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The central issue is this:

[quote="RArvay"]What I am failing to convey is that (presumably) each of us has an inward experience of our own inward experience, and
that phenomenon, or property, is profoundly different from anything else described in physics. It is in a separate class altogether.[/quote]
You have not failed to convey this to any of the discussants as far as I can see, and especially to me. Indeed this is what is often refereed to as "consciousness." From Buddha to Descartes to Whitehead to Dennett to Penrose, all have puzzled about it. We understand the issue, but do not necessarily agree with your take on it. In particular, for all we know a robot may well have the "inward experience" of being self-aware in the same sense as you attribute us to have "inward experience." And since you cannot possibly prove otherwise, your assertions about the specialness of "conscious humans" reduce to mere statements of faith. Thus what you have failed to convey is that there is a real puzzle here in the first place. All I gather is an unjustified belief in the specialness of "inward experience", in need of justification.

Joy Christian wrote:
[quote]
This is a misrepresentation of the point I made above. What I pointed out was a very real possibility that consciousness may be a mere illusion.
You then asked: "What is it that is having the illusion?"
And I answered: "A robot, for example."
Now you claim:
An illusion cannot have an illusion.
But my robot certainly dose not seem an illusion to me, and more importantly it may not be an illusion to my robot itself either. Thus your assertion is empty.[/quote]

Kind sir.
I did not say that the robot is an illusion. I am saying that consciousness cannot be an illusion, because that would mean
that an illusion was having an illusion. An illusion, being something that does not exist except in the mind,
cannot exist, and therefore, cannot have an illusion.

What I am failing to convey is that (presumably) each of us has an inward experience of our own inward experience, and
that phenomenon, or property, is profoundly different from anything else described in physics.
It is in a separate class altogether.

One might adapt pantheism to say that each atom perceives itself, but that sort of argument gets us nowhere.
One might say that we can concoct a computer program that convincingly responds to us as if it
were internally conscious, but we can never know whether that computer has what it is that we experience
as inward consciousness.

Each of us experiences only his own consciousness, and if he does, then for him, it is the one thing
that he knows for a certainty exists. "Cogito ergo sum."

Indeed, I can never fully know for a certainty that you experience inward consciousness as I do.
That has led some to hypothesize that there are bio-mechanistic humans, so-called zombie humans.
I choose to dismiss that hypothesis as fruitless.

Finally, I notice that repeatedly, respondents to this post attribute to me some sort of belief which I may or may not hold.
Such attributions shed no light on the central topic, and may reveal a form of bias in the attributer.

Even were I to believe in faeries and unicorns, the statements I make about consciousness
stand or fall on their own merits, regardless of any bizarre beliefs I might hold.

The very difficulty of this conversation is to be expected, if indeed we are discussing something
that is something truly unique and without definition in terms of physics.

It has helped me to better understand that difficulty, and hopefully enabled me to better deal with it.

I thank each of you, and the moderators, for this opportunity.

[quote="RArvay"]Indeed, it has been suggested by some that not every human being is indeed conscious except
in the sense that (as Joy Christian seems to assert) a robot can be said to be conscious, an external appearance,
but not the inward experience.[/quote]
This is a misrepresentation of the point I made above. What I pointed out was a very real possibility that consciousness may be a mere illusion.

You then asked: "What is it that is having the illusion?"

And I answered: "A robot, for example."

Now you claim:
[quote]An illusion cannot have an illusion.[/quote]
But my robot certainly dose not seem an illusion to me, and more importantly it may not be an illusion to my robot itself either. Thus your assertion is empty.

[quote="RArvay"]I submit that no robotic explanation of consciousness can ever describe or define what we inwardly
experience as consciousness, exactly as we can never explain color to a person blind from birth who has
never experienced color. Numbers and wavelengths can be communicated, the quality of an experience cannot,
nor can consciousness itself.[/quote]
The trouble is that a lot of what you claim are merely assertions of your own faith in something or other, or assertions of your own deep-seated beliefs.

In science, and especially in this forum, most of us are fighting against such unjustified beliefs (by this I do not imply that scientists are free of unjustified beliefs).

