TPF : Hard Problem of Consciousness

[Gnomon]

Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/852751

Well I think its just question begging here either side because I am just making the claim that information could be simply what its like to be information. And you just disagree. — Apustimelogist

Sorry to butt-in here, but it seems to me that this "disagreement" is not about "question begging" but about Question Defining. I think I understand what you are aiming-at with the equation of a "bit" of incoming Information, and the "what it's like experience" of meaning in the mind. But, saying that "Information is what it's like to be information" comes dangerously close to a tautology. And strays near the Cartesian Theater's observing homunculus, that has baffled better minds than mine. Because "information" is inherently ambiguous.

Unfortunately, the term "information" has been defined in various ways. For example, as both a physical Quantum out there, and a metaphysical Qualia in here. To be Informed is to experience a "Difference (A) that makes a Difference (B)". The A> Distinction may be a "bit" of incoming physically embodied information, but the B> Distinction is an internal metaphysical idea or image that makes a difference (meaning) to the Observer. Our difficulty with defining such subjective distinctions objectively may be due to the fact that Information is both Objective and Subjective. There's an inherent ambiguity. So, don't give-up on your definition, just try to grasp the other (complementary) meaning of "information".


Both/And Principle :
My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html

[Gnomon]

But, saying that "Information is what it's like to be information" comes dangerously close to a tautology. — Gnomon
Well my notion of information here is even more basic than what you are talking about. Its just about distinctions. Experience and information are both primitive concepts in the sense that they cannot be further defined. So this tautology doesn't really add any danger that wasn't already there. — Apustimelogist

Sometimes a tautology is philosophically fundamental. Shannon defined Information physically, in terms of Energy/Entropy relationships. You seem to be defining Information metaphysically or essentially, in terms of meaningful experience, conscious awareness, or sentient knowing. Are you equating Sentience and Experience with the capability for being affected mentally by sensory impressions from the environment? Can you expand on that notion relative to The Hard Problem?

[Gnomon]

I am just saying that it is plausible to construe experiences as information. All I really know about my own experiences is that I am making or perceiving distinctions which are immediate to me. — Apustimelogist

Information used to be defined in terms of knowledge / meaning contained in a mind, especially connotation or denotation that is personally relevant to the receiver. Hence, knowing is experiencing/feeling, either first hand, or from communication. But what is a sentient "person" : the body/brain or soul/mind, or both, in a symbiotic relationship? My money is on the Both/And answer.

On this forum, we always come back to the Either/Or, Physical vs Metaphysical, question. But, perhaps, as you suggest, the distinction merely reflects the difference-of-purpose for Science vs Philosophy. So, it depends on who's asking. Is the Brain or the Soul the experiencer of incoming Information? It seems that the brain processes the data, but the mind interprets its significance relative to the Self. Yet, one without the other is insentient. It takes two to know, to know that you know, and to know that you are two.

How could a scientist know what the brain knows, except by asking the knower --- who will respond with spoken or written tokens of meaning : words.*1 Yet, apart from an informed experiencing mind, those tokens are nonsensical. Does a parrot understand the meaning of the sounds it echoes? Obviously, the parrot perceives the sounds a human makes, but whether it conceives the encoded meaning is debatable.

When scientists began looking into how we communicate Information from one mind to another, they of course began to look for atoms of meaning (bits). But those bits are intangible and invisible. So Shannon defined a new kind of token that could be encoded into electric pulses, transported over wires, and then decoded back into meaning in a personal mind. But, in the process of exporting from one mind to another, the codes are encapsulated into mathematical abstractions that have no inherent personal meaning. But only conventional abstract significance : a logical state with only two possible values : yes/no, or true/false, or 1/0.

Since, information is so important to us, we have many different words to describe various facets of the process of enforming or encoding or experiencing meaning into a mind. So, your equation of "experience" with "information" agrees with common sense : I experience, and I know what I experience, and I imagine that a record of that experience is encoded physically in my brain. Yet, when we look at the tangles of neurons, we don't see anything identifiable as Information or Meaning. Mind-reading requires two minds and two brains. Therefore, I conclude that information/meaning is a holistic phenomenon of an integrated system of sensors and coders.

Is Consciousness purely a physical or metaphysical phenomenon, or a function of both Mind and Matter? I guess that depends on how you define "phenomenon". Does a camera knowlingly "observe" phenomena or just blankly record photons? The great philosopher Yogi Berra once noted : " you can observe a lot just by watching".


