hand with right hand_self-reference_identity operator.* This triad might be unorthodox, but the attempt to express a logical sequence is intelligible even if incorrect.

*The three parts of the triad mirror each other as parallels.

The fact that a hand cannot grasp itself is apodictic. — Wayfarer

I think the apodicsis of your claim is context specific. Since our focus is consciousness, grab becomes "grab." Following from this, I can counter-claim that in the context of consciousness:

Grab your right hand with your right hand and report back. — Wayfarer

posits the physical dexterity of a body part into a false parallel with the cognitive dexterity of the mind.

Using your own mind, you conceive the command: "Grab your right hand with your right hand and report back." Then, you command me to carry out the command, not with my mind, as you did in conceiving the command, but instead with the body part which is my physical hand. This is a gross mis-match.

When I carried out your command with my mind, as you did in configuring the command, my cognitive dexterity easily matched your cognitive dexterity.

Furthermore, the bifurcation of: "Grab your right hand with your right hand and report back." is a feature of the mindscape, not of the landscape. You challenge me to treat one unified whole as if it's two independent wholes. In leveling your challenge, you were confident I would fail in the task. But the cheat you enacted took recourse to a feature of the mindscape not found in the landscape.

I've pointed out the false-paralleling of the two modes (mindscape vs landscape). What also needs to be pointed out is the fact you utilized your cognitive dexterity to conceptualize one unified whole as if it's two independent wholes. Your doing this is evidence you yourself don't really believe in the impossibility of reconceptualizing one unity as two independent wholes. This evidence casts doubt on any suggestion you don't understand: grab right hand with right hand_self-reference_identity operator.

Well, if you understand as well as I that the cognitive dexterity of the mind easily bifurcates hands towards word games of context-specific impossibility, then it follows your mind easily bifurcates itself into itself as subject looking at itself as object.

Now we proceed to understand your argument about the subjective self always seeing but never seen makes the same mistake of false-parallelism argued above: the physical self cannot look directly at itself; the cognitive self of the mindscape, on the other hand, has no problem doing so. Since our focus is consciousness, we're contextually concerned with the cognitive self, not the physical self.*

*This distinction is not intended to imply the cognitive self is not also physical. It is true, however, as made obvious in these arguments, that the two modes are not identical.

The subject/object duo cannot be broken apart. Each always implies the other. That's the bi-conditional, isn't it? — ucarr

I agree that subjects and objects are ‘co-arising’. This is a fundamental principle in Buddhist philosophy. Schopenhauer uses it to great effect in his arguments. — Wayfarer

Here's evidence in your own words of your belief that upon the mindscape, the subject/object duo cannot be broken apart.

Report: RH = RH. — ucarr

I’ll need photographic evidence in this case ;-) — Wayfarer

Write the math onto a marking board, put your right hand alongside the math and then take a picture. The math represents the right hand with bifurcation of its identity; this is a two-in-one of identity elaborated. This is picturing for literal sight of the ultimate self-referential grabbing.

We could say of someone, ‘she has a brilliant mind’. In that case her mind is indeed an object of conversation. — Wayfarer

You can also use ‘see’ metaphorically, as in ‘I see what you mean’. — Wayfarer

But in both cases the metaphorical sense is different to the physical sense. — Wayfarer

The radical nature of QM resides in the fact the resolution of Schrödinger's cat paradox is effected literally, not metaphorically. The observational property of consciousness as a) measurement; b) resolution of superposition to simple position is literal, not metaphorical.

These objectified claims about consciousness are not limited to an individual's subjective experience of Schrödinger's cat paradox. QM physics claims it for everyone.

Furthermore, regarding the mind's eye, since our focus is consciousness, within this context even the mind's eye is literal. We're literally talking about the observational property of consciousness and it's mathematical and experimental verification in physics: public, measurable, repeatable.

The stunning revelations of QM arise from it having already objectified consciousness.

In order to deny this objectification, you must defeat both: a) The Copenhagen Interpretation and b) The Many Worlds Interpretation of QM with counter-examples. That means doing science, not philosophy.

Since thought, language and mind do not occur apart from brain, how can you claim brain and mind are parallel?

Regarding emergent properties of the brain, they exemplify the differential circularity of the higher-orders of thermo-dynamics: morphodynamics, teleodynamics.

