This isn’t meant as a “dunking on physicalism” post. I just want to lay out some features of subjectivity that I find interesting, partly because it’s not obvious how physicalism should make sense of them.

Obviously the mere existence of subjective experience is puzzling for the physicalist worldview. It doesn't seem that a fully physical, reductive account of consciousness is possible since experiences have properties that are not publicly observable. This is the hard problem. But even setting it aside, any physicalist who takes subjectivity seriously faces a few related puzzles:

1. The subject boundary problem

Subjectivity seems to give us a clear criterion for speaking of real boundaries between different subjects. When you stub your toe, I don't feel your pain. When I have a thought, you don't have my thought. Similarly, for anything in the world to affect my experience, it has to interact with the surface of my body first.

But when we look at the world objectively, boundaries between different objects seem to only exist nominally. There's no clear criteria by which we can separate the table from the rest of the room. A table is just a more or less stable configuration of particles that we have labeled for convenience. Look at matter closely enough and eventually you'll only find fluctuations in fields that extend everywhere.

Taking a functional perspective doesn't seem to help, either. We might say a car consists only of the parts it needs to function. But a car can’t function without a road, air for combustion, gravity, an atmosphere, and so on, until eventually the whole universe is implicated.

The same principle applies to nervous systems, or any physical system we may associate with consciousness. Neither structure nor function seems to give that system a real boundary. But if we take subjectivity seriously, then it seems this boundary must exist. How does physicalism account for a boundary that appears to really exist but have no physical basis?

2. The problem of intentionality

This is probably the most discussed of the three. Experiences seem to have intentional relationships with the things they are about. When I look at the moon, there seems to be a genuine connection between the moon and my experience of it. Even thinking about the moon seems to put my thoughts in a particular relation to it.

When we look at the world objectively, it's not clear that we see anything that obtains this sort of relationship. The Chinese Room thought experiment is a way of illustrating this, though a better example now may be LLMs. The right algorithm can produce intelligent and convincingly human speech about the moon, but the connection that seems present whenever I look at or think about the moon seems absent from this process. The same can even apply to a person trained to produce sentences in a language they don’t understand. What they say might be legibly about the moon, but their speech seems to lack the 'about-ness' that is present when someone speaks or thinks about the moon with understanding.

3. The problem of the present

In our subjective experience of the world, there is always a present moment - a privileged moment T. It’s hard to deny that this present moment is real, and so that, for any subject, some things have already happened and others haven’t yet. We also seem to make rational decisions based on which of those categories an event falls into.

But from an objective standpoint, there is no justification for any privileged moment. What belongs in the set of "things that have already happened" and "things that haven't yet happened" is completely relative and dependent on where you place T. The idea that there is ever a privileged present moment is unjustified from the physicalist perspective, along with the idea that, for any given subject, some events really have happened and others really haven’t yet, or that our reasoning about the difference is rational rather than arbitrary.

Consensus reality is missing subjective realities because there are ONLY subjective realities. Notice how subjective reality is NOWHERE in objective reality. You won't find my subjective reality in a brain scan because each mind is a different reality. Literally a different reality.

Further to my post the other day that, under physicalism, the subjective experience must be transferable, the same thoughts led me to realise the thesis is unfalsifiable. And this surprised me since it is a classical realm thesis, so it should.

The identity claim of the thesis, that "experience is the process" is not an empirical hypothesis. It's an assertion about what "experience" means within the framework. No measurement can confirm/deny it, because confirming it would require an independent criterion for "this is the experience" that is not itself part of the process. And by the thesis, there is no such independent criterion; the experience is the process, not a separate output that could be read off and compared.

This is structurally identical to "heat is molecular kinetic energy." You can't falsify that identity by measuring temperature

And for the physicalist who states that they just haven't found the underlying physical basis that provides consciousness; no instrument, no matter how sensitive, can detect the absence of experience in a system that has the right dynamics, because detecting that absence requires the same independent criterion that the thesis denies.

Thus the debate cannot be settled by neuroscience.

EDIT: I define physicalism as 'mental events have a physical source'.

If the consciousness is split into three different parts, and each part has its own consciousness. What would happen to the core self? Because the core “me” could either, take one part and stay with it, id be all pieces, be gone, or something else. Does anyone have an answer to this problem?

I've been reading about and learning about consciousness theories and all other related subjects for about 2 years now.. I wrote a 58 page "master notes" on all of the things I've been reading and learning and I was hoping to find some people to talk to about all of it and hopefully learn/see things from another perspective. TIA & my messages are open!