Denotation : the literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests.
Connotation : an idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning.

*1. See Mind-blowing mind-reading technology thread for pros & cons of the question.

↪Wayfarer

[Gnomon]

I see philosophy as primarily concerned with the problems of meaning - and that in an existential, rather than a semantic, sense. Philosophy attempts to grapple with the perennial problem of 'what it means to be', and it's not an academic concern, as we are, in fact, beings. — Wayfarer

Yes. Unfortunately, some on this forum seem to think that the job of Philosophy is simply to criticize our use of language. Perhaps the noun "being" and the verb "to be" are the most difficult concepts to "grapple with", since we directly experience Being, but can only imagine Non-Being. Likewise, we experience Consciousness, but unconsciousness is the lack of experience. Our language can express "what it's like to see", but fumbles with "what it's like to be".

What is it like to be unconscious? Do we continue to Be when unconscious, or asleep, hence not experiencing? Those are rhetorical questions, for another lifetime . . . another Beingness.


Recall that in Vedanta, consciousness (citta) is never a 'that'. It is never an object, or for that matter a phenomenon. The phenomenon is 'that which appears'; consciousness is 'to whom it appears'. — Wayfarer

I'm not very familiar with Vedanta, but that's similar to what I meant by distinguishing between Brain & Soul, or Body & Person. Materialists typically deny the existence of a Soul, probably because it is not a perceivable phenomenon. Yet, Soul and Person are conceivable noumena; even though their mode-of-being is debatable. I'm also not familiar with Materialist literature on the topic of Noumena. Is it a legitimate topic of philosophical "grappling"? Or best left to the religious myth-makers?

*1. Noumena : The Self-concept we call "Soul" is definitely a metaphysical idea, not a physical thing. But is it a ding-an-sich? Who knows?

[Gnomon]

So maybe symmetries / invariances are fundamental. — Apustimelogist

In a philosophical sense, I think of "Symmetries" as logical relationships, which are the essence of Information. Existentially, those inter-relationships may well be fundamental to Reality in it's multiplicity. For example, when a Singularity divides into a Diversity, symmetries are born, and can later be broken : e.g. matter/anti-matter. The immensity of this cosmic notion is astronomically over my head, but I'll put it on the docket for further exploration.


Symmetry and Symmetry Breaking :
The term “symmetry” derives from the Greek words sun (meaning ‘with’ or ‘together’) and metron (‘measure’), yielding summetria, and originally indicated a relation of commensurability
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/symmetry-breaking/

[Gnomon]

Now for me, double-aspect is a only in our models and not existing in reality beyond us. — Apustimelogist

I will assume that your philosophical "reality beyond" is something like Plato's Ideality, or Kant's mysterious realm of the ding-an-sich ; not a religious other-world populated with meddling gods & avenging angels. The comments here only skim the surface of my information-based BothAnd Monism. One holistic uber-reality with dual aspects.

Dualism is a philosophical issue only because our mental models can include referents to both perceived objects, and "things" that we know only by imagination. To wit : Ancient people inferred that there must be something invisible about humans that explains how they are different from animals (Reason), and how a living body is different from a dead body (Animation). Early labels for that unseen something (e.g. Greek psuche) seemed to equate Life & Mind as dual aspects of a universal Elan Vital.

So, eventually the Soul (Ghost) was imagined as a separate being, temporarily merged with a material body. But, Descartes' dualism focused mainly on the essential difference between a 3-dimensional physical body (res extensa) and a zero-dimensional metaphysical mind (res cogitans). And, Kant postulated that there must be a noumenal "reality" (or Ideality) beyond the scope of our phenomenal senses. He admitted that we can't actually know anything about that Platonic realm. Yet, he concluded that we can use reason & imagination to infer some logically necessary properties of such an immaterial sphere of unformed potential.

But, another perspective on the Platonic world of archetypal forms says that it is the True Reality --- a sort of heaven --- and our physical senses can detect only vague hints of what's really real. Even so, faced with a big-bang beginning, we can conjecture that our space-time world is not absolute, but merely a passing shadow (a model) of a more all-encompassing timeless realm of Potential. It's that extra-sensory speculation, though, that Materialism denies, and for good practical reasons. So, only impractical philosophers concern themselves with things they can't see or touch, but only imagine. Moreover, for Materialists, anything imaginary is immaterial, possibly illusory, and can't be proven to exist in any sensible manner.

