All matter is a cognitive ‘hallucination,’ even the brain itself

Because you cannot derive abstractive capabilities from certain combinations if such capabilities are not present in the simplest forms of matter. You cannot get something from nothing.


We don't even have evidence that the external world is truly "physical" ~ we only know what our senses show us, and we call the stuff we perceive "physical", because it has common properties.


It is the most naive explanation ~ there is nothing "simple" about presuming that our perception of the external world is as it is, because you have to ignore whole swaths of data strongly suggesting that we do not perceive reality as it really is ~ everything from quantum mechanics / physics suggests this.

The simpler explanation is that the physical form shapes and modulates how we perceive sensory data ~ we never perceive the sensory data in and of itself, only what the physical form shapes it into.

We will not reach an agreement on your claim that we cannot get abstractive capabilities from combinations of things that do not have such capabilities individually. I just don't follow your logic.

I don't care if we call the external world physical. It's simply clear that there is something other than our experiences.

I'm not saying that we are perceiving the external world exactly as it is. I'm only suggesting that we are perceiving it somewhat like it is, rather than constructing an elaborate interface to something that is completely different.

I don't know what you mean by a physical form shaping sensory data. It seems to me that we perceive some subset of all the external data, with that perception having more or less fidelity. Then we may significantly bias the data to fit various models of the world that we have developed in order to reduce brainpower, speed up responses, ignore nasty stuff, and so forth. Biases and errors can creep into the process at every level.

~~ Paul

Brains have never been shown to be capable nor responsible for "generating" anything.

That is mere confusion and conflating by Materialists of correlation with causation, because the Materialist just redefines minds as epiphenomena of brains, so it must be the brain doing stuff, not the mind.

You must have a really different concept of "generating" than I do. When we open up a skull, poke some neurons, and elicit an image, is that not the brain generating something? You may argue that it is not the brain, but instead some sort of immaterial mind, but there is even less evidence for that. No immaterial mind is forthcoming. So why rag on the materialists and not also the idealists?

Now, if you are going to insist that such experiences must by definition be the result of an immaterial mind, then you are begging the question.

~~ Paul

There is nothing more happening at a transistor level ~ it is still purely physical and chemical reactions.

What you don't seem to realize is that we humans create abstractions, and then build physical tools to support those abstractions.

In terms of physics and chemistry ~ there are no macro features. There are just micro features that we conscious entities mentally abstract away as "macro".

I don't really understand what you are trying to say here. I agree that there are only micro features, but these can be assembled in ways to produce macro features that we find useful. Or in ways that generate interesting events in nature without our involvement. So to say that there is no "additive" micro feature and thus we can't get additive macro features is incorrect.

But I think I don't understand what you're trying to say.

~~ Paul

That's your own bias. Mathematics only describes the shared relationships of the architecture upon which Experience arises/emerges. Maths is not the architecture, it is a way we can describe something which is hidden.

The following is a quote from your post #24:

But my idea, is that 'experience' is only a calculated result, not the 'data' itself. The result of calculating the 'data', obscures the 'data'. The result (experience) seems to be the shared processing of alike mathematical structures (patterns, or relationships). A good candidate for the shared structures, are the mathematical structures of these helix-like cylindrical protein structures (MT's), it may not even be their mathematical structure directly, but rather their internal structure which orders the mathematical structure of water, which may be where a 1:1 mathematical structure of 'experience' (the result) is being calculated.

You state in the beginning of this that "experience" (which is an essential aspect of conscious awareness) is a calculated result, which is a mathematical structure. Then you say that experience seems instead to be shared computational processing, something entirely different. Which is it? In these statements you are essentially saying both that consciousness is an emergent property of a mathematical structure, that is, of an abstraction, and that it is computational processing.

In the first place, conscious awareness can't be a mathematical (or any other) abstraction because there is a fundamental existential gulf between the two. Secondly, consciousness is also not computational processing, for the same reason.

Accordingly, your statement is as incompatible with the reality of what the essence of consciousness really is, as the usual materialist assumption that consciousness is one and the same as, or an "emergent" property of, the collective interactions of billions of neurons in the brain.  
B

Those kinds of tools do not know what they are doing. Whether AI "knows" what it's doing is a topic for discussion, although I'm bored of the whole AI thing already.

~~ Paul

I guess I don’t understand why you mention adders then?

I mean ink has no capacity for communication as a substance, yet we can have books, flyers, posters, etc.

I don’t believe the ink is thinking when it is used for those purposes, anymore than I think the components of a computer think when arranged in a particular way?

I guess I don’t understand why you mention adders then?

I mean ink has no capacity for communication as a substance, yet we can have books, flyers, posters, etc.

I don’t believe the ink is thinking when it is used for those purposes, anymore than I think the components of a computer think when arranged in a particular way?

I mentioned adders because people appear to believe that if there is no "X attribute" in low-level things, then there can't be any "X attribute" in compositions of those things. Now, if consciousness or thinking is somehow special and can't appear out of combinations of low-level things that have no consciousness, even though adding can, then I need to see a logical proof that this is the case, for some definition of proof. As far as I can tell, it's a just-so claim.

