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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 7

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ufology said:
It seems abundantly self-evident that the experience of pleasure motivates people to acquire that which causes it, and one of the primary experiences in that department is the sexual experience, which just so happens to be intimately connected to the survival of the species, and could therefore be considered a crucial component of that drive. It's also well established fact that the opposite ( the experience of pain ) causes withdrawal from the cause, and that also provides incentives not to become injured or starved, again playing a crucial role in survival.

In this context I really don't see what the big mystery of "why" is all about. It's obvious. Overdetermination is irrelevant because subjective experience happens regardless. Not everything in the universe abides by maxims like Overdetermination or Ockham's Razor. They're not physical laws. They're just points to ponder. Is there some finer point you are trying to make with your line of questionin
Click to expand...


I did ... mental causation ...

Can anyone else give it a go? I've bern through this several times.
 
ufology said:
It seems abundantly self-evident that the experience of pleasure motivates people to acquire that which causes it, and one of the primary experiences in that department is the sexual experience, which just so happens to be intimately connected to the survival of the species, and could therefore be considered a crucial component of that drive. It's also well established fact that the opposite ( the experience of pain ) causes withdrawal from the cause, and that also provides incentives not to become injured or starved, again playing a crucial role in survival.

In this context I really don't see what the big mystery of "why" is all about. It's obvious. Overdetermination is irrelevant because subjective experience happens regardless. Not everything in the universe abides by maxims like Overdetermination or Ockham's Razor. They're not physical laws. They're just points to ponder. Is there some finer point you are trying to make with your line of questioning? If so why not just state it?
Click to expand...
We've been through it b4 ... If anyone else wants to go back over it @Soupie? Ok but I'm moving on. You can also go back through the archives. This is why we're not sure that you understand the hard problem ... But you say you do ... So ok ... Its like the post above that you're not sure if someone gets it ... If it comes up in another context ok ... If not ok.

Moving on.

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/onphil...intelligence/amp/?client=ms-android-sprint-us

"Consider then patients who have severe memory defects. A few of these patients have not only lost much of their past memories but are also unable to form new memories, and thus to learn. From their point of view it seems like every moment is the first moment that they have ever experienced, and they themselves may even claim that whatever they did in the past must not have been conscious (since they don’t remember it). However when interacting with such people it seems obvious that they must be conscious. They talk and react to the world in much the same way that everyone else does, so questioning their consciousness would imply that we could never be sure if anyone was conscious. "

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smcder said:

I did ... mental causation ...

Can anyone else give it a go? I've bern through this several times.
Click to expand...
@ufology

Conceivability question:

Can we conceive of an organism that generates this consciousness-correlating EM field but didn't have p consciousness? Yes.

Thus discovering an EM filed that correlates w/ consciousness does not solve the hp.

I would add that even if we discover what causes the EM field, we wouldn't discover what causes the em field to correlate with p consciousness. Thus the hp.
 
I'm all for reducing consciousness down to the most fundamental physical correlates. However, for logical reason, this won't lead us to find a physical cause for p consciousness.

(R(CS(CS of R)))
 
Perhaps someday we can arrive at a "wave equation" for p consciousness in which we can arrive at a probability of what p state a particular organism/system might be experiencing.
 
Soupie said:
I'm all for reducing consciousness down to the most fundamental physical correlates. However, for logical reason, this won't lead us to find a physical cause for p consciousness.

(R(CS(CS of R)))
Click to expand...

if we say cs isn't physical ... I think some will say its like the effects of a EMF field ... non-material but physical ... so a counter argument would be to directly measure the physical effects of consciousness - NOT like Tononandonandoni but a meter that measures the physical effect, say - of pleasure itself on the nerves themselves ... right? a non physical/non material interaction with the physical/material world?
 
