Philosophy Discussion Forums

Consul wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 9:08 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 3:17 pmI'm not looking for complete success but there really is Zero progress with understanding Conscious Experience. There has been Huge progress with regard to the Neural Correlates of Conscious Experience. That should not be confused with progress with regard to Conscious Experience.

The Scientific and Physicalist view is that Consciousness is somehow located in the Neurons or is an Emergent Property of Neural Activity. It is a reasonable assumption given that Conscious Activity is Correlated with Neural Activity. But Science has no Theory, Hypothesis, or even a Speculation about how Consciousness could be in the Neurons or an Emergent Property. Science has not been able to show for example, how something like the Experience of Redness is some kind of effect of Neural Activity. In fact, the more you think about the Redness Experience and then think about Neural Activity, the less likely it seems that the Redness Experience is actually some sort of Neural Activity. Science has tried in vain for a hundred years to figure this out. If the Experience of Redness actually was in the Neurons, Science would have had a lot to say about it by now. Something has got to be wrong with their perspective on the problem.

The Inter Mind Model (IMM) can accommodate Consciousness as being in the Neurons or an Emergent Property, but it can also accommodate other concepts of Consciousness. The IMM is structurally a Connection Model, in the sense that the Physical Mind (PM) is connected to the Inter Mind (IM) which is connected to the Conscious Mind (CM). These Connections might be conceptual where all three Minds are actually in the Neurons or an Emergent Property. But these Connections might have more reality to them where the PM, the IM, and the CM are separate things. I will Speculate that the situation is more like the latter than the former. In that case the PM, which is in Physical Space (PSp), uses the IM to create a Connection to the CM, which is in Conscious Space (CSp). The important perspective change here is that the PM is Connected to the CM, rather than assuming that the PM contains the CM as part of the PM. This allows the CM to be a thing in itself existing in it’s own CSp.………

I'm not sure I understand you correctly, but you seem to have replaced interactionistic substance dualism with an interactionistic (connectionistic) substance trialism—which reminds me of the following:

"Ipse autem Deus pacis sanctificet vos per omnia et integer spiritus vester et anima et corpus sine querella in adventu Domini nostri Iesu Christi servetur."
—
"And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
—Bible, New Testament (1 Thessalonians 5:23)

Here we have an additional distinction between spirit (spiritus) and soul (anima), which happens to be pretty obscure.

While googling around, I came upon this paper, in which someone postulates a "submind":

* Njikeh, Kong Derick. "Mind, Submind and Body Substances/Components." International Journal of Philosophy 7/1 (2019): 17–19.
[Free PDF]

"Introduction: In Christian theology, trialism is the doctrine that human is made up of three components which are the Spirit, the Soul and the Body. Trialism was introduced in philosophy by John Cottingham as an alternative interpretation of the Cartesian dualism (mind-body dualism) of Rene Descartes, which states that human is made up of two substances; the Mind and Body which are distinct and separable with the Mind being a non-physical substance which holds consciousness. In Cartesian Trialism by Cottingham, he kept the two substances in cartesian dualism and introduce a third substance or attribute called Sensation which belongs to the union of the Mind and Body. Going in line with the three attribute (Mind, Sensation, Body) nature of human by Cottingham, I think that the third substance (Sensation), is limited in explaining the processes that takes place between the Mind and the Body. This is because Sensation is based mostly in the perception of the senses and doesn’t take into consideration the sub-thinking processes involving memories, emotions and reflexes. I think that the substance “Sensation”, in Cartesian trialism should be replaced with the term “Submind” in what I called “Derician Trialism” which involves; the Mind, Submind and Body. This Submind is equivalent to the soul component in Christian trialism and the subconscious state in neuroscience."

I don't know if Njikeh's ideas correspond to yours (Is your "intermind" a "submind"?); but the alleged connections or interactions between Descartes' two substances are very mysterious already, so ones between three (basic kinds of) substances are even more mysterious.

You've complained that the neuroscience of consciousness is a failure; but I fail to see how your ontologically abstruse tripartite model can explain the origin and nature of conscious experiences, which you put into a nonphysical "conscious mind" (located in a nonphysical "conscious space") that is directly connected to a nonphysical(?) subconscious(?) "intermind", and indirectly (via intermind) to a "physical mind" (= brain).

Well, cognitive psychology/cognitive science (with its nonphenomenological terminology featuring the central concepts of function, information, and representation) operates basically on a theoretical level below the phenomenological one and above the neurophysiological one: conscious mind — subconscious cognitive mind — brain.