...the subjective elements of experience were assigned to the 'secondary qualities' of objects in the early days of modern science. — Wayfarer

It seems to me that here you're tipping into phenomenology.

But I cannot see the act of seeing (or for that matter grasp the act of grasping) as that act requires a seen object and the perceiving subject (or grasping and grasped). It is in that sense that eyes and hands may only see and grasp, respectively, what is other to them. — Wayfarer

As I claim, brain is integral to thought, language and mind, not parallel.. So, again, the mind's eye in our focus upon consciousness is literal, not figurative. You exemplify this with your prescription for perception: "eyes and hands may only see and grasp, respectively, what is other to them."

You could not deliver this prescription with authority if your perceptual eyesight were not literal. In the context of consciousness, perceptual eyesight is just as literal as optical eyesight. Were this not the case, you would not be writing declarative sentences about what perceptual eyesight can and cannot do: "...I cannot see the act of seeing." This clause, like the sentence: "This sentence is false." simultaneously declares what it denies. (At the level of perception, in order to make a declaration that you cannot see the act of seeing, you must see it.)

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos

That is the background, if you like, that the 'hard problem' is set against. If you don't see that, you're not seeing the problem. — Wayfarer

You're trying to set boundaries for the context of the HPoC debate.

The central question of the HPoC goes as follows: How is it the case that subjective experience is associated with the physical processes of the brain?

Apparently, you accept the Galileo_Descartes binary of brain/mind as the proper structure and scope of the HPoC debate. Modern physics, with the backing of QM and the measurement problem, rejects the binary as falsity. If you want to defend immaterialism via the binary, then I think you must firstly defend it scientifically. I don't think facile references to emergent properties will be enough.

...processing that information without consciously experiencing it. — Wolfgang

Some of the earlier levels of machine learning are supposed to be examples of what you describe above, but machine data processing is connected to the conscious thinking of the human programmer.

The machine utilizes electric and mechanical power to rotely follow cyclical patterns consciously configured in terms of beginning, middle and end states by the programmer. So, when you connect the programmer to the machine, there is no processing of information without consciously experiencing it.

Information does not exist outside of patterns recognized and strategically plotted by humans. In the absence of the human will, "information" is merely brownian motion.

I see no obvious reason why consciousness cannot perceive itself as an object. — ucarr

Grab your right hand with your right hand and report back. — Wayfarer

RH = Right Hand. Now, let me file my report on my right hand grabbing itself.

Report: RH = RH.

Now, it's your turn to respond to one of my things: I say that when I make a claim about something, intending by my claim to establish an objective fact, I simultaneously treat that something as an object.

You argue in your post above that: consciousness cannot treat itself as an object.

If you're right then you're wrong because in making your claim you've established an objective fact
about consciousness. Isn't that what you're trying to do? Well, what you're trying to do is straighten me out about a certain objective fact about what consciousness cannot do. How are you able to do that outside of knowing that fact?

Conclusion: a) If you're right, then you're smack in the middle of paradox a la "This sentence is false;" b) If you're wrong, as in "Consciousness cannot treat itself as an object is wrong." then you're still smack in the middle of paradox: a) if you're right, then you're wrong; b) if you're wrong, then you're right.

Conclusion The subject/object duo cannot be broken apart. Each always implies the other. That's the bi-conditional, isn't it?

Conclusion. If the previous two conclusions are correct, then the theory the conscious is a non-intersecting parallel to the material must pursue its search for support elsewhere.

...the hard problem of consciousness is...the paradox it creates when thinking of consciousness as an object in the world. — Skalidris

...the hard problem of consciousness will always remain for those who try to visualise consciousness as an object. — Skalidris

when we ask ourselves “why are these materialistic phenomena accompanied by experience?”, we trigger a self referential explanation that has no other outcome than being circular — Skalidris

...consciousness cannot be viewed solely as an object since it has to be there for the perception of objects. — Skalidris

It’s equally true that consciousness cannot be viewed solely as a subject since objects must be acknowledged in order to establish consciousness.

I see no obvious reason why consciousness cannot perceive itself as an object.

Objects are established by descriptions of what they are and what they do apart from opinions and acts of imagination.

There is a well-known counter-example to your claim:

Consciousness can only be viewed as consciousness (cannot be broken down into something else since it is always there as a whole in our reasoning). — Skalidris

This example is the Measurement Problem.