I could be persuaded with Searle that consciousness takes a brain, a biological brain similar to what we have ... so this is substrate dependence, at least only certain substrates make cs possible, so its not strictly a matter of organizing matter, the matter matters -
 
smcder said:
I could be persuaded with Searle that consciousness takes a brain, a biological brain similar to what we have ... so this is substrate dependence, at least only certain substrates make cs possible, so its not strictly a matter of organizing matter, the matter matters -
Click to expand...
Can you can give an example of a phenomenon that is known to be substrate dependent?
 
t is certain that there may be extraordinary mental activity with an extremely small absolute mass of nervous matter: thus the wonderfully diversified instincts, mental powers, and affections of ants are notorious, yet their cerebral ganglia are not so large as the quarter of a small pin’s head. Under this point of view, the brain of an ant is one of the most marvelous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of a man.”

Charles Darwin
 
Soupie said:
Can you can give an example of a phenomenon that is known to be substrate dependent?
Click to expand...
Chemical reactions require specific chemicals ... Any given element has specific physical properties ... We use specific materials to build transistors b/c of their physical properties... True we can use tubes but they can only be so small ... You can build a supercomputer out of tinker toys but it would be huge and slow ... Etc etc ... If consciousness depended on speed of processing ... Then it would have to be made of certain materials b/c size, heat etc would come into play ...

Does that answ er?

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Chalmers says it isn't... But build a brain out of tinker toys.... Billions or trillions of them .... He says it would be cs

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smcder said:
Chemical reactions require specific chemicals ... Any given element has specific physical properties ... We use specific materials to build transistors b/c of their physical properties... True we can use tubes but they can only be so small ... You can build a supercomputer out of tinker toys but it would be huge and slow ... Etc etc ... If consciousness depended on speed of processing ... Then it would have to be made of certain materials b/c size, heat etc would come into play ...

Does that answ er?

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Click to expand...
Since all physical matter can be reduced to fundamental particles, all physical matter is essentially the same substrate just arranged differently.

So with any physical phenomenon, it's the arrangement that matters, not the substrate.

Ie if cs is a physical phenomenon there will be multiple pathways to it.
 
Soupie said:
Since all physical matter can be reduced to fundamental particles, all physical matter is essentially the same substrate just arranged differently.

So with any physical phenomenon, it's the arrangement that matters, not the substrate.

Ie if cs is a physical phenomenon there will be multiple pathways to it.
Click to expand...

all you are saying is that everything physical is made of fundamental particles ...

what substrate dependence means is that only the functional organization matters ... so a brain made of tinker toys organized the way a brain made of sillicone organized the way a brain made of carbon would all be conscious ...

but theres another implication to what you are saying ... do you see it?
 
Soupie said:
@ufologyConceivability question: Can we conceive of an organism that generates this consciousness-correlating EM field but didn't have p consciousness? Yes. Thus discovering an EM filed that correlates w/ consciousness does not solve the hp. I would add that even if we discover what causes the EM field, we wouldn't discover what causes the em field to correlate with p consciousness. Thus the hp.
Click to expand...
The issue in your post has to do with the nature of the Hard Problem of Consciousness, or what I used to refer to as the "so-called hard problem of consciousness" because the so-called "problem" isn't really a "problem" that can be "solved" in the manner that is suggested by calling it a "problem". That is to say that there is no way to verify that consciousness apart from one's own exists because there's no way to "solve the problem" of "what it's like" to be something you're not. It's not logically coherent.

Initially the above observation about the HPC led @smcder and I into discussions that seemed very frustrating for him because from his perspective I was missing the point, and indeed, in the context of some of his comments, I was missing the point because at the time, I had written the whole idea off as incoherent and therefore useless ( which it's not ). It's very useful for describing what we mean by consciousness on a conceptual level. However because it doesn't speak to the question of what consciousness is on a physical level, it's not relevant to those discussions. Consequently we shouldn't expect any physical theory to "solve" the HPC.

So to put it as diplomatically as possible, saying that physical explanations don't "solve the HPC" does nothing to diminish their value. The EM theory may be accurate, and whether or not it solves the HPC is irrelevant.
 
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