The 'hard problem of consciousness'

In truth, it is not a causal relationship, but a correlation between two different levels of description of the same phenomenon. By falsely establishing a causal relationship, we artificially create the seemingly insoluble question of how neuronal activity can give rise to conscious experience.

This question is similar to asking why H2O is wet

Centralization in the brain brought with it the need for a feedback mechanism that made it possible to consciously perceive incoming stimuli – consciousness, understood as the ability to sense stimuli.

There's a reason why Chalmers says "arises from" rather than "is caused by."

But that's precisely the hard problem: Whence this "ability to sense stimuli"? Why couldn't the stimuli simply do their thing (including whatever self-correction you want to build into it) without being sensed?

The hard problem is more about trying to explain how color "arises" from non-colored things, like neurons and wavelengths.

you examine a human organism and find that there are sensors

Think logically: if they were stimulus-response machines, who would monitor the sensors?

Suppose you know nothing about consciousness, but you examine a human organism and find that there are sensors and nerves. Do you then ask yourself what this is good for? The answer will be that it must have a function. Perhaps you then think that it is there so that these beings can sense what they are doing. So that they are not eaten in the next moment. Sensing is nothing other than consciousness. In our case, this has now become more differentiated, so that we experience entire dramas. This does not change the principle.

Yes, and if you "define down" sensing so that it becomes something a thermostat can do, then you're still minus a theory of consciousness, which now has to be defined as something else.

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

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

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

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

the majority of philosophical problems are based on linguistic confusion.

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

"Sensing" is doing the work of two meanings that shouldn't be confused here.

1) Sensing- akin to "responding in a behavioral kind of way"
2) Sensing- akin to "feeling something".

Clearly we want to know how 1 and 2 are the same, or how 1 leads to 2, etc

The decisive error in thinking now occurs when we swap or mix the levels of description. So if we suddenly switch from the physiological to the psychological level and construct a causal relationship between the two that cannot exist in reality. So if we claim that physiology is the basis of psychology, or that the excited group of neurons causes the conscious experience of red.

This change of perspective is particularly treacherous because it often happens unnoticed.

The hard problem of consciousness can therefore be seen as a misunderstanding of the evolutionary function and development of consciousness. What we perceive as a subjective experience is essentially the evolution of a mechanism that ensures that relevant stimuli are registered and processed in an adaptive way.

Hoffman builds his case using evolutionary game theory, demonstrating that perceptions that accurately represent reality are not favored by natural selection. He further critiques the conventional view of physicalism—the idea that the physical world is the foundation of all reality—arguing that space, time, and objects themselves are human constructs rather than fundamental aspects of the universe. Instead, he suggests that consciousness itself might be fundamental, proposing a theory in which reality consists of a network of conscious agents interacting

.All other corners of the world untouched by our participation also are agentially perspectival with respect to themselves via their interaffecting within configurative patterns of interaction.

Consciousness and the rest of the world is not subjective or objective. ... Consciousness is no different than a map of the world...

Our understandings of the world aren’t ideas in the head, they are activities of engagement.All other corners of the world untouched by our participation also are agentially perspectival with respect to themselves via their interaffecting within configurative patterns of interaction. Hoffman and Chalmers still think of consciousness as an Ideal substance.

I agree. I took that to be part of asking how a "sense" of stimuli could take place.

I don't read "arises" as a type of causation. We need a verb to describe what happens when two phenomena occur at the same time, and yet one appears to ground the other. That's what I think "arises" is supposed to mean here. Causation should be reserved for things that occur sequentially in time. Wolfgang's two levels of description are a good example. Does the presence of 22 people on a soccer field, following certain rules, "cause" a soccer game? This would be a very awkward and counter-intuitive way of putting it. Rather, we'd say that the soccer game simply is the 22 people following the rules, under a different description.

(Note, BTW, that speaking of "two phenomena" somewhat begs the question, but it's hard to find a non-question-begging way of putting it.)

The world is objective in the sense that it is independent of us, and available for all of us. Also maps of the world have this objective mode of existing.

Consciousness, however, is subjective in the sense that it exists only for the one who has it. All conscious states have this subjective mode of existing. Some conscious states are not only subjective in this sense, as some beliefs can also be objective in an epistemic sense. Justified true beliefs are both ontologically subjective and epistemically objective.

In this sense, consciousness is the presence of colors, sounds, smells, and feelings and the thoughts that categorize these sensations into logical ideas the same way a soccer game is the presence of 22 people on a field following rules.

How do we get from that to consciousness being the interaction of neurons? Is it two separate phenomenon, or the same phenomenon being described from two different perspectives?

He argues that our perceptions of reality are not accurate reflections of the world as it truly is. Instead, he proposes that evolution has shaped our perceptions to prioritize survival. According to Hoffman, organisms that perceive the world in a way that maximizes fitness, rather than accuracy, are more likely to survive and reproduce. This leads to the conclusion that what we see, hear, and experience is not an objective representation of the world as it is, but a kind of 'user interface' designed to hide the complexity of reality and present simplified, useful representations to aid survival.

.All other corners of the world untouched by our participation also are agentially perspectival with respect to themselves via their interaffecting within configurative patterns of interaction.
— Joshs

isn't that panpsychism?

The confusion of levels of description

The world is independent of a map as well so this does not really get at what it means to be objective vs subjective.

..as if humans have this special quality of the world being independent from us.

Earth is the only planet that we know to have human life. In this sense, is the Earth subjective in that Earth is the only planet to have human life? ...
..you seem to be trying to make a special case for human consciousness in that it is the only thing that has uniqueness.

I'm not clear how the subjective experience of eating chocolate, say, is a product of, shall we say, patterns of interaction within a network, shaped by how beings engage with their environment. I'm trying to understand what this frame contributes to a 'deflation' of the hard problem. Can you tease this out a little more for a layperson?

Vitalism used to be a solution to a "hard problem" based on the assumption that...

Now I don't think we're anywhere near a synthesis of consciousness from unconscious compounds, but if seems fairly clear that consciousness is a biological phenomenon.

I know it’s difficult not to associate agency with consciousness...

Could it be argued that modern (enlightenment) Science is an attempt to improve observational accuracy for the purpose of learning to manipulate reality in service to human survival and thrival? Hence, not eliminative Materialism (matter only), but inclusive Realism (matter + mind). For example, the Webb telescope extends the range of our vision, not for practical survival purposes, but for theoretical knowledge that may have some specific survival advantages, if we humans ever encounter predatory aliens from foreign galaxies

Now I don't think we're anywhere near a synthesis of consciousness from unconscious compounds, but if seems fairly clear that consciousness is a biological phenomenon.

Moreover, conscious states such as visual experiences have a hierarchical structure in the sense that the experience is not solely a biological phenomenon. It is also causally constrained by the behavior of light, and influenced by the observer's psychology, sociology, language and culture. All of these can be described, but none of them is a complete description of the experience. However, the lack of a single complete description is hardly a problem.

I know it’s difficult not to associate agency with consciousness...
— Joshs

‘Whereas Barad dilutes the theoretical distinction between mind and matter as well as the distinction between animate and inanimate, the contention here is that it is ethically and politically vital to hold on to a notion of subjectivity understood in terms of the capacity for experience’ - from a critique of Barad’s agential realism.

?Tom Storm Barad’s ‘agential realism’. Streetlight mentioned it also. As a form of materialism, it is obliged to deny the ontological distinction between animate and inanimate, per the above

he issue for Thompson isn’t whether the animate and the inanimate are ontologically distinct, but how to understand subjectivity in terms of autonomous processes of self-organization in living systems.

But he still differentiates living from non-living right at the outset. 'The living order is characterized by the emergence of a new kind of structure in the physical order.' I can't see how what you're advocating is not reductionist

"I follow the trajectory that arises in the later Husserl and continues in Merleau-Ponty, and that calls for a rethinking of the concept of “nature” in a post-physicalist way—one that doesn't conceive of fundamental nature or physical being in a way that builds in the objectivist idea that such being is intrinsically of essentially non-experiential. But, again, this point doesn't entail that nature is intrinsically or essentially experiential (this is the line that pan-psychists and Whiteheadians take). (Maybe it is, but I don't think we're now in position to know that.) All I want to say for now (or think I have grounds for saying now) is that we can see historically how the concept of nature as physical being got constructed in an objectivist way, while at the same time we can begin to conceive of the possibility of a different kind of construction that would be post-physicalist and post-dualist–that is, beyond the divide between the “mental” (understood as not conceptually involving the physical) and the “physical” (understood as not conceptually involving the mental)."

Now I don't think we're anywhere near a synthesis of consciousness from unconscious compounds, but if seems fairly clear that consciousness is a biological phenomenon.

I have made the case over many years that self-replication provides the threshold level of complication where the clear existence of a self or a subject gives functional concepts such as symbol, interpreter, autonomous agent, memory, control, teleology, and intentionality empirically decidable meanings. The conceptual problem for physics is that none of these concepts enter into physical theories of inanimate nature.

