By studying the human brain and replicating its behaviour. — Michael

Assuming behavior can result in consciousness. There's good reasons for thinking that's not the case.

What do you mean by "fundamental"? — Michael

Something that's not explicable in terms of something else, which in context means an empirical explanation.

Only in our scenario that biological computer isn't told to turn on a blue light but to activate the parts of its "brain" that are responsible for bringing about a blue colour experience. — Michael

But how will we know how to put together a biological computer that can bring about a blue color experience? I assume that won't be a binary pattern.

Unless you want to argue for something like a God-given soul or substance dualism, — Michael

There are other options, which you know about.

what reason is there to think that the human brain and its emergent consciousness is some special, magical thing that cannot be manufactured and controlled? — Michael

Not magical, but maybe fundamental.

We might not have the knowledge or technology to do it now, but it doesn't follow from that that it's in principle impossible. — Michael

Right, but there are somewhat convincing conceptual arguments against it. I don't know what the nature of consciousness is, but nobody else has been able to explain it either. And until that can be done, we don't know what computing it would entail, other than stimulating an existing brain.

A computer simulation is just taking some input and applying the rules of a mathematical model, producing some output. The article I linked to explains that biological computers can do this. It's what makes them biological computers and not just ordinary proteins.

And we know that at least one biological organ is capable of giving rise to consciousness.

So put the two together and we have a biological computer, running simulations, where the output is a certain kind of conscious experience. — Michael

Wait a second, what does a conscious output look like where you take some input, apply the rules of a mathematical model, and produce output?

I'm not aware of any mathematical model that can do that, or what it could even possible look like. Are you?

I'm thinking you input some matrices of data, there's some machine learning models, and then the output is .... a blue experience???

That doesn't compute, because it's not a computation.

Here's something related Elon said last year. To paraphrase:

Humans are already cyborgs and superintelligent because of smartphones. Anyone with one of these is more powerful than the president of the United states 30 years ago. — paraphrased Elon

Then he goes on to talk about the limiting factor for superhuman intelligence is output bandwidth, so we need brain to computer interfaces to bypass our slow modes of communication.

A common assumption in the philosophy of mind is that of substrate ‐ independence . The idea is that mental states can supervene on any of a broad class of physical substrates. Provided a system implements the right sort of computational structures and processes, it can be associated with conscious experiences. It is not an essential property of consciousness that it is implemented on carbon ‐ based biological neural networks inside a cranium: silicon ‐ based processors inside a computer could in principle do the trick as well. — Bostrom

Yeah, this is far from widely accepted in philosophy of mind. People with a strong computer science background tend to endorse it a lot more than people who are more philosophical in general. I'm not sure where the neuroscientists fall on this on average, but I would guess they're a bit more reserved about making such assumptions.

I believe Musk is creating the conditions with his Boring company and SpaceX, to be able to travel to any part of the world in an hour's time. That's pretty radical if you ask me. — Posty McPostface

Sure, along with cold fusion, flying cars, and Martian colonies. We've heard this sort of stuff for decades now. You should see some of the futuristic predictions from the 1950s.

The argument for the simulation I think is quite strong. Because if you assume any improvements at all over time — any improvement, one percent, .1 percent. Just extend the time frame, make it a thousand years, a million years — the universe is 13.8 billion years old. — Posty McPostface

But this argument doesn't work for everything. Say we apply it to the speed of transportation. There was a dramatic increase from horse to train, automobile and airplane. But after a certain point, which would be the 60s or 70s with highways, concord jets and trips to the moon, we didn't really increase our speed of transportation, despite continued improvements in technology related to transportation. We leveled out on how fast we move people and things around.

A similar thing might happen to computing before we reach the amount we would need to actually run an ancestor simulation. What sort of computing resources is it going to take to simulate Earth's history? It will be a tremendous amount, if you want it to be anything like the real world.

The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one — Michael

One potential problem is that we don't know whether a simulation can include consciousness. The fact that we're

A. Conscious
B. Don't have any clue what it would entail to simulate consciousness

Argues against the likelihood that we're living in a simulation.

nd realists are idealists in the sense that they understand reality to be mediated by the self (from sense organs to personality as a whole). — macrosoft

Some realists do deny this, at least when it comes to perception. Direct realism denies that there is an idea or sense impression in the mind mediating the thing itself. As such, you're aware of seeing the tree, not a mental image of the tree.

Because we’re not the center of the universe, and mind is dependent on matter.

The stupid unfunny joke is the level of suffering and capriciousness of life, not the mere possibility that God created us yesterday for the LULZ.

Why is existence dependent on being known?

Of course only if it was, but if it was, then probabilities would go out of the window because they would be an illusion along with the world as (we think) we know it. — TWI

Well, there is that. Same with being in a simulation.

