Why is Consciousness

So what's really going on?

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Justintruth
Posts: 187
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Justintruth »

Londoner wrote: ... I do not think we can use it in the other direction, (not without begging the question by first turning the mind into an external object like the brain).
All minds are external objects to my mind save my mind. If someone sees red in China in some room where no one sees him. And if he subsequently forgets that in fact at that time he did see red, the fact remains. However, there is a difference between an objective fact and a subjective fact. The objective fact - let's pretend color was objective - could have been seen by others. But the seeing cannot be seen by others. You cannot see my seeing. That does not mean that my seeing is not a feature of the world. And if my seeing and all of the billions of other seeings, and hearings, etc are occurring external to your mind and if each of them is causally connected to a different brain - shooting this brain effects this seeing - shooting that brain affects that seeing - and if whenever you look in a mirror directly you see the same body then it is reasonable to believe that your seeing too is an external fact in the world independent of the fact that for you it is not.
I do not imagine that I am ever clearly and directly conscious of the world, under anesthetic, when drunk, asleep or otherwise.
My experience of anesthesia is that you are not conscious at all. WIth respect to the others what do you mean by "directly conscious"? I am unaware of any direct consciousness of the world. Perhaps you mean consciousness of our own brains phenomenally? Not sure what you mean.
My sensations are always filtered through my sensory organs, then translated into ideas via a mental architecture that is partly innate and partly learnt.
Let's say that any causal pathway that results in a mechanism that thinks contributes to that mechanisms thinking. Some pathways, however, provide no information about the external world. By information I mean Shannon information. For example food is converted to energy and without it you can't think. But food contains no information. But some pathways contain information - both the genetic pathway and the sensory do. It is not out of the question, that we will be able to use the food pathway to convey information in the future. In the future you may go to school by taking the right pill.
So my mind must be something distinct from any particular sensation, let alone the claim that a particular sensation is 'real' in the sense of representing the world, or being shared by others.
Your mind need not be distinct from the brain for its sensations to be filtered through the senses and translated into learned or innate ideas. That's a non-sequitor
The reason I think I have a mind....


We are not discussing whether you have a mind but rather whether the brain you have is doing the thinking. What is the difference between having a mind and your brain thinking. You will experience the same. The difference can only be found by finding differences in your experiences that are not reflected by differences in your brain. We cannot exclude this possibility so agnosticism is the scientific answer. Scientifically we don't know yet because we don't yet have the techniques required to map the brain in detail. However given the brain's structure and given all we know so far I think that the most probably hypothesis is that those differences do not exist. This is part of the "no ghost/no zombie" hypothesis.
... I can accept that what the nurse describes as what happened during the operation is 'true', yet also that it was not what happened to 'me', me meaning 'my mind'..
That's exactly right. Doesn't that make her mind external to yours and yours external to hers?
].because this suggests that the mind is somehow mapped onto the world.
"World". There are different meanings. If by "world" you mean the universe the mapping is provided by the causal brain. Line ten people up and let them each see a different color. Anesthetize one and the color seeing that stops is the one associated with the brain that was anesthetized. So we have the mapping. Of course we could just ask "Who is seeing red?" and see who says "Me!" and we again get the mapping.