Self-replication requires an epistemic cut between self and non-self, and between subject and object.

Self-replication requires a distinction between the self that is replicated and the non-self that is not replicated. The self is an individual subject that lives in an environment that is often called objective, but which is more accurately viewed biosemiotically as the subject’s Umwelt or world image. This epistemic cut is also required by the semiotic distinction between the interpreter and what is interpreted, like a sign or a symbol. In physics this is the distinction between the result of a measurement – a symbol – and what is being measured – a material object.

I call this the symbol-matter problem, but this is just a narrower case of the classic 2500-year-old epistemic problem of what our world image actually tells us about what we call the real world.

With respect to the Evan Thompson quote, the way I interpret that is in line with phenomenology - it aims to avoid dualistic categorisation by avoiding reduction to purely physical or purely mental. part of 'healing the split' caused by mind-body dualism. But I don't think that supports any form of materialism

Self-replication requires an epistemic cut between self and non-self, and between subject and object.

Self-replication requires a distinction between the self that is replicated and the non-self that is not replicated. The self is an individual subject that lives in an environment that is often called objective, but which is more accurately viewed biosemiotically as the subject’s Umwelt or world image. This epistemic cut is also required by the semiotic distinction between the interpreter and what is interpreted, like a sign or a symbol. In physics this is the distinction between the result of a measurement – a symbol – and what is being measured – a material object.

Enactivists assert a strong notion of world-involvement,
i.e., processes in the environment play more than informational roles in the consti­tution and actualization of life and mind . To enact a world of significance is to engage in actual acts, which are material events with spreading consequences that are both world-changing and agent-changing. Environmental and biological/cognitive processes are mutually enabled and mutually constituted. They interpenetrate at all scales and they co­ordinate across scales.

Historicity and the co-constitution of organism and environment are internally related in the enactive approach. Concerns about the conservation of organization are mostly linked to the self-production requirement of autopoiesis (the regen­eration of the conditions that continuously give rise to the operationally closed network of processes making up the organism). Concerns about barriers, bound­aries, and in general about an organism’s relation to its environment are mostly linked to the condition of self-distinction in the definition of autopoiesis. From an enactive perspective, self-distinction and self-production are dialectically re­lated, that is, they are mutually dependent, though distinct, mo­ments of autopoiesis. You cannot have one set of processes and not the other as long as the organism lives, yet the processes are not the same. All processes subserving self-distinction are themselves products of self-production

And the fact that it turned out inorganic and organic compounds are not fundamentally different is not evidence that the same answer will apply to the HPoC.

The problem isn't the lack of a complete description. Rather, it's how we can even talk about all this without importing (as you do) the term "observer".

Sure, we can describe a subjective experience, but how do we explain its existence, or why it exists in the way it does and not in another? That's the hard problem.

If we could build a working brain our of inorganic parts that was functionally equivalent to a working organic brain, wouldn't the non-biological brain be conscious?

Materiality is discursive in the sense that it consists of reciprocal acts of affecting and being affected that form normative systems.

The problem isn't the lack of a complete description. Rather, it's how we can even talk about all this without importing (as you do) the term "observer".
— J

Ok, please explain to me why we can't talk about all this without using the word 'observer'?

For example, a feeling of being drunk (its existence and why it exists the way it does) is uncontroversially explained by the effects that alcohol has on our cognitive functions.

But to me that requires the existence of the kind of agency that only begins to appear with organic life (by no means only conscious agency.) That is the reason I'm open to biosemiosis but not to pansemiosis.

leave out the terms "observer" and "experience." Let's look at the result and see what we think.

jkop:visual ..... have a hierarchical structure in the sense that the ..... is not solely a biological phenomenon. It is also causally constrained by the behavior of light, and influenced by the .....'s psychology, sociology, language and culture. All of these can be described, but none of them is a complete description of the .......

m. I think Hoffman learns the wrong lessons from evolutionary theory.

Not so sure about "logical ideas" (maybe just "ideas"?) but otherwise I agree.

At this point we need to make sure it's not just a dispute over terms. What do we want "phenomenon" to designate? I vote for something like "appearance to a mind," so that the 22 people and the soccer game are two different phenomena. On that understanding, I want to say that neurons and consciousness are also two different phenomena, appearing from two different perspectives. But notice that it doesn't really matter how we understand "phenomenon" here. We could go the other way and stipulate that "phenomenon" designates a single event in time, in which case the soccer game and consciousness are now redescriptions of "the same phenomenon." Either way, we're left with the hard problem. I know many people want to do some arm-waving here and say, "Well, it's two different descriptions, what more do you need to know?" but surely the answer is, "A lot. Why are these descriptions as they are? What allows the passage from one description to another? Are we right in believing that the mental-level description is grounded in, but not caused by, the physical-level description? Does the physical-level description have a "translation" into Mentalese? When we encounter something as extraordinary as subjective experience, what else do we need to say about it to fill out the experience? Yes, consciousness is, in a sense, "only" a description of how things look to a subject, but don't we feel it's a lot more than that too -- somehow constitutive of identity?" etc. etc.

To be a living system is to maintain a normative pattern of interacting with an environment in the midst of changing conditions. Sense-making is about pragmatically relevant actions , not concordance with ‘reality as it is’, whatever that’s supposed to mean. This doesn’t make what sense-making reveals as an illusion, or mere appearance as opposed to the really real. It shows us that this is what ‘reality as it is’ IS in itself.

The world is independent of a map as well so this does not really get at what it means to be objective vs subjective.
— Harry Hindu

Consider cities and landscapes and most of the environments that people live in. Large parts of our lived world depend on the maps and drawings after which they were built. Those are parts of the actual world, and it is in this sense that the world depends on maps for being such a world. Without maps it would be a different world.

..as if humans have this special quality of the world being independent from us.
— Harry Hindu
I can't make sense of that.

The world is objective in the sense that it is independent of us, and available for all of us. Also maps of the world have this objective mode of existing.

That's not what I say. Many humans and other animals are conscious. Consider the events in your physiology when you are having the conscious awareness of a tickle. Others may have similar events, but not those that exist in your physiology. The tickle exists whenever you feel it, and when you no longer feel it, then it doesn't exist anymore. This mode of existing is radically different from the way the world exists or the map

To be a living system is to maintain a normative pattern of interacting with an environment in the midst of changing conditions. Sense-making is about pragmatically relevant actions , not concordance with ‘reality as it is’, whatever that’s supposed to mean. This doesn’t make what sense-making reveals as an illusion, or mere appearance as opposed to the really real. It shows us that this is what ‘reality as it is’ IS in itself.

I don't know what "appearance to a mind" means. It seems to imply that a mind can be independent from some appearance as if something appears to a homunculus in the brain.

Any appearance in the mind is the result of some measurement in that the brain measures and interprets wavelengths of light and sound and these measurements are the means by which we interact with the world.

Personally, I believe that irreconcilable differences between quantum physics and classical physics will be resolved with a proper explanation of consciousness.

Sense-making is about pragmatically relevant actions , not concordance with ‘reality as it is’, whatever that’s supposed to mean. This doesn’t make what sense-making reveals as an illusion, or mere appearance as opposed to the really real. It shows us that this is what ‘reality as it is’ IS in itself.

Ever read The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose?

Right, conscious states are different from unconscious states, but are they fundamentally different?

consciousness, understood as the ability to sense stimuli

I’ve learned that the principle is called ‘relevance realization’ or ‘the salience landscape.’ It’s a guiding principle for all organic life. But self-aware rational beings might have requirements beyond those of other life-forms - think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Other organisms are not able to consider the nature of existence in the way h.sapiens is, so questions of truth or falsehood don’t arise as part of their ‘salience landscape’.

Most organisms act to maintain and reproduce their lineage through ongoing responsiveness to life-relevant features of what thereby becomes their biological environment. Con-ceptually articulated ways of life are two-dimensional in the deeper sense that they are oriented not only toward continually maintaining their biological lineage but also toward determining what that way of life is and will be. This sense of two-dimensionality is “deeper” in that it enables those organisms to differentiate how they take their environment to be from how it is.

I meant rewrite the thesis but avoid using those terms. Give a description you believe is accurate but that doesn't have recourse to "observer" or "experience" .

And the world would be different without humans and their minds, so I don't see how you've made any sensible distinction between what it means to be subjective vs objective.

I was pointing out that the mind is not special in having things independent of it, so you have failed to make any sensible distinction between what is objective and subjective.

I am conscious as I type this. In a couple hours, I will be unconscious. The states are fundamentally different. Aside from differences in brain activity, however, a physical exam of me in each state of consciousness would find very little different.

Ok, please explain to me why we can't talk about all this without using the word 'observer'?

Moreover, conscious states such as visual experiences have a hierarchical structure in the sense that the experience is not solely a biological phenomenon. It is also causally constrained by the behavior of light, and influenced by the observer's psychology, sociology, language and culture. All of these can be described, but none of them is a complete description of the experience. However, the lack of a single complete description is hardly a problem.

