No, they're serious about it:

"The elusive subjective conscious experience — the redness of red, the painfulness of pain — that philosophers call qualia? Sheer illusion." -Daniel Dennett

Their argument is pretty straightforward:

P1: Only the material/physical is real.
P2: Conscious experience can't be material/physical.
C: Conscious experience can't be real.

If you calculated the voltage, frequency or current at every point in this circuit, it would still be a mystery as to why those particular parameters cause consciousness, assuming it truly did of course.

Dennett and his see our externals as the "great illusion' which if one proceeds to ancient times of India it was thusly named . The reason it was thusly named is because the ancient Indian of 8000 years ago was ensconced within another realm, which borders on what you and I see, hear, etc.

What they said to themselves was "only the spirit is real" and our senses dealt with the illusion this being the underlying tenor of the idea of "illusion". Their mantra is "only the spirit is".

Dennett and his boys only recognize the material senses and also call this the "illusion" in which case he should bring forth the character of this illusion but being bothered with the likes of him is nonsensical (no pun intended).

The reality is that in that world of "non illusion" or the "spirit" of the ancient Indian there was no freedom, no error, for a human being within that realm was fixed such as a finger on the body.

This "illusion" or "realm of images" to which we work does allow for error and in this the human being progresses to a "freedom" of individuality such that in evolution the human being can exist in the spirit as a "free being" unlike the finger on the body.

The human being is in development which can only be marveled within this "world of images".

Back to Dennett , he only recognizes the material, as if he can give good understanding of what exactly that means . Ask him to characterize "matter" and see how far he or anyone else gets without some comprehension of a supersensible or non material world to which matter, in actuality, belongs.

Consciousness is not a thing or inner organ but the perceptive ability of a man to perceive the outer world via senses as above of the [perceptive ability of "dream consciousness" which is not given to our intellectual forays or the consciousness of "deep sleep" to which the ancient initiates forayed including the Buddha after long and arduous training.

If, for example, one could enter into that realm of deep sleep and was "conscious" it would be maddening if one were not trained properly as per the ancient initiates. In our world we see a chair or a bend in the corner and the chair will not disappear upon trying to sit on it nor will the bend turn into a deep cliff in this our daytime consciousness.

With training, inner sensory organs are developed along with a strength of individuality (self consciousness) which will withstand the higher environs of the spaceless and timeless realm. "He who toys with the gods they drive mad."

A conscious activity is an interaction of the "inner" , for example taste sense and the "outer" the corresponding food. In the higher realm of the Buddha these senses and incitements (external world) disappear and a new realm of conscious activity can begin with the proper tools (higher senses).

In this higher realm one also practices "self consciousness" or that conscious behavior which is accomplished without our earthly or mattered bodies. This is the realm of the Buddha, and the great religious leaders of mankind inclusive of Moses, a great initiate, along with Zarathustra of Persian times.

Sorry , just goes , on and on.....

By the way, don't forget the 'soul", for the experience is a "soul experience" and the higher realms are the home and origin of the 'soul" .

PTM do you remember when you were 5? Do you have videos or recordings of you talking at age 2-3 without the single shame in the world talking honestly about everything?

What do you think it feels on the inside to be a newborn or a toddler? Can i suggest it feels like a very fuzzy world that is not well focused yet where you have no idea what the objects are and you are feeling lost?

How do we get from this to much better? By experiments. Relentless. Hundreds of millions of them by age 6, more than 10 per second even. We are learning at exponential pace and the neurons connections as the videos i linked show grow dramatically in that time period.

We are a system that stores information supplied by senses and as we get better we store processed info likely too. This is how we learn. The first thing you learn is the language of the senses. This is why we remember nothing from that time. Because it made absolutely no sense in order to register as a memory properly. We were training to read the input. You can only remember things that make sense when that new.

That smooth perfect experience you are now having observing the world around didnt exist at the first week. It emerges because the brain finally trains itself to play the game better and interpret things better.

So higher consciousness emerges when unlike the fruit fly we move from the level of simple if then else reaction to an experimental probing model of the world that has started to anticipate patterns now. This is how we get illusions too by being failed by established well trusted patterns occasionally.