But most cognitive scientists aren't substance dualists (let alone trialists), because they regard neither the conscious mind nor the subconscious cognitive mind as an immaterial substance existing in addition to the brain or body as a material substance. They think a realistic cognitive science must be developed into a cognitive neuroscience, with all subconscious cognitive (intellectual) capacities and activities being implemented by neurophysical processes and structures.

No religion Please. The Inter Mind is a completely Logical hypothesis driven by the the Gulf of understanding we have between Neural Activity and Conscious Experience. The Inter Mind is a missing Processing stage between the Physical Mind and the Conscious Mind.

I always say nobody has an Explanation for Conscious Experience.

Oops re at least one typo I caught in the above:
"we need to tackle just WHY are proposed criteria should be the criteria"
should have been
"we need to tackle just WHY our proposed criteria should be the criteria."

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 8:58 amIt is a completely arbitrary assumption to just assume that Conscious Experiences are material stuff.

You may call it an assumption, but it's definitely not "completely arbitrary"—especially not in the light of our scientific knowledge of the world!

"The impetus behind [physicalism] is the conviction that there is nothing 'spooky' about the mind, the conviction that we minded creatures are highly complex but physically explicable parts of our world."

(Jackson, Frank. "A Priori Physicalism." In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind, edited by Brian P. McLaughlin and Jonathan D. Cohen, 185-199. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. p. 186)

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 8:58 amThe Experience of something like Redness is always going to be a Huge Problem for these Materialist propositions.

Well, as the saying goes: Predictions are difficult to make, especially when they concern the future.

Anyway, as I already said, the hard problem is a problem for everybody, including the antimaterialists!

Can substance dualists or spiritualist substance monists answer the following questions?

– Generic Consciousness: How might nonphysical properties of immaterial souls explain when a state is conscious rather than not?
– Specific Consciousness: How might nonphysical properties of immaterial souls explain what the content of a conscious state is?

(Questions rephrased and borrowed from: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cons ... roscience/)

"The hard-problem view has a pinch of defeatism in it. I suspect that for some people it also has a pinch of religiosity. It is a keep-your-scientific-hands-off-my-mystery perspective. One conceptual difficulty with the hard-problem view is that it argues against any explanation of consciousness without knowing what explanations might arise. It is difficult to make a cogent argument against the unknown. Perhaps an explanation exists such that, once we see what it is, once we understand it, we will find that it makes sense and accounts for consciousness."

(Graziano, Michael S. Consciousness and the Social Brain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. p. 7)

Even if mysterianism is true, and homo sapiens is intellectually incapable of solving the hard problem, materialism is still preferable to its ontological rivals.

QUOTE>
"Finally, there’s mysterianism, which is associated with the philosopher Colin McGinn. Mysterianism is the idea that there may exist a complete physical explanation of consciousness – a full solution to Chalmers’ hard problem – but that we humans just aren’t clever enough, and never will be clever enough, to discover this solution, or even to recognise a solution if it were presented to us by super-smart aliens. A physical understanding of consciousness exists, but it lies as far beyond us as an understanding of cryptocurrency lies beyond frogs. It is cognitively closed to us by our species-specific mental limitations.

What can be said about mysterianism? There may well be things we will never understand, thanks to the limitations of our brains and minds. Already, no single person is able to fully comprehend how an Airbus A380 works. (And yet I’m happy to sit in one, as I did one time on the way home from Dubai.) There are certainly things which remain cognitively inaccessible to most of us, even if they are understandable by humans in principle, like the finer points of string theory in physics. Since brains are physical systems with finite resources, and since some brains seem incapable of understanding some things, it seems inescapable that there must be some things which are the case, but which no human could ever understand. However, it is unjustifiably pessimistic to pre-emptively include consciousness within this uncharted domain of species-specific ignorance.

One of the more beautiful things about the scientific method is that it is cumulative and incremental. Today, many of us can understand things that would have seemed entirely incomprehensible even in principle to our ancestors, maybe even to scientists and philosophers working just a few decades ago. Over time, mystery after mystery has yielded to the systematic application of reason and experiment. If we take mysterianism as a serious option we might as well all give up and go home. So, let’s not."