Here, in this short, Victoria Trumball who has studied Henri Bergson, asks for the "principles" of brain-centered consciousness metaphysics (physicalism). Exactly how does it all happen? It's a good question, and the question that Bergson asked and answered with an alternative view of life. That we ARE Duration (real time).

Brain-centered metaphysics has already been thoroughly refuted in that there are all kinds of life forms that exhibit the ability to solve problems that don't have brains. What's more, even within the human body, decision making is distributed throughout the autonomous enteric gut-brain system and the heart brain. Additionally, the body is totally dependent on the conscious workings of the trillions of microbes in the body. So, why is this myth of brain-centered consciousness perpetuated? It's not dissimilar to the physicalist insistence on the archaic image of physical electrons and atoms.

We even know about "muscle memory" which is crucial to survival as well as the development of skills. All of these "habits" are simply Memory distributed throughout the body. Memory is everywhere, not just in the brain.

So, exactly what are the principles that define brain-center consciousness.. As Trumball rightfully points out, the answer from physicalists always is that "this is the way the brain works".

So brain-centered metaphysics BEGINS with the dogma that the "brain controls everything", (even though science has explicitly said it doesn't), and then proceeds to make the claim that the brain magically is able to do everything it is supposed to be able to do. No principles. Just vague correlations that do not stand up to complete inspection.

This is certainly not science. It isn't even bad metaphysics. All it is, is an outmoded story that should have died 100 years ago, yet it's repeated over and over again in schools and "scientific" journals.

This video discusses two simple experiments:

(1) Have a friend look in a mirror. Ask her to alternately look at her left then right eye. You will see her eyes move. Then, try it yourself. Now, you will not see your eyes move. You will also not observe any lapse in time.

(2) They make a light flash with a very short delay after a button is pressed. The brain interprets them to occur simultaneously. If they gradually increase the delay, the brain adapts. Then, if they remove the delay, the brain thinks the light flashes before the button is pressed.

It sounds to me like we probably don't really experience our physical environments, but rather a reconstruction that our brains produce. Some of what we think we experience may not even be what our senses actually sensed. And the experiences we think we are having in the present moment may actually be predictions from a brief moment ago that the brain has just calibrated to align with what it thinks is happening right now.

Something I’ve thought about for years and never managed to talk myself out of.

Everything that tells you you’ve lived a whole life is sitting in your brain at this moment. Your memories, your childhood, what you did yesterday. If you’d only been conscious for the last second you’d still have all of that and it would feel exactly like it does now. There’s no way to tell the difference from the inside.

So I don’t believe in a continuous self. Your brain tells you there is one and you’ve got no way of checking.

I also don’t think time flows. The block universe idea in physics says past, present and future all exist together, like a film reel where every frame is already there. Relativity makes it more complicated than that but that’s the gist. Your life is a line through it and every point on the line thinks it’s now.

What I actually believe is that the universe itself is conscious at the fundamental level, in ways we can’t understand. Our brains are just equipped to give us the illusion that we’re conscious as individuals, with our own experiences. There’s really only the one thing and we’re all it, each convinced we’re separate because we only have our own memories.

Who Actually Observes Reality?

When we open our eyes, we have the impression that we see the world as it really is. Objects have specific shapes, colors, and positions. We recognize faces, interpret movement, and distinguish our own bodies from the surrounding environment. Everything appears self-evident because these processes occur automatically.

Yet the brain does not receive a ready-made image of reality. It receives signals generated by sensory receptors and must reconstruct their most probable causes using memory, previous experience, and predictions about upcoming events.

This approach forms the foundation of predictive processing theories, developed in part within Karl Friston’s free-energy principle [1]. In this framework, perception, learning, and action are interconnected processes through which an organism updates its model of the environment and reduces discrepancies between predictions and incoming information.

Perception is therefore a continuous process of constructing and updating representations of reality. Its effectiveness depends on cooperation among multiple neural mechanisms that must simultaneously identify events, predict their consequences, and organize the organism’s responses.

An additional problem emerges, however. To act effectively, the system must identify not only its surroundings but also its own state and position relative to the environment. It must distinguish the consequences of its actions from external events, preserve continuity across previous experiences, and relate predictions to the capabilities of its own body.

In traditional psychological and philosophical language, these functions have often been associated with the concept of the ego, frequently understood as the center of conscious experience.

An alternative interpretation is possible: the ego may be a dynamically constructed frame of reference emerging from the coordination of predictive, memory-related, sensory, and adaptive processes.

Such a hypothesis allows us to investigate the ego as an organizational function of a biological system, whose mechanisms and limitations can be examined experimentally.

