I like seeing information/consciousness being placed side by side. Do you think, in a technical sense, they are closely related or even have the same physical basis? Words are defined by their common usage so if we use common definitions we may be building in confusion to the problem of consciousness.

Something else that may help in the problem of consciousness is to consider order of operations.
For example in mathematics the convention is parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition and subtraction. In philosophy, we can also set for ourselves a sensible order of operations. I like starting with physical matter as the primary consideration first and stating that outright so if someone has an objection they can suggest an alternative. Then you could move on to information-consciousness being derived from physical matter and stating how that is physically supported. This eventually leads to the mental worlds that we inhabit. Someone like Wayfarer may object to this as reductionism and I'm sympathetic to that view, however the benefit is that by following an order of operations we might eliminate some physically unsupported mental content that we seem to be prone to.
An example of physical constraints in our mental content would be time perseption. We time travel in our minds in a way physical matter does not permit and there is a need for philosophy to address this.
So the problem of not having an order of operations is that you'll get stuck defending mental constructs without considering physical limits. Say like believing time travel is possible.

I think the basic problem is that people want to define consiciousness as a clear division between the sentient and the non-sentient. Proto-consciousness just shows clearly this problem. I think there's a) an accurate model for the way consciousness emerges THAT WE DON'T YET KNOW and yet we b) cannot make a direct division just what is conscious and what isn't as sentient can be more or less conscious.

Even what is alive and what isn't is difficult to answer when you take (biological) viruses into question.

Again it's our own desire to make things to be what we want that is the main problem here.

Does that mean the file isn't a set of physical 1's and zeros on my hard drive? Of course it is. Its obvious. — Philosophim

And that is the key difference between a computer and a human. For a computer, there's nothing more the file could be. It isn't "like anything" to be a computer. But we have a different experience, which gives rise to all of the problems discussed on this thread.

This may be one of those fundamental philosophical problems that simply call up different basic intuitions. I certainly don't think that physicalists are less intelligent than I am, or wrong in some obvious, silly way. I hope they feel the same way about me! It just seems like a brute fact (to me) that what I do when I interpret a story about Sherlock Holmes is completely different from what a computer does when it realizes a program. And functionalism has had a very hard time since its heyday in the late 20th century.

You can examine a lit object under a magnifying glass, but you can't examine a sound under a magnifying glass. We're using the wrong tool and looking for the wrong thing. We measure consciousness by behavior. We experience our own consciousness, but no one else's. As such, we cannot measure our own subjective consciousness, nor any other. But we have determined that the brain affects consciousness over multiple scientific discoveries over decades now. Its incontrovertible. — Philosophim

Again, you take my metaphors literally. The point of the question is that immaterial functions cannot be studied by empirical methods. There is no empirical evidence for Ideas ; only behavioral inferences, as you said. In other words, the tool for examining the Mind is the Mind itself. Materialists see the world through the (metaphorical) lens of the Mind, but can't see the Mind itself.

Again, you erroneously imply that I deny the role of Brain in Mind functions. Not so. Mind is merely what the Brain does : its function, its action. The engine (a physical object) of an automobile directly affects the quality of Transportation, its immaterial action. What we call "mind" is the immaterial function of a physical brain. But a brain in a vat, with no connection to the outside world, would have no mental functions. We'll never know if the isolated brain has a self-concept, but I doubt it, because it would have no non-self to contrast with. A primary evolutionary function of Mind is to relate Self to Other (environment). :smile:

Note --- I like to use the Aristotelian concept of Metaphysics in place of "immaterial". But that term is now mainly associated with Catholic theology. Yet, five centuries BC, Ari added an appendix to his work on Physics (nature) for a discussion of philosophical Ideas --- over & above physical Things --- immaterial Concepts*1 about nature (Ontology). For Ari, those ideas are not super-natural, but merely immaterial Forms, or in modern terms : Information (EnFormAction). For example, Properties are not material things, but mental attributions.

*1. Aristotle About Ideas :
The Peri ide^on (On Ideas) is the only work in which Aristotle systematically sets out and criticizes arguments for the existence of Platonic forms. . . . . , and why and with what justification he favors an alternative metaphysical scheme. She examines the significance of the Peri ide^on for some central questions about Plato's theory of forms--whether, for example, there are forms corresponding to every property or only to some, and if only to some, then to which ones; whether forms are universals, particulars or both; and whether they are meanings, properties or both.
https://www.amazon.com/Ideas-Aristotles-Criticism-Platos-Theory/dp/0198235496
Note --- Contra Plato's monistic universal Forms, Aristotle proposed the dualistic notion of HyloMorphism : a combination of Matter and Essence : car engine + transportation as a team. Different ways of looking at the same thing. The embodied causal force that enforms material objects is the Essence (property, qualia) of the Thing.

