/lit/ - Literature

>>21219205
I mean we arent totally capable of talking about subjective experience. We cant even say for certain that everyone has subjective experience, let alone fully express it. We are forced to talk about them in relation to the objective.

>>21219320
because "Consciousness" is not a duality of subject and object. If it were then there would not be any for the physical brain to think about consciousness. In "Does Consciousness Exist" William James posits a more monic conception of consciousness by referring to things as "pure experience." There is no consciousness (subject) of blue (object) there is just the pure experience of blue, and blue and the experience of it are the exact same thing. Consciousness of qualia and the qualia itself are the same.

Literally everything in the universe is pure experience including "matter." matter is only known insofar as it is purely experienced by us and thus the constitution of matter or the "physical" is also pure experience. Quantum Mechanics has proven this by investigating the ultimate composition of matter and finding out that matter does not exist except insofar as we purely experience it - quantum mechanics has to incorporate "the observer" as fundamental to the nature of matter. Pure experience makes up the structure of the universe itself.

Thus you are capable of becoming aware of your own pure experience because the activity of your brain although it is "physical" is itself made of pure experience. Becoming aware of the fact that you conscious and talking about subjective experience is just the same thing as thinking about the fact that you are thinking, or in other words, when your brain starts taking in its own activity as data to interpret rather than the excitations of sense neurons.

>>21219205
I mean we arent totally capable of talking about subjective experience. We cant even say for certain that everyone has subjective experience, let alone fully express it. We are forced to talk about them in relation to the objective.

>>21219291
>>21219347
>We are forced to talk about them in relation to the objective.
Yeah but why are you capable of thinking about your own qualia if it's supposedly completely separate from your brain, which is where cognition happens? If that's the case then we shouldn't even have any view of subjective experience or qualia as a concept.

>>21219331
That's pretty cool but I don't understand it.

>>21219331
>quantum mechanics has to incorporate "the observer" as fundamental to the nature of matter
This is not true. Quantum wave function collapse happens when a quantum mechanical system is forced to interact with classical physics, which was called the observer effect initially, but that's no longer the term they like to use because of the misconceptions that arose from it.

>>21219205
Both subjective experience and cognition are physical, which does not amount to saying they are the same thing. You did forget the third category, which is that of "act", which is the substantial result of the intersection of subject and object. Check out De Anima, and be wary of any other recommendations on this topic. It's not particularly fruitful in the grand scheme of things, and it's also not that difficult to comprehend if you have your head on straight. To some extent you have to accept that you will never get a completely satisfying answer through the medium of words.

>>21219205
>If subjective experience (hard problem/qualia) is metaphysical, and cognition (thinking, reasoning, talking, etc.) is physical, then why are we capable of analyzing and talking about subjective experience?
My cock is not only about but _in_ your mouth.

We can make untrue statements all we like ;)

>>21219205
>If subjective experience (hard problem/qualia) is metaphysical, and cognition (thinking, reasoning, talking, etc.) is physical, then why are we capable of analyzing and talking about subjective experience?
>>>
because what actually exists is not the physical!

>>21219458
Why would it be separate? Who told you that?

>>21219331
This is what i subscribe to but it doesnt explain why when you open up a brain you dont see someone elses qualia and so the op question of how can a brain which can be seen by others can talk about qualia which cant is left unanswered

>>21220222
Subjective experience by definition is not an object. It's not a physical object. It has no position or momentum or any of those quantities. It's qualitative and these physical quantities like spin or velocity or position or momentum don't apply. These quantities apply to the physical objects rendered in minds.
>and cognition (thinking, reasoning, talking, etc.) is physical
None of those things are physical. Those are mental (technically, the physical is also mental). Those are still subjective and not physical objects. There are physical constraints on those things, so if the physiology gets damaged in a certain way, then the quality of consciousness with regard to the interface with the physical world may be altered. This constraint or interaction with the physical world does not mean consciousness is physical. Just like if you are playing a video game and the guy on the screen that you are controlling gets hit on the head, the game play can be altered in such a way that the virtual character now wobbles or staggers. The damage to the virtual brain in the virtual head of the virtual avatar has been injured, and now the interface with the reality will be altered. Our reality is the same way, but the immersion level is much higher so the effects to the physical (which is actually a mind generated virtual objects) correlate with and correspond to include actual alterations of consciousness in the form of pains or sensations or cognitive impairments. These impairments do not actually harm the fundamental substance of the consciousness though, they only constrain them while interfacing with this particular reality. The constraints get lifted after the death of the avatar body. Consciousness interfaces with the physical world through immersion, given a vantage point in a first person shooter style situation to create APPARENTNESS of being 'in' the physical world. It is not 'in' the physical world though, the physical world is rendered in or emerges 'within' consciousness.