We don't like it when people dump something on our door step and then leave. Get back here and defend your pile of crap! — Bitter Crank

Maybe the flaming dog poop on your door popped into existence? Must you always blame the neighbors?

I don't know. I'm a wavering realist. Sometimes idealist arguments get in my head.

Because if the world was created yesterday, or today or even just now then our senses are deceiving us. All sorts of reasons. — TWI

Yes, but only if it actually was.

1. We don't know whether that's possible.

2. If it is possible, then it's probably highly unlikely (statistical fluctuation results in the orderly world around us or the appearance of one).

3. We don't have any reason for thinking it did happen (our senses and memories tell us the world has been around for a while).

Therefore, it's reasonable to suppose the world has been around longer than yesterday.

Well, there are idealists on this forum.

Yes, but if we wish to test those ideas we still only have our senses. — TWI

Yes, but our senses tell us the world has been around for a while. So what reason do we have to suspect the skeptical scenario? What reason do we have to believe it's even possible? Because we can think it?

In the old days, a good idealism debate would run 100 pages minimum, with much discussion of apples and mountain tops. Also chairs at the end of the universe.

Color me disappointed in this paltry showing.

Do boundaries exist in the real world beyond our minds? If boundaries don't exist in the real world, then neither do things, and thus one might be called to question the insight of thinkers who continually refer to them. — Jake

How would we perceive boundaries if there are none, and how would we even exist if there were no boundaries? I'm walking along and there's a huge drop off ahead of me. I keep walking and I die. But if there isn't actually a boundary between the ground I walk on and the air I'm about to step foot on, then why would I die?

80
All we have are the five senses which can easily be fooled. — TWI

Good thing we also have brains and other people to check our ideas with.

Although I don't know whether suck skepticism can be refuted, it's pathological. We don't have any examples of people coming into existence with memories intact. It's just a hypothetical situation we imagine. Could it be possible? I don't know. Maybe as a Boltzmann Brain?

But it's not something we have a reason to actually suspect. It's a mere possibility, like a giant orbiting teapot, or aliens beaming brainwashing thoughts into our heads.

That may be the external world realist’s interpretation of their observations but if idealism is the case then the interpretation is wrong. — Michael

Right, but if idealism is the case, then the world as it appears to us is massively misleading. One has to wonder why the world is experienced as if it's material/physical, and as if it's much more than what we perceive. Why the appearance of billions of years of matter prior to consciousness, if that's not the case? Why the experience of needing a physical body that requires nourishment, air, water, etc in order to stay conscious?

Why is there something rather than nothing? I don’t see why it makes more sense to say that first there was matter and then there was consciousness than to just say that first there was consciousness. — Michael

Because all of our scientific and everyday knowledge tells us otherwise. People are born and they die. Humans evolved. The geological and astronomical records indicate great age. And so on for almost everything we care to investigate.

guess it depends how you define ''faith''. — philosophy

I don't define it as induction. I can make inferences that the tree continues to exist in the quad after nobody is perceiving it, but I can't infer that it's God keeping it there.

The point, however, is that said existence cannot be justified on the basis of reason but on faith. I believe that a world independent of my mind exists but I cannot possibly know this. — philosophy

But why is this faith and not inductive logic? We're not positing elephants trumpeting quarks as the basis for everything, or God (unlike Berkeley and Descartes).

The realist, in positing a mind-independent world, is making a claim beyond experience. — philosophy

Yes they are, but that's because it makes sense. Otherwise, how could you be born or die? How do we account for all these experiences of an external world with things we can't see that effect us?

The idealism that you're arguing for makes all experience brute and mysterious, and it turns the known universe into perception. That means anything external to my experience is only known as an idea. That's a very small world.

"Unperceived object" isn't a contradictory term. "Object" doesn't mean "perceived." — Terrapin Station

I don't agree with it, but the argument is that unperceived objects can't be known, not that they can't exist. Well, Berkeley tried to argue that unperceived objects were incoherent, but Hume is just saying that only what's perceived can be known.

EDIT: Actually, I take that back. The Hume quote is arguing that they are inconceivable. That's kind of shocking.

..Now since nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions...it follows that 'tis impossible for us so much as to conceive or form an idea of any thing specifically different from ideas and impressions. — philosophy

Was Hume channeling a future Berkeley here? Radical empiricism does logically end up at idealism, so it's not terribly surprising. I just wasn't aware that Hume actually made an argument for idealism.

His body would be part of his perception. An idealist wouldn't except that their body is part of a mind-independent world, or at least not that they could know.

The idealist simply asks: How could you possibly know that? — philosophy

It makes the most sense of our experience of being part of a much larger world to which we are born, live and die, as all those questions I posted seek to establish.

