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

You made me think. Thanks.

Unfortunately, when I think hard, my posts get longer.

First, I notice that I have been using two different definitions of consciousness. This may be confusing you. It confuses me

1. "Likewise a "mind" or a "consciousness" is just the name for that set of actions by our neurons"
   
2. "Consciousness is a construct of the brain. It is basically an overall model of the many models that the brain builds of itself and the world."
   

So first, let me clarify some terminology.

As I have said before, I believe the brain creates a model that summarizes the brains' activity. We might call this our self model. It is important. It tells our brains the overall picture of what is going on, and the specific thing that is going on now. For instance, at this moment, my self model is saying that I am writing a post about consciousness.  As I started this paragraph, this model updated to say I am working on a paragraph on something that I call a self model.

At each point in time there are ideas that dominate our brains' mental activities. I will call that attention to those ideas that reach domination our attention. I can only hold a limited amount of ideas in attention at any one time. Many ideas are vying to reach attention, but there is not room for everything. As the ideas struggle beneath the surface to reach attention, they build a coalition supporting them. It is much like using Slido during a group call, in which everybody gets a vote, and the ideas with the highest number of votes float to the top. In my brain, my self model gets to cast a lot of votes. Since it says I am writing this post, any idea that is related to what I am writing gets an easy pass to the state I call attention. More granular, while building this particular sentence, any word that would likely come next gets an easy pass up to attention. But my self model is not a dictator. Other ideas can win out. For instance, if there is a sudden loud noise behind me when I am typing, the neurons in my brain will quickly get onboard with responding to this noise, vote it quickly to the top, and this paragraph will become second in importance.

That overall stream of ideas through our attention gets summarized and stored in our self model.

Can my self model itself come to the center of attention? Certainly. When it does, my brain's attention is on who I am and what I am thinking and doing. I would call this state where our attention focuses on our self model by the name consciousness. Since the self model is constantly updated with the latest mental events at attention , it now updates to say my attention is on my self model. And so, as I continue this attention to my self model, I am now paying attention to my self model being aware of my attention to my self model. And it can loop multiple times, so I become conscious of being conscious of being conscious of being conscious.

I remember the first time something like this happened to me. As I remember it, I was standing in our living room waiting for my ride to kindergarten. And then I started to think about the fact that I was standing there waiting. And then suddenly I started to think about the fact that I was thinking about standing there waiting. And then I started thinking about thinking about thinking about standing there waiting. Suddenly the mental light came on, and I felt an unexpected realness. It was a surreal experience. I was not simply an automaton doing things. No! I was alive, really alive, really contemplating something stunning going on right in my mind. I will never forget that day. It left a huge impression. It is the first clear memory I have of anything that happened in my life up to that point. I was now conscious of being conscious of being conscious.

So anyway, yes, our awareness can become aware of being self aware, even though consciousness itself is not the thing making the decisions.

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Regarding my definitions at the top of this post, I should correct them to read.

1. A "mind" is just the name for a set of actions by our neurons
   
2. "Consciousness" is basically the act of being aware of an overall model of our mental activity that our brain builds.
   

So you believe "consciousness" is a form of attention processing created by neurons in order to interact with the world?

So you believe "consciousness" is a form of attention processing created by neurons in order to interact with the world?

The self-model, as described above, is created by neurons to improve interaction with the world.

Consciousness, as described above, is the act or bringing this self model to attention. As such, it might just be something that sometimes happens when the self-model becomes strong.

Likewise, when neurons are all working together to observe sensory inputs, recall memories, determine what the body will do, and issue signals that cause the body to do what the neurons collectively ask, we have a name for that conglomeration--a mind.

Sigh, okay. How do non-conscious, mindless neurons "work together" or "observe" or "recall" or "determine" or "issue signals"?

You're borrowing the language of conscious intention to describe something entirely non-conscious.

After all, you are claiming that consciousness can arise from something purely non-conscious. I'm not sure you get to borrow any language of conscious intent. That's sort of cheating, in a sense.

Not just that, it's unnecessarily confusing. It's an almost odd form of unintentional animism...

Sigh, okay. How do non-conscious, mindless neurons "work together" or "observe" or "recall" or "determine" or "issue signals"?

You're borrowing the language of conscious intention to describe something entirely non-conscious.

After all, you are claiming that consciousness can arise from something purely non-conscious. I'm not sure you get to borrow any language of conscious intent. That's sort of cheating, in a sense.

Not just that, it's unnecessarily confusing. It's an almost odd form of unintentional animism...

I've noticed Merle use the phrase "vying for attention" several times in this thread.

It had me wondering, is that the same as something like this reaction of metallic calcium with water?

Here the water molecules are vying for attention of the chunk of calcium:

Reaction 3 Calcium + Water

The question really is this: is using such language in the fairly random example of calcium+water somehow inappropriate? That is, it seems I am attributing such things as deliberate intent and conscious attention to these inert chemicals, is that ok?

If that language is problematic in this case, how is it not also problematic or inappropriate in the case of bunches of neurons?

I've noticed Merle use the phrase "vying for attention" several times in this thread.

It had me wondering, is that the same as something like this reaction of metallic calcium with water?

