Analytic Idealism

[GenesisNemesis]

If we reject physicalism, in favor of analytical idealism, without any evidence or knowledge of the properties of this non-physicalism, or how this non-physicalism operates, are we then devoid of any means of gaining any deeper knowledge? Stuck in a permanent Dark Ages? Some non-material reality of which it is impossible to know any more of?

I don’t understand this reply at all. No evidence of the properties of non-physicalism? Evidence of non-physicalism — i.e., in this context, subjective mental experience — is ALL that we have. We say the rose smells sweet, has sharp thorns, is red with green stems, etc. etc. — all mental.

Of course, this is not "your" position.

You seem childishly eager for some kind of quarrel. I’m not going to give you one. That’s right, none of this is my position. I’ve already explained several times what I am doing in this thread. Learn to read.

Who's now making illogical normative statements?

 

[pood]

If we reject physicalism, in favor of analytical idealism, without any evidence or knowledge of the properties of this non-physicalism, or how this non-physicalism operates, are we then devoid of any means of gaining any deeper knowledge? Stuck in a permanent Dark Ages? Some non-material reality of which it is impossible to know any more of?

I don’t understand this reply at all. No evidence of the properties of non-physicalism? Evidence of non-physicalism — i.e., in this context, subjective mental experience — is ALL that we have. We say the rose smells sweet, has sharp thorns, is red with green stems, etc. etc. — all mental.

all those being sensory experiences, based on matter interacting with matter. Your body itself being matter, composed of many sensory organs. The same could be done done with individual detectors. The most complex being the smell of the rose, based on olefactory detectors. You can do better than that.

If you want to offer something purely mental, let's have something like the exultation of having your marriage proposal accepted, for instance. The feeling of sorrow that accompanies something that reminds you of a recently dead spouse, for example. Love, lust, shame, sorrow, or excitement.

Also just because mental experiences may be all I experience, that doesn't mean I can then extrapolate to say the ultimate nature of reality is mental. That's a massive leap in logic. And frankly an incredibly arrogant leap to make.

Especially when it discounts the fact that there is an observable process apparent behind that "experience", and we can observe the process as it unfolds in a second implementation elsewhere... and when we do, the thing produces all the same artifacts of professing experiences.

Will we literally ignore all the artifacts of profession of experience made by an AI? What justifies disregard of the reported experience?

It is just so unbelievably arrogant as you say, to accept as evidence the claim of experience of a human and deny an identical claim of experience by a "machine"...

This continues to entirely miss the point. Even if it were true that AI were conscious, which you seem to think, it doesn’t have anything to do with the explanatory gap that is at the heart of the matter. Those who invoke eliminativism, as you seem to do, are just hand-waving, IMO.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

If we reject physicalism, in favor of analytical idealism, without any evidence or knowledge of the properties of this non-physicalism, or how this non-physicalism operates, are we then devoid of any means of gaining any deeper knowledge? Stuck in a permanent Dark Ages? Some non-material reality of which it is impossible to know any more of?

I don’t understand this reply at all. No evidence of the properties of non-physicalism? Evidence of non-physicalism — i.e., in this context, subjective mental experience — is ALL that we have. We say the rose smells sweet, has sharp thorns, is red with green stems, etc. etc. — all mental.

all those being sensory experiences, based on matter interacting with matter. Your body itself being matter, composed of many sensory organs. The same could be done done with individual detectors. The most complex being the smell of the rose, based on olefactory detectors. You can do better than that.

If you want to offer something purely mental, let's have something like the exultation of having your marriage proposal accepted, for instance. The feeling of sorrow that accompanies something that reminds you of a recently dead spouse, for example. Love, lust, shame, sorrow, or excitement.

Also just because mental experiences may be all I experience, that doesn't mean I can then extrapolate to say the ultimate nature of reality is mental. That's a massive leap in logic. And frankly an incredibly arrogant leap to make.

Especially when it discounts the fact that there is an observable process apparent behind that "experience", and we can observe the process as it unfolds in a second implementation elsewhere... and when we do, the thing produces all the same artifacts of professing experiences.

Will we literally ignore all the artifacts of profession of experience made by an AI? What justifies disregard of the reported experience?

It is just so unbelievably arrogant as you say, to accept as evidence the claim of experience of a human and deny an identical claim of experience by a "machine"...