Ever read The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose? — J
Tried and failed. The maths was beyond me. I’ve often enjoyed Sir Roger’s talks on other topics. I’ve recently written a Medium essay about his views on QM.

They're fundamentally different under the assumption that consciousness is non-material, which implies dualism, i.e. that we split the world in two, which is implausible.

I doubt that Penrose thought in terms of the Platonic principle of Cosmic Reason as the essence of Consciousness.

"The wavefunction is the ontological state of existence of systems in the universe.

I suspect that Rouse’s distinction will eventually prove to be untenable.

They're fundamentally different under the assumption that consciousness is non-material, which implies dualism, i.e. that we split the world in two, which is implausible.

There's a lot more for us to learn about the universe, and so far there is little reason to split it in two.

I know, the right language is hard to find. What I think we want to describe is the subjective event that occurs when, say, I think of a purple cow. The image of the cow is rather like something that "appears to a mind" but if that seems too Cartesian-theater, no matter. We can perhaps find better language, but I hope the target concept is clear enough: First the cow isn't there (for me), and then it is, not as a pattern of neurons but as a cowish purply image. What has happened? That's the event we're concerned about, which I'm suggesting we could call a "phenomenon".

The problem here is that, in order to get from "brain measurements of wavelengths of light and sound" to "an appearance in the mind" and the idea that "we" interact with the world, we have to import some new concepts. Mind? We? Where did this subjectivity come from? Once again, the hard problem: How do we get from here to there? Why should there be anything like an appearance in the mind, if the brain seems ideally equipped to do the measuring on its own and respond accordingly?

It should be clear by now, that it depends on whether we use those words in their ontological sense or their epistemic sense.

The mind is special in the sense that its existence is observer-dependent, unlike the world. The world doesn't depend on an observer to exist. They have different modes of existing.

We need a physicalist translation, or reduction, of "experience," for starters. In what sense is visual experience biological? Do we know how our brains create the illusion of the Cartesian theater that characterizes subjective experience? Not at all. You can say, "Someday we will," and I agree that's likely, but at the moment it's unsolved, and it's not a matter of lacking a description, as you put it. We lack any theory at all about how and why it happens.

By clarifying their ambiguity we can get rid of some of the problems.

For example, in talk of the experience of seeing a cat, the word 'experience' or 'seeing' can refer to what is constitutive for having the experience: the feeling. But they can also refer to what the experience is about: the cat.

So, what is left to explain is this: How does my brain create the feeling?, and I believe we know at least something about how feelings are evoked by hormone levels, neurons releasing dopamine etc.

The impossible request that we ought to explain how hormone levels etc create the illusion of a Cartesian theatre seems to be based on a fallacy of ambiguity.

"The wavefunction is the ontological state of existence of systems in the universe. — Gnomon
I take issue with that in this essay.

But the kind of "feeling" involved in having a mental image of a cat is surely not explainable by hormone levels.

Can you sketch even the beginning of an explanation of a mental image that involves feeling-type causes such as hormones or other chemical items?

...processing that information without consciously experiencing it.

Dualism posits two substances of different kinds, i.e. mental and material. But consciousness doesn't have to be conceived of as an 'immaterial thing' apart from but different to the physical. Rather it pertains to a different order, namely, the subjective or first-person order, in which it never appears as an object. Rather it is that to which (or whom) all experience occurs, the condition for the appearance of all knowledge.

The past and future are irreconcilably different,

Right, so instead of substance-dualism you have two orders or perspectives or property-dualism. All the same, when we want to explain how two phenomena are related to each other, yet assume that they are fundamentally different in a way that makes is hard or impossible to understand how they could be related, then the problem might be in the assumption.

In research on gravity, there's talk of backwards causation and that time is not a fundamental property of the universe.

I don't know, but it doesn't seem to be a hard problem to explain how the past creates the future.

I think I could add "the illusion of" in front of every reference to "subjectivity" and it wouldn't alter the problem. If I understand you, you believe that subjectivity only becomes a "problem" when it is labeled as subjective and claimed to be a mirror or a window or something that validly reflects an external reality. But if none of that is so, and what I was calling "subjectivity" is in fact a dualistic illusion, we still need to know how this comes about, and why.

I'm not sure our ignorance is so fundamental. Moreover, the word 'experience', like perceptual verbs such as 'see', are ambiguous. By clarifying their ambiguity we can get rid of some of the problems.

For example, in talk of the experience of seeing a cat, the word 'experience' or 'seeing' can refer to what is constitutive for having the experience: the feeling. But they can also refer to what the experience is about: the cat.

The cat is the object that you see, which causes you to feel a certain way. The way it makes you feel is what the cat is like when it is seen under those conditions, and what the cat is like is not a creation of anyone's brain, nor are the conditions under which the cat is seen.

Ok, Husserl might not seem to be a dualist, but the assumption that consciousness is immaterial in the sense that it never appears as an object in a world of objects, implies an epistemological dualism, and the hard problem reappears. For if consciousness is immaterial, then it seems we have no way of knowing what it's like to be another observer, or how immaterial experiences arise in a material world.

A similar problem arises for indirect realists because of their assumption that we never see objects directly, only by way of seeing our own sense-data (or mental images) first.

For idealists for whom everything is consciousness, the hard problem does not arise from a metaphysical or epistemological wedge. Likewise, it doesn't arise for direct realists under the assumption that we see objects directly: e.g. what it feels like is what the object appears like.

A "mental image" couldn't even resemble visible objects such as cats or images

What it's like to see the cat is a feeling, not an image.

But if none of that is so, and what I was calling "subjectivity" is in fact a dualistic illusion, we still need to know how this comes about, and why.
— J
But that is what I've been saying - that seeing this as a dualist illusion IS the problem. Abandon dualism and introduce the idea of monism and see if that helps you solve the problem.

We agree that subjectivity could be a dualist illusion. (I don't think it is, but I'm happy to assume it for purposes of argument.) But if it is, we still need to know why. You say, rather cavalierly, "Abandon dualism." OK, I imagine a purple cow and I follow this up by saying to myself, "This experience of me-and-purple-cow-image is illusory. There is no separation." But this doesn't make the purple cow go away, or change into something else. I'm sure you don't believe this would happen either, but what do you believe? What changes, for you, in this sort of experience when you introduce the idea of monism? Is it that experience, as presented, becomes a sort of brute fact, about which it's no longer possible to ask questions? This isn't meant to be snarky, I'm genuinely interested.

In my posts above I'm arguing against the property dualism that is implied in the so called hard problem of consciousness. The problem reappears also in epistemological forms of dualism, such as in indirect realism, or in any philosophy in which it is assumed that consciousness is inaccessible to our knowledge.

Those are not my problems. I'm a direct realist, and a monist, so there's no need for you to give me a lecture on the monist nature of the world. Likewise, when I'm talking of subjective and objective in their ontological and epistemological senses, I'm not trying to split the world in two. In a monist world, things can have different modes of existing, and some things are observer-dependent (e.g. money) while other things (e.g. mountains) exist regardless of observers. But thanks anyway

?Gnomon
Generally :up: but watch out for the tendency to reify, 'make into a thing'.

Are Mathematics and Metaphysics "real" or "ideal"?

Is an electron a wave or particle? How about neither and we come up with a better word?

It sounds like where we differ is that you want to eliminate the idea of a mental image altogether. I think there are plausible and persuasive reasons for doing this in the case of perceptions. But not for imagined or remembered images. If these experiences are not, in some ordinary-language way, mental images, then what are they? And how could they be explained away as being identical with their physical substrates?

Actually, direct realism is part of the hard problem. In asserting that you see the world as it is - as static objects and physical brains, and comparing that to how the mind appears and is described as being non-physical and immaterial is how the hard problem arises.

I asked you what an observer is, and you didn't answer the question.

A "mental image" couldn't even resemble visible objects such as cats or images

What it's like to see the cat is a feeling, not an image.

Computers create models of the world. Does this mean that the computer can imagine things? What makes brains so special in that minds arise from them but cannot arise from a computer? Both are physical objects and both are doing similar things in processing (sensory) information. If a physical object like a brain can produce a mind, then why not a computer?

Ok, Husserl might not seem to be a dualist, but the assumption that consciousness is immaterial in the sense that it never appears as an object in a world of objects, implies an epistemological dualism, and the hard problem reappears. For if consciousness is immaterial, then it seems we have no way of knowing what it's like to be another observer, or how immaterial experiences arise in a material world.

For idealists for whom everything is consciousness, the hard problem does not arise from a metaphysical or epistemological wedge. Likewise, it doesn't arise for direct realists under the assumption that we see objects directly

For example, a bird observing its environment,, birdwatchers observing the bird, a prison guard observing prisoners, a solo musician observing his own playing, an audience observing the musician, scientists observing their experiments, a thinker observing his own thinking (e.g. indirectly via its effects).