The problem with the theories that consciousness is separate from matter and energy, is that there is no evidence from tests. — Philosophim

That's the problem with Materialism, it looks for empirical evidence of something that is immaterial. The only evidence of Mental Functions is philosophical inference. If a pile of rocks suddenly formed a tower of stones, we would have to infer Mental Intention behind the balancing act*2. :joke:

No, because Genesis was not known and provable with evidence, it was myth. Beliefs are not the same as what is known at the time. — Philosophim

You may not think Darwin was asserting something unbelievable, but most of his contemporaries did, because they were convinced of a different belief system. You think Gnomon is proposing something unbelievable because it does not align with your materialistic beliefs. Scientific paradigms change, not only due to empirical evidence, but to philosophical perspective. "To biologists, it is puzzling that Kuhn failed to mention the two greatest paradigm shifts in the biological sciences — Darwinism and Mendelism." https://laskerfoundation.org/paradigm-shifts-in-science-insights-from-the-arts/ :nerd:

And this is not a problem. This is the limit of what we can measure today, and we take what is most reasonable from that analysis. — Philosophim

I agree. Yet Reasoning is not empirical, but philosophical. A Paradigm Shift is a change of perspective on the evidence. :cool:

PS___ I appreciate your respectful skepticism. It forces me to tighten-up my own reasoning. And to find new ways to describe an emerging new paradigm of Philosophy and Science.


*2. We infer that a carefully balanced stone stack is not natural, but intentional

levels of description
Up to this point, nothing immaterial has happened. We operate exclusively in the field of physics and physiology. . . . . In truth, it is not a causal relationship, but a correlation between two different levels of description of the same phenomenon — Wolfgang

Thanks for the novel approach to the categorical conundrum : Hard (theoretical ; philosophical) Problem as compared to the Easier (empirical ; scientific) Problem.

All causation is a correlation between Cause & Effect. But some (snapshot) relationships are static and statistical, with no change in (physical) state. A state change requires energy, and a source. The difference between physiology and psychology is A> state change (physical energy) and B> categorical shift (mental information). :smile:
"Correlation is a statistical measure that shows the relationship between two or more variables, while causation means that one event is the result of another. Correlation does not automatically imply causation, and causation always implies correlation." ___ Google AI overview

Typically, we start with a description of the visual process from a third-person perspective - in other words, we describe what is objectively observable. Then, suddenly, and often unconsciously, we switch to first-person perspective by asking why we experience the process of seeing in a certain way. — Wolfgang

Third person is objective. First person is subjective. Objective looks at external physical things (objects). Subjective looks at internal metaphysical concepts (ideas). Even if a physical Cause of observed change is not obvious, we still infer (from common experience) that some Cause was necessary. (e.g. Where did that bullet come from? We automatically look in the direction of the bang). :smile:
"The problem of causality is a philosophical issue that involves the difficulty of determining which events are causes and which are effects." ___ Google AI overview

"Why does consciousness feel the way it feels?", which already contain in their formulation the assumption that there must be an objective explanation for subjective experiences. — Wolfgang

From experience with the physical world we learn (assumption) to look for a cause for every change in state. The only exceptions are found in the uncertainties of quantum physics, in which an effect may seem to precede the cause. :smile:
"The idea that every effect has a cause is known as universal causation. However, some physicists and philosophers question whether cause and effect are as straightforward as they seem". ___ Google AI overview

we ask questions that are tautological in themselves and therefore fundamentally unanswerable. — Wolfgang

"Why?" questions correlate Objective with Subjective. Philosophical vs Scientific. Any answer is not empirical/objective but theoretical & personal. Theoretical opinions may be accepted without empirical evidence if they feed a need. The ability to see complementary or contrasting colors (redness vs green) allows us to discriminate a predator from the vegetation. Example : wetness is not an objective observation, but subjective qualia. Is that walking surface slippery? :smile:

the majority of philosophical problems are based on linguistic confusion. — Wolfgang

Animals without language, also lack a philosophical ability to ask why? So, they seldom confuse What Is with What Ought to Be. :smile:

This evolutionary perspective shows that consciousness is essentially an adaptive function for optimizing survivability. — Wolfgang

The human ability to predict the future state of a physical system is the core of both Science and Philosophy. The difference is that Science uses that information for practical (material) purposes, while Philosophy uses that premonition for psychological reasons (feelings & meanings). :smile:

I haven't read Spinoza, I've just watch some videos and read a few lines about his work and this is what I understand.