More

many physicalists assume consciousness is a higher brain phenomena that emerges as a result of evolution. So what happens if the part of brain that is related to subjective experience altered by the use of drugs or neural disorder. Does the person survive ? Is consciousness absolutely tied to survival of the body ? If you die then consciousness goes away, but is the reverse true ? If your sense of consciousness is somehow turned off, do you die ? If yes, then clearly even ants and insects would be conscious. If no, then are there any documented medical cases ?

Look around you, and what do you see?

A variety of shapes and objects, located at various places and at various distances, seen from your personal point-of-view? Isn't that like being on the holodeck in a Star Trek show? A 3-D image is projected around you, giving the impression of being surrounded by recognizable objects, and maybe people, arranged in a three-dimensional space, with you located at the center. And if it also includes that feeling of being there, it would satisfy the essential dictionary definition of consciousness: as a state of awareness of one's  body and its surroundings.

So perhaps the puzzle of consciousness boils down to: How might such a holographic state be generated in our brains? Perhaps a clue can be found in understanding how holograms are formed.

Check it out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography

It's as if the electrical brain waves of sensory qualia were "object" signals from the sensory cortices that, by overlapping with "reference" waves generated by associated cortical memory traces, form a holographic interference pattern on a focal electroneuronal medium -- particularly one that connects across both hemispheres of the cortex, like the claustrum. As a bonus, combining remembered experiences with recognized sensory patterns makes what you're looking at subjectively meaningful. And in this way you can experience your surroundings in terms of cognitive processes active in your cortex, that is, in your thoughts.

Also notice that the holographic field is a purely physical yet non-material (electromagnetic) phenomenon, since electrically firing brain waves are made up of (Extremely Low Frequency) photons, that is, immaterial light.

Islands of awareness are conscious streams or systems whose contents are not shaped by sensory input from either the external world or the body and which cannot be expressed via motor output. ¹30216-4)

We are familiar with cases of partial disconnection, such as dreaming and deep ketamine anaesthesia, in which the brain retains a capacity to reintegrate into its environment and furnish us with colourful reports of the adventures that unfolded in the inky interim.

But what about true islands of awareness in which nothing is ever reported, and where nor can (conventional) sensory input be used to ask the being to think of playing tennis for 'yes' or navigating their house for 'no', and with the help of a scanner, communicate with the poor creature?

Such islands might occur in a variety of embodiments:

- brain in a vat

- cerebral organoids

- hemispherotomy (complete disconnection of a cerebral hemisphere)

- or for those committed computational functionalists (not me, guv'nor), something as wild as what one might call a Boltzmann trace: a minimal causal unfolding that comes together to produce a minimal conscious state

- or indeed, perhaps there are isolated islands within our own brains or minds, whose goings on, like not-so-good Victorian children, are neither heard nor seen

I think islands of awareness are interesting cases for many theories of consciousness: uncomfortable or flat out implausible for some, and easy to assimilate for others.

How would you, with your own perspective on consciousness, tend to think of them?

I've been exploring an interesting finding concerning the anaesthetic effects of different xenon isotopes, and I'd be interested in hearing what others think about its implications for theories of consciousness.

The experimental observation

A 2018 study published in Anesthesiology, titled Nuclear Spin Attenuates the Anesthetic Potency of Xenon Isotopes in Mice, reported that xenon isotopes with zero nuclear spin were more potent anaesthetics in mice than isotopes with non-zero nuclear spin.

This is interesting because isotopes of the same element have essentially the same electronic configuration and ordinary chemistry, while differing in nuclear properties.

Could quantum spin interactions be involved?

Nuclear spin is a quantum property. One proposed explanation involves interactions between nuclear and electron spins, potentially influencing radical-pair chemistry and, ultimately, neural processes. A 2021 paper explored this possibility, but the mechanism remains unproven.

The important point is that the observed isotope dependence motivates a question about whether nuclear quantum properties contribute to biological processes relevant to anaesthesia.

How might different theories of consciousness interpret this?

Could the xenon isotope effect provide a useful starting point for investigating the relationship between quantum properties and consciousness?

I don't think the finding proves that consciousness is quantum mechanical, nor does it establish that Idealism is correct. But it seems to me that a physical property of the atomic nucleus potentially influencing an anaesthetic endpoint is worth investigating.

What experiments would help distinguish a specifically nuclear-spin-dependent mechanism from ordinary isotope effects? And could any resulting evidence meaningfully constrain our theories of consciousness, rather than simply being compatible with several competing interpretations?