The hard problem is more about trying to explain how color "arises" from non-colored things, like neurons and wavelengths.

Likewise, when we experience seeing red, it's because that specific wavelength stands in contrast to other wavelengths of visible light. Therefore, within the neuronal circuits of the brain wherein we interpret the specific wavelength for red, there's nothing therein that's red because the relativistic effect that supports our experience of red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes, not within the neuronal circuits of the visual cortex of our brain.

Computers operate according to the parameters, programming, and designs created by the scientists who build them. While it's true that large language models can generate unexpected insights based on their training data and algorithms, the key point is that these systems do not understand anything. They process and output information, but it's not until their output is interpreted by a human mind that true understanding occurs.

Additionally, I dispute the idea that the brain is simply a 'physical object.' The brain might appear as a physical object when extracted from a body and examined by a pathologist or neuroscientist. But in its living context, the brain is part of an organism—embodied, encultured, and alive. In that sense, it's not just an object but part of a dynamic, living process that produces consciousness in ways that no computer can replicate.

Actually, direct realism is part of the hard problem. In asserting that you see the world as it is - as static objects and physical brains, and comparing that to how the mind appears and is described as being non-physical and immaterial is how the hard problem arises.
— Harry Hindu

:roll: That's not direct realism. Why bother?

In the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, direct or naïve realism, as opposed to indirect or representational realism, are differing models that describe the nature of conscious experiences; out of the metaphysical question of whether the world we see around us is the real world itself or merely an internal perceptual copy of that world generated by our conscious experience.

I asked you what an observer is, and you didn't answer the question.
— Harry Hindu

For example, a bird observing its environment,, birdwatchers observing the bird, a prison guard observing prisoners, a solo musician observing his own playing, an audience observing the musician, scientists observing their experiments, a thinker observing his own thinking (e.g. indirectly via its effects).

I appreciate your taking the time to lay all this out for me. Could I ask you to take this to a simpler level, and describe to me what you think happens when I imagine a purple cow? I'm still concerned about the hard problem, understood as the emergence of subjectivity (or the illusion of subjectivity, if you prefer) from chemical/neuronal activity,

Some have proposed "wavicle". What do you suggest?
My question about Math & Metaphysics was philosophical, not scientific. So the distinction between Real and Ideal is relevant for a philosophy forum. :smile:

What is a wavicle?
"It is in your dictionary. Something which simultaneously had the property of a wave and a particle in physics. My physics class was over 70 years ago so I’m not up on that contradictory word. It is like saying something is frozen and liquid at the same time. Like an “honest thief”.

Its a rather pathetic attempt to assign one ( made up) word to the wave-particle duality of nature that is described in quantum mechanics mathematics. Wave–particle duality ___Wikipedia.

Doesn't your description contradict these statements?

Additionally, I dispute the idea that the brain is simply a 'physical object.' The brain might appear as a physical object when extracted from a body and examined by a pathologist or neuroscientist. But in its living context, the brain is part of an organism—embodied, encultured, and alive. In that sense, it's not just an object but part of a dynamic, living process that produces consciousness in ways that no computer can replicate.

But we can imagine and dream of red things. So it seems to me that the color red is the form visual information takes and stored as such for future use in making predictions about the world.

...within the neuronal circuits of the brain wherein we interpret the specific wavelength for red, there's nothing therein that's red because the relativistic effect that supports our experience of red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes, not within the neuronal circuits of the visual cortex of our brain

I have the sense that when you say 'idealism', you believe that it posits something called 'mind' which is constitutive of reality in the same way that 'matter' is for materialism.

If you're using direct realism in a different way then I would hope that you would explain.

... a human body ... converts ... Data into Meaning

All knowledge must be integrated. Dualism causes problems. Monism solves those problems.
Either we take the attributes of waves and particles that do not contradict each other and integrate them into what it means to be a wavicle, or we come up with another word. What about process or information?

21st century physics has equated Information with causal Energy

Energy is the relationship between information regimes. That is, energy is manifested, at any level, between structures, processes and systems of information in all of its forms

Bishop Berkeley understood, correctly, that such a split makes no sense, so he decided to focus on the mind. Matter is not eliminated, but it's not fundamental. Mind is.

And does that make sense to you? Does it seem plausible?

A "mental image" couldn't even resemble visible objects such as cats or images

What's mental is the intent to find out what the cat might look like, which may feel like seeing, since it can be satisfied by one's ability to use memories and beliefs about cats. It can also be satisfied by doodling with a pencil on paper until the visible shapes of a drawn cat satisfy what you had in mind. But what you had in mind was never an image, only a hunch, a feeling evoked by the intent etc.

No, but what makes sense is Berkeley's rejection of the split between mind and body.

And does that make sense to you? Does it seem plausible?
— Wayfarer

No, but what makes sense is Berkeley's rejection of the split between mind and body.

If it’s not some sort of resemblance between the doodle and “what you had in mind”, then what determines satisfaction here?

if we want matter in or representations of reality, we need to keep the split between mind and matter.

It ain't necessarily so, for we are not confined to representations of reality. Experiences of reality are presentations of reality in the sense that the experience in your mind of a material reality is the material reality. When mind about matter is the matter, then there is no split between mind and matter. .

Imagining a cat may resemble seeing a cat (or cat-like doodle) since the levels of hormones and neurotransmitters that evoke the mental states in both cases can be similar or the same. Hence their resemblance.

If so, why is this brain-centered higher-order memory function immaterial?

So Berkeley's idealism is implausible, but it's less implausible than Cartesian dualism?

..monist idealism is the only form of monism which has the appearance of being coherent.

..we assume "matter" as something independent form minds, to support our belief in a real world which is independent from us,

Have you ever checked your hormone and neurotransmitter levels in order to be satisfied of a resemblance?

I would think that the resemblance is more likely the result of some sort of comparison between the imagined cat and the seen cat.

How do the physical causes of your mental states affect your judgement of a resemblance between them?

Couldn't two very different mental states have the same hormone and neurotransmitter levels?

...in humans, Meaning places the world data in relationship to the Self-concept.

Mind is a holistic Function of brain, not identical with the neural network.

As I understand it, meta- refers to anything that is over & above meaningless matter : the Map is not the Terrain.

21st century physics has equated Information with causal Energy — Gnomon
So, you embrace the understanding information is physico-material?

You might ask, 'Why would we need to be conscious of an imagining?" Why can't a p-zombie do the same thing but without the actual experience of imagining a purple cow? The answer is that I don't think the p-zombie is a valid argument.

So, in the case of an information field flanked by energy fields, we have a grouping of three energy fields, a two-plus-one with info being one type of energy and the flanks being another type of energy?

So, for sentients, meaning is always personal?

Is paradox a synonym for enformaction?

Premise -These questions make an approach to distilling what consciousness does objectively: it resolves paradoxes.

Is paradox a synonym for enformaction?

No. Does "the power to enform" seem paradoxical to you?

That combination of Cause & Laws is what I call EnFormAction (EFA) : the natural holistic tendency to create complex systems from simpler components

Premise -These questions make an approach to distilling what consciousness does objectively: it resolves paradoxes.

That may be the evolutionary adaptive function that led to conscious awareness of Self & Other, which are often at odds.

No, I just feel them. What I feel is my physiological state, in which hormones and neurotransmitters etc are constitutive for having it.

But feelings are invisible, you can't compare a visible cat nor graphic image with the feeling of imagining what they look like. You can, however, compare things of the same type, such as two visible cats, two visible images, or two invisible mental states by how they feel when you have them.

A "mental image" couldn't even resemble visible objects such as cats or images

Well, for example, alcohol can affect my mental state so that I feel tipsy, a blurry kind of feeling, which in turn resembles the blurry feeling of seeing blurry or expressive pictures, or hearing blurry sounds, etc. There is something genuinely blurry about feeling tipsy, or in what it's like to see blurry pictures etc.

I have a lot of questions about p-zombies too, but we don't need them in this instance. Any number of computer-generated entities can do all the things you mention: respond to their environment, learn, make predictions, use feedback loops, offload routines to different parts of memory. So I disagree that "Consciousness is necessary for learning and making predictions." This is why the purple cow is such an annoying example -- it doesn't do anything. It simply sits there, so to speak, being a mental image, again so to speak. If a computer-generated entity could do this, I would have to allow that it might be conscious, but I don't believe it can. Except by rather strained analogy, there's no equivalent of a digital state that also has a subjective appearance to the software that we cannot experience.

Having said this, some computer-savvy poster is going to show me I'm wrong! OK, I'm ready. . .

Now we go deeper into the brain_mind interface. The experience of seeing red, like the experience of seeing animated graphic images on a computer screen, is an interpretation of code for the experience. The Graphical User Interface of images viewed on a computer screen is an interpretation of Java, C++, etc. When you look at the code directly, you won't see any graphic images. Likewise, when you study neuron synaptic firing rates, electric current and voltage levels in active parts of the brain, etc., you won't see any graphic images replicating the natural world. There's no analog simulation of the natural world within the databases of computers, and there's no analog simulation of the natural world within the brain.