It gives us a clear example of consciousness observing itself as an object in accord with what an object is and what an object does:

Schödinger's Cat

A thought experiment called Schrödinger's cat illustrates the measurement problem. A mechanism is arranged to kill a cat if a quantum event, such as the decay of a radioactive atom, occurs. The mechanism and the cat are enclosed in a chamber so the fate of the cat is unknown until the chamber is opened. Prior to observation, according to quantum mechanics, the atom is in a quantum superposition, a linear combination of decayed and intact states.

Any future evolution of the wave function is based on the state the system was discovered to be in when the measurement was made, meaning that the measurement "did something" to the system that is not obviously a consequence of Schrödinger evolution.
--Wikipedia

What is consciousness? In our context here, it is a measurement system. This is a fact about consciousness, thus establishing its identity as an object.

What does consciousness do? In our context here, it changes the state of superposition into the state of (well-defined) position.

Perhaps it is that post hoc reflection that makes us think we are sometimes consciously aware. It is only the moments we recall that could make us believe that. — Janus

I did see something red. And I don't need post hoc reflection on such an experience. I can look at something red right now, and reflect on the experience as I'm having it. — Patterner

There is the question whether experience of direct sensory input is incomprehensible_inexpressible stimulation_perturbation of a material_physical state, with this brute force registration of a now altered state -- perhaps somewhat parallel to an electron hit by a photon and then elevated to a higher orbital shell in its now excited state -- causing a memory circularity that is the reflection Janus refers to above.

So, by this continuity, consciousness is rooted in circularity_redundancy and, like Wayfarer's point about the meaning of a printed book being inter-relational -- as in the waveform of mass, i.e., energy as distinguished from the particle form of mass, i.e., matter -- does not possess a discretely resolved position and direction; consciousness, like in the reading of a book, does not have a discrete vector measurement possible, and so it appears as if pre-QM science cannot measure consciousness.

QM, however, can and does measure the probability clouds of energetically perturbed elementary particles. Also, the whereness of vector-measurable phenomena is addressed as waveform-like probability graphs in a theater of action that allows existential ambiguities of the physical_material. It's math that currently makes the closest approach to the physical_material status of consciousness.

We must continue to mine math's ability to measure things we can't imagine experientially.

It seems very difficulty to separate human thought from human language...animals have thoughts that don't seem connected with language. Danger. Safe. Food. Mate. Protect. We would have had at least as many before we developed language... — Patterner

All members of the animal kingdom make audible utterances in response to what they're experiencing. As cognitive capacity increases going upward along the food chain, the audible utterances in response to cognitive experiences become more complicated.

Audible utterances for a specific type of experience are repeated as that type of experience repeats. The mind of the creature takes memory impressions of a specific type of experience matched to a specific type of utterance.

At the human level, this same general process of memorization of audible utterance patterns matched to corresponding experiences generates words and sentences shared by members of the group experiencing these audible utterance_experience duets.. Language.

Human language is merely the more intricately detailed deluxe version of sound patterns matched to experiences practiced by the entire vocal subset of the animal kingdom.

Language, like human thought, is material_physical. The continuum running from the current_voltage variations of neuronal circuits to the vibrating vocal chords of utterance to the receptive hearing of listeners followed by their own symmetrical mirroring of same within themselves is material_physical.

Our current turn in the conversation is promising along the lines of further examining the relationship between subjective/objective.

What we don't know if whether the robot actually has a subjective experience of being a robot. Its does not have to be the consciousness of a human to have a subjective experience. — Philosophim

Right. Our necessarily subjective examination of the robot, like our examination of everything else, terminates in a simulation based upon what we perceive concerning its nature and behavior. Ultimately, we're compelled to put faith in the serviceable accuracy of our simulations of the agents populating the world around us.

It must be the case that our objectivity is populated by these simulations.

If a simulation necessarily differs to some degree from its referent, then we can understand that the interface linking self with other is a complicated amalgam of the two. One generalization derivable is that no sentient is totally isolated because even the sentient's own selfhood can be simulated asymmetrically, as evidenced by multiple personality disorder.