If by "world" you mean Being then the notion of mapping onto is more difficult. The separation between the seen and the seer is not a necessary property of experiencing. When it is not there no mapping is possible because nothing separates the experiencing from the experienced. Still "walking around in it" was "walking around in it" and so while the Oneness is still present the experiencing can still be spatial. You sort of have the whole content being spatial. It is not quite true that Mystical experience is not spatial. It is certainly not spatial in the normal sense. But you can walk around, garden, do things while experiencing non-objectively.
To describe the senses as preserving 'external information' rather begs the question. Cells in my eye respond to light in a mechanical way; my brain may turn this into what we are calling information,....
The best idea is to equate the word "information" with Shannon information and treat the sensory pathway as a signal pathway. No information is created in the brain. Rather information that was deposited into the signal, say when light struck a rock and reflected, is communicated and possibly stored in the brain. Also the experiencing that occurs reflects this information and we can tell from our experiencing facts about the world external to our brains. That encoding into the brain of this information and the encoding into experiencing are not the same encoding. But it is a non sequitor to say that it is not the brain thinking and that there needs to be another something called the mind in order for these two encodings to occur. The seeing that the brain does encodes the same information that is in the light even before it strikes the eye, and the fact that the brains encodes this in the seeing it does and in the motion or alignment of its atoms is not a reason to posit anything other than the fact that the brains seeing is not just the motion of its atoms - it does not mean that the brain is the atoms and the seeing is something else.
....but that is different from the electrical signal in the optic nerve, let alone the photons themselves or the origin of those photons. After all, a tree also responds to light, (which confers survival advantage) but we do not imagine that the tree sees the world.
Right. Nor does a computer that stores these letters think. But the information encoded in these letters does exist in the computer. Information has nothing to do with meaning. Look at the Rosetta stone. There is information there. But no meaning in the stone. Look at Claude Shannon's paper on information theory. He says explicitly it has nothing to do with meaning.
...I would suggest that the 'information' is something we create, internally. The map is in our heads. We interpret the signals from our optic nerve by reference to that map. Thus, if we get discordant signals we do not immediately make a new map. When things do not fit in, we first think; 'I must be dreaming/drunk/under anesthetic etc.' Only reluctantly, if there is no other way, will we readjust our map (as minimally as possible) to adapt to disruption. (I see God. I will go with 'I'm drunk' or 'somebody is playing a trick' or even 'an alien!' before abandoning all of science.)
Yea. Except that we create the information internally I agree. The information exists in the environment and it get's in mainly through the sensory pathway - also through instinct.
I think we can only do this because we (our minds) stand at a remove from any given sensation, or piece of information.
There may be differences between color experiencing and thinking about color experiencing. Is that what you mean? Both may be something our brains do though.
... The tree responds to light, we respond to light, but unlike the tree we are aware we are responding to light, thus we have the ability to think about light as a general phenomenon, and thus we know that our eyes can deceive us.
Right. But trees don't have brains. That is why they don't experience. At least that's plausible. Also that is why trees don't think. They have no brains.
...Its mind is created through realising difference, separateness..
But you can also say that the brain thinks and realizes the difference, separateness. The only difference between the two is whether what happens is the "creation" of some noun called a "mind" or whether the brain doesn't create something called a "mind" but rather just thinks. We agree basically on the facts. What will decide this is if we find that there are two thoughts that occur without a corresponding change in the brain. If that happens then you are right. But if they are one to on onto then you are wrong by Occam's razor.
I would have said that what characterises our minds is a continual awareness of the present.
Heidegger has good stuff on this. Temporality is fundamental to being. It get's very complicated.
I would disagree that I am the same 'me' as I was an hour ago. If I was, then I could not know it; I would not be aware that an hour had passed, since no change would have occurred.

As I live in the moment, everything is fluid. But in the past, everything is fixed. That in itself is a fundamental difference between 'me an hour ago' and 'me now'. I can only connect the two if I think of myself now as if I was an object, if I view myself from outside, imagine myself as a cinema film where a series of slightly changing images connects 'then' to 'now'. Yet at the same time, I am aware this is a falsification; a construction. The me that was is gone absolutely.
You can think that way. But there are other ways you can think. For example you can think that rocks are not fluid but solid. Whereas water is fluid. The whole notion of fluidity can be objective.

What will help is if you divide your thinking into two categories. When you consider what is and try to describe and then think about it you are considering its nature. Then the descriptions of science are invaluable. The describe solids, gases, liquids, etc. It's very accurate and does a bang up job of describing what we experience. But if you consider that it is, if you consider existence itself then the descriptions you are using are better. For there is no meaning to a solid fact that it is vs a liquid fact that it is. But temporality does seem to be fundamental to being of mind. It is hard to, maybe impossible to think of our existence without involving time. Numbers come to mind as non temporal. Eternal existence it is called. It can be done but not for the mind. Some call it the mind of God. But that temporalizes God. It get's very technical and I surely can't parse it right now.