OK. I will add to my statement.
Not too long off, we will make make robots that have consciousness.
That doesn't mean we will understand what consciousness is, but it will be a step towards that understanding.

Ben wrote:
[quote]Isn't that putting man at the centre of the universe, like the earth once was?
I suspect that even a gnat is conscious.[/quote]

I don't know.
It's irrelevant to the central question.
.

[quote]RArvay wrote:
I submit that no robotic explanation of consciousness can ever describe or define what we inwardly
experience as consciousness, ...[/quote]
Isn't that putting man at the centre of the universe, like the earth once was?
I suspect that even a gnat is conscious.

Tony wrote:
[quote]I don't think we are talking past each other [/quote]

Alas, alas! We are indeed on different pages.
Here and in other posts, assumptions have been made about what I am assuming,
and that has diverted the discussion.

I begin with the simple axiom that we are conscious (and that therefore we exist).
There is no need to bring into this any external motivations or assumptions.
One either accepts the axiom or rejects it.

The fact of our inward consciousness is not the same as an external observation of atoms.
Inward consciousness is something unique and apart from all other phenomena.
Consciousness is the most profound thing we know about.
If one disagrees with that, then I am afraid we cannot productively discuss the matter any further.

Indeed, it has been suggested by some that not every human being is indeed conscious except
in the sense that (as Joy Christian seems to assert) a robot can be said to be conscious, an external appearance,
but not the inward experience.

An illusion cannot have an illusion.

I submit that no robotic explanation of consciousness can ever describe or define what we inwardly
experience as consciousness, exactly as we can never explain color to a person blind from birth who has
never experienced color. Numbers and wavelengths can be communicated, the quality of an experience cannot,
nor can consciousness itself.

A weak analogy is the need for cosmologists to explain fine tuning by invoking more universes than we can observe.
This analogy is weak, because having invoked a multi-universe to explain ours, we encounter the much greater
problem of explaining the physical constants of that much larger universe.

Even so, the analogy is that in order to explain consciousness, we need a larger context than the known
physical universe, and perhaps even something stranger than quantum theory.

My failure to communicate all of this is my failure, and I shall struggle to find more adequate ways to express
that the experience of experience is ineffable, so much so, that it stands apart from any physical explanation without
a paradigm shift in the way scientists think.

Until I find a way to do that, I humbly offer my apologies.
.

[quote="RArvay"]I think we may be talking past each other.

Science operates (generally) on a natural materialist assumption that
the world "out there" is a completely objective reality,
a reality which relies only on itself as a reference or context.

But this assumption is itself subjective, even metaphysical.
It may be incorrect, and [u]inward[/u] consciousness may be a strong indicator
that physical nature does not, and cannot, explain itself.

Tegmark himself may be alluding to something along this line when he says
that mathematics does not merely describe physical nature, it [u]IS[/u] physical nature.
If so, this turns the abstract reality (numbers) into the fundamental objective reality,
and demotes what we perceive to be physical reality into an abstraction of our minds.

.[/quote]

I don't think we are talking past each other as I understand what you are claiming but I question the validity of the assumption underpinning your position.

Perceiving oneself is necessarily different from perceiving externally to oneself in that one does not actually perceive or observe oneself. Rather one has an intermittent internal awareness of the mental construct of oneself which is used as a tool to enable coherent navigation and interaction with the external world. Generating the sense of self is an inherent characteristic of the mind's capability to create concepts, in this case an internal construct incorporating a sense of personal identity aligning with a physical body. Confusion arises when semantic descriptions of the internal construct of self are mistaken as attributes of an objectively existing entity independent from the physical body.

The idea of physical nature explaining itself is bizarrely backwards. Physical nature simply is whatever it is and it is we who are trying to explain it. Even if consciousness were granted some manner of a more fundamental ontological status over physical nature then it would just mean that consciousness simply is whatever it is and it would still be us trying to explain it. We have no right to demand or expect that whatever it is underpinning the foundation of our existence must explain itself or for that matter that we should assume that we are able to explain it.

The natural materialism on which science is predicated is not on a subjective assumption but on an objectively verifiable foundation. Science follows wherever the objectively verifiable leads. Whatever subjective assumptions anyone may have once entertained about the nature of reality vanished with the discovery of the the quantum world.