1. In his view, every element possesses an infinite of attributes, including consciousness. So every atom that you contain is somehow alive. “all [individual things], though in different
degrees, are...animated”1 https://willamette.edu/arts-sciences/philosophy/past-colloquia/nwpc-2010/roelofs.pdf
“the human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God; thus when we say, that the human mind perceives this or that, we are saying nothing but that God...in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind has, this or that idea.”2

On the other hand, he claims that there's no real separation, and that everything is a whole. So how come the whole isn't conscious? If all atoms inside me have the attribute of consciousness and they form a greater conscious being (me), why stop here? You're saying that all people in a country are conscious, but the country isn't. Why not? If smaller conscious attributes somehow form a larger consciousness, why larger consciousnesses cannot form another larger one and so on to infinity?
Moreover, I don't see how Spinoza can avoid the either the combination problem or the hard problem, even if he manages to change a little bit the terms. How come smaller conscious attributes come together and form a bigger one? How come a non-conscious entity can cause consciousness?

If you want a historical angle on it, I think in context the big problems he's speaking about are the mind body problem, God's relationship to substance, God's freedom, good and evil, and whether God's an agent - in historical/political context I think he's as much a radical Jewish theologian and political activist as a metaphysician. — fdrake

That's truly hard to bite. So stabbing your toe could be considered a thought causing another thought, namely ''Damn this needle''. I simply cannot see how this works.

There's just no way to use a brain to look at a brain and say, "This is what brains are like, according to my brains, and my brains must be right."

I fancy myself a hard Mysterian: this problem cannot be practically solved.

With greater perspective could come a more common sensical assumption. But we don't know, at this juncture, where we are or what we're made of. We see the Earth as still and it's hurtling through space. We see hard matter and liken it to something called "the physical" and at the same time know it's all in flux.

It isn't saying anything to say that the mind is physical anyway, because we don't know what the physical is.

The best we can do is tinker with it and exploit its resources and capabilities. We cannot, ever, in my view, precisely dictate what it is. Is everything mundane or completely abstract? There's just no way of dictating this.

So do you think it's plausible to argue that all organism are intelligent, at least in some basic or fundamental respect? — Wayfarer

My argument would be that all life and mind is semiotic. And so that means they have pragmatic intelligence. As levels of encoding, they can learn - in Darwinian fashion - to live and persist in their material worlds.

And that, therefore, the emergence of living organisms is also the manifestation of intelligence - not the work of an 'intelligent designer', but an incipient tendency towards conscious existence that might plausibly begin to flourish wherever the conditions were suitable. — Wayfarer

Well now you edge into language that smuggles in "consciousness" as its ultimate destination. And consciousness is a technical term employed by Cartesian representationlism. It presumes that the ultimate evolutionary goal might be the kind of rationalising philosopher who sits in an armchair in a darkened room just passively contemplating the facts of reality. Or perhaps more in your case, a guru passively engaged with nothingness in a tropical glade. :razz:

But if you stop short of that - if you retain the stress on pragmatic action, and avoid crossing over into a passive, sensory and static conception of consciousness - then you can see a natural arc of progression.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs, no less.

'What is latent', my Hindu philosophy lecturer used to say, 'becomes patent'. — Wayfarer

For sure. I do take a Hegelian dialectical view that evolution involves historical progress. We are ascending towards some antithetical bounding limit that is a triumph over unruly disorder and the arrival at Platonic/Hegelian/Peircean perfection of some kind.

But then I also stress that this "perfection" is of the pragmatic kind. Which is the unromantic conclusion that would make the happy holist upset.

So as I have said often enough, modern humans climbed the semiotic ladder. Our world encoding machinery has become increasingly abstracted from the world it would regulate. We have genes and neurons. But we have added further semiotic machinery in the form of words and numbers.

Language organises our social worlds and gives us the habit of self-addressed speech as well. We gain self-awareness, freewill, higher emotions, recollective memories, prospective imaginations. All those good things that led us to take over the planet and start bending it to our collective desires.

Then along comes maths and the power to apply its completely abstracted view of reality in terms of technology - machines and computers.

But look at what we actually do with all this semiotic prowess. In the end, we just obey the thermodynamic imperative to entropify. We don't do anything smarter that a bacterium filling up a petrie dish and choking itself in its own material waste, starving itself to death with its own depletion of the environment's limited resources.

There is no "enlightenment" that will be made patent at the end of this evolutionary journey.

Or if there is some further step that comes after the current epoch, it will have to be one that continues the same old entropic game to its next pragmatic level. And sure, I can sketch what that means in practice. It is the obvious stuff - like realising we need to invest in recycling and renewables as a properly organised living structure is all about being "closed for material causality".

The paradox is the one I describe - the need to both entropify (that is, waste energy to heat), and yet to keep the materials that do the job locked into the system that does the entropifying.

You can't drive a car far, no matter how much fuel is available, if everything is dropping off, or dripping out, as you fly along the highway. It has to hold together to be the combustion-propelled structure that is.

This Logos is at the same time a force and a law, an irresistible force which bears along the entire world and all creatures to a common end, an inevitable and holy law from which nothing can withdraw itself, and which every reasonable man should follow willingly.

