I like the questions. While I might not be able to give satisfactory answers to them, here's how I view the issues raised:
On Friday, 19 April 2019 23:41:40 UTC+3, Terren Suydam wrote: > > Hey Cosmin, > > What is the mechanism by which consciousness acts in a top down manner on > and influences electrons and presumably other particles? How does that > causal link manifest? > > Notice that I specifically use the word "influence" and not "causation". This is because I believe there is no causation. Let's not talk about electrons, because electrons don't exist, they are just ideas in consciousness. Let's just talk about qualia. The idea is that when I see an image for example, I just see it. But that image comes with a whole emergent structure built into it: objects, shapes, colors, shades-of-gray, black-and-white. So in a way there is a top-down influence in levels from the level of the image to all its constituent levels. But it is not causation, because colors don't cause shades-of-gray, but influence them such as to conform with the highest level. Take the colored cube image: <https://drawpaintsculpt.worldsecuresystems.com/Images/Journal/How-Tos/Charlie/colour-constancy/colour-constancy-diagram.jpg?Action=thumbnail&Width=1200> The reason the squares are yellow and blue is because there is a top-down influence in levels from the level of the full visual scene to the level of colors. But there is no causation. Is just influence, and the influence is in the direction of the parts to contribute to the whole in a meaningful way. The same must happen when we move our body. Whatever is behind the appearances of "electrons", it acts as parts and take part in the greater holistic meaning of moving the body. But again, is not causation, is parts contributing to the whole in a meaningful way. You can read the full account that I'm giving to how influence works, in the section "The idealist ontology" on Part II of my The Emergent Structure of Consciousness paper. (or in the book) > Some other questions: > > Given that electrons don't really exist by your account, what stops the > seemingly inevitably slide into solipsism? Why does our world seem > constrained? > > Is not solipsism because I think it is a good assumption to allow the existence of other consciousnesses in the world. The world seem constrained because of the interactions between consciousnesses, each consciousness wanting to be in power, and you get an evolutionary game in which all consciousnesses adapt to all the other consciousnesses. > Put another way, what is the principle that makes sense of your account of > consciousness such that it can influence some things, but not others? > > I think this is because of evolution. Certain connections were established between certain consciousnesses in order to help them survive. It's similar to why we have the qualia that we have and not others: because they helped us at some point in our evolutionary history. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
