??? Why is that “absurd”?
It might not seem absurd if waves and particles were just reduced elements of consciousness, but they are intended to be without consciousness - independent of it and without any consciousness intrinsic within them. Therefore it is required that a complete lack of something might result in that something, if only these non-somethings were arranged in certain ways.
I think something emerging from its opposite, or at least from a complete lack of that something is the epitome of what absurdity is supposed to mean.
Whether or not absurdity can happen is a different matter, of course. You can just leave it at “well it just does”, and practically speaking that’s true. Photons having certain wavelengths “just do” cause red to look like it does rather than any other way, despite having no redness or consciousness within them. No properties of any sensation are contained within the object causing it, but that’s how they appear when observed.
You can’t even see sight or any kind of sensory perception when observing a brain, the sensation has to be a result of the brain only unto itself, without ever even any having any specific spatio-temporal position. Where is the red? Where is the pleasure? You can explain what they’re made of and what things interact to cause them, but none of this explanation and any understanding of it will actually cause the specific experience of them in the particular way that your brain seems to conjure them. Quite aside from how matter vibrations move your eardrums, the kinetic energy is converted to electric signals, interacting with chemicals blah blah blah - the sensation is all the work of the brain. The brain doesn’t even need any outside stimulus from “reality” to make consciousness happen.
Somewhere along the way between explanations, a divide is crossed to actual experience. It’s necessarily absurd in fact, because all these explanations will all be in terms of experiences, and you just have to accept it when you’re told they are independent of experiences.
What does it mean for B to emerge or arise from A? That’s the most important question in this thread, isn’t it?
Does it not simply mean that B can be predicted based on A? If that’s the case, then it is far from absurd to claim that consciousness arises or emerges from particles and waves. It simply means that you can predict consciousness based on particles and waves. Nothing else.
Not quite. In the first statement, it’s made clear that it’s event X that’s doing the forcing. In the second statement, it could be X that does the forcing, or a third variable (like God) that forces both.
Certainly! The first argument is about what ‘cause’ means, whereas the second is only about what creates the concept of ‘cause’ in our minds. The first one says: I draw the conclusion that X causes Y because I’ve consistently seen X and Y conjoined in experience. The second one says: I intuit that X causes Y, though I’m not sure why. My neurologist tells me it’s because of all my past experiences seeing X constantly conjoined with Y. The first is making a logical argument. The second is merely a causal result of experiences. I maintain that the first is invalid because if all you’ve experienced is X constantly conjoined with Y, then you can only draw the conclusion that a correlation exists. If you conclude a cause exists, you are adding something extra. ← That extra bit (which raises the concept to a ‘cause’ proper) may be a result of the brain having undergone certain experiences (i.e. seeing X constantly conjoined with Y), which is what the second argument is saying, but it can’t just be a reference to what you’ve experienced since we never experience a ‘cause’ per se. Thus, ‘cause’ must mean something more than just X and Y being constantly conjoined.
Technically no. Even if we were to infer that all instance of ‘AB’ above are all the instance of ‘AB’ that exist, we don’t know whether A is causing B or a third variable (say God) is causing both.
The issue is not whether A can lead to B… for all we are able to observe “they just do” - as I covered.
It’s whether or not it seems absurd for certain kinds of A to lead to certain kinds of B - as I covered.
Just because A can empirically lead to B, and B can empirically be predicted by A, that doesn’t mean it makes any logical sense. It’s essentially the problem of Dualism from philosophy 101. A ball bouncing back off a solid wall? That’s fine: they’re both solid objects, electromagnetic attraction and repulsion + conservation of momentum, no problem. You even get less and less bounce from less and less difference in momentum until you reach none and there’s no bounce anymore. Cool. Same type of thing → causal interaction.
Inert particles and waves do stuff in our brain that someone much more qualified than me can probably explain pretty well and… the experience of redness emerges? You what?! How is the outcome remotely related to the input? At what point did unconscious waves and particles become conscious experience? What is the threshold or link between “entirely without experience” waves and particles… and red? Or pleasure? Why do we even need to feel pleasure to feel attraction or pain to feel repulsion (simplistically speaking)? Why not just behave in the exact same way through natural forces without the conscious experience? Doesn’t there need to be some kind of intermediate medium or sliding scale for something to turn into an entirely different opposite? What and where even is the subject of this experience? Why can it only be the result of these causes that experiences itself, and an outside observer has absolutely zero access to it?