The reason consciousness is possible is because the physics of the world is simple. Yes precisely. Because the law of gravity is simple you understand how things fall and what happens next very quickly. If the trajectory of objects were complicated you would have a hard time decoding what is happening. If you see a stone on earth any stone and any stone on Mars you realize its a stone and not a sphere or a smooth industrial type polished object. If you see polished you know its not wild nature, its humans etc. If you see an egg of any bird, even ones you never saw before you know its an egg. If you see a table or ridiculous design you still recognize it as a table. It is because you have seen what tables do and what properties they share. If you see a table with 2 legs you start thinking is it fixed on the ground somehow because it makes no sense to you. A picture of a person is dramatically different than random 16 mil pixels color dots. It would be impossible to recognize a face if it was like the 16 mil random sequence pixels without correlations. You can see a picture of a person with 1/100 the number of pixels and still recognize it although you appreciate a much cleaner picture of course.

After millions of experiments the world finally makes sense and you experience what you recall at age 5-6 and later. It definitely made sense a lot earlier than that but not at the first week for sure. So what does this tell you? That it is emerging chemical and biological structure that takes you there that did not exist on day 1.

Why would consciousness exist? Because it is the next step of the if then else complex model of insects. It is the step to a dynamical information based model of reality. Because the one with the higher nervous system became more likely to survive. The others all they had is thousands of eggs per generation. 1 in 1000 will make it with their stupid brain system and many enemies and its good enough for the species. With us we have something monumentally bigger in place. Look how more substantial our brain is from other mammals and how pivotal our hands are in terms of dexterity and degrees of freedom that enable probing and tool building and manipulating of the environment. I bet the fingers alone massively accelerate the building of higher level consciousness in young humans.

Your computer or smart phone right now is somewhat conscious. More conscious than the fruit fly. They are not self conscious of course but if you improve their structure to allow them to experiment in all directions and have arms and legs, they will show you things you never expected. The computer will learn to walk and run and recognize images and quickly it will be able to run based on what image it seems and know ahead of time what happens next. This is where the game begins.

People fail to realize the obvious, that to get to the toddler level hundreds of millions of experiments took place to build the system. We humans are relentless at training. Endless processing. This is why feral children are unable to socialize and do any math when discovered. They missed the game civilization provides. And they cant recover from missing the math game. Almost impossible. They have a very different understanding of their environment than we do.


Would you for a moment entertain the possibility that for every second that passes for you to make sense of the world you use billions of connections in the same second? Well billions is a very big number that can start producing sequences of logically good things that anticipate the world and what comes next very well. Your brain constantly interprets all the info senses provide. You are now good at this game. Senses and connections are the origins of consciousness under the blessing of experimentation. Consciousness is indeed about decoding the present and anticipating what comes next even affecting it with choices that appear to be free but of course we know better by now. We do not know how our thoughts emerge because it is a probability game that sometimes makes perfect sense when the probability is very strong (sure what to do, think etc next) and sometimes its all over the place sporadic and random because its close among choices until one finally exponentially wins. You know what i mean. When you are trying to solve a math problem you are not thinking about a sexy girl or when trying to drive in a difficult situation with rain etc you are not thinking what the TV has right now or if the glove compartment of your car has some almond nuts bag. On occasion you do though lol! See my point? How does this randomness happen? It rarely happens in crisis mode though right?


What will convince you is to see an example of how neuron activity via chemistry brings to front action something like a past memory or info that suggests what comes next. When you were learning Geometry were you as eager as later to draw random lines and circles? Why did that change? Could it be that now your brain probes for points to draw lines from a lot more often in all this randomness before a solution emerges because you remember its a winning strategy? What you want is to understand how past connections come to the front. It may have something to do with simulating what senses provide in a way that in some invisible domain you reconstruct a reality of connections even when your eyes no longer see the past experience again. Signal pattern identification probabilistically triggers other signals and connections that closely match? This is why research in this will solve it and wont likely require new physics just better understanding of the details.

I'd counter that the conclusions they draw about the so called "material/physical" are really being drawn about their illusory perception of an "out there" which they've named "material/physical". It's a perception experienced through senses and expanded by technical tools and scientific theories but it's still a perception which is an illusion of what's out there. In fact, it's precisely this illusory perception of the material/physical which needs improvement before it can point to an explanation of consciousness. It's not surprising that this illusory and inadequate perception of the material/physical which leaves them unable to explain consciousness should also lead them to a conclusion about consciousness which is self evidently wrong.