>>21219205
Whoops, this second part after the green text
>>21220379
was meant for you op

>>21219475
>quantum mechanical system is forced to interact with classical physics
lmao what? nobody says this. everyone still calls it "the observer." Classical mechanics and Quantum mechanics are not two entities that can interact with each other like that.

>>21220323
we don't see other people's qualia because the physical isolation of our brain causes our consciousness to develop the illusion that it is localized. We believe that consciousness exists as an isolated unit in ourselves because of the illusion of continuity of self constructed by memory, and due to the fact that we are directly related to orders of magnitude more things going on inside our brain than we are related to the things going on in the outside world. When you open up someone's brain, you DO see qualia, just not theirs.

>>21220397
This. Classical mechanics is thought to emerge from more complex quantum systems. They are not separate things that can interact. I wonder if you could almost use this as an analogue for idealism. The objective emerges from more and more complex systems of the subjective. Not separate but the subjective is more fundamental.

>>21219205
Consciousness is emergent and purely physical. It evolves like everything else.

>>21219205
Subjective experience is physical. Don't be bullshitted

>>21220774
you mean the physical is subjective experience

>>21220553
>>21220795
Oooooh real life schizophrenia! Medication is for squares am I right fellas?

>>21220426
Doesnt explain what about the brain creates the illusion of locality. Otherwise there wouldnt be this discussion

>>21220859
the schizophrenics are the ones who are literally denying their own immediate experience. Materialist philosophers like Churchland and Dennett have finally realized that in order for materialism to make sense you have to deny the reality of immediate experience and they actually have attempted to do so.
>>21221148
It's the degree of relatedness. There are like 10 trillion relations in the brain through synapses, but only 10 million sensory neurons that relate you to the outside world. If something happens in your brain, you are directly related to it in thousands of different ways. But if something happens outside your brain most likely you are not directly related to it at all but only indirectly. This vast contrast in the degree of relatedness between your brain's relations to itself and your brain's relations to the external world is what causes locality.

>>21221168
btw this is also the cause of free will. the fact that your brain exists in such a sharp contrast to the outside world means most of your actions are determined by what goes on inside your brain (e.g. yourself) and therefore you are mostly self determined.

almost everything you perceive is due to your own brain and not the outside world.

There also is of course the construction of memory which means that if there is theoretically a universal consciousness that is the same everywhere, whenever it "ingresses" into a particular organism or a particular relation between knower and known, or whenever the everywhere-identical-consciousness becomes actualized in a particular prehension, it cannot "remember" the fact that it is global and not local because memory itself is local due to the physical nature of the brain.

>>21221168
>The only thing that is real is the subjective experience
>I cant prove anyone else has subjective experience
>Thus the only thing that is demonstrably real is my experience of the world
>When I die the world ends
Sounds pretty schizophrenic to me friendo

>>21219205
Cognition isn't physical. These are all mental processes that exist within consciousness. Nothing is purely physical.

>>21221408
>Nothing is purely physical.
Depends on what you mean by physical. No model of the physical world is accurate; that said, everything is still one, whether you want to call it "energy," "the cosmos," "God," "will to power," etc.

>>21219205
DOES IT MATTER? THIS WHOLE BOARD IS A MADHOUSE.

FORGET ABOUT THIS NONSENSE AND GO OUTSIDE HOLY SHIT

>>21221168
bear with me cuz im not sure if your answer fits the question, since the sensory data relating to the outside world is still taken in in first person from the pov of the brain. im not asking why the image of the red pillow doesnt feel like me and my thoughts do, but why is there an image of the red pillow from the angle my brain is looking at it? what about the brain is producing that image?