(Seth, Anil. Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. New York: Dutton, 2021. pp. 21-2)
<QUOTE

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 9:53 pm SteveKlinko wrote:

Next, I would like to talk about Panpsychism with respect to Conscious Experience. This seems to be a popular theory, or really just a speculation, that there is some sort of Consciousness aspect in everything. So Electrons, Protons, Neutrons, etc. have a tiny aspect of Consciousness. This is basically a Physicalist proposition because the theory stipulates Consciousness is in all matter even down to the level of elementary particles. The hope with this speculation is that when Electrons combine with Protons and other elementary particles, that the Atoms and Molecules will have some combined greater Consciousness. Finally, at the level of a massive object like a Brain, all the combined micro Consciousnesses will somehow combine to give us the Conscious Experiences that we have. There is no Logic or even a Clue as to how these micro Consciousnesses can combine into a larger Consciousness that has Conscious Experiences. So the biggest problem with this theory is that it always talks about some ambiguous vague generalized Consciousness Thing. It can never get to an Explanation for any actual Conscious Experience. There is no way this theory can Explain what the IM is within the theory. How does this theory Explain any Conscious Experience?

You are a philosopher capable asserting many good points worthy of debate;

But in philosophy many conceptualizations of concepts of concepts, such as 'Consciousness' are 'rabbit holes' - they branch in many,
if not infinite directions with no absolute definition or full understanding even possible - Unless you can simplify to the lowest common
denominator.
Such as this simplification by the famous Quantum Physicist Max Planck:

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
― Max Planck

Another words no ideas or concepts are even possible unless an 'a priori' state of consciousness exists.
Consciousness can not come out of non-consciousness, non-consciousness is non existent
unless you want to postulate a creator god - but even that concept must stem from consciousness.

Panpsychism goes back to ancient Greek philosophers - And I suppose some of the prejudice against it is because of how old
and basic it is. But if you don't accept the consciousness of everything you immediately step into the rabbit hole,
a rabbit hole that has no way out.

That said two final questions: Express to me one thing, idea, concept or mathematical formula that exists independently of a
conscious state of mind and Prove the existence of a Universe existing independently of conscious observation

I do use the word Consciousness, but I also prefer to be more specific. In fact I don't believe there really is some generalized Consciousness concept. I agree with you that there is only Conscious Experience. I will usually try to get people to think about the Conscious Experience of Redness, the Standard A Tone the Salty Taste, or whatever a particular group can deal with. Redness usually works good and it is my favorite target for discussion.

I have argued in other writings on Volition, Knowledge, Understanding, Creativity, Humor, and Emotions, that these aspects of the Human Mind are firmly based in the Conscious Mind (CM). The Physical Mind (PM) has no Volition, Knowledge, Understanding, Creativity, Humor, or Emotions. These all involve a CM as the place where these things happen. Also, we have previously realized that all Sensory Experience happens in the CM. Think about Redness, the Standard A Tone, the Taste of Salt, the Smell of Bleach, and the Touch of a Rough Surface.

Taking this one step further, it is Logical to Speculate that everything we are, and every thing we thought we were, is some kind of Conscious Experience. We might actually only Exist as CMs in Conscious Space, and are merely Connected to our PMs in Physical Space. There might be no Conscious aspect in the PM that is part of what we are. The PM would be an Unconscious, Electrochemical, Mechanistic, Tool that the CM uses.

The best argument for an independent External Universe might be that we know things can change in the External World, when clearly there is no Conscious Mind to Observe the changes. Now if you are trying suggest that the Universe is a Simulation then there would be no way to prove it was a Physical Universe instead of a Simulation. If you are suggesting a stronger case of "everything is Conscious Experience" than I have talked about then you are basically invoking that the Simulation is just some process of Consciousness. But there is still some sort of Simulation going on. So if the real Universe is as the Idealists believe, then there would be no way to know if the Universe was actually Physical or not.

Sy Borg wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 2:32 am I don't think we can attribute consciousness to elementary particles and the like. At that level of reality you have reactions. When you have multiple interconnected reactions, as are found in simple organisms, then you have reflexes. Organise enough of those reflexes in an interconnected way and you have consciousness.

An analogy would be building digital circuits. You start with gates - yes or no switches - and you put the gates together to form simple circuits. Those circuits are then put together to create applications, such as a timer. Note that the switches are not the same as the final application; a digital gate is not a timer, but when many gates are be organised in certain ways, then they can create a timer.

So I see reactivity is the key concept of our universe rather than consciousness, though each pertain the the interconnectivity of reality. Things in the universe may be more or less reactive. Or they may be more or less selective about that to which they react. Or they may be more or less flexible in reactions. Consciousness can thus be thought of a thin sliver of a reactivity spectrum in a similar way to visible light on the electromagnetic spectrum - a thin sliver of the most complex and ordered dynamics amidst mountains of non conscious dynamics that range from quantum mechanics to galactic collisions.

