How Does Evolution Produce Consciousness/Reason?

[Zarathustra]

What if the laws which govern physiological function, like neurones firing in the brain, which can be mapped ... dont prescribe or directly affect or control content but simply enable content.

Yes! That's what I'm saying!

And this doesn't mean necessarily that we HAVE to abandon materialism (though I believe materialism is incomplete). There are varieties of materialism which fit what you've just said, such as non-reductive materialism:

"Monism" is kind of an umbrella term, but maybe I can instantiate the idea of non-reductive materialism in one argument. Henceforth, i will be referring to "monism" of the mind (as opposed to cartesian dualism.)

Donald davidson provides a atrong case for what he calls "anomolous monism." He accepts three premises:

The interaction principle: There is a causal relationship between physical events and some mental states

Cause-law principle: a causal relationship entails a strict law governing the relating each object

Anomalism principle: there are no laws that can predict mental states (explanatory non-reduction.)

Davidson then delineates between causation and explanation, saying that language utilized for this causal relationship is essentially physical. Since there isn't any strict law of the form p --> m, there must be something else going on. He then deduces that "m" must be token identical to a physical event. However this only describes the event, failing to explain it.

Here, metaphysical reduction (monism) actually hinges on explanatory non-reduction.

(I had to read this twice to get it.) What he's saying here is that just because you can't explain mental events with a physical cause doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't physical; they're just inexplicable (at least with the same kind of explanation that explains how the brain works). So this allows one to maintain a form of monism (i.e. "there is only one metaphysical 'substance,' instead of two") while acknowledging that mental states are something different, in terms of explaining them with physical causation.

I personally don't like this. I don't believe that any part of the universe is inexplicable. I think that mental states are natural (not supernatural). And anything in nature can be explained. I just think (like Nagel) that we need to expand our concept of "natural" to include something more than material. And I don't think we have to give up monism to do this!

Honestly, I don't think this is all that radical, not after the transformation science has undergone in the 20th century. Who would have thought that matter and energy are two forms of the same thing prior to Einstein? They seem radically different. But just because they can be converted into each other doesn't mean that we have the same set of explanations for each one. Classically, matter is described by equations in the category of "mechanics," while energy is described by things like Maxwell's equations. Quantum mechanics and special relativity have united these into a whole.

So why can't we imagine that there is a similar union between mind and matter that will require a new branch of science to make explicit? We still use "materialism" to describe both matter and energy, but this isn't really the best term. Why not call it "energyism," if they are two forms of the same thing? The point is that matter and energy (and space and time) form a monism of widely different phenomenon, described by very different theories, which are actually all united. And in this union, we see that the classical understanding of all these phenomena was incomplete and naive. In reality, they are wildly different. We had to transform our conception of each to achieve this union.

I think a similar transformation will be necessary to unite mind and body. Just as we had to give up the idea of absolute space and replace it with relativistic space-time, so too we'll give up the idea of strict materialism and replace it with a neutral monism that admits a kind of immaterialism into reality.

I am of the belief that our physicality is the material cause of consciousness itself.

I do think that our specific kind of consciousness is dependent upon the specific kind of physicality we have. Sure. If we had a different kind of physicality, we'd have a different kind of consciousness. But it's also possible to have many different kinds of consciousness with this same physicality. People can be very different not merely because they have slight variations in their brains, but because they have wildly different world views, ideas, cultures, understanding.

Our brains are virtually identical to the brains of people living 100,000 years ago (or more). But we are entirely different creatures now. The difference is not merely our technology--that's just one outward sign of it. The difference is our connection to reality. Our understanding. We are living deeper in the world than people 100,000 years ago. We are creatures whose minds traverse the depths of the universe from the subatomic to the intergalactic. Our consciousness spans orders of magnitude more of this reality . . . all while having basically the same brain. The same physicality.

