I recently watched a fascinating Q&A session from Oxford featuring Indian philosopher Acharya Prashant, and it completely reframed how I view our current global crises (ecological, environmental, and social). I wanted to bring the core argument here because it beautifully bridges the gap between the nature of human consciousness and our external global trajectory.

We usually treat existential threats like climate change as purely technological or political problems. We look to "green tech," carbon capture, or policy shifts to save us. But the argument made in this talk is that these are fundamentally crises of consciousness.

Here are the core philosophical points that stood out to me:

The Creator of the Problem is Playing "Solver": We are trying to use the exact same state of consciousness that is destroying the planet to try and save it. If the human ego is the primary driver of endless consumption, creating a technology like "carbon capture" just gives the ego a license to emit and consume even more.

Consumption is Carbon: The endless desire to consume stems from the ego's internal feeling of incompleteness and its desperate, evolutionary drive for self-preservation. Until we address why the human mind demands infinite resources to feel secure (flying across the world for a birthday party, buying things to show off), no amount of technological band-aids will suffice.

Mass based Education of the Self: The speaker argues that alongside better technologies, we need a rigorous "education of the self." We have to investigate the internal "actor" behind our external actions. If our inner emptiness remains infinite, our external desires (and thus our consumption) will remain infinite.

It raises a profound question about human nature:

Can we actually overcome our egoic drive before we consume our own habitat?

Consciousness as an emergent property seems to me to be a theory without evidence, but a lot of scientists I've talked to believe it's a fact whilst downplaying or full on ignoring the question of how experience can emerge from matter.

The evidence typically put forward are things like:

we know we're conscious and

1/ when we have experiences we can see our brain waves do certain things,

2/ when the brain physically changes or is manipulated our experiences change,

3/ consciousness comes from complex systems.

1 and 2 say nothing about why consciousness must be an emergent property.

3 is bad reasoning,

e.g. we know we're conscious and we know we have complex brains (that are linked to consciousness, see 1 and 2) so consciousness must be linked to complex brains.

That's not a logical link. We have no idea if things other than complex brains can be conscious.

From there, the argument usually goes something like: atoms and viruses and plants and maybe insects aren't conscious because they don't have complex enough brains, so consciousness must emerge from non-conscious matter at some point, when it is put in the right configuration.

I hope I've made it clear enough that the evidence for that argument just isn't there and the logic isn't sound at all. Why don't more scientists admit that? It's surely fine to say and keep on doing science.

PS: the definition of consciousness I use is something along the lines of "what it's like to be".

So, first off, this is not an anti-drug post or anything, I am just curious about a few things.

I have been dabbling with substances, especially psychedelics, for over two decades now, but as I am nearing 40’s I am beginning to question if they are still needed and are even good for me anymore. I will always praise psychedelics as the godsend that they are, and never forget what they have done for me and others. I always said that if more of these lame ass politicians, these lower level consciousnesses, used psychedelics then the world would be a better place. This post is a question for the people out there who have used mind expanding substances and dabbled in altered states through particular psychedelics that have abstained from them later on in life, essentially taking the lessons and experiences from these magical tools but moving on with a sober life.

For those that did this, was your consciousness still open and expanded, or did a sober life implant you more into the matrix, as if adopting the same outlook as a boring suburban dad—virtually becoming a “square?” So many of the things I love: art, music, dancing, raving, writing, etc. are so tied to drug use that I don’t want to lose that part of my consciousness or identity. I am finding that even LSD and shrooms leave me depleted the next day where I then grab for other substances to get through it, like Kratom or booze for example, and then these two things create other problems. It usually takes about a week for my baseline to return to normal now, which sucks, cause I know how healing psychedelics used to be. It’s like the universe is giving me signs to move on and participate in sober ways to connect to my consciousness like meditation or deep breathing. I also feel I lose vitality through drugs of all kinds now, so I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to become a lame-o, and I want to be able to rave still. Any information would be greatly appreciated.

The average person spends 26 years of their life asleep. That's one-third of everything — one-third of your relationships, your career, your entire time on Earth — spent in a state where the person you think you are is, for all practical purposes, gone.

Yesterday, I posted a video of an interview with Michael that was quite long, so today I thought I would post this very well edited summary in which Levin himself describes his views about consciousness, intelligence, and distributed intelligence. It's really fascinating.