That's my guess in 2021, anyway

But take the Conscious Experience of Redness. What possible combination of material substances and interaction of substances including any kind of Neural Activity will Logically all of a sudden produce a Redness Experience in a Conscious Mind. It is not even Sensible to expect that any kind of Material combinations or Neural Activities can ever produce a Conscious Experience. This bottom up expectation for Conscious Experience is completely unfounded and there is Zero Scientific evidence for it. It is however as good a Speculation as anything. The Huge Explanatory Gap for it must be Explained.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 10:31 am As I've commented time and time again, the first thing that needs to be tackled is a "philosophy of explanations" in general. We can't critique whether something works as an explanation or not if we don't rigorously tackle a philosophy of explanations first.

We need to pin down just what the criteria for explanations are--it needs to be literally spelled out in at least a cluster property manner--and we need to tackle just WHY are proposed criteria should be the criteria. A "subsection" of this is going to have to tackle philosophy of meaning in a plausible way, because it's going to need to address how expressions have meaning and how that all manages to "link up" or not with other things. And all of this needs to be done in a way that in general, things that are intuitively accepted as explanations can meet the criteria and things that are intuitively considered unexplained do not meet the criteria.

And, if we're going to dismiss a scientific approach to explaining consciousness because the scientific approach doesn't meet our criteria for explanations, then to be consistent, we either need to present an alternative approach that DOES meet our criteria for explanations, or we need to reject that just as well. So, for example, there can be no seduction into nonphysical, mystical, religious, etc. approaches to consciousness if those approaches can't meet our criteria for explanations--at least not if we're going to reject a scientific or physicalist approach for that very reason.

But we can't even begin to discuss this until we do our philosophical work re explanations, because otherwise we can't figure out whether we have an explanation or not, because we don't know exactly what explanations are or why they're whatever they supposedly are.

I don't dismiss the Scientific approach, but rather I just observe that Science has made Zero progress Explaining Conscious Experiences.

My criteria for a good Explanation of Conscious Experience is when the Explanation is celebrated as the most important discovery of Human history. There will have to be Nobel Prizes involved. The Hard Problem must be solved as a result of this Explanation. If that Explanation is overturned someday then so be it. That's how Science works. No amount of up front Philosophizing about the meaning of Explanation will help.

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 1:15 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 10:31 am As I've commented time and time again, the first thing that needs to be tackled is a "philosophy of explanations" in general. We can't critique whether something works as an explanation or not if we don't rigorously tackle a philosophy of explanations first.

We need to pin down just what the criteria for explanations are--it needs to be literally spelled out in at least a cluster property manner--and we need to tackle just WHY are proposed criteria should be the criteria. A "subsection" of this is going to have to tackle philosophy of meaning in a plausible way, because it's going to need to address how expressions have meaning and how that all manages to "link up" or not with other things. And all of this needs to be done in a way that in general, things that are intuitively accepted as explanations can meet the criteria and things that are intuitively considered unexplained do not meet the criteria.

And, if we're going to dismiss a scientific approach to explaining consciousness because the scientific approach doesn't meet our criteria for explanations, then to be consistent, we either need to present an alternative approach that DOES meet our criteria for explanations, or we need to reject that just as well. So, for example, there can be no seduction into nonphysical, mystical, religious, etc. approaches to consciousness if those approaches can't meet our criteria for explanations--at least not if we're going to reject a scientific or physicalist approach for that very reason.

But we can't even begin to discuss this until we do our philosophical work re explanations, because otherwise we can't figure out whether we have an explanation or not, because we don't know exactly what explanations are or why they're whatever they supposedly are.

I don't dismiss the Scientific approach, but rather I just observe that Science has made Zero progress Explaining Conscious Experiences.

My criteria for a good Explanation of Conscious Experience is when the Explanation is celebrated as the most important discovery of Human history. There will have to be Nobel Prizes involved. The Hard Problem must be solved as a result of this Explanation. If that Explanation is overturned someday then so be it. That's how Science works. No amount of up front Philosophizing about the meaning of Explanation will help.

So again, we'd need a GENERAL philosophy of explanations as I outlined. If you consider something like bridge construction, say, to be explained, and the criteria for it being explained do not include Nobel prizes and the like, then we can't really consider Nobel prizes a criterion for explaining consciousness. The general philosophy of explanations needs to apply to anything and everything we consider explained; it needs to work as a demarcation criteria between "x is explained" and "y is unexplained" in general, for everything we could consider.

Re "science making zero progress explaining consciousness" what area or field has made non-zero progress in this?