Another (unlikely) possibility is the rock subjectively experiences, but has no capability of expressing any behaviors. Maybe it's exactly what we think it is, but conscious. — Patterner

This is an intriguing conjectured phenomenon. One question raised by it that comes to mind is whether or not subjective experience counts as behavior. Usually, when a sentient experiences something, even if it's just observation, that subjective experience triggers physiological reactions that, by definition, are detectable. For example, if a sentient observers the approach of a powerful predator, typical physiological reactions include, acceleration of heartbeat and temperature, dilation of the pupils, and other symptoms of fear and stress. We don't suppose rocks can have such physiological reactions, but as soon as we imaginatively ascribe subjectivity to a rock, assumptions about fight or flight strategies for sake of survival enter the picture.

If the rock is conscious, but we don't know it, then the rock is far from being exactly what we think it is.

The difference is that a human has different behaviors that we ascribe to being conscious. But we cannot objectively know what its like for that other human to have the subjective experience of being themself. — Philosophim

If we use the Turing_Chalmers' argument to the effect: a cyborg externally programmed to behave like a conscious human will appear to be conscious i.e., have a selfhood without that actually being the case, then we cannot be certain that an observed person is really internally conscious i.e., in possession of a selfhood.

Let me reverse engineer my argument above to apply to what you also said:

We objectively do not know what its like to be that rock. What we do is look at the measurable existence of the rock and 'its behavior'. Since we do not ascribe anything the rock 'does' to an internal locus, we say it doesn't behave like its conscious. But do we objectively know it does not have a subjective experience? No. We simply assume. — Philosophim

As you say, re: the rock's possible subjective experience, we simply assume not. So, possibly (but unlikely) the rock could be suppressing it's selfhood from expressing as behavior so as to keep its selfhood hidden from observers.

This is why I claim that my selfhood and your selfhood, though non-identical, approximate each other sufficiently generically so that it's correct to say the difference between the two is by degree instead of categorical. For this reason, then, you and I do know, to some practical degree, what it's like to be the other person.

Sentient beings cannot navigate the natural world of other sentients without knowing to a practical degree what it's like to be another sentient. Of course there are many problems in our efforts to understand each other. For this reason, books both fictional and non-fictional are written in numbers counting up into the millions.

...some people are color blind. This means their subjective experience of green is so similar to another set of colors, that they can't really tell much of a difference. But can a color sighted person every objectively know what that's like? No. — Philosophim

I've underlined the part of your above quote wherein you describe what it's like to be a color blind person without being one yourself. How is it that you can do that? You have enough information, both from science and from descriptions given by color blind persons to approximate in your understanding what the experience of color blindness is like. There is presumably some degree of separation between what the actually color blind person experiences subjectively, and your cognitive simulation of that experience but, again, I claim the difference is by a navigable degree, not by an impenetrable categorical difference.

Existentialism, which is centered on “existence precedes essence,” gives us a way forward with our database of scientific disciplines and their methodologies. We, as existentialists, can assert that we don’t really know the world beyond realistic-seeming narratives that, ultimately, in the absence of epistemological certainty, we hold as true on the basis of faith. Going forward from there, we try our best to have integrity as we hold faithful to our realistic-seeming narratives. — ucarr

The undecidability of the question of an advanced cyborg having an innate unique selfhood as distinguished from a technology-based simulation of same might be insoluble.

I think AI will go forward to a technology-based simulation of selfhood. Can it somehow deviate from its programming into a unique sentience not programmed? In other words, can programming propagate an emergent and unique selfhood?

Moving towards Bladerunner 2049, can a technology-based emergent selfhood propagate another emergent selfhood in the mode of giving birth to a child? — ucarr

So, I predict that technology-based sentience will, per the above speculations, eventually spawn unique sentience not programmed which, in turn, will spawn emergent selfhood in the mode of giving birth to a child.

This tells us that the insuperabillty of subjectivity of selfhood will be preserved across objective propagation of selfhood. So, the seeming-immateriality of selfhood, preserved as technology-based selfhood, will persist, and organic humans will not be any more certain about what it's like to be an independently conscious cyborg than they are certain about what it's like to be another organic human.

There will be difficulties in the organic human_independent cyborg relationships, but these difficulties will, to some extent, parallel the human-to-human relationship problems.