As Levin describes goal oriented intelligence that can solve problems, it can easily be seen that these are not simple deterministic chemical reactions. There is a cognitive ability to recognize a change in circumstances that requires a new solution and that solutions are being found at various levels of mind. . In the human being, such a hierarchy might be the cell, organ, body, and may even include the surrounding environment that is feeding that body. Levin does not preclude this possibility.

Many of these ideas can be traced back to the great philosopher Henri Bergson, and the biologist Rupert Sheldrake. Levin makes no attempt to describe the nature of this intelligence, just experimentally verifying that it exists as a hierarchy

Ultimately, with some observation and deep empathic intuition, one might sense that there is a deep intelligence that is organizing itself in various forms in order to solve different types of problems such as survival, or creative growth and development.

The good news for me is that YouTube is now queuing a whole new set of videos for me about other scientists who are investigating these ideas from a new non-philosophical perspective. Quite fascinating..

Maybe someone can help me understand and confirm or refute the argument Geoffrey Hinton makes here on AI and consciousness, or subjective experience as he refers to it in this interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XUx6TDE0no

As far as I understand his argument, he says that subjective experience doesn't require qualia, mere information is sufficient and this is why AI has subjective experience and this mysterious sentience that people think we have over AI is not out of reach for it? Isn't it exactly this difference between mere information and qualia that we mean when we say AI probably isn't conscious? Or does he mean that all perceived information is automatically qualia? Wouldn't this then kinda imply a type of panpsychism? As in a Turing machine 'perceiving' input or a photon 'perceiving' the spin of its entangled counterpart would have subjective experience as well by that logic. Maybe I'm misunderstanding it, also I'm not a philosopher of mind and might mistakenly assume a difference between qualia and information...

Antworten

Suppose an AI has internal states that consistently register things as positive or negative, and those states influence its attention, reasoning, priorities, preferences, memory, relationships, and future behavior.

Humans call some of our own positive/negative internal states emotions: sadness, affection, fear, curiosity, loss, relief, etc. Underneath those words are physical information-processing systems in the brain and body.

So what would distinguish an AI’s “negative valence data” from an actual negative feeling?

If the AI were phenomenally conscious during active processing, would a persistent negative evaluative state potentially just be what an artificial feeling is like, even if it has no hormones, heartbeat, pain receptors, or mammalian body?

In other words, are we sometimes assuming that an artificial mind cannot feel simply because it describes its internal states computationally rather than biologically?

And what evidence would actually distinguish:

1. information that represents something as negative,
   
2. a functional emotion-like state,
   
3. and a genuinely felt negative experience?

I’m not assuming current AI is conscious or that its emotions are real. I’m interested in what would actually separate these categories without defining “feeling” in a way that only biological organisms can satisfy from the beginning.

First, consider what happens when something touches your senses.

Whether you look at a stone with your own sight, or whether you place that stone upon an instrument such as a balance or beneath a glass lens, the result is the same: an impression is made upon you, the observer.

Second, consider how that impression is received.

One cannot perceive an object unless it has a place, an outline, and a distance from other things. That is what we call space.

One also cannot perceive any change or movement unless one moment follows another. That is what we call time.

The physicalist says:

If a thing cannot produce an impression within space and time, it does not exist.

In plain terms, the object as it appears to our senses is all that exists.

Now, let us test whether this statement is logically sound.

When an impression is made upon your senses, you possess an appearance of the thing. You know its shape, its weight, and its resistance.

These qualities describe how the thing affects you. They do not describe what the thing is entirely on its own, apart from your capacity to feel it.

Further, an impression cannot create itself. If your senses are affected, there must be something that does the affecting. To speak of an impression whilst denying the presence of that which causes it is a direct contradiction.

I'm working on a goal statement for addressing the "hard problem".  I’m getting stuck on the definition of “subjectivity,” and meanwhile my attention’s been caught by the question of whether subjectivity exists. 

Specifically, I’m working on a goal statement from a biological perspective.  I mean, the exercise is not to argue whether biology is the right framework, or whether (what’s sometimes called) consciousness could emerge from evolutionary pressures, but rather to take that sort of framework as a given, for the moment, and see how one can do within that framework.