So, there are at least two alternatives to traditional Body/Soul dualism : A> Matter-only monism, or B> Mind-only monism. Yet the latter is literally unrealistic, and the former is essentially mindless. So, I prefer a philosophical model, based on Information, that makes sense, both physically and metaphysically. For example, the Brain is a biological processor of Information, and the Mind is merely its operational Function, which is only a name for an abstract input-output process of Living & Thinking. The process is not the thing, and we infer functions only by meta-physical inference, not by physical sensation. Yet, viewed as a whole system, that mind/matter duality is a singular Person : You.


Is the information stored on a computer metaphysical or physical? :
Great question. All information is metaphysical - necessarily so, in fact. Information exists as differences, and a difference is the one thing you definitely cannot prove exists in physics . . . . The physical structure is the material organisation. . . . . For this reason all information can be considered as sets of co-ordinates, but the actualisation of the information (the manner in which it becomes intelligible) involves the solution of the differences.
https://www.quora.com/Is-the-informatio ... r-physical
Note --- Well-informed people have argued for both sides of the physical/metaphysical question. So, I conclude that Generic Information must take on both forms. If not physical, computers would not be able to process it. If not metaphysical, humans could not make sense of it. So, the Information of which our world, and our world models, are constructed is Both-And, not Either-Or. BothAnd is a Monism.

[Gnomon]

If we say there are two points, one relates to the other and vice versa. Then we have information. — Throng

Your post reminded me of the old idiom : "that's my two bits worth" ; typically referring to an unsolicited opinion. The monetary reference was to a quarter dollar : $.25. But where did the term "two bits" come from? The explanation I found said it referred to a "spanish dollar" worth eight reales (pieces of eight?). Hence : two pieces = a quarter dollar. But my source says, there was no "one bit" coin.

Is it a cosmic coincidence, that one bit has no inherent value (meaning), except in relation to another bit?

ORIGIN OF 2 BITS :
https://sunfarm.com/images/2bits.htm

[Gnomon]

Yet the latter is literally unrealistic — Gnomon
What makes you say this, out of interest? — Apustimelogist

The adjective "unrealistic" was intended only as definitive, not derogatory. Matter is "realistic" in the sense of hands-on practical or pragmatic utility, while Mind is "unrealistic" in the sense of literally intangible & immaterial, hence not something you can directly manipulate for real-world purposes.

Mind-world Ideals, such as Utopias. are considered to be literally unrealistic & out-of-reach. But . . . . and this is a big Butt . . . . "mere" Ideas, when coupled with Will & Intention, can have real-world consequences*1. So, although I am Materialistic & Realistic relative to practical or scientific questions, I am Mentalistic & Idealistic regarding philosophical (open-ended) or potential questions. Does that answer your question?

Quote from post above :
"A> Matter-only monism, or B> Mind-only monism. Yet the latter is literally unrealistic, and the former is essentially mindless."

*1. Elon Musk's "unrealistic" video-game goal of saving humanity by emigrating to Mars, has driven him to develop many practical stepping stones on the path to that "impossible dream" : electric cars, re-usable rockets, low-orbit communication satellites, etc.


Mind is merely its operational Function, which is only a name for an abstract input-output process of Living & Thinking. — Gnomon
Does that include qualia? — Apustimelogist

Yes. The physical brain is a quantitative bio-machine, which processes countable units of matter & energy, in order to produce the qualitative products that we know as Ideas, Imagination, Experience, Consciousness, etc.

Similarly, the function of your Cell Phone is not to spit-out physical objects, such as a paper-tape of calculations. Instead, it processes Information and produces "Communication", which is not a quantifiable thing, but a process with a qualitative value to sender & receiver. "Communication" (share + action) is a noun that refers not to a particular Thing, but to a purposeful act or procedure, that can be imagined as-if a particular thing. Likewise, a Function is a rationally-inferred goal-directed on-going process that is sometimes treated, abstractly, as-if an observed static object. But the purposeful Quality is a mental noumenon, not a physical phenomenon.

PS___ Wayfarer's reply above may be more to your point.