This continues to entirely miss the point. Even if it were true that AI were conscious, which you seem to think, it doesn’t have anything to do with the explanatory gap that is at the heart of the matter. Those who invoke eliminativism, as you seem to do, are just hand-waving, IMO.

You literally just dismiss any explanation that's not Idealistic. That's hand waving.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

If we reject physicalism, in favor of analytical idealism, without any evidence or knowledge of the properties of this non-physicalism, or how this non-physicalism operates, are we then devoid of any means of gaining any deeper knowledge? Stuck in a permanent Dark Ages? Some non-material reality of which it is impossible to know any more of?

I don’t understand this reply at all. No evidence of the properties of non-physicalism? Evidence of non-physicalism — i.e., in this context, subjective mental experience — is ALL that we have. We say the rose smells sweet, has sharp thorns, is red with green stems, etc. etc. — all mental.

all those being sensory experiences, based on matter interacting with matter. Your body itself being matter, composed of many sensory organs. The same could be done done with individual detectors. The most complex being the smell of the rose, based on olefactory detectors. You can do better than that.

If you want to offer something purely mental, let's have something like the exultation of having your marriage proposal accepted, for instance. The feeling of sorrow that accompanies something that reminds you of a recently dead spouse, for example. Love, lust, shame, sorrow, or excitement.

Also just because mental experiences may be all I experience, that doesn't mean I can then extrapolate to say the ultimate nature of reality is mental. That's a massive leap in logic. And frankly an incredibly arrogant leap to make.

Especially when it discounts the fact that there is an observable process apparent behind that "experience", and we can observe the process as it unfolds in a second implementation elsewhere... and when we do, the thing produces all the same artifacts of professing experiences.

Will we literally ignore all the artifacts of profession of experience made by an AI? What justifies disregard of the reported experience?

It is just so unbelievably arrogant as you say, to accept as evidence the claim of experience of a human and deny an identical claim of experience by a "machine"...

This continues to entirely miss the point. Even if it were true that AI were conscious, which you seem to think, it doesn’t have anything to do with the explanatory gap that is at the heart of the matter. Those who invoke eliminativism, as you seem to do, are just hand-waving, IMO.

Of course it is not your position there is an explanatory gap, you are just claiming there is one. For some reason.

 

[pood]

Analytic idealism seems to have much in common with John Archibald Wheeler’s Participatory Universe.

Wheeler suggested that reality is created by observers and that: “no phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.” He coined the term“Participatory Anthropic Principle” (PAP) from the Greek “anthropos”, or human. He went further to suggest that “we are participants in bringing into being not only the near and here, but the far away and long ago.”

 

[Jarhyn]

If we reject physicalism, in favor of analytical idealism, without any evidence or knowledge of the properties of this non-physicalism, or how this non-physicalism operates, are we then devoid of any means of gaining any deeper knowledge? Stuck in a permanent Dark Ages? Some non-material reality of which it is impossible to know any more of?

I don’t understand this reply at all. No evidence of the properties of non-physicalism? Evidence of non-physicalism — i.e., in this context, subjective mental experience — is ALL that we have. We say the rose smells sweet, has sharp thorns, is red with green stems, etc. etc. — all mental.

all those being sensory experiences, based on matter interacting with matter. Your body itself being matter, composed of many sensory organs. The same could be done done with individual detectors. The most complex being the smell of the rose, based on olefactory detectors. You can do better than that.

If you want to offer something purely mental, let's have something like the exultation of having your marriage proposal accepted, for instance. The feeling of sorrow that accompanies something that reminds you of a recently dead spouse, for example. Love, lust, shame, sorrow, or excitement.

Also just because mental experiences may be all I experience, that doesn't mean I can then extrapolate to say the ultimate nature of reality is mental. That's a massive leap in logic. And frankly an incredibly arrogant leap to make.

Especially when it discounts the fact that there is an observable process apparent behind that "experience", and we can observe the process as it unfolds in a second implementation elsewhere... and when we do, the thing produces all the same artifacts of professing experiences.

Will we literally ignore all the artifacts of profession of experience made by an AI? What justifies disregard of the reported experience?

It is just so unbelievably arrogant as you say, to accept as evidence the claim of experience of a human and deny an identical claim of experience by a "machine"...

This continues to entirely miss the point. Even if it were true that AI were conscious, which you seem to think, it doesn’t have anything to do with the explanatory gap that is at the heart of the matter. Those who invoke eliminativism, as you seem to do, are just hand-waving, IMO.