PairTheBoard

No our world out there (as imagined by physics, senses and experiments) is very close to the real thing or a faithful representation of it. The moon is indeed a spherical rocky object that is out there even when you are not looking. Only if you experiment with particles it gets more intriguing. At the large scale level we do get it very close to the actual thing because its a classical statistical game. Our senses are not telling us lies, they offer very decent representations of the actual thing. They were evolved to play that game well. We can test our senses easily.

Any reframing of physics is only going to have indirect effect to the way we see the macroscopic world and some rare microscopic properties that propagate to large scale in terms of why it is like that conceptually not render what we see fake or anything close to it.

Here is an illusion for fun though;



Our consciousness is a macroscopic outcome actually. The problem is that in the past some stupid pseudo science garbage about consciousness being related to exotic QM theories were allowed to flow even by some decent theorists. But dont forget how even Newton was an alchemist on occasion.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...complex-brain/
Scientists differ on the difference between consciousness and self-awareness, but here is one common explanation: Consciousness is awareness of one's body and one's environment; self-awareness is recognition of that consciousness—not only understanding that one exists, but further understanding that one is aware of one's existence.

I'm guessing/hoping you're working off a different definition of consciousness than the orthodox?

In and of themselves certain parts of the brain aren't logical or intelligent, but working together in a certain manner they display that property. So I think we can go as far as saying that 'logic' or 'intelligence' is an emergent property of the brain, but that's about it.

Masque.

I thought that we'd evolved to perceive reality in whatever way best enables survival in our particular environment. Not necessarily in whatever way represents reality accurately.

I have no need for senses that ants have, for example, which are highly attuned to seismic changes and events, and can likely predict things based on particular seismic activity. I can know of these things indirectly, sure, but I can't know what they would feel like and I can't know how not knowing that would impact my view of the world.

Your claim that our senses enable a faithful representation of the world is likely disputed by many in your own field, let alone biology and other scientific disciplines. This claim seems ignorant to this notion that our senses are incomplete. We can only sense so many things, as needed to survive in OUR environment. The things we cannot sense, we may only know indirectly, and we cant know how direct knowledge of such things might change our view of the world.

Take a break from deciding it is and enjoy the performance. That's a basic simplicity involved- enjoyment. No wonderful complexity excluded while simply enjoying.

Senses are incomplete (you cant see x rays, neutrinos etc) but in what they do are not failing us in anything other than our philosophy of reality (hence why QM looks strange). They havent failed us in the classical scale of things. They do a very good job there thank you!

Also you better believe it that by the test of a minimal neurons insect a smartphone is no less aware of its environment and its own condition.

For all purposes ants etc are nothing more than some advanced cellular automata. You can survive very well with 100 if then else rules of behavior or whatever they have. Especially if only 1 in 10 needs to survive or whatever for all to work ok eventually.


Also i hope we are having a faithful honest discussion here not trying to get each other on bs inconsequential details that were never intended in order to undermine a ton of other material that i saw no reaction at all to so far. Of course on occasion senses can fail us based on our own condition or how the environment can fool our prejudices or statistically valid anticipations that work most of the time. But our senses are very good representations of the world at large. They are not giving us a world that is very different or even a little different in a meaningful manner than the real thing unless we suffer from some condition. List a failure then that you can prove on standard conditions that is not a disease based one. If you start spinning around yes your sense of balance will fail etc, if you start playing with hot and cold , very dark and very bright etc your perception will be altered but you know what i am taking about here. It is very rational based on our physics that our senses would work that way.


Also what do we disagree on so far?

1. That you can understand it with current physics?

2. That you can understand the variations of subjective based on better and better models of the objective function of these systems and faithful interactions between people?

3. what else?

Until we have a complete theory of all possible ways to from consciousness can only strongly judge consciousness by its effects on environment not by how it feels to us to have it which is a valid but weaker and likely not universal metric.

To address your point about the moon....

You mean that bunch of 0s and 1s so meticulously arranged so as to be experienced by conciousness as a spherical, rocky, orbiting object?

The moon is no more real than the chemicals and their determining 0s and 1s which are the code comprising all of you. At least according to many proponents of your kind of physicalism...

They are losers. I am not!

So you dont believe the moon and the way it interacts with other objects to be reducible to code?