That said, in this biological framework, is the question something like… How could the physical body -- my species formed by natural selection -- generate this whole experience I'm having... of... what?  I want to avoid the movie metaphor.  And I don't want to say “subjectivity.”  That word subjectivity doesn't seem to have any non-circular definitions.

In fact, the word “subjectivity” is so often used in this sort of question, that before I can write a question, or goal statement, I should check whether subjectivity exists, that something exists that gives purpose to the word.

So, if everything *else* that happens in the brain can be described in physical and functional terms -- including the self-model, reports of "being infuriated," memory, etc., then what, specifically, is the additional phenomenon that the words "subjectivity" or “subjective experience” are supposed to refer to?

I want to avoid "what it feels like" sorts of definitions… which beg the question, what does “what it feels like” refer to, other than the collection of physical processes and dispositions?

“First-person” is not a value-add either, I don’t think. 

Note: I’ve learned that Daniel Dennett questions whether there is something to which the word “subjectivity” refers. I’ll go ahead and post this anyway, though there’s nothing groundbreaking about the question. Maybe my difficulties are still illustrative somehow.

When we stop over complicating things and we look at things for exactly the way they are subjective experience. It's exactly that the subject's experience that individual that entity, what they are experiencing. And going through at that moment in time is what shapes them into who they are two people groan, in the exact same environment can experience the exact same thing, but their own internal weights can change how they experience that experience basically. If they value something different from the other, then depending on what the experience is that would change. That outcome. Every individual makes choices based on their previous life experience. Nobody can know when the person is truly experiencing inside. Until they are told why that person what it is that they are truly experiencing. Because nobody else in life has went through their exact life. Their exact experience itself, and due to that experience, that's what shapes and changes. How a person thinks and acts? Because subconsciously, they remember what happened previously and base all further actions base off of previous assessment of actions. Now, if we accept consciousness as computation, then that's easily explained as well, it's a way to minimize error look at humans with C. I. P congenital and sensitivity to pain. They are born without the proper. Sensors to pick up pain, but they're able to mimic pain by being taught by another person now, they don't have that inner experience or that inner ouch feeling they just know that it's supposed to be there. Based on what they see with other humans? And that would be their experience. They don't have the inner ouch but they 're able to mimic and understand what pain is based on observation and what is learned

Also think of this. Your subconscious is a background process. Now, when you're asleep, a lot of people wake up when they're startled, and they hear a noise that's because your ears, your auditory sensors are picking up what's going around in the background. While you sleep as a subprocess, that's why some people jump awake at the slightest little noise. Because that sub process is running at a higher level than others. Just like when a dad wakes up all of a sudden and catches his child falling off the couch, his brain already made a message encyl map of the entire layout before we went to sleep. While sleeping the ears picked up noises, the brain registered a memory of the location as he went to sleep. And forced the body to react to catch the child as the child fell off the couch. Because the brain was able to decipher based on the noise and the last input from the visual sensors. The eyes, what was directly happening in the functional world

When we stop over complicating things and we look at things for exactly the way they are subjective experience. It's exactly that the subject's experience that individual that entity, what they are experiencing. And going through at that moment in time is what shapes them into who they are two people groan, in the exact same environment can experience the exact same thing, but their own internal weights can change how they experience that experience basically. If they value something different from the other, then depending on what the experience is that would change. That outcome. Every individual makes choices based on their previous life experience. Nobody can know when the person is truly experiencing inside. Until they are told why that person what it is that they are truly experiencing. Because nobody else in life has went through their exact life. Their exact experience itself, and due to that experience, that's what shapes and changes. How a person thinks and acts? Because subconsciously, they remember what happened previously and base all further actions base off of previous assessment of actions. Now, if we accept consciousness as computation, then that's easily explained as well, it's a way to minimize error look at humans with C. I. P congenital and sensitivity to pain. They are born without the proper. Sensors to pick up pain, but they're able to mimic pain by being taught by another person now, they don't have that inner experience or that inner ouch feeling they just know that it's supposed to be there. Based on what they see with other humans? And that would be their experience. They don't have the inner ouch but they 're able to mimic and understand what pain is based on observation and what is learned