Our connection to reality is not strictly physical, because reality is not strictly physical. Reality has meaning, which is conceptual/abstract/ideal. And that is where you truly connect with reality. You can grab a hunk of matter and squeeze it as tightly as you want to your chest, and never really connect with it (due to electron repulsion). But with our minds, we can pass right through it, get to its true essence, which was entirely invisible to people for much of history, even though they were made of the stuff and stood upon it. No physical connection is ever as intimate/real as knowledge. And yet, it is immaterial. Knowledge is not made of matter. It has no mass, charge, etc. It can pass right through the world like a ghost, or move the world with machines. Knowledge truly is magic . . . real magic . . . the magic of reality. And consciousness is the turning point of that magic, the phenomenon which converts it from a latent potential lying dormant everywhere in the universe into something that actually affects the world--the turning point between conceptual and actual, the bridge between meaning and matter. Meaning is everywhere, an immaterial "layer" that lies "on top of" and "inside" everything in this world. Mind can see it. Mind can touch it. Mind can turn it into a causal force here and now, or simply ride it to the edges of the universe.

[Skyweir]

Wow that was a thrilling and extremely exhilarating read. What a journey articulated in those few paragraps. Im kinda heartened about the monist perspective and maintaining a material connection.

Really good post Z kudos.

[Skyweir]

Cags interesting addition re your reality tunnels.

I think uncertainties arent in and of themselves truly problematic. I think certainties can present as many problems, mostly because they can limit further exploration and the very real potential of acquiring additional knowledge.

I think Z is definitely on to something re monoism

.. does dual monism add to the discussion and if so what about pansychism?

I may have misspelled that

[lucimay]

Our connection to reality is not strictly physical, because reality is not strictly physical. Reality has meaning, which is conceptual/abstract/ideal. And that is where you truly connect with reality. You can grab a hunk of matter and squeeze it as tightly as you want to your chest, and never really connect with it (due to electron repulsion). But with our minds, we can pass right through it, get to its true essence, which was entirely invisible to people for much of history, even though they were made of the stuff and stood upon it. No physical connection is ever as intimate/real as knowledge. And yet, it is immaterial. Knowledge is not made of matter. It has no mass, charge, etc. It can pass right through the world like a ghost, or move the world with machines. Knowledge truly is magic . . . real magic . . . the magic of reality. And consciousness is the turning point of that magic, the phenomenon which converts it from a latent potential lying dormant everywhere in the universe into something that actually affects the world--the turning point between conceptual and actual, the bridge between meaning and matter. Meaning is everywhere, an immaterial "layer" that lies "on top of" and "inside" everything in this world. Mind can see it. Mind can touch it. Mind can turn it into a causal force here and now, or simply ride it to the edges of the universe.

wow. I mean...just...wow. that is a profoundly perfectly articulated thought, man. beautiful.
thanks. thanks for that.
are we still nominating things for post of the year?
shit the bed rex, i just love this.

[Fist and Faith]

I was just going to say the same, luci. There's some great reading there, Z. I've been too involved with other things to do more than simple reading here, but I like these in particular:

Science explicitly forbids goals/purpose/intentions from the interactions of matter. So atoms can't have goals. But we do. Therefore we must be more than atoms.

Knowledge truly is magic . . . real magic . . . the magic of reality. And consciousness is the turning point of that magic, the phenomenon which converts it from a latent potential lying dormant everywhere in the universe into something that actually affects the world--the turning point between conceptual and actual, the bridge between meaning and matter. Meaning is everywhere, an immaterial "layer" that lies "on top of" and "inside" everything in this world. Mind can see it. Mind can touch it. Mind can turn it into a causal force here and now, or simply ride it to the edges of the universe.

Very important ideas, communicated clearly and concisely.

I don't know what I think of monism. (I guess. I'm not well versed in the lingo of these topics.) Nothing that exists in this universe can be in violation of the universe's laws/properties. Consciousness exists in this universe. We just need to learn more of the universe's laws/properties if we want to understand it.

