Is the Filter Theory committing the ad hoc fallacy and is it unfalsifiable?

Which of the [entities Merle listed] are conscious? All of them, with the potential exception of the waterfall: although I tend towards endorsing animism, it's admittedly difficult to know whether such entities as waterfalls - those that our modern culture sees as "inanimate objects" - really are conscious.

That's not the question I was trying to ask. My question got nowhere, so lets lay it aside and address your question. (I added my answers for each.)

Which of these are conscious?  

1. Waterfalls: no
   
2. Bacteria: no
   
3. Sunflowers: no
   
4. Jellyfish: no
   
5. Ants: probably not
   
6. Toads: perhaps minimally conscious
   
7. Monkeys: Yes, but not as much as modern humans
   
8. Chimpanzees: Yes, but not as much as modern humans 
   
9. Homo erectus: Yes, but not as much as modern humans
   
10. Humans: Yes
    

You, however, claim that everything on that list is conscious with the possible exception of waterfalls.

Perhaps we should add another item to our list: nails. If you tend to endorse animism, and think waterfalls might be conscious, could nails also be conscious? 

I find it hard to believe that nails, jellyfish (that have no brain), waterfalls, and sunflowers are conscious.

Why and how are they conscious; what necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness do they satisfy, and, in particular, is having a soul - as you (Merle) define it - part of those conditions? They are conscious because they are embodied minds; minds that are irreducible to anything non-mental (aka physical). Those minds are distinct entities from the physical (non-mental) brains^[1] with which they are associated.

I see the mind as a set of actions and mental states. Just like a conversation, a stampede, a war, a viral infection, or a ballgame are a set of actions and states of matter, but are not actually physical items, so with the mind.

What does it even mean to say a mind is a non-physical entity? Those words don't even have meaning to me. What are you even talking about?

Mind and brain though distinct are tightly coupled during the mind's embodiment, and they interact intimately. The soul (as I define it in this context) is the subject of consciousness; the essential conscious self of those embodied minds. 

This non-physical entity you call "mind" somehow becomes tightly coupled with a brain. And yet it doesn't really seem to be doing anything without the brain's participation. When the brain goes under anesthesia, is there no uncoupled part of the mind that could keep on working? Then why does the mind stop under anesthesia? If the mind follows the state of the brain's hardware, how do we know it is not a product of the brain's hardware?

Good reasons have been shared in this thread for thinking that that premise is false, and compelling counter-arguments to your arguments against mind-body dualism have been shared. 

What good reasons have been shared for thinking that brains cannot be the fundamental source of human consciousness? I keep hearing two weak arguments:

1. Physical things cannot have thoughts about things. Non-physical things can have thoughts about things. Therefore thoughts come from something non-physical.  [This argument is false. Brains do indeed have thoughts about things. And non-physical things are not even defined. What are they? How is saying a non-physical thing did it different from saying it is magic? The arguments that say physical things cannot do these things would also apply to non-physical things.]
   
2. Nails are not conscious. Therefore, no physical thing can be conscious. [How is this logical? Carbon based life forms can do a lot of things nails cannot do.]
   

So nails and brains are both made of atoms? Are the atoms made of stuff too? None of this stuff is conscious right?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Yes, yes, and yes.

I am assuming your third "yes" is agreeing that atoms are not conscious.  So where does this consciousness come from?

Natural selection would not be operating on (irrelevant because casually impotent) feelings but on brain patterns which determined survival-promoting behaviour, regardless of how those brain patterns (and the behaviour they caused) felt.

We would, then, have no reason to expect survival-promoting behaviour to feel good, and survival-diminishing behaviour to feel bad, because how it felt wouldn't change anything about the way we acted (so as to enhance our prospects of survival) given our naturally selected brain states.

But how we feel does effect our behavior. If something feels good we tend to do it agian. If it feels bad we tend to avoid it. Thus, evolution would tend to favor those that feel good when good things happen to that person, and feel bad when bad things happen to that person. The brain that is best able to have feelings that match the desirable state for that brain has a survival advantage.