This is what forced me to monism, but not materialist monism because the outcome is entirely devoid of waves and particles - those things happen side by side in direct correlation but AREN’T the experience itself. Of only one thing can I be entirely sure: that the experience exists whether or not the direct correlation with waves and particles is just some weirdly consistent co-incidence. So at base, the monism must therefore consist of the experience part alone, which is consistent with the fact that all talk, witnessing and understanding of waves and particles is in terms of consciousness… all makes sense that way.
The consciousness is primary and the foundation, the “underlying reality” is a result of it - not the other way around - as I covered.
Afraid not.
Apparently you haven’t an understanding of exactly what consciousness is. Once understanding WHAT it is, it isn’t all that difficult to realize of what it is made. Consciousness arises from the one reality. The one reality does not arise from consciousness. Before there can be a conscious physical being, there must first be a physical being.
From one’s own experience and studies as an adult on other children, from birth consciousness comes first, then the ability to identify “physical beings” + then identity of oneself as a physical being.
How can anyone not understand what consciousness is? All understanding is conscious → consciousness is primary to understanding. All is consciousness to anyone ever period. The “one reality” arises from consciousness and is purely understood in terms of consciousness.
It seems like one is taught to forget what consciousness intuitively is, in order to re-understand it in absurdly contradictory but useful terms - which is what I gather this thread to ultimately be about.
Perhaps you have a different definition of “consciousness”. Without merely substituting one vague word for another, can you state what your unambiguous definition of “consciousness” is?
Quite possible, yes. Nothing quite like having a debate where two people are talking about different things.
This will be a description of what I consider consciousness to be and not be, “defining” it as the emergence that it is from a few different angles so that I may try and squeeze it out. I’m not sure if you will find it satisfactory to your requirement of “unambiguous” because it’s a result that’s left over after explanations have started and finished - rather than the explanation part itself.
I regard consciousness as the presence of sensory experience. I’m not sure if most would think of dreams as unconscious, but I’d still regard them as a kind of consciousness. It doesn’t have to be any specific type of sensory experience, just anything from the minimal upwards, and of any type. Basically any basis of any empirical evidence is consciousness. I even regard the experience of performing and recognising a logical deduction, as well as that to which the logic is applied, as sensory experience - we know if something is consistent or not by the feeling of close association and familiarity in memory - but that’s another topic.
It is the form and quality of existence.
It’s the way rather than the what/how, but it can be unevenly focused upon so that “whats” can be forged as separate from what which is not focused upon, and mechanistically recombined by imagined forces after such divisions have been performed to create “hows” - for the purpose of utility. “Way” is what I am trying to accentuate with the word “experience”, and by “quality” I want to draw attention to “qualia”.
Like I said in my previous post, we could potentially behave in the exact same way just by natural forces moving us in the same ways - without any personal subjective experience of it - like a computer/robot. Complex motion and adaptability surely doesn’t necessarily require it. Consciousness is that which is extra to how a computer could be said to “think”.
Consciousness isn’t just the experience of “what the world is actually like”, it is all entirely generated within the brain and merely based on sensory interaction with what is presumed to be the world. The raw sensory data is transformed as it is transmitted and only really comes to create this consciousness once interpreted and conjured into “this”. It’s at best a representation of what isn’t us (and what is) that could have taken any form or not existed at all, but happened to do so in this particular “way”. Sound isn’t what vibrations “are”, colours aren’t what different wavelengths of photons “are”, touch isn’t what electricity “is”, these things and all the other aspects of sensory experience are extra to what the raw inputs are, they aren’t even the raw things at all - just what is extra to them - separate and unconnected to their supposed source.
Perhaps you could share your definition of consciousness so that we can compare?
What I want to understand is why you think it is absurd for certain kinds of B to arise from certain kinds of A. If “B arises from A” means nothing other than “we can successfully predict B from A” then where is the problem? You can predict any kind of B based on any kind of A e.g. you can predict one’s experience of color based on colorless particles.
Why do they have to be the same kind of thing?
They are related in the sense that whenever particles and waves act in a certain manner the experience of redness follows.
