TPF : Short Theory of Consciousness

[Gnomon]

Ok, so this just confirms what I said, Your theory is a potpourri of ideas very descriptive of your own pop-movie.
No epistemic value, no consequences or implications for anything. I'm sorry Gnomon, I'm being intellectually honest, don't get too attached to this theory. Try to get new sources and new perspectives, not trying just to be right in what you say but listening to the novelties,the epistemic progress.
Contemporary times are great for this, you never get bored — Raul

Thanks for offering your personal *opinion* put-down. But, if you were interested enough to actually read the Enformationism thesis, you would find that it is anything but a "potpouri" of random ideas. Instead it is a carefully reasoned step-by-step hypothesis based on a cutting-edge scientific concept --- that everything in the world is a form of Information --- leading to the logical conclusion that the world itself must have had an Enformer. It is not presented as an empirical scientific fact. And it's not pretending to be an academic philosophical theory. As the website says, "it's not something to believe, it's something to think". If you don't like the way I think, think-up a thesis of your own.

PS___What is your definition of "the epistemic process"?

PPS___ Do you have a personal worldview with "epistemic value, consequences
, or implications"?

PPPS ___What is your theory of Consciousness? Does it have as much "epistemic value" as Pop's theory?

[Gnomon]

The contemporary philosophy has to go in hand with science and it helps it making progress as well as sense explaining the cultural and epistemic implications of scientific discoveries. — Raul

I agree. That's why I base my cutting-edge philosophical thesis on cutting-edge science, both Empirical and Theoretical. But I try to avoid the dogmatic stance that is known as Scientism.

"Physicist John Wheeler coined the term black hole. ... Wheeler said the universe had three parts: First, “Everything is Particles,” second, “Everything is Fields,” and third, “Everything is information.”
https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/the-b ... nformation

"Everything we perceive consists of matter or energy that “vibrates”. It now appears also to be an information system"
https://hagedoorn.org/en/everything-is-information/

Forget Space-Time: Information May Create the Cosmos : "The universe is a physical system that contains and processes information in a systematic fashion and that can do everything a computer can do"
https://www.space.com/29477-did-informa ... osmos.html

Everything is information : Physicist Vlatko Vedral explains to Aleks Krotoski why he believes the fundamental stuff of the universe is information
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfQ2r0zvyoA

You're basically dreaming on going back in history to the times when people were following the dictates of Asclepio? — Raul

Where did you get that absurd idea? That assertion sounds like another baseless put-down of something not understood. I don't think you intend to be a Troll, but you're beginning to make wild accusations. Are you offended by the notion that everything in the world is a form of EnFormAction?

Asclepius was the Roman god of medicine. What does that have to do with my thesis that everything in the world is a form of universal Information. One of those forms is mundane Matter, and one is ordinary Energy, and another is common Consciousness. Nobody today has to pray to a god for healing.

SCIENTISM : excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques.
https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/d ... k=OlWHLWxi

[Gnomon]

The qualia of life is consciousness — Pop

I like that analogy, and I take it literally. I suspect that the reason scientists and philosophers find Consciousness to be the "Hard Problem" is that they think in terms of physical Quanta, and ignore meta-physical Qualia. But Generic Information (EnFormAction = energy + intention) is both : Everything in the world is a form of Information. For example, the word "information" originally referred to the contents of a Mind : immaterial Ideas. But then Einstein equated amorphous "Energy" with the quality called "Mass", which is how we quantity Matter. Around the same time, Shannon showed how mental Ideas could be converted into physical changes in Energy ( 1 = positive ; 0 = negative ) in order to transmit ideas from one Mind to another. Hence, Information can take on a variety of manifest forms, from measurable Quantitative Matter to imaginary Qualitative Mind, known only via the sixth sense of Reason. Therefore, it seems that the invisible stuff we label "Energy", may be the same stuff that causes the Qualia we call "Life" and "Mind".
http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page29.html

I'm currently reading a book by John Horgan, Mind Body Problems : Science, Subjectivity, & Who We Really Are. In his interview with theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman, I noticed their use of terms & concepts similar to those we are using in this thread. For example, Kauffman said, "It didn't take something that was utterly, bizarrely, mysterious and improbable to make a self-reproducing system. . . . It's self-organized." Another term he used was "autocatalysis". And a catalyst is a causal agency that changes something else without itself being changed. It's usually a chemical, but that definition also sounds like Energy and EnFormAction. Both are invisible & intangible, but no longer "mysterious or bizarre".

