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

I do accept that an AI in a video game about tennis could learn the game, but we both agree there's no consciousness in today's computers. That your explanation, taking out anything that requires the consciousness that needs to be explained, seems more appropriate for how a conscious-less AI could learn tennis than how consciousness is involved makes me feel it's not a great argument for why we should think brains made of non-conscious constituents can produce consciousness.

Was specifically thinking of these bots:

Quake III Arena is the latest game to see AI top humans: Two layers of AI learning help create bots that consistently top humans.

Yes. 

The biggest limitation of this aircraft electronic system analogy seems to be that with the human mind/brain but not with the pilot/interfacing aircraft electronics system, the interface with the vastly complex mechanisms of the brain is totally unconscious, and to the conscious mind the interface is totally transparent with the human coming to identify him/her self with the system as a whole.

I do like the dashboard of the craft proposed, it matches with Essentia Foundations argument that evolution adapts us to see very little of reality:




I think the challenge is how to incorporate things like brain-based illnesses. This is where I think the division between user and "avatar" in a VR environment helps to some degree, as there is in-game memory that will affect how the character can proceed.

There really isn't anything quite like the brain-mind relationship though so all analogies will fall short in some way.

Processed information stored from previous experiences which we call memories. 

What's information in this view? I ask because @stephenw posted this quote in another thread:

"Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism  which does not admit this can survive at the present day."
 - Norbert Wiener

I can relate. Maybe less now but I definitely know that experience.

I very much wonder how much less hard that would be (to slip into that mode) in we weren't in the culture that we are in, and we hadn't lived decades with that conditioning.

On the other hand the internet gives us access to so much riches spirituality and psi-wise that an opposite micro-counterculture is also happening, which is helping me a lot the more I bathe in its waters. Living (or maybe thinking about it I should say, like apprehending the future, rationally or not) I find harder than thinking about what comes "after".

I guess we are all here "bathing in it's waters" as it were. I think maybe there is something about the medium which keeps us hungry for more proof, bettter arguments. . . . I think I'm still waiting for a level of certainty which would move the discussion to another level ( such as irrefutable results from aware2 perhaps ).

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.

@Laird was making the point that if one is a "Physicalist" and thus believes the fundamental constituents of reality are non-conscious and everything is reducible to those constituents, then the final explanation for evolution cannot involve "raw feels" (qualia).

[Or I think that's the point he's making, he can ideally clarify if not.]

One could say all the explanations at the biological level can be "cashed out" at the level of physics but it is hard to see why we have the feel responses we do if feels are not part of the story of natural selection. But if all actions are due to non-conscious constituents of physics then it doesn't actually matter if we feel pain is bad or pleasure is good because [regardless of our conscious awareness the actions are determined by movements at the level of physics biology arguably would reduce to].

It's called the Problem or Mystery of Psycho (Mind) - Physical (Body) Harmony.

One could say all the explanations at the biological level can be "cashed out" at the level of physics but it is hard to see why we have the feel responses we do if feels are not part of the story of natural selection. But if all actions are due to non-conscious constituents of physics then it doesn't actually matter if we feel pain is bad or pleasure is good because [regardless of our conscious awareness the actions are determined by movements at the level of physics biology arguably would reduce to].

It's called the Problem or Mystery of Psycho (Mind) - Physical (Body) Harmony.

Darwin was not a neoDarwinist.  He spend a lot of time looking at how natural selection effected learning and instinct.  From my point of view, learning is detection of structured information whose meaning is an attractor.  In this way objective meaning flows into the subjective part of an informational environment.  C. Darwin tracked the processes behind instinct, where behaviors were learned, became instinctual and then refocused actively into new adaptation.

 In 1872, Darwin published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, in which he argued that all humans, and even other animals, show emotion through remarkably similar behaviors. For Darwin, emotion had an evolutionary history that could be traced across cultures and species—an unpopular view at the time. Today, many psychologists agree that certain emotions are universal to all humans, regardless of culture: anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness and sadness. 

 https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/obs...xperiment/

Yeah on the one hand belief in the afterlife seems to be doing fine, even in places where it dropped I think it seems to be coming back.

I do wonder how one would facilitate education here. I guess one could start with the logically impossibility of Materialism, then compare the research that was done on Survival with other field research and witness testimony?

If there is no a priori reason to reject, say, Reincarnation research then is the work done comparable to work done by those studying what we would consider "mundane" phenomena?

At least this is the path that led me to thinking more positively about the Survival cases, but admittedly I'm a bit of an odd duck because I am trying to separate the logical conclusion from my starting intuition there's an afterlife.

I think veridical NDE investigators generally follow abductive reasoning, and therefore their conclusions necessarily can only be to what comes up as the best explanation of several different theories, given the actual incomplete and sometimes conflicting data. Obviously there can not be absolute certainty of these conclusions.