Metaphysical assumptions or arguments are simply irrelevant. They are based on arbitrarily invented abstract concepts operated on by arbitrarily invented rules. Hence metaphysical musings only represent concoctions of human imagination dreamed up about the world rather than having a claim of validity for an accurate representation of what actually constitutes the world.

Tegmarks' ideas about numbers are fanciful to say the least, as is his view that the universe consists of an infinity of infinities of every possibility. I find this an example of applying an arbitrary assumption about a human invented concept (infinity) to the external world without credibility or justification. Like observation, I think this is another example of confusing the relationship of an invented concept with the natural world. It seems an irresistible urge indeed if not conceit for humans to invent abstract concepts and then convince themselves their invented concepts have managed to accurately represent and reflect the reality existing beyond the mind.

By the way if you credit Tegmark's speculation that abstract mathematics actually is physical nature then it follows consciousness is also constituted by mathematics. Hence it should able to be understood by mathematics, an idea you seem to have already rejected in a previous post when you stated 'It will not be answered in a laboratory or on a blackboard'.

Bottom line is consciousness may be unique (as far as we know) but this in and off itself does not constitute viable justification for elevating consciousness to ontological prominence over the physical reality in which it is embedded and on which it depends.

Science is a product of the human mind that investigates the nature of the world beyond the human mind as well the human mind itself. It may turn out that consciousness is in fact some fundamental component of reality that just lay as a dormant potentiality for a few billion years before getting around to start existing. Or it may be investigation of consciousness reveals it is as an aspect of the conventional natural world that we have not yet (or may never for that matter) managed to unravel.

What we do know is that the conscious mind is capable of unlimited invention and that humans have repeatedly tended to invent anthropocentrically gratifying concepts placing us in a special or privileged position within the mind-numbing vastness of the universe. Through the science that the human mind invented, the human mind has discovered that absent credible grounds for taking speculative concepts seriously, the most prudent position to adopt is open-minded skepticism, even if it eventually turns out, as quantum mechanics has shown, that the universe in not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine.

[quote="RArvay"]The central question here is not religious or sociological. It is scientific.[/quote]
Nothing that physics can offer (now and in near future) helps to answer that question. If any science can tell about the nature and effects of consiousness, it is zoology, not physics.

[quote="RArvay"]Joy Christian wrote:

[quote]Another possibility is that consciousness is entirely an illusion.[/quote]

What is it that is having the illusion?
.[/quote]
A robot, for example. Have you ever watched Blade Runner?

Joy Christian wrote:

[quote]Another possibility is that consciousness is entirely an illusion.[/quote]

What is it that is having the illusion?
.

Wouldn't it be funny that the only thing that's real to us, cause let's face it we can't really experience anything than our consciousness, turns out to be unreal ? Wont we need new definitions of what's real ?
[b]
"Reality=everything that does not reside in consciousnesses"[/b] :cry:

[quote="RArvay"]Bottom line, consciousness, the self observing phenomenon, is unlike any other.
Recognizing that is a critical first step in studying it.
.[/quote]
Another possibility is that consciousness is entirely an illusion.

We have been wrong about things before. Time and again what we had thought to be real has turned out to be unreal.

You are on shaky grounds.

I think we may be talking past each other.

Science is a product of the human mind.
The quote by JBS Haldane underscored the importance of recognizing that.

Science, an activity of the mind, studies things "out there."
The traditional and conventional methods it uses may not
be suitable to study the world "in here."

Can we really apply the same criteria and methodology to studying
the supposedly objective world to the study of the very same consciousness
which we use to study it?

This is the point of my asking, can the eye see itself?
Is it possible that an objective, conscious study of consciousness is inherently impossible?

Science operates (generally) on a natural materialist assumption that
the world "out there" is a completely objective reality,
a reality which relies only on itself as a reference or context.

But this assumption is itself subjective, even metaphysical.
It may be incorrect, and [u]inward[/u] consciousness may be a strong indicator
that physical nature does not, and cannot, explain itself.

There is a qualitative difference between the perceiver and the perceived.
When the perceiver perceives himself, this is entirely unlike
the perceiver perceiving an object outside himself.

Tegmark himself may be alluding to something along this line when he says
that mathematics does not merely describe physical nature, it [u]IS[/u] physical nature.
If so, this turns the abstract reality (numbers) into the fundamental objective reality,
and demotes what we perceive to be physical reality into an abstraction of our minds.

I don't pretend to be able to unravel all of this, and I'm not sure anyone can.

Bottom line, consciousness, the self observing phenomenon, is unlike any other.
Recognizing that is a critical first step in studying it.
.

[quote="RArvay"]

The central question here is not religious or sociological. It is scientific. Science is, as I am sure Tony agrees, based on observation.
What is the most fundamental of all observations, and (presumably) the most common? It is the observation of our own consciousness.

<snip>
So far, the hypothesis that consciousness arises as a consequence of the arrangement of atoms seems as unlikely as
that all twenty-seven known constants of nature arose only once, and purely by chance.
.[/quote]

Science is based on objective empirical verification through observation or experiment grounded within a mathematically framework. The phenomenon of consciousness is not an objective observation but a rather an intermittently experienced subjective mental state of internal awareness.

The mission of scientific investigation is to identify criteria for discriminating between mentally invented abstractions having independent external correlates from those without. Encapsulating the concept of consciousness via a specific label of an invented abstraction does not constitute grounds for bootstrapping the abstraction into reification.

Ever since the outcome of quantum experiments started being described as dependent on observation rather than measurement there has been a range of wildly speculative hypotheses about how reality must be predicated on or subject to consciousness. Such speculation is based on nothing more than semantic confusion.

It may or may not be the case that understanding consciousness requires a paradigm shift. However history has repeatedly shown that many phenomena once accepted as being beyond human understanding or beyond the natural world have turned out not to be so. Hence arguments from ignorance (you don't understand it) or incredulity (you find it too unlikely) do not constitute grounds for claiming understanding consciousness cannot or will not eventually be included within the ever-expanding domain of scientific models based on matter, energy and mathematics, and at least for the time being, having no need to incorporate mysticism or the supernatural.

Tony wrote:

[quote] One historical characteristic and behavior of consciousness that persists to the present is the innate anthropocentric psychological impulse to elevate humankind to some special or privileged status within the greater scheme of reality. The obvious example of this is the invention of gods and sundry manner of imaginary beings who interact in a bizarre assortment of ways with humankind.
[/quote]

The central question here is not religious or sociological. It is scientific. Science is, as I am sure Tony agrees, based on observation.
What is the most fundamental of all observations, and (presumably) the most common? It is the observation of our own consciousness.

This fact presents science with a problem unlike any other which it faces. It asks, in a sense, can the eye see itself?
Apparently, it can, and does, metaphorically of course.
Granted, there are profound philosophical implications inherent in the question, and equally so, there are
profound philosophical implications concerning consciousness. But there are also profound scientific questions that demand to be addressed.

For example, as I have stated before, inward consciousness is the only known
phenomenon which observes itself. If the collapse of a probability wave depends on an observer, then what happens when
the observer observes itself? This is not the kind of question that can be casually answered, should not be casually dismissed,
and perhaps cannot be answered by science using its current paradigm.

In order to address whether consciousness is a fundamental principle in nature, we must begin by noticing that nothing in the present
paradigm of science predicts or explains it. I must repeatedly emphasize here that I am not speaking of the [u]outward[/u] evidences of consciousness,
but YOUR OWN[u] internal[/u] experience of it, which is ineffable. For example, classical physics (as I believe Tegmark points out) assumes that nature
[u]could [/u]exist in principle with no conscious observers to observe it. That assumption might be wrong.

Therefore, the scientific question of consciousness is unique. It will not be answered in a laboratory or on a blackboard.
It requires something new, a paradigm shift. This, of course, discomfits those for whom the materialist paradigm
is the only permissible context for an answer.

In these exchanges, I have not proposed a specific answer as to the nature of consciousness. Rather instead, I have focused
on the question itself, and proposed that (just as the multi-verse theory was needed to explain the otherwise inexplicable
statistical anomaly of fine tuning), a larger context is needed to understand consciousness.