I think that making memory into a noun does what I wrote about earlier, turn it into an object, one that can be lost or found.
Now this is where you can see it for finally we have science on this. Science has determined that short term memory occurs in changes in the chemistry in the synapse but long term memory has to do with making additional connections between nerve cells. So a mapping has at least partially been made.
But I would say that there is something we do called 'remember', in which we try to make sense of the present, place it in our metal map. We need to create patterns, discern cause and effect relationships. When doing this, I think it works both ways. We are quite capable of creating, or adjusting, our memory to fit in with how things are now. I understand that this is something readily observed in life; the witness to an accident will 'remember' details that create a narrative that makes sense, and so on. It is not difficult to implant memories or 'lose' them.
So how do you explain the effect of a stroke on memory. Can you show me how to remember if I get a stroke? I could surely use that if there is a way. But you can't. Once that stroke occurs it wipes out the function of those neurons and memory is destroyed. Its not something you *can* do. Look, you can use your will to try to remember. But you need more than your effort for the memory to occur. There are times when your will is unsuccessful. I suspect that that "trying" is the same "trying" that we do to move an arm and that is why "thinking" can tire you just like exercise does.
Once again, to be clear, I do not dispute that our ability to have thoughts depends on our brains and body.
Why can we not modify our notion of matter such that arranging it in some way causes it to think? Then we can learn the rules and even tell what it is thinking by how its molecules move.
I would say that the question of causality is different. Causality is something we create in order to make the world predictable. If I say 'A caused B' I am selecting two features of the world and pointing out a connection between them, because I find it useful to do so. But the causality only arises because I did that selecting; in reality B is caused by the state of the entire universe, (as was A).

So by trying to explain the mind in terms of causality, we are using a technique that is created in the mind. It is like trying to show that hallucinations are not real through the medium of hallucinations.
OK, you have more than one point here. First causality does not mean identity. I don't claim it does. If you define "a brain" as just the physical structure where "physical structure" is limited to the current physical science then brains in fact do not think. Because there is nothing in physical science that says that they do and we are limiting the term to what the current science says. But our definitions can evolve. We can define matter as something which if arranged in a certain way will think and we can define which ways matter must be arranged for which thoughts. So for me it is not that brains cause thinking, I am saying that brains are thinking. But the fact that brains can be thinking means that brains are not just describable with the current physical laws. But there is no other object, nor no other subject required. The brain can serve both as the object of the impulses of the senses and the subject of experiencing. There is nothing wrong with that definition provided we continue not to find two difference experiencings, two subjective experiences to use your terms that correlate with the same physical configuration. Even if one of those experiencings is null - a zombie - then it is better to say that there is a mind. But absent zombies or ghosts it is better to change our notion of matter and realize that object not only can be subjects but that they are.
Londoner
Posts: 783
Joined: Sun Sep 11, 2016 8:47 am

Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Londoner »

Justintruth wrote:
All minds are external objects to my mind save my mind.
I would say that the only mind I have access to is my own. I can assume other people have minds, that is they have personal experiences, but those experiences are not external objects to me in the sense that their bodies might be. I can observe their brains, but not their 'being themselves'.
Me: I do not imagine that I am ever clearly and directly conscious of the world, under anesthetic, when drunk, asleep or otherwise.

My experience of anesthesia is that you are not conscious at all. WIth respect to the others what do you mean by "directly conscious"? I am unaware of any direct consciousness of the world. Perhaps you mean consciousness of our own brains phenomenally? Not sure what you mean.
My brain is still working under anesthesia. I am not conscious of what is happening to my body, but my point is the one I make in the next sentence you quote. I am always aware that my senses can be misleading, I can be deceived, that there are things that are there but which I cannot sense.
Me: My sensations are always filtered through my sensory organs, then translated into ideas via a mental architecture that is partly innate and partly learnt.

Let's say that any causal pathway that results in a mechanism that thinks contributes to that mechanisms thinking. Some pathways, however, provide no information about the external world. By information I mean Shannon information. For example food is converted to energy and without it you can't think. But food contains no information. But some pathways contain information - both the genetic pathway and the sensory do. It is not out of the question, that we will be able to use the food pathway to convey information in the future. In the future you may go to school by taking the right pill.
I was more referring to Kant etc. That I am equipped with particular sensory organs, and a brain configured to make use of the signals it receives. So my notion of reality is created by these things. So not only can I never perceive things as they might be in themselves, but I am also aware that my ideas can be wrong. (You reference the problem in your last post when you wrote of our ideas of temporarily; I need to order sense impressions in time, but I am also aware that my sense of time - where the past in some sense exists - is wrong in the context of physics.)