The universe can be defined as the sum of everything that was, that is and that will be. We can say the universe is made out of particulars. William James called them “neutral stuff” to indicate that they are neither physical nor mental (you should check out his Neutral Monism if you haven’t already.) Charles Sanders Peirce, I think, had his own version of this concept which is “vagueness” (often referred to as “ontological vagueness” to indicate it is no merely epistemic.) Ernst Mach called these particulars “sensations”. He also called them “elements”. Positivists called them “facts”. Bertrand Russell called them “events”. You can call them “qualia” or “qualities” if you want to. I think Russell called them that too. Some sources say that he did. Some sources equate “neutral monism” with “the primacy of qualia”. I don’t know. Either way, it does not matter. At any point in time, there are particulars we are aware of and particulars we are not aware of. The universe is the sum of all particulars that exist regardless of whether anyone is aware of them or not. This is different from the view that the universe is a mechanism, i.e. a set of rules, according to which everything works.
If you were a living thing the size of an atom or smaller with a sufficient degree of consciousness, would you be asking that question? It is likely there will be no or very minimal diversity to be cognized by such an atomic-sized living.
From the above we can infer the question of the concepts diversity & unity must be emerging from our own selves rather than things pre-existing independently to be observed.
To facilitate survival and sustain consonance by dissolving dissonance, all humans has evolved with the impulse for certainty and jumping to a definite answer regardless it is true or not. Something to act upon is a primal survival trait which is better than no answers that is paralyzing. This is the reason why the majority are jumping to cling on to a First Cause or God to resolve infinite regression despite the fact God is an Impossibility within an Empirical-Rational reality.
However humans are also evolving toward higher cognitive and reasoning faculties, i.e. philosophy-proper. Note Russells’,
What we have is all that is emerging and unfolding within our normal consciousness.
Obviously we need to know the reality that is emerging. But to live a state of higher consciousness with philosophy-proper we need to modulate our primal impulses such that we do not end up clinging to definite answers and dogmas like ‘primitive’ theologian, theists and other dogmatics.
What we are experiencing is the emergence of reality and we need the most efficient philosophical tools [e.g. Science, mathematics, philosophical thinking, logic, critical thinking, wisdom, etc.] to understand the whole system of reality covering from diversity to ‘unity’ but suspending the seduction of definite answers and absolute certainty.
Thus the presentation of diversity from the Universe in complementarity with Unity involve the interdependent interaction of humans within that emerging reality.
As Kant has stated, why there are Laws of Nature [of diversity and unity] is because we ourselves [collectively] put it there.
^ So then it becomes the hard problem of consciousness. How do we get the emergence of qualities in consciousness from qualitiless unconscious existence?
Yes, we like to come up with answers to questions, and we often jump to conclusions without fully establishing the grounds for those conclusions. But how does that answer the question?
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Are you saying that the qualitative diversity we see is just a product of a mind that has evolved to produce that qualitative diversity–through its impulse to jump to conclusions–and that with more refined science, philosophy, thinking skills, etc., we will come to find that the universe is really quite monotonous?
It seems to me that your definition of non-absurdity is potentially identical to predictability. Perhaps nothing is absurd to you if it’s predictable, and anything absurd to you is only that way if it’s not predictable - you’ll have to tell me. If that is the case then there’s no wonder why you’re not getting my point because nothing predictable could be absurd to you.
I am however saying that certain predictable things can be absurd based on how strange the mechanism would have to be in order to explain said predictability. In this case, it simply seems as though we are using different definitions of absurdity: perhaps more of a subjective term. I’ve even gone as far as to suggest that any mechanism seems to have an absurdity to it if one questions the necessity of every step. For example:
Even if they were the same kind of thing, whyever would it not be absurd if they interacted predictably? What’s the necessity behind things of the same type predictably interacting, never mind things of a different type? As I think I suggested, it may have something to do with what we just happen to have grown to accept from our respective previous experiences. To me, I see things of the same type interacting relatively more predictably than things of different types. Perhaps to you the question of what types of things react more predictably than others is irrelevant - they either do or they don’t, and that’s all that’s relevant. I’m abstracting and you’re more concretely minded maybe? Just a suggestion based on the extremely small amount of your words that I have read to date - only you can confirm how you think.
But as far as what I can say to confirm how I think goes:
Yeah, in practice they’re related - “it just does” as I keep saying I accept. But how the hell, after we’ve exhausted ourselves talking in terms of certain wavelengths interacting with other waves and particles in the eye, down the nerves to the brain etc. etc. does any of this turn into redness? None of these explanations had redness or any kind of consciousness in them throughout any very informative and detailed explanation from start to finish, and then suddenly BAM: redness. How does this transition from complete lack of consciousness to consciousness happen? What is the bridge? The lead-up to the bridge tells us nothing about the bridge itself in this case.