Kauffman also proposed the existence of "a new creative force or law or something that counteracts entropy, the universal tendency of things to fall apart". That sound like your notion of "Self-organization" and my term "Enformy". At the Santa Fe Institute, Kauffman studies Complexity in nature, which is the opposite of decomposing Entropy. So, another term for "Self-Creation", may be "Complexification", which creates new things with novel Properties, or Qualia.

Enformy :
In the Enformationism theory, Enformy is a hypothetical, holistic, metaphysical, natural trend or force, that counteracts Entropy & Randomness to produce complexity & progress.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

Qualia :
Latin term for immaterial properties, such as color & shape, of physical objects. Usually contrasted with Quanta, referring to unique things that can be counted. Qualia are subjective aspects of sensory perceptions (e.g. redness), as contrasted with the presumed objective existence of material things. Yet, all we ever know of real things is the mental images created in the mind, in response to sensory stimuli, not the things-in-themselves.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page17.html

Complexity : information-theoretic complexity measures such as integrated information have been proposed as measures of conscious awareness
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 00424/full

"But Energy is not itself stuff; it is something that all stuff has". (a quality of Matter)
Likewise, Information is not matter, but it is something that all matter has. (a quality of Matter)
Moreover, Mind (consciousness) is not matter, but it is a quality of a material Brain.
https://profmattstrassler.com/articles- ... dichotomy/

[Gnomon]

Where did you get that absurd idea?
From the following paragraph you sent above:
" My thesis is not intended to provide empirical value to scientific knowledge of the material world. Yet, it is intended to add some "epistemic" value to the philosophical understanding of immaterial Mind. The "proof" of that added value may not be known, until a new generation of philosophers grows-up without the weight of ancient materialistic or spiritualistic dogma — Raul

Will you please explain to me how you interpreted that quote to mean that "You're basically dreaming on going back in history to the times when people were following the dictates of Asclepio?". I don't see the connection. Are you inferring an advocacy of Spiritualism?

I enjoy the give & take on this forum. And the reason I post here is a> to get feedback on my non-mainstream ideas, and b> to have those ideas intelligently challenged, so I can improve them. But I don't appreciate an "out of the blue" assertion that my worldview is advocating a return to ancient "dictates" on medicine.

Enformationism :
As a scientific paradigm, the thesis of Enformationism is intended to be an update to the obsolete 19th century paradigm of Materialism. Since the recent advent of Quantum Physics, the materiality of reality has been watered down. Now we know that matter is a form of energy, and that energy is a form of Information.
As a religious philosophy, the creative power of Enform-ationism is envisioned as a more realistic version of the antiquated religious notions of Spiritualism. Since our world had a beginning, it's hard to deny the concept of creation. So, an infinite deity is proposed to serve as both the energetic Enformer and the malleable substance of the enformed world.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

[Gnomon]

Impressions like these lead me to a panpsychic understanding. I think this would be roughly consistent with how Koch, and Tononi would also see it. — Pop

In John Horgan's interview with Koch, he summarized the IIT theory : "It depicts us as nodes in an infinite web of information, a cosmic consciousness that is pretty close to God, the God of Spinoza if not the Bible". That's similar to my worldview, but I insist on making a distinction between Information as the essence of Energy, and Information as the essence of Mind. As I see it, the Big Bang Singularity contained no mental phenomena, but only Potential for the eventual emergence of Consciousness. So, I disagree with the New Age notion of conscious Atoms. They do exchange Information in the form of electrons (energy) that are gained or lost or shared. But I don't see that as awareness in the human sense.