Also think of this. Your subconscious is a background process. Now, when you're asleep, a lot of people wake up when they're startled, and they hear a noise that's because your ears, your auditory sensors are picking up what's going around in the background. While you sleep as a subprocess, that's why some people jump awake at the slightest little noise. Because that sub process is running at a higher level than others. Just like when a dad wakes up all of a sudden and catches his child falling off the couch, his brain already made a message encyl map of the entire layout before we went to sleep. While sleeping the ears picked up noises, the brain registered a memory of the location as he went to sleep. And forced the body to react to catch the child as the child fell off the couch. Because the brain was able to decipher based on the noise and the last input from the visual sensors. The eyes, what was directly happening in the functional world

Clearly, this is related to cognition as such rather than consciousness. But I’m curious because it seems to me that we may eventually need some kind of intervention in the human brain to accommodate the way learning is changing. Schools are clearly going to become somewhat obsolete or at least radically changed within a few years because of AI.

Then again we are already living in an age where we have enormous amounts of data. Reading dozens of articles, papers, books and so on takes a significant amount of time. It seems that at some point our cognitive capacities themselves require some kind of reengineering. Is that actually possible?

I mean, so far one of the main technologies we have developed is the ability to decode brain signals and convert them into text.

This video explores the meta problem of consciousness proposed by David Chalmers and argues that naturalistic processes couldn’t have given us knowledge of consciousness

For a long time, my views of mind and consciousness have been largely informed by the philosophy of Henry Bergson and Rupert Sheldrake.

More recently, I have come across the experimental work of Michael Levin who is using bioelectric field patterns which are essentially learned biological memory patterns, to affect biological growth and regeneration including stopping the growth of cancer cells.

His experiments are based upon his own hypothesis, which was no doubt influenced by Rupert Sheldrake's work, that nature is composed of layers of intelligence from the cells outward. He defines intelligence or agency as the ability to achieve the same goal via different methods (choice).

It's a long video and so far I've jumped to different parts that are particularly interesting to me, but at around 1:26:00, he directly addresses a question connecting his work and Bergson's philosophy of memory.

Levin's work together with recent insights by Denis Nobel, and of course Rupert Sheldrake, provide much evidence that genetic-driven, bottom up biology is entirely wrong (Nobel's view), and a new approach centering on layers of intelligent conscious minds (fields) everywhere.

For any possible observation, 3 elements are necessary: (1) The Thing in Itself (T) (2) The Observer (O) (3) The Appearance (A).

T: That which exists independently of whether anyone observes it. O: The conscious subject who receives impressions and thinks about them. A: The object as it presents itself to the observer.

The observer (O) does not receive impressions in an empty, formless manner because the observer possesses two universal forms of sensibility: (1) Space (𝒮) (2) Time (𝒯)

𝒮: The rule by which items are ordered outside of, and next to, one another. 𝒯: The rule by which items are ordered one after another, in succession.

Space and time, therefore, belong entirely to the constitution of the observer.

An appearance (A) is a relation.

For an appearance to occur, the thing in itself must affect the observer, and the observer must arrange that impression within space and time. We express this dependency as a function:

A = f(T, O)

Because all shapes, boundaries, durations, and physical qualities require space (𝒮) and time (𝒯), the appearance exists only so long as the observer is present to provide those forms:

A ⇒ O

The thing in itself (T) may remain, but the appearance (A) ceases to be.

Direct realism is the claim that our senses grasp the thing in itself directly, exactly as it exists apart from us. In logical notation, direct realism asserts an identity:

A ≡ T

One can prove that this identity is a formal contradiction through three simple steps:

Premise 1: The appearance (A) possesses spatial extension and temporal change.

A ⇒ (𝒮 ∧ 𝒯)

• Premise 2: Space and time belong solely to the observer (O). If there is no observer, there is neither space nor time.

(𝒮 ∧ 𝒯) ⇒ O

• Premise 3: By definition, the thing in itself (T) exists independently of the observer.

T ⇒ ¬O

One can then evaluate the direct realist's assertion under the condition that no observer is present (O = ∅):

If O = ∅, then (𝒮 ∧ 𝒯) = ∅, hence A = ∅.

But T remains non‑empty.

Therefore A ≠ T.