>>21221886
it's not in "first person" to begin with since like I said earlier the "subject" is just a much later construction and pure experience is without differentiation between subject and object or between "I" and the thing "I" am experiencing. The subject is a product of later thought.
>but why is there an image of the red pillow from the angle my brain is looking at it? what about the brain is producing that image?
it's an extremely massive complex of relations all condensed into the single pure experience of it, each moment nearly every part of your brain is saying something about the data, and each moment all those things come together and coalesce to form the single experience of it in that moment. as soon as the data comes in it is processed into something by the visual cortex which we barely even know how it works because it somehow uses the idea of "space" to categorize things, and also categorizes it by the wavelength of all the light, and then everything else in the brain is affected by what happened in the visual cortex, you aren't just seeing the pure color in space, but also thinking about how far away it is to you, predicting what will happen with it, deciding what to do next based on the information, getting memories fired off, and every association you've ever formed from the color red is going off, it's super massive and it's every disparate part of your brain contributing to the experience of the present moment all at once. it's the state of every neuron added up into one picture, and the reason it all appears as one single perception despite how much is going on is the huge amount of integration your brain has, every neuron is connected to thousands of other neurons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp9B7raW_O4

>>21219205
because of structure of our brains

>>21219205
I mean we arent totally capable of talking about subjective experience. We cant even say for certain that everyone has subjective experience, let alone fully express it. We are forced to talk about them in relation to the objective.

>>21219205
metaphysics is just the term for saying we don't understand something so everyone makes up their own shit about it

>>21221920
how can data or relations become qualia though? i feel like the question is left untouched

captcha: NHG0D

>>21224256
every relation is a qualia for each neuron. that is what i've been saying. everything in the universe, material or immaterial, is an entity that can only interact with anything else by prehending it, which means becoming conscious of it, and having a subjective feeling of it, which it then uses to make an output that in turn is taken up by the other things in the universe. the output is equivalent to the re-evaluted being of the entity after taking in something else as input or becoming conscious of it. then other things take the new being as input. it is all conscious. In that sense insofar as you are a whole you are just like one being neuron or one big prehending entity. the subjective feelings you get are just a particular instance of the subjective feeling everything gets when it interacts with anything.

>>21224294
>which means becoming conscious of it, and having a subjective feeling of it
why is that equal to interaction or having a relation? why does a "feeling" result, whatever that really is.
how can purely informational differentiation like "there are colors a, b, c, d... that arent each other or have such and such relationship with each other" or "there are senses sight, taste, sound... that arent each other or have such and such relationship with each other" result in those actual colors or senses that have qualities that are at least seemingly their own and not just a result of being different from the others. if they are relationships, asking what something is will be answered by what it is not but then asking what that field of what it is and what it is not is will be answered by other fields that that field is not... in an infinite regress of relationships without anything that makes a concrete thing like qualia be. what im trying to say is, how can just relationships alone make experience be? what decides what relationship is assigned to what qualia? i can imagine an information system not be conscious. why?

>>21224161
So basically metaphysics is everything then.

>>21224442
Yes

>>21224429
Because there’s no “pure information” that has to get transformed into consciousness. Information already is consciousness. That is the defining nature of information, it is qualia, it is experienced by things.
>i can imagine an information system not be conscious
You can imagine an information system from the outside and block off your ability to empathise with it. But you can never imagine there not being consciousness or subjective feeling of some kind because if you try to imagine it whatever you imagine will be felt subjectively by you.

Just because there is an aspect of awareness that can be described as "what its like to experience red" or whatever, does not entail something non-physical. You can have your hard problem, your qualia, and still have it represent nothing save the ho-hum function of the meat in your head.

I wish people would stop using this as a doorway from which to let in mysticism.

