“okay, but why are things good and bad?” portion is going to turn out to be an unprivileged additional layer imposed by easy-problem-consciousness stuff. I do believe that easy problem stuff is information processing, but I believe it in the sense that there are informational elements—the fundamental building blocks of the universe—and those elements’ informational state is exactly their structural state; and the hard problem of consciousness resides in an unresolveable question of “why should any building block exist locally at all?”. Or in other words, localitypilled something-rather-than-nothing as being the same question as “why does my perspective exist”.
I would agree with this if what you mean by it is that information is being processed, and it seems as though certain information is relevant to consciousness in a way which could plausibly give rise to notions like good and bad as an emergent property. Having written that, I should say that I would expect them to be about the simplest properties which could emerge, and that I am also not completely sure it’s the case, e.g. it could be that what I thought you were suggesting in the last comment, i.e. that consciousness simply is logic, is true, or alternatively that there is some kind of unsatisfying way to explain consciousness which doesn’t seem to reduce our confusion using logic.
Reading your paragraph about P-zombies, I would point out that implicit in your use of the words ‘real/realness’ seems to be the assumption that, in this sense, mathematics is not real. But it is logical, so it seems conceivable/coherent/logically valid to imagine a - -zombie, or a P-zombie for that matter, unless the solution to the hard problem of consciousness is of a purely logical nature. Having said that, I agree with your paragraph given your use of the word “realness” , or at least I think I do.
You say:
In other words, I’m a structural realist who also believes there’s something underneath the structures, but that it’s beyond our reach to know what it is, and that we are doomed to always wonder “why” there is something rather than nothing.
Am I correct to read this as you saying you’re what mathematicians would call a ‘platonist’ ? But that you are not a ‘mathematical universe hypothesist’ in the extreme who thinks that logic is all that there is? That you believe that logic has a fundamental referent which isn’t logical itself? (This referent would presumably be something to do with the local existence/consciousness.) What I meant when I said I possibly disagree was that it seems possible for this referent to be something logically attached to, which is to say, included in the playing out of a physical process, which would be a chain of implication, or maybe something continuous but otherwise similar, in a ‘mathematical universe’ , but it could be a separate ‘node’ from any of the physical ones. Though you could reasonably object that this distinction is somewhat artificial; I would distinguish them by stating that the consciousness ‘node’ need not have any effect on the physical ones, even though they would affect it.
the mind I describe there having a good time overall: I dunno, you could make the host mind pretty huge, and then probably not. It depends on the ratio of how much stuff is happening in the host vs happening in the guest.
I think I would agree with this.
My own position would be that it could well be the case that the fundamental logical point of connection with ‘reality’, or alternatively logical constituents of consciousness, exist on such a small scale or such a low level of abstraction, that you could probably have a neurone which behaved exactly (from the perspective of other neurones connected with it) like a neurone with different experiences, so that its host would be completely unaware of this. Maybe there would be some information propagating out of it, but as you mentioned, this might not be noticeable. This would mean that the host would still ‘enter’ your council of cosmopolitans, thinking, and perhaps being logically and philosophically justified in doing so, that its neurones had internal experiences which intuitively matched its own on a larger scale, leading to the same acausal norms and moral value system being derived. I could still be misunderstanding that process though; I will read through it again.
What I described as host is also known as a simulator (device), and the guest is the simulated thing, simulatee. Simulation does not exit the realm of the physical, it just hides that there are smaller scale simulator/host elements from the simulatee/guest. I don’t see how the host level could be unaware, but the guest could be.
I think I might be a constrained sort of platonist. I don’t think every logical referent we can hypothesize in the language of our logic, which we can say “math-exists”, has to be a real thing which exists outside of our description of it. I do think our universe seems like it ought to be one of many actually real possibilities in a weak remark 4 multiverse, despite that the others can’t be confirmed to exist in a physical sense by us; but I’m not convinced that a full tegmark 4 multiverse is required, where all logically consistent referents exist.
Another way to put it is that logic is in the business of determining what you can say must be true in a given space, starting from some axioms and validity rules; the “really exists” I’m proposing here would be our actual universe’s truth fact. When one uses logic to describe objects which existed prior to writing logic on a page, you’re attempting to preserve the truth of facts; if I have an apple, and I have a banana, then I have an (apple banana). But those names could refer to anything; our universe seems to provide us with actual substrate. A mind structure in another universe which does not exist on any actual substrate physically would have the same confusions I’m expressing and only does not do so due to not being instantiated. This substrate is sometimes called compute or reality fluid, and I’m proposing it also is sometimes called hard-problem-consciousness.
Perhaps my view is vacuous because all logically consistent structures exist and there is nothing which could separate an “underlying substrate” of those structures; then perhaps my view could be technically vacuously correct but really just be “structural realist platonism with tegmark 4″, or so.
