Eise

Of course, but we have to distinguish what these inner states are: For the person having the pain it is the pain itself For the observer it is seeing (and hearing?) that a person reports pain

Good point. I was aware (!) that I am a bit vague with 'universal'. What I do not mean is all-knowing. What I do mean goes in the direction that the world of an 'universal anticipator' is not artificially limited, which is, I assume, the same as that there is no principal limit to what we can learn. Now of course there are chess programs that can learn, but this capability is limited to an artificial limited world. So no, the central heating system is not aware. It just has sensors for the faults it can report, and that is not an inner state. You do as if consciousness for inner states is the same as for objects I observe through the senses, in other words, that the 'awareness of a sensation' is in itself again a sensation. I do not believe that. Try it out. If I look at my computer mouse, I am aware of something black. I am also aware that I am aware of something that is black. But for me it stops there. What you really describe is just a logical construction, that does not occur in the mind. I do not understand what you mean here. If I say 'I am aware that you are conscious of pain' I am not reporting that I am in pain. That another person is in pain is not a report of an inner state of mine. But maybe I did not get your point.

It can also give you a more analytical and critical mind. Something for you to study? Not really... But I am doing something useful: I am participating in philosophical questions on the science forum!

No, no and no. Physics can and never will explain the basis of consciousness. I thought we were past this point? Consciousness will be explained by neurology and cognitive science. Its explanation will be based on a functional analysis, not on the accidental stuff that implements these structures. Every physical basis that implements the functions needed has consciousness. That is the reason you can forget to explain consciousness by any fundamental law of physics, because these details do not matter. Awareness is the capability of a system to universally anticipate possible events and how its own actions might affect them. It is also capable to reflect on its own inner states. Every system that shows it has such capabilities, is conscious. Saying that you can imagine such a system but that it is not conscious, is not a valid argument. I would even say: you cannot imagine it. See DD's quote above. Your gut feeling is underestimating how terrible complex the brain is. When thinking about machines, we might think about steam engines, or nowadays' modern computers. That is the thinking behind sayings that consciousness is '...basically just chemistry reactions along a biological substrate that is itself plastic'. No. To say it cryptically: consciousness is basically not basic. It can exist only in very complex structures, how complex we still have to find out. But the basis is the structure, not the substrate. Therefore, if you are looking for consciousness, do not look at basic physical or chemical laws: look for complex structures! You always avoided to answer one of my main questions to you: what form could a possible explanation of consciousness have, that you would really call it an explanation? Two thoughts to that: Would you ever accept an explanation that somehow makes the step from something not conscious, to something that is conscious? If not, the only way out seems to be 'reality is fundamentally conscious' as basic proposition. No explanation possible. (Or become religious, or believe in a soul: which is more or less the same as 'No explanation possible') The concept of 'explanation' implies that something can be explained to others. But that is a 3rd person viewpoint. How can a 3rd person explanation explain 1st person awareness? My conclusion is clear: your road to understanding consciousness is a dead end. To say it pretty bold: it is your gut feeling against my arguments (and of many others, of course...).

Yes, of course. But the question is 'what do I leave out' when I present a complete theory of consciousness. If a theory of consciousness explains how a person honestly reports about his inner states, must we add then some mystical extra? Do you need, together with a report of an inner state, also that the person says 'and I am conscious of this inner state'? Or is the reporting of the inner state consciousness? But of another rainbow. The person next to you does not see the rainbow at exactly the same place. You have your brain, I've got mine. I have my inner states, you have yours. Again, you lay higher constraints for an explanation on consciousness than you do for other phenomena. At some point also the physicist stops explaining. Having a complete theory is enough. There will always be left some basic elements that cannot be explained. Same for consciousness. DD presents his ideas as more or less 'complete' explanation of consciousness. Why should his theory not be the exlplanation of the 'feeling aware of oneself'? If you accept that science cannot explain first person experiences, then you also should not try. Science is just the methodological way of structuring the 3rd person view: so any explanation that you can share with others is bound to fail, because it presupposes the 3rd person view. So also Donald Hoffman's views are no use. BTW, I asked your reaction for the quote from DD's book. Do you have one? Why would the defence of vitalism be wrong, but your defence of the incompleteness of DD's theory not? They have exactly the same structure!