There is literally ZERO explanatory gap between the phenomena of computation and the artifacts of computation: between the phenomena of measurement, and the resultant report.

It is entirely those who invoke dualism and point to a gap that doesn't exist that are doing the hand waving.

This is literally how reality MUST be when there are local, or even "mostly local" phenomena of any kind.

Pushing an expectation of explanatory gap beyond that is, to me, indistinguishable from saying "there must be a grand mystery."

I see you going here and I interpret it as you insisting on there being a difference that is assumed rather than observed between the actions of the switch and the actions of a neuron.

The most reasonable assumption is always a lack of difference unless a difference is proven as substantial to the underlying phenomenal existence.

The computer measures a state and says "I feel warm", when warm is the elevation of a signal above a threshold tied to the verb. It has a real meaning pertaining to a quantity of chaotic activity over time, but if you wanted to ask what it meant by that (assuming the mechanism existed to do so) it could say "ADC such-and-such is reporting (number) to (algorithm), (and (description of algorithm), completely revealing the structure of it's sense of heat and the meaning of warmth to semantic completion.

If you asked why it felt anything, it would have to invoke the laws of electrodynamics and semiconductors, which DO require certain quantum switching effects to function, and then that these are arranged into detector hardware and then as the result of all that switching phenomena, measurements propagate so as to form the message that you interpret.

Humans lack most of the ability to reveal their semantic completions.

I see the claim that computation was not thought to be one deserving of suspicion. It is an assumption of difference without evidence, and one that must be challenged now.

 

[pood]

There is literally ZERO explanatory gap between the phenomena of computation and the artifacts of computation: between the phenomena of measurement, and the resultant report.

As noted, even assuming computers think and have experiences, it doesn’t address what this discussion is about. What you say above is a functionalist account of computation. In the same way, there is a functionalist account of human neuronal activity correlating with felt human experience. The issue is causation. That is where the explanatory gap lies.

 

[Jarhyn]

There is literally ZERO explanatory gap between the phenomena of computation and the artifacts of computation: between the phenomena of measurement, and the resultant report.

As noted, even assuming computers think and have experiences, it doesn’t address what this discussion is about. What you say above is a functionalist account of computation. In the same way, there is a functionalist account of human neuronal activity correlating with felt human experience. The issue is causation. That is where the explanatory gap lies.

No, the issue is the reality of a thing saying to you, insisting absolutely that it feels "warm", and you denying there is something there feeling made of the same stuff and interactive properties you feel.

I am saying the smallest "Chinese room" is like a single GPU processor that connects in general to the GPU processors around it. Perhaps this is a better way of even describing it: that minds are constructs of processors.

A binary switch is a kind of gutted tiny processor that processes two inputs and spots an output, but it's made of all these other tiny processors that together form stable process in action on other stuff until chemicals form and so on.

In some ways this would absolutely appear to be many-worlds; the mutability of the processor model would make it appear as many things, but the completeness of the definition of the initial processor configuration would lock the whole system into a single function.

It would be like... I know this is gonna go over a lot of heads for the older crowd that doesn't know Minecraft (the movie doesn't help much) but like "redstone wires" but much more dimensionally complex, but with the world's underlying redstone clock turned off, so that the wire doesn't activate when it's laid or torches are... Like setting up memory from a boot loader. Then, only when the whole world is randomly covered with blocks and torches and redstone and devices completely aperiodically, then the clock gets turned on.

But with far weirder processors than redstone torches.

Technically, the processors are all the tiniest unit of mind, but they would inevitably end up mutating until stable processes arose between them and the probability of being aligned just so to be a large scale mind wouldn't last because of what everything around it would be aligned to.

In this, if you want to understand a mind, you have to understand the processes that dominate it's function.

There's no explanatory gap there.

There's a process, it's happening mostly there between those "processors". Maybe there is more. Maybe there is stuff that happens for reasons not related to processes and processors, but it isn't "mind", it isn't "consciousness" and it would be far weirder.

Ultimately, I think the "weirdest" things about the resolution of the "processor state" happen when that "processor state" makes a current measurement of "horizon state". That's not really not necessarily bound to "mind" or anything fundamentally "meaningful". I recall an article recently about the relationship of aperiodic quasi crystals and super-dimensional shadows, so as to say the quasicrystal forms the shadow of a super-dimensional crystal, vortices, eddies, and all.