>>21226112
>Because there’s no “pure information” that has to get transformed into consciousness. Information already is consciousness
i mean relationships when i say information, not perceptions that are perceived by a perceiver or whatever. we agree on perceptions existing on their own i think.

but im not convinced relationships are equal to qualia. we might only be thinking this because everything within our world of qualia is in a relationship, or because our only experience of relationships is through qualia, thus relationships being a bigger set that contains qualia rather than them being equal sets.

for example lets say red exists through its relationship with the other colors. does this mean if everything was red it wouldn't be perceived as red? we definitely wouldn't call it red since it would be everything, but would it not be seen as red as we know it? i don't see how redness as its own thing rather than as something merely defined by what it is not could arise out of mere relationships.
>But you can never imagine there not being consciousness or subjective feeling of some kind because if you try to imagine it whatever you imagine will be felt subjectively by you.
no but i can imagine IT not having any subjective feeling. it would exist as qualia in my mind, but why my mind instead of its? if no brain is experiencing something (say a rock), is there qualia of it or arising from it, since everything is an information system of some order?

>>21226799
relationships are perceptions. that is what they are. you can't just abstract perception away from relation. that is the same as abstracting relation away from relation. "Relationships without perception" is just nothing.

Redness is not defined only by its relation to other things, it is a simple substance in itself. Try your thought experiment with something that is actually a pure relation, for example, the relation between a length and double the length. If either one of the lengths was the only thing that existed in the universe, then there really wouldn't be the relation of single to double. A pure relationship like that only exists in you because the single line is not conscious of its halfness to the double line, you make that connection, so there is no simple substance that can't be abstracted away. Another thing to realize is that you are an entity unto yourself. No single neuron has your experience because you are the composite of neurons. But the composite of neurons is only a subjective feeling if all the individual neurons form a subjective feeling.
>no but i can imagine IT not having any subjective feeling
You can't. All you can do is stop yourself from trying to imagine what its subjective feeling is.
> if no brain is experiencing something (say a rock), is there qualia of it or arising from it, since everything is an information system of some order?
The qualia isn't arising from it, the qualia is how it interacts with everything else. it is IN it. It just doesn't have memory or self reflection so it appears not to be "conscious" but that is only when you distinguish consciousness as more advanced than subjective feeling because consciousness as you know it has memory and self-reflection.

>>21226914
>>no but i can imagine IT not having any subjective feeling
>You can't. All you can do is stop yourself from trying to imagine what its subjective feeling is.
also btw as soon as you imagine it reacting to something else, you have already imagined it having a subjective feeling as for example when a proton reacts to the presence of an electron, there is no way for it to interact with the electron if it doesn't have its own purely subjective relationship to the electron

>>21219205
All human thought and ideology ends up in complete meaningless. Mathematics, religion, literature, everything ends in contradiction or paradox. Just take a look at Godel's proof. Mathematics can't even prove the existence of mathematics. Even the greatest experiments in science end up as totally meaningless (see Schrodinger's cat)

That means even your qualia and this conversation is pointless

>>21226928
>abstract consciousness away from math, religion, literature, and science
>hurr, why is all of it meaningless?
because meaning is supplied by consciousness. Logic for example is completely computable and is just an empty set of rules to have operations performed on them mechanically and produce outputs without the machine knowing what the output or input or operations actually are or mean. The MEANING of logic only comes in when YOU think about it, and when you are conscious of it qualitatively. qualia is meaning.

If you create a list of set theory axioms for how to deal with a triangle, you cannot prove that those axioms are consistent. But if you simply look at a triangle and become fully conscious of the triangle as a substance, you can at once perceive that the axioms are consistent because the triangle is consistent and fully conceivable. that is the meaning of Gödel's proof you are missing.

>>21226938
Exactly, and if meaning is only supplied by consciousness, you can only "reason" about consciousness or being "alive". It entails nothing about anything after we die, what to believe, what to follow or anything of that nature

>>21226943
I've already thought of this at great length, the end result is that you can prove that what is inconceivable does not exist. thus "death" conceived as a cessation of consciousness does not exist. if you try and postulate that there is something that exists but which you can neither become conscious of or reason about, all you get are paradoxes.

>>21219205
Because we can translate qualia into physical sounds and letters by the symbolism of language. The symbolic form mediates the mental and the physical, and transforms mental into physical, and physical into mental.