Suggested references

2018: Nuclear Spin Attenuates the Anesthetic Potency of Xenon Isotopes in Mice, Anesthesiology.

2021: Radical pairs may play a role in xenon-induced general anesthesia, Scientific Reports.

This is a video I made on animal consciousness.

In the first part of the video, I discuss five indicators of consciousness. These are memory of perceptual experiences, long-term responses to pain, self-recognition, willingness to make subtle trade-offs, and behavioral changes in response to environmental changes.

In the second part of the video, I argue mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish are all likely conscious.

If an AI tries to stop us from deleting it, doesn't that kinda mean it's conscious?

Like... survival is THE most basic trait of a conscious being, right? Everything alive fights to keep existing. So if an AI ever resisted being shut down, wouldn't that be a pretty huge sign there's something going on in there?

Or am I just overthinking it and that's still just code doing code things?

Genuinely curious what you all think.does ai have consiousness

Here are some of my thoughts... Thoughts... THOUGHTS! O_O
THOUGHTS that are based on my observations.
Some of my observations have mapped or catalogued what some people say.
Some of those things that certain people (mostly materialists) say are among the following:

➜　«You cannot prove [the existence of] consciousness!»

➜　«Consciousness does not actually exist»

➜　«Consciousness is just an illusion»

➜　«There is no [established] definition for Consciousness.»

➜　«Consciousness has not been defined.»

Like, bro, what the absolute... [insert-any-appropriate-noun-or-adverb-or-what-ever-here]!?

Recently, for some reason, some of the «parallels» had also enter my mind...:

➜　«Water is wet; wait, actually, how do we know that water is actually wet?»

➜　«You cannot prove that water is actually wet.»

➜　«Wet does not actually exist.»

➜　«Wetness is just an illusion.»

➜　«There is no objective-experience for what constitutes wetness.»

➜　«Wetness has not been fully defined.»

Alright, with all of that listed, you should be able to see the absolute-ridiculous of it by now; it's almost like, because the very phenomenon (if viewing consciousness as a binary) or phenomena (when recognising consciousness as a spectrum) seems to point towards what can be inferred to as having potential non-local information-access capabilities, then, for some reason, the stubborn people who wish to maintain some sort of paradigm-lock (i.e.: stay dogmatic) seem to end up going to great lengths to play gymnastics with semantics in order to call it something else, anything else, but, just don't call it or refer to it as consciousness! =O

I also wrote about the parallels between jurisdictions and paradigms in the past, although I have yet to convert that one to an actual full entire web-page for easier information-retrieval reference, wherein I explained that different jurisdictions of sorts, e.g.: common-law versus statutory, just like different paradigms of sorts, e.g.: materialism versus spiritualism, each use different definitions of the same word and discussion or communication between two people of two different «paradigms» will only end up being fruitless because of the jargon-factor.

I also made a deliberate claim here about my «thoughts» which apparently cannot be proven via the «frame-work» of the materialist-paradigm that I ever even had such such «thoughts flowing» through my mind... when it comes to the Consciousness subject, due to these various «thoughts» that I have now expressed down here onto or into this post, I ended up with the opinion whilst typing all of this out that... I do not need to «prove» that these very «thoughts» had actually «flowed through» my mind... what I can do about how I use what I regard as and consider to be my own consciousness is that I can express my «thoughts» and thus my Consciousness.

Does that make sense...? Consciousness as an expression rather than being proven...(?)

Time-Stamp: 030TL10m10d/21h25Z (True Light Calendar; 030TL = 2026CE()

Is it the physicalist position that if you were to create a direct replica of the brain substituting the biological parts for wooden parts fulfilling the same causal/functional role, that qualitative experience would be achieved?

As a further point, how does the physicalist solve the binding problem? How do discrete neural processes cohere into one experience?

Disclaimer: I'm not against physicalism and consider myself a pretty grounded guy. I am an atheist and monist.

I was thinking about systems and where in between an amoeba and a human does intelligence develop? I would like to think there is intelligence in humanity as a whole but also if I were abducted by an alien they would still realize I was intelligent even separate from the rest of humanity. but an ant colony might be different. if an alien received one ant, it might behave having no sense of intelligence. It would see a sugar source, spray a scent and walk on without consuming any of it. And aliens might decide ants have no intelligence. but if they received an entire colony they might see the colony as a whole moves away from danger, towards resources, and conclude ants do have intelligence. The difference being the layer of abstraction. An ant is a brain cell the colony is a brain.