Again, Horgan quotes Koch, "You think only humans are truly conscious, and we're a lot less conscious than we think we are, whereas I think everything is at least a little conscious, including jellyfish, compact disk players and dark energy". Early on, I toyed with the Universal Consciousness concept, but eventually came to understand that Actual Mind is an emergent phenomenon, not an essential aspect of the world. However, the Potential for Mind is an essential element of reality.

This conclusion is based on my understanding of how Evolution operates, somewhat like a computer program. So, I think PanPsychism is based on a Spiritual worldview. But, what the ancients interpreted as intelligent & intentional Spirits operating in the world, is what we now know as mundane cause & effect Energy. Hence, Information per se is the potential for Change, and for Meaning. But, Energy is the actual cause of change. That may sound like nit-picking, but it's important to my worldview to make that key distinction between the Energy of Materialism, and the Ghosts of Spiritualism.


Potential :
Actuality and Potentiality are contrasting terms for that which has form, in Aristotle‘s sense, and that which has merely the possibility of having form. Actuality (energeia in Greek) is that mode of being in which a thing can bring other things about or be brought about by them, the realm of events and facts. . . . . By contrast, potentiality (dynamis in Greek) is not a mode in which a thing exists, but rather the power to effect change, the capacity of a thing to make transitions into different states.
https://www.the-philosophy.com/actualit ... -aristotle

Emergence :
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors which emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

Evolutionary Programming :
Special computer algorithms inspired by biological Natural Selection. It is similar to Genetic Programming in that it relies on internal competition between random alternative solutions to weed-out inferior results, and to pass-on superior answers to the next generation of algorithms. By means of such optimizing feedback loops, evolution is able to make progress toward the best possible solution – limited only by local restraints – to the original programmer’s goal or purpose. In Enformationism theory the Prime Programmer is portrayed as a creative deity, who uses bottom-up mechanisms, rather than top-down miracles, to produce a world with both freedom & determinism, order & meaning.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html

PanSpiritualism : http://bothandblog5.enformationism.info/page32.html

Mind-Body Problems: by John Horgan
https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Body-Proble ... mozilla-20

[Gnomon]

Since 19th many theories have come, materialism is an stereotyped word you keep using and that is the proof that your Enformation comes late and adds not epistemic value. — Raul

What word would you suggest in place of "Materialism", as the opposite of "Spiritualism"? Are you a Materialist or Spiritualist or Other?

I'm sorry the thesis of Enformationism doesn't add any "epistemic value" for you. Nevertheless, it was only intended to add epistemic value to my own personal worldview.

21st Century Materialism : Perhaps because modern developments in biochemistry and in physiological psychology greatly increased the plausibility of materialism, there was in the mid-20th century a resurgence of interest in the philosophical defense of central-state materialism.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/materi ... aterialism

Epistemic value is a kind of value which attaches to cognitive successes such as true beliefs, justified beliefs, knowledge, and understanding
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

[Gnomon]

Your claims are basically going backwards, traditional spiritualism disguised with a pseudo scientific approach (Asclepio's times). — Raul

Obviously, you have completely missed the point of the Enformationism thesis. It is exactly the opposite of what you claimed. I do explore the wisdom of the past, such as Aristotle's categories. But I don't accept any pre-scientific notions about the physical world as authoritative. Yet, I do think that pre-scientific sages were not idiots, as you may assume, but merely doing their best to understand How & Why the world works as it does. Modern Science does a good job of the "How", but struggles with the "Why". Hence the "Hard Problem" of Consciousness remains unsolved to this day. At least, a few of us, like Pop and Gnomon, are trying novel approaches, rather than repeating the same old failures of the past.

PS___Does your worldview explain "not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love"?