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 12:53 pm

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 9:53 pm SteveKlinko wrote:

Next, I would like to talk about Panpsychism with respect to Conscious Experience. This seems to be a popular theory, or really just a speculation, that there is some sort of Consciousness aspect in everything. So Electrons, Protons, Neutrons, etc. have a tiny aspect of Consciousness. This is basically a Physicalist proposition because the theory stipulates Consciousness is in all matter even down to the level of elementary particles. The hope with this speculation is that when Electrons combine with Protons and other elementary particles, that the Atoms and Molecules will have some combined greater Consciousness. Finally, at the level of a massive object like a Brain, all the combined micro Consciousnesses will somehow combine to give us the Conscious Experiences that we have. There is no Logic or even a Clue as to how these micro Consciousnesses can combine into a larger Consciousness that has Conscious Experiences. So the biggest problem with this theory is that it always talks about some ambiguous vague generalized Consciousness Thing. It can never get to an Explanation for any actual Conscious Experience. There is no way this theory can Explain what the IM is within the theory. How does this theory Explain any Conscious Experience?

You are a philosopher capable asserting many good points worthy of debate;

But in philosophy many conceptualizations of concepts of concepts, such as 'Consciousness' are 'rabbit holes' - they branch in many,
if not infinite directions with no absolute definition or full understanding even possible - Unless you can simplify to the lowest common
denominator.
Such as this simplification by the famous Quantum Physicist Max Planck:

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
― Max Planck

Another words no ideas or concepts are even possible unless an 'a priori' state of consciousness exists.
Consciousness can not come out of non-consciousness, non-consciousness is non existent
unless you want to postulate a creator god - but even that concept must stem from consciousness.

Panpsychism goes back to ancient Greek philosophers - And I suppose some of the prejudice against it is because of how old
and basic it is. But if you don't accept the consciousness of everything you immediately step into the rabbit hole,
a rabbit hole that has no way out.

That said two final questions: Express to me one thing, idea, concept or mathematical formula that exists independently of a
conscious state of mind and Prove the existence of a Universe existing independently of conscious observation

I do use the word Consciousness, but I also prefer to be more specific. In fact I don't believe there really is some generalized Consciousness concept. I agree with you that there is only Conscious Experience. I will usually try to get people to think about the Conscious Experience of Redness, the Standard A Tone the Salty Taste, or whatever a particular group can deal with. Redness usually works good and it is my favorite target for discussion.

I have argued in other writings on Volition, Knowledge, Understanding, Creativity, Humor, and Emotions, that these aspects of the Human Mind are firmly based in the Conscious Mind (CM). The Physical Mind (PM) has no Volition, Knowledge, Understanding, Creativity, Humor, or Emotions. These all involve a CM as the place where these things happen. Also, we have previously realized that all Sensory Experience happens in the CM. Think about Redness, the Standard A Tone, the Taste of Salt, the Smell of Bleach, and the Touch of a Rough Surface.

Taking this one step further, it is Logical to Speculate that everything we are, and every thing we thought we were, is some kind of Conscious Experience. We might actually only Exist as CMs in Conscious Space, and are merely Connected to our PMs in Physical Space. There might be no Conscious aspect in the PM that is part of what we are. The PM would be an Unconscious, Electrochemical, Mechanistic, Tool that the CM uses.

The best argument for an independent External Universe might be that we know things can change in the External World, when clearly there is no Conscious Mind to Observe the changes. Now if you are trying suggest that the Universe is a Simulation then there would be no way to prove it was a Physical Universe instead of a Simulation. If you are suggesting a stronger case of "everything is Conscious Experience" than I have talked about then you are basically invoking that the Simulation is just some process of Consciousness. But there is still some sort of Simulation going on. So if the real Universe is as the Idealists believe, then there would be no way to know if the Universe was actually Physical or not.

Again - It is interesting, and I have no argument with slicing, dicing, and chopping consciousness any logical way you want.
But you could not do this without an 'a priori' conscious state - If there is no consciousness there is no experience, no observation,
there is nothing without a fundamental state of consciousness - And even nothing could not be understood, or speculated upon without
consciousness.

Again, the fundamental of existence itself is consciousness - And when analyzed properly you see that nothing exists without observation - And observation requires consciousness - Nothing is going on outside of consciousness.

Or in Planck's words:

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
― Max Planck

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 8:01 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 1:15 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 10:31 am As I've commented time and time again, the first thing that needs to be tackled is a "philosophy of explanations" in general. We can't critique whether something works as an explanation or not if we don't rigorously tackle a philosophy of explanations first.

We need to pin down just what the criteria for explanations are--it needs to be literally spelled out in at least a cluster property manner--and we need to tackle just WHY are proposed criteria should be the criteria. A "subsection" of this is going to have to tackle philosophy of meaning in a plausible way, because it's going to need to address how expressions have meaning and how that all manages to "link up" or not with other things. And all of this needs to be done in a way that in general, things that are intuitively accepted as explanations can meet the criteria and things that are intuitively considered unexplained do not meet the criteria.