Yep. This is fine as antique metaphysics. Logos and flux, order and disorder, laws and initial conditions, constraints and degrees of freedom. All ways of talking about cosmic existence as evolutionary persistence.

But what if the logos is the second law of thermodynamics?

Well it is. But maybe humans just aren't intellectually equipped to complete the technological revolution they started. Maybe burning the free lunch of a billion years of accumulated fossil carbon in a 300 year belch was a little short-sighted. And things like ecology are "just too complicated" for humanity in general to understand - in the necessary gut-felt and immediate way that would involve reversing back down Maslow's hierachy of needs. :meh:

You've got to laugh.

There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject

I see that kind of perspective as part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Sorry to be hard, but hippie idealism failed for good and obvious reasons. Humanity has maths and so it builds machines. The failure of society to take a unified view of that - one that couples the subjective and objective view of reality in a pragmatic, long range, fashion - is where it all starts to go wrong.

We now run society as a machine - both a physical and intellectual one. There are transport systems and economic systems. The world that good engineering understands. Then there is the big divide that is all our culture, entertainment, consumption, social game playing.

We don't just encourage a dualistic "two worlds" approach to life, we fiercely demand it as the way humans can live with all the comforts of technology, and none of its responsibilities.

That leads to the completely predictable reckoning.

We should be busy coupling the two sides of the equation. Again, the simple and obvious stuff. Just bring in the carbon tax already. Connect consumerism and population growth to its environmental consequences. Etc.

But things are rolling too far and too fast. Smart folk will already be factoring in generalised collapse into their future models.

So if you want the complete Hegelian arc of biosemiosis, this is my summary.

History has always worked this way. The invention of photosynthesis nearly killed all life on earth because free oxygen is a deadly toxin, while using up all the CO2 turned the planet into a global snowball.

Photosynthesis might at first seem a miracle source of free energy - just point your leaves at the sun and flourish. But only 1% of life - bacteria eking out an existence in the small pools of meltwater that lingered in the ice-over tropics - survived this catastrophic innovation.

Life had to complete the job and evolve the inverse of photosynthesis, which is oxygen consuming and CO2 excreting respiration. After a few hundred million years things began to recover with that.

The Gaian material cycle was closed once more. One organism's waste was another organism's food. By complementing each other this way, a new global metabolic economy could be established - one with much more evolutionary complexity because the whole biotic game had been shifted up a gear to be driven by the "boundless" renewable energy of the Sun.

So biosemiosis is indeed a theory of everything when it comes to life and mind on Earth. The latent will be made patent.

Imagine if we did crack fusion. And the world hasn't collapsed into generalise chaos before we do. What kind of social beings would we have to be to flourish in that kind of world - where AI will also be as real as it is going to get?

How do we invent the culture, the politics, the mores, the institutions, that might intersect a future that is a step beyond the fast-failing now?

My argument is that the only framework is the one nature has always known. One way or the other, nature will fix things its way.

It will be quite hard for us to actually kill the planet. What's another half billion years for the re-emergence of something more complex than a world of cockroaches and weeds? The Sun won't burn out until another 7 billion years after that.

Yep. You got to laugh. :cry:

The problem of consciousness is hard because we have no explanation of how we can be consciousness.

There is no causal explanation. (There is also no agreed upon definition of consciousness)

Also physical explanations are ruled out because mind or the mental are defined against the physical.

Pointing out which brain regions activate when I am seeing red does tell us anything about the colour nor do the light/EM wavelengths. Knut Nordby an achromatic colour scientist who learnt a lot about the physiology and psychology of colour vision but never experienced the colour red or anything beyond achromaticism.

All this is heavily discussed in the philosophy of mind and to some extent in neuro science.

Isn't it just lumpen materialism? You still haven't allowed for intentionality other than as a byproduct or epiphenomenon of these essentially unintentional relations. — Wayfarer

Intentionality? That seems like an easy problem, not the hard one: a machine following a goal. For example a self-driving car is "intending" to get to a destination (without running over pedestrians). Or a killer robot is "intending" to kill someone.

I think the correct term for...

*more like a family resemblance of neuronal happenings, there's no one-to-one correspondence. — Isaac

...is Anomalous Monism. @Banno taught me the term, so will kindly correct me if I'm wrong.

'Experience' is a word we use to describe a set of happenings we learn through our culture belong to that word. Because our culture is embedded in a real world which science studies, there'll be some overlap with the objects of science (neurons in this case), but the overlap isn't necessarily direct because the concept 'experience' is constrained by the world science studies, it's not defined by it.

By the same token, there's no proper one-to-one causal relationship because 'experience' is just a word we have, used in a variety of social contexts. It doesn't necessarily describe any object of science, nor is the fact that there's no direct causal link surprising or 'a problem' (hard or not). We simply wouldn't expect there to be.