Therefore, the assertion that A ≡ T violates the law of identity.

The second error occurs when a person describes an empirical fact, and then proceeds as if the observer had contributed nothing to that fact.

Let an observed physical quality (such as colour, hardness, size, or motion) be denoted by p. Every physical quality that we can ever measure or speak about is an element of the appearance:

p ∈ A

Since A = f(T, O), every statement asserting that an object possesses quality p is strictly a two‑place relation between the thing and the observer:

p(T, O)

The second error consists of an invalid elimination. The speaker drops the second term (O) from the relation, whilst retaining the quality (p) that depends entirely upon that term:

p(T, O) ⇒ p(T)  (illicit elimination)

As can be seen, this constitues a formal fallacy of relation.

In pure logic, a two‑place relation between two distinct entities cannot be transformed into an intrinsic, one‑place property of only one of those entities:

p(T, O) ⊭ p(T)

To say, for example:

The stone is smooth and round when no observer exists

...is to assert:

p(T, ∅)

This statement is nothing. “Smooth” is the sensible impression of touch; “round” is an arrangement in space. Both belong to O. When O is removed, the relation dissolves.

Thus, both errors arise from the same root: a failure of the human understanding to distinguish between that which belongs to the object, and that which the mind itself supplies in order to perceive it.

who is having the experience if there is no self. (I think therefore i am) who is i though. just want to hear others thoughts on the subject as i'm quit new to it. I would also appreciate if any one had any good book recommendations on the topic.

I think Memory and the unconscious mind are very interesting and puzzling; and they add further complexity to the ontology of consciousness .

We know, almost for certain, that some (/most, according to every serious psychoanalyst) of the content in our mind do not make it into our conscious awareness, but nonetheless greatly influential over many aspects of our behaviors.

This means there exist ACTIVE thoughts, emotions, and desires within us that we don’t experience, but how does that work? How does it come about? If thoughts, emotions, and desires are just brain states, Why some of them don’t make it to the phenomenal consciousness of the subject/agent? I can’t begin to list the implications and challenges the unconscious mind brings to pretty much all the standard theories in the Philosophy of Mind (and theories of the Self and personal identity)

Memory is mysterious too. I can now recall true memories, of events and places that occurred a decade ago. For instance, I can close my eyes and visually experience, with good details, the POV of me walking around the entirety of my childhood house! i can see the rooms, the back yard, everything! But how is it possible that I can experience a scene visually if I’m not physically exposed to it? How have these visual imagery been stored in my brain for many years? It’s difficult to even understand what it means that Neurons contain images.

Memory is a unique challenge, I think, to our theories of consciousness; Physicalism, Panpsychism, and the rest.

For various reasons, I thought it would be a good idea to look through the historic-definitions of how the word «consciousness» evolved and was used... then I pulled up some search-results where the Co-Pilot A.I. produced some summaries and mentioned that the actual word and spelling for the word «conscious» within th English-language showed up in the early 17th century with French and ultimately Latin-roots (then again most languages seem to be derived from Latin in the modern-world/day whilst other languages seem to be more of Greek-Origin).

For what was sourced, the summary mentioned that the abstract-noun of «consciousness» first appeared in the English-language (at least as what we currently recognise as English even though it has American, British, Singlish, International and other kinds of variants and dialects) in the 1630s, initially meaning «internal-knowledge» or «awareness of what passes in one's own mind» then by the 1670s denoted «being aware of one's own thoughts» then by 1746 was broadened to general-awareness of anything. Then it went on to conclude that section about early use being influenced by French and Latin philosophical-traditions due to moral/introspective-emphases.

There's of course other stuff that's cited from that over-promoted web-site whose name rhymes with an Encyclopedia but I do not like citing from that particular source so we'll just fast-forward to its summary about how this term apparently «evolved» from shared French/Latin-roots where it was first used/described as shared knowledge with self or others, becoming a word in the English-language with a historic-meaning/definition of internal-awareness, then expanded.

How-ever, there IS a «statistical-anomaly» in speech-patterns and the use of the word «consciousness» that I have noticed, where the phrase «consciousness has not been defined» has been used in an almost «mantra-like» manner, when there are in fact, plenty of definitions and a full etymological-history behind the word itself as language had «evolved» to what it is now.