Bishop Berkeley understood, correctly, that such a split makes no sense, so he decided to focus on the mind. Matter is not eliminated, but it's not fundamental. Mind is.

In direct realism, the mind is directly linked to the world.My conscious awareness of the world is the actual world, not a mental replica. There's no gap between my conscious awareness and the world.

But another way to think of quantum reality is as a field of Potential that can become Actual

there is no reason to say that quantum entities are ever really waves. Rather, the probabilities of where we will observe them in an experiment can be conveniently determined by the calculus of the Schrödinger equation, proposed in 1926 in response to de Broglie, which is formally analogous to a kind of wave equation. But a wave of what? Not of a physical thing – a density or field – but of a probability. The distribution of these probabilities, when observed over many repeated experiments (or a single experiment with many identical particles), echoes the amplitude distribution of classical waves, showing for example the interference effects of the famous double-slit experiment.

But that's the thing. What makes a mass of neurons conscious, but a mass of silicon circuits not conscious?

Well, now you're establishing some kind of Cartesian theater where there is a GUI that is being viewed, but viewed by what?

...the computer screen is a physical object that emits light so this still does not seem to be a valid example.

What I'm trying to say is that the world may be more like the GUI than the code

What I am trying to say is that primary "substance" of the world is process, relationships or information.

No. Does "the power to enform" seem paradoxical to you? — Gnomon
Yes.

I thought maybe your holistic combination of substance, form and dynamics creates an environment wherein parts are simultaneously discrete and gestalt.

The whole landscape of evolution is a branching web of boundaries both combining and separating.

I think the idea of potential is just that - an idea and not some inherent property of reality. Ideas like randomness, probability, possibility and potential are all ideas that stem from our ignorance.

My point is that... ..you judge a resemblance by comparing the cat that you imagine to the cat that you see.

I was questioning why you are talking about physical states at all with regard to judging a resemblance between an imagined cat and a seen cat.

Sounds more like solipsism to me.

Potential is not-yet Real.

...the Voltage of an electric battery is its potential for future current flow measured in Amps.

But that's the thing. What makes a mass of neurons conscious, but a mass of silicon circuits not conscious?

We don't yet know

Difference of potential is rooted in the extant charge of the concentrated particles. It is real. . . .
There is a basic difference between having an idea about current flow and having a charged battery ready to deliver current flow.

The battery poles are certainly Real. but until they are connected into a circuit, the electric current is only Potential.

Difference is a mental concept : Ideal not-yet Real.

Potential is not a real thing, but an ideal concept that points to a future state.

Difference and Potential are found only in Conscious Minds, not in the material world

We don't yet know. My hunch is that it's going to be a version of the same thing that makes a biological creature alive, and a computer not. And yes, this could all be off base -- the sort of thing people will marvel it a few centuries hence -- "How could those people have gotten it so wrong?" But for the moment, I haven't heard of anything that suggests a computer could have inner states. Do you know of anything along these lines? (Grant me, for the moment, the idea that an inner state would be a sign of consciousness.)

Well, now you're establishing some kind of Cartesian theater where there is a GUI that is being viewed, but viewed by what?
— Harry Hindu

Are you implying the GUI is being viewed by an immaterial mind? Would this be, in context of your thinking, cognition-to-cognition, along the lines of mental telepathy?

So, simulation of the world by GUI is movement towards consciousness and thus it resembles the mind more than it resembles its code?

A mass of neurons has processing of memory functions attached; I'm not sure, but I think AI operates in similar fashion.

Yes. Potential is not-yet Real. Science and philosophy are tools for dispelling our ignorance. :smile:

Potential :
Unrealized or unmanifest creative power. For example the Voltage of an electric battery is its potential for future current flow measured in Amps. Potential is inert until actualized by some trigger.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html

On the contrary! When you experience the world as it is, then your experience is the world. Doesn't mean that the world is a figment of your experience.

how can anything invisible resemble something visible?

If we say that consciousness is a type of working memory that contains sensory information . . .

I've said that I think it's unlikely that non-biological entities will turn out to be conscious.

Well, yes, then various things follow, but I don't think that's a good thing to say. My own consciousness doesn't at all resemble this description phenomenologically, and once again we're a long way off from being able to say that, despite this, it "really is" working memory plus sensory information. Just for starters, for whom is the information informative?

I'm trying to get at your reasoning here.

For you, who else?

If my description does not resemble what it is like for you, then please explain what it is like for you.

Only in distinguishing between the world and your experience do you become a realist and at the same time an indirect realist as the experience is not the same thing as the world.

Our difference centers on whether or not a potential current embodied within a charged battery is physical whereas a potential current embodied within the mind's memory is abstract. In both cases the potential is tied to something physical: a) the charged battery and its difference of potential; b) the mind's memory and the difference of potential it represents abstractly.

How does saying that potential is not-yet-real differ from saying it doesn't exist? . . . . there is no such thing except within our minds

Likewise, when we experience seeing red, it's because that specific wavelength stands in contrast to other wavelengths of visible light. Therefore, within the neuronal circuits of the brain wherein we interpret the specific wavelength for red, there's nothing therein that's red because the relativistic effect that supports our experience of red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes, not within the neuronal circuits of the visual cortex of our brain.

But we can imagine and dream of red things. So it seems to me that the color red is the form visual information takes and stored as such for future use in making predictions about the world. For us to be able to apply what we predict to the world, our predictions need to be similar to what we attempting to realize in the world, or else how could we apply new ideas to the world?

Well, now you're establishing some kind of Cartesian theater where there is a GUI that is being viewed, but viewed by what?

Okay but you can only access the code via a GUI. I can only access your neurons via my GUI. Your neurons and the code appear in my GUI as visual representations of what is "out there". The neurons and the code do not exist as represented by the GUI. As you said, the GUI is a representation, and not the neurons and code as it actually is. So maybe terms like, "neurons" and "code" are representations of how they appear in the GUI and not how they are in the world, and how they are in the world is simply information or process and we are confusing the map (GUI) with the territory.

However, there's a feeling in what it's like to see the cat, which is comparable with a feeling of what it's like to see the cat-picture. There's also a feeling in what it's like to imagine a cat. You can compare your feelings (via memories), and judge resemblances between them.

So, similarly, I'm guessing that consciousness will turn out to be a property of living organisms exclusively. Why? Because whatever it is that makes an entity alive is going to be turn out to be what makes it consciousness.

you want to stipulate a meaning for "resemblance" that makes physical visibility more important as a criterion. I guess you can do that, but I think we need 1) an explanation for how the ordinary-language use became so common, and 2) a good argument for why this notion of "resemblance" is useful or clarificatory, in this context. What are you trying to ameliorate, with this usage?

there can be resemblance between two states of affairs such as seeing things and thinking about things.

Well, now you're establishing some kind of Cartesian theater where there is a GUI that is being viewed, but viewed by what?
— Harry Hindu

Viewed by the brain that constructs the simulation of the world within the visual field of the eyes.

There just isn't any reason to make the visible/invisible comparison central to resemblance.

Your visible/invisible distinction seems irrelevant, at least for the one imagining the cat.

It makes little difference whether you reduce all seeings and imaginings to "feelings", or whether you call it a comparison between a seen cat and an imagined cat.

There just isn't any reason to make the visible/invisible comparison central to resemblance.
— J

I didn't.

A resemblance-relation requires at least two objects which can resemble each other. Granted that all objects resemble each other in the abstract sense of being objects, but how can anything invisible resemble something visible?

My point is that they can't, unless you somehow make both visible.

How does saying that potential is not-yet-real differ from saying it doesn't exist? In your example, it seems that you are simply saying that potential is simply the current state of an electric battery before being connected to a system to supply it with energy. Some batteries are never connected to a system so it would be incorrect to say that they have the potential to do anything. It is our ignorance of what the future holds for the battery that makes us think of "potentials" and "possibilities" when, in a deterministic universe, there is no such thing except within our minds.

The central executive in a computer does not view the data it is working with. The data simply exists in memory and is manipulated in real-time by the central executive.

What form the data takes in memory is the ultimate question here.

From our perspective it takes the form of silicon circuits, computer code and logic gates. From others' perspective the data in your working memory takes the form of neurons and the chemical and electrical signals between them. But from our own minds, we do not experience neurons and their chemical and electrical signals. We experience colors, shapes, sounds, etc. of which others' working memory is composed of. From our own perspective, our own working memory takes the form of colors, shapes, etc. and it is only by observing others' working memories that we experience something different. So which form does working memory actually take? Which one is the real form working memory takes?

What form the data takes in memory is the ultimate question here.

So which form does working memory actually take? Which one is the real form working memory takes?

Surely that makes visibility "central to resemblance" -- indeed, it sounds like the criterion for it ("you can't, unless . . .").

