Apologies for the late and brief reply. My web presence has been and will continue to be very sporadic for another two weeks.
there are two ways an MP theory can be causally closed but not contain consciousness. First, it can be wrong. Maxwell’s equations in a vacuum are causally closed, but that theory doesn’t even describe atoms, let alone consciousness.
If it was wrong, how could it be causally closed? No subset of our physical theories (such as Maxwell’s equations) is causally disconnected from the rest of them. They all describe common interacting entities.
The other possibility [....] an MP theory which does in fact encompass conscious experiences and give them a causal role, but the theory is posed in such a way that you cannot tell what they are from the description.
Our MP theory has a short closed list of fundamental entities and forces which are allowed to be causative. Consciousness definitely isn’t one of these.
You wish to identify consciousness with a higher-level complex phenomenon that is composed of these basic entities. Before rearranging the fundamental physical theories to make it easier to describe, I think you ought to show evidence for the claim that some such phenomenon corresponds to “consciousness”. And that has to start with giving a better definition of what consciousness is.
Otherwise, even if you proved that our MP theories can be replaced by a different set of theories which also includes a C-term, how do we know that C-term is “consciousness”?
You close out with the question of “why do we experience anything at all?” That is going to be a hard problem
It needn’t be. Here’s a very simple theory: a randomly evolved feature of human cognition makes us want to believe in consciouness.
Relevant facts: we believe in and report conscious experience even though we can’t define in words what it is or what its absence would be like. (Sounds like a mental glitch to me.) This self-reporting falls apart when you look at the brain closely, as you can observe that experiences, actions, etc. are not only spatially but also temporally distributed (as they must be); but people discussing consciousness try to explain our innate feelings rather than build a theory on those facts—IOW, without the innate feeling we wouldn’t even be talking about this. Different people vary in their level of support for this idea, and rational argument (as in this discussion) is weak at changing it. We know our cognitive architecture reliably gives rise to some ideas and behaviors, which are common to practically every culture: e.g. belief in spirits, gods, or an afterlife.
Here’s a random mechanism too: cognitive architecture makes regularly think “I am conscious!”. Repeated thoughts, with nothing opposing them (at younger ages at least), become belief (ref: people being brought to believe anything not frowned upon by society, tend to keep believing it).
Causal closure in a theory is a structural property of the theory, independent of whether the theory is correct. We are probably not living in a Game-of-Life cellular automaton, but you can still say that the Game of Life is causally closed.
Consider the Standard Model of particle physics. It’s an inventory of fundamental particles and forces and how they interact. As a model it’s causally closed in the sense of being self-sufficient. But if we discover a new particle (e.g. supersymmetry), it will have been incomplete and thus “wrong”.
You wish to identify consciousness with a higher-level complex phenomenon that is composed of these basic entities. Before rearranging the fundamental physical theories to make it easier to describe, I think you ought to show evidence for the claim that some such phenomenon corresponds to “consciousness”. And that has to start with giving a better definition of what consciousness is.
Otherwise, even if you proved that our MP theories can be replaced by a different set of theories which also includes a C-term, how do we know that C-term is “consciousness”?
I totally agree that good definitions are important, and would be essential in justifying the identification of a theoretical C-term or property with consciousness. For example, one ambiguity I see coming up repeatedly in discussions of consciousness is whether only “self-awareness” is meant, or all forms of “awareness”. It takes time and care to develop a shared language and understanding here.
However, there are two paths to a definition of consciousness. One proceeds through your examination of your own experience. So I might say: “You know how sometimes you’re asleep and sometimes you’re awake, and how the two states are really different? That difference is what I mean by consciousness!” And then we might get onto dreams, and how dreams are a form of consciousness experienced during sleep, and so the starting point needs to be refined. But we’d be on our way down one path.
The other path is the traditional scientific one, and focuses on other people, and on treating them as objects and as phenomena to be explained. If we talk about sleep and wakefulness here, we mean states exhibited by other people, in which certain traits are observed to co-occur: for example, lying motionless on a bed, breathing slowly and regularly, and being unresponsive to mild stimuli, versus moving around, making loud structured noises, and responding in complex ways to stimuli. Science explains all of that in terms of physiological and cognitive changes.
So this is all about the relationship between the first and second paths of inquiry. If on the second path we find nothing called consciousness, that presents one sort of problem. If we do find, on the second path, something we wish to call consciousness, that presents a different problem and a lesser problem, namely, what is its relationship to consciousness as investigated in the first way? Do the two accounts of consciousness match up? If they don’t, how is that to be resolved?
These days, I think most people on the second path do believe in something called consciousness, which has a causal and explanatory role, but they may disagree with some or much of what people on the first path say about it. In that situation, you only face the lesser problem: you agree that consciousness exists, but you have some dispute about its nature. (Of course, the followers of the two paths have their internal disagreements, with their peers, as well. We are not talking about two internally homogeneous factions of opinion.)