You keep saying we can predict it so that’s fine - and maybe that’s enough for you. It’s not enough for me because I’m respecting everything you and science say, but still nobody is enlightening anyone else as to how the the non-consciousness of what is sufficient to you jumps to consciousness.
These people are attempting to posit the existence of such a bridge and calling its substance various different terms, but to me this is all speculation. I think scientific analysis, testing and structured observation perhaps can only apply to the physical - not the mental (in the conscious non-physical sense) nor any bridge between them… or for that fact any substance that transcends both the physical and the mental: just the material. As I suggested, this is all unnecessary as they are all tied together by the mental (in the sense of subjective consciousness e.g. of qualia): all talk and understanding of matter - to which we can apply the highly useful discipline of science - is in terms of consciousness. It might not be meant to be dependent on, and secondary to consciousness, and thinking of it in such a way makes it (appear) possible to apply science, but in practice that’s all it is. The physical as “a useful trick of the mind” is a much more simple and elegant solution: monism of the substance “experience”.
The word “absurd” simply means unreasonable. It applies to predictions. It is predictions that can be absurd. A prediction is absurd to the extent that it is contrary to evidence. For example, expecting that you can survive without food and water by simply thinking positively is absurd.
Well, I don’t understand your question. What exactly are you asking? Would you be kind enough to explain it in detail for me?
Note that whenever someone asks a “how” or a “why” question they are asking something related to a correlation between two or more particulars (a.k.a. qualia, qualities, events, facts, elements, sensations, sense-data, informational atoms, bits, objects of experience and many other terms people came up with in the past.) When I ask “how do you turn the lights on?” I am asking “what can cause the lights to be turned on?” or more precisely “what event is highly correlated with the event of lights turning on?” Similarly, when I ask “why did he do that?” I am asking “what caused him to do that?” or more precisely “what event that is highly correlated with the kind of thing that he just did preceded what he just did?” In every case, the question has the form “how can I predict that?”
You have to explain to me what kind of question you are asking.
You mean the bridge between non-consciousness and consciousness that you’re talking about? No, I don’t think they posit the existence of such a bridge. They are saying exactly the same thing I am saying.
That’s where they disagree with you. Ernst Mach in particular.
Qualia are neither mental-subjective nor physical-objective. That’s neutral monism.
Mental and physical, subjective and objective, are categories that include certain qualities and exclude others. Categories are nothing but portions of reality. Physics is a portion of reality. Physical portions of reality exclude colors which does not mean that there are no colors outside of these portions of reality.
But that’t neutral monism. William James calls it “pure experience”.
I don’t see the need to run to the hard problem of consciousness.
In any case, this question will lead to an infinite regression.
As I had stated, we need to shift the attention to our selves rather than something out there.
Let Science deal with the physical world but why do we get entangled with metaphysics is due to our inner psychology.
So when we encounter any dilemma within the physical world the focus should be on our inner psychology rather than turning to a God.
Being good in philosophy is the ability to suspend our psychological propensity to crave for definite answers - see Russell below.
We need to keep questioning and one will note a path leading to ‘know thyself’ and the psychology within one self and the generic others.
What we have is a Spontaneous Emergent Reality.
There is no absolute and definite answers to such a reality.
“What is” is contextual and perspectival.
If we look out, we face diversity, when we look inward we face monotony or toward unity. We need to accept both are reality depending on the perspective.
There is cause and effect to explain the interconnection of things within reality but there is a limit to cause and effect where it involves psychology, e.g. Hume’s customs, habits and constant conjunction.
What is critical is to develop our philosophical knowledge and wisdom to understand the subtle limits involved.
What is diversity and unity are products of the mind but what is critical here is if you are asking how and what trigger unity to break into diversity, then you have to turn inward to understand the psychology [e.g. the program to jump to conclusion] behind it.
The majority when faced with this question will answer it is God which is the ultimate unity which created and continually create the diversity. This is not true because as I had proven, God is an impossibilty. The underlying problem to all these is human psychological and it is to this that the individual must turn to resolve the associated issues and problem.
