/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15277886
Brains are only ever observed as mental objects rendered in the data streams to minds. And so at best you would be arguing that damage to mental objects called brains CORRELATES to reported subjective experience. At no point in any of this is there some observer independent, non-mental substance called matter. And this correlation can be explained when you accept an information point of view of the physical world, as stated in these posts
>>15278652
>>15278655

>>15200504
It doesn't have to be a substance dualis though. The matter based objects appearing in mind are ALSO mental objects, so idealism works just fine with substance monism and the observed data. This takes care of the mind body interaction problem too. Mind acting on 'matter' then becomes just mind effecting mental objects. There are still 'me AND not me' objects, but they are all MENTAL objects. So no substance dualism. And no having to postulate this unverifiable substance called mind/observer independent matter.

>>15141277
>You are the one who brought up the chinese room metaphor that includes two conscious entities to somehow prove that it can apply to non-conscious trickery
Yes, I stand by that as well, I just think it's not strong enough. I see why he did it though. You can't appeal to another UNCONSCIOUS entity doing the symbol manipulating because the idea is to appeal to us already conscious beings if this process that we all can relate to would create understanding. He had to use the human.
>Except he isn't the only one involved, he is also accurately translating the information along the way, and if he wasn't accurately passing along information the chinese person would not validate his translation, so the validation from someone verified to understand the symbol serves as proof that there was consistent recognition of the meaning of the symbols
Yeah, so you are just appealing to more already consciousness entities. The idea is that consciousness can not emerge from UNCONSCIOUS processing.
>Its like saying you can have a coin sorter that accurately sorts coins without understanding which coin goes where, at the end of the day it doesn't really matter and can't even be determined how understanding comes into play if it produces the same functions as understanding in the end.
No, it's not like that. The man in the room is conscious already. We are talking about if a MEDIUM which all of this takes place in can emerge just by executing some syntactic shuffling AND can our type of qualitative and semantic understanding emerge 'IN' (consciousness has no position or momentum or these physical quantities, I must still use location words like 'in' still though because of flaws in language) a consciousness by syntactic symbol shunting.
>So consciousness must be a specific type of material called organic?
Consciousness IS the the material. Matter is a form of mental object which is only ever observed in minds. I will have to continue in the next post.

>>15120822
>why yes, this mind of course spontaneously generates out of thin air every second of the day
I am not that anon, but I want you to answer a question. Have you or any human ever seen a physical phenomenon or a piece of matter in the form of anything other than a mental event or object occurring in a mind? Has a brain ever been observed as anything other than an object of mind?
>what do you mean mind can interact? I thought we just established the mind is a fully detached entropy-violating spooky ghost phenomenon! I am a crypto-dualist please rape my face
You are actually the dualist. You are claiming that there is something called observer independent matter. There isn't. And you can never prove that there is, being that all human experience from the womb to the tomb takes place in the medium of consciousness. If you want to claim that brain creates mind, then you are claiming that one mental object (the brain) causes another mental object (the mind). You would be wrong, but at least you would be a substance monist. Right now you are a dualist. You believe there is a substance called objective, observer independent matter and there are brains of meat matter which somehow beam a non-material experience into a SUBJECTIVE/first person observer. You have no description of how this beaming and receiving process happens, but you just want people to believe that this is the case.

>>14798728
>the flawed apparatus inside our heads?
Also I would just add that if you are doing the doubting of the outside world thing, then postulating a head that consciousness is located in is superfluous. The brain and head would be a part of the very observer independent reality you are doubting. So when you look in the mirror and see your head, this is a mental object rendered via a data stream beamed into you consciousness. And your mind renderers on an as needed basis only. Only upon observation and only at the detail you need for game play. It doesn't have to model the whole universe down to the minute level. It does not have to render the atoms in the desk your computer sits on. If you go to the beach, it does not have to render the sand under the surface sand. If you scoop out a scoop of sand, then it defines those values representing the next layer down of sand. And it also does not have to render brains, nor the brains of anyone that appears as a mental object in your mind. Unless you are a brain surgeon or something, in which case brains will be rendered as mental objects. The point is, since you are already assuming that physical worlds can somehow be beamed into observers by pieces of meat (brains) and presented as a simulation of a material world, the next step is to realize that you can cut out the middle man. There is no observer independent matter, including brains, and there is no need for the brain, in the brain in the vat scenario. You just need the data stream. It's actually comfy as hell by the way, idealism.

>>14762217
If physical objects are mental objects, then this is not dualism, this is idealist monism. And this is in fact the only way we ever experience reality. And then the mind body problem also disappears. Mind acting of the physical is mind effecting mental objects. The materialist idea of self existent observer independent matter is the incoherent world view and you get things like the hard problem of consciousness and the problem of identity over time that op brought up is another one. Even your own identity as pointed out here.
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>>14742526
>I feel like pansemiosis/It From Bit theories need to either embrace hard emergence, which cuts against their grounding in physics, or find a way to redefine information
The key is information. This is true. So if shannon type info is can be interpreted as quantifying the level of "surprise" of a particular outcome, then where does the surprise lay? Does info only occur in consciousnesses? I also wonder if it comes down to quantifiable and qualifiable information. The physical world is quantifiable information appearing in a consciousness and these more or less 'objective' mental objects (objective in the sense that more than one observer can observe and measure them in there subjective data streams) quantifiable in terms of momentum, velocity, weight, angular momentum etc, which are able to inspire
subjective qualitative consciousness, form a kind of dual aspect informational/idealist monism. A subjective kind of info and a more or less objective kind of information. Eddington came close to this conclusion.

>>14740755
No it is not. Thoughts are not made of brain. If I have a thought of a mountain I am not seeing a mountain formed by smooshing brain matter together in the shape a mountain. I am seeing an object made of thought. I will never see a neuron in my life or a whole brain. I will never see any matter without it being rendered in my consciousness. No one will. There is no experience of matter except in the medium of consciousness.