If you literally got nothing out of it, then surely you read it wrong. DD does not ignore the 1st person at all. However, the only way we have access to this 1st person is by a person's actions and speech. So we must find the conditions in the brain and the 'software running on it' that make e.g. the reporting of inner states possible. That is all what science can do, because science is the 3rd person view per definition. DD presents his view on what these conditions are, and refutes all kind of arguments against his views. The crux of your argument is refuted by the character of it: 'I can imagine systems that conform to all these conditions, but are not conscious'. DDs reaction to this is (in my words) that you are lying. Nobody can really imagine this (Chapter 9.5): What is your reaction to this? Right. Here lies the problem, at least it seems so. In reality I am fully convinced that you are aware. Only conscious programs can write such texts as you do. Yes. And I am the only person that is standing in the middle of the rainbow, only I have a glory around my head, and at sunrise above the sea the light mirroring in the water is pointing at me.

Thank you for the accolades. I hope I will not disappoint you. However, you made a lot of statements: o You never had use for philosophy o You never had use for philosophers o You never had respect for philosophy o You never had respect for philosophers Which ones apply? And which did I (hopefully) end? Can you use philosophers now?

Completely right of course. It is even worse what was done here. Dennett has this sentence 'foot noted' So where did you find this quote, MattMVS7?

Minor correction: all elements above helium. From here.

No, it isn't. And what do you mean with just speculation? In the first place there are different kinds of speculation: By lack of knowledge about certain facts, one can speculate about what would be the case (e.g. crime cases). Theory developing in science. One tries to find a theory that explains more facts than existing ones, but which empirical verification (or falsification) is still outstanding. Speculation in science however should always be consistent with most known facts. So 'Einstein was wrong!' is a very bad speculation, because relativity has been confirmed by many facts. Not bothered by any real knowledge in the field, propose all kinds of wild ideas. Thinking about reality 'behind the scenes', e.g. questions about what reality really is, about God, etc. Good philosophy is neither of them, accept maybe some questions in the fourth category; but I personally do not favour such kind of questions. Not quit clear what you mean. Philosophy surely is not about empirical reality. For that we have the sciences. And it certainly is not some 'assertion'. But philosophy is the reflection on how we think about reality. Its aim is to uncover the presumptions we use, ambiguities in concepts, and eventually to criticise them. It tries to find out how we think, and how we should think if we want to get at valid conclusions. No, no, and no. None of the 4 forms of speculation above is philosophy. Philosophy is an academic discipline, a training in clear thinking in the domain of reflections on fundamental questions. Thereby it might be that philosophy never finds final answers: but that does not mean it is therefore speculation. One could say philosophy's aim is intellectual insight. As Strange already did, a philosopher would point out to you that you mixup causes and reasons. There are 2 ways you can explain why a building exists: it exists because stones were piled together with the correct cement between them etc. it exists because people needed a place to live in. The first is the question for the cause, the second for the reason. We know that in nature many things exist without a reason, they only have causes. For the universe as a whole the question might not be that clear, but at least there is no logical reason to assume that there is a reason why the universe exists. The philosopher would show you that your '... why ...' (in 'all that exist must have an explanation why they exist') is ambiguous, because it can refer to an explanation in term of causes, or an explanation in terms of reasons. You shift the meaning of what an explanation is between 'Buildings exist because of the builder's reason to build' and 'all that exist must have an explanation why they exist'.

Sorry, I was not very active recently, so I chime in a bit late. The question supposes that science (which science?) has the same object as philosophy. That is just not true. The question is like 'what is louder, red or green?'. Of course philosophy is not always correct. And science is neither. And again, while philosophy and science have different domains of interest, one cannot be a replacement for the other. Depends on which science. Psychology, history, literature, sociology are not so much accurate as e.g. physics. Philosophy surely tries to be as consistent as possible, but again, even if philosophy would be more accurate than physics, it is not a replacement for it, because it has a different research domain. Every science has its philosophical corners, namely there where the concepts or methods that are used in that science are reflected. Sometimes this is necessary, if a science discovers that it does not make progress, and this might be related to its most fundamental concepts or methods. And sporadically an outsider might notice that some aspects of a science are like an emperor without clothes, and sometimes this person is philosopher. But I think this is pretty seldom. So, no, science does not prove philosophy at all. Philosophers however should take care that they do not leave their area of speciality, and propose ideas that are in conflict with established science. If I repeated some answers already given, I was to lazy now to read the complete thread...

