Consciousness

[another1]

ryan, water remembers things. A single drop has 446 information panels. How many drops can an ocean on the planets surface have? My figures say all information in what we currently believe is a universe. Explains part of your panpsychist things there, if you can count every drop of water on (and inside) the planet and multiply that by 446. That would take a long time but hey I'd support your cause because it would be more about raising awareness. People should know how sensitive water is.

Someone told me I could DIE if I drank water the wrong way. If I think about zombies while drinking water, the water will damage my body, and also damage the word due to the zombie information carrying over to the river and eventually the ocean- then back to some unlucky organism born with zombie traits.

Eventually real zombies could start stalking because we convinced our water that it is natural for zombies to exist. In a thousand years we may be full-on zombie, assuming water doesn't find another way to kill us by then. A thousand years is a ridiculous number but that is how long it would take for water to change our physiology as a backlash from our own corrupted thoughts.

I'm not committed to the idea fully but water does have at least short memory they say. If one drop can have a short memory, it can probably sustain all memories as an ocean. One drop may only be able to carry a zombie thought for a few feet, but your body is made of water, so the zombie information wouldn't go away until you pee. Then the pee will infect the toilet, pipes, creeks...

I was told you can even defluoridate city water using only the power of your mind. Haven't seen it tested but you can probably do it this evening and get back to me on that.

Are you talking about information theory? I think it was Seth Lloyd that said that the entire universe is a quantum computer processing its own evolution. If I remember correctly, he also said that the air in a balloon has so many bits of information (information entropy) that it would take a computer the size of our solar system to store the information.

Sounds about right but I'll go with my own definitions. Everybody comes up with the same ideas. I've seen that expressed in too many ways already. That isn't a hard problem to scribble out. Common sense if you ask me. Best not to expose yourself to those theories til you think a while for yourself, in my opinion. And be skeptical if you do, because you are probably right to begin with, to beat all hell. They corrupt your imagination easily if you let them, huh. Screwy people and their theories.

You said this: "where could we go from there?", when referring to the final numbers they get on consciousness.

I said: "Knowing the fact of the matter makes matter pointless", when talking about the exact same thing you were.

But you said you didn't know what I meant. You have your own definition but it is the same isn't it?

 

[PyramidHead]

That analogy only goes as far as the part I bolded.

LOL!

Unless you choose to remain ignorant, we already know how novel properties can emerge from parts that lack those properties. I agree that the emergence of minds from brains is not understood, but it's not like emergence per se is a great mystery that needs solving. Most of science doesn't make sense unless you acknowledge that the whole has properties that are not found in its parts.

These particles are only changing positions in space; what is emerging outside of the mind??? I understand that if you take a line of particles and put them into a square formation that a square emerges. It emerges in my mind, but out there there is nothing added ontologically. We still have the same exact particles in a space.

Now the mind is a truly emergent thing out there. Presumably others have minds too, but why/how? Isn't it just easier to say that the mind is already a property of some or all kinds fundamental particles.

Easy to say, hard to justify when you actually examine it. You're still left with all the same problems as before, only you're adding the new problem of explaining why my stapler has a mind even though it doesn't seem to be into jazz. Panpsychism is a cop-out, a shortcut that doesn't get you any further than just admitting you have no clue what the universe is made of or how the mind works.

 

[PyramidHead]

Juma, this isn't just me saying this; it's the main problem with emergentism. It might be the way it is, but it is deeply unsettling.

"Although examples of higher level properties which are not identical to lower order properties are easy to find, examples where they are not reducible to or predicable from their bases are more controversial."

From wiki , I don't know who said this, but doesn't the latter part make sense Juma?

Ryan, emergentism is the very thing you are proposing. To go back to your cloud-to-airplane analogy, how would it be any less mysterious if the individual water particles were all actually tiny airplanes? It still needs to be explained how the entire plane can function as a unified whole, and not just a swarm of independent planes. Think about cabin pressure, for example. Each individual airplane is pressurized inside its cabin, but that doesn't guarantee a pile of tiny airplanes will therefore have a pressurized cabin. You need arrangement and interconnectivity for that. And at that point, the fact that each particle has its own little pressurized cabin doesn't make any difference anyway, because the mini-cabin pressures aren't contributing anything to the whole. So you're right back to needing emergence. That's why I keep saying panpsychism doesn't solve anything, it just shifts the problem to a new room while simultaneously making some egregious claims that aren't consistent with everyday observation.

 

[fromderinside]

parts more parts, states more states so many parts and states. Oh, and processes. What is being done here? Look, science, not philosophy, is already past quarks so an intellectual redo couched as philosophy isn't going to do much good.

Ask yourself what does consciousness effect.

 

[ryan]

Try the link I gave you.