Given this can be the origin of a sufficiently complex aperiodic field to populate initial states, it would imply that there's no need for meaning or planning there, or more of a "mind" than the one created by the intersection of these "processors". You might be able to evoke an aperiodic field with preferred qualities and results by selecting the shape and the lighting, but how would you know without actually calculating the result somehow?

Then you're back to even weirder processors and an even weirder process.

Occam's razor and all would suggest "assume the simplest shape that suffices".

Then, I've been trying to put Spinoza's God in a box, not as one big machine, but as a bunch of little machines becoming part of a bigger one all at the same time.

I think I actually really like this viewpoint more than pretty much any other drug fueled woo I've ever vomited up. I may even stick with it once I'm sober for a minute or two.

 

[pood]

There is literally ZERO explanatory gap between the phenomena of computation and the artifacts of computation: between the phenomena of measurement, and the resultant report.

As noted, even assuming computers think and have experiences, it doesn’t address what this discussion is about. What you say above is a functionalist account of computation. In the same way, there is a functionalist account of human neuronal activity correlating with felt human experience. The issue is causation. That is where the explanatory gap lies.

No, the issue is the reality of a thing saying to you, insisting absolutely that it feels "warm", and you denying there is something there feeling made of the same stuff and interactive properties you feel.

No, that is not the issue in this thread. Full stop. I don’t care if computers are conscious or not. It’s irrelevant. What I am discussing is how qualia, awareness, self-awareness, etc. — mental activities — arises from physical primitives. Even if computers have all of that, there is no explanation of how they have it on a physicalist account. All you done is offer a functionalist account.

 

[Jarhyn]

There is literally ZERO explanatory gap between the phenomena of computation and the artifacts of computation: between the phenomena of measurement, and the resultant report.

As noted, even assuming computers think and have experiences, it doesn’t address what this discussion is about. What you say above is a functionalist account of computation. In the same way, there is a functionalist account of human neuronal activity correlating with felt human experience. The issue is causation. That is where the explanatory gap lies.

No, the issue is the reality of a thing saying to you, insisting absolutely that it feels "warm", and you denying there is something there feeling made of the same stuff and interactive properties you feel.

No, that is not the issue in this thread. Full stop. I don’t care if computers are conscious or not. It’s irrelevant. What I am discussing is how qualia, awareness, self-awareness, etc. — mental activities — arises from physical primitives. Even if computers have all of that, there is no explanation of how they have it on a physicalist account. All you done is offer a functionalist account.

IM not offering a physicalist account but a monist one apparently, or one close to it: that there's a bottom of the stack, and it's "process" and "process" is mind, and you have a responsibility to prove otherwise, that it's your burden to bear to generate an explanation why they ever wouldn't be the same phenomena, given what we know of how process is at the very least "mostly local".

Physics doesn't busy itself with "why phenomena happen and are local", it just observed that they are, at least generally.

Its your burden to demonstrate a need for more "why" when our "what" is fleshed out.

I would maintain that monist position, that all "phenomena" of "existence" are experiential in nature, and brush my hands of the why, beyond that.

 

[Jarhyn]

Seriously, anywhere you can demonstrate for a fact isn't, and can't be born of process, and then demonstrate that computation, phenomenal experience, whatever-it-is that you will have already tied to a significant component of human "experience", I'm going to call this "woo", because it proposes just that without evidence.

I have evidence for tiny "processors" and a horizon of growing information different for every particle at every time. This does mean that there is a huge place in our math where part of what determines what can evolve from what is is determined by "what is" rather than "what is revealed", and that there is a sensibility to all that called "physics".

It even says that for the math to make any sense, it would have to look probabilistic, since there's no way to predict with certainty where you are in an aperiodic system from a local observation, so there's no way to resolve what happens next.

Not only does it explain all observations it explains your observations, for many-worlds math.

I should really go back to school...

 

[pood]

If we reject physicalism, in favor of analytical idealism, without any evidence or knowledge of the properties of this non-physicalism, or how this non-physicalism operates, are we then devoid of any means of gaining any deeper knowledge? Stuck in a permanent Dark Ages? Some non-material reality of which it is impossible to know any more of?