Enformationism :
A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to ancient Materialism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's a Theory of Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

[Gnomon]

My worldview in few words? I consider myself a natural-cognitivist. — Raul

I don't find that term in a Google search. Is that your own private personal worldview?

I'm not one of those that tries to create a theory and think it is the cutting-edge theory because I'm not a professional philosopher, I'm not a scientist so I don't have access to the latest technologies so it would be ridiculous and pretentious for me to build a theory of the world myself. Are you a philosopher or a scientist? — Raul

Apparently, you bow to the authority of the priests of Science, and don't trust your own reasoning ability. Yet, you claim to have a personal worldview. Did you just snatch it out of the air? On what authority was it based? What cognitive steps led to that personal belief system?

Since you are posting on a forum for amateur philosophers, why do you think it's "pretentious" to "build a theory of the world" yourself? The Enformationism thesis specifically denies that it is intended to serve as a new religion. Besides, what do philosophers do, it not build theories of the world? What's the point of this forum, if not to share specific opinions & general worldviews? :joke:

Heterophenomenology ("phenomenology of another, not oneself") is a term coined by Daniel Dennett to describe an explicitly third-person, scientific approach to the study of consciousness and other mental phenomena.

That objective perspective of Science is fine for studying the physical material world. But it's not adequate to understanding the subjective meta-physical mental world. The topic of this thread is : "a short theory of Consciousness". Has your natural-cognitivist approach contributed any "epistemic value" to the hard question of Consciousness -- of Subjectivity? Dennett thinks he has solved the problem, by merely dismissing it as a problem. He calls Consciousness an "illusion". Is your awareness a hallucination? Maybe that's why you don't trust your own reasoning ability.

[Gnomon]

You have so many things to learn. It is evident you guys don't even have a scientific education, and you have invested all this energy writing a theory of everything — Raul

Raul, you accused me of wanting to go backward to a primitive way of thinking about the world. But I'd like offer a different analysis of our contrasting worldviews. Instead of going backwards, I have made a lateral move. In my youth, during discussions on religious topics, I was sometimes accused of being too rational & analytical -- of being a know-it-all -- making no allowance for human feelings and opinions. I was more like you then. But, over the years, I discovered that I did have some things to learn, that are not found in the textbooks of mainstream Science. Ironically, I'm now sometimes accused of being passive-aggressive.

One thing I've learned is that the world is not all simplistic black & white. It's a complex rainbow of perspectives, some of which are true, some false, and some truish. To counter black & white thinking, I like to refer to the Yin/Yang symbol, where both halves contain a spot of the other color. In terms of the Enformationism thesis, I call that the BothAnd Principle. It acknowledges that the world is characterized by opposing forces. Like the human genders, the hard, aggressive, no-nonsense, Masculine element is compatible with the soft, passive, sentimental Feminine element. But. balancing the inherent conflict between those different perspectives is not an easy task --- as illustrated in the tribulations of marriage between male & female.

My original character was typically masculine : focused on Reasoning, Doing, Analysis, and Sensory Evidence. Now, my new, more balanced, personality makes allowance for Emotions, Feelings, Holism, and Intuitive Evidence. I'm still not completely harmonized to the point of being genderless, but I try to be open to other points of view. However, your aggressive, haughty, know-it-all responses -- to a side of the world you are not comfortable with -- seems a bit too Macho for a philosophical forum, where moderation is the key to a calm, reasoned dialogue.