Links are not really useful when it comes to the interpretation of this information by the poster...you in this instance.

You need to provide the information that you believe supports your claims so that we can see what you mean and how you interpret what you read, and not just look at links.

Read, from the link I gave, "Panpsychism can parallel almost every current theory of mind; it simply holds that, no matter how one conceives of mind, such mind applies to all things.".

 

[ryan]

Are you talking about information theory? I think it was Seth Lloyd that said that the entire universe is a quantum computer processing its own evolution. If I remember correctly, he also said that the air in a balloon has so many bits of information (information entropy) that it would take a computer the size of our solar system to store the information.

Sounds about right but I'll go with my own definitions. Everybody comes up with the same ideas. I've seen that expressed in too many ways already. That isn't a hard problem to scribble out. Common sense if you ask me. Best not to expose yourself to those theories til you think a while for yourself, in my opinion. And be skeptical if you do, because you are probably right to begin with, to beat all hell. They corrupt your imagination easily if you let them, huh. Screwy people and their theories.

You said this: "where could we go from there?", when referring to the final numbers they get on consciousness.

I said: "Knowing the fact of the matter makes matter pointless", when talking about the exact same thing you were.

But you said you didn't know what I meant. You have your own definition but it is the same isn't it?

I see what you are saying now, but I still think it is best that everyone uses definitions to make mutual understandings faster and easier. But I do agree with you that we all have a sort of intuition that goes a long ways, if not all that there is. Using the same jargon (assuming everyone understands the definitions) does make things go more efficiently, yes?

 

[ryan]

Juma, this isn't just me saying this; it's the main problem with emergentism. It might be the way it is, but it is deeply unsettling.

"Although examples of higher level properties which are not identical to lower order properties are easy to find, examples where they are not reducible to or predicable from their bases are more controversial."

From wiki , I don't know who said this, but doesn't the latter part make sense Juma?

Easy to say, hard to justify when you actually examine it. You're still left with all the same problems as before, only you're adding the new problem of explaining why my stapler has a mind even though it doesn't seem to be into jazz. Panpsychism is a cop-out, a shortcut that doesn't get you any further than just admitting you have no clue what the universe is made of or how the mind works.

I will explain below.

Ryan, emergentism is the very thing you are proposing. To go back to your cloud-to-airplane analogy, how would it be any less mysterious if the individual water particles were all actually tiny airplanes? It still needs to be explained how the entire plane can function as a unified whole, and not just a swarm of independent planes. Think about cabin pressure, for example. Each individual airplane is pressurized inside its cabin, but that doesn't guarantee a pile of tiny airplanes will therefore have a pressurized cabin. You need arrangement and interconnectivity for that. And at that point, the fact that each particle has its own little pressurized cabin doesn't make any difference anyway, because the mini-cabin pressures aren't contributing anything to the whole. So you're right back to needing emergence. That's why I keep saying panpsychism doesn't solve anything, it just shifts the problem to a new room while simultaneously making some egregious claims that aren't consistent with everyday observation.

I totally agree. I mentioned to another1 in the last of my thought process posts for panpsychism. It alone doesn't answer the "binding problem".

But what panpsychism does do is give us a property that we can use to explain things from the beginning, the Big Bang if you will. Reductionism always wins. Your house is suddenly not going to be haunted by ghosts (by ghosts I mean things that do not follow any laws of physics) in which case they would have emerged. But we all know this never happens; things that exist in of themselves don't emerge like that.

I also gave an explanation as to how the new prospects of entanglement in the brain can actually explain the binding problem. Entanglement is actually, so far, true emergence of a property not reducible to its parts. Along with panpsychism, this emergence of a unified behavior is exactly what we would need to explain the binding problem of consciousness, IMO.

 

[ryan]

parts more parts, states more states so many parts and states. Oh, and processes. What is being done here? Look, science, not philosophy, is already past quarks so an intellectual redo couched as philosophy isn't going to do much good.

Ask yourself what does consciousness effect.

Many just believe that the consciousness is epiphenomenal: no effect on the physical. Does it affect anything mental do you mean? Does it affect itself somehow - interesting. But if it's epiphenomenal then that won't help the scientists.

 

[Juma]

parts more parts, states more states so many parts and states. Oh, and processes. What is being done here? Look, science, not philosophy, is already past quarks so an intellectual redo couched as philosophy isn't going to do much good.

Ask yourself what does consciousness effect.

Many just believe that the consciousness is epiphenomenal: no effect on the physical. Does it affect anything mental do you mean? Does it affect itself somehow - interesting. But if it's epiphenomenal then that won't help the scientists.

Consciousness epiphenomenal? That doesnt make any sense at all.