However, some of the foremost NDE researchers have still come up with the albeit short-of-absolute-certainty conclusion that some form of consciousness continues after physical death, as evidenced by (1) some NDErs almost certainly having temporarily left their physical bodies and brains as some sort of mobile center of consciousness to travel to other locations in the world or in other realms, where they sometimes made observations of things that they had no way of knowing normally, and (2) these NDErs having consciously made these observations during a period when their physical brain was dysfunctional during serious trauma. Observations described in the accounts that could later be verified by the investigators.

From Wiki:

"Abductive reasoning (also called abduction, abductive inference, or retroduction is a form of logical inference that seeks the simplest and most likely conclusion from a set of observations. It was formulated and advanced by American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce beginning in the last third of the 19th century.

Abductive reasoning, unlike deductive reasoning, yields a plausible conclusion but does not definitively verify it. Abductive conclusions do not eliminate uncertainty or doubt, which is expressed in retreat terms such as "best available" or "most likely". One can understand abductive reasoning as inference to the best explanation, although not all usages of the terms abduction and inference to the best explanation are equivalent.
....properly used, abductive reasoning can be a useful source of priors in Bayesian statistics."

As witness Kenneth Ring. He has been one of the foremost NDE researchers and I think he showed a lot of wisdom in his concluding remarks in a paper on veridical NDE evidence in respect to attacks by one of the leading NDE skeptics, Keith Augustine (already linked by Brian, at https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/675...no1-70.pdf ):

"....I have tried to speak in their (the NDEr's)
voice so that they would be heard, not me. In this respect, the evidence
from NDEs is, I believe, highly suggestive that some form of
consciousness continues after death; the abundant NDE testimony I
have heard and read convinces me, as it does most others, of that.
Augustine of course is free to reject such testimony or to insist that it
does not (absolutely) prove anything. I can certainly agree with him on the latter
point, but I cannot disregard what NDErs have shared with me over
a period of more than twenty years, and I dare say that if Augustine
had had the opportunity I did during the time I was active in the field,
he might well find himself concurring with me. In any case, I
encourage him to look into the matter for himself by cultivating direct
contact with NDErs."

On the other hand, most skeptics reject abductive reasoning, insisting on, due to their biased absolute conviction of materialism, coming to a negative (definitely not paranormal) conclusion if there is even just the slightest possibility of a there being a "normal" materialistic explanation for the data in hand. Of course they refuse to use abductive reasoning in determining Bayesian priors. They therefore summarily reject one of the primary tools used by mankind in answering important questions where an actionable answer discerning the most likely solution is greatly necessary, despite incomplete and perhaps erroneous data. As most prominently necessitated and used in trials deciding issues of guilt or innocence in the field of criminal law.

Sciborg,

Please compare the following statements:

1. The underlying nature of reality is such that, when humans exist, they are conscious.
   
2. The underlying conscious nature of reality is such that, when humans exist, they are conscious.
   

I contend that the first statement is true. I understand you think the second statement is true. Fine, #2 may be true, but the problem is that your words imply that statement number 2 proves that statement number 1 is false. That is wrong. If statement number 2 is true, then, by simple logic, statement number 1 is also true.

Regarding the underlying nature of reality, it might or might not be conscious. I don't know. I argue that statement 1 is true, and am not specifically arguing that the underlying nature of the universe needs to be conscious or unconscious.

I tend to think the underlying nature of the universe in unconscious. For consciousness is very complex. Laws of a universe can come from nothing ( see The Problem with Nothing ) But laws of a universe that thus come into existence are more likely to be simple, as per Occam's Razor. So there is a prior improbability that the basic nature of the universe is not conscious.

Of course one could argue that a conscious universe better explains human consciousness, and that compensates for the prior odds against the added complexity of universal consciousness. Perhaps. I don't know. But I find a universe with an underlying consciousness to be less likely compared to a fundamentally unconscious universe. 

Again, this is my point:

• The activities of the mind require the brain. If the brain is destroyed, then, as far as we know, anything that would be left that had been part of the cause of my thoughts could not be expected to carry on the activities of the mind that occurred in this life. If the brain is missing, it is hard to see that anything that remained would continued to output any mental functioning that would continue to be the self. 
  

After 400 posts, I don't find anything here that substantially refutes that claim. Can you point to a post here that refutes this claim?

Evidence of the claim that non-conscious matter cannot produce consciousness? That's just basic logic ->

If the brain is made from non-conscious constituents it cannot produce consciousness because you cannot get Something (Mind) from Nothing (Non-conscious Matter).

I have explained many times to you that I think the mind is a set of actions done by one or more entities, yes? Just like a conversation, a stampede, a war, and an avalanche are a set of actions by one or more entities, so the mind is a set of actions by one or more entities. After all that discussion, does it ring a bell that I keep mentioning that to you?

So, if the mind is a set of actions, then yes you could get a set of actions from matter. You can argue that the brain is not adequate for this task, but you cannot say it is "making something from nothing" when matter acts. That is a bogus argument.

