On 4/19/2019 2:19 PM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
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.
Of course if you built an AI to identify the color of objects the full
visual scene would have exactly the same "influence", except you would
be able to trace it back to a normalization of the colors in the AI...an
entirely causal process, and one that no doubt happens in the brain.
Brent
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.
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