 

[another1]

Sounds about right but I'll go with my own definitions. Everybody comes up with the same ideas. I've seen that expressed in too many ways already. That isn't a hard problem to scribble out. Common sense if you ask me. Best not to expose yourself to those theories til you think a while for yourself, in my opinion. And be skeptical if you do, because you are probably right to begin with, to beat all hell. They corrupt your imagination easily if you let them, huh. Screwy people and their theories.

You said this: "where could we go from there?", when referring to the final numbers they get on consciousness.

I said: "Knowing the fact of the matter makes matter pointless", when talking about the exact same thing you were.

But you said you didn't know what I meant. You have your own definition but it is the same isn't it?

I see what you are saying, but I still think it is best that everyone uses definitions to make a mutual understanding faster. But I do agree with you that we all have a sort of intuition that goes a long ways, if not all that there is. Using the same jargon (assuming everyone understands the definitions) does make things go more efficiently, yes?

Thank you for listening to me ryan and I'll just say this one thing. No point continuing because I'm hopelessly lost and too ignorant. But I'll explain why I feel it doesn't matter that it is impossible for me to comprehend things. Here you go. I'm inside a body that will die. Right? Consciousness is how I communicate with my body and puppet it around. All for my enjoyment. Props and stupid stuff all day. Right?

I'm the only living spirit in any world. Right? I have no evidence to go past that. I can't speculate. Sharing conscious life with other things would mean that we're bound in a kind of hell. That is depressing and unrealistic. That doesn't mean that you're not very real. Not meaning to insult. You're probably just another instance of me. I sense there has been a long time to kill and a lot of firewalls to prevent things from seeming other than what I assume is absolute nothingness. And I doubt there is a but beyond that.

In this scenario there is no point in bragging about being God because there is nobody to admire you but yourself. Nature would be a sad and lonely thing, existing only to stand at attention when looked at. "What would be the point" would come to mind in an isolated, disembodied and timeless state, so imagination maybe happens on separate tiers, interfering with itself because why not.

But yeah, ryan, I'm a rational person and I go on evidence. I'm me, and I'm the the only conscious entity in what I may be leading myself to believe is a life. Have you possessed other people and fully confirmed that they are actually there? I have not. I've only been me. Kinda stuck from there, so the next step is of course to claim that I am God. It makes perfect sense. I'm really skeptical, see. I don't think I can make the call. All I can assume is that I am all that there is. So there went my responsibility to understand, as well as my responsibility to explain. This idea suits me just fine, but some things would need ironing out to prove it. And like I said, proving it is the opposite of what should be done, by the very nature of life.

 

[ryan]

Many just believe that the consciousness is epiphenomenal: no effect on the physical. Does it affect anything mental do you mean? Does it affect itself somehow - interesting. But if it's epiphenomenal then that won't help the scientists.

Consciousness epiphenomenal? That doesnt make any sense at all.

Why not?

 

[untermensche]

Many just believe that the consciousness is epiphenomenal: no effect on the physical. Does it affect anything mental do you mean? Does it affect itself somehow - interesting. But if it's epiphenomenal then that won't help the scientists.

Consciousness epiphenomenal? That doesnt make any sense at all.

It makes sense but it also makes consciousness completely unnecessary.

The consciousness that cannot move anything is not needed by anything. It just watches and feels what other things do. It thinks it is moving the arm, but that is just a funny joke the brain is playing for some reason.

It is an evolved property that has no purpose at all.

But evolution is a process of keeping that which serves a purpose, in terms of survival. If the leg helps the animal survive evolution is a process that keeps the leg around. For a while at least.

Why consciousness would continue to exist if it serves no purpose defies evolutionary principles.

It defies reason.

 

[ryan]

I see what you are saying, but I still think it is best that everyone uses definitions to make a mutual understanding faster. But I do agree with you that we all have a sort of intuition that goes a long ways, if not all that there is. Using the same jargon (assuming everyone understands the definitions) does make things go more efficiently, yes?

But yeah, ryan, I'm a rational person and I go on evidence. I'm me, and I'm the the only conscious entity in what I may be leading myself to believe is a life. Have you possessed other people and fully confirmed that they are actually there? I have not. I've only been me. Kinda stuck from there, so the next step is of course to claim that I am God. It makes perfect sense. I'm really skeptical, see. I don't think I can make the call. All I can assume is that I am all that there is. So there went my responsibility to understand, as well as my responsibility to explain. This idea suits me just fine, but some things would need ironing out to prove it. And like I said, proving it is the opposite of what should be done, by the very nature of life.

You say, "All I can assume is that I am all that there is.". But wait a minute. If all you know for sure is X, then are you justified in saying that X is all there must be? But yeah, solipsism is a bitch. I suppose you have to make assumptions that best explain what is going on.

 

[ryan]

Consciousness epiphenomenal? That doesnt make any sense at all.

It makes sense but it also makes consciousness completely unnecessary.