The point I am questioning is the identification between the mind and 'consciousness' in the sense of 'not being under anesthetic' . If I say I have a mind, I am not making the claim that I am ever aware of the world in an unmediated way.
Me: So my mind must be something distinct from any particular sensation, let alone the claim that a particular sensation is 'real' in the sense of representing the world, or being shared by others.

Your mind need not be distinct from the brain for its sensations to be filtered through the senses and translated into learned or innate ideas. That's a non-sequitor
If you are distinguishing between 'sensations' and 'ideas' then you are also making that distinction. And I think we have to, (although the choice of the indeterminate word 'sensation' hides this).

If a photon enters my eye, then is turned into an electrical signal, neither of those things is 'a tree' or whatever. When I write 'a tree' you understand that idea as an idea; you do not turn that idea into an electrical signal or a photon. Nor does my having the idea 'a tree' depend on me continuing to react to reflected light.

It seems to me that if we insisted that there was no distinction to be made between a sensation and an idea we would be ignoring a fact evident in all experience.
We are not discussing whether you have a mind but rather whether the brain you have is doing the thinking. What is the difference between having a mind and your brain thinking. You will experience the same. The difference can only be found by finding differences in your experiences that are not reflected by differences in your brain. We cannot exclude this possibility so agnosticism is the scientific answer. Scientifically we don't know yet because we don't yet have the techniques required to map the brain in detail. However given the brain's structure and given all we know so far I think that the most probably hypothesis is that those differences do not exist. This is part of the "no ghost/no zombie" hypothesis.
I think there is a sharp difference between my having a mind and 'the brain that I have is doing the thinking'.

It is hard to even formulate the second; if I 'have' the brain, what am I? Am I the rest of my body? But then we could go through all the bits; I have an arm, I have a head...we could go through everything and never find the 'I' that is doing the 'having'. Yet we each still know that we exist, that there is an 'I'.

Let us suppose that we have all those techniques to map the activity of the brain. What would it look like? If I stood in front of some sort of monitor in which it showed particular neural pathways light up when I thought 'tree', the two would still not correspond. When I think 'tree' I am not thinking 'lights on a monitor'.

We already know that thought takes place in the brain; knowing in more detail where and how is not the issue. The difference is between being inside our own heads - and observing heads from outside. They two can never be the same. I think that the word 'mind' describes the first.
The best idea is to equate the word "information" with Shannon information and treat the sensory pathway as a signal pathway...


I would use that word differently. I think we call something 'information' relative to a purpose. If I detect light which I interpret as 'a tree' I would call that 'information' if I was looking for an apple to eat, or trying not to bump into hard objects while on a walk, or looking for an example to use in a philosophy discussion. I do not care about the light as such, nor is the tree any one thing. What the tree means, in the sense of the information it conveys, depends on me and can change.

So in terms of this discussion, what I understand by 'tree' and everything else, is dictated by purpose. And purpose is not something possessed by the reflected light or the tree - purpose is created because I stand relative to these things, I am conscious of myself as not those things.
Right. But trees don't have brains. That is why they don't experience. At least that's plausible. Also that is why trees don't think. They have no brains.
I do not see why there not having that particular organ, a brain, would make any difference. If we equate experience with brain activity, and see brain activity as something entirely mechanical, a matter of chemistry, then why would we draw a line between the way a tree responds to light and our brains respond to light?

I would say that the difference is consciousness, that the tree simply responds, but we both respond and are aware that we are responding. And that this awareness is what we think of as our 'mind'. It is something that plainly exists, yet cannot be reduced to any particular mental event.

I would suggest that a desire to reduce 'mind', or 'consciousness' to something in particular is a product of wanting to explain everything in terms of cause and effect. I think this is one of those distortions that arise from the way we humans are configured. If I am to make sense of what my eyes tell me, I must posit a particular cause. The cause of my seeing a tree is - the existence of a tree.