Let's take a few examples. Take a dog for instance, most of the time, they don't pass the "mirror test" of self-awareness, which implies (but does not prove) that they either lack a distinct sense of identity, or the identity they have, is rather different than ours.

Or take the example of the mantis shrimp, they have 16 light cones, as opposed to our three. This suggests they see many, many more colours than what we could even imagine. And it's hard to attribute to them, say, the same capacity of multiplicity we have. Whereas we take a tree to be one object, a mantis shrimp, lacking concepts (most likely), might see several objects.

The point is not so much that math isn't human based, it's that it attaches itself to the universe, in a way language does not - the words we use are arbitrary, the numbers we use, though we can change the symbol 3 to "III", give us the same answer.

And we don't even need to apply numbers to the universe, we can use them "by themselves" to solve a problem internal to math.

The biggest issue is, where are the numbers? And why do they work so well in physics?

I mean since scientific observations are publicly available whereas consciousness is not publicly observable it's hard to see how it could work. — Janus

There is no basic problem here. All that is required is good honest observations, and this is fundamental to science anyway. So, in the same way that a person copies another person's scientific procedures to verify the honesty of the reported observations, we can verify another person's internal observations by making our own in a similar way.

The issue is not that internal observations of consciousness are fundamentally unscientific, the issue is that the scientific community has been mostly disinterested in internal observations. So these forms of science are pushed to the fringes. The scientists are motivated to produce more and more creature comforts into higher and higher levels of luxury, because that's where the money is. There is no money in learning about the true internal nature of consciousness and the intellect so view scientists will work on these observations.

I mean since scientific observations are publicly available whereas consciousness is not publicly observable it's hard to see how it could work. — Janus


There is no basic problem here. All that is required is good honest observations, and this is fundamental to science anyway. — Metaphysician Undercover

The difference between "good honest observations" of subjective experience and scienitifc observation of the external world is that the latter can be checked and corroborated, while the former cannot. How could I know your observations of your own experience are "good and honest"? That would involve a leap of faith. How can I know that even my own introspection is accurate? What could it be accurate in relation to? Accuracy is an inter-subjective idea. A similar issue arises for empirical observations when attempts are made to render them absolute.

It seems to me that if consciousness wasn't publicly observable, then what in the world would it mean to say that someone is conscious? You seem to imply that consciousness is only that which I alone can access. It would have to be at the very least both private and public. The public part being that which allows us to access the concepts and ideas associated with what's happening to us privately. — Sam26

The behaviors we associate with being conscious are of course public, no argument there. On the other hand, only I know what I am conscious of at any time, unless I tell others. But then they have no way of knowing whether I am being honest.

Of course, since we all privately experience being conscious, talk about being conscious is manifest publicly. I'm also not denying that there is scientific investigation of consciousness in terms of brain imaging to find out what parts of the brain are active when people are asleep, eating chocolate, viewing various kinds of images, or what people report when certain areas of the brain are electrically stimulated, and so on. But none of that captures the subjective qualities of experience; they are private. cannot be adequately described and are perhaps unique to each of us in their living particularity.

So, I disagree with you when you say there are only the outward signs of being consciousness, which by implication suggests that there is not inner experience. You might know that in your own case, but how could you possibly know that in the case of others? And I'm here to tell you that my own experience says you are wrong about that. Of course, for you to believe me will be a leap of faith: I could be lying to you.

while the romantic mode is based on intuition and direct experience. — ChatGPT

In careful, technical conversation, it's hard to make sense of qualia. It's hard to even point out the logical difficultly to people, because our ordinary way of talking obscures the issue. This is the Motte and Bailey confusion as explored by Ryle. So people don't 'get' Wittgenstein's point. There is 'obviously' something like 'direct experience.' One says so and one agrees. Of course. But not of course. The problem of the meaning of such signs is overlooked. One has bills to pay, places to be, more visceral myths to elaborate, something juicier to chew on.

The problem of consciousness is so hard because not only is it an abstraction layer on top of a physical brain but also because we are creatures that experience emotion and behave unexpectedly rather than mechanically.

The reason why it can’t be explained is because consciousness could be the divine spark manifesting its creator in human form or it could even be a soul but that’s unscientific.

The mind is not the brain.

I see philosophy as primarily concerned with the problems of meaning - and that in an existential, rather than a semantic, sense. Philosophy attempts to grapple with the perennial problem of 'what it means to be', and it's not an academic concern, as we are, in fact, beings. This is why I think Chalmer's paper is important - it is grappling with the problem of what it is like to be. It's pointing out that no matter how much we know about objective facts-of-the-matter, the problems of being are at once urgent and pressing, and somehow intractable to objective solution.

One thing I am dropping from my view is that reality - in whatever way you want to metaphysically theorize about it - is not like a set of objects that just permanently exist at one scale and can be arranged in different ways like marbles in a box.