And, if we're going to dismiss a scientific approach to explaining consciousness because the scientific approach doesn't meet our criteria for explanations, then to be consistent, we either need to present an alternative approach that DOES meet our criteria for explanations, or we need to reject that just as well. So, for example, there can be no seduction into nonphysical, mystical, religious, etc. approaches to consciousness if those approaches can't meet our criteria for explanations--at least not if we're going to reject a scientific or physicalist approach for that very reason.

But we can't even begin to discuss this until we do our philosophical work re explanations, because otherwise we can't figure out whether we have an explanation or not, because we don't know exactly what explanations are or why they're whatever they supposedly are.

I don't dismiss the Scientific approach, but rather I just observe that Science has made Zero progress Explaining Conscious Experiences.

My criteria for a good Explanation of Conscious Experience is when the Explanation is celebrated as the most important discovery of Human history. There will have to be Nobel Prizes involved. The Hard Problem must be solved as a result of this Explanation. If that Explanation is overturned someday then so be it. That's how Science works. No amount of up front Philosophizing about the meaning of Explanation will help.

So again, we'd need a GENERAL philosophy of explanations as I outlined. If you consider something like bridge construction, say, to be explained, and the criteria for it being explained do not include Nobel prizes and the like, then we can't really consider Nobel prizes a criterion for explaining consciousness. The general philosophy of explanations needs to apply to anything and everything we consider explained; it needs to work as a demarcation criteria between "x is explained" and "y is unexplained" in general, for everything we could consider.

Re "science making zero progress explaining consciousness" what area or field has made non-zero progress in this?

Your analogy about Bridges is simply Incoherent. We are not building Bridges, we are trying to discover the secret of our Existence.
When I say Science has made Zero progress, I of course mean all Areas and Fields have made Zero progress.

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑November 30th, 2021, 3:28 am

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 12:53 pm

UniversalAlien wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 9:53 pm SteveKlinko wrote:

Next, I would like to talk about Panpsychism with respect to Conscious Experience. This seems to be a popular theory, or really just a speculation, that there is some sort of Consciousness aspect in everything. So Electrons, Protons, Neutrons, etc. have a tiny aspect of Consciousness. This is basically a Physicalist proposition because the theory stipulates Consciousness is in all matter even down to the level of elementary particles. The hope with this speculation is that when Electrons combine with Protons and other elementary particles, that the Atoms and Molecules will have some combined greater Consciousness. Finally, at the level of a massive object like a Brain, all the combined micro Consciousnesses will somehow combine to give us the Conscious Experiences that we have. There is no Logic or even a Clue as to how these micro Consciousnesses can combine into a larger Consciousness that has Conscious Experiences. So the biggest problem with this theory is that it always talks about some ambiguous vague generalized Consciousness Thing. It can never get to an Explanation for any actual Conscious Experience. There is no way this theory can Explain what the IM is within the theory. How does this theory Explain any Conscious Experience?

You are a philosopher capable asserting many good points worthy of debate;

But in philosophy many conceptualizations of concepts of concepts, such as 'Consciousness' are 'rabbit holes' - they branch in many,
if not infinite directions with no absolute definition or full understanding even possible - Unless you can simplify to the lowest common
denominator.
Such as this simplification by the famous Quantum Physicist Max Planck:

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
― Max Planck

Another words no ideas or concepts are even possible unless an 'a priori' state of consciousness exists.
Consciousness can not come out of non-consciousness, non-consciousness is non existent
unless you want to postulate a creator god - but even that concept must stem from consciousness.

Panpsychism goes back to ancient Greek philosophers - And I suppose some of the prejudice against it is because of how old
and basic it is. But if you don't accept the consciousness of everything you immediately step into the rabbit hole,
a rabbit hole that has no way out.

That said two final questions: Express to me one thing, idea, concept or mathematical formula that exists independently of a
conscious state of mind and Prove the existence of a Universe existing independently of conscious observation

I do use the word Consciousness, but I also prefer to be more specific. In fact I don't believe there really is some generalized Consciousness concept. I agree with you that there is only Conscious Experience. I will usually try to get people to think about the Conscious Experience of Redness, the Standard A Tone the Salty Taste, or whatever a particular group can deal with. Redness usually works good and it is my favorite target for discussion.