Of course the moon is real and doesnt need you to look at it. It has properties that can be detected easily. 0s and 1 s what on earth is that? It is a representation of something tangible if so. The moon is there because it can interact with all kinds of things that secure its there before you even look statistically. It has been thoroughly probed by the rest of the universe.

This is not the same with an electron or its spin. But the moon has so many particles that its uncertainty is ridiculous. What you define as moon is a very large scale boundary of a macroscopic object. That neighborhood is beyond speculation there. Who cares if it fluctuates 10^-15m up or down in the boundaries of the last atoms. This is not how you define it. You define it by the aggregate and other easily detectable macroscopic qualities that are always detected there in the aggregate. That is securely there statistically protected by 10^-10000000 orders of impossible to happen bs.

You know that all you need to secure the matter in this system is very old is the ratio u238/u235. That all existed before any human or animal consciousness ever did.

Sometimes i do not even understand what you are objecting to. Are you denying the existence of the macroscopic world such as the planets of this system? Is that an illusion?

Matter is empty 99.99999% or more by volume but who cares, when you try to probe it, it appears you cant go through it with your fist. Neutrinos do however. For neutrinos the world is different. But we are better, larger systems.

Although 99% empty space (I'll use this example instead of the 0s and 1s) the moon is nonetheless real - in the sense that I cant probe it/put my fist through it.

Understood.

Our mutual understanding of what is real here, for the sake of this example, is based on humans or other medium-sized lifeforms (if you will) being unable to physically penetrate an object by use of body parts.

Now I hope you're still following...

Because our conclusion that the moon is real depends on our inability to probe the moon with our fists or whatever other body parts, the reality or non-reality of the moon is determined by a supposed interaction between a conciousness or human (me/my fists) and an object (moon).

You then make the claim that the moon can be real without any such interaction - without a human or conciousness.

Do you understand the dilemma?

You can examine properties of the moon by an endless variety of methods that establish it is older than a few million years that is the span of our species in this planet. So it has to have existed before us the observer. See the point now?

Isotopes of Uranium can prove that this system's higher elements are over 6 bil years old. I can watch the tides and know the moon is causing them in great part. We have isotopes and minerals, rocks etc from the moon too. We can measure He3 concentration in its matter and know how long it has been radiated by solar wind even.

I can find evidence of past tides also before this observer ever existed. So you see the point now?


A macroscopic system has crystal clear consequences because of the laws of probability. It is probed by the universe and it leaves plenty of consequences that do not require this observer but can be established by other ones and the consequence on them.

When you say that the moon is older and imply it was here before conciousness you're making many claims at once.

1. The moon is older than human conciousness.
2. The moon is older than all earthly conciousness.
3. The moon is older than all possible conciousness in the universe.
4. Things can exist without subject-object interaction.
5. Our understanding of time is complete.

As you go further down this list my confidence in your claims diminishes. For example, based on our understanding claims 1 and 2 I can get behind. 3/4/5 I dont know. Since I don't know them I cant say with confidence that conciousness is not fundamental; that subjectivity is not fundamental.

At the moment of the big bang there is no biological matter hence no consciousness yet but the particles that make the world today ie mostly Hydrogen and Helium are there!

The observer is the rest of the universe. It doesnt have to be a conscious one.

The bold is what keeps me awake at night. Why would you say this? A physicist would say that we aren't seeing the molecules at least, and therefore, not seeing what it truly is.

Do we ever see anything other than light?


PairTheBoard

I would go even further and say that we aren't seeing the code of 0s and 1s that instructs the composition, trajectory, momentum and location of the atoms/molecules and everything else.

To be fair, such ability isn't required for the survival of living creatures. And it probably wouldn't be an evolutionary advantage if some were capable of it bec who needs to see the atoms to survive?

Right. If we've evolved to see the world in the way that best fits our operating environment, rather than as it actually is, it is dubious to suggest that our perception of the world is a fairly accurate representation of it. Accurate - from our perspective; to our purposes - may be closer to the truth.

The opposing view - that our perspective is not an accurate representation, agrees in one respect with the above view. They both agree that whatever the truth is, the human perspective in particular, must be special in some important way:

To say our perspective is inaccurate means that we are aware of this inaccuracy, unlike other creatures, and thus special. To say that our perspective is accurate means that it more closely represents the world, as compared to other creatures; and thus special.

However you slice it, human conciousness is something highly different to that of other observable life.

And this is something.