I would say 'consciousness' exists - the fact it cannot be reduced to 'an effect' is not a sign that it is unreal, rather it is a sign that the whole notion of explaining everything in terms of cause-and-effect is wrong. That it is a useful way of thinking, but also a distortion. 'Consciousness', like everything else, is indivisible; everything in the universe is both cause and effect.
Me: But I would say that there is something we do called 'remember', in which we try to make sense of the present, place it in our metal map. We need to create patterns, discern cause and effect relationships. When doing this, I think it works both ways. We are quite capable of creating, or adjusting, our memory to fit in with how things are now. I understand that this is something readily observed in life; the witness to an accident will 'remember' details that create a narrative that makes sense, and so on. It is not difficult to implant memories or 'lose' them.

So how do you explain the effect of a stroke on memory. Can you show me how to remember if I get a stroke? I could surely use that if there is a way. But you can't. Once that stroke occurs it wipes out the function of those neurons and memory is destroyed. Its not something you *can* do. Look, you can use your will to try to remember. But you need more than your effort for the memory to occur. There are times when your will is unsuccessful. I suspect that that "trying" is the same "trying" that we do to move an arm and that is why "thinking" can tire you just like exercise does.
When I wrote 'We are quite capable of creating, or adjusting, our memory to fit in with how things are now' I didn't mean we could 'will' ourselves to know how to play the violin, or recover from a stroke. I meant that we treat our memories like the information we get through our senses i.e. we do not entirely rely on them. If I remember putting my keys in my pocket but then see them on the hook, I readily accept that my memory is not real. As it often is. We don't have to be stroke victims to know that our memories are not stored with the reliable impartiality of a computer hard drive.
OK, you have more than one point here. First causality does not mean identity. I don't claim it does.
It does and it doesn't.

If I say 'If P then Q', then on one level it is a claim that to say 'P' is also to say 'Q' (i.e. it is a tautology). Except that I have just distinguished 'P' from 'Q'; but if 'Q' can be distinguished, because it is something more (or less) than 'P' then the claim 'If P then Q' is incomplete; if must be 'If P - and something else - then Q'

Again, I'd say this is about us wanting - needing - to explain the world in terms of a series of discrete 'If P then Q' type relationships, even though that picture is not ultimately coherent.
If you define "a brain" as just the physical structure where "physical structure" is limited to the current physical science then brains in fact do not think. Because there is nothing in physical science that says that they do and we are limiting the term to what the current science says. But our definitions can evolve. We can define matter as something which if arranged in a certain way will think and we can define which ways matter must be arranged for which thoughts. So for me it is not that brains cause thinking, I am saying that brains are thinking. But the fact that brains can be thinking means that brains are not just describable with the current physical laws. But there is no other object, nor no other subject required. The brain can serve both as the object of the impulses of the senses and the subject of experiencing. There is nothing wrong with that definition provided we continue not to find two difference experiencings, two subjective experiences to use your terms that correlate with the same physical configuration. Even if one of those experiencings is null - a zombie - then it is better to say that there is a mind. But absent zombies or ghosts it is better to change our notion of matter and realize that object not only can be subjects but that they are.
Yes, our ideas seem to be getting into sync there. As you gather, I agree that there is no other subject, no ghost or homunculus inside the physical brain that is 'me' or 'mind'. Perhaps our difference amounts to your saying that it would be a mistake in science to think that way, whereas I am saying it is (also) a sort of 'category error'?

How nice to have an exchange where both sides get a chance to clarify their thoughts and nobody loses their temper!
Justintruth
Posts: 187
Joined: Sun Aug 21, 2016 4:10 pm

Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Justintruth »

... but those experiences are not external objects to me in the sense that their bodies might be...
Even though they are not external objects to you in the sense that their bodies might be their experiencing is a external to your mind and is a fact, right? If someone sees red in China you might not know it but it still happened, right?
So not only can I never perceive things as they might be in themselves, but I am also aware that my ideas can be wrong....
In some absolute sense this might be right but in a very practical sense it is wrong.