Hi KipIngram, How are you doing with Dennett? Bored? Fascinated? Disgusted? Irritated? 'Arising' is a big word. It is only needed that the structures that would lead to consciousness can be physically realised. I think that 'computing' neither 'arises' from laws of physics. But we know structures that can compute can be realised with physical means. I really think you lay harder constraints on an explanation of consciousness than on other (natural) phenomena. Again, explaining a higher order phenomenon from simpler phenomena necessarily means that these phenomena are not conscious themselves, otherwise you have explained nothing. But if you principally do not accept such a step, from the non-conscious to the conscious, then you have already ruled out to explain it ever.

I wonder what kind of explanation would satisfy you: 'virtus dormitiva' or reductionism? If both are not acceptable for you, what kind of other possible explanation would be? If consciousness principally cannot be explained by processes that are not consciousness, then consciousness cannot be explained at all. But what is an explanation that already contains the explanandum? Why do you expect physics to give an explanation of consciousness? It is like expecting an explanation of life, or evolution, from physics. But huge parts of evolution can be studied without any reference to the underlying mechanism. In the end, Darwin devised his theory of evolution without knowing anything about genes, DNA or hydrogen bonds. It looks like trying to become a good chess player by studying chess computers physically. Dennett surely concentrates on the 'software'. He sees the mind as a fuzzy virtual von Neumann architecture running on the massive parallel functioning brain. So it is not just complexity. It is complexity that enables new kinds of processes, like minds. This is missing the point completely. You cannot use our 'simple' software algorithms as examples of how the brain works. Dennett does a lot more. Why do you think his book has so many pages? What you basically are saying here is that any science of consciousness is impossible. Science is taking the third person perspective. If knowledge must be valid for everybody, then you cannot refer to subjective feelings that might not be valid for everybody. Read on. Dennett gives many examples of how our simple intuitions about the mind are wrong (the 'Cartesian Theatre'), and how his multiple drafts model can solve many riddles about consciousness that first leave us totally perplexed. As an interesting exercise: imagine there are philosophical zombies. (You will also meet them in Dennett' book, if you read on...) A p-zombie, as it is indistinguishable from a normal human per definition, would also report about the beautiful colours of a painting, or would also suffer from the same optical illusions as we do (e.g. report colours that are not really there). Can you imagine such a thing? Would it be logically possible to describe inner states ("That's beautiful!"; "I feel lonely."; "Sorry, I am not in the mood to play chess now." etc), or react on possible inner states of you ("Sorry, I did not want to hurt you.") It is not about these sentences just being displayed on a terminal. The p-zombie is consistent in its utterances and behaviour, but is not conscious. Is that easier to imagine than that it is not a p-zombie at all, and that he is just as human as we are, and thus is conscious?

I think you get yourself in a kind of logical problem here. There are two kinds of explanations: the 'virtus dormitiva' way; and the reductive way. In the first way, the working of a sleeping powder is explained by saying that it contains 'sleeping-force'; in the second way a phenomenon is explained by lower level phenomena that have nothing in common with the phenomenon to be explained. To give an example: life can be explained by assigning all organisms vis vitalis ('élan vital', or 'living force'). Or it can be explained by a lot of chemical reactions working together, reactions that are not alive themselves. You obviously choose the 'virtus dormitiva' way: you explain our consciousness by stating it has conscious constituents. Dennett explains it by processes in the brain that itself are not conscious. If they were, nothing would be explained. So you have a choice: to give up explaining; or accepting that some complex processes constitute subjective experiences. That comment is completely wrong: Dennett argues a chapter of about (I have the book as ebook) 45 pages against several conceptions of qualia. Dennett really takes every bull by the horns.