Theoretical physics, from what I have read, seems to characterize particles and forces at the most fundamental level in terms of symmetries and invariances that possibly emerge and dissolve depending on the situation (maybe a good example in physics is that it is thought that during the development of the universe you had symmetry breaking where new forces, particles and even mass emerged where they did not exist before).

So maybe symmetries / invariances are fundamental. — Apustimelogist

Totally with you on that - I think that is an insight that is coming through a number of different people. But don't loose sight of the role which the mind plays in establishing relationships - by identifying them, by seeing how this relates to that in ways that would never be otherwise perceptible.

Is Consciousness purely a physical or metaphysical phenomenon, or a function of both Mind and Matter? — Gnomon

Recall that in Vedanta, consciousness (citta) is never a 'that'. It is never an object, or for that matter a phenomenon. The phenomenon is 'that which appears'; consciousness is 'to whom it appears'.

Seems hard for me to rule out that there could be a mapping between experiences and all possible forms of information. — Apustimelogist

I was surprised to see this side-topic dialog still going-on, and even jumping from Evolution to Consciousness forums. Your original formulation --- "information is what it is like to be information" --- sounded odd to me at first. But I eventually came to see more-or-less what you were aiming at*1. The difficulty here may stem from the many Specific forms of Generic Information. Another hurdle may be that you are approaching the Information/Consciousness equation from a different background (technical vs philosophical) from & myself.

Here's a technical Neuroscience article on the topic of how Information is related to Qualia*2. It's over my head, but you may be better able to follow the argument. In my thesis, I refer to Information as a shapeshifter. For example : Generic Information (relationships, connections, associations, patterns) Information as physical Energy (hot/cold proportions) ; Information as material Structure (brain tissue organization) ; information as abstract Data (mathematical-statistical correlations) ; Information as Qualia (subjective experience or feeling) ; Information as Knowledge (personal meaning). In my own thesis, the "direct mechanism" is metaphysical instead of physical. I'd be interested to know if you are proposing another "shape" of Generic Information. :smile:



*1. Information (subjective experience) is what it's like (experience or feeling) to be information (knowledge). Please correct me, If I missed your intention. There are several possible ways to interpret the original phrase.

*2. Information and the Origin of Qualia :
This article argues that qualia are a likely outcome of the processing of information in local cortical networks. It uses an information-based approach and makes a distinction between information structures (the physical embodiment of information in the brain, primarily patterns of action potentials), and information messages (the meaning of those structures to the brain, and the basis of qualia). . . .
The really challenging problem in consciousness studies is to find an answer to the question of the origin of subjective experience itself. . . .
There have been some attempts to explore the origin of phenomenal experience. . . .
However, there is no theoretical account that shows a direct mechanism whereby certain neural activities should lead to a phenomenal outcome. This article is one attempt to link the purely physical with the phenomenal, and it builds on a previous article on the topic
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2017.00022/full

Having the experience of consciousness, i.e. being aware, does not necessary involve meaningful mental images, or even mental images (i.e. thinking) at all. — Alkis Piskas

Perhaps, but I was thinking in terms of Blindsight*1, in which the physical senses seem to "Perceive" things in the world without forming conscious Concepts : sensing without knowing. Also, in the Vegetative State*2 a person processes sensory inputs (percepts ; data) but show no signs of conscious (concepts ; memory) awareness. For example, a Mimosa leaf will reflexively respond to a "perceived touch", by physically contracting the leaf, but presumably without forming any verbalizable concept, such as "something touched me". Ironically, some people "like" to think that Jade plants, Aloe, and Peace Lilies conceptually "like" to be touched (anthropomorphism?).

The vocabulary problem here is that our functionally materialistic language --- based on sensory impressions --- typically uses Perception & Conception interchangeably, without making the philosophical distinction that is important to distinguish Mind from Brain, as different concepts. Hence, in my dialogs with Physicalist/Materialists, who deny the metaphysical ideality of an immaterial Mind, I often make the distinction between personal Concepts and abstract Percepts. But it usually falls on deaf ears : that perceive, but do not conceive. :grin:

PS___ I found this definition on Quora, that seems pertinent to this discussion :
Conceive “ to form a mental representation of” involves an internal process of thinking that produces a new result.
Hence, Conception adds some personal meaning to the physical sensations of Perception. That's because they may include emotional or poetic affects, in addition to factual or prosaic data, Concepts are more likely to be remembered, due to their Self-interest. :blush:

*1. Blindsight :
the ability to respond to visual stimuli without consciously perceiving them. This condition can occur after certain types of brain damage.
___Oxford dictionary

*2. Vegetative State of living person :
A vegetative state is when a person is awake but is showing no signs of awareness. A person in a vegetative state may: open their eyes. wake up and fall asleep at regular intervals. have basic reflexes (such as blinking when they're startled by a loud noise or withdrawing their hand when it's squeezed hard)
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/disorders-of-consciousness/#:~:text=A%20vegetative%20state%20is%20when,hand%20when%20it%27s%20squeezed%20hard)

I think that the terms "sentient" and "sentience" is misconceived by many here from what I could gather from this and other discussions (topics) — Alkis Piskas

(the following applies to the remainder of that section of your post too).
That's fair. I guess I would stipulate the difference I outlined previously for two reason:
1. That seems to be what most philosophers of mind take to be the difference between the two; and
2. It makes it much easier to talk about awareness over consciousness (or, as a higher level of it).