We need consciousness to think, therefore we need consciousness to make any inference about consciousness, that's the problem. — Skalidris

You haven't explained why this creates a logical impossibility. — Baden

Skalidris seems to be saying that consciousness, in the form of subjectivity, holds insuperable. If so, then no objective perception of consciousness is possible, and thus the insoluble problem for developing technology that generates subjectivity.

The undecidability of the question of an advanced cyborg having an innate unique selfhood as distinguished from a technology-based simulation of same might be insoluble.

I think AI will go forward to a technology-based simulation of selfhood. Can it somehow deviate from its programming into a unique sentience not programmed? In other words, can programming propagate an emergent and unique selfhood?

Moving towards Bladerunner 2049, can a technology-based emergent selfhood propagate another emergent selfhood in the mode of giving birth to a child?

...you are...using an inaccurate definition of the HPoC. As J pointed out early on... — Patterner

The hard problem is, "Will we ever know what it is like to BE a conscious individual that isn't ourselves" — Philosophim

Just for the record, that isn't the standard way of stating the problem and it isn't David Chalmers' way (he coined the phrase). You can listen to Chalmers describe it here: He defines the problem as "how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences in the mind." — J

And I'll note again, the only reason we cannot figure out how physical processes give rise to the subjective experiences of the mind is because we have no way of objectively knowing what it is to hold that subjective experience, because you must BE that being having that subjective experience. — Philosophim

I think your point above makes an important clarification: there's something about the native point of view of the sentient that obstructs, so far, our understanding how (or if) physical processes give rise to the subjective experience.

...we have no way of objectively knowing what it is to hold that subjective experience, because you must BE that being having that subjective experience. — Philosophim

As I understand you, you're implying that the subjectivity of the sentient is insuperable i.e., it is a container which has no exit. This claim, if true, leads us into the very complicated business of examining the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity.

If it’s true that the subjectivity of the sentient is insuperable, that then calls into question the possibility of objectivity in general. If the sentient cannot know what it’s like to be beyond its own subjective being, then it follows that the sentient cannot know what it’s like for anything, other than itself, to be, whether a stone, a galaxy or another person.

Well, if objectivity in general is in doubt, then, as you all know, that lands us right back into the territory of solipsism: how can I be sure what I perceive is existentially independent of my perception of it? Indeed, how can I have such knowledge if I’m forever locked inside of my subjectivity?

So, we now see that the HPoC is another angle of view – a very complex and perhaps ultimately fruitful angle of view – focusing on the gnarly problem of the possibly inescapable self-enclosure of solipsism.

It sounds strange, but, in my context here, when we claim to know the chemical composition/interactions of a rock, we’re also claiming to know “what it’s like to be that rock.”

To be sure, knowing a rock by knowing its chemical composition/interactions is a much more simple phenomenon than knowing another person by knowing their consciousness, but the difference is a difference of degree, not a categorical difference.

If we’re locked out of objectivity because of insuperable subjectivity, then we’re thrown all the way back to securing our beliefs on the basis of faith rather than on the basis of science.

Existence precedes essence because science can only get started by assuming the existence of things prior to any possibility of analysis and its attendant logic and the subsequent scientific disciplines.

Existentialism, which is centered on “existence precedes essence,” gives us a way forward with our database of scientific disciplines and their methodologies. We, as existentialists, can assert that we don’t really know the world beyond realistic-seeming narratives that, ultimately, in the absence of epistemological certainty, we hold as true on the basis of faith. Going forward from there, we try our best to have integrity as we hold faithful to our realistic-seeming narratives.

I assert there is a reasonably accurate one-size-fits-all-what-it’s-like-to-be-selfhood, accessible to many if not all sentients, that supports the sympathy and morals essential to the peaceable animal kingdom and civilization. — ucarr

This is a nice thought, but can we demonstrate this to be something known, or will it only remain a belief? — Philosophim

There are plenty of people in life I don't understand. And I'm sure there are plenty of people in life who don't understand me. — Philosophim

It is known by you what it's like to be a person.

It is known that the transitive property can be configured with word arrangements that make valid statements: If a = b and c = b, then a = c. I can take this word arrangement and apply it to you: If Philosophim = person and Joe Blow = person, then Philosophim = Joe Blow (to the extent of the standard of measurement known as person).

Survival, or accomplishing a task together require a closeness and understanding of another person up to a point to get this done. — Philosophim

Two persons understand each other to a limited degree because they share important attributes common to personhood.