Slowly I have only one answer to you: read Consciousness Explained, of Daniel Dennett. The answer is not just 'emergence'. Dennett gives a pretty good theory how consciousness emerges from brain processes. In the end I think it will boil down to this: we see that consciousness has to do with the complexity of the brain. A researcher, believing that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, discovers what kind of complex structures reveals this consciousness. Another researcher, believing that consciousness is an emergent property of some structures in the universe, discovers what kind of structures leads to consciousness. The structures they describe will be the same. For me this means that the assumption of consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe is as superfluous as is the assumption that it needs a God to keep everything running. We just have to accept that complex structures can give rise to consciousness, that this is a fundamental fact of the universe. Empirically both kind of theories cannot be distinguished: using Ockhams rasor tells us to ignore superfluous assumptions.

We have to be very precise here. As qualia play no causal role, they have no existence on their own. It is a mistake to see them as some additional entities to the process that runs on the brain. So I would say we also have no qualia. It is just another word for being conscious. I think that if an AI program reports inner states in the same way we do, she has consciousness. I see no reason why not (have you seen the movie 'Her'? It is fun, and something to think about. Or Ex Machina?) I've read Penrose's Shadows of the Mind. I did not find it very convincing. He is misusing Gödel's incompleteness theorem (Hofstadter shows in GEB that such kind of arguments are invalid). I've even once had a small chat with Penrose, and he very honestly admitted that his theory is far from complete. In my own words: it is very speculative. Exactly. I think we learn from physics that combining General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics leads to infinities, but that this problem only plays a role in extreme circumstances, like black holes and the Big Bang. So why we would need a quantum theory of gravity to understand consciousness is totally incomprehensible for me. I think theories of consciousness based on QM, or the possibilities left open by QM can never provide a theory of consciousness, simply because in QM we 'cannot look behind the scenes'. What we observer are quantum events: e.g. the measurement of a particle. There is no way to look behind what we observe (an obvious tautology, but tautologies are per definition true...). We even know that that there are no local hidden variables.

There are different meanings of the word 'ego' of course. What I mean is the feeling that something of 'me' is the same though all the years, from my earliest childhood till now. It is the basis if thinking that this is a 'thing', a mind which is the unchanging subject of all experience and activity, and that according to many people survives death. This means it has an existence of its own, independent of the brain. That is the illusion of the ego: there is no such a thing. That does not mean that there is no consciousness. "The light is on, but there is nobody at home". Just to mention: this is also the classical Buddhist view: the soul has no independent existence of its own. Well, as I described above I see this as different concepts. We assign consciousness to the ego, 'that what is conscious', but that is just a (strong) habit. We are aware of things we see, that we hear, of our thoughts and feelings etc. The ego is so to speak a narrative of the brain, without any independent existence. I don't know, you keep saying that. It's ok if my arguments do not convince you, but I hope at least that you understand them. But again: did you read about David Chalmers, with his 'easy problems' and 'the hard problem'? I recently saw him in 'Through the Wormhole' and he argued for a view that seems very similar to yours: that consciousness is somehow a fundamental attribute of existence. Yes, qualia (singular: quale) is the technical term. However, I think you use it wrongly when you say we experience qualia: qualia are the experience. We experience that something is red: that experience is the 'red quale'. However, I think you get in trouble if you want to answer the question: what is the causal role of qualia? Would an objective observer see the difference when somebody is missing qualia? If they play no causal role in the universe, do they exist then? Dennett heavily criticises the concept of qualia in Consciousness Explained. The chapter's title is Qualia Disqualified. As quote above the text he has following quote: Thrown into a causal gap, a quale will simply fall through it. This does not mean we do not experience the world around and in us. It means that it can be explained by brain processes.

Of course we are conscious. Consciousness in itself is not an illusion. But many aspects of it can be, like unconditional free will, a continuous stream of consciousness in the exactly the same time as 'world time', the ego. Did you look at my link of the 'hard problem'? I think we know what you are talking about. I think there is no sharp threshold of animals that are conscious or not. Evolutionary I think consciousness goes hand in hand with the capability to steer behaviour by observing the environment. A bee that informs her colleagues that 50 meters from the beehive, in NE-direction is a field of clover might have consciousness, even if it is very limited. Let me turn around your 'I cannot imagine' argument: I cannot imagine how an animal can picture its environment, evaluate possible actions with their outcome against its own interests, without being conscious. There is a level in the brain at which it makes symbolic interactions, with representations of itself, its environment and its interests. But we know that symbolic manipulations can exist in rigid, logical, and physical hardware. So consciousness might be the necessary consequence of being such a system.

