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>Why then would evolution produce beings with internal conscious experience? Well, I'm arguing it's the other way around. But to address what I think is the sp

by zarmin 4y ago

>Why then would evolution produce beings with internal conscious experience? Well, I'm arguing it's the other way around. But to address what I think is the spirit of your question: if reality is only mind, if consciousness is truly fundamental, then why can't you read my thoughts? Why do we feel like individuals? Why do we have obviously separate private conscious inner lives? When you are asleep and dreaming, your "alter" generally does not know they are dreaming. Your dream self has dissociated from your waking self, but it is only after you wake up that you realize you were dreaming (if you even remember). Another example of this phenomenon is Dissociative Identity Disorder, where one mind splits into many alters, each unaware the others exist. I'm glossing over a significant amount in order to get to my point, but here are a couple links that go into great detail: - https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/JCdbmFCHYB0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP6 https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/JCdbmFCHYB0C?hl=en&gb... (chapter 5) - https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/2/2/10/htm#sec4-philosophies-02-00010 https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/2/2/10/htm#sec4-philosophies-... (search for "Yet, we know empirically that living people have separate, private experiences (Fact 6)") My point is, our private conscious inner lives are dissociations, alters, from a "mind-at-large" fundamental consciousness. And the boundaries of these dissociations, the "containers" of individual private conscious inner life, (again glossing over so much, like panpsychism's combination problem) are metabolizing organisms. Metabolizing organisms are what alters _look like_ from the outside. Kastrup: "Since we only have intrinsic access to ourselves, we are the only structures known to have dissociated streams of inner experiences. We also have good empirical reasons to conclude that normal metabolism is essential for the maintenance of this dissociation, for when it slows down or stops the dissociation seems to reduce or end. These observations alone suggest strongly that metabolizing life is the structure corresponding to alters of [fundamental consciousness] But there is more: insofar as it resembles our own, the extrinsic behavior of all metabolizing organisms is also suggestive of their having dissociated streams of inner experiences analogous to ours in some sense" (from the mdpi link) >This would also mean that our internal conscious experience has no effect on what decisions we make, on whether we cry, smile, what memories we form, etc. Don't your thoughts and feelings influence your behavior?

russdill 4y ago
> Well, I'm arguing it's the other way around. But to address what I think is the spirit of your question: if reality is only mind, if consciousness is truly fundamental, then why can't you read my thoughts? Why do we feel like individuals? Why do we have obviously separate private conscious inner lives? No, this is not the spirit of my question at all. I feel like the spirit of my question is completely being missed. I realize you've thought very deeply on how and why the world arrives from consciousness itself and you've been working very hard to get this concept across. I get the general gist of your theory and there's lots of detail and thought behind it. I'm not sure how I can set my question out more clearly than I already have. But I'll try. Rather than trying to explain your own theory in greater detail, can you try to work with me on getting a mutual understanding of my line of reasoning? We have a very excellent predictive model of particles and fields. So much so we are building experiments worth billions upon billions of dollars to attempt to find places where reality differs even to the slightest degree of that model. The human brain, the warm squishy stuff in your head, can be viewed as being composed of particles and fields. Particles and fields may just be some manifestation of some pan psychic reality, but we can still use our model of particles and fields to predict the behavior of those particles and fields. So the first question. Can we use our model of particles and fields to predict the behavior of the particles and fields within the human brain? You've already appeared to answer this question in the affirmative "Their operation would be perfectly compatible with the known laws of physics." From this it follows that I can create a computer model of a human brain, complete with all the cells, proteins, neurons, etc, and that human brain will be capable of any action (eg, the signals sent by neurons out of the brain) a real human brain is. There would be no way to discern between a real flesh and blood human brain and the simulated one by talking to it. Since a real human brain tells you that it's conscious and has internal experience, the simulated one must tell you the same. While the simulated human brain will tell you that it's conscious, it is of course not proof that it is. But this leads to your next question: > Don't your thoughts and feelings influence your behavior? If thoughts and feelings are a thing that don't pass the computability test, but a simulated human brain doesn't have external behavior that differs from a flesh and blood human brain, then no, thoughts and feelings have no effect or even influence on your behavior. In such a case they are a mere passenger. Any effect they have would necessitate that the particles and fields within the brain suddenly behave in a way that violates our model of particles and fields.

by zarmin 4y ago

russdill 4y ago

> Well, I'm arguing it's the other way around. But to address what I think is the spirit of your question: if reality is only mind, if consciousness is truly fundamental, then why can't you read my thoughts? Why do we feel like individuals? Why do we have obviously separate private conscious inner lives? No, this is not the spirit of my question at all. I feel like the spirit of my question is completely being missed. I realize you've thought very deeply on how and why the world arrives from consciousness itself and you've been working very hard to get this concept across. I get the general gist of your theory and there's lots of detail and thought behind it. I'm not sure how I can set my question out more clearly than I already have. But I'll try. Rather than trying to explain your own theory in greater detail, can you try to work with me on getting a mutual understanding of my line of reasoning? We have a very excellent predictive model of particles and fields. So much so we are building experiments worth billions upon billions of dollars to attempt to find places where reality differs even to the slightest degree of that model. The human brain, the warm squishy stuff in your head, can be viewed as being composed of particles and fields. Particles and fields may just be some manifestation of some pan psychic reality, but we can still use our model of particles and fields to predict the behavior of those particles and fields. So the first question. Can we use our model of particles and fields to predict the behavior of the particles and fields within the human brain? You've already appeared to answer this question in the affirmative "Their operation would be perfectly compatible with the known laws of physics." From this it follows that I can create a computer model of a human brain, complete with all the cells, proteins, neurons, etc, and that human brain will be capable of any action (eg, the signals sent by neurons out of the brain) a real human brain is. There would be no way to discern between a real flesh and blood human brain and the simulated one by talking to it. Since a real human brain tells you that it's conscious and has internal experience, the simulated one must tell you the same. While the simulated human brain will tell you that it's conscious, it is of course not proof that it is. But this leads to your next question: > Don't your thoughts and feelings influence your behavior? If thoughts and feelings are a thing that don't pass the computability test, but a simulated human brain doesn't have external behavior that differs from a flesh and blood human brain, then no, thoughts and feelings have no effect or even influence on your behavior. In such a case they are a mere passenger. Any effect they have would necessitate that the particles and fields within the brain suddenly behave in a way that violates our model of particles and fields.