If you take a blind man and someone that can see, you can demonstrate that the blind man cannot tell certain things that the seeing person can. In fact the function of our senses is to deliver information to our brains. I know Kant's point. But there is something else that is a function of the nature of our experiencing. What we experience is such that there are things, and other people, (which we perceive mediated by their bodies but nevertheless we have exquisite apparatus that allows us to interpret mainly by the face, what the other person is experiencing to an amazing degree given we have no direct access) and within this nature, because of its symmetries which are real, we can posit the objects we experience and we posit the existence of our bodies and the incarnate nature of our experiencing.

All of that is a description of the nature of our experiencing. Now within that description information (Shannon information) is transduced and transmitted to our sensory organs where it is further transduced and communicated to our brains which the experience.

That whole description is augmented by our capability to imagine and perceive spatially. If you look at a line drawing of a cube you can see that there is more than mere thought involved but rather a kind of perception as you can make the front and back face switch position with the perceptive apparatus - within imagination.

That whole description is of what is or the nature of our experiencing and that nature is real. So I do believe that while there is some truth in saying that we do not perceive thing as they are in themselves that is not true in all senses for information about the external objects is in fact represented in how we do perceive the objects.

Look, imagine light of two different frequencies in the optical spectrum. We see one as red one as blue. Now it is true that the red we see or the blue we see is not the thing as such that Kant refers to. But that does not mean that there is no information perceived for the frequency of the electromagnetic wave is reflected in the different experiencing, and if I ask you to get the red ball not the blue one you will be able to and if you ask what a red ball is or what an electromagnetic wave is I can show you.

So while Kant is right in a sense there is another sense that we have to account for. It is a sense that is an aspect of the nature of our experiencing. It is objective, contains experiences of others mediated by their bodies and within that description there is the fact of the brains and the sensory pathways, the transducers (eardrums, retina) and all of that. Within that description there is the fact of the signal pathways and how they bring information to the brain where it is processed, affects motor neurons, and confers survival advantage.

So there is essential information that is a part of nature that constitutes these sensory pathways in the nature of our experiencing (we can examine an ear) and those pathways do allow us to experience the world external to our bodies.

The final step is also there, the content of our experiencing is a function of our brain's state in such a way that the experiencing (the red) is dependent on the effect caused by the senses such that the information (about the frequency of the light) is reflected in the nature of our experiencing.

All of this is accidental to our experiencing. It is a result of the nature of experiencing - the "what" of experiencing. But that "what" - nature - is as I describe it as you can confirm by just looking around you at the sensory apparatus on the heads of others or in a mirror at your own eyes and ears.

So while we can admit Kant's point we must not forget this other point that is a contingent real fact (or set of facts). Statements like "He is color blind so he can't read that sign" have empirical scientific validity - valid natural science. You can also see how we can be wrong. And we could be wrong about everything (Popper) but we also can be right and often are and there is a practical difference - a real aspect of the nature of our experiencing - that constitutes the "rightness" that I am describing.

Now you may say, we don't know absolutely - yes - right - we don't but there is the fact that we do know in the sense that it all hangs together as a predictive explanation of the nature of experiencing. Imagine an envelope. I don't know whether you have opened it and looked inside. I ask "Do you know what's in it?" You say yes, I opened it yesterday" Now that is a fact and you are either lying or not about it. You can engage in radical skepticism and say if we don't absolutely know we don't know at all but that misses the descriptive accuracy and impoverishes your ability to describe what happens. If I asked you and you always reply "No" because we do not absolutely know if there is even an envelope then you have impoverished your natural descriptions and compromised your ability to communicate facts about the nature of your experiencing.
...It seems to me that if we insisted that there was no distinction to be made between a sensation and an idea we would be ignoring a fact evident in all experience....
I do not maintain that there is no distinction between an idea and a sensation. But they do have something in common. They are both examples of experiencing by the brain. Anesthesia will interfere with both. They differ significantly in other aspects of their nature.
If I stood in front of some sort of monitor in which it showed particular neural pathways light up when I thought 'tree', the two would still not correspond. When I think 'tree' I am not thinking 'lights on a monitor'.
Ah, but they do "correspond" at least potentially, once we figure out the correspondence. Also that correspondence likely has symmetries on which we can base a set of rules. We probably will be able to even say: "If you construct a neurology in this state (particular pathways light up) then it will be experiencing the "thought of a tree". Correspondence is not identity. If we define neural pathways as capable of experiencing and then, through research correlate the material conditions under which experiencing happens with the experiencing that happens, and if that correlation is always present then we can successfully speak of the material experiencing. What we can't do is to identify experiencing with what is in the current description of physical law. The current notion of matter and how it works includes no experiencing. But that description can be modified.
The difference is between being inside our own heads - and observing heads from outside. They two can never be the same. I think that the word 'mind' describes the first.
If that is what mind is then you are right that minds exist. But that just refers to the experiencing. That experiencing, the "mind" as you have defined it, can be accurately described as being done "by" that brain, that same brain that is seen from the outside. Look in a mirror and point and say "That brain is experiencing this experiencing of being in a mirror pointing at the mirror." You can trace the light, look at the eyes, predict what will happen if you darken the room or take a knockout drug. All of the science - and science is scios, it is knowing - can be done right there.