Well, I think QM shows how we can still do science, even if we have lost perfect predictability: it predicts chance distributions. But as long as some event has a cause, we can still do science. Or it has no cause, and then we are left with randomness. I do not see how randomness can explain mental phenomena. I also do not understand why you mention 'unpredictability' here. Should that be an element of awareness? At most it is an element of creativity. But if I conscious avoid to collide with another car, I think I am fully aware, and very predictable. Somehow you intermingle creativity, awareness and free will. Sure, they are somehow interdependent, but they are not the same. I think, as you do, that awareness is the most difficult problem to understand. If we do understand it, I think the explanation of creativity follows directly. The 'problem' of free will I consider as being solved already. It is a pseudo problem, caused by a wrong understanding of what free will really is. If the mind somehow causes our behaviour, then it is accessible to science. But I think your definition just goes too far. If one really observes, in one self, what free will is, what empirically is given what free will is, we do not have that much: On on side, I do not know where my exact motivations come from. In some situations, where my choice is between equal alternatives, it is often impossible to say why I chose the alternative I did. On the other side, I perfectly know that what will happen next depends on my choice. My decisions matter. And if nobody forces me to do something I normally would never do, it was a free choice. Everything else people associate with free will, like consciousness always preceding actions, or that we 'could have done otherwise' in a categorical sense (and therefore contradicts determinism), is metaphysical humbug that doesn't follow from my honest experience. I agree. But maybe the problem is not science, but the concepts we are using to think about consciousness. And that is why the problem of consciousness is not just a scientific problem, but also a philosophical problem. Daniel Dennett, who had the courage to give his book the title 'Consciousness explained', is a philosopher. But one who uses all of cognitive science to show how his theory works. I think you should read the book. Due to the discussions we have here, I am now rereading it, and really, it is worth the time. But the most difficult in the book is to get rid of some (cherished?) illusions. I think that if we have explained how every behaviour arises, we will not feel the need for a separate theory about consciousness. I think that when all the 'easy problems' are solved, nobody will still see a 'hard problem'.

Hi KipIngram, I think I have good grounds to state that QM processes are not relevant for consciousness. The number of QM events involved in a simple signal process in the neurons and between the synapses is too big, and temperature is too high for individual QM states to play a role. See e.g. Max Tegmark, The importance of quantum decoherence in brain processes: Of course I cannot be 100% sure that QM does not play a role, but it just does not make sense to me. It shifts the explanation of awareness, creativity and free will to a domain where QM states we cannot observe anything. The wave function itself is not an observable. The only thing we can observe in QM is the single event, not what happens immediately before. There is no way that a 'willed' QM event can be distinguished from the 'default quantum noise'. So how could the brain can do that? Also I think that free will must not be explained by some new kind of process in the brain. As free will for me means 'being able to do what you want' no reference to special mechanisms in the brain is necessary. To distinguish free actions from coerced actions we only have to know what a person wants, and what he in fact does. Same for creativity: the 'classical chaos' in the brain is already big enough that randomness because of neural mechanism are more than enough to explain why new ideas can arise. QM randomness would also not be distinguishable from the classical chaos in the brain. So for me it is much too early to throw away the idea that the mind is an emergent phenomenon of the brain. Introducing consciousness as physically fundamental is like introducing God because we do not understand how the universe, and we in it, have arisen.