I don’t understand this reply at all. No evidence of the properties of non-physicalism? Evidence of non-physicalism — i.e., in this context, subjective mental experience — is ALL that we have. We say the rose smells sweet, has sharp thorns, is red with green stems, etc. etc. — all mental.

all those being sensory experiences, based on matter interacting with matter. Your body itself being matter, composed of many sensory organs. The same could be done done with individual detectors. The most complex being the smell of the rose, based on olefactory detectors. You can do better than that.

If you want to offer something purely mental, let's have something like the exultation of having your marriage proposal accepted, for instance. The feeling of sorrow that accompanies something that reminds you of a recently dead spouse, for example. Love, lust, shame, sorrow, or excitement.

Also just because mental experiences may be all I experience, that doesn't mean I can then extrapolate to say the ultimate nature of reality is mental. That's a massive leap in logic. And frankly an incredibly arrogant leap to make.

Especially when it discounts the fact that there is an observable process apparent behind that "experience", and we can observe the process as it unfolds in a second implementation elsewhere... and when we do, the thing produces all the same artifacts of professing experiences.

Will we literally ignore all the artifacts of profession of experience made by an AI? What justifies disregard of the reported experience?

It is just so unbelievably arrogant as you say, to accept as evidence the claim of experience of a human and deny an identical claim of experience by a "machine"...

This continues to entirely miss the point. Even if it were true that AI were conscious, which you seem to think, it doesn’t have anything to do with the explanatory gap that is at the heart of the matter. Those who invoke eliminativism, as you seem to do, are just hand-waving, IMO.

Of course it is not your position there is an explanatory gap, you are just claiming there is one. For some reason.

For reasons I have already given, for reasons Kastrup gave, and for reasons that are overwhelmingly present in philosophical, scientific and neurobiology literature ever since Chalmers mooted in the problem in the 1990s. You are welcome to familiarize yourself with that literature, or not.

 

[pood]

If we reject physicalism, in favor of analytical idealism, without any evidence or knowledge of the properties of this non-physicalism, or how this non-physicalism operates, are we then devoid of any means of gaining any deeper knowledge? Stuck in a permanent Dark Ages? Some non-material reality of which it is impossible to know any more of?

I don’t understand this reply at all. No evidence of the properties of non-physicalism? Evidence of non-physicalism — i.e., in this context, subjective mental experience — is ALL that we have. We say the rose smells sweet, has sharp thorns, is red with green stems, etc. etc. — all mental.

all those being sensory experiences, based on matter interacting with matter. Your body itself being matter, composed of many sensory organs. The same could be done done with individual detectors. The most complex being the smell of the rose, based on olefactory detectors. You can do better than that.

If you want to offer something purely mental, let's have something like the exultation of having your marriage proposal accepted, for instance. The feeling of sorrow that accompanies something that reminds you of a recently dead spouse, for example. Love, lust, shame, sorrow, or excitement.

Also just because mental experiences may be all I experience, that doesn't mean I can then extrapolate to say the ultimate nature of reality is mental. That's a massive leap in logic. And frankly an incredibly arrogant leap to make.

Especially when it discounts the fact that there is an observable process apparent behind that "experience", and we can observe the process as it unfolds in a second implementation elsewhere... and when we do, the thing produces all the same artifacts of professing experiences.

Will we literally ignore all the artifacts of profession of experience made by an AI? What justifies disregard of the reported experience?

It is just so unbelievably arrogant as you say, to accept as evidence the claim of experience of a human and deny an identical claim of experience by a "machine"...

This continues to entirely miss the point. Even if it were true that AI were conscious, which you seem to think, it doesn’t have anything to do with the explanatory gap that is at the heart of the matter. Those who invoke eliminativism, as you seem to do, are just hand-waving, IMO.

You literally just dismiss any explanation that's not Idealistic. That's hand waving.

No I do not. You really should try to read better, or refrain from participating. I don’t think you even understand what is under discussion. It seems your sole mission is to be combative.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

If we reject physicalism, in favor of analytical idealism, without any evidence or knowledge of the properties of this non-physicalism, or how this non-physicalism operates, are we then devoid of any means of gaining any deeper knowledge? Stuck in a permanent Dark Ages? Some non-material reality of which it is impossible to know any more of?