The invisible and visible can't resemble each other unless we make both visible.

Your visible/invisible distinction seems irrelevant, at least for the one imagining the cat.
— Luke

A cartoonist who imagines a fictional cat might find it relevant to also see visible cats.

In the sense that an imagination is invisible and a cat is visible, they can't be compared,

Notice that there is no need to assume dualism between the cat and what it's like to see the cat: the experience is the cat.

Many forms of dualism are fallacies of ambiguity.

A literal interpretation of the term 'mental image' is a fallacy of ambiguity.

So perhaps the hard problem of consciousness is a fallacy of ambiguity?

Notice that there is no need to assume dualism between the cat and what it's like to see the cat: the experience is the cat.
— jkop

Do you claim a cat seen via the virtual viewing of imagination is no less physico_material than a cat seen via the optics of the eyes?

Language open to more than one interpretation falsely suggests two objective and parallel modes of being?

A literal interpretation of the term 'mental image' is a fallacy of ambiguity.
— jkop

I see the redundancy; I don't see the ambiguity.

You're saying the HPoC stems from an ambiguity of language without a referent ambiguity in nature?

When you imagine a cat, however, there is no relation between the experience and a cat (neither physical nor mental cat). What you are experiencing then is your own creative use of memories and beliefs with the intent to figure out (by what it feels like) what the cat is like.

The visible properties of the cat fix what it's like for you to experience the cat. Your use of memories and beliefs about cats fix what it's like for you imagine the cat.

A literal interpretation of the term 'mental image' is a fallacy of ambiguity.

You're saying the HPoC stems from an ambiguity of language without a referent ambiguity in nature?

Right. Chalmers assumes that an experience is accompanied by a property of what it's like to have the experience. That's property-dualism.

As if seeing the cat consists of two experiences, one of the cat, and another of what it's like. Separately or somehow coalesced. I find the dualism implausible and redundant. I believe that seeing is the experience, and what the experience is like is what the cat is like.

Right. Chalmers assumes that an experience is accompanied by a property of what it's like to have the experience. That's property-dualism.

As if seeing the cat consists of two experiences, one of the cat, and another of what it's like.

I believe that seeing is the experience, and what the experience is like is what the cat is like.

the subjective experience of knowing one is seeing things in the world, including knowing one is seeing oneself.

What is the cat like when it is not being seen?

...the subjective experience of knowing one is seeing things in the world, including knowing one is seeing oneself.

That's several different experiences and objects stacked on top of each other.

What could that be like?

What is the cat like when it is not being seen?

If by central executive you mean CPU (central processing unit), then I say it's not an unreasonable stretch to construe "processing" as "views." In each case -- the CPU in one and the brain in the other -- a processor processes data in the act of constructing a world view. Furthermore, the brain also manipulates data that simply exists in memory. When you imagine or dream of the experience of seeing red, that's an example of your brain manipulating data that simply exists in memory.

I guess you want to go from:

What form the data takes in memory is the ultimate question here.
— Harry Hindu

to:

So which form does working memory actually take? Which one is the real form working memory takes?
— Harry Hindu

I guess the passage is intended to be a narrative that elaborates two or more forms of "working memory."

Also, I guess you believe one form is real and the other not.

I would say the brain is more like the actual computer with a CPU, working memory and long-term memory, not just a CPU. Each part is necessary and cannot function without the other parts.

I would distinguish between "processing" and "views" as a view being a type of processing where the information being processed is about the world relative to the one processing the information. This is why the world appears and sounds to be located relative to your eyes and ears and that all of our sensory perceptions are about the world relative to our locating in space-time.

We seem to have a problem with how we experience other's working memory compared to how we experience our own working memory.

I'm not asking which one is real. I'm simply asking what form does the contents in any type of working memory take... If it is simply a matter of perspective - of BEING your working memory as opposed to representing the working memory of others because it would be impossible to BE others' working memory so your only option is to represent it, then that is ok.

I believe that seeing is the experience, and what the experience is like is what the cat is like.
— jkop

What is the cat like when it is not being seen?
— Patterner

More or less like it is when it is seen (disregarding Schrödinger's cat). :smile:

If I see you, would you say my experience of you is like what you are like?

I think I am missing every important quality/aspect of what you are like when I experience you.

But I don't know that this mannequin is not you. When seeing it, I believe it's you.

do you think what it's like for me to experience seeing you is the same as what it's like for you to be you?

I would say the brain is more like the actual computer with a CPU, working memory and long-term memory, not just a CPU. Each part is necessary and cannot function without the other parts.
— Harry Hindu

I understand you to be referring to R.A.M./R.O.M. with: "working memory and long-term memory."

I think consciousness, performing in its virtual imaging mode, as based on memory, greatly complicates and perplexes the discreteness and certainty of the location of the referent in relation to the viewer. The portability of memory in time and in space complicates our understanding of the original link between referent and viewer regarding their respective locations.

Furthermore, I think this loosening of the link between the two is one of the main causes of the HPoC. I can access my own subjective memory directly. I can only attempt to access another person's subjective memory indirectly, as via listening to a narrative recounted from memory by another person.

I think it's possible to understand that even in the case of one's own subjective memory of being oneself, a separation exists between oneself as thing-in-itself (a kind of pure objectivity of a thing, extant, I believe, more as concept than experience) and a mental representation within subjectivity.

I guess I'm saying we are not exactly our thoughts. Evidence for this might be the fact that sometimes the motives for our behaviors are unconscious.

As to the question of the general form of working memory, firstly, I think memory has a circular structure. Going forward from there, I speculate subjectivity is a higher-order of mnemonic feedback looping. Going forward from there, our ability to know what it's like to be someone else depends upon our virtual viewing (in our imagination) of the GUI of the contents (code) of the other person's working memory.

If the "I" is accessing anything, it is the world via its senses. Working memory is just a working model of the immediate environment relative to the body.

...red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes...

But we can imagine and dream of red things.

...do we have solve the problem of the ontology of knowledge before we can start talking about the ontology of the world?

So your experience of hitting your thumb with a hammer is the same as my experience of seeing you hit your thumb with a hammer?

In your earlier quote immediately above, you argue that our working memory is not solely based on the immediate connection between self and world. In addition to this, you say our working memory can also be based upon imagination and dreams.

If "the ontology of knowledge" can be construed as "the physics of consciousness," the central question of this conversation, then it seems that understanding the ontology of the world -- at least regarding physicalist physics -- has come first, and now consciousness lies under the microscope.

In your earlier quote immediately above, you argue that our working memory is not solely based on the immediate connection between self and world. In addition to this, you say our working memory can also be based upon imagination and dreams.

What I am saying is imagination and dreams are a manifestation of the work being done in working memory. There is also the work of interpreting sensory data and one's memories, which includes imaginings and dreams, is used as a basis for interpreting sensory data.

If the "I" is accessing anything, it is the world via its senses. Working memory is just a working model of the immediate environment relative to the body.

...within the neuronal circuits of the brain wherein we interpret the specific wavelength for red, there's nothing therein that's red because the relativistic effect that supports our experience of red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes, not within the neuronal circuits of the visual cortex of our brain.

But we can imagine and dream of red things. So it seems to me that the color red is the form visual information takes and stored as such

What I am trying to say is that primary "substance" of the world is process, relationships or information.

What form the data takes in memory is the ultimate question here.

I've been following this conversation with interest but I don't yet understand whether the computer-based terminology is meant to be a useful analogy or a literal description of the brain/mind/consciousness situation. Would any of you be able to help me out here?

The HPoC, as I understand it, derives from the question how (or if) the brain's code for our perceptions includes the subjective experience of perceptions by an experiencing self.

I don't see any escape from the contradiction. In your original intention with your quote, you argued that the experience of seeing red can be interior to the mind. Through virtual seeing via the mind-supported imagination, we can lie in our bed at night and "experience" seeing red based on the neuronal memory circuits stored in our brain. Therein resides no literal red. In your later quote, you say, emphatically:

This quote says (independent of your intended meaning) working memory is an internal representation of the world. You're describing a bifurcation of sensory experience and virtual seeing. Virtual seeing is constructed from code-bearing memory for "red."

As I understand you now, you're saying: cognitively speaking, the color red is visual information stored in memory as code, and stored code is working memory.

When you introduce the word "information," you rocket away from the external world into the interior of the mind. No, the color red itself is not the form of visual information stored in the mind. Instead, there is electro-chemical, neuron-mediated code within the brain.

The HPoC, as I understand it, derives from the question how (or if) the brain's code for our perceptions signifies the subjective experience of perceptions by an experiencing self.

Instead of saying that working memory is an "internal" representation of the world, we say it is a working representation of the world. We could say the same thing about dreams. They are a working representation of the world,

I've been following this conversation with interest but I don't yet understand whether the computer-based terminology is meant to be a useful analogy or a literal description of the brain/mind/consciousness situation. Would any of you be able to help me out here?