We share our stories because the bond of human identity allows us to walk a mile in each others' shoes. How much we relate to another person varies widely, but the connection rarely drops to zero.

...whether we do harm to things or not should be more than feelings. Just because I feel disgust at something doesn't mean I should kill it. Just because something makes me happy doesn't mean I should embrace it. For me, it is a respect for its agency, the fact that despite all the odds that get thrown at every life, it has survived until now. Why should I harm or end it over something as trivial as just an emotion? — Philosophim

From the above I understand the theme of your response to my first of two main conjectures to be "difference." My counter-narrative to your theme is "continuity."

So, your narrative propounds the discontinuity of extra-categorical modal difference whereas my counter-narrative propounds the continuity of intra-categorical intra-modal connectedness.

Let me attempt to translate the above sentence into plain-spoken English: with your theme, a collection of things are grouped into separate categories, with the assumption there is no connectedness between the categories. As an example, consider a group of apples in one category and a group of oranges in another category.

What you have done, I think, is equate feelings with apples for one of your categories and equate thoughts with oranges for another one of your categories.

In my counter-narrative, I claim that feelings and thoughts belong to one category: cognition. The difference between these members of one category is by degree, and therefore not by category.

To elaborate, to have a feeling about something means having thought about something with a relatively small amount of detail, or low resolution. On the other hand, to have a profound understanding about something means having reflected on something towards amassing a large amount of detail, or high resolution.

When we compare low-resolution feelings with high-resolution thoughts, it’s like comparing a low-resolution digital image of something with a high-resolution version of the same image. That they are the same image establishes their mutual membership within one category: a specific image. The difference between them is not extra-categorical and modal, but rather intra-categorical and extensional.

The fancy logical term for your theme of difference by category is “intentional:” the properties that something needs to have in order to be counted as a member of a specified category.

Your theme argues that feelings and thoughts are intentionally disconnected; my theme argues that feelings and thought are intentionally connected.

That your theme overstates the difference of feelings and thoughts by degree with respect to difference-as-disconnection is evidenced by:

There are plenty of people in life I don't understand. And I'm sure there are plenty of people in life who don't understand me. Bonding often comes from like goals. Survival, or accomplishing a task together require a closeness and understanding of another person up to a point to get this done. It does not require me to understand exactly what another person is experiencing in life. — Philosophim

I assert this is an overstatement of the degree of difference_disconnection separating feelings from thoughts in terms of people understanding each other and moreover, it is therefore an overstatement of the degree of sameness_connection necessary for a human to know what it’s like to be a bat.

As you say, you can bond with another human without knowing exactly what it’s like to be the other person. Nonetheless, to a degree, you do know what it’s like to be another person. And likewise, to a degree, you do know what it’s like to be a bat.

Highly technical, very abstract thoughts about moral principles are directly connected to intuitive feelings about how we should treat other innocent beings. Without this direct connection, moral principles become empty and therefore meaningless.

I assert there is no impenetrable membrane called what-it’s-like-to-be-an-individualized-self. It’s this mistaken belief that creates the hard problem. It's this mistaken belief that falsely divides subjective from objective. Clearly, the selfhood of the self is the object of that selfsame self's consciousness.

I assert there is a reasonably accurate one-size-fits-all-what-it’s-like-to-be-selfhood, accessible to many if not all sentients, that supports the sympathy and morals essential to the peaceable animal kingdom and civilization.

We can map the brain to your behaviors, and even note what you are thinking before you are aware of it. But we cannot know what it is like to BE you. To BE your consciousness. — Philosophim

What if there is not only individualized what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods but also a one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood both universal and constant?

With this supposition, we can say that what-it's-like-to-be a bat living in a cave is the same as what-it's-like-to-be a human living in a college dorm.

Speculating about this possibility doesn't necessarily imply the sense of a world populated by individual what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods is illusory. No. It's a point-of-view that allows us to ask what's the relationship between the one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood and the individual what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods.

In our speculation about the possible existence of a one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood, we can ask ourselves what's going on when we sympathize with the suffering of another person. Morals are about doing no harm to other innocent beings. How can we value this principle governing our behavior if we don't have some semblance of a one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood that we access and utilize to support the sympathy that fuels our moral thinking and behavior?

