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  • Dirty Secrets of Consciousness by David Chalmers

Join David Chalmers as he delves into the fascinating discussion of consciousness.

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Keywords: Consciousness, Dirty Secrets, Chalmers

While the day in, day out, year in, year out paid job of computer programmers is to make viable (symbolic) systems that ACTUALLY WORK in the real world, physicists, mathematicians and philosophers still haven’t got a clue what the elements of a viable system are.

Hence another old video featuring physicists, mathematicians and philosophers who continue to struggle with a conceptual toolbox that is missing half the conceptual tools that are needed to construct a viable system, a viable moving world.

The missing parts of the conceptual toolbox are the logical connectives (like IF, AND, OR, IS TRUE and THEN) that, as people whose year-in year-out paid job is to make systems that actually work know, are what is needed to turn equations and numbers into something that more closely resembles a viable system, a viable moving world.

Logical connective statements (statements including IF, AND, OR, IS TRUE and THEN) represent the necessary time-place point-of-view aspects needed if you want to construct something that represents a viable system, a viable moving world.

And clearly, these necessary logical connective aspects are the very same aspects of the universe that are the basis of higher-level consciousness and free will.

But, as expected, and missing half the necessary tools in the explanatory toolbox, all that David Chalmers can say about consciousness is:

  1. We can’t define it
  2. We can’t measure it
  3. We can’t explain it (i.e. the subjective experience, “the hard problem”)
  4. We don’t know what it does, we don’t know the function of consciousness
  5. We can’t ignore it

And as expected, and missing half the necessary tools in the explanatory toolbox, all that David Chalmers can ask is:

  • What is an observer?
  • What distinguishes observation from registration?
  • What is the theoretical role of consciousness in physical theory? What is the role of observation and consciousness in physical theory?

…………………............................…..

The mistake that David Chalmers has made is to assume that physics' symbolic equations and numbers could represent a viable system. But the correct way to look at it is to say that:

(the consciousness of physicists and mathematicians) + (the agency of physicists and mathematicians) + (the symbolic equations and numbers)

is what actually represents a viable system.

Physicists, mathematicians and philosophers STILL can’t face up to the problems created when man-made symbols are used to symbolically represent the world.

    Lorraine Ford
    The FQxI conference, where David Chalmers was talking, was titled:
    “If A Tree Falls:
    The Physics of What Happens and Who Is Listening”.

    So a “foundational question” is:
    If tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?
    The answer is: If tree falls in a forest, it makes sound waves, vibrations in a medium, but sound is the experience of animals whose ears interact with sound waves.

    Similarly:

    • Colour is the experience of animals whose eyes interact with light waves, colour is not a property of light waves;
    • Taste is the experience of animals eating food, taste is not a property of the food; and
    • Meaning is the experience of educated human beings whose eyes interact with light waves coming from alphabetic or other symbols on a page or screen, meaning is not a property of the written or spoken symbols.

    But physicists, mathematicians and philosophers STILL can’t face up to the problems that arise when man-made symbols are used to symbolically represent the physics of the world. Instead, there are still endless, absurd, hair-splitting, Chinese room-type arguments.

    In fact, the correct way for physicists and mathematicians to look at their equations is to say that:

    (the consciousness of physicists and mathematicians) + (the agency of physicists and mathematicians) + (the symbolic equations and numbers)

    is what actually represents a viable system, a viable world.

    The mistake that David Chalmers has made is to assume that physics' symbolic equations and numbers alone can represent a viable system, a viable world, and to assume that the problem we face is to explain consciousness when what was represented by the symbolic equations was already perfectly adequate and viable without consciousness.

    The truth is that what was represented by the symbolic equations was NOT viable without the consciousness and agency of human beings.

    The correct way for physicists and mathematicians to look at their equations is to say that:

    (the consciousness of physicists and mathematicians) + (the agency of physicists and mathematicians) + (the symbolic equations and numbers)

    is what actually represents a viable system, a viable world.