The reality of this statement can be seen. Imagine standing before the mirror next to a jack-o-lantern with a knockout drug. Pour some into the jack-o-lanterns head. Then drink some and have it reach your brain through the blood and see what happens. This is not a-priori. Logically it is possible that you would experience no change drinking the drug but experience a knock out by pouring the drug into the jack-o- lantern. It is logically possible. It is factually determined only from sense experience. It is an aspect of nature or experiencing and the purview of natural science. It is based on temporal symmetry as the effect can be repeated as it does for much of science. We must capture this fact and symmetry somehow and that statement that it is "that brain that is experiencing standing in the mirror with a drug"... that captures it. It captures something real as the content of our experiencing is real and hence if it corresponds, we call it true. Saying that pouring the drug into the Jack-o-lantern will stop you from thinking is false and saying that taking the drug will affect you is true. The statements say something and can even inform someone who does not know these facts (ok everyone knows in this example but you know what I mean).
I would use that word differently. I think we call something 'information' relative to a purpose. If I detect light which I interpret as 'a tree' I would call that 'information' if I was looking for an apple to eat, or trying not to bump into hard objects while on a walk, or looking for an example to use in a philosophy discussion. I do not care about the light as such, nor is the tree any one thing. What the tree means, in the sense of the information it conveys, depends on me and can change.
I agree that we *could* use the word as you say but I highly recommend using the term "information" exclusively for Shannon information. There is a whole body of knowledge in the science of information that can then be indexed and we can clarify the distinctions between a mere property of symbols - information - and the knowledge it can communicate.

The processing of the information and the interpretation of it are dependent on you but the light from the tree contains information about the tree independent of anyone ever seeing it. The frequency of the reflected light is a function of the properties of the tree in a very specific way that is general and explained by physical theory.