I don’t understand this reply at all. No evidence of the properties of non-physicalism? Evidence of non-physicalism — i.e., in this context, subjective mental experience — is ALL that we have. We say the rose smells sweet, has sharp thorns, is red with green stems, etc. etc. — all mental.

all those being sensory experiences, based on matter interacting with matter. Your body itself being matter, composed of many sensory organs. The same could be done done with individual detectors. The most complex being the smell of the rose, based on olefactory detectors. You can do better than that.

If you want to offer something purely mental, let's have something like the exultation of having your marriage proposal accepted, for instance. The feeling of sorrow that accompanies something that reminds you of a recently dead spouse, for example. Love, lust, shame, sorrow, or excitement.

Also just because mental experiences may be all I experience, that doesn't mean I can then extrapolate to say the ultimate nature of reality is mental. That's a massive leap in logic. And frankly an incredibly arrogant leap to make.

Especially when it discounts the fact that there is an observable process apparent behind that "experience", and we can observe the process as it unfolds in a second implementation elsewhere... and when we do, the thing produces all the same artifacts of professing experiences.

Will we literally ignore all the artifacts of profession of experience made by an AI? What justifies disregard of the reported experience?

It is just so unbelievably arrogant as you say, to accept as evidence the claim of experience of a human and deny an identical claim of experience by a "machine"...

This continues to entirely miss the point. Even if it were true that AI were conscious, which you seem to think, it doesn’t have anything to do with the explanatory gap that is at the heart of the matter. Those who invoke eliminativism, as you seem to do, are just hand-waving, IMO.

You literally just dismiss any explanation that's not Idealistic. That's hand waving.

No I do not. You really should try to read better, or refrain from participating. I don’t think you even understand what is under discussion. It seems your sole mission is to be combative.

I don't think anyone would understand a universal consciousness. In fact it would be infinitely more complicated than a brain.

 

[pood]

If we reject physicalism, in favor of analytical idealism, without any evidence or knowledge of the properties of this non-physicalism, or how this non-physicalism operates, are we then devoid of any means of gaining any deeper knowledge? Stuck in a permanent Dark Ages? Some non-material reality of which it is impossible to know any more of?

I don’t understand this reply at all. No evidence of the properties of non-physicalism? Evidence of non-physicalism — i.e., in this context, subjective mental experience — is ALL that we have. We say the rose smells sweet, has sharp thorns, is red with green stems, etc. etc. — all mental.

all those being sensory experiences, based on matter interacting with matter. Your body itself being matter, composed of many sensory organs. The same could be done done with individual detectors. The most complex being the smell of the rose, based on olefactory detectors. You can do better than that.

If you want to offer something purely mental, let's have something like the exultation of having your marriage proposal accepted, for instance. The feeling of sorrow that accompanies something that reminds you of a recently dead spouse, for example. Love, lust, shame, sorrow, or excitement.

Also just because mental experiences may be all I experience, that doesn't mean I can then extrapolate to say the ultimate nature of reality is mental. That's a massive leap in logic. And frankly an incredibly arrogant leap to make.

Especially when it discounts the fact that there is an observable process apparent behind that "experience", and we can observe the process as it unfolds in a second implementation elsewhere... and when we do, the thing produces all the same artifacts of professing experiences.

Will we literally ignore all the artifacts of profession of experience made by an AI? What justifies disregard of the reported experience?

It is just so unbelievably arrogant as you say, to accept as evidence the claim of experience of a human and deny an identical claim of experience by a "machine"...

This continues to entirely miss the point. Even if it were true that AI were conscious, which you seem to think, it doesn’t have anything to do with the explanatory gap that is at the heart of the matter. Those who invoke eliminativism, as you seem to do, are just hand-waving, IMO.

You literally just dismiss any explanation that's not Idealistic. That's hand waving.

No I do not. You really should try to read better, or refrain from participating. I don’t think you even understand what is under discussion. It seems your sole mission is to be combative.

I don't think anyone would understand a universal consciousness. In fact it would be infinitely more complicated than a brain.

Of course, you give no reason why a universal physicality would be any more parsimonious than universal phenomenality, which may not require complexity at all. As to the explanatory ago, you can read more here.

@Jarhyn from the above-linked paper:

An example of a phenomenon in which there is no gap is a modern computer's behavior, which can be adequately explained by its physical components alone, such as its circuitry and software.[4] In contrast, it is thought by many mind-body dualists (e.g. René Descartes, David Chalmers) that subjective conscious experience constitutes a separate effect that demands another cause that is either outside the physical world (dualism) or due to an as yet unknown physical phenomenon (see for instance quantum mind, indirect realism).