Frankly I can't think of a single argument you've refuted so I still think if the brain is made from non-conscious constituents it cannot:

-Have Thoughts About Anything
-Use Reason
-Store Memories [that require any of the other aspects in this list]
-Have Subjective Experiences

Why cannot a brain made of non-conscious constituents use reason? Even simple creatures like ants have brains that use crude reasoning in their brains. Why cannot this be done without conscious constituents?

And simple creatures like bees can store memories. Why cannot this be done without conscious constituents?

When it comes to subjective experiences, yes, that is controversial. Nobody knows where that comes from.

But I personally don't see the need for the underlying nature of the universe to be conscious in order for insects to use crude reasoning and store memories. If you think so, fine. 

None of this addresses my point about survival after death.

Again, as I said in my first post here, I readily acknowledge that something else other than just neurons may be involved. And that something else might be a fundamental consciousness behind reality. 

In your footnotes here, I see two mentions of Consciousness Explained. 

Of course. I was describing two experiments, so I provided two footnotes to my source. That allowed people to trace back through the footnotes to read about the original experiments. That is not an appeal to authority. It is giving a source.

So all that stuff about how the neurons are vying for attention and the brain making a model of the self to deal with said vying were just some ad hoc ideas you came up with? If I open up Consciousness Explained I won't find Dennett proposing something similar for how consciousness can be produced by non-conscious matter?

Again, I don't think it's a problem that you are borrowing ideas from Dennett or anyone else. But it's silly to make an arbitrary distinction between a summary of someone else's ideas and a direct quote/reference.

I learned a lot from Dennett, yes. But I never make the point that one should believe these things because Dennett believes them. However, your references to the work by Sam Harris appear to have no other point then to take Harris as an authority. For in that post, he basically just discusses his awe at the fact that consciousness exists. Reading that link doesn't lead me to information about any experiments or any significant argument other than Harris's awe at the thought of consciousness.

I thought Harris' argument was quite convincing, as why would we expect Something (Mind) to come from Nothing (Non-conscious Matter). Isn't that why it's so obvious a nail doesn't have consciousness that to believe such a thing makes a person "as dumb as a nail"?

So when he says that non-conscious information processing (IP) can produce consciousness is like "round squares" or "2 + 2 =7" he doesn't mean that it's a logically impossible proposition?

He simply does not say that. He says,

Likewise, the idea that consciousness is identical to (or emerged from) unconscious physical events is, I would argue, impossible to properly conceive—which is to say that we can think we are thinking it, but we are mistaken. We can say the right words, of course—“consciousness emerges from unconscious information processing.” We can also say “Some squares are as round as circles” and “2 plus 2 equals 7.” But are we really thinking these things all the way through? I don’t think so. [source, emphasis added]

So he is saying it is impossible to conceive of what it even means for unconscious things to make consciousness. He is not saying it is impossible to happen. Further down he says,  "Consciousness may very well be the lawful product of unconscious information processing." So how can you use that post as proof that consciousness cannot come from unconscious information processing? Harris actually says the opposite.

It could even be the case that the physicists like Max Planck who say Matter is generated by Consciousness are correct.

So very unclear what you mean by "I trust science" here.

When I say I trust science, I mean I trust the process of science. I do not mean I trust every thing every scientist ever said.

Again, Planck's statements on the underlying consciousness of the universe appears to be based on his religious belief. I have never seen any scientific evidence he gave for the claim.

The fact that he was a great scientist and made this statement does not prove it is true.

Already pointed out a few times "non-physical" is just used in contrast to the claim that the "physical" has no consciousness in its fundamental constituents. If, as logic dictates, the "physical" defined in this way cannot account for consciousness we know exists then it follows from *that* definition that consciousness is "non-physical".

Again, you quote this out of context. Your original gave several different meanings that people use for "non-physical". You pick the one you don't like, and make this out to be the only definition for this word. It's not. There is a reason people struggle with the meaning of this word. The struggle even has a name--Hempel's dilemma. See https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-i...9#pid52649 .

Claiming the idea of consciousness being a fundamental constituent of reality as "non-natural" is just begging the question.

If there is a fundamental consciousness to reality, that would be natural.

But if there is a soul unique to a person that animates a person, that is supernatural. 

You yourself seem to dismiss the idea of souls. Without souls, can this fundamental-consciousness continue my identity as a conscious self after my brain is gone?

But I've already noted this doesn't mean there are souls a few times over? How many more times can this be said?

As long as there are people saying that we have souls that continue our existence as an identifiable self after death, we should tell them that an underlying universal consciousness doesn't necessarily mean we have eternal souls. Consciousness doesn't necessarily mean we survive death.

I've already said, at least twice by my recall, that I think it's reasonable for a person to look at brain illness as a reason to disbelieve in an afterlife?

Have you ever given a good reason why it is that, when a person experiences brain damage in a particular area, he can lose much of his ability to store new memories? Saying "filter theory" without explaining how it solves the problem is not an answer. 

Things like retrograde amnesia after brain injury are expected if the brain is fundamental to our mental life. How do you explain it?

The underlying nature of reality is such that, when humans exist, they are conscious.

This is clearly true, but explains nothing concerning how consciousness is produced in the first place.