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Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by morpheos137 on Thursday March 18, 2021 @03:17PM (#26506421)
I am a non-materialist and I think consciousness is not a thing. So there's that position too. What do humans, mammals and earthworms have in common that AI or robots do not (as yet?) I would not say it is consciousness (because my position is there is really no such thing) but rather they have in common the fact that they are alive and subject to the Darwinian replication program and guided by common mental processes like, thought, emotion, memory, proprioception, sensation.

By non-materialist I mean I do not see matter as distinct from information. I believe the only thing that exists is information. What is information? It is structure and meaning and pattern and potential. Information is entwined with entropy.

Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by mehphp on Thursday March 18, 2021 @03:50PM (#26506794)
Can you expand on consciousness not being a thing? You mean it doesn't exist at all or it isn't a physical thing?
Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by morpheos137 on Thursday March 18, 2021 @03:58PM (#26506895)
I don't believe consciousness exists in a meaningful way in the real world. It certainly exists as a word in a dictionary and as something for philosophical types to have woo debates over. I think the word is vague term that signifies different somewhat independent things that living organisms have to a greater or lesser extent (memory, emotion, thought, embodiment, etc). I believe attempting to have a scientific debate about consciousness is kind of like asking how many angels could dance on the head of pin.
Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by hackinthebochs on Thursday March 18, 2021 @08:31PM (#26509083)
Of course you're conscious. It's simply a label attached to the phenomena going on in your head. Denying you are conscious is about as substantive as people with certain psychiatric disorders saying they aren't real.

>If we can think of something that is not objectively measurable what suggests that it exists objectively as opposed to it being a subjective opinion?

That you prefer chocolate ice cream isn't objective. But that you have a preference for chocolate ice cream is objective. The content of the conscious percept isn't necessarily real, but the fact that you are having what we call a 'conscious percept' certainly is real. Just because it is happening in your head, why should it not be real?

Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Thursday March 18, 2021 @04:47PM (#26507375)
I find that a very strange statement for a supposedly conscious being to make. Consciousness does absolutely objectively exist, or at least I can say it does for me. That its existence is not objectively measurable doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just means that the philosophy of empiricism is not complete.
Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by morpheos137 on Thursday March 18, 2021 @05:24PM (#26507709)
>I find that a very strange statement for a supposedly conscious being to make.

I don't claim to be conscious. I am alive and awake and thinking and sensing, etc.

>Consciousness does absolutely objectively exist, or at least I can say it does for me.

This sentence appears to confuse subjective experience with objective reality.

>That its existence is not objectively measurable doesn't mean it doesn't exist

If we can think of something that is not objectively measurable what suggests that it exists objectively as opposed to it being a subjective opinion?

Can you define consciousness without invoking subjective conscious experience? You agree there is not evidence of objective existence and yet you say it objectively exists because you subjectively feel it does. Is this not self-contradictory?

Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by gowld on Thursday March 18, 2021 @05:47PM (#26507903)
OK, Consciousness is a subjective opinion.

Are you claiming that subjective opinions do not exist, despite your own observations of your own subjective opinons?

Also, imagine you live in a box with a yellow ball. And you can speak to other people outside your box. They tell you they also live in a box with a yellow ball. You will never have proof that they actually have yellow balls in their boxes. And they will never have proof that you actually have a yellow ball in your box.

Would you say that yellow balls are merely a subjective opinion, and don't exist?

Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by morpheos137 on Thursday March 18, 2021 @06:31PM (#26508226)
First you have to define what you mean by "exist." Of course every idea that can be conceived exists in some sense.

That does not mean its existence is realised or useful. Is it useful (consequential) and consistent that yellow balls exist? If yes, then they do. If no, then they don't.

Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Friday March 19, 2021 @07:55AM (#26512248)
> Can you define consciousness without invoking subjective conscious experience? You agree there is not evidence of objective existence and yet you say it objectively exists because you subjectively feel it does. Is this not self-contradictory?

No, I'm saying it need not be objectively measurable to be real. This is what I mean by empiricism being an incomplete philosophy.

Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by readbeard on Thursday March 18, 2021 @06:43PM (#26508328)
Is there any measurement or objective fact in the world that you can become aware of except by means of subjective experience?
Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by plutonorm on Thursday March 18, 2021 @11:22PM (#26509903)
Hold your hand to a flame and tell me there is no experience that goes beyond the material world. It feels like something to experience pain. Why? That is the question here. To deny that there is such an experience is self deceiving.
Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by nynx on Thursday March 18, 2021 @03:45PM (#26506730)
How does believing that all things are information differ from believing all things are matter? Those sound just like two sides of the same coin to me.
Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by morpheos137 on Thursday March 18, 2021 @03:53PM (#26506834)
Materialists see information as deriving (resulting) from a spatial - temporal - state distribution of matter or energy. Informational people see information as giving rise (causing) to matter and energy. I subscribe to the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis more or less and am sympathetic to Cyclic Conformal Cosmology. Thus cause and effect are reversed.
Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by anthk on Thursday March 18, 2021 @05:24PM (#26507702)
I always was more impressed on why information on the atoms (how interact between themselves) is not as researched as the matter itself, is truly fascinating.
Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere? by forgotmypw17 on Thursday March 18, 2021 @05:29PM (#26507765)
We think we have it so hard with our 9-5 jobs and 2 weeks vacation.

Meanwhile, atoms have been working without as much as a fucking smoke break for literally billions of years! >_<