So really things like the Hard Problem, and Materialism needing a logically impossible Something-From-Nothing miracle to produce consciousness, are due to how Physicalists insist "physical" has to mean no mental aspects.

To requote Peter Sjöstedt-H:

It is often expected that a position be defined before it be rejected. In the case of physicalism, however, a reason for rejecting the position is the fact that it cannot be properly defined. This ambiguity in the meaning of “physicalism” is brought out through what is known as Hempel’s Dilemma, named after its formulation by philosopher Carl G. Hempel,[1] though it was in fact formulated earlier by Herbert Feigl.[2] The dilemma: it seems that the meaning of physicalism can be grasped through either of two horns. The first horn is exclusive belief in the phenomena of current physics, such as matter-energy, space-time, the fundamental interactions, and so on. The problem herewith is that such a belief is highly unlikely to be true. This is in part because we can witness the constant change of physics through history, realizing that our current state of understanding is but a moment within this history and thus, by pessimistic induction,[3] we realize that physics is likely to continue changing. Secondly, as is well known, the current state of physics cannot be final due, in particular, to the inconsistency between general relativity and quantum mechanics. Thirdly, as will be seen below, the role of the mind in current physics is undetermined.

Thus a self-proclaimed physicalist might therefore instead embrace the second horn of the dilemma: belief in the phenomena of a future, ideal physics. Yet there are two chief problems with this alternative. Firstly, how could one believe in physicalism if one did not know what that was? One may almost as well profess one’s adamant belief in drallewertism. Secondly, it may turn out that a future physics would include mentality amongst its fundamental elements. But because physicalism, as material monism, is as such opposed to dualism (one where mind and matter are equally fundamental), such a possibility would seem to contradict the current understanding of physicalism. As a result of this implication, many self-proclaimed physicalists add a “no-fundamental-mentality” condition to the meaning of physicalism to preclude such a possibility.[4] However, one cannot determine the future direction of physics, thus physicalism, by advancing ad hoc exclusionary clauses to suit one’s current preferences. It may well be that a future physics will be contrary to “physicalism,” as understood in such current exclusionary terms.

You quote at length this text that says physical and nonphysical is not clearly defined. I agree. Physical and nonphysical are not clearly defined. They have different meanings to different people.

So you cannot simply say your mind is nonphysical and hope we understand what you are saying. What do you mean when you use that word?

Likewise when you say the mind in nonmaterial. That word can have many meanings. ( see https://www.bing.com/search?q=+nonmateri...cc=0&ghpl=) Which meaning are you using? What are you even saying?

You might as well tell me the mind is xyzxyzous as say it is nonmaterial or nonphysical. What do those words mean?

After pulling out the nonmaterial card, you use it as a get out of jail free card.

You state problems that some people see with physical consciousness. Are their conclusions valid? You never try to make their arguments. You just tell us that somebody says this about physical or material things. Then, for my views, we hear the equivalent of, "Lock them up!" Then, for your view, you pull out your get-out-of-jail-free card and declare victory.

First, you have not shown that arguments against the physical are valid. If valid, you have not proven that your get-out-of-jail-free card trumps anything.

Heck, maybe I should just say brains are teaofeawogheriwaous, and anything teaofeawogheriwaous can trump any argument you make, so therefore brains are conscious.  That's basically the same thing as the argument you keep making.

I am assuming your third "yes" is agreeing that atoms are not conscious.  So where does this consciousness come from?

I think consciousness is a creation of the brain. Like a ballgame, a war, or a concert, consciousness is not an actual object. Rather, it is that state and set of awareness actions and memories created by the brain.

I talk more about consciousness at https://mindsetfree.blog/dare-to-questio...sciousness .

I think actions are caused by neurons in the brain as I describe at https://mindsetfree.blog/how-can-molecules-think/ . It is not the consciousness that decides. 

To make these decisions to drive our bodies, our brains not only analyze a broad range of sensory inputs, but also read processed information stored from previous experiences which we call memories. These sensory and memory inputs all view for dominance, with certain patterns of neurons reaching dominance at any time. These neurons control the body at that moment in time.

