Patterner

The wording I like is - How can we be certain this is how it works if we don't have any idea how it works?

Indeed. I believe consciousness plays a role in evolution. I believe consciousness is a different thing than mental abilities. I believe that, as ment...

Well, it's not terribly expensive, so worth checking out. I've never heard of causally closed systems or folk psychology. My world view prioritizes co...

Is that what you were specifically recommending of his?

No, it doesn't mean that. I see distinction between all kinds of non-living things. An asteroid, a cloud, and a star. Three things that are as differe...

I am diabolical. :grin: I don't see the many characteristics of life as illusions or epiphenomena. They are real things, and so are you and I. I just ...

Damasio doesn't not even suggest an explanation. I really like his writing. I like the detail, the poetic feel, and the way he builds all along. But h...

In Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence, Sara Imari Walker says much the same.I agree with them. Life is a bunch of chemical proce...

There are many biological processes. Respiration, metabolism, reproduction, circulation, protein synthesis, the immune system, glycolysis, the Krebs C...

Well, maybe we're still not on the same page. And I'm entirely willing to take the blame for that. There's certainly no way a human intelligence could...

Well, I have to say I've had the wrong understanding of emergence all along. I thought weak was something that could be explained by the properties of...

Certainly not. Getting back to the universe, only Laplace's demon could do that, and only if all aspects of reality are strictly deterministic. Intell...

Ok. How about this... Since the history and operation of the universe is the result of properties that can be described in specific, consistent ways, ...

If you're asking what, exactly, consciousness is, I couldn't imagine. But, as Brian Greene writes in Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Sear...

Although you're right, I believe the conversation of the moment is about whether or not the same initial conditions, properties, and laws would lead t...

My guess is that consciousness is fundamental, a property of particles, just like things like mass, charge, and spin are. If this do-over has the same...

Since the universe was constructed from those laws, there is no reason that those laws couldn't do it again. But no human, if given the power to creat...

Liquidity is not a property of the individual building blocks. Not of the molecules of H2O, not of the atoms of hydrogen or oxygen that make up the mo...

Just proofread the above for the umpteenth time. Realized I said the second electron shell holds up to eighty electrons. :lol: It now says eight. Also...

Yes. Things happen consistently. H2O is liquid within a range of temperatures and pressures, solid at others, gas at others. This is not due to random...

It didn't make sense to me either. How about an example of emergence that I think a lot of people agree on? X = liquidity Y = the properties of partic...

Ok. I seem to be experiencing operating difficulties lately.

I just think I'm not understanding you. It seems like you're saying we have tables made out of wood and nails, but we can't make tables out of wood an...

I don't get how that answers my question to T Clark. That's not my understanding of panpsychism in general, and not what I think about it. I don't thi...

Sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult. There has to be a misunderstanding. Anything that exists and is the product of the laws of physics was construc...

The claim is not that what we have was not necessitated. The claim is that the possibility of it could not have been seen beforehand. I don't see reas...

We'd certainly have to be a lot smarter than we are to predict such a complex thing as the biology we are familiar with. If we were as smart as we'd n...

"The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe..." Of c...

I will read More Is Different. Thank you. but what you were saying seems impossible. I can understand that it's possible that, if there were non-biolo...

As opposed to "Throw enough physical things together, and they make non-physical things."

He is right, though. That is not weak emergence. According to you, you started with things that had weight. Weight didn't emerge.

The property is in all particles, not just those in the human brain. Consciousness doesn't mean intelligence or the ability to communicate. Ask a mous...

All true. But, if I read you right, you are saying that, if you add enough physical things and processes, you will get something non-physical. The poi...

Apologies. I'm beyond swamped at work and with my 89 year old father's many needs. I participate as time allows. I'll read your post again.

The difference is that movement is a physically observable, measurable, and explainable thing. We can watch someone's muscle move. We can measure how ...

Well, that's not what I said. Why would anyone expect to be able to build a wooden structure using only water? Why would anyone expect to be able to b...

Sucker!!! :rofl: I don't know how you define life. It seems to me it's a bunch of physical processes. Metabolism. Respiration. Circulation. Immune sys...

I don't know if we can set consciousness aside in any aspect of voice or gait, but we can't in all of them. The most obvious is timbre. Why do a trump...

I have sometimes used analogies to try to get this idea across. But I really don't think it's necessary. Do you think you can make something non-physi...

The point is more along the lines of you can't gather water in any amount, or in any configuration, and end up with wood.

No, speculation is fine. My speculated answer is quite different from that most people here, but we're all just speculating. Speculation is the first ...

Because there is no explanation, from any side of the hundred-sided fence, that is more than speculation. Fair enough. We are inferring the existence ...

That sounds about right.

I think it does the opposite. "THE truth" would be a claim of having the absolute truth. "My truth" is what works for me. "Your truth" is what works f...

I don't think being able to scientifically study various aspects of consciousness means we "understand how consciousness can be realized in physical n...

Why do people everywhere have fascination for mathematics, quantum physics, music, philosophy, history? What is it confusing that people have a fascin...

And, of course, anything that owes its existence to consciousness. For example, poetry, music, and art. Can you give me an example of anything other t...

Applying consciousness to what you said: "Have you read any cognitive science or evolutionary psychology related to the origin of consciousness? This ...

Meaning things like redox reactions and the electron transport chain. We understand how those things work, and how they cause protons to build up in o...

Right. Despite not knowing how gravity came about, its effect could be measured. Newton was able to write a mathematical formula, which could be used ...