      Lorraine Ford
      It is not entirely true, what David Chalmers said about consciousness, back in 2016. He said:

      1. We can’t define consciousness
      2. We can’t measure consciousness
      3. We can’t explain consciousness (i.e. the subjective experience, “the hard problem”)
      4. We don’t know what consciousness does, we don’t know the function of consciousness
      5. We can’t ignore consciousness

      What he said is not entirely true, because we CAN define consciousness (1 above), we CAN explain consciousness (3 above), and we CAN know what consciousness does (4 above), in the very same way that we define, explain and know the low-level energy, momentum, and position categories that exist in the world.

      How one defines, explains and knows energy, momentum and position is: we use special symbols to represent these categories, and we use other special symbols to represent the relationships between these categories and the other low-level categories in the world.

      These symbolic statements, that represent the energy, momentum and position categories, are not the actual “living” real-world categories; these symbolic statements merely REPRESENT the low-level real world on paper or screen.

      Similarly, we can symbolically represent low-level consciousness, seen as the necessary-to-a-viable-system, on-the-spot, time-place, point-of-view aspect of the world, as something like (e.g.):

      (position=number1) AND (momentum=number2) IS TRUE.

      The above statement is how one would represent low-level, on-the-spot, time-place, point-of-view information about the world. As has been shown by computer programs and computer systems, this is the type of collated "TRUE" information about a system that is necessary in order for a viable moving system to exist.

      Of course, it is true that we can never measure consciousness (2 above) because, while low-level position and momentum are aspects of the world that can potentially be measured, a low-level aspect of the world representable as “(position=number1) AND (momentum=number2) IS TRUE” is not a thing that can be measured.

      This is irrespective of whether low-level position and momentum can simultaneously be measured, or whether low-level position and momentum simultaneously exist: what CAN'T be measured is something representable by a statement containing the symbols "AND" and "IS TRUE". The symbols "AND" and "IS TRUE" in a statement symbolise time-place, on-the-spot point-of-view, collated, consciousness aspects of the world.

        Lorraine Ford
        Is it reasonable to condense the world, with its stars and planets and mountains and rivers, and trees and flowers, and people and animals, into a few low-level symbolic equations of physics, on paper or screen? And the answer is “yes”, because these equations and numbers symbolically represent seemingly-universal low-level underlying structural relationships that have been experimentally found to exist in the world.

        Similarly, is it reasonable to condense consciousness, with its experience of reds and greens, and its awareness of one’s internal situation, and its awareness of one’s situation with respect to the external surrounding world, into low-level symbolic statements which include “AND” symbols and “IS TRUE” symbols, on paper or screen? I would say that the answer is “yes”, because these statements represent necessary, though unmeasurable, low-level time-place point-of-view collated on-the-spot aspects of a viable moving system.

          4 days later

          Lorraine Ford
          Re consciousness, agency, and time:

          The other issue, related to consciousness/ information/ knowledge, is the issue of agency/ free will/ creativity, an issue which is often merged with the issue of consciousness/ information/ knowledge. The two are clearly related, but are not the same thing.

          Rather than just defining/ labelling the high-level movement of high-level animals as “agency”, the agency issue is probably more correctly thought of as the issue of why it is that the universe is moving at all (i.e. why are the numbers, that apply to the categories, changing).

          This is an issue because, despite the delta symbols, physics’ law-of-nature equations only represent relationships between categories, where the numbers only change IF other numbers change. I.e. physics’ law-of-nature equations don’t actually represent all the necessary components needed if you want to have a viable moving system. A missing component would seem to be agency/ free will/ creativity, defined as the “missing” source of number movement in the universe.

          Looking at it the above way, time seems to be a category that “emerges” out of agency/ free will/ creativity, i.e. time is a new category created by the consciousness/ information/ knowledge that “number change (for a particular category) IS TRUE”.

          So, a separately existing time category would seemingly be completely superfluous if you had the consciousness/ information/ knowledge that number change (for a non-time category) had occurred.

          So, my conclusion is that the delta symbols in physics’ law-of-nature equations probably represent:

          • Initial number change due to agency/ free will/ creativity;
          • Further number change as a consequence of law-of-nature relationship; and
          • The time category, seen as a new category created by the consciousness/ information/ knowledge of number change.

          But admittedly, the above conclusion might sound a bit far-fetched.

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