Here’s a very simple theory: a randomly evolved feature of human cognition makes us want to believe in consciousness.
If you want to deny that there actually is any such thing as consciousness (saying that there is only a belief in it), you’ll need to define your terms too. It may be that you are not denying consciousness as such, just some particular concept of it. Let’s start with the difference between sleep and wakefulness. Do you agree that there is a subjective difference there?
Apologies for the late and brief reply. My web presence has been and will continue to be very sporadic for another two weeks.
If it was wrong, how could it be causally closed? No subset of our physical theories (such as Maxwell’s equations) is causally disconnected from the rest of them. They all describe common interacting entities.
Our MP theory has a short closed list of fundamental entities and forces which are allowed to be causative. Consciousness definitely isn’t one of these.
You wish to identify consciousness with a higher-level complex phenomenon that is composed of these basic entities. Before rearranging the fundamental physical theories to make it easier to describe, I think you ought to show evidence for the claim that some such phenomenon corresponds to “consciousness”. And that has to start with giving a better definition of what consciousness is.
Otherwise, even if you proved that our MP theories can be replaced by a different set of theories which also includes a C-term, how do we know that C-term is “consciousness”?
It needn’t be. Here’s a very simple theory: a randomly evolved feature of human cognition makes us want to believe in consciouness.
Relevant facts: we believe in and report conscious experience even though we can’t define in words what it is or what its absence would be like. (Sounds like a mental glitch to me.) This self-reporting falls apart when you look at the brain closely, as you can observe that experiences, actions, etc. are not only spatially but also temporally distributed (as they must be); but people discussing consciousness try to explain our innate feelings rather than build a theory on those facts—IOW, without the innate feeling we wouldn’t even be talking about this. Different people vary in their level of support for this idea, and rational argument (as in this discussion) is weak at changing it. We know our cognitive architecture reliably gives rise to some ideas and behaviors, which are common to practically every culture: e.g. belief in spirits, gods, or an afterlife.
Here’s a random mechanism too: cognitive architecture makes regularly think “I am conscious!”. Repeated thoughts, with nothing opposing them (at younger ages at least), become belief (ref: people being brought to believe anything not frowned upon by society, tend to keep believing it).
Causal closure in a theory is a structural property of the theory, independent of whether the theory is correct. We are probably not living in a Game-of-Life cellular automaton, but you can still say that the Game of Life is causally closed.
Consider the Standard Model of particle physics. It’s an inventory of fundamental particles and forces and how they interact. As a model it’s causally closed in the sense of being self-sufficient. But if we discover a new particle (e.g. supersymmetry), it will have been incomplete and thus “wrong”.
I totally agree that good definitions are important, and would be essential in justifying the identification of a theoretical C-term or property with consciousness. For example, one ambiguity I see coming up repeatedly in discussions of consciousness is whether only “self-awareness” is meant, or all forms of “awareness”. It takes time and care to develop a shared language and understanding here.
However, there are two paths to a definition of consciousness. One proceeds through your examination of your own experience. So I might say: “You know how sometimes you’re asleep and sometimes you’re awake, and how the two states are really different? That difference is what I mean by consciousness!” And then we might get onto dreams, and how dreams are a form of consciousness experienced during sleep, and so the starting point needs to be refined. But we’d be on our way down one path.
The other path is the traditional scientific one, and focuses on other people, and on treating them as objects and as phenomena to be explained. If we talk about sleep and wakefulness here, we mean states exhibited by other people, in which certain traits are observed to co-occur: for example, lying motionless on a bed, breathing slowly and regularly, and being unresponsive to mild stimuli, versus moving around, making loud structured noises, and responding in complex ways to stimuli. Science explains all of that in terms of physiological and cognitive changes.
So this is all about the relationship between the first and second paths of inquiry. If on the second path we find nothing called consciousness, that presents one sort of problem. If we do find, on the second path, something we wish to call consciousness, that presents a different problem and a lesser problem, namely, what is its relationship to consciousness as investigated in the first way? Do the two accounts of consciousness match up? If they don’t, how is that to be resolved?
These days, I think most people on the second path do believe in something called consciousness, which has a causal and explanatory role, but they may disagree with some or much of what people on the first path say about it. In that situation, you only face the lesser problem: you agree that consciousness exists, but you have some dispute about its nature. (Of course, the followers of the two paths have their internal disagreements, with their peers, as well. We are not talking about two internally homogeneous factions of opinion.)
If you want to deny that there actually is any such thing as consciousness (saying that there is only a belief in it), you’ll need to define your terms too. It may be that you are not denying consciousness as such, just some particular concept of it. Let’s start with the difference between sleep and wakefulness. Do you agree that there is a subjective difference there?