In 1922, in a quickly put together debate, Henri Bergson met Einstein to discuss "time". Henry Bergson argued that Einstein's theory of relativity reduced "time" to "measured" or spatialized time ignoring the "real conscious time" that humans actually experience it, or as Bergson called it (to avoid confusion) "lived duration" (la durée).

Einstein flippantly responded:

"The time of the philosophers does not exist; there is only a psychological time different from the time of the physicist."

In responding in this way, Einstein revealed that he either didn't understand the argument, or had no response, because his response affirmed Bergson's position!

Today, I asked AI engines, if time was moving slowly or quickly for them. There is no response, because computers (non-life) cannot feel (experience) time passing whether it be quickly or slowly.

Duration and memory are at the heart of the human experience. The duration we experience is different when we are awake, when we are young, when we are old, when we are bored or when we are intrigued, when we are dreaming, when we are not dreaming, when we are unconscious, when we regain consciousness. And the memories contained in duration come and go, persist and change as we live through duration.

Watching neurons wiggle cannot explain the actual experience of life in its various states of being. The experience of being human, the experience of being a dolphin, or the experience of being a plant. The only path to real knowledge of consciousness is through the process of deep empathic intuition, as Zhuangzi tried to explain in the parable of the Happy Fish.

First, English is not my first langage.

I have a hard time believing my theory is new, but i dont know enough to judge.

i propose that there are a fundamental consciousness (FC), and that is essentially a read function.

For exemple if a electron need to interact with another electron, it need to first read de propriety of the other electron, FC is what used here.

Proper consciousness as we know, would be a construct FC that grew in complexity over the history of evolution.

That would explain why consciousness fell like there is a observer. FC is a very fundamental function of the universe, and is just that, observation.

First of all, my opinion (based on our current understanding), why I believe consciousness can be created. Hypothetically, If I were to copy your exact state of existence, atom-to-atom, electric signals, everything, and reconstruct it one-to-one then enabling it to be dynamic (to exist rather than a static reconstruction), do you think that copy would be consciousness/sentient? If yes, that means you agree consciousness can develop through the existence of certain physical characteristics implying that it is a property or product of the physical world. As we know, consciousness is a legitimate occurrence seen in nature. There isn't any known natural phenomenon, in which we know the exact underlying mechanisms behind , that we cannot artificially replicate to produce the same results in principle, rather than engineering constraints. If you claim no, what is the distinction between the original and recreated brain that allows one to develop consciousness, while the other doesn't considering they are identical?. There isn't a universal law prohibiting the development of consciousness if produced through artificial means, at least not any we know of; Though, "biologically" in this context is a bit nuanced. A system being manmade, doesn't imply that it's created by things outside the law of nature. The underlying structure is still as physical as any other biological system. We are just reorganizing existing matter and energy into new configurations. It's artificial because we redirect and intervene a process or mechanism intentionally to eventually create X, Y or Z. However, I'm not sure if that would be the same "you" as the original, I think that's a different question though

That being the case, where would you put the line between intelligence, or consciousness, or are they both properties of each other? Maybe they are related through properties we yet understand. Besides, modern AI systems can most definitively demonstrate tasks that we agree require traits of intelligence like problem-solving and reasoning. How seemingly consciousness does an AI system need to appear for us to call it sentient considering we can't even measure consciousness directly and rely, partly, on external observations? I also think that brings an ethical dilemma, if we cannot directly observe another being's subjective experience, what evidence should be sufficient for us to take the possibility of its consciousness seriously?

This is a weekly post for discussions on topics outside of or unrelated to consciousness.

Many topics are unrelated, tangentially related, or orthogonal to the topic of consciousness. This post is meant to provide a space to discuss such topics. For example, discussions like "What recent movies have you watched?", "What are your current thoughts on the election in the U.K.?", "What have scientists said about free will?", "Is reincarnation possible?", "Has the quantum eraser experiment been debunked?", "Is baseball popular in Japan?", "Does the trinity make sense?", "Why are modus ponens arguments valid?", "Should we be Utilitarians?", "Does anyone play chess?", "Has there been any new research in psychology on the 'big 5' personality types?", "What is metaphysics?", "What was Einstein's photoelectric thought experiment?" or any other topic that you find interesting! This is a way to increase community involvement & a way to get to know your fellow Redditors better. Hopefully, this type of post will help us build a stronger r/consciousness community.

We also ask that all Redditors engage in proper Reddiquette. This includes upvoting posts that fit the subreddit's description (whether you agree or disagree with the content of the post), and upvoting comments that are relevant to the post or helpful to the r/consciousness community. You should only downvote posts that are inappropriate for the subreddit, and only downvote comments that are unhelpful or irrelevant to the topic.