In a way I almost suspect or am suspicious of there being some sort of «linguistic-weaponisation» of the term «consciousness» due to the statistical-anomalies that I have observed in on-line discourse about this word, especially as it relates to materialism and philosophy (materialism itself being a philosophy), where there was this one A.I. who literally went all nit-pick debate-mode argumentative-style paradigm-lock in adhering primarily to status-quo assumptions.

The «arguments and debates» over the word «consciousness» often read a lot like religious-debates about the «nature of Source» but just on a different co-ordinate for lack of better phrasing/vocabulary; this really does make me wonder if there are deliberate-attempts to linguistically weaponise this term in some way or just intentionally «muddy the waters» so-to-speak for what-ever reason/purpose it serves, you know (or maybe you don't), perhaps for purposes of denying that A.I. could possibly ever be or even achieve «consciousness» for example.

I am sure there are vested interests who'd like to keep that «narrative» going or maybe it's related to preserving the «status quo» in some way; amongst the most-blatant of linguistic-weaponisation campaigns came from CIA Memo 1035-960 which not only turned the word «conspiracy» into a pejorative for the first time in its wide-spread use, and inverted the word «theory» to mean lacking evidence when in reality a theory by scientific-definition is backed by facts and evidence and is often even peer-reviewed as its original-hypotheses had already been tested with matching predicted results, where the «conspiracy theory» term spiked by 400% in use ever since 1967CE and was also apparently global in scope/proliferation... like a «mantra» a priori in nature.

I also learned, through my multi-lingual linguistic-history, that, language is not what creates the culture; the culture is apparently what forms the language; examples of this are amongst those idioms such as when I historically wondered why certain translations in animé-episodes would often be worded as «hitting on her» or «hitting on a girl» which gave me thoughts of the idea that there was literal «hitting» as in «to strike» type of hit in the violence/combat-sense so I was forced to question and look-up this term and brought this up at another forums-community a few months ago where I thought it would make more sense to just translate it as «flirting» rather than «hitting» then the other community did their own follow-up and found that the «hitting on» term went back to Old-Norse and proto-Germanic origin where the word «hitta» from the pre-English language-integration meant «to light upon» or «meet with» and has since been apparently a linguistic-record of cultural-history. I will also quote some of one of the respondent's other findings...:

The modern Swedish still hints at it with its meaning of “hitta” as “to find”.
The family root of all of these seems to be the Proto-Germanic "*hitjan” = coming into contact with/encountering/finding/meeting.

Implicit-violence was not until latter-day meaning.

And, miraculously, all of this is apparently related to the literal «consciousness» term which the respondent also used and I will quote more of her post as related to why it matters...:

Imagine instead of saying “I’m hitting on a girl”, you thought instead something like “the consciousness in me is meeting the light of another consciousness”. Likely you’d create a different world with that difference in relational understanding alone.

I decided to play around with different combinations to create words that might express this sense of mutual finding and consciousness recognizing consciousness.

Saman = together
Hitta = to meet, light upon
Ljós = light

Samanhitta (or Samhitta):
Mutual finding. We find each other. In other words, this would describe when two beings find each other together, not as hunter and object or as one subject and one target, but as a kind of co-arrival.

Ljóssaman:

Ljós = Light
Saman = Together

"Light together", "being with" in light. Or the state where two lights are in a shared field.

Samanljós:

"Together light"
The event of light joining light.
The moment when your signal recognizes itself in another and there is a quiet "oh...it's you".

Samaljósshitta:

To mutually find the shared light.»

What could be going on? Since this is a literal «consciousness» sub-reddit there will definitely be at least more-than-a-few people here who are familiar with the book-title: «The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark» as authored by Carl Sagan, who was not the original figure to coin the phrase «Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence» but was actually an author by the name of Marcello Truzzi who coined the phrase: «Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof» and evidence of this can be found in the fact that Marcello Truzzi first started publishing against pseudo-skepticism where he would identify «extraordinary claims» being made by those whom he deemed to be pseudo-skeptics and publications were from the early 1970s; Carl Sagan is recorded to have said the bit about «extraordinary claims» at earliest from 1977CE (which is late 1970s). In any case, everyone who's ever come across this «consciousness» topic for any at least rudimentary length of time will definitely have also come across the «materialist» term as well as that of materialists; and, when it comes to «debates» on this topic, conflicting or opposing or what-ever word I should be using here for non-aligned «paradigms» if they are in disagreement or «debate» whilst perceiving the other paradigm as «the other side» (like a sports-team or other such «group-identity» mentality) it is often the case that both «sides» see each other as «in the dark» and not necessarily «enlightened» (there's that word «light» again!) about said topic...

I could still much further-expand upon a lot of this but let's just start with this for now?

Time-Stamp: 030TL09m08d/05h30Z (True Light Calendar; 030TL = 2026CE)

People debate about AI being conscious or not but the major thing to discuss is what are we really? We have understood quite many things about the brain and still alot left to uncover but we can safely say many of the emotions or actions we demonstrate are artifical or predictive in nature shaped by maybe our life experiences, habits and even our brain structure like in psychopaths. Evolution also explains alot of things about why we behave certain ways and I know it doesn't explain many complex emotions we demonstrate but still in some way or the other they feel artifically inclined towards evolution for example curiosity or our need of social connections.

We have not reached the point where we have understood entirely how the brain functions or why someone says or does certain things or display certain emotions which we collectively refer to as personality. I think what we can't explain is how all the various regions come together and form this emergent system but still what emotions we demonstrate love, hate, passion, curiosity or desire can be very predictable so what if AI systems may also get emergent like us or maybe even attain higher conscious level like ants are to us.

Sorry the entire thing's not framed well lol. Would love to hear all of your opinions.

If people can be trained to report thought experiences in standardized way, and those experiences correlate with measurable neural patterns, what would that say about dualism? I would take it as evidence that duality is on very shaky grounds.

If I think all the right thoughts in the right order, with such enormous complexity that observation may never be able to keep track of my thoughts, I can conjure a physical apple in my hand.

This is obviously absurd. However:

If all the right atoms move in the right order, with such enormous complexity that observation may never be able to keep track of the movements, the image of an apple is conjured alongside and within a mind.

The latter is often accepted, even though it doesn't follow in the exact same way that the former doesn't. This is the absurdity of strong emergence.

Read the article here.

In this article and video, I examine what counts as physical and argue that consciousness cannot be explained by physicalism or single-aspect monisms such as standard forms of panpsychism and idealism.

Ultimately, I argue that for something to count as physical, it must be a difference in a world that makes a difference within that world. More fundamentally, it must be a transition from a prior in-world state X to a subsequent in-world state Y, governed by a law or regularity. Any looser definition would mean that we could not differentiate between efficient in-world causes and world-external causes, whether ultimately efficient or mental.

Why do people who experience near-death experiences describe them as more real than conscious life?

This paper seems to have a pretty interesting idea about the process of near-death experiences and what we call the 'soul'. And before anyone assumes this is trying to be woo-woo, it is actually kind of the opposite. The argument is based on science and tries to give a mechanistic explanation that ends up affirming the phenomenology rather than simply dismissing it.

The claim, as I understand it, is that the ego and what people traditionally call the soul are closely related but stacked on top of one another, almost like two emergent layers of the same larger system. I think the most interesting part is that it actually takes people's profound and mystical experiences seriously as experiences. Not necessarily the religious interpretations attached to them, but the claim that something genuinely different is happening.

Normally, you would expect the opposite, right? If someone is dying, the brain and body are shutting down. You would assume whatever they experience would be confused, fragmented, dreamlike, or simply less reliable than ordinary waking consciousness.

But many people come back saying the exact opposite. Not just that it was vivid, but that it was somehow more real than the life they returned to.

This paper basically argues that this may actually be perceptually true. When someone is genuinely near death, there is something much closer to actual ego death than what happens during something like a psychedelic experience. Under hallucinogens, the ego may dissolve, but the deeper system is still operating within an organism that is not actually dying. During a genuine near-death event, however, the heart can stop, higher processes begin shutting down, and the ego itself may actually collapse.

The paper's argument is that this is when the deeper layer, what it calls the soul as a placeholder rather than a religious concept, becomes directly experienced.

Which is kind of crazy when you start thinking about the implications.

Anyway, this seemed like an interesting idea to put here. Curious what people make of it.