So far, the hypothesis that consciousness arises as a consequence of the arrangement of atoms seems as unlikely as
that all twenty-seven known constants of nature arose only once, and purely by chance.
.

[quote="RArvay"]

The further question which I pose is this:
Is consciousness an emergent phenomenon of physics,
or is it more foundational than that?

Until we can show a sequential, causal chain of actions, a chain which shows how inert atoms become organized
into producing the indefinable internal experience of consciousness-- until we have that, we are dealing with
an undefined, and perhaps indefinable quintessence, which to my knowledge, no current theory of physics predicts.

If one posits that the subject is off limits to physics, very well, but it seems that
Max Tegmark strongly disagrees, and who am I to challenge him in matters of physics?

Perhaps the greatest mystery in physics is the physicist.
.[/quote]

Ascribing some measure of ontological status to an object or phenomenon arises from and depends on knowledge of its characteristics and behavior. One historical characteristic and behavior of consciousness that persists to the present is the innate anthropocentric psychological impulse to elevate humankind to some special or privileged status within the greater scheme of reality. The obvious example of this is the invention of gods and sundry manner of imaginary beings who interact in a bizarre assortment of ways with humankind.

In modern times, interpretation of observations of certain quantum phenomena has provided a less absurd excuse than traditional ancient mythology to elevate humankind to a special or privileged status through speculative positing of consciousness as a fundamental force distinct from the other accepted forces.

It is innate human nature dominated by psychological drivers that uses the facilities of consciousness to invent a comforting framework for human existence whereby psychological drivers are sated. However trying to argue that consciousness is a fundamental force because consciousness has to date not been explained by science is simply an example of the informal logical fallacy, an argument from ignorance.

Consciousness may or may not be a fundamental force and its investigation is not off limits to physics. But until and unless there is credible objective evidence to support such a claim, such a claim is just a demonstration that naive human consciousness tends to function as a subservient tool pandering to sating human psychological desire.

Perhaps the greatest mystery is why it is still taking such a long time for some people to acknowledge primacy of the objective rationally coherent over the subjective psychologically comforting.

[quote]And as is manifestly evident throughout human history, the conscious observer can also experience that which has no basis in existence outside of the conscious observer's own mind who then dreams up semantic concoctions attempting to reify the illusion of his internal subjective experiences. Without a basis supported through objective investigation, personal experiences and attempts to imbue them with external ontological status reside in the realm of psychology.[/quote]

This is quite a bit off track from the original topic.

Tony is delving into epistemology which, while certainly related to consciousness, is on its periphery.

The question asked by Tegmark involves the core nature of consciousness.
The further question which I pose is this:

Is consciousness an emergent phenomenon of physics,
or is it more foundational than that?

Until we can show a sequential, causal chain of actions, a chain which shows how inert atoms become organized
into producing the indefinable internal experience of consciousness-- until we have that, we are dealing with
an undefined, and perhaps indefinable quintessence, which to my knowledge, no current theory of physics predicts.

If one posits that the subject is off limits to physics, very well, but it seems that
Max Tegmark strongly disagrees, and who am I to challenge him in matters of physics?

Perhaps the greatest mystery in physics is the physicist.
.

[quote="Dirkman"][quote="Tony_r"] to imbue them with external ontological status reside in the realm of psychology.[/quote]

Is there a reason scientifically demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that there's an entirely internal reason for us humans having an experience of consciousness instead of being philosophical zombies?[/quote]

Nothing regarding the fundamental nature of the external reality in which we are embedded has been scientifically demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt so it is a vacuous question predicated on a specious premise about science.

Human imagination can invent all manner of possible explanations about the nature of reality since, unlike scientific investigation, imagination is unconstrained by the requirement for objective demonstration of conformance with the external world beyond imagination. Absent at least some credible measure of objective verification, human inventions such as brains in vats, the Matrix, Boltzman Brains and anything else that can be dreamed up are a reflection of the internal world of human imagination rather than the external world in which it resides.

[quote="Tony_r"] to imbue them with external ontological status reside in the realm of psychology.[/quote]

Is there a reason scientifically demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that there's an entirely internal reason for us humans having an experience of consciousness instead of being philosophical zombies?