Here the water molecules are vying for attention of the chunk of calcium:

Reaction 3 Calcium + Water

The question really is this: is using such language in the fairly random example of calcium+water somehow inappropriate? That is, it seems I am attributing such things as deliberate intent and conscious attention to these inert chemicals, is that ok?

If that language is problematic in this case, how is it not also problematic or inappropriate in the case of bunches of neurons?

Not sure about "problematic", but it can certainly be confusing, and thus inappropriate to some degree or another, if seriously claimed that said molecules or neurons are "vying for attention". But Materialists / Physicalists often seem confused ~ they so often use the language of conscious intent while not actually believing that neurons are conscious or intentful. Materialists / Physicalists never seem to really care about correcting this confusion, either...

No-one seriously thinks that molecules vie for attention... I hope. Though, maybe a Panpsychist has that excuse, at least, as they believe consciousness to be fundamentally some sort of subatomic particle. But Materialists / Physicalists has no such thing to be able to fall back on, as matter is non-conscious for them.

1. "Consciousness" is basically the act of being aware of an overall model of our mental activity that our brain builds.
   

So you believe that the brain produces a model of our mental activity and something is aware of that?  What is it that is aware? What you seem to be saying in summary is that being aware is the act of being aware and that doesn't explain anything.

Sigh, okay. How do non-conscious, mindless neurons "work together" or "observe" or "recall" or "determine" or "issue signals"?

You're borrowing the language of conscious intention to describe something entirely non-conscious.

After all, you are claiming that consciousness can arise from something purely non-conscious. I'm not sure you get to borrow any language of conscious intent. That's sort of cheating, in a sense.

Not just that, it's unnecessarily confusing. It's an almost odd form of unintentional animism...

Well, being an English speaker, I am confined to the words I know. Do you know words that mean "unconsciously work together" or "unconsciously observe" or "unconsciously recall" or "unconsciously determine" or "unconsciously issue signals"?

These are the kinds of things computers do every day. And yet we write how computers in factories observe what it happening through their sensors, work together with other computers to determine what to do, and issue signals to motor and air cylinders to drive motions. We don't mean they are doing it consciously.

If that language is problematic in this case, how is it not also problematic or inappropriate in the case of bunches of neurons?

The question seems to be one of language. Do I constantly need to state that something is happening unconsciously? That seems to be implied by the context.

Do you agree with me that a lot of the content of our mental thoughts is generated unconsciously? Where did the words come from to generate the sentence above? That is a complex sentence that required knowledge of a significant vocabulary and knowledge of grammar. Somehow, after deciding on the idea you wanted to express, something somewhere must have looked up words for you and formed that sentence. Yes, you were consciously aware of what was coming to you, and you probably sent some of the original phrasing back for revision, but somewhere something was looking through your mental dictionary and your store of knowledge and presenting those words to you. How exactly did that happen?

I contend that something was unconsciously generating that sentence. And I contend that this something, this word-selector, was probably your neurons. 

What do you think did it? Unconscious parts of your soul?

What process did the words-selector use? Was it a vast parallel process with the winning words coming to you?

If your soul was doing it, why aren't you aware of the process? And how did your soul even have access to a mental dictionary? Did it save the meanings of all these words in a database somewhere? Does that mean your soul was in a different state after it learned the meanings of these words? What changed? For everything we know about memory says that when something remembers, the physical state of something changes so that the memory is now stored. How does your soul do that?

So you believe that the brain produces a model of our mental activity and something is aware of that?  What is it that is aware? What you seem to be saying in summary is that being aware is the act of being aware and that doesn't explain anything.

I think that the awareness is generated by the brain as a whole.

What do you think generates your awareness? Magic? If not magic, how does the thing that you think generates your awareness differ from magic?

Well, being an English speaker, I am confined to the words I know. Do you know words that mean "unconsciously work together" or "unconsciously observe" or "unconsciously recall" or "unconsciously determine" or "unconsciously issue signals"?

No, because there are none. Because non-conscious entities do not "work together", "observe", "recall", "determine" or "issue signals". Because these are qualities known only to be exhibited by consciousness. Matter has never been observed to ever do any of these things.

These are the kinds of things computers do every day. And yet we write how computers in factories observe what it happening through their sensors, work together with other computers to determine what to do, and issue signals to motor and air cylinders to drive motions. We don't mean they are doing it consciously.

Computers do not actually do any of these things. We write about how computers "do" these things, because they're metaphors. We project what is familiar onto external, inert, non-conscious tools, because it helps us mentally organize how to think of these tools' functionality.

No-one means that they're doing it consciously ~ usually. But it has led to confusion. It has led to some enthusiasts to proclaim that they might become conscious or might rival human intelligence.

Because some confuse analogy and metaphor for the literal, and think that they are indeed equivalent. Some deliberately try to redefine the meanings of words in order to create hype for computer "consciousness" or "intelligence".

Computers are just dumb bricks of complex silicon designed by conscious, intelligent human beings. It matters not how complex and complicated these big bunches of silicon are ~ they still have no more consciousness nor intelligence to them. Artificial Intelligence models fare no better. Just because it's a different kind of configuration, doesn't mean that these neural networks suddenly gain any sort of intelligence. Said neural networks are just highly specialized combinations of hardware and software tooling designed to mimic how neuroscience believes that neurons might work, or at least, used to.