But direct realism wouldn't accept the starting premise for idealism, which Terrapin pointed out. Direct perception means perceiving things out there, and not in the mind.

Do you think such a view can be refuted? — philosophy

It can be argued against somewhat convincingly. How does idealism of this sort handle birth? Death? Other minds? Why does science discover a vast universe? Did the dinosaurs not exist? What about evolution?

How do you explain the experience of sickness without talk of germs and cells that you can only experience under a microscope? Why is it that radiation is something to worry about, or poison that you can't taste or smell? How is it that technology makes use of radio waves, which we can't experience? What about atoms?

How come dogs can hear what we can't, and birds and insects can see what we can't? If you crossed the street without paying attention, could you die?

Those sorts of questions, and there are a vast number of them, can be used to construct a convincing argument that there is a whole world that's independent of our perceiving it. This doesn't mean we can't perceive or detect it using tools we make, or infer it indirectly, just that it exists on it's own terms.

These are all objectively true or false. They're all claims about an individuals belief's (their brain states) and can all be determined (in principle) as true or false — ChrisH

Assuming beliefs can be identified with brain states.

But okay, how about this one?

Sally: "Casablanca is the best movie ever made".
Fred, "Nope, it's clearly the Godfather."
Peter: "I did not like the Godfather. It insists upon itself."
Millenial: "Second and third Matrix movies were better than the first."

Could you examine their brain states to determine the relative merits of the movies mentioned?

"Physical facts" there isn't a reference to the science of physics, especially not as the contingent set of theories, laws, etc. as presented in physics textbooks, classrooms, etc. It's rather a reference to the type of ontological stuff we're talking about. — Terrapin Station

So this ontological stuff is the world, or reality. And you wish to call it "physical". But it could have things not described or predicted by physics in it. Panpsychism, neutral monism, strong emergentism, non-supernatural dualism and epiphenomenalism are all consistent with this ontological stuff.

It's like Thales saying everything is water, someone pointing out that space isn't entailed by water, and Thales saying that he doesn't mean the study of water, but the actual ontological stuff, therefore it's not a problem to say space is made up of water.

Which is just word play. We could say the world is ontologically watery instead of physical, and it accomplishes the same thing.

The physics logically entails the properties of water, unless you think physics is either:

A. Not logical
B. Incomplete

What does that have to do with logical entailment? — Terrapin Station

There's no way for H20 not to have the properties of water when you take into account all of the physics and chemistry. Of course you can imagine a world where it's different by ignoring the physics and chemistry, just like we can imagine super heroes.

But that's not what Chalmers meant by conceivability.

The zombie argument only makes sense if you believe epiphenomenalism is possible. — JupiterJess

That's not the only possibility. Dualism, panpsychism, occasionalism are other possibilities.

Of course, you could attempt to explain how you believe it's actually a logical implication. — Terrapin Station

If you know all the physical and chemical properties of water, then there's no way for ice not to be slippery under the right environmental conditions. Therefore, conceiving of ice lacking slipperiness is to fail to fully take into account it's makeup.

We can't say the same thing for consciousness.

I think that trying to think about it any other way is rather incoherent, simply because the entire notion of nonphysical existents is incoherent, — Terrapin Station

Nevertheless, we have all sorts of concepts which aren't part of physics, so figuring out how they can be understood as physical is the challenge.

You're making an assertion, but you have to be able to back it up.

If we're talking about convincing the elite to move, can we start with Trump?

Mars will initially be comprized of the elite of the World. — Posty McPostface

Earth must be a pretty awful place for the Elite to want to move to Mars. I'd move to Antartica first before Mars. It's still breathable, has lots of water, there is life, protection from cosmic rays, and the rest of civilization is not far by boat or plane. Also, the gravitational difference. We evolved for Earth's 1g. Not sure how well suited we are for significantly less over a life time.

I think Detroit would be my first choice also. Then Antartica. Then Mars, assuming Siberia isn't an option.

SEP agrees with you, but then goes on to say that ancient philosophers do discus matters relevant to our modern notions of subjective and objective.

Sextus describes the skeptic’s states of ‘being-appeared-to’ as affections of the mind. A skeptic can report these states in their utterances. Illustrating this point, Sextus uses expressions associated with the Cyrenaics, a Socratic school of thought. These expressions literally mean something like ‘I am being heated’ or ‘I am being whitened.’ They aim to record affections without claiming anything about the world.

You asked what motivates warding off epistemological concerns, and my response is that these sorts of concerns arose a long time ago, have evolved but have never gone away, so it's natural for those discussing philosophy to want to address them. My understanding is this is what is motivating Sam and what motivated Wittgenstein.