So, in with your definitions in place it would be very hard to see how a fruitful conversation about hte difference between a human and plant viz. what type of perception constitutes whatever we want to call the 'human' level of consciousness vs a lower, plant-like level. I think sentience, as used to enumerate an actual rather than speculative self-awareness (something i really don't think a plant has) solves what would have been a linguistic problem.

Regarding the related link you gave to the Plant-Consciousness essay - I can't say much about it. It's not referenced, seems to make some pretty wild leaps:

"A bean plant, being fed upon by a spider mite, can
analyze from its saliva just what type of spider mite is feeding on it. It then will craft a specific
pheromone, releasing it from its leaf stomata as a volatile chemical into the air. That pheromone
will call to the plant the exact predator that feeds on that particular spider mite"

these appears to be inventions of hte author - we have no reason to think this isn't a mechanistic process the same way many of our autonomic processes occur. There's clearly no 'thought' in it. So, the contention isn't supported by the article itself. We also get sections like this:

"Depth analysis of plant consciousness since the turn of the (new) millennium is finding that their
brain capacity is much larger than previously supposed, that their neural systems are highly
developed—in many instances as much as that of humans, and that they make and
utilize neurotransmitters identical to our own."

These are almost all demonstrably untrue claims. Plants do not have brains, as a start point.

But certainly they must have a certain kind of sense, i.e. they must feel something, othersise they coulnd't perceive — Alkis Piskas

I don't think this is the case. I think because of your broad use of 'sentient' you're importing a necessity that isn't present. A plant need not be 'aware' for it to mechanistically react to stimuli. If it could, in fact, choose how to react, then we get some infernce of analysis whcih would require some debate around feeling. I don't quite think the current explications can allow for that inference. I would also note that VFT do not know whether it's a fly. They also snap at fingers, large dust, small rocks etc.. etc.. It seems to be a triggering event, not a perception-driven event.

I see that you took the VFT proposed experiment seriously! :grin:
Well, a appreciate a lot a fruitful imagination like yours! — Alkis Piskas

Heh, that's definitely going to be my schtick until I'm a graduate student LOL.

So, I believe we can safely take this element out of the equation. — Alkis Piskas

Fair, and I agree. I suppose here, we're leaning toward that cognition isn't involved, so feeling can't follow. Unsure if that was your intention with this though!

I don't think, either! :smile: — Alkis Piskas

As above. I think this is nearly a fatal flaw in the theory that a VFT is sentient. But again, with your defintions in place, nothing we've discussed would lean one way or the other!! I just prefer the definitions i've used as they make a fairly good, albeit imprecise, heuristic for judging the mental faculties or one or other being.

And what are the implications, other than that the hard problem doesn't exist? — Echarmion

That's the point of the debate. If there's no hard problem, then it's just a matter of the easier problems amenable to neuroscience and psychology. Easier as in they don't cause a metaphysical or epistemological issue.

The only thing I'm struggling with is to find out if spinozism can still work if the hard problem were true and materialism false. — Eugen

Yes. "Materialism" (re: natura naturata, or modes) is not ultimately real (re: natura naturans, or substance) in spinozism and, therefore, it's false to claim so. Also, in spinozism, "consciousness" does not emerge from "unconscious matter" so there's no "hard problem" (just as there's no "mind-body problem").

So the hard problem comes down to subtracting something at the beginning and being surprised by its addition. — Valentinus

Elaborate. I'm not following this ...



I don't believe it can be made plainer than this:

"Materialism (re: natura naturata, or modes) is not ultimately real (re: natura naturans, or substance) in spinozism and, therefore, it's false to claim so. Also, in spinozism, "consciousness" does not emerge from "unconscious matter" so there's no "hard problem" (just as there's no "mind-body problem"). — 180 Proof

And substance aka "God" is not an entity – not a "person" – but a process, as S says: nature naturing.