But is the more we need to learn in regards to a single root/building block of everything? It's long been know that matter and energy are convertible. At the root, they are the same thing. The material aspects of the universe are not what we would intuitively think of as "material". Solid objects don't bounce off of each other because a piece of something hits a piece of something else in the sense that we would all assume if we had not learned otherwise. As you just said, it's electron repulsion. Forces; charges. Electricity is also elections. Same thing, different circumstances.

Exactly what is an electron? Exactly what's at the base of it all? We don't know. I like strings, with all the extra spatial dimensions. I'm just going to call it strings, for the sake of having something to call it. As incredible and gorgeous as it is, there is still no hint of goals/purpose/intentions. If they vibrate in the 7th dimsension, or some combinations of dimensions, maybe we have dark matter. But still no intention. It's still following the properties of the universe; the laws of physics. How would vibrating in other dimensions allow for the development of consciousness? Is one of those dimensions free of laws?

So maybe it's not monism.

[Skyweir]

Could it be dual monism as suggested in the article you linked?

Also I think theres a significant difference between what we dont yet know and what is knowable. I know you havent made that distinction, so not a criticism.. but I dont believe there is very much at all that cant be know .. outside of the ontological that is.

As Z says look at what is known today .. knowledge is constantly be nuanced, revised, refined and new discoveries and understandings achieved.

[Fist and Faith]

For example, think of someone who has never seen any red objects and has never been told that the color red exists. That person knows nothing about how redness relates to brain states, to physical objects such as tomatoes, or to wavelengths of light, nor how it relates to other colors (for example, that it's similar to orange but very different from green). One day, the person spontaneously hallucinates a big red patch. It seems this person will thereby learn what redness is like, even though he or she doesn't know any of its relations to other things. The knowledge he or she acquires will be non-relational knowledge of what redness is like in and of itself.

If someone can hallucinate something that actually exists, but which they know nothing about or ever heard of, then I would say that thing is, indeed, materially reducible. If it was not caused by sensory input - whether seeing red, hearing or reading about red, or whatever - then it must be caused by the particular arrangement of the brain's particles.

But I don't expect such a thing is possible. I don't think anyone can hallucinate, or imagine, the experience of seeing red, without having seen red. Even hearing people talk about it couldn't create that color in your consciousness. You might accept that there is a color you have not seen, but that doesn't mean you can create it in your mind. Do color-blind people hallucinate a color they can't see? The parts of their brain that get the information from the optic nerve are still good; they just lack, for example, the red cones in the retina.

If they said they hallucinated red, how could we know? Not like we can test it; have them repeat the hallucination; whatever.

[Skyweir]

Humans have established that strawberries, blood, watermelon etc are the colour red.

Those who have eyes have learned what the colour red looks like, because thats what we are taught.

Those who have never seen red, in nature, in books, because they are blind, or even just colour blind .. may think they see the colour red .. but if theyve never seen the colour assigned to lips, blood, strawberries etc .. they can not know .. red .. and we can never know what they think in their minds eye, or hallucinations or whatever.

I dont understand how that is an example of something materially reducible.

I also dont understand how such an unaffirmable hypothesis can progress an understanding of consciousness.

But that could be an indication of my lack, not yours.

[Fist and Faith]

I agree with you. I think the example is bad. IF it worked as described, IF someone experienced red without the sensory input of that wavelength hitting the retina, without ever having heard that there was a color they had never seen, it would mean the experience of red is NOT the result our consciousness subjectively interpreting the sensory input.

But it is. The example is not s good example to demonstrate what comes after it:

This suggests that consciousness-of some primitive and rudimentary form-is the hardware that the software described by physics runs on.

IF the example was valid, it would suggest that. But the thought experiment is invalid. We shouldn't use it to further a line of reasoning.

[Zarathustra]

Thanks guys!

Re: monism. It's a way to avoid the problems of dualism, which include the problem of how two metaphysically distinct "substances" can interact. If there is a basis of interaction, then this "interface" argues for monism. If there is a common ground upon which the two can connect, then they can't really be distinct.

That doesn't necessarily mean materialism. That's just one kind of monism. Perhaps the single substance is mind. I don't believe that, either, but the point is that there are many possibilities.

[Fist and Faith]

Yeah, the interface idea makes sense. But we either have one "substance" that can function in two different sets of rules - at the same time, no less! - or two substances that operate under different sets of rules, but can interact.

Or maybe it's not two sets of rules. Maybe just one set, which can be ignored when matter is arranged just so.

EDIT: I guess quantum events ignore the cause & effect of particle intraction? Take half-life. A substance could have a half-life of 1 day. After one day, half of the particles have decayed. After a million years, some particles have still not decayed. What cause those that decayed to do so? Nothing.

The laws of physics apply above that level, I imagine even because of that level. Things that we do know, properties that can be described with mathematical formulae, are built on that foundation. Of course, "half-life" is, itself, a mathematical description. But the cause of it, the cause of a particle's decay, being non-existent, cannot be described or understood in such ways.

So consciousness' non-materially reducible quality isn't unique? And there is a certain large-scale "order" to half-life, just as consciousness is not chaos.

(All of that assumes I understand half-life, and that science has not found a cause of particle decay that I haven't heard about.)

[Fist and Faith]

Of course, the article might be right about one or to things:

Electrons and other particles can be thought of as mental beings with physical powers; as streams of experience in physical relations to other streams of experience.

The fundamental building blocks; THE primary particles; Brahman: "The irreducible ground of existence. The essence of every thing."; the strings of String Theory - call them what you will. They are more akin to concepts than anything else. I'm not saying they are the concepts/thoughts of any mind. It's just that this is the nature of reality. It's all made of thought-stuff. Not thoughts, but thought-stuff. Thoughticles ("Thoughticles" is a stupid name, but I haven't come up with anything better yet.) are best described as ideas. The most basic, fundamental ideas that can be.

Just sayin'.

[Skyweir]

Im incredibly impressed you went to the effort of trolley ng back through the pages of the thread till 2007

[Fist and Faith]

2017. And I didn't. I just got the Search button.

[Skyweir]

Wow .. thats still impressive! Yes apologies 2017.

[Zarathustra]

Yeah, when you are writing about things you have given a lot of thought, it's not that hard to remember things you've said. And with the search feature, it's easy to find.

I don't know much about radioactive decay, either, but I know that randomness is part of reality, as described by quantum mechanics. This doesn't mean that matter somehow violates physical laws, just that there is some wiggle room within the apparent determinism of physical laws. But large collections of matter will have this randomness "smeared out" or "cancelled out" so that the probabilistic nature of individual particles adds up to a macro event that looks deterministic.

We're not the first ones to be tempted at finding an answer to the apparent freedom of the mind in quantum mechanics. Maybe mind somehow magnifies these effects, seemingly violating laws of physics and determinism through a deep connection with the quantum weirdness of matter.

I'm not sure about the idea that thought is the fundamental layer of reality. I'm more open to the idea that some kind of "mental/immaterial" property is a property of all matter, and this is later honed and magnified by evolution into consciousness. I think some version of this is not purely speculation, because matter has a mathematical structure. That's not merely speculative or figurative, but concrete, actual. Matter embodies mathematical forms. And yet math itself is abstract and independent of matter. So you have this immaterial formal system that somehow "connects" to matter, a property of all matter. That connection itself is another Hard Problem, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematical descriptions of the world. Not only is it a mystery why this should be (i.e. an amazing "coincidence") but also how immaterial truths take shape in matter.

So can we include this Hard Problem with the others and say that it, too, is another way to phrase the others? Perhaps the reason why matter can be so accurately described with an abstract, formal system (Hard Problem of Math) is related to why matter can produce mind (Hard Problem of Mind), which is related to the mystery of what substance lies at the "center" of all physical relations (Hard Problem of Matter). The relations of matter are mathematical. So asking how math relates to matter is like asking how the relations of matter relate to the substance of matter. It's almost the same question, except a bit more specific [i.e. how do these mathematical relations connect to (the substance of) matter, instead of asking why the relations are mathematical at all, or how does math in general connect to matter]. And then the question of how mind relates to matter is very similar because mind is what makes the general question possible--not merely because mind makes all questions possible, but because mind sees the abstract math which lies beyond the specific examples which are instantiated in matter. Without mind, the only connections between matter and math would be those specific relations within material interactions which are themselves mathematically "shaped." But mind, produced by matter, makes a new connection to the whole of math, even those parts which aren't instantiated by any particular physical event.

In other words, the H.P. of Matter is a specific case of the H.P. of Math, while the H.P. of Mind makes possible a general case of the H.P. of Math.

However you view it, there is a connection between matter and the abstract. The connection is actual/concrete on the first level--i.e. the "shapes" of matter's interactions with itself. The connection is abstract on the second level--i.e. the mind's ability to dip into the possible mathematical truths, not merely the actual, instantiated ones.

That is, in fact, a new way of saying that mind is doing something different than a strict, deterministic, material reductionism can explain. Consciousness is matter's own ability to connect with possibility. This is true not only in terms of mind seeing all the possible mathematical truths that aren't embodied by any particular physical relation, but it applies even more generally. Reality is itself specific. There is either a predator hiding in the bushes or there is not. But we can consider both. Our ability to imagine the possibilities here allows us to take actions even before a particular reality becomes manifest. We act--moving our bodies--in ways that respond to possibilities, not merely actualities (as most matter behaves). And new, never-before-seen actualities become attainable through this connection with the possible, via mind's ability to translate mere possibility into actuality.

Just like quantum mechanics spitting out things randomly at the bottom of all physical laws, dancing on a level between probabilistic and actual, mind is doing the same thing at the other end.

It's all connected. It's all the same mystery. But we have very good reasons to think that it's not all bottom-up, materially determined. There is an interface between possible/actual, abstract/concrete, conscious/unconscious, purposeful/accidental, material/mental. To put the emphasis on one side of these pairs is to miss half of reality. You can't reduce one side to the other. They form a loop.

[Zarathustra]

No pile of sand, no matter what size, no matter what KIND, will do anything that is not the indisputable result of the ways the particles interact.

I suspected [was pretty certain actually, if you replied at all] you'd say something like that.
Same old hole we've been in.
One more try:
You've got a couple virus-shells sitting in your lab. All they need is DNA to get busy.
In one you inject all the stuff that makes up DNA.
In the other you inject DNA.
One [the second] will DO STUFF.
The other WON't.
BOTH, everything within them has identical messengers...
One will eternally be a blob of crap [unless something else is done]
The other will [hopefully] infect the brains of people who don't believe in vaccines and cause them to be not dumb or deluded.
Because the MESSAGE is different.
Your particle interactions aren't EXPLANATIONS, they're DESCRIPTIONS.
They have information but not meaning.
The difference between a blob of everything that DNA is made of and DNA is the CONTEXT, not CONTENT. It's the NOVEL, not the ALPHABET.

I'm not sure that you can compare the order/structure of DNA to the meaning inherent in a novel--even though you can compare the individual atoms within DNA to an alphabet. A novel is most certainly "more than the sum of its parts." There is no explanation of how the letters "T" "h" "o" "m" "a" and "s" relate to a leper who finds redemption, not without a host of things that can't be reduced to those letters (or their relation to other letters). But there is nothing about the organization of DNA that can't be reduced to how those atoms are interacting with each other.

Saying that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" is more than saying that something whole works better than something broken. Anything reduced to its bare ingredients is going to function differently than when those ingredients are arranged properly. But that still doesn't attain the level of "metaphysically distinct" you get from putting letters together to make a story, or putting brain states together to make meaning. A brain is functioning--producing brain states--whether someone is asleep or under anesthesia. That's not the same as brain states writing a novel, much less producing mental states. You are conflating these differences.

We don't know what charges are from "inside," we can only see them outside. BUT they ARE properties and they ARE material. Because the difference in a charge-property is why when a positron and electron meet they annihilate.
The material difference in charge.
[[which is the same reason electrons repel...material identity in charge.]]]

1 + (-1) = 0. I've just "annihilated" a positive thing with a negative thing, and yet neither are material. The only difference between your example and mine is that you can find actual examples of this happening in reality, not merely conceptual examples. But to say that actual = material is to beg the question. We don't know that these properties are material if we don't know what lies at the "center" of matter's properties. Sure, there must be some difference between a simulation and reality, but it's just an assumption that this difference is comprised of some material, rather than some consciousness. You're basically saying reality is material because your ontology is materialism. In other words, a tautology.

[Fist and Faith]

I don't see the same problem with math that you do. We either have chaos, or we don't. And we don't. And it's an all or nothing situation. can I have half order and have chaos. We say that about our lives, but not the laws of physics. It's all order. So, since we exist, it means we have order. In our particular universe, order follows these particular rules. What kind of descriptions of the world would you find reasonably effective?

And yeah, I know what you mean about the decay, and giving overall order. Still, afawk, there is no cause why any given particle decays and another doesn't. Or for why the half life works that way. It's as though the substance simply follows the formula 1/2 every X time units. As though the equations determine or control the events, rather than simply describe them.

[Zarathustra]

I don't see the same problem with math that you do. We either have chaos, or we don't. And we don't. And it's an all or nothing situation. can I have half order and have chaos. We say that about our lives, but not the laws of physics. It's all order. So, since we exist, it means we have order. In our particular universe, order follows these particular .

Fist, it is not an all or nothing situation. I can build shelter for myself with some branches and moss if I am lost in the forest. That works just fine for my purposes, which are keeping me alive. It doesn't have to be a building designed by an architect. But if I had instead built something like the Great Pyramid in Egypt, you might be a little surprised, right?. The problem is not so much that there is order rather than chaos, but that this order is so fine tuned on many orders of magnitude from the subatomic to the intergalactic. Why should so much of our reality be subject to such an exquisite structure? You could easily have much more chaos mixed into the order. Just like you can have a few sand castles and then a bunch of random sand for the rest of the beach. One does not preclude the other.

Again, the problem is not math, but rather be unreasonable effectiveness of math. There are many ways you could have a universe that is not this finely structured. The entire universe could have instead been like radioactive decay. Random for the most part, but roughly structured at a much much higher level. And then science would have been just a collection of rules of thumb, rather than precise mathematical formulas.

[Fist and Faith]

Too late, I added - What kind of descriptions of the world would you find reasonably effective? But I guess you answered that. I disagree. I believe it is an all or nothing situation. Neither the hut nor the pyramid could exist if math was not consistent. I can't find it, but there's a drawing that's probably Farside with two guys building a house together, measuring in cubits. Each building one half of the house, meeting in the middle. Where one side of the house is much bigger than the other. It's funny, but it also makes my point. Such a structure couldn't exist.

But, of course, if math didn't have consistency throughout, we'd never get to the point of two guys with tools and wood. Nothing could be built at any level below that. The fact that we can have what we think of as a mixture of chaos and order on levels that we can see doesn't mean that the levels we can see could exist if that kind of mixture was the underlying principle of reality. The consistency throughout all levels IS the inderlying principle. You couldn't have 1+1=2 on the lowest level, then 1+1=3 on the next level. There wouldn't be a next level.

Even the apparently random nature of which particle will decay and which will not follows a mathematical pattern in groups. (Maybe even if there are only two particles?) If there was no consistent pattern, "half-life" or otherwise, it would be chaos. If a particular substance's half-life was one day, then a century, then three months... Or if we couldn't guess what a particular substance would decay into, because one day it became lead, the next gold, the next seventeen helium... It would be like trying to play Fizzbin. There is something not-random involved.