When I turn to my inner psychology, I find that all the qualities I see in the world turn out to be artifacts of my own mind. These are known as phenomena, qualia, perceptual reality, etc. So then the question becomes: how does a network of neurons end up creating all this phenomena, qualia, perceptual reality–all these subjective experiences–with all its qualitative diversity? ← To me, that’s the hard problem of consciousness.
It’s more important in philosophy to know your motives than to know your arguments. Without knowing what you’re really striving for in philosophy, your arguments tend to be really sloppy. One must also know how to take a breath in philosophy. It’s important not to always respond or to slap together a patchwork argument in a rash, panicked manner. Sometimes it pays to take a step back and think about how best to respond, and even take back a few things you’ve said if per chance it serves your greater goal (your motive).
Again, it seems like you’re saying diversity is an artifact of mind.
That is based on insufficient turns within your inner psychology.
If you have done sufficient turns, you will arrive at the proximate arrangement/combination of neurons that compel you to ask and be desperate to find the answers to ‘the hard problem of consciousness’.
If you were to do a few more turns, you will realize there are neural combinations that will seduce you to jump to a conclusion of God as the answer to the question. For those who accept God as an answer, there could be some relief but it is double edged with its loads of evil from a belief in a God which is illusory and impossible.
If you do a few more turns to the neural connections that support wisdom you will realize it is wiser to leave the question of hard-consciousness suspended without aby definite answer [Russell on the ultimate purpose of Philosophy] but apply whatever knowledge to it in contexts.
That is my point.
It is important in philosophy-proper to know your motives but it is more critical to understand the psychological basis behind that motive. Generally this psychological aspect is ignored in Western Philosophy, the reason being to avoid being subjective.
In philosophy-proper it is most effective to take into account all elements including the subject that is involved in the philosophizing. In this case, we need to understand the subject in a collective generic sense rather than as an individual subject.
One can study diversity on an empirical basis, but ultimately the question of diversity will fall back on psychology.
We can use Science and others knowledge to understand the diversity of things, e.g. why there are so many varieties of apples.
But if we are to a complex question ‘Who created the diverse things within the Universe’ we have to take into account the nature of the question and the most effective approach in such a question is to turn to the inner psychology of the individual subject [generic basis].
“Unreasonable” is the usual synonym to be found as the dictionary definition. Though by derivation the word means “out of tune”, which doesn’t necessarily relate to reason as it’s no more or less reasonable to be out of tune, it just seems wrong and doesn’t “fit” - according to how you would expect that things are supposed to be, the absurd is not that way. Absurdity can relate to reason, if something is out of tune with reason it’s unreasonable, sure, but it’s not necessarily what the word means. Likewise with predictions, as you say, absurd predictions don’t fit with what previous experience would indicate to be probable. But even in keeping with the definition of absurd as “unreasonable”, a mechanism can be absurd if it isn’t in keeping with how mechanisms usually are, even if it’s a reliable prediction that does consistently yield results that you would expect. So the consequence of the prediction might not be absurd, but the constitution of that prediction could still be absurd.
An example that I thought of was “energy”. It’s perfectly predictable how energy will be conserved in a closed system, and what forms it will change into depending on what is happening within the closed system. But surely there is still some level of absurdity to how chemical energy is converted to electrical energy like in a battery, or potential energy to kinetic energy if you drop that battery? The different types of energy seem completely different to each other, and yet we expect them to consistently change from one form to another because by experience they just do.
I get the feeling that you’ll reject this example too, because as I said: it’s predictable. It’s reasonable to expect energy to change forms like it does, because it just does. But at least it’s been proposed that there’s some underlying consistency between different types of energy (they’re all types of energy), but this isn’t even the case for waves/particles and consciousness - neither is supposed to be made of the other and there is no concept proposed to underlie both of them. And how could there be? They have nothing in common. But we predictably find that one seems to cause the other…
I don’t know how I can explain any of this any better. And yet it seems like you are completely unable to even begin to understand what I’m trying to say. It sounds like William James might be on a similar track to me with his “pure experience” and neutral monism, but I’ve not come across any of him yet. All I’m asking is how waves and particles can interact with consciousness such that one can cause the other. Practically speaking I can accept that it seems like they predictably do, but how? There is no crossover, it’s like expecting a brick wall to stop a ghost - whether or not it actually did in any predictable way.
^^ The worship of Magic (“It cannot be understood”). Anti-Science from the so called “progressive”.
