[ExI] What is "Elemental Redness"?

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Jason,

On Wed, May 3, 2023 at 8:24 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, May 3, 2023, 7:53 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi Jason,
>> You always have such great things to say, but I'm having a hard time
>> keeping up with this one.
>> On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 9:50 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, May 2, 2023, 10:19 AM Gadersd via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> > Chapter One
>>>> >
>>>> > There is no 'hard problem'.
>>>> >
>>>> > The end.
>>>>
>>>> I agree that most philosophers are hallucinating a problem into
>>>> existence, but there is some interesting structure to the way the patterns
>>>> are organized in the brain that is worth elaborating on. It is beautiful,
>>>> sort of like a mosaic.
>>>>
>>>
>>> The hard problem of consciousness comes about by assuming a particular
>>> answer to the mind-body problem.
>>>
>>> The mind-body problem asks: what is the nature of the connection between
>>> mind and matter.
>>>
>>> If you assume matter is fundamental (materialism) then you end up with
>>> "the hard problem of consciousness" -- how to explain the appearance of
>>> consciousness given only matter.
>>>
>>> On the other hand:
>>>
>>> If you assume consciousness is fundamental (materialism) then you end up
>>> with "the hard problem of matter" -- how to explain the appearance of
>>> matter given only consciousness.
>>>
>>
>> Did you mean to use the same term (materialism) in both different cases
>> here?  Or was that a typo?  Did you mean to say something different like
>> (spiritualism or subjectivism) in the second case?
>>
>
>
> Hi Brent, it was a most unfortunate typo. I meant to say "immaterialism"
> here. This is the idea that consciousness, thought, ideas, etc. are more
> fundamental than the apparent physical reality. It is common in Buddhism
> and some parts of Hinduism, and appeared in the west more recently with
> George Berkeley.
>
>
>>
>>> There is, I believe, a solution to the mind-body problem which explains
>>> the appearance of matter as well as the existence of consciousness. But the
>>> answer ventures beyond philosophy of mind and into ontology. I think
>>> without this complete picture, no attempt at answering either the hard
>>> problem of consciousness or the hard problem of matter would have led to a
>>> satisfactory explanation.
>>>
>>
>> Can you give some examples of what you mean by ontology, or go into more
>> details about what you are saying here?
>>
>
> Ontology is the field devoted to questions like:
> "What is real?"
> "What exists?"
> "What is the extent of reality?"
> "Why does anything exist?"
> "What is necessary for something to exist?"
>
> The full details of what I am saying here are found in my "Why does
> anything exist?' article:
> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/
>
> The cliff notes version is that consciousness is tied inextricably with
> physical reality, much like Wheeler supposes, then observer and the
> observed forming a pair.
>
It's hard to motivate myself to even consider anything like this.  My brain
just screams: "red herring" ;)  The same feeling I get in Mormon Sunday
School.


> This has been explored and fleshed out more recently by Bruno Marchal,
> Russel Standish, Max Tegmark, Markus Muller, and most recently by Steve
> Wolfram. The end result being that physical law emerges out of properties
> of observers and of observation. In a sense, consciousness is more
> fundamental than physics, but there is a mathematical consistency that
> explains the connection.
>

But it would be so great to have some concise descriptions of some of these
principles, so we could track how much expert consensus exists for and
against what parts of these (pre theoretical scientific) ideas.  With a
focus on what most of the experts agree on.  If I saw some significant
consensus, that would provide me much more motivation to spend time on
something like that, which right now, seems just as bad as the stuff I hear
in Mormon Sunday School.

My current RQT
<https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/6-Representational-Qualia>
view
is kind of a "pan qualityists"  At least some stuff has 'qualities' and the
reason they behave the way they do, is because of those qualities.  I don't
get the Pan psychists view, which believes everything is "conscious" which
would necessitate everything being "computationally bound" (i.e.
consciousness = computationally bound qualities).  Which seems crazy to me,
because not even most of the stuff in my brain is computationally bound
into my consciousness.  Sure, a rock may have a quality (why it behaves the
way it does?), but that quality isn't computationally bound with any other
qualities, so shouldn't be considered conscious.
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