Yes. But the correlations found do not agree with the premise of the existence of local causes. That means if you want to see consciousness as a quantum phenomenon that consciousness is not just local. Do you want to go that far? (Some people do: accidentally I yesterday saw an episode of 'Through the Wormhole', named 'Is there life after Death'. Stuart Hameroff defends such a kind of theory. Maybe something for you? Hmmm. But we have other examples of emergence. E.g. electrons, protons and neutrons have no colour. However their composites (atoms and molecules) have. Electrons, protons and neutrons do not evolve, but organisms built from them do. Electrons, protons and neutrons do not plan the future: but we, built from them do. Can you give me a reason why that would be impossible, except 'I cannot imagine'? Well I am not saying free will is an illusion. Only a certain definition, namely as uncaused will, it makes no sense. And I don't think you really sense that. What you sense is that you do not know where your thoughts, feelings, motivations etc arise. But that does not mean that they originate from some non-physical domain. Hofstadter would say: you do not have access to the level where your brain 'calculates': you are not aware of your neurons firing. What I think you do sense, is what I said before: that I am able to act according to my wishes and beliefs, and that makes free will. Creativity is the unexpected popping up of new ideas. But that does not mean that they do not have a causal foreplay on levels where your mind has no access to. I do not think this will show ever. We already know that consciousness only arises in animals with brains of a certain complexity. I also think that consciousness exists in different gradations: it is not that insects are not aware at all, and only primates, or even just humans, have consciousness. But this means that your 'conscious atoms' can only express themselves as conscious when they are organised in certain complex structures. If we have discovered exactly what kind of structures these are, the need for postulating 'conscious atoms' will drop away, just as the angels moving celestial bodies dropped away by celestial mechanics. An "I cannot imagine how these celestial bodies are moving without angels pushing them" will not do.

Well, that is a very unusual way of defining free will. What you name free will I would call creativity. And that is not the same as free will at all. I would define free will as follows: A person is said to have free will if he is able to act according his own motivations. This definition covers the daily use of the concept of free will, and does not contradict determinism. (Just to add, one can make several amendments to this definition to make it more precise, but I think for most discussions this suffices.) And also, for new things to happen, we just need new situations that did not occur before. That is also not in contradiction with determinism. I understand your reasoning, but I do not agree. In the first place because of the above: free will just is not doing something unpredictable. In the second place while EPR shows there are no local causes determining the outcome of a single quantum event. In the third place it is not clear at all that the brain functions as a 'quantum-event amplifier'. And even if it turns out to be, how does the brain know which events to amplify to new ideas or actions, and which not? Further, I would like to mention one point again: you lay stronger constraints on an explanation of consciousness, than you do for other phenomena. Or do you think something is still missing in e.g. the theory of electromagnetics. "Yes, I know, but what is really causing the charges?". We know what charges are, because we have a full blown theory about them. If we have a theory that explains what kind of structures are conscious, we have explained consciousness. I think this is more or less the point that MonDie makes here.

But my point is that EPR experiments show that there is no room for hidden local causes. QM has only randomness on offer, and my will is simply not just randomness. Of course not! You are mixing two different discourses: on one side there is the discourse about reasons, motivations, aims, etc. On the other side is the discourse of laws of nature, of energy, of conservation laws, of causes, etc. In the first discourse talking about free will, or coercion, makes sense: in the second it does not. In the second, talking about determinism and randomness makes sense, in the first it doesn't. The problem of free will and determinism is a pseudo problem, that under the correct understanding just evaporates. There is a relevant way in which e.g. a chess computer has a choice: it can move a pawn from E2 to E4, but also E3, but it cannot move to A5. This is true, even if the choice is determined. The same with us: we are determined, but there is relevant meaning of having a choice: if you are in MacDonalds you cannot choose a coq d'orange. But you can choose between a big Mac or a Cheeseburger. That you are a determined system does not change the fact that you choose. So there is a relevant meaning of free will in a determined world: that what will happen next, depends on your choice (opposed to e.g. that what you do depends on the choice of somebody else). Again, you must be aware of the difference between determinism and fatalism. Your choice might be determined, but what will happen depends on your choice. In fatalism, what happens, happens independently of your choices. We are determined, and therefore free will can arise. In a world of randomness this would be impossible. There is some kind of illusion of free will: that it has no causal foreplay. But that my choices have impact is an empirical fact. The idea that we have some kind of absolute free will is a metaphysical idea, that is not supported by any evidence. It was probably just a theological idea, as a solution to the problem of the theodicy. Tell me about these restrictions: give me some empirical evidence that you are restricted by the laws of physics (not the obvious kinds of course, e.g. that you cannot fly, or run faster than light). GEB is not tedious at all! It is fun! But it can be demanding, if you really go through it. But you can try this short cut. But you should really read GEB. It definitely change my view, and gave me a deeper insight of how consciousness can arise in a formal system. Just to say "It is emergence" definitely falls short. But the theories that cognitive science came up with can be subsumed under the label 'emergence'. The real problem for you is that you say "I cannot imagine how a complex mechanism like our brain can be conscious". Now that is not very solid. You step in one stroke from "I cannot imagine it" to "cognitive science is bankrupt". Understanding the brain might be a slightly more difficult problem than the movement of planets and other dead bodies. No. We are machines. Very, very complicated electrical-chemical-biological machines. "Yes, we have a soul, but it’s made of lots of tiny robots." That is the way I do it too. Another way is to use 'raw format': see what happens if you press the button just above the button for 'Bold'. Sometimes my postings get completely messed up, and the only way I can save them is by using the 'raw mode'. There you can use tags, as many other, more primitive forums software, e.g. use the tag