Where does this working representation of the world occur? Is it discoverable by science? Which scientific discipline would we expect to discover and describe it? What would count as falsifying this theory?

So whatever you interpreted from what I said, I never implied that the mind is internal and the world external.

Instead of saying that working memory is an "internal" representation of the world, we say it is a working representation of the world.

We could say the same thing about dreams. They are a working representation of the world, just an incorrect interpretation, no different than a waking hallucination is an incorrect working representation of the world.

They are a working representation of the world, just an incorrect interpretation, no different than a waking hallucination is an incorrect working representation of the world. It is incorrect because we are incorrectly interpreting the red we experience as being a product of our senses' interaction with the world when they are actually another working model.

We don't experience seeing when asleep.

The information in a computer is part of the "external" world, so I don't understand what you mean by rocketing "away from the external world into the interior of the mind".

Maybe we should talk in terms of experiences only and then assign seeing and imagining to types of experiences...

You keep forgetting the first step and that is that any time you talk of... code, you are only talking about how it all appears in your GUI.

The information in the computer is not the information that it received through it's input. It can even recall the processed information stored to process further without any access to the world, meaning that the information it is working with stored information instead of information received via some input.

This isn't much different from how we can have a working model of the world and other kinds of working models going on in the form of predictions, imaginings and dreams.

Some might say that this is all loose talk and the machines aren't really understanding or trying anything, but computer scientists use these terms and they authorities in this field? A better explanation is that computation has finally demystified mentalistic terms.

I think this working model is somewhere in the brain,

A first step would be to isolate (if it's not something that the brain as a whole does), how or where sensory information from all senses come together (as the mind is amalgam of the information from all five senses at once) from which the model is constructed.

A first step would be to isolate (if it's not something that the brain as a whole does), how or where sensory information from all senses come together (as the mind is amalgam of the information from all five senses at once) from which the model is constructed.
— Harry Hindu

the problem of the subjective unity of experience which currently escapes scientific definition.

This is ingenious, but I see two problems. First, computer scientists are not authorities at all in the fields of linguistics or philosophy -- indeed, in my experience, they often have no interest in these fields. Their use of mentalistic terms about machines is as likely to be loose talk as anyone else's. Second, computation has if anything intensified the mystifying aspects of mentalistic terms. Hard enough to understand how to talk sensibly about human beliefs, desires, thoughts, and perceptions! but now we're also supposed to attribute physical or information-based versions of these states to a computer? Now that's mystifying.

With all respect, surely this is what "internal" is meant to refer to. Why deny that it's different from "external," i.e., not somewhere in the brain?

This is reasonable, but if we succeed in doing this, what is the second step? What do you imagine could come next, scientifically? This is a serious question -- in fact, the question of the HPoC. We have to picture some way of explaining the mental with relation to the physical; finding the place in the brain that hosts or constructs the "model" merely sets the stage for this explanation by restating the problem.

Are you telling me it's generally true the mind and the world have no internal/external relationship? On the other hand, are you instead telling me the mind and the world have no internal/external relationship within the limited context of our two-person dialogue without generalizing further?

Does working memory have a temporal_spatial location, or is that irrelevant?

If a dream is a working representation of the world, and likewise a waking hallucination is a working representation of the world, why are they in some sense incorrect? In the context of your post overall, I'm getting the impression that dreams, hallucinations and socially verified perceptions are distinct types of working representations. How is it that some of them can be incorrect?

Are you saying the red we experience is just our interaction with more information labeled as “working model”? If this is so, does it follow that there is no translation from observed physico_material objects (existing independently within an objective world) into information in a form compatible with our brain?

Are you saying there's no parallel between seeing a red stop sign while driving a car and seeing a red stop sign while dreaming?

So, you're saying we're always interacting with one or more types of information systems, and, speaking generally, this is what the world is like?

When I talk of code, I'm accessing the GUI-constructed resultant of my neuronal activity?

In my attempt to understand what you've written immediately above, here's my paraphrase:

The information in the computer is not the information it received through its input. What's in the computer can recall its stored information for further processing without accessing the world. This means the information within the computer works with its own memory instead of working with information received from an input.

So, working representations cover a range of types including: the world, predictions of future worlds, imaginings and dreams?

What do you mean by your use of the words, "internal/external"? Are you using them in the same sense that the dog is internal to the dog house?

If so, then why can we look in the dog house and see the dog but not look in the brain and see the mind?

What if the mind is what the whole brain does, and not what some internal part of the brain does?

How did the contents of my mind get on your computer screen for you to read? How did the contents of your mind get on my computer screen for me to read? Are the contents of your mind inside my computer?

Are the four dimensions just mental representations of the relations between objects, causes and their effects?

The contents of working memory is about a specific temporal_spatial location, namely you and your immediate environment. It is a relationship between you and your environment.

I'm getting the impression that dreams, hallucinations and socially verified perceptions are distinct types of working representations. How is it that some of them can be incorrect?

Because when we compare them to our actual observations of the world, we find that they are not the case.

I think about information as the relationship between cause and effect. Effects carry information about their causes. We are informed about the state of the world by the effect it has on our mind. We might misinterpret some percepts, but over time we can work those out by making more observations and making logical sense of these multiple observations as in the way we solve the mirage problem.

When we wake up (and thereby make another observation), we interpret the experience as a dream, not as an actual experience of seeing.

So, you're saying we're always interacting with one or more types of information systems, and, speaking generally, this is what the world is like?

The mind is part of the world and part of the causal chain that everything else is part of. Apples, chairs, trees, mountains, planets and stars are all information in that they are all effects of prior causes and causes of subsequent effects. Minds are not special in this regard.

What does it mean to be "subjective"? Does it not have to do with a view from somewhere as opposed to a view from nowhere / everywhere?

You're talking about how the information is structured and presented as your GUI.

You are confusing the GUI with what it represents when you use terms like "physical". The world is not physical. It is presented as physical by the way your GUI represents it.

For you to think of anything, you have to create objects of thought and your objects of thought have boundaries that don't exactly line up with the "boundaries" in the world.

If we allowed the computer to take in some input and then use that information as input to a deductive or inductive process, we end up with new information. The question then becomes, does the new information apply to the world (you might ask, "is the information correct or incorrect?")?

It's just that in the moment of the dream, we misinterpret what we are experiencing and confuse the prediction or imagining with the world...

You could even say that an effect is a representation of its causes. A chair is representative of all the processes that went into making it.

Are you saying that philosophers should be telling the computer scientist how the computer works?

What do you mean by "internal" and "external" in this respect?

What does it mean to be "subjective"? Does it not have to do with a view from somewhere as opposed to a view from nowhere / everywhere?
— Harry Hindu

I would say no. I believe "subjective" means "a view that someone, some viewing entity has from somewhere," so "to be subjective" means "to be an entity that has such a view." Leaving out the "someone" allows you speak about "a view," as if the view is kind of hanging around. But this is impossible -- a view requires a viewer. Hence subjectivity is crucially about the person who has the view. Or not to beg the question -- if it could be shown that a computer was an entity that could have a view, then it would be a candidate for subjectivity.

To anticipate a possible objection: All kinds of things can be viewed from a computer's point of view, but that's not what we're talking about. The viewer in such cases is me or you, seeing things from the computer's PoV. I'm arguing that the computer per se has no views at all -- it isn't the sort of thing that can have such an experience.

No, but I am saying that we have every right to criticize computer scientists' language when they begin to talk about other things besides computers and science -- such as "knowledge," "thinking," "understanding," et al. The analogy would be no different for a biologist: I wouldn't dream of telling them how DNA works, but if they began using expressions like "the organism knows" or "the cells are trying to . . . " and that sort of thing, I would certainly protest. This also comes up constantly in talk about evolution.

(And I'm not saying that we philosophers aren't guilty of this kind of loose talk too. We certainly are, but we ought to be better on our guard than most, since questions of language loom so large in our concept of what we do.)

We seem to be getting a little muddled between two different questions. One is, "Is there a place for dualistic thinking in metaphysics?" The other is, "What do we mean when we use 'internal' to describe a feeling or a thought, or the mind itself?" To the first, I'm saying, "You yourself don't seem able to do without dualistic concepts when you talk about this, so perhaps this sort of dualism is important in talking about metaphysics." A statement like "I think this working model is somewhere in the brain" can have no meaning unless it's opposed to "I think this working model is not somewhere in the brain." So the dualism of "in/not in" (internal/external) seems important to what you want to say.

The second question is more complex, because there's likely not a single usage of "internal" when it comes to mentalistic terms -- it may be meant literally, metaphorically, or somewhere quite vague. Your riposte shows this nicely: In one sense, it seems absolutely true to me that mental paraphernalia are internal to the brain, by virtue of direct supervenience. But in another sense, we certainly can't take a scalpel to the brain and locate "the mind," or any single mental event. In that sense, "internal" isn't the right word. I think a good response here would be to say, "Fine, let's not get hung up on language choices which may not satisfy everyone. I'm happy to consider using your terminology -- what would it be? How would you prefer to distinguish the 'location' of a mind so that we can talk meaningfully about its supervenience on my brain and not on, say, the tree in my front yard?"