The consciousness that cannot move anything is not needed by anything. It just watches and feels what other things do. It thinks it is moving the arm, but that is just a funny joke the brain is playing for some reason.

Why? How do you know that you aren't the physical and the mental? What you do as a physical being reflects mentally, like looking into a mirror.

 

[rousseau]

Can someone sum up the interesting stuff fromderinside has said so far?

 

[rousseau]

I have two versions of hell. The first is being trapped in a programming meetup, being forced to talk about Javascript libraries for all eternity, the other is talking about consciousness with people who think there's something magical about human experience.

 

[fromderinside]

Can someone sum up the interesting stuff fromderinside has said so far?

Here's recent stuff.

How do I love thee .....

So subconscious planning is out, sub conscious programming next steps is out, ....... finally something, experiencing, that actually requires consciousness -setting aside planning and controlling which are probably just punching out existing to-dos -

Finally why I do love thee, rejecting illusion just because one doesn't see benefits for one doing as other's are seen to expect. If that were conscious it would take place after the expectations had been expressed. We don't experience in real time, we experience after information arrives permitting us to experience.
…..
At will indeed. Its as if the the great faerie were beside you. You don't will, you just do. What kind of doo doo is that? If it's you and you did it then either you willed it or you are a machine. As you know I'm a great believer in machines. So you wouldn't want to agree with me would you
......
isn't the effort you exert trying to remember actually a rationalization for not being able to access a memory you believe you possess? With our wonderful brains and words to spare we spend a lot of time masturbating this way. Do you really want to argue such rationalization is actually will?
…..
How cold does ice need be before hitting it with a hammer shatters it? Experimented with water in HS. Water shrinks until about 4 degrees C then expands as temperature drops to about zero degrees then it expands substantially just below that until it begins to shrink again around -7 degrees. Interesting physical dynamic donchathink.
…..
Think of it this way: Consciousness is the butterfly effect of the brain leading to feedback leading to other activity relevant to one's situation. Oh, wow.
…..
We don't usually start with "its within the realm of possibilities" without positing how and why one believes it is there based on some evidence. A rational possibility needs rest on some rational basis. When one pulls something out of one's excretory orifice we usually look away. Face it, something pulled from there is neither rational nor a possibility because its a self evident waste of another's time. Just like that we've gone from rational possibility to self evident waste of another's time.

BTW your inference that panpsychism and integrated information theory have any relation to  Information Theory,  Claude Shannon is not true on its face.

One would do better looking bases of consciousness if one looked at Chaos theory and the consequences of feedback in deterministic systems. Think of the situation this way: Consciousness is an awareness of one's situation in ones social world being processed as response to those conditions.
….
There are many attendings, several awarenesses and just one, if any at all, consciousness. As to why one might believe consciousness is there I suggest you read on the social man, Chaos, and feedback in the context of evolution. Oh, and those conditions are the social aspects of which one is aware. Chaos out of deterministic, even mechanistic behavior, comes from feedback. Humans, maybe other life forms, are trying to interpret feedback on the fly. Don't hurt yourself.

Oh, by the bye, one needn't resort to faeries or quanta to find source(s) of consciousness.
….
parts more parts, states more states so many parts and states. Oh, and processes. What is being done here? Look, science, not philosophy, is already past quarks so an intellectual redo couched as philosophy isn't going to do much good.

Ask yourself what does consciousness effect.
….

I'd summarize this as a lurch towards a Chaotic frame for consciousness as a window into feedback in social behavior of the person probably as justification for why something like consciousness might be preserved as a phenotype as part of how one copes with one's primary threats, other humans.

There are a couple logical jabs in the set as well.

OK rousseau?

 

[DBT]

Links are not really useful when it comes to the interpretation of this information by the poster...you in this instance.

You need to provide the information that you believe supports your claims so that we can see what you mean and how you interpret what you read, and not just look at links.

Read, from the link I gave, "Panpsychism can parallel almost every current theory of mind; it simply holds that, no matter how one conceives of mind, such mind applies to all things.".

That's just an article referring to David Skrbina's argument for the importance of panpsychism. It's still a philosophical argument.

We still have no scientific basis for panpsychism.

 

[ryan]

Read, from the link I gave, "Panpsychism can parallel almost every current theory of mind; it simply holds that, no matter how one conceives of mind, such mind applies to all things.".

That's just an article referring to David Skrbina's argument for the importance of panpsychism. It's still a philosophical argument.

We still have no scientific basis for panpsychism.

never said they did

 

[Juma]

Consciousness epiphenomenal? That doesnt make any sense at all.

Why not?

It runs at odds with the evidence. There is a very clear connection between human behaviour and how concious we are.
Unconciuos = vegetable (or at least very impaired behaviour.)