But, hence why I think you can describe minds, and describe what they would do if they existed, without knowing if they’re real outside your description. Under this view, describing a mind makes it real/exist/hard-problem-companies to the extent you describe it, by carrying it on the same substrate that carries you. You can never meet a p-zombie, in this view. You can only meet minds which really exist, but which are missing features. That’s where I think current AI fall, for example.
None of what I’ve said in this comment so far directly weighs on your moral valence realism question. I do agree that it’s likely a very small and primitive fact if it’s a general one at all. I haven’t thought as much about it to be able to describe it eloquently, the rest of my comment is reciting views rather than anything new right now. I’ll ponder it.
I don’t really have much to disagree with in your comment, as I find myself uncertain of whether or not to believe in the mathematical universe hypothesis, something like your ‘substrate’ view, or even a more elaborate description like the ‘Three worlds’ as envisaged/popularized by Roger Penrose, where the platonic/mathematical world contains all/part of the physical world( by describing its physical laws), which itself contains all/part of the mental world (by containing brains and computers which think of it), which itself can in principle ‘think into existence’ all/part of the mathematical platonic world. This structure is certainly satisfyingly recursive, but it seems unclear to me whether the mental world can be separated from the platonic/mathematical one. Other possibilities seem (to me, though it’s possible I’ve missed a reason to rule them out) to include that there is a physical substrate within which only some matter is imbued with the consciousness fluid, or even that there is a kind of feedback loop in which two or more ‘beings’/‘entities’ simulate and observe one another, thereby making one another conscious without either containing a source of consciousness. This last one seems unsatisfying in the same way in which your IDCC idea seemed unsatisfying to me when I first read it, but I now no longer think that they are so similar. It seems as though the IDCC is a way, much like Acausal Normalcy, of deriving ideas about what one ought to do in particular situations from the fundamental conscious experiences, rather than an explanation of where they come from, as far as I can tell. Is this correct?
Having said (admittedly I wrote some of it after this paragraph) that, I will now try to persuade you that the mathematical universe hypothesis, with inherent consciousness to the information, is preferable. When reading your description of the fluid, I was reminded of the idea that light needed an aether through which to propagate in order for Maxwell’s equations to describe that light in a universal way. But it was superseded by the view that any observer defines their own equivalent of the ether, with respect to which the light propagated in a way described by Maxwell’s equations anyway, but which didn’t actually have any objective existence other than as percieved by the observer. Similarly, according to the mathematical universe hypothesis, the thing which differentiates between mathematical objects which are physically real, and those which are only mathematically real, is the observer’s position in the mathematical universe. This eliminates the requirement for an aether/consciousness fluid, by replacing it with an artefact of the way in which the observer is embedded in what was already presupposed to exist within either theory (spacetime/mathematics). There are some small differences, such as that the space-time structure of Newtonian physics differs from the spacetime of special relativity, and the fact that reference frames depend upon velocity rather than position (although that changes in general relativity I suppose) , but overall I would say the similarities are notable. We lack a way to ‘move with respect to the aether’ , i.e., move outside the area of the platonic universe covered by this fluid if it exists, so there is no way to test either theory and this argument is really just an appeal to Occam’s razor.
You say
I would agree with this if what you mean by it is that information is being processed, and it seems as though certain information is relevant to consciousness in a way which could plausibly give rise to notions like good and bad as an emergent property. Having written that, I should say that I would expect them to be about the simplest properties which could emerge, and that I am also not completely sure it’s the case, e.g. it could be that what I thought you were suggesting in the last comment, i.e. that consciousness simply is logic, is true, or alternatively that there is some kind of unsatisfying way to explain consciousness which doesn’t seem to reduce our confusion using logic.
Reading your paragraph about P-zombies, I would point out that implicit in your use of the words ‘real/realness’ seems to be the assumption that, in this sense, mathematics is not real. But it is logical, so it seems conceivable/coherent/logically valid to imagine a - -zombie, or a P-zombie for that matter, unless the solution to the hard problem of consciousness is of a purely logical nature. Having said that, I agree with your paragraph given your use of the word “realness” , or at least I think I do.
You say:
Am I correct to read this as you saying you’re what mathematicians would call a ‘platonist’ ? But that you are not a ‘mathematical universe hypothesist’ in the extreme who thinks that logic is all that there is? That you believe that logic has a fundamental referent which isn’t logical itself? (This referent would presumably be something to do with the local existence/consciousness.) What I meant when I said I possibly disagree was that it seems possible for this referent to be something logically attached to, which is to say, included in the playing out of a physical process, which would be a chain of implication, or maybe something continuous but otherwise similar, in a ‘mathematical universe’ , but it could be a separate ‘node’ from any of the physical ones. Though you could reasonably object that this distinction is somewhat artificial; I would distinguish them by stating that the consciousness ‘node’ need not have any effect on the physical ones, even though they would affect it.
I think I would agree with this.