~~ Paul

I mentioned adders because people appear to believe that if there is no "X attribute" in low-level things, then there can't be any "X attribute" in compositions of those things. Now, if consciousness or thinking is somehow special and can't appear out of combinations of low-level things that have no consciousness, even though adding can, then I need to see a logical proof that this is the case, for some definition of proof. As far as I can tell, it's a just-so claim.

~~ Paul

But it's consciousness of humans that are interpreting the adder, so I don't see what value the example has?

Is there something different between an adder in a computer and an abacus? Or either of those and ink making words in a book? Without consciousness these are just collections of particles or whatever the "physical" is supposed to be now?

All these arrangements of "physical" stuff, really meaning things in consensus experience, are made because consciousness is already present in reality.

We have to be careful not to mistakenly smuggle in the consciousness we are trying to explain.

The following is a quote from your post #24:


You state in the beginning of this that "experience" (which is an essential aspect of conscious awareness) is a calculated result, which is a mathematical structure. Then you say that experience seems instead to be shared computational processing, something entirely different. Which is it? In these statements you are essentially saying both that consciousness is an emergent property of a mathematical structure, that is, of an abstraction, and that it is computational processing.

In the first place, conscious awareness can't be a mathematical (or any other) abstraction because there is a fundamental existential gulf between the two. Secondly, consciousness is also not computational processing, for the same reason.

Accordingly, your statement is as incompatible with the reality of what the essence of consciousness really is, as the usual materialist assumption that consciousness is one and the same as, or an "emergent" property of, the collective interactions of billions of neurons in the brain.  
B

I'm not sure what you're going on about. I said "Mathematics only describes the shared relationships of the architecture upon which Experience arises/emerges. Maths is not the architecture, it is a way we can describe something which is hidden".

You must have a really different concept of "generating" than I do. When we open up a skull, poke some neurons, and elicit an image, is that not the brain generating something? You may argue that it is not the brain, but instead some sort of immaterial mind, but there is even less evidence for that. No immaterial mind is forthcoming. So why rag on the materialists and not also the idealists?

Now, if you are going to insist that such experiences must by definition be the result of an immaterial mind, then you are begging the question.

~~ Paul

If someone tells me there are only shades of red in a paint set, it would hardly be question-begging for me to then say that set will never produce paintings with shades of blue or green.

@Valmar 's observation follows from the Materialist claim that the fundamental stuff making up reality lacks all mental character. If matter has no thoughts, it would only follow that combinations of matter don't have thoughts. 

In fact AFAIK all Materialists seem to agree with us for almost all combinations with only brains being the special, mysterious exception for some...

I say "some" b/c in fairness there do seem to be Materialists who agree matter cannot have thoughts about anything ->

We see why the Paris neurons can’t be about Paris the way that red octagons are about stopping. It’s because that way lies a regress that will prevent us from ever understanding what we wanted to figure out in the first place: how one chunk of stuff—the Paris neurons—can be about another chunk of stuff—Paris. We started out trying to figure out how the Paris neurons could be about Paris, and our tentative answer is that they are about Paris because some other part of the brain—the neural interpreter—is both about the Paris neurons and about Paris. We set out to explain how one set of neurons is about something out there in the world. We find ourselves adopting the theory that it’s because another set of neurons is about the first bunch of neurons and about the thing in the world, too.

This won’t do. What we need to get off the regress is some set of neurons that is about some stuff outside the brain without being interpreted—by anyone or anything else (including any other part of the brain)—as being about that stuff outside the brain. What we need is a clump of matter, in this case the Paris neurons, that by the very arrangement of its synapses points at, indicates, singles out, picks out, identifies (and here we just start piling up more and more synonyms for “being about”) another clump of matter outside the brain. But there is no such physical stuff.

Physics has ruled out the existence of clumps of matter of the required sort. There are just fermions and bosons and combinations of them. None of that stuff is just, all by itself, about any other stuff. There is nothing in the whole universe—including, of course, all the neurons in your brain—that just by its nature or composition can do this job of being about some other clump of matter. So, when consciousness assures us that we have thoughts about stuff, it has to be wrong. The brain nonconsciously stores information in thoughts. But the thoughts are not about stuff. Therefore, consciousness cannot retrieve thoughts about stuff. There are none to retrieve. So it can’t have thoughts about stuff either.

Rosenberg, Alex. The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions (pp. 178-179). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

For myself I remain skeptical that there is "physical" stuff outside all experience yet generating the experiencer and all their experiences. Additionally it seems this "physical" stuff that supposedly comes before all experience will only ever be known through experience...that calls to mind your sig ->

If the existence of a thing is indistinguishable from its nonexistence, we say that thing does not exist. ---Yahzi

But it's consciousness of humans that are interpreting the adder, so I don't see what value the example has?

Is there something different between an adder in a computer and an abacus? Or either of those and ink making words in a book? Without consciousness these are just collections of particles or whatever the "physical" is supposed to be now?

All these arrangements of "physical" stuff, really meaning things in consensus experience, are made because consciousness is already present in reality.

We have to be careful not to mistakenly smuggle in the consciousness we are trying to explain.

It doesn't have to be something that humans experience and interpret. Is there some sort of "salt attribute" in sodium and chlorine?

Now, if you are going to say that absolutely everything exhibits attributes only in view of humans experiencing those attributes, then you are giving consciousness a special position. And that would be smuggling in consciousness, would it not?

~~ Paul