Qualia are often referred to as the phenomenal properties of experience, and experiences that have qualia are referred to as being phenomenally conscious. Phenomenal consciousness is often contrasted with intentionality (that is, the representational aspects of mental states).
https://iep.utm.edu/qualia/

[Gnomon]

Seems hard for me to rule out that there could be a mapping between experiences and all possible forms of information. — Apustimelogist


I was surprised to see this side-topic dialog still going-on, and even jumping from Evolution to Consciousness forums. Your original formulation --- "information is what it is like to be information" --- sounded odd to me at first. But I eventually came to see more-or-less what you were aiming at*1. The difficulty here may stem from the many Specific forms of Generic Information. Another hurdle may be that you are approaching the Information/Consciousness equation from a different background (technical vs philosophical) from ↪Wayfarer & myself.

Here's a technical Neuroscience article on the topic of how Information is related to Qualia*2. It's over my head, but you may be better able to follow the argument. In my thesis, I refer to Information as a shapeshifter. For example : Generic Information (relationships, connections, associations, patterns) Information as physical Energy (hot/cold proportions) ; Information as material Structure (brain tissue organization) ; information as abstract Data (mathematical-statistical correlations) ; Information as Qualia (subjective experience or feeling) ; Information as Knowledge (personal meaning). In my own thesis, the "direct mechanism" is metaphysical instead of physical. I'd be interested to know if you are proposing another "shape" of Generic Information.



*1. Information (subjective experience) is what it's like (experience or feeling) to be information (knowledge). Please correct me, If I missed your intention. There are several possible ways to interpret the original phrase.

*2. Information and the Origin of Qualia :
This article argues that qualia are a likely outcome of the processing of information in local cortical networks. It uses an information-based approach and makes a distinction between information structures (the physical embodiment of information in the brain, primarily patterns of action potentials), and information messages (the meaning of those structures to the brain, and the basis of qualia). . . .
The really challenging problem in consciousness studies is to find an answer to the question of the origin of subjective experience itself. . . .
There have been some attempts to explore the origin of phenomenal experience. . . .
However, there is no theoretical account that shows a direct mechanism whereby certain neural activities should lead to a phenomenal outcome. This article is one attempt to link the purely physical with the phenomenal, and it builds on a previous article on the topic
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 00022/full

[Gnomon]

I think you guessed I would have a problem with GI, genetic information, and I do. I see it as a mental projection only. It exists physically in your brain state and does not exist physically in genetic material. — Mark Nyquist

My post spelled the term "Generic", not "Genetic, Information*1. In my thesis, I use GI as a modern version of Plato's "World of Forms" to suggest a singular ideal origin, and shared heritage, for all of the various forms (configurations of matter, energy & mind) in the world. Genetic information, in the form of chemical genes, is one of those manifold offspring of the pre-Bang Progenitor Form. Another philosophical term for that concept is First Cause. It's merely a logical necessity to hypothetically account for Darwin's "forms most beautiful"*2.

I agree that Genetic Information "does not exist physically" in DNA . . . . except in the material form of bio-chemical interlinkage, which is meaningless until interpreted (template translation) by the fertilized cell. The functional metaphysical Information of Nucleic Acids takes the geometric form of a double helix. But even that is an over-simplification of the essential inter-relations that characterize fundamental Information. Bare-bones Information is mathematical Ratios (note the root of Rational). But a mind-boggling form of Information is the Life that emerges from holistic complexes of cells.

In my concept of Generic Information, everything in the world is a form --- chip off the old block --- of the creative Power to Enform. A physical form of that power is Energy, and a metaphysical form is human Intention or Will. As a meta-physical philosophical concept, EnFormAction*3 is difficult to explain in our conventional materialistic language, without giving the impression of religious motives. So, I am forced to use common -- sometimes religious -- metaphors to illustrate my meaning.

PS___ I have no religious beliefs, but I do share some philosophical concepts, such as Holism, that have been adopted by world religions to justify their own meta-physical beliefs. For those opposed to metaphysics-in-general it's all the same non-sense.


*1. Generic : relating to or shared by a whole group of similar things; not specific to any particular thing:
Genetic : relating to origin, or arising from a common origin.

*2. “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
― Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

*3. EnFormAction :
*** Metaphorically, it's the Will-power of G*D, which is the First Cause of everything in creation. Aquinas called the Omnipotence of God the "Primary Cause", so EFA is the general cause of everything in the world. Energy, Matter, Gravity, Life, Mind are secondary creative causes, each with limited application.
*** All are also forms of Information, the "difference that makes a difference". It works by directing causation from negative to positive, cold to hot, ignorance to knowledge. That's the basis of mathematical ratios (Greek "Logos", Latin "Ratio" = reason). A : B :: C : D. By interpreting those ratios we get meaning and reasons.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html