My own position would be that it could well be the case that the fundamental logical point of connection with ‘reality’, or alternatively logical constituents of consciousness, exist on such a small scale or such a low level of abstraction, that you could probably have a neurone which behaved exactly (from the perspective of other neurones connected with it) like a neurone with different experiences, so that its host would be completely unaware of this. Maybe there would be some information propagating out of it, but as you mentioned, this might not be noticeable. This would mean that the host would still ‘enter’ your council of cosmopolitans, thinking, and perhaps being logically and philosophically justified in doing so, that its neurones had internal experiences which intuitively matched its own on a larger scale, leading to the same acausal norms and moral value system being derived. I could still be misunderstanding that process though; I will read through it again.
What I described as host is also known as a simulator (device), and the guest is the simulated thing, simulatee. Simulation does not exit the realm of the physical, it just hides that there are smaller scale simulator/host elements from the simulatee/guest. I don’t see how the host level could be unaware, but the guest could be.
I think I might be a constrained sort of platonist. I don’t think every logical referent we can hypothesize in the language of our logic, which we can say “math-exists”, has to be a real thing which exists outside of our description of it. I do think our universe seems like it ought to be one of many actually real possibilities in a weak remark 4 multiverse, despite that the others can’t be confirmed to exist in a physical sense by us; but I’m not convinced that a full tegmark 4 multiverse is required, where all logically consistent referents exist.
Another way to put it is that logic is in the business of determining what you can say must be true in a given space, starting from some axioms and validity rules; the “really exists” I’m proposing here would be our actual universe’s truth fact. When one uses logic to describe objects which existed prior to writing logic on a page, you’re attempting to preserve the truth of facts; if I have an apple, and I have a banana, then I have an (apple
Perhaps my view is vacuous because all logically consistent structures exist and there is nothing which could separate an “underlying substrate” of those structures; then perhaps my view could be technically vacuously correct but really just be “structural realist platonism with tegmark 4″, or so.
But, hence why I think you can describe minds, and describe what they would do if they existed, without knowing if they’re real outside your description. Under this view, describing a mind makes it real/exist/hard-problem-companies to the extent you describe it, by carrying it on the same substrate that carries you. You can never meet a p-zombie, in this view. You can only meet minds which really exist, but which are missing features. That’s where I think current AI fall, for example.
None of what I’ve said in this comment so far directly weighs on your moral valence realism question. I do agree that it’s likely a very small and primitive fact if it’s a general one at all. I haven’t thought as much about it to be able to describe it eloquently, the rest of my comment is reciting views rather than anything new right now. I’ll ponder it.
I don’t really have much to disagree with in your comment, as I find myself uncertain of whether or not to believe in the mathematical universe hypothesis, something like your ‘substrate’ view, or even a more elaborate description like the ‘Three worlds’ as envisaged/popularized by Roger Penrose, where the platonic/mathematical world contains all/part of the physical world( by describing its physical laws), which itself contains all/part of the mental world (by containing brains and computers which think of it), which itself can in principle ‘think into existence’ all/part of the mathematical platonic world. This structure is certainly satisfyingly recursive, but it seems unclear to me whether the mental world can be separated from the platonic/mathematical one. Other possibilities seem (to me, though it’s possible I’ve missed a reason to rule them out) to include that there is a physical substrate within which only some matter is imbued with the consciousness fluid, or even that there is a kind of feedback loop in which two or more ‘beings’/‘entities’ simulate and observe one another, thereby making one another conscious without either containing a source of consciousness. This last one seems unsatisfying in the same way in which your IDCC idea seemed unsatisfying to me when I first read it, but I now no longer think that they are so similar. It seems as though the IDCC is a way, much like Acausal Normalcy, of deriving ideas about what one ought to do in particular situations from the fundamental conscious experiences, rather than an explanation of where they come from, as far as I can tell. Is this correct?
Having said (admittedly I wrote some of it after this paragraph) that, I will now try to persuade you that the mathematical universe hypothesis, with inherent consciousness to the information, is preferable. When reading your description of the fluid, I was reminded of the idea that light needed an aether through which to propagate in order for Maxwell’s equations to describe that light in a universal way. But it was superseded by the view that any observer defines their own equivalent of the ether, with respect to which the light propagated in a way described by Maxwell’s equations anyway, but which didn’t actually have any objective existence other than as percieved by the observer. Similarly, according to the mathematical universe hypothesis, the thing which differentiates between mathematical objects which are physically real, and those which are only mathematically real, is the observer’s position in the mathematical universe. This eliminates the requirement for an aether/consciousness fluid, by replacing it with an artefact of the way in which the observer is embedded in what was already presupposed to exist within either theory (spacetime/mathematics). There are some small differences, such as that the space-time structure of Newtonian physics differs from the spacetime of special relativity, and the fact that reference frames depend upon velocity rather than position (although that changes in general relativity I suppose) , but overall I would say the similarities are notable. We lack a way to ‘move with respect to the aether’ , i.e., move outside the area of the platonic universe covered by this fluid if it exists, so there is no way to test either theory and this argument is really just an appeal to Occam’s razor.