>>21226947
>what is inconceivable does not exist
Yes, that's one of the paradoxes. People can hold contradicting beliefs (i.e. claiming to know something unknowable) and apparently this is a common well-accepted evolutionary strategy. Take for example, I say something exists, when it quite clearly does not, then I can say "well I just KNOW". That's a boundary of human knowledge. It's meaningless

Also morals evolved for human cooperation, so our moral reasoning is flawed in a sense too. I would say those are also meaningless technically, because that's where religion and the idea of good came from

>>21226960
I'm not claiming to know something that is unknowable. What is unknowable is what will happen after death. What is knowable is that something will happen. The reason that that is knowable is that the idea that nothing will happen after death is a paradox.
> Also morals evolved for human cooperation, so our moral reasoning is flawed in a sense too. I would say those are also meaningless technically, because that's where religion and the idea of good came from
Morals are not meaningless, they are unique. The fact that you don't have the same morals as a bee or an atom does not invalidate your morals. Something can be absolute despite only being absolute to you. In fact, the thing that is absolute despite being only absolute to you is your own self nature. your self nature is the source of the derivation of morals. You will find what is in your nature to find meaningful to actually be meaningful. "Meaning" in a moral sense depends on your values. Your values depend on your self. But your self is absolute since by non-contradiction you cannot act against your self nature, you cannot violate it, and you cannot deny it. Thus Meaning is also absolute.

>>21226971
>paradox
Paradoxes are unknowable, therefore if it ends in paradox it's meaningless
>Morals
They are only good for reasoning about cooperation and reasoning while we're alive. Our ideas of good and evil, morality, etc is based on what we had no control over before we came into existence

You also can act against your own self nature. That would be self-deception, another paradox

>>21226986
>Our ideas of good and evil, morality, etc is based on what we had no control over before we came into existence
yes, your self nature was defined before you were born. that doesn't make your self nature meaningless or any less absolute or any worse a source of morals. it also does not violate free will.

>>21226988
if you are the one performing self deception then the self deception arose from your own self nature thus you did not act against it.

>>21221188
>btw this is also the cause of free will. the fact that your brain exists in such a sharp contrast to the outside world means most of your actions are determined by what goes on inside your brain (e.g. yourself) and therefore you are mostly self determined.
Surely if everything is material and the causal closure of the physical is correct, all of those interactions within the brain could be traced back to factors external to the brain (from birth or before).

>>21227032
1. the fact that your brain is so sharply cordoned off from external reality means that your brain is mostly self-determined. if the nature of the brain is predetermined before it comes into existence, then this does not violate the autonomy of the brain. imagine that God creates a simple entity that has desires and seeks things. the entities entire nature will have been determined by God in his creation of it. But since the desires of the entity are nevertheless its own desires, and because its actions come from its own nature rather than from the actions of a bunch of other things, it is self-determined.
2. everything being determined by efficient causes doesn't violate free will. Free will is an immediate reality. Efficient causes are posterior constructions of the mind in creating an abstract scientific model, they are thus subordinate to immediate conscious experience. your immediate experience is that of yourself as a single entity, not a million fractions. every completely single entity necessarily has to determine its nature from within rather than due entirely to external causes or else it would not have any self nature at all and would just be a composite of other things. thus as you experience yourself as a single entity you have free will.

>>21226951
Mental is physical. The experience of qualia should not be, which is why it's alarming that we can talk about qualia. Qualia itself may have physical mechanisms, but the experience of qualia is metaphysical unless you are a mindless husk NPC, which you are. If this isn't intuitive to you then you are a p-zombie.

>>21227053
NTA but holy shit you are retarded. I was going to write a response but as I kept reading your post my disbelief just became more and more palpable, and I realized reality is so far off from your assumptions and worldviews that nothing I say has a chance of penetrating it.

>>21227288
what makes you think your post constitutes a victory? all you said to anyone was "I think this guy is retarded!" Does absolutely nothing to sway anyone who does not already agree with you. It doesn't change my opinion of myself. You are screaming into the void until you say something substantive.

>>21227296
Yeah well I would rather scream nothing into the void than put effort into a response that will disappear the instant it makes it through your visual cortex. Your existence does not warrant a substantive response.