The reason I say you are a dualist is because you hold experiences are a different type of reality, such that they cannot be affected, explained, related to or accounted for by other things that exist. — TheWillowOfDarkness

If by reality you mean matter, then yes, I don't believe consciousness can be described with that. That's the hard problem. I could be a dualist, but who knows, maybe I'm an idealist and I don't believe in matter at all.
''We know'' materialism is false because of the hard problem and panpsychism is also very problematic. But I'm open-minded to other ideas, this is why I want to understand spinozism better. The problem is that it seems to be highly interpretable and so far I think it is not a serious view in regards to the mind. But who knows... maybe I'll get more information.

Nobody knows what Spinoza would have said the the "hard" problem. I don't think it's a hard problem to begin with. Why shouldn't concsciousness come from non-consciousness? Could you please write a paragraph explaining it's onto-logically impossible for consciousness to come from matter which has formed into a brain? New things arise. Red and blue make a brand new color (purple). What in the world is no difficult about consciousness coming from energy in the brain and spinal cord? I don't get it. People nowadays fixate on consciousness and ask "why this instead of nothing? What explains it". I don't think they will ever get an answer by fixating on it from that angle. Better to give up the problem and come at it from a different place latter in life

Have you ever read anything about that topic? Because it seems to me closely connected to the hard problem argument. — Wayfarer

If the conflict is closely related to a made up "hard problem" based on ''why'' questions, things don't look promising.
Can you define what Darwinian Naturalism means to you ,because I had problems in the past to agree on a definition.

How Can We Distinguish Perception from Cognition? — Gnomon
I have absolutely no problem with that. :smile: — Alkis Piskas

Shortly after our dialog in this thread, on the distinction between "Perception" & "Conception", I came across the Quora article linked below*1. The author takes an "enactivist approach" to such contentious questions. I was not previously aware of that particular philosophy of Consciousness, but it may agree with my thesis in principle, if not in detail. Enactivism seems to be an attempt to bypass the implicit Dualism of the notion that they are two incompatible entities, as in Brain/Mind and Body/Soul or Oil & Water doctrines, while avoiding the implication problems of Panpsychism.

Enformationism is monistic, but in a different sense. It says that physical Perception and mental (metaphysical) Conception are merely different forms of the same universal substance/essence : Generic Information (power to enform ; programmed causation/energy). The Quora article doesn't mention Holism specifically, but that is how I unify two apparently isolated things, that are integral parts of the same system.

If you are not inclined to click on an external reference, stay tuned. As I become more familiar with Enactivism*2, I may eventually offer my personal opinion on the notion that Perception and Conception are merely two phases of the same thing, that we know via different channels : a> neural senses or b> sixth sense of Reason/Inference. For now, all I can say is that I agree with the monistic conclusion. :smile:



*1. What is the difference between conception & perception? :
The question is essentially dualistic, that is, it implies the two are implicitly divided, are different; a case of body and mind dualistic reductionism.
www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-conception-perception/answer/Geoff-Lawson-4
Note --- The author seems to dismiss the traditional dualism as a linguistic quirk. But I think our common languages may reflect important philosophical discriminations made over the years by important thinkers.

*2. Enactivism rejects mainstream conceptions of mind that strongly demarcate minds from bodies and environments. It holds that such conceptions are not justified and should be rethought. Enactivism aims to eradicate misleading dualisms that continue to dominate analytic philosophy of mind and much cognitive science. It aims to dissolve the mind-body problem by asking us to abandon our attachment to traditional dichotomies and to come to see that minds are not ultimately separate from bodies, environments, or others.
https://iep.utm.edu/enactivism/

Part of my investigation into the philosophy of science started with my investigation into the philosophy of mind, specifically my attempts to define thought. I arrived at the hypothetical conclusion that if reductionism and determinism are true, thought could be defined as the action of carrying out instructions. Basically identical to the function of a CPU if I understand correctly. That drove me deep into the hard problem of consciousness, the concept of certainty, and the concept of "good science". If this is the case we could bypass the attempts to locate "consciousness" and focus directly on modifying behavior from a neuronal point of view. But the core of that idea is essentially panpsychism. The notion that thought is possible on an atomic level. I think it is possible that thought is a dimension (for lack of a better word) of matter. Attempting to test that though would be the same as trying to solve the hard problem of consciousness. Frankly though, all of that could be bullshit, all I know is I am officially confused.

Do you always write pure rubbish, or can you cite scientific research which establishes this fact? How were you made aware that the hard problem had been solved? — Galuchat

If you can explicate why this is "pure rubbish" then you may just answer the OP' concern. While I never stated that the hard problem of consciousness is solved, do I really need to explain what property dualism is?

Do you always write pure rubbish, or can you cite scientific research which establishes this fact? How were you made aware that the hard problem had been solved? — Galuchat

There is a vast body of scientific research that establishes the fact that consciousness is a feature of the functioning brain. It is even possible to instantiate, through injury or surgery, more than one consciousness on a single brain, with different personalities, preferences and goals.

As for the hard problem, it has been solved in principle for about 30 years. Consciousness is a software feature.