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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: Rahz]
    #29661659 -

Rahz said:
Quote:
I think we largely agree that a complete evolutionary and organisational account, meaning the complete resolution of the soft questions, could contain the answer. The remaining difference is that you regard the present explanatory gap as sufficient to retain a hard problem, while withholding confidence that the gap will close. I regard it as an open set of evolutionary and organisational questions whose answers have not yet been developed.


Perhaps that scientific gap will be filled softly, and I like your idea about different levels. Perhaps the scientific gap is otherwise complete, meaning there's nothing substantial left to understand scientifically, and some people don't see it, as red suggests.

But on another level, we don't need to infer awareness from science because we encounter it directly.

Asking the question of why there is awareness is its own answer. It's an acknowledgment. Asking why reality exists is its own acknowledgment. They are the same question.

There is a potential tension there. It can be like trying to force an existential primitive through an analytical filter. It's generally useful, but at the extremes where we are questioning reality or our own existence, "I don't know" is a good stopgap, but the ideal answer is a simple kind of non-dualistic affirmation.

I bring this up to suggest that as a matter of our general experience there doesn't need to be a gap, while at the same time one can entertain a scientific gap in understanding.

I get what Chalmers is saying. Maybe it's unreasonable to ask science to explain the existence of the reality it already presupposes.


I agree that awareness does not need to be inferred from science. We encounter it directly. But that direct encounter establishes the phenomenon, not an explanation of how or why awareness takes the particular forms it does within evolved organisms.

I also think there is a difference between asking why reality exists at all and asking why particular organisms experience. Science may presuppose that reality exists, but it can still investigate natural phenomena within reality, including how experience varies with the organisation and condition of an organism.

I think we largely agree that a complete evolutionary and organisational account, meaning the complete resolution of the soft questions, could contain the answer. Once that possibility is conceded, I do not think the present explanatory gap is enough to retain a hard problem as a distinct explanatory category. The gap shows that the evolutionary and organisational account expressed through the soft questions has not yet been developed.

The assumption is not in saying that the soft questions may eventually answer it. That possibility has already been conceded. The additional assumption is in treating an unresolved remainder as necessarily a hard remainder, rather than as an undeveloped evolutionary or organisational explanation. To establish a further hard problem, it would need to be shown that a specific explanatory demand remains even after the soft questions have been answered.

That is why I hesitate to treat awareness as equivalent to the bare existence of reality. Awareness is not encountered merely as an unchanging fact. It is the state that changes with emotion, attention, learning and perception, as well as with causal alterations to the organism such as sleep, injury and drugs. Drugs are distinctive as introduced chemical causal inputs. By modifying the organism’s chemistry, they can alter the state of awareness, including introspection, which is itself an experience. Awareness is therefore not insulated from causal conditions or from the evolved organisation of an organism.

That does not mean a complete account has already been developed. It gives us reason to treat awareness as belonging within the organisation science is trying to understand, rather than as something outside it.


--------------------
I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.


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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: Freedom]
    #29661742 -

so how do you perceive awareness?


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:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: sudly]
    #29661776 -

Quote:
I think we largely agree that a complete evolutionary and organisational account, meaning the complete resolution of the soft questions, could contain the answer.


Yes, but there's a caveat I would want to see about shared understanding of why the hard problem is considered hard.

There are soft problems that seem considerably hard. Using a tree as an example, they cannot currently be derived from physics or QM. It seems a mesophysical issue. It may not require further formulation but the confirmation of tree development through quantitative interaction is an immense job.

Having solved that problem, we could derive everything phenomenal about the operation of trees.

The same can be done for humans. But, this may still not describe why there is experience.

Perhaps it is perceptual, but the difference is that I can envision a system of quantitative interaction capable of reproducing objects of awareness. I have trouble envisioning a system that can predict the fact of awareness.

That doesn't mean atman. I don't wholly reject the idea for the same reason I don't reject any possibility, but atman doesn't make sense. Sharing an absence of sense with the fact of awareness isn't enough of a commonality to draw a correlation.

Even if physicalism turned out to be completely incapable of explaining awareness, that would establish at most the inadequacy of that physicalist account, not the truth of atman.

Quote:
That does not mean a complete account has already been developed. It gives us reason to treat awareness as belonging within the organisation science is trying to understand, rather than as something outside it.


I still think there is an assumption here. It may be a correct assumption. There is a logic to it. But it is still an assumption or preference, a methodology. Do you agree with that?


--------------------
rahz

comfort pleasure power love     truth awareness peace I am      I feel      I do     I love  I speak    I see    I know

why there is reality and patterned, law-like consistency at all, rather than noise or non-reality is not a question physics answers. It's a question physics presupposes an answer to in order to provide other answers.

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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: Rahz]
    #29661833 -

who here attempts to describe or understand awareness in terms of body feelings or presence in the moment?
who here equates consciousness with awareness?


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:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: redgreenvines]
    #29661882 -

redgreenvines said:
so how do you perceive awareness?


I wouldn't presume there's a thing that perceives awareness.

thinking about cause and effect I see two profound mysteries that could be the same

For physics there is the first mover problem. So we have an explanation gap right from the start.

Then despite great fit there's an apparent gap between experience and the physics we imagine to underlay it.

Its also possible that experience is part of physics, like how their are gravitational fields and electromagnetic fields, their could be experience fields. For example ions moving across the membrane might perturb a field of experience creating contrast. Memory would then be stored patterns of perturbing the field. How we could detect such a field and show that it has experience would be really hard i think. It would probably show up as having some kind of effect on the ions or whatever might perturb the field.

I don't present that as a theory i believe in, but as an example of a missing mechanism. however that mechanism and physics still has the first mover problem


Edited by Freedom (09/05/26 09:44 AM)

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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: The Blind Ass]
    #29661891 -

The Blind Ass said:
well well well, apologies gents. now i see this <->:give remaining beer to a bubba, tis not for me:<-> is not the way to be either.  :takingnotes:
Carry on.
:nowords:
:leaving:



I'm not good at the poetry stuff but here's someone who is:

Quote:
Having questions and answers, we smear everything with shit and piss. Not
having questions and answers, thunder and lightning crash. The great earth
in ten directions is leveled, and all of space is torn open. Not allowed to
enter from outside; not allowed to leave from inside, a gavel strikes the
sounding block and the ten thousand affairs are completed. At such a
time, how is it?


After a pause Dōgen said: Time and again, everything exists within a
painting. Even allowing for what is split apart, snow falls at midnight.


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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: Freedom]
    #29661938 -

Freedom said:
redgreenvines said:
so how do you perceive awareness?


I wouldn't presume there's a thing that perceives awareness.

...




i didn't ask that,
just wondering what you personally think about your own awareness or consciousness, but if you do not, no need to answer. this is not about a theory or a religious point of view, it is about what you feel or think or can say about your experience of consciousness or awareness or even about personal memory.


--------------------
:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: redgreenvines]
    #29661967 -

When I look for a part of the moment that is perceiving, or look for what hears sound or feels touch, there doesn't appear to be anything but the sound or touch

the sense of a center disappears, as well as edge.


I've spent hours trying to say something more, it always feels partial and misleading and incorrect.



how about you?

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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: Freedom]
    #29661988 -

yes, I do not see a 'perceiver' perceiving awareness, but I feel breath mixed with flashes from the various senses, and I recognize bits of models or geometries strewn around like abandoned toys while the next breath begins, sometimes there is the shadow of an entire body sometimes it is bright.


--------------------
:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: Rahz]
    #29662018 -

Rahz said:
Quote:
I think we largely agree that a complete evolutionary and organisational account, meaning the complete resolution of the soft questions, could contain the answer.


Yes, but there's a caveat I would want to see about shared understanding of why the hard problem is considered hard.

There are soft problems that seem considerably hard. Using a tree as an example, they cannot currently be derived from physics or QM. It seems a mesophysical issue. It may not require further formulation but the confirmation of tree development through quantitative interaction is an immense job.

Having solved that problem, we could derive everything phenomenal about the operation of trees.

The same can be done for humans. But, this may still not describe why there is experience.

Perhaps it is perceptual, but the difference is that I can envision a system of quantitative interaction capable of reproducing objects of awareness. I have trouble envisioning a system that can predict the fact of awareness.

That doesn't mean atman. I don't wholly reject the idea for the same reason I don't reject any possibility, but atman doesn't make sense. Sharing an absence of sense with the fact of awareness isn't enough of a commonality to draw a correlation.

Even if physicalism turned out to be completely incapable of explaining awareness, that would establish at most the inadequacy of that physicalist account, not the truth of atman.

Quote:
That does not mean a complete account has already been developed. It gives us reason to treat awareness as belonging within the organisation science is trying to understand, rather than as something outside it.


I still think there is an assumption here. It may be a correct assumption. There is a logic to it. But it is still an assumption or preference, a methodology. Do you agree with that?


I used the term “complete” deliberately, because I thought it was important to distinguish an unfinished account from one that had genuinely exhausted the relevant explanatory work. But looking more closely at Chalmers’s formulation, I can see that his “complete functional account” is complete only within a stipulated domain of functions, structures, dynamics and causal roles.

Quote:
His original formulation

https://consc.net/papers/facing.html



My own use of “complete” was broader. I meant complete with respect to the phenomenon being explained, including why and how an organism experiences.

That makes me open to a caveat. I do not assume that the existing soft questions, answered exactly as they are now framed, must automatically answer phenomenology. If their resolution appears to leave a remainder, one or more may be framed too narrowly, or a further evolutionary and organisational question may need to be formulated. If an account of operations leaves experience untouched, I would first ask whether it has adequately characterised the organisation of an experiencing organism, rather than immediately assume that the remainder is inherently hard.

Your tree example also makes “derive” and “operations” unclear. A scientific explanation of tree development need not derive a tree directly from physics or quantum mechanics, or manufacture a seed from scratch. It may explain development through the relevant organisation across levels. The human case differs because awareness is already an established phenomenon to be explained. The question is not simply whether we can reproduce the objects of awareness, but how and why awareness itself belongs to the organisation of a human organism.

When you say that you have trouble envisioning a system that can “predict the fact of awareness”, I do not take prediction to mean access to somebody’s private mental contents. I mean something closer to how prediction works in particle physics. The LHC does not directly observe many particles, but tests theories through constrained signatures from which their presence is inferred. An account of awareness might identify organisational conditions under which awareness changes, then test whether interventions on those conditions produce corresponding changes in experience.

My own assumption is therefore a methodological hypothesis. It treats awareness as a causally variable feature of evolved organisms and directs inquiry towards the organisation through which it changes. If a complete functional account in Chalmers’s sense leaves a remainder, the next step is to reconsider the framing of the soft questions or formulate a further evolutionary and organisational question, rather than assuming that the remainder is inherently hard. It is fallible, but it provides a way to investigate the question.

By contrast, the possibility that awareness lies outside what an evolutionary and organisational science could understand is an assumption without an equivalent methodology. It does not specify how that boundary could be identified or established beyond the present explanatory gap and our difficulty envisioning an answer. Until such a reason is given, I think the gap is better treated as an undeveloped explanatory task than as evidence of a limit on what the relevant organisation could explain.


--------------------
I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.


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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: sudly]
    #29662377 -

A materialist axiom can state that consciousness is wholly physical, but it cannot simply assume the explanatory work is complete or that explaining everything the brain does would automatically explain why those processes are accompanied by subjective experience.

A leap of logic occurs when one moves from dependence on the brain to identity with the brain. Neuroscience can establish strong causal relationships between neural processes and conscious states, but causal dependence and identity are different claims.

1. Whenever a particular neural state or neural organization occurs under relevant conditions, a corresponding experience reliably occurs under those same conditions.

2. Altering that neural state or organization alters or eliminates the corresponding experience.

3. Therefore, the experience is causally dependent on, causally realized by, or systematically associated with that neural state or organization.

The leap:

4. Therefore, that particular experience is identical with that particular brain state.

Dependence does not automatically entail identity. This shows that physical dependence doesn't (by itself) necessitate physical identity. Physical dependence can be supported by neuroscience, but physical identity is a further metaphysical conclusion.

The further claim that subjective experience is identical with a physical process requires either an additional identity principle or an argument that, once the relevant physical and functional explanation is complete, no further explanation of subjectivity is needed.

The claims that "subjective experience is not a separate substance, property, or event added to the physical process", that "once the brain’s physical and functional operations are completely explained, nothing further remains to be explained", and that "The hard problem is a conceptual illusion", do not demonstrate that identity follows from neural dependence. Rather, they reject or reinterpret the demand for a further explanation by adding or defending a metaphysical principle: that a complete physical-functional account is sufficient to explain consciousness, or that phenomenal experience is simply another way of referring to the relevant physical process.

Even a complete physical map may leave the hard problem unanswered, not because it fails to explain what the brain does, but because it may still fail to explain why those processes are accompanied by subjective experience. The claim that "there is no further why" is a philosophical resolution of the explanatory problem rather than a conclusion established by neural correlation alone.

Whatever physical entity is proposed, whether it be a neural state, a temporally extended process, or a system-level organization, its identity with experience is an additional philosophical claim rather than something that follows automatically from dependence.

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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: Rahz]
    #29662495 -

I thought that this link might be interesting to help gauge how far we have come

Imaging Inscape: The Human Soul (1913)
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/baraduc-soul/

It submits a form of photo proof as evidence for non-physical mysteries.







--------------------
:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: teknix]
    #29662565 -

I think your response has largely replaced my position with a stronger, standard identity-physicalist position, then argued against that position. I have not claimed that neural dependence establishes an identity between a particular brain state and an experience.

I have not argued that neural dependence entails identity. My point is that causal variation gives us reason to investigate awareness through an organism’s organisation.

I have not claimed that neuroscience has completed the explanatory work. The relevant account is plainly unfinished and may require better-framed existing questions or new questions.

I have not said that there is no further why. My view is that the present remainder may reflect an undeveloped evolutionary and organisational explanation.

I have not claimed that a complete functional account automatically resolves experience. As I have now clarified, a complete functional account in Chalmers’s stipulated sense may still not be complete with respect to the experiencing organism and the phenomenon being explained.

Nor have I claimed that the hard problem is an illusion. I think we should not assume that a remainder is inherently hard before examining whether the relevant questions are incomplete, too narrowly framed, or missing an important organisational relation.

The question for me is not whether causal dependence, by itself, proves an identity claim, because my point is that causal variation gives us reason to investigate awareness through an organism’s organisation. The question is whether the present explanatory gap gives us reason to treat awareness as outside what an adequate evolutionary and organisational science could understand. I do not think it does.


--------------------
I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.


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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: sudly]
    #29662577 -

I think what we are missing isn't the neuroscience so much (which has been correlating brain function with consciousness). I think we are missing a theory.

Its like heat and metal expansion share identity. Heat is molecular motion which is the expansion. The correlation became identity with the theory.

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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: Freedom]
    #29662594 -

my theory is associative reflexes after associative memory formation i.e. familiarity


--------------------
:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Philosophies compared [Re: redgreenvines] * 1
    #29662723 -

this (the book) reminds me of meditation

like you can get sucess and happiness from meditation

and benefit

ongoing benefit

like daily, probably daily

love

have a great day everyone


--------------------
Make love not war
And art
Save the planet
Fix the earth

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General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
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