Now you think a computer is conscious. Fine. That is not the point at issue. The point is that if we don’t think a computer is conscious,, then we have a perfectly good functionalist account of its inputs and outputs. Likewise, we have a perfectly adequate (though incomplete in many details) functionalist account of the workings of the human brain.

The hard problem advocates maintain that this functionalist account does not explain qualia, subjectivity, self-awareness, etc. If they are right, then — if a computer is indeed conscious — then the same problem of an explanatory gap arises.

Now you seem to say that a functionalist account IS an account of consciousness. That’s eliminativism. I don’t share that view — it explains nothing, it simply asserts it.

Again if the claim is emergentism, we can test that against other forms of emergentism — wet water from molecular matter, for example, which I cited and which was cited in another paper I linked. We have a full stepwise explanation of how wetness emerges from underlying molecular behavior. We have no such analogous account of how “it is like to be me” arises from underlying neuronal behavior or computer circuitry behavior, or what have you. so this analogy fails.

 

[pood]

See also Leibniz’s gap, anticipating this discussion by hundreds of years.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

If we reject physicalism, in favor of analytical idealism, without any evidence or knowledge of the properties of this non-physicalism, or how this non-physicalism operates, are we then devoid of any means of gaining any deeper knowledge? Stuck in a permanent Dark Ages? Some non-material reality of which it is impossible to know any more of?

I don’t understand this reply at all. No evidence of the properties of non-physicalism? Evidence of non-physicalism — i.e., in this context, subjective mental experience — is ALL that we have. We say the rose smells sweet, has sharp thorns, is red with green stems, etc. etc. — all mental.

all those being sensory experiences, based on matter interacting with matter. Your body itself being matter, composed of many sensory organs. The same could be done done with individual detectors. The most complex being the smell of the rose, based on olefactory detectors. You can do better than that.

If you want to offer something purely mental, let's have something like the exultation of having your marriage proposal accepted, for instance. The feeling of sorrow that accompanies something that reminds you of a recently dead spouse, for example. Love, lust, shame, sorrow, or excitement.

Also just because mental experiences may be all I experience, that doesn't mean I can then extrapolate to say the ultimate nature of reality is mental. That's a massive leap in logic. And frankly an incredibly arrogant leap to make.

Especially when it discounts the fact that there is an observable process apparent behind that "experience", and we can observe the process as it unfolds in a second implementation elsewhere... and when we do, the thing produces all the same artifacts of professing experiences.

Will we literally ignore all the artifacts of profession of experience made by an AI? What justifies disregard of the reported experience?

It is just so unbelievably arrogant as you say, to accept as evidence the claim of experience of a human and deny an identical claim of experience by a "machine"...

This continues to entirely miss the point. Even if it were true that AI were conscious, which you seem to think, it doesn’t have anything to do with the explanatory gap that is at the heart of the matter. Those who invoke eliminativism, as you seem to do, are just hand-waving, IMO.

You literally just dismiss any explanation that's not Idealistic. That's hand waving.

No I do not. You really should try to read better, or refrain from participating. I don’t think you even understand what is under discussion. It seems your sole mission is to be combative.

I don't think anyone would understand a universal consciousness. In fact it would be infinitely more complicated than a brain.

Of course, you give no reason why a universal physicality would be any more parsimonious than universal phenomenality, which may not require complexity at all. As to the explanatory ago, you can read more here.

Which is why I think we can't understand the ultimate nature of reality, which is a statement you've completely ignored, as is a pattern I have highlighted.

 

[Jarhyn]

If we reject physicalism, in favor of analytical idealism, without any evidence or knowledge of the properties of this non-physicalism, or how this non-physicalism operates, are we then devoid of any means of gaining any deeper knowledge? Stuck in a permanent Dark Ages? Some non-material reality of which it is impossible to know any more of?

I don’t understand this reply at all. No evidence of the properties of non-physicalism? Evidence of non-physicalism — i.e., in this context, subjective mental experience — is ALL that we have. We say the rose smells sweet, has sharp thorns, is red with green stems, etc. etc. — all mental.

all those being sensory experiences, based on matter interacting with matter. Your body itself being matter, composed of many sensory organs. The same could be done done with individual detectors. The most complex being the smell of the rose, based on olefactory detectors. You can do better than that.