How is it that many humans easily shuttle between an individualized selfhood and the one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood that enables the bonding of friendship and love so important in their lives?

The edifice of the arts (literature, drama, music, dance, painting, sculpture) depends upon the interpersonal identification of artist, art work and audience. Is this not, to some observable degree, a communal experience wherein the one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood exerts a very useful and desirable power?

When we think about knowing what it's like to walk a mile in another man's shoes, we must acknowledge that, obviously, we're really experiencing what it's like to be ourselves being aware of what it's like to be another, separate self.

From this realization we see that, as already said here, our consciousness is, for each of us, insuperable. Well, what if the insuperability of individualized what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods can merge with all other insuperable what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods to form a universal and constant one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood also insuperable?

So, after all, maybe we really do know all what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods. Isn't this access to all what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods the underlying assumption that supports the edifice of morality?

Doesn't morality lose it's existential imperative within our justice-governed lives without it?

Another, possibly important speculation, goes as follows: the foundation of consciousness is memory. Memory consists of feedback loops traversing neuronal brain circuits that empower awareness of things and events via the initial perception of things and events in themselves repeated for comparison and re-presentation so that the thing in itself becomes a perceived thing in itself and, after another, vertically stacked feedback loop creating a higher-order feedback loop tower per unit of time, we arrive at the self knowing it's perceiving a re-presentation of a thing-in-itself, as based on an original thing-in-itself.

This higher-order feedback loop tower per unit of time is the necessary circularity of consciousness examining itself. So, the circularity of consciousness examining itself is the friend of our understanding of consciousness, not its enemy.

The friendliness of the circularity of consciousness examining itself resides in the conjectured phenomenon of consciousness itself being a possibly irreducible circularity making the selfhood of consciousness possible.

If this is the case, then, of course, examination of the nature of consciousness entails circularity.

Here’s the takeaways: a) let’s not assume that individualized what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods have impenetrable membranes. Maybe the membrane of selfhood is semi-permeable, as evidenced by human sympathy; b) let’s assume that the innate circularity of the self is part of a multi-tiered tower of levels of consciousness that can merge and divide such that the individualized what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods and the one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood are not mutually exclusive.

What I've learned from this conversation:

Summation

The existence of a material thing, when viewed outside the constraining scope of strategic incompletion, stands wrapped within a shroud of mystery at both ends of a continuum: neither the beginning nor the conclusion of material existence can be explained rationally because the practice of reason assumes the existence of material things as its necessary prerequisite.

Rationality and its language of logic therefore are contained within the continuity_continuum of existence. The continuity_continuum of existence being the sine qua non prerequisite for reason, it can make no start outside the material theater of action. Given this fact, there can be no rational explanation for existence-itself-in-general.

Naturalists take recourse to Deism, a doctrine that posits a cosmic creator who only actualizes material reality. In the wake of this rationally unexplainable act of creation, sentients are free to reason forward through material existence toward evolving phases of understanding and control of aspects of the material existence.

More specifically, through the powers of the arts and sciences, sentients are able to reason towards a concept of freedom post material creation. An operational presupposition claims humanity (so far as what is currently known) holds the highest position of freedom as material individuals who know both themselves and their environment.

According to this continuity, existence precedes essence. Per Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Sartre, human, through personally designed action, creates its essence, and thus is responsible for it.

This continuity, then, posits mysterious existence prior to morality and its sets and their degrees of inclusion, both of which are chosen by the individual.

The ancient scribes, who wrote the grammar of morals for the eastern and western hemispheres, by claiming inspiration from an eternal cosmic sentience, clearly worked in terms of existence precedes essence.*

*If the Deist creator is eternal, then existence is eternal. Since more than one cosmic creator is co-eternal with a material manifestation thereof, the question of priority vís-a-vís existence/essence must be examined through the lens of another question: Does any type of existence assume a material component?

If so, then within the mysterious state of being of the Deist creator, existence/essence co-exist with existence holding the overarching position of priority.

Evidence supporting this consists in the mind being grounded in the brain, and therefore the mind/brain interface dwells within the scope of the material.

As the sentient individual evolves, the complexity and absential materiality of personally designed morals will continue to approximate, at the level of the material individual, the grammar of morals assigned by the ancient scribes to the cosmic creator.