Macho : showing aggressive pride in one's masculinity. [or rationality]

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.
* The Enformationism worldview entails the principles of Complementarity, Reciprocity & Holism, which are necessary to offset the negative effects of Fragmentation, Isolation & Reductionism. Analysis into parts is necessary for knowledge of the mechanics of the world, but synthesis of those parts into a whole system is required for the wisdom to integrate the self into the larger system. In a philosophical sense, all opposites in this world (e.g. space/time, good/evil) are ultimately reconciled in Enfernity (eternity & infinity).
* Conceptually, the BothAnd principle is similar to Einstein's theory of Relativity, in that what you see ─ what’s true for you ─ depends on your perspective, and your frame of reference; for example, subjective or objective, religious or scientific, reductive or holistic, pragmatic or romantic, conservative or liberal, earthbound or cosmic. Ultimate or absolute reality (ideality) doesn't change, but your conception of reality does. Opposing views are not right or wrong, but more or less accurate for a particular purpose.
* This principle is also similar to the concept of Superposition in sub-atomic physics. In this ambiguous state a particle has no fixed identity until “observed” by an outside system. For example, in a Quantum Computer, a Qubit has a value of all possible fractions between 1 & 0. Therefore, you could say that it is both 1 and 0.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html

Fuzzy Logic :
Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued reasoning in which the truth values of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely false.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic


PS___Your hyper-agressive use of smiles ( :lol: :lol: ) indicates a tendency to ridicule what you don't emphathize with. Please try to be cool.

[Gnomon]

In my understanding, this is the beginning of consciousness . . . . What I'm getting at is that there is an evolving process at play always — Pop

I agree, but the metaphorical "awareness" of an atom or ant is not fully-developed. In my graph of cosmic progression, full Consciousness was attained only after Life emerged only a short time ago, on the cosmic scale. Information (EnFormAction) is the causal force of Evolution, but it only causes consciousness after a long period of complexification and integration, as in IIT.


No there is nothing spiritual about my understanding. It is entirely logical. Rigorously logical. — Pop

OK. I'll accept that. In my worldview, Spiritualism was an intelligent rational response to the pre-scientific understanding of ancient people. They saw animals moving & behaving, so inferred that they were motivated by a common invisible force, that they compared to life-giving breath. But they also saw trees moving in the wind, and concluded that invisible Spirits or souls or gods were shaking them. Some even detected evidence for Spirits in crystals that sparkled with light energy. But today we would attribute those phenomena to non-conscious non-living Energy. Hence, the worldview of Panpsychism that is fashionable today among New Agers, and even some scientists, is based on an outdated understanding of causation. That "breath of the gods" notion might have been logical three thousand years ago, but now we are able to make a practical distinction between Information -- which in some forms has a mind-like quality (meaning) -- and Energy -- which sometimes has a life-like quality (motion, animation), but no human-like mental qualities. This picky distinction is necessary for the logic of my thesis to make sense.

Panpsychism is the view that all things have a mind or a mind-like quality.

Spiritualism :
A primitive theory of Cause & Effect, ignorant of physical energies & forces. Enformationism is an update based on generic Information as the “substance” of both Energy & Matter. To Enform is to cause an effect. To be“spiritual” is to discern true causes. Animal Intuition is sufficient to grasp that this reliably follows that. But ancient humans tended to reason beyond the obvious to imagine hidden causes for natural events, such as weather. Invisible spirits & gods were held responsible for both productive rain and destructive storms. But modern reasoning has found mundane causes for those natural phenomena. The chain of causation leads all the way back to the beginning with no miraculous gaps between causes & effect. And each causal event is basically an exchange of energy/information.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page18.html

We know a philosophical zombie is inert with only energy and information. It needs emotion for consciousness. Why should this not work for everything?
The logic is that it should! — Pop

Everything? Are you saying that atoms have emotions, and communicate feelings? Perhaps, in a metaphorical sense. But the fine distinction I make is between non-conscious Energy Effect, and Conscious Affect. Effect is a physical (material) change due to energy input. But Affect is the meta-physical (mental) result of a meaningful input of information. It's the same difference between Motion and Emotion. :chin:

↪Gnomon
Lets not respond to trolls. — Pop

I'm sorry for allowing your thread to go off-topic. But I enjoy sparring with those of different opinions. I don't really expect to change their minds, but it's good exercise for my flabby philosophical muscles. :joke: