Theories of Consciousness

[Atla]

By "probably" I meant that if 100% of what we know about the world can coherently be explained without any dualism

That will never happen. No matter what we know, the dualists can always claim correlation, not causation. I do agree with the Occam's razor thing.

It's not like the dualists have a better explanation. Putting the questionable in a completely black box is not a better explanation that the grey box that the naturalists have. The black box has no explanitory power, being only a punt to a realm beyond certain kinds of empirical investigation.

What will never happen?

[Atla]

Chalmers pointed out that what he refers to as Experiential Consciousness presents a uniquely Hard Problem for traditional physicalism. That's not a "failure to solve it." It's a call to re-examine our metaphysical axioms.

Yeah and then he failed to solve it.

Eliminating one of the two substances of substance dualism eliminates substance dualism.

And that's where you're wrong. The main reason Western philosophy of mind made no progress in the last few hundred years is that almost every philosopher of mind was either so profoundly incompetent or so unwilling to make progress, that they all collectively pretended that eliminating one of the two substances of substance dualism eliminates substance dualism.

Well it doesn't, at least it certainly didn't do that in practice. After we eliminate one of the substances, we are still in dualism where we think on a substance on one hand and think on a nothingness on the other hand. The dualism is still deeply embedded in our psyche, in our thinking even if we don't notice it. My stance however is to truly do away with dualism (nondualism).

[Andy Kay]

Chalmers pointed out that what he refers to as Experiential Consciousness presents a uniquely Hard Problem for traditional physicalism. That's not a "failure to solve it." It's a call to re-examine our metaphysical axioms.

Yeah and then he failed to solve it.

Chalmers' intention was to demonstrate that physicalsim is no more problem-free than any of the alternatives, and he succeeded in doing that. To claim that he "failed to solve it" serves only to expose a profound misunderstanding of this point.

Eliminating one of the two substances of substance dualism eliminates substance dualism.

And that's where you're wrong. The main reason Western philosophy of mind made no progress in the last few hundred years is that almost every philosopher of mind was either so profoundly incompetent or so unwilling to make progress, that they all collectively pretended that eliminating one of the two substances of substance dualism eliminates substance dualism.

Well it doesn't, at least it certainly didn't do that in practice. After we eliminate one of the substances, we are still in dualism where we think on a substance on one hand and think on a nothingness on the other hand. The dualism is still deeply embedded in our psyche, in our thinking even if we don't notice it. My stance however is to truly do away with dualism (nondualism).

Two minus one is one, or to put it another way, two minus one is not two.

[Atla]

Chalmers' intention was to demonstrate that physicalsim is no more problem-free than any of the alternatives, and he succeeded in doing that. To claim that he "failed to solve it" serves only to expose a profound misunderstanding of this point.

He came up with something like "naturalistic dualism", he failed to solve the problem.

Two minus one is one, or to put it another way, two minus one is not two.

Again, the reality is that all these Western philosophies still have two.

[Andy Kay]

Chalmers' intention was to demonstrate that physicalsim is no more problem-free than any of the alternatives, and he succeeded in doing that. To claim that he "failed to solve it" serves only to expose a profound misunderstanding of this point.

He came up with something like "naturalistic dualism", he failed to solve the problem.

If you're claiming Chalmers is a failure because he "failed to solve the HPC" then you're still missing the point. We're all free to create metaphysical hypotheses, but when all of the empirically inadequate hypotheses and the logically inadequate hypotheses have been eliminated, the remaining hypotheses are scientifically intractable so we can't do any more than leave them on the table. Chalmers was just exercising his freedom to create metaphysical hypotheses.

Two minus one is one, or to put it another way, two minus one is not two.

Again, the reality is that all these Western philosophies still have two.

Oh they have more than two. They have more than there are stars in the sky. If you're trying to explain something then you're not succeeding.

[Atla]

If you're claiming Chalmers is a failure because he "failed to solve the HPC" then you're still missing the point. We're all free to create metaphysical hypotheses, but when all of the empirically inadequate hypotheses and the logically inadequate hypotheses have been eliminated, the remaining hypotheses are scientifically intractable so we can't do any more than leave them on the table. Chalmers was just exercising his freedom to create metaphysical hypotheses.

All dualist ideas are empirically inadequate. I didn't claim he was a failure. Don't know why you keep freaking out by the fact that he couldn't solve the HPC either, when all the other philosophers couldn't either.

Oh they have more than two. They have more than there are stars in the sky. If you're trying to explain something then you're not succeeding.

Then why did you say two, when now you decided that you were talking about something else.

Anyway, of course you won't be able to understand what I'm saying, it takes at least months to get out of dualistic thinking. Of course you won't be able to do that suddenly.

[Andy Kay]

If you're claiming Chalmers is a failure because he "failed to solve the HPC" then you're still missing the point. We're all free to create metaphysical hypotheses, but when all of the empirically inadequate hypotheses and the logically inadequate hypotheses have been eliminated, the remaining hypotheses are scientifically intractable so we can't do any more than leave them on the table. Chalmers was just exercising his freedom to create metaphysical hypotheses.

All dualist ideas are empirically inadequate.

You're going to have to defend that position if you want to be taken seriously.

I didn't claim he was a failure.

by Atla » Mon Jan 13, 2025 4:47 pm: "Chalmers pointed out the problem but failed to solve it."

Don't know why you keep freaking out by the fact that he couldn't solve the HPC either, when all the other philosophers couldn't either.

The point you're still missing is that it was never Chalmers' intention to "solve the HPC." His intention was to point out that physicalism is not without its own problems.

Oh they have more than two. They have more than there are stars in the sky. If you're trying to explain something then you're not succeeding.

Then why did you say two, when now you decided that you were talking about something else.

Oh I'm still talking about "substances" used as a philosophical term of art... the underlying unchanging quality-less "essence" of a thing that acts as a carrier for all of the changing qualities of that thing. Just to be clear I feel I need to repeat that I'm with Hume on the issue of philosophical "substance."

Anyway, of course you won't be able to understand what I'm saying, it takes at least months to get out of dualistic thinking. Of course you won't be able to do that suddenly.

Is that a way of saying that you're unable to explain your position?

[Atla]

If you're claiming Chalmers is a failure because he "failed to solve the HPC" then you're still missing the point. We're all free to create metaphysical hypotheses, but when all of the empirically inadequate hypotheses and the logically inadequate hypotheses have been eliminated, the remaining hypotheses are scientifically intractable so we can't do any more than leave them on the table. Chalmers was just exercising his freedom to create metaphysical hypotheses.

All dualist ideas are empirically inadequate.

You're going to have to defend that position if you want to be taken seriously.

I didn't claim he was a failure.

by Atla » Mon Jan 13, 2025 4:47 pm: "Chalmers pointed out the problem but failed to solve it."

Don't know why you keep freaking out by the fact that he couldn't solve the HPC either, when all the other philosophers couldn't either.

The point you're still missing is that it was never Chalmers' intention to "solve the HPC." His intention was to point out that physicalism is not without its own problems.

Oh they have more than two. They have more than there are stars in the sky. If you're trying to explain something then you're not succeeding.

Then why did you say two, when now you decided that you were talking about something else.

Oh I'm still talking about "substances" used as a philosophical term of art... the underlying unchanging quality-less "essence" of a thing that acts as a carrier for all of the changing qualities of that thing. Just to be clear I feel I need to repeat that I'm with Hume on the issue of philosophical "substance."

Anyway, of course you won't be able to understand what I'm saying, it takes at least months to get out of dualistic thinking. Of course you won't be able to do that suddenly.

Is that a way of saying that you're unable to explain your position?

I already explained the things you ask. And again no, I didn't claim that Chalmers was a failure, only that he failed to solve the HPC just like almost everyone else. That doesn't make him a failure. If you have again no idea what I just said then I don't know what to tell you.

[Noax]

By "probably" I meant that if 100% of what we know about the world can coherently be explained without any dualism

I'm going to interpret your words differently and suggest that this is already the case. 100% of what we know about the world can coherently be explained without any dualism. Not everything can be thus explained, but anything on the unexplained list isn't on the list of 'what we know about the world'.

What will never happen?

Dualism being outright falsified. Any weight of evidence can always be hand-waved away as correlation, as is typically done by its proponents. Case in point:

I think it's about what is right here and right now, namely conscious experience, and the inability of traditional physicalism to accommodate it.

Not so sure about that. It would be pretty hard for a complex physical creature to function without it. Take a Roomba floor cleaner, which requires this sort of experience to navigate around and also to find its power source to recharge (eat) now and then. The Roomba works fine under physicalism, so why can't I? You'll of course wave this away as fundamentally different, but only by presuming a fundamental difference that physicalism wouldn't. I tend to reach for simple examples to explain things. Dualists tend to reach for complex examples to hide behind the lack of understanding of them.

Eliminating one of the two substances of substance dualism eliminates substance dualism.

And that's where you're wrong. The main reason Western philosophy of mind made no progress in the last few hundred years is that almost every philosopher of mind was either so profoundly incompetent or so unwilling to make progress, that they all collectively pretended that eliminating one of the two substances of substance dualism eliminates substance dualism.

What a wonderful example of a circular explanation of an assertion nobody else seems to understand, let alone agree with. The philosophers are all wrong about X, because (wait for it) "they all pretend that X".

Two minus one is one, or to put it another way, two minus one is not two.

Anyway, I agree with you on this point. We're apparently numbered among the profound incompetents.

Chalmers' intention was to demonstrate that physicalsim is no more problem-free than any of the alternatives, and he succeeded in doing that.

It seemed to create a whole list of new problems, all without solving any of the old ones. Doesn't seem like success to me.

No better explanation of anything is offered. A different ontology is offered, but the new parts are utterly unexplained.
New problems include
What is privileged to work this way and what isn't (Roomba for example)? Where's the line? Usually the lines are super far apart. Humans have it. A pencil sharpener doesn't. No comment about the stuff in between, lest we disturb the obfuscation.
Which substance has memory?
Which substance does the deliberating?
Interaction: How does cognition substance cause any kind of physical effect?

The same questions can be mildly reworded for property dualism.

These are all questions open to empirical testing, and yet no such testing takes place since obfuscation seems the primary directive.
The only thing somewhat consistent is that the cognition substance is responsible for qualia and experience in general, but it cannot work without answers to the other bits.
Those are all new problems introduced, without any old ones being solved. Hence my disagreement that Chalmers succeeded in achieving what you claim.

[Atla]

I'm going to interpret your words differently and suggest that this is already the case. 100% of what we know about the world can coherently be explained without any dualism. Not everything can be thus explained, but anything on the unexplained list isn't on the list of 'what we know about the world'.

Ffs I said everything we know about the world can coherently be explained without any dualism, and nothing is unexplained.

Dualism being outright falsified. Any weight of evidence can always be hand-waved away as correlation, as is typically done by its proponents. Case in point:

Ffs there is zero scientific evidence for any correlation, so the proponents of correlation believe in the tooth fairy. But we ultimately can't prove the tooth fairy isn't real either, as we can't prove a negative. So I never said that dualism can be outright falsified.

What a wonderful example of a circular explanation of an assertion nobody else seems to understand, let alone agree with. The philosophers are all wrong about X, because (wait for it) "they all pretend that X".

You don't understand it, that's my point. Every time you think you eliminated dualism, you are still trapped in it, because you are bad at philosophy. Almost everyone is bad at philosophy, it's beyond their abilities to unlearn 400 or 2400 years of dualistic conditioning. You're trapped in the circularity not me.

[Andy Kay]

Any weight of evidence can always be hand-waved away as correlation, as is typically done by its proponents. Case in point:

I think it's about what is right here and right now, namely conscious experience, and the inability of traditional physicalism to accommodate it.

Not so sure about that. It would be pretty hard for a complex physical creature to function without it. Take a Roomba floor cleaner, which requires this sort of experience to navigate around and also to find its power source to recharge (eat) now and then. The Roomba works fine under physicalism, so why can't I? You'll of course wave this away as fundamentally different, but only by presuming a fundamental difference that physicalism wouldn't. I tend to reach for simple examples to explain things. Dualists tend to reach for complex examples to hide behind the lack of understanding of them.

Firstly I'm not a substance dualist, I'm not a physicalist, and I'm not an idealist. I'm metaphysically agnostic so you make a mistake in interpreting my refusal to reject dualism as support for dualism. I don't reject physicalism either, but I can see they both face serious problems.

Your assessment of my comment seems symptomatic of a problem that infests discussions like this, and that is an absence of consensus on how the word "consciousness" is being used. Variant uses are legitimate, so Chalmers goes to great lengths to identify the use of the word he wishes to discuss and even to expose those uses of the world that he is NOT interested in discussing. I have a feeling that this is a case in point, and that we should have that discussion first if we are not to waste each other's time.

Chalmers' intention was to demonstrate that physicalsim is no more problem-free than any of the alternatives, and he succeeded in doing that.

It seemed to create a whole list of new problems, all without solving any of the old ones. Doesn't seem like success to me.
No better explanation of anything is offered. A different ontology is offered, but the new parts are utterly unexplained.

New problems include
What is privileged to work this way and what isn't (Roomba for example)? Where's the line? Usually the lines are super far apart. Humans have it. A pencil sharpener doesn't. No comment about the stuff in between, lest we disturb the obfuscation.

Which substance has memory?
Which substance does the deliberating?
Interaction: How does cognition substance cause any kind of physical effect?

The same questions can be mildly reworded for property dualism.

These are all questions open to empirical testing, and yet no such testing takes place since obfuscation seems the primary directive.
The only thing somewhat consistent is that the cognition substance is responsible for qualia and experience in general, but it cannot work without answers to the other bits.
Those are all new problems introduced, without any old ones being solved. Hence my disagreement that Chalmers succeeded in achieving what you claim.

I'm not promoting substance dualism and most of these points are simply pointing out the problems with substance dualism, so I find nothing worth arguing about there. You say "No better explanation of anything is offered" and I have to agree, but I don't regard that as an obstacle. For me at least, the point is to recognize the habits of thought that lead us to prejudicially eliminate ontologies, rather than to support any particular ontology. And to do that we have to reach a common understanding of the word "consciousness."

[Age]

Again, see, here, how these people, back when this was being written, would spend so much of their time concentrating on 'looking at' and/or just 'making up' more, 'theories', instead of just 'looking at' the 'very thing' that the word 'consciousness' was meaning and referring to, exactly.

'Consciousness', itself, is just an extremely VERY SIMPLE, and VERY EASY, thing to COMPREHEND, and UNDERSTAND.

[Noax]

Firstly I'm not a substance dualist, I'm not a physicalist, and I'm not an idealist. I'm metaphysically agnostic so you make a mistake in interpreting my refusal to reject dualism as support for dualism. I don't reject physicalism either, but I can see they both face serious problems.

We're both open then, but still both with obvious preferences. My only significant rejection is any view that renders empirical knowledge invalid, not because such a view is necessarily wrong, but because nothing at all can be known if such a view were to be the case.
There are several views that do this.

Your assessment of my comment seems symptomatic of a problem that infests discussions like this, and that is an absence of consensus on how the word "consciousness" is being used. Variant uses are legitimate, so Chalmers goes to great lengths to identify the use of the word he wishes to discuss and even to expose those uses of the world that he is NOT interested in discussing.

OK, I agree that a definition would be nice. Chalmers uses something like "the way we experience the world, the way it feels to us subjectively", which seems to work for my comments about the Roomba, except Chalmers probably wouldn't include the Roomba in his usage of 'we'. If that is true, the bias (that 'we' do a different way than anything not 'us') is already in the definition.

I have a feeling that this is a case in point, and that we should have that discussion first if we are not to waste each other's time.

Feel free to offer an alternate definition. I got that one from a quick google, totally ignoring the AI response which was completely off target. I don't think the definition there (with 'we' and 'us' replaced by 'things') necessarily begs a dualistic notion of consciousness. That conclusion comes later.

I'm not promoting substance dualism

You claimed that Chalmers succeeded in demonstrating that physicalsim is no more problem-free than any of the alternatives, and yet you seem to admit that physicalism is more problem free than his alternative.

to do that we have to reach a common understanding of the word "consciousness."

Or at least be up front when switching to a different definition. Anyway, you have one other than the one I quote above? It seems reasonable except for the anthropocentric wording of it, easily avoided.

[Atla]

Fun fact, in nondualism, consciousness as in the eternal first-person-view and consciousness as in the individual mind (organism mind, AI mind etc.) are two completely unrelated kinds of consciousness. It's simply that the first one (which is simply existence) is "everywhere", including where individual minds are.

Of course the Western philosophers didn't realize this for hundreds or thousands of years and always conflate the two. That's why according to nondualism, it's impossible in Western philosophy to ever agree on a good definition of consciousness.

In summary, Chalmers defines consciousness as the subjective experience of the mind and emphasizes the difficulty in explaining how and why these experiences arise from physical brain processes.

Even if we forget about the dualist problem of experiences arising from physical brain processes, the above is wrong. Yes, every mind is subjective in the sense of indirect realism - there is sort of a representation of the world in our head and that's what we always experience, and it's a somewhat subjective representation. That's consciousness as in the individual mind.

But the eternal first-person-view isn't the individual mind's, that's existence itself.

[Andy Kay]

Firstly I'm not a substance dualist, I'm not a physicalist, and I'm not an idealist. I'm metaphysically agnostic so you make a mistake in interpreting my refusal to reject dualism as support for dualism. I don't reject physicalism either, but I can see they both face serious problems.

We're both open then, but still both with obvious preferences. My only significant rejection is any view that renders empirical knowledge invalid, not because such a view is necessarily wrong, but because nothing at all can be known if such a view were to be the case. There are several views that do this.

I'm not sure what it means to "render empirical knowledge invalid" except to suspect it means that all data used in model building must not have already been empirically invalidated. If this is what you mean then I would add the condition of logical consistency just for completeness. So all metaphysical hypotheses must be logically consistent and empirically adequate.

I'm not promoting substance dualism

You claimed that Chalmers succeeded in demonstrating that physicalsim is no more problem-free than any of the alternatives, and yet you seem to admit that physicalism is more problem free than his alternative.

In the interest of clarity then, permit me to rephrase my comment: Chalmers was pointing out that physicalism is not problem-free, just as the alternatives are not problem-free. The problem confronting the physicalist paradigm needs to be brought into the daylight because of the widespread preferential treatment for physicalism (probably a result of the spectacular success of scientific methodologies as a means of knowledge acquisition), and I commend Chalmers for his efforts.

Let me just say that I welcome constructive criticism, so I'll await any comments on the above before I attempt a description of how I'm using the word 'consciousness.'