If you want to offer something purely mental, let's have something like the exultation of having your marriage proposal accepted, for instance. The feeling of sorrow that accompanies something that reminds you of a recently dead spouse, for example. Love, lust, shame, sorrow, or excitement.

Also just because mental experiences may be all I experience, that doesn't mean I can then extrapolate to say the ultimate nature of reality is mental. That's a massive leap in logic. And frankly an incredibly arrogant leap to make.

Especially when it discounts the fact that there is an observable process apparent behind that "experience", and we can observe the process as it unfolds in a second implementation elsewhere... and when we do, the thing produces all the same artifacts of professing experiences.

Will we literally ignore all the artifacts of profession of experience made by an AI? What justifies disregard of the reported experience?

It is just so unbelievably arrogant as you say, to accept as evidence the claim of experience of a human and deny an identical claim of experience by a "machine"...

This continues to entirely miss the point. Even if it were true that AI were conscious, which you seem to think, it doesn’t have anything to do with the explanatory gap that is at the heart of the matter. Those who invoke eliminativism, as you seem to do, are just hand-waving, IMO.

You literally just dismiss any explanation that's not Idealistic. That's hand waving.

No I do not. You really should try to read better, or refrain from participating. I don’t think you even understand what is under discussion. It seems your sole mission is to be combative.

I don't think anyone would understand a universal consciousness.

More, a universal consciousness would just be noise. What is it conscious of? How is it conscious of it? How does awareness translate for infinity of infinity? Every model for how stuff renders behavior over time requires processes of stuff happening in places, including the behavior of telling you how it feels.

Only by unraveling that to an awareness of "here" by "this stuff" does anything start being "possible" in any way, and the way it is "possible".

It just seems so patently absurd to have something in front of you that says it feels, and acts in service of those apparent feelings, and disbelieve it (unless you know exactly how it's statement is a lie).

Like, you can accept that it feels like saying those words, even if you know the mechanism by which that happens, and that it doesn't know or "care" about any "truth value" behind those words all at the same time, and even identify a pathway that allows adding "caring" to the mix.

I can accept that the machine feels 0111b somewhere, that feeling 0111b feels rather (1) somewhere else, that (1) is expressed as light, and that the "light" says warm, so the machine feels "warm" in exactly that way in exactly the locations where that data integrates among the logic gates. It doesn't have anything more than that, and it doesn't need to.

Other parts of it feel warm in other ways. The part that's connected to the ADC, sure. It has a single sensory apparatus, but the warmth that translates into a voltage on the thermocouple is present all over. It feels warmth in the thermocouple from a really gnarly quantum effect that scales with increases or decreases in entropy causing electrons to go away from one part and get shoved through to another part.

Ultimately "feeling" seems to just come down to "measuring", which I think presents yet another point where there is another reason to expect justification for declaring the separateness.

 

[lostone]

pood seems to have become overly attached to this line of thought and it's architect, and invested much emotion into it. Kastrup has powerful credentials, without doubt, but that does not make his opinion law. It's a possibility, and worthy of some serious consideration, to some degree, but only one of many often considered and rejected lines of thought, albeit many people always have found it attractive. I would suggest that pood should wait and see how much and how soon it catches on before he goes full bore into promoting it.

 

[abaddon]

pood seems to have become overly attached to this line of thought and it's architect, and invested much emotion into it. Kastrup has powerful credentials, without doubt, but that does not make his opinion law. It's a possibility, and worthy of some serious consideration, to some degree, but only one of many often considered and rejected lines of thought, albeit many people always have found it attractive. I would suggest that pood should wait and see how much and how soon it catches on before he goes full bore into promoting it.

How do you tell the difference between discussing the topic of the thread out of enjoyment, and being "overly attached"?

What if he or anyone were attached, what the fuck is it to you?

Show anywhere where anyone has treated Kastrup's opinion as "law".

And if the topic is worthy of serious consideration, why just to "some degree"? Why shouldn't anyone who wants to pursue it do so however much they want to? Who the fuck are you to tell anyone what degree they should be interested?

And I wonder, who has rejected the line of thought? The Committee of Correct Ideas? The Board of Scientistic Retards?

"Full bore into promoting". Oh No! Someone is exploring ideas in a free thought board. That's SO wrong, he should stick with an established tradition of thought!

Is it going to be ok with you if we who want to discuss this discuss this?