Let me make a beginning to my response by asking if dog_doghouse and mind_brain are two duos forming a true parallel. Dog_doghouse is a relationship between two things not connected. No one claims the dog was caused by the doghouse. Mind_brain is a relationship between two things connected. Because some say the mind is caused by the brain, and some say the mind is independent of the brain, there is an issue in debate about which claim is true.

Additional thought – Whether or not the mind is inside of the brain might also be a sticking point in your contextualization of internal/external. If, as some claim, the mind is immaterial, then it is not inside of the brain, nor is it inside of any other material thing.

The lack of dimensional extension of immaterial things is one of the difficulties with connecting them to material things. Following from this, obviously, the claim an immaterial mind is connected to a material brain makes posits a very hard theory to prove. On the other hand, we know it’s true that “no brain, no mind.” On the surface of things, the theory claiming mind is either: a) identical to brain, or b) emergent from brain presents as much easier to argue.

If immaterial things exist dimensionless, then there’s the strong suggestion inside/outside, being dimensional properties, have no meaning for them. If this is the case, then we have to try to answer the difficult question: Where are they? Can an existing thing exist nowhere?

From neuroscience we know that certain parts of the brain do things made use of by the mind. For example, the visual cortex, which is the part of the cerebral cortex that receives and processes sensory nerve impulses from the eyes, produces memorizable visual images essential to the mind's imaginative activity.

We know our communication depends upon representation that, in turn, gets manipulated by our computers.

Your use of the preposition "between" evidences the fact we cannot make sense in thinking or writing about navigating and experiencing our material world without separations across spacetime and, conversely, connections across spacetime. Self and environment and living seem to entail necessary binaries.

Haven't you been arguing that "our actual observations of the world," like dreams and hallucinations, are just another type of information system, i.e., just another working representation no more a literal transcription from an objective reality than are dreams and hallucinations?

Haven't you, as evidenced via my paraphrasing of your language above, been implying Kant is correct in asserting there is a noumenal world of things-in-themselves, presumably objective, that's inaccessible to our necessarily representative translations thereof via the senses_the brain_the mind?

Haven't you been using this argument to support the argument denying an inside/outside duality?

Haven't you been implying that a network of information systems is our insuperable environment?

Haven't you, through the above stages of argumentation, been arguing generally that the "map is not the territory," an argument rooted within Kant's noumena?

Does what you say imply there exists within the world objective states of a system rooting representations thereof within facts? If so, can we designate these objective states of a system as radiant facts transmitted to our understanding via representations? If so, does this radiant transmission of objectivity evidence information as an energetic, mass-to-mass alteration of form across spacetime?

I'm asking if causality is a physico_material phenomenon. This question is important because it spotlights whether spacetime is an active agent of consciousness as a physical phenomenon. Going forward with the presumption it is, we can conjecture that consciousness, the boundary administrator, parses reality via a set of formatting functions that includes causal changes that assemble the timeline. So, time, like space and consciousness, is a physico_material phenomenon.

Consciousness, as the boundary administrator formatting and thereby constructing the timeline of events making up the history of the cosmos, makes a close approach to mind as the fundamental thing in existence.

R.E.M. sleep is the stage of sleep where most dreams happen. This fact makes me resistant to the claim dreaming of a red stop sign is unambiguously distinct from wakefully seeing a stop sign.

I think your underlined claims support rather than refute the correctness of the conclusion of my quoted question. That you think the mind is just another information system additionally reenforces the correctness of my conclusion.

If the deductive information is a logically correct derivative of the input information about the world, then barring emergence and supervenience, we know from the transitive property that it is also pertinent to the world, since its source is pertinent to the world.

To the extent the dreaming experience is recognizable as waking experience, and thus can be conflated with it, the dreaming experience is not different from the waking experience.

To the extent that an effect is not a simulation of its cause, it's not a representation of its cause. For an example: a chair is not a simulation of the process that made it. We can propound this argument by claiming the oakwood chair that derives from an oak tree is not the oak tree, nor is it a simulation of it.

Causal relationships are about transformation, not simulation.

How did you come to the conclusion that I did not imply that a view from somewhere isn't a view from somewhere, as in where someone is standing?

This is why I asked what you mean by the words, "understanding", "trying" and "knowing". You can only say that the computer scientist and biologist is wrong in their usage when you have clearly defined the words themselves.

Go back and read what I have said. I have clearly steered away from using dualistic terms

I think you still haven't taken in the force of my point. Of course it's a view from somewhere, but that isn't what mainly characterizes it. Rather, it's the "someone" that is crucial. Can you imagine a "view" being from some particular place, but with no viewer?

This is a separate point. I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm saying they're not experts. I was replying to your notion that a computer scientist is somehow expert in the use of those words because he or she is a computer scientist. Such a person may be as correct or incorrect as anyone else, and yes, we'd need to get clear on what that would mean, but the point is that there is no built-in expertise, either way, neither mine nor theirs. If you like, I can take a shot at putting some content to mentalistic terms, but I wanted to get the "computer scientist as expert on the mental" thing out of the way first.

I don't think so, but we can let that one go. Possibly the only dualism you recognize is mind/body, or mental/physical, dualism; I was pointing to a much wider application.

YOU are the one using the terms "internal/external". I'm asking you what YOU mean by those terms. If you are saying that the mind is caused by the brain, then that is not an internal/external relationship. It is a causal relationship. So what do YOU mean by saying that the mind is internal to the brain if you do not mean the same thing as the relationship between the dog and doghouse?

What do you mean by your use of the words, "internal/external"? Are you using them in the same sense that the dog is internal to the dog house? If so, then why can we look in the dog house and see the dog but not look in the brain and see the mind? What if the mind is what the whole brain does, and not what some internal part of the brain does?

How does one get at the material nature of the world via a dimensionless, immaterial GUI?

What does it mean to say that there is a lack of dimensional extension of immaterial things?

...why can we look in the dog house and see the dog but not look in the brain and see the mind?

You cannot access all of your long-term memories at once but you can recall them from somewhere. From where are they recalled if there is no dimension to the mind?

One could argue that the dimensional aspect of material things is a product of your GUI, in the way the information is structured in your GIU, not of the world.

This is only vision but I have four other senses that come together with vision in my mind. Where do they all come together in the information structure we call the mind, or the GUI?

I can get at the thoughts in your head by correctly interpreting the causal relationship between the scribbles I see on the screen and the thoughts in your mind.

I would just say that self and environment are themselves relationships and processes. Try pointing to the boundaries of each and see if you can succeed. Everything is a relationship.

Where is the material stuff you keep talking about if all we can ever point to are relationships?

...you have to bring in what I said about information being a relationship between causes and their effects, and the way you get at the causes is by making more than one observation and using logic.

I would like for you to try to explain yourself without using terms like, "internal/external", "material/immaterial" and "objective/subjective". Each time you type a sentence with those terms, try removing them and see if it takes away anything from what you intend to say. If it does, then what is it that is taken away?

I am not saying that causality is a physico_material phenomenon. It is just a process, or a relationship, like everything else, and that using terms like physico and material confuses the issue.

When the lights are out or you close your eyes, and you experience a red stop sign, what are you actually doing - seeing or imagining?

Your problem lies in you trying to explain how material and immaterial things interact, and how an immaterial mind can represent material things. Your assertions imply that the mind is special or separate from the world when we understand that it isn't. The solution isn't in doubling down on dualism. The solution is monism.

Causal relationships are about transformation, not simulation.

I never used the word, "simulation", so this appears to be a straw-man argument. An effect is a representation of its causes, not a simulation of its causes

You have used the words, so you must know what they mean, right?

Where do we go if we want to know what words mean?

I think a good response here would be to say, "Fine, let's not get hung up on language choices which may not satisfy everyone. I'm happy to consider using your terminology -- what would it be? How would you prefer to distinguish the 'location' of a mind so that we can talk meaningfully about its supervenience on my brain and not on, say, the tree in my front yard?"

Then why can't you open the brain and point out where the mind is? I also said that it is possible that the mind is what the entire brain does, not just some internal part of it. What do you mean by "internal" and "external" in this respect? Do you mean the same thing as your birthday present being internal to the box with the wrapping paper and bow? If so, then why can't we open the brain to see the mind like we can open the box and see your present? It seems to me that using terms like "internal", "external", "subjective" and "objective" is evidence of your dualistic thinking making it more difficult to solve the problem.

What I am saying is that effects carry information about their causes, whether the cause starts in the world or in the mind (the mind is part of the world, so I don't see why it makes sense to talk about the mind being a different thing (immaterial vs material) than the world).

Seeing involves light.

It would be strange to claim the elected official is an effect of his constituents.

the physics of a material world, beyond mentally constructed information supports something being at stake: the life of the aware subject experiencing the world.