I have argued in other writings on Volition, Knowledge, Understanding, Creativity, Humor, and Emotions, that these aspects of the Human Mind are firmly based in the Conscious Mind (CM). The Physical Mind (PM) has no Volition, Knowledge, Understanding, Creativity, Humor, or Emotions. These all involve a CM as the place where these things happen. Also, we have previously realized that all Sensory Experience happens in the CM. Think about Redness, the Standard A Tone, the Taste of Salt, the Smell of Bleach, and the Touch of a Rough Surface.

Taking this one step further, it is Logical to Speculate that everything we are, and every thing we thought we were, is some kind of Conscious Experience. We might actually only Exist as CMs in Conscious Space, and are merely Connected to our PMs in Physical Space. There might be no Conscious aspect in the PM that is part of what we are. The PM would be an Unconscious, Electrochemical, Mechanistic, Tool that the CM uses.

The best argument for an independent External Universe might be that we know things can change in the External World, when clearly there is no Conscious Mind to Observe the changes. Now if you are trying suggest that the Universe is a Simulation then there would be no way to prove it was a Physical Universe instead of a Simulation. If you are suggesting a stronger case of "everything is Conscious Experience" than I have talked about then you are basically invoking that the Simulation is just some process of Consciousness. But there is still some sort of Simulation going on. So if the real Universe is as the Idealists believe, then there would be no way to know if the Universe was actually Physical or not.

Again - It is interesting, and I have no argument with slicing, dicing, and chopping consciousness any logical way you want.
But you could not do this without an 'a priori' conscious state - If there is no consciousness there is no experience, no observation,
there is nothing without a fundamental state of consciousness - And even nothing could not be understood, or speculated upon without
consciousness.

Again, the fundamental of existence itself is consciousness - And when analyzed properly you see that nothing exists without observation - And observation requires consciousness - Nothing is going on outside of consciousness.

Or in Planck's words:

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
― Max Planck

We are at an Impasse here because there is no evidence that I have ever seen that would make me believe there is no independent External Universe. For me, assuming that the Universe Exists only when observed is not a Sensible starting point for exploring Conscious Experience.

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 3:06 pm I have given the Illusion proposition all the consideration that it deserves. Decades worth of consideration. Illusionism of one form or another has always been there making a mockery out of the Reality of the World as I know it. There is no Chain of Logic that takes you from the Conscious Visual Experience that I have, to the realization that it is not really there. This is pure Hucksterism. They have got to do better than that. It's almost as if the Illusionists actually do not have Conscious Experiences like I have. They may be Experiencing more at the level of the Neural activity and actually do not have the Qualia of the Visual Experiences. Maybe the Lights are out in their Minds. Seems to me the usual move that I see with Illusionism is that they are the ones, in fact, casually dismissing Conscious Experience. It is up to them to Explain how what is so Obviously true can be so Illusory and wrong.

The thing is, we're looking here for something that current knowledge and wisdom simply doesn't cover. We're looking for something new, that we don't currently have. In this context, I find it odd that you will casually discard ideas that might prove useful without evidence. You seem to just dislike them, so you throw them away. How will you find what you're looking for, if you won't consider such possibilities as there are?

Your 'arguments' against (in this case) 'illusionism' are little more than insults. I see little or no logic in your dismissal.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑November 30th, 2021, 9:13 am

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 28th, 2021, 3:06 pm I have given the Illusion proposition all the consideration that it deserves. Decades worth of consideration. Illusionism of one form or another has always been there making a mockery out of the Reality of the World as I know it. There is no Chain of Logic that takes you from the Conscious Visual Experience that I have, to the realization that it is not really there. This is pure Hucksterism. They have got to do better than that. It's almost as if the Illusionists actually do not have Conscious Experiences like I have. They may be Experiencing more at the level of the Neural activity and actually do not have the Qualia of the Visual Experiences. Maybe the Lights are out in their Minds. Seems to me the usual move that I see with Illusionism is that they are the ones, in fact, casually dismissing Conscious Experience. It is up to them to Explain how what is so Obviously true can be so Illusory and wrong.

The thing is, we're looking here for something that current knowledge and wisdom simply doesn't cover. We're looking for something new, that we don't currently have. In this context, I find it odd that you will casually discard ideas that might prove useful without evidence. You seem to just dislike them, so you throw them away. How will you find what you're looking for, if you won't consider such possibilities as there are?

Your 'arguments' against (in this case) 'illusionism' are little more than insults. I see little or no logic in your dismissal.