You can try the sandbox.

Hi KipIngram Sorry it took so long for me to get back, but during the week I am so occupied by my work... About EPR: I do not quite understand what you are saying, and how it is an counter argument against mine: that EPR experiment show that there is no underlying, local mechanism in QM, so that QM does not leave room for being influenced by a mind, so to speak under the threshold of QM. No, that is not true. What you are doing here is taking a mind, or soul for granted. But if you see that we are what the brain does, then this makes no sense. Something cannot be coerced by itself. You can be coerced by somebody else: by threatening you, or literally forcing you to do things. But that has nothing to do with determinism. Determinism is not the same as coercion. Determinism is only saying that from certain start conditions only one set of end conditions follow. But that is the course of things, not coercion. Laws of nature force nothing: they just describe how nature flows. What my brain does is really a choice: a choice between possible consequences of several actions I can imagine to do in a certain situation. But such an 'evaluation machine' can be determined. Every chess computer is an evaluation machine in a very limited universe. Why do you think so? Can this feeling not be explained just as well by the immense complexity of the brain? And I think even a chess computer may surprise you by doing a fully unexpected move. Then you haven't read any book that really tries to explain consciousness as emergence. It is much more than just saying 'emergence', like other say 'soul' or 'God'. Really, Read GEB and Dennett's 'Consciousness Explained'. Of course it is a choice! Evaluation of several possibilities, and choosing one, is a choice. This is exactly the evolutionary advantage of consciousness: not to react automatically on some chemical gradient or light source, but have a picture of the environment, about its own position in this environment, to recognise its own interests, its possibilities for actions, evaluating the consequences and then choosing the best option. We see an increase in this capability in animals with increasing brain complexity. So why invoke something else than this (neural) complexity? So you are looking at the wrong place for consciousness if you think it should follow from our laws of physics. You do not become a good chess player by analysing the physical structure of the chess computer that always beats you. Or another example: you do not understand evolution by studying elementary particles. Elementary particles do not evolve in the Darwinian sense. Yet Darwinian evolution exists. Evolution is also an emergent property of complex material structures, called life. You are doing it again... If you use the word 'just' like this, everybody knows that you are leaving something out, namely the most important. You are just a portion of chemical: how can you be conscious? If awareness is somehow fundamental to the universe, why is it that we only see awareness in higher animals? It must have to do something with complexity! If we would have found out what, do you think somebody will still say 'oh but this only works because matter is conscious', or 'and so we have an antenna for the soul-entity; but we do not know still what this soul-entity is'. In Newton's days one could wonder who started to move the planets, or how gravity works (Angels pushing, looking that they push exactly according to the inverse square law...). Yep. But in both case you still have to explain why we have awareness, and e.g. a stone hasn't. And of course it is not just 'sufficient complex', but complex in a certain way. If science understands under what conditions complex structures are aware, then we will have understood awareness. Exactly. Nothing in the simple rules of 'Life' suggests that such complex structures can arise from them: they have even build Turing machines with it. They even replicated 'Life' with 'Life'!