In creatures with advanced minds, that have vast amounts of memories and ideas vying for attention, it is helpful for the brain to build a concept of the self that is consciously driving the body. This pattern of neurons that we call the conscious self feeds into the mass of ideas vying for dominance, and helps filter out neural patterns that would drive bodily movements inconsistent with the self that the brain has defined. The pattern we call consciousness is constantly updating itself, almost as soon as the thought of an action starts to reach dominance. Thus, in retrospect, it looks like our consciousness was driving the show, but our consciousness is an elaborate model of the overall self that the neurons are creating.

How does the part of our brain that decides know what all these neurons are doing? There is no such thing as a part of the brain that decides. There is no central control room. Human brain processes are just a modification of the simple knee-jerk reaction of simple creatures that drive inputs based on simple inputs. Human brains greatly expand the set of neurons that provide input to the decision making. These neurons are often firing based on memories that are stored in the brain. And the brain as a whole decides which set gets to move the muscles.

Not only are there ideas vying to control the muscles, such as directing the arm to swing the tennis racquet, but ideas vying for of what type of stroke tohit and where to run, and ideas vying on a higher level to decide if one wants to concentrate on tennis or the girl in the next court, and ideas vying at even higher levels to determine if one even wants to play tennis, and what one wants to do with his life. All these levels of mental activity can all be vying together, and each somehow is such that it eventually drives neurons that drive the body.

And consciousness is a key player in all this, building a self-image, and constantly feeding that self-image into the mess of neurons running the show.

So the conscious is real, yes, just like a swim class or a reunion is real, but it is not a physical object. Neither is it a non-physical object, which, to my mind, is an oxymoron.

...

How would you define the word "Physical"?

Let me know so I can keep it [in] mind as we discuss the non-conscious atoms that make up brains and nails.

I understand that consciousness and thoughts are different things.

So, if we can stipulate that brains can have thoughts about things, and then move on to consciousness, that is what I want to do. Can we all stipulate that brains can have thoughts about things so we can move on?

Can there be thoughts without consciousness?

Maybe best to define "thoughts" and "consciousness" because I would have said no consciousness => no thoughts.

I understand that consciousness and thoughts are different things. That why I distinguish the two. I want to first establish an agreement that brains can have thoughts about things, and then discuss consciousness. And yet I keep hearing that brains cannot have thoughts about things. As long as I keep hearing people argue that brains cannot have thoughts about things, I will explain that I think brains can have thoughts about things.

So, if we can stipulate that brains can have thoughts about things, and then move on to consciousness, that is what I want to do. Can we all stipulate that brains can have thoughts about things so we can move on?

So, we can only discuss consciousness if we agree to your claims about brains? What a bold statement... what you may want is irrelevant. As I see it... you're the only one who is being insistent about brains being capable of producing thoughts. No, you want it to be true, so you can feel secure in your beliefs... whatever they are. I'm not really sure what you believe, even after all this time reading your posts. I wonder if you know what you really believe...

Brains simply cannot have thoughts about things, because they are made purely of matter, and as various forum members have quoted, many relevant big-name philosophers believe that matter cannot produce thoughts or have any qualities which allow for thoughts to come into being. A thought simply cannot be a quality of matter. No arrangement of matter, however complex, can or has ever remotely and vaguely produced anything approaching a thought.

Thoughts simply don't have a single physical quality to be able to speak of. Poke around in a brain all you like. You won't find thoughts ~ you'll find brain processes, none of which can coherently be stated to be a "thought".

Consciousness, however... thoughts always are associated with an individualized consciousness, no matter your definition of such. That is the simple reality.

So you cannot simply say your mind is nonphysical and hope we understand what you are saying. What do you mean when you use that word?

Only a lunatic would use this argument in this context. It is obvious what is meant.  However, I'm fed up of your constant obfuscating and Sciborg is more than capable of holding his own so I am going to take a back seat and be entertained - something that is impossible for pure matter.  I may jump in from time to time but I don't expect you to look honestly at what others are saying.