We can use your definition of the term "information" but I highly recommend against it as the term "information" has been given a very specific meaning in "information theory" by Shannon and you at least must say that you are using the word in a completely different way from how it is used when we speak of signals, or computers etc. when we say that they convey information. Information is a property of symbols. It has nothing to do with meaning. You can have meaningless information or meaningful information but the information content itself cannot tell you which it is. You need keys to retrieve the meaning from a set of information. "The dog" and "X6293&%" contain the same amount of information assuming a normal keyboard. Only by knowing English can you retrieve the meaning from the first.
...purpose is not something possessed by the reflected light or the tree - purpose is created because I stand relative to these things, I am conscious of myself as not those things...
I agree with this basically. Parsing the word "purpose" get's very involved. But I agree that that separation comes first. Actually, it is original. We find ourselves already in the world according to Heidegger. Sartre, in "Being and Nothingness" gave a very detailed phenomenological account of that "not" that you used. Nihilation, being able to say "not those things" as you did, is very fundamental to one of the main ontological modes that a human can be in. For him we modify the meaning of being by the nihilation we do. That separates him from Heidegger. Heidegger believes that we must "thrust aside our interpretive tendencies" and I believe that Sartre's nihilation is one of those tendencies. But thrusting them aside must be understood as Husserl did in Ideas. You temporarily stop considering what is and perform what he calls the Phenomenological epoche. That is not a permanent feature until Sartre misinterpreted it to be. You can cease the nihilation and experience the One and then restart it and do science. We are not restricted in the possibilities of our ontology.
I do not see why there not having that particular organ, a brain, would make any difference. If we equate experience with brain activity, and see brain activity as something entirely mechanical, a matter of chemistry, then why would we draw a line between the way a tree responds to light and our brains respond to light?
Why? It is factually determined from the nature of experiencing. You are right that the neural response to the light is the same in one sense. It's just normal physics in both cases. Normal by current description. But we know factually that we are experiencing in a way that can be effected by chemical changes in our brains. And when we look at photosynthesis its more like our respiratory system in reverse. There is no reason to posit that the tree is thinking (although there are some cases of mushrooms that might be an exception). When we modify the physics I think we will conclude that trees are not conscious. I am aware of the biology of accelerated motion that shows the trees competing like animals but I still think so.
...desire to reduce 'mind', or 'consciousness' to something in particular
It is not reducing mind to something it is bringing the physical description up to speed. It is the opposite of reduction. That is why we need "addition" to the physics. Because it does not reduce.
If I say 'If P then Q', then on one level it is a claim that to say 'P' is also to say 'Q' (i.e. it is a tautology). Except that I have just distinguished 'P' from 'Q'; but if 'Q' can be distinguished, because it is something more (or less) than 'P' then the claim 'If P then Q' is incomplete; if must be 'If P - and something else - then Q'
Look, you can have even statistical causality. If p then 50% of the time q. Logical inference is not causality although it is related. It takes a bit to parse that.
Perhaps our difference amounts to your saying that it would be a mistake in science to think that way, whereas I am saying it is (also) a sort of 'category error'?
I do think that we can and should do the science to see what configurations of matter will experience and what the experiencing will be like given the configuration. We can do that. I am aware of other options but this seems to me to be the simplest betting that we don't find a lack of correlation in the future
haribol acharya
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by haribol acharya »

I am unsure if consciousness is taken apart from material reality. I have gone through the articles of a bunch of philosophers like Professor Nagel, John Searle, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, two schools of thought one argues that consciousness is a matter of subjective experience and the other opposes this idea and asserts that consciousness is a process or result of neurobiology and can be analysable, measurable and is totally not of the mind but only of the brains. This topic is intricate and I will run short of empirical evidence and what I put forth will be simply rubbish.

With that said, however, I do not refrain from discussing it for the topic consciousness is a topic that mirrors total human history. We are now on this forum discussing things just because we are humans. Humans are conscious beings and animals may be consciousness but the domains totally differ. If I distance from scientific propositions while discussing consciousness I will across to a world of Gods, fairies, angles, rebirth, reincarnations and the like but I am a person of the twenty first century and do not take things for granted without delving into logical fields.

I do know which panel is right, those who side with metaphysics or those with physics. I read both equally and do not want to end up in a conclusion.

One thinker has interested me of late. It is J Krishnamurti. Vedanta, zen masters, Buddhist teachings source me with plenty of thoughts on consciousness.

I have little to say and cannot reach a conclusion. I just love a discussion.
Londoner
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Londoner »

Justintruth wrote:
Even though they are not external objects to you in the sense that their bodies might be their experiencing is a external to your mind and is a fact, right? If someone sees red in China you might not know it but it still happened, right?
It isn't about whether I know what is happening in China, it is about the aspect of any 'seeing' (by anyone, anywhere) that can be called a fact. I cannot know that they are experiencing, I cannot know that anyone anywhere is experiencing, because I cannot get inside their heads.

If I wanted to verify if the person in China saw red, the best I can do is look at the object myself (or get others to do so) and see if it is the colour that people generally call 'red'. Or I might find out whether the conditions were the type normally associated with seeing i.e. there was light, the person was not blind and so on. But ultimately, I cannot know what experience they had.

There are two parts to the experience, the red thing and the person, and the experience is a blend of the two. I can only access one side.
Me: So not only can I never perceive things as they might be in themselves, but I am also aware that my ideas can be wrong....]

In some absolute sense this might be right but in a very practical sense it is wrong.

If you take a blind man and someone that can see, you can demonstrate that the blind man cannot tell certain things that the seeing person