Terminal lucidity

[Jim Cross]

Emergentism, of course, would be an alternative to panpsychism. Somewhat implicit in your "quantum computer" and the linked article's learning neural network is that probably everything we observe in the universe is emergent from a lower level materiality. Consciousness is yet another thing that emerges in biological entities with biological neural networks at a small scale like a fractal pattern of the neural network of the universe as a whole.

As I said above, it depends by what you mean by "consciousness" here. If it's the conscious events, then yes, it is possible in principle to establish causal relations between neural network activity and the outcoming conscious evens. But what is not possible is to demonstrate how these events are consciously experienced as qualia. How is that an output of a neural network is experienced as "red"?

There are high-tech companies making chips with electronic or photonic neural networks. This chips process images taken by a camera and produce signals/events at the outputs of the neural network for a purpose of pattern recognition. Let's say we will send an image of a red rose to its input. How would such a neural network chip ever be able to consciously experience the "redness" in the image? How would there be in this chip "something like to experience the redness"? Now, if we replace the photonic neural network with bio-cell neural network, how does it change anything? How could the electrical impulses at the outputs of the bio-cell neural network cause the experience of "redness"? "Somehow" is not a good answer here, there needs to be at least a tractable explanatory path to explain how such emergence of the conscious experience would be possible based on the known laws of physics. It is actually pretty obvious that it is not possible in principle. This is the "hard problem"

The brain isn't an assemblage of chips. It doesn't behave in any way an assemblage of chips. I've never claimed (and have argued against) that we can instantiate consciousness with chips.

The biological cell is obviously of much different construction than a chip.

The discussion I thought we were having was whether materialism required epiphenomenalism or panpsychism. It doesn't require either. Consciousness could be another form of something physical that emerges when certain forms of matter begin to interreact in certain ways.

Idealism has to go to absurd lengths to explain something like Alzheimer's. What would it be? Your conscious mind and/or the universal mind is creating the brain with the missing neurons that, by the way, seems to be causing (or at least strongly associated with) your own lost of faculty?

FWIW, my own explanation is that consciousness is actually a form of a physical field, perhaps electromagnetic with unknown quantum aspects, that arises through rhythmic firings of neurons, that feedbacks directly into the neurons as part of a causal loop.

[Eugene I]

The discussion I thought we were having was whether materialism required epiphenomenalism or panpsychism. It doesn't require either. Consciousness could be another form of something physical that emerges when certain forms of matter begin to interreact in certain ways.

FWIW, my own explanation is that consciousness is actually a form of a physical field, perhaps electromagnetic with unknown quantum aspects, that arises through rhythmic firings of neurons, that feedbacks directly into the neurons as part of a causal loop.

Yes, the conscious phenomena would only arise within certain forms (neural structures). However, it requires the fundamental (non-emerging) capability of matter to have qualitative experience (which is what panpsychism does). The problem is: any physical observable phenomenon can be accurately described by math, math is fully equipped and sufficient for it. However, the conscious experience ("something it is like to experience red") is in principle inexplicable by math. It is in principle beyond the reach of physics.

Idealism has to go to absurd lengths to explain something like Alzheimer's. What would it be? Your conscious mind and/or the universal mind is creating the brain with the missing neurons that, by the way, seems to be causing (or at least strongly associated with) your own lost of faculty?

Again, depends on the version of idealism. BK's version is completely naturalistic, there is no pre-meditated reason for the MAL to create anything, so there is no "reason". MAL creates the universes instinctually with no regard whether the beings in such universes undergo deceases and suffering.

[Jim Cross]

The problem is: any physical observable phenomenon can be accurately described by math, math is fully equipped and sufficient for it. However, the conscious experience ("something it is like to experience red") is in principle inexplicable by math. It is in principle beyond the reach of physics.

While you're at it, why not pile on the requirement that even observable phenomenon that can be described by math can't be explained? They can only be described.

You're asking for something nobody else has explained either What is your explanation for it? What is BK's explanation for it?

[Eugene I]

While you're at it, why not pile on the requirement that even observable phenomenon that can be described by math can't be explained? They can only be described.

You're asking for something nobody else has explained either What is your explanation for it? What is BK's explanation for it?

Well, the only thing we can do is to admit that "something A (conscious experience)" is just not an emergent phenomenon of "something B (matter)" if there is no way for us to establish any emergence link between these two "somethings". In that case what metaphysics does is that it "declares" (=assumes) that such "something" is irreducible ("fundamental"). But that belongs to metaphysics, science does not even need to do that, it is enough for science just to remain agnostic.