It's that High Def, Wide Screen, multi Color, Visual Experience that I use to move around in the World without bumping into things. This Visual Experience is there, and it has a purpose. If you did not have that Experience you would bump into things. Sorry, you can have an open mind about things but as the old saying goes: Don't be so open minded that your Brain falls out of your head and onto the floor. If you want to continue your study of Conscious Experience with the starting point that it doesn't really exist then your journey is over. I start with the assumption that my Conscious Experiences are real things that must be and can be understood. I do understand that you are not alone in this incomprehensible proposition. But we are at an Impasse on this.

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 30th, 2021, 8:38 am

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 8:01 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 1:15 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 10:31 am As I've commented time and time again, the first thing that needs to be tackled is a "philosophy of explanations" in general. We can't critique whether something works as an explanation or not if we don't rigorously tackle a philosophy of explanations first.

We need to pin down just what the criteria for explanations are--it needs to be literally spelled out in at least a cluster property manner--and we need to tackle just WHY are proposed criteria should be the criteria. A "subsection" of this is going to have to tackle philosophy of meaning in a plausible way, because it's going to need to address how expressions have meaning and how that all manages to "link up" or not with other things. And all of this needs to be done in a way that in general, things that are intuitively accepted as explanations can meet the criteria and things that are intuitively considered unexplained do not meet the criteria.

And, if we're going to dismiss a scientific approach to explaining consciousness because the scientific approach doesn't meet our criteria for explanations, then to be consistent, we either need to present an alternative approach that DOES meet our criteria for explanations, or we need to reject that just as well. So, for example, there can be no seduction into nonphysical, mystical, religious, etc. approaches to consciousness if those approaches can't meet our criteria for explanations--at least not if we're going to reject a scientific or physicalist approach for that very reason.

But we can't even begin to discuss this until we do our philosophical work re explanations, because otherwise we can't figure out whether we have an explanation or not, because we don't know exactly what explanations are or why they're whatever they supposedly are.

I don't dismiss the Scientific approach, but rather I just observe that Science has made Zero progress Explaining Conscious Experiences.

My criteria for a good Explanation of Conscious Experience is when the Explanation is celebrated as the most important discovery of Human history. There will have to be Nobel Prizes involved. The Hard Problem must be solved as a result of this Explanation. If that Explanation is overturned someday then so be it. That's how Science works. No amount of up front Philosophizing about the meaning of Explanation will help.

So again, we'd need a GENERAL philosophy of explanations as I outlined. If you consider something like bridge construction, say, to be explained, and the criteria for it being explained do not include Nobel prizes and the like, then we can't really consider Nobel prizes a criterion for explaining consciousness. The general philosophy of explanations needs to apply to anything and everything we consider explained; it needs to work as a demarcation criteria between "x is explained" and "y is unexplained" in general, for everything we could consider.

Re "science making zero progress explaining consciousness" what area or field has made non-zero progress in this?

Your analogy about Bridges is simply Incoherent. We are not building Bridges, we are trying to discover the secret of our Existence.
When I say Science has made Zero progress, I of course mean all Areas and Fields have made Zero progress.

What are you even reading? There was no analogy about bridges.

To have a general philosophy of explanations, as we'd need in order to debate whether we have explanations of various things, our criteria for explanations need to work for any arbitrary thing that we consider explained. Bridges are an example, not an analogy. If we believe that bridge construction (and functioning, etc.) is explained, then our criteria for explanations need to work for that particular example.

. . . as the criteria need to work for any example we could think of, by the way.

Again, we'd need criteria that work as demarcation criteria for partitioning out explained versus unexplained things, for everything we could input. Otherwise we don't really have a philosophy of explanations, and we can't proceed to argue based on whether something is explained or not, because we can't even characterize what explanations ARE exactly.

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑November 29th, 2021, 1:03 pmBut take the Conscious Experience of Redness. What possible combination of material substances and interaction of substances including any kind of Neural Activity will Logically all of a sudden produce a Redness Experience in a Conscious Mind. It is not even Sensible to expect that any kind of Material combinations or Neural Activities can ever produce a Conscious Experience. This bottom up expectation for Conscious Experience is completely unfounded and there is Zero Scientific evidence for it. It is however as good a Speculation as anything. The Huge Explanatory Gap for it must be Explained.

Saying that x produces y implies that x is different from y, because nothing can produce itself; so there is a duality or dualism between the producer and the produced. To say that experiences are produced by neural processes is to affirm propert dualism.

My contrary contention is that the brain doesn't "produce" consciousness (like the liver produces bile). Experiencings of red(ness) aren't produced by neural activity, because they are patterns of neural activity with characteristic parameters. Experiences aren't produced by neural processes, because they are composed of (lower-level) neural processes which collectively constitute and are thus identical with them.
Experiences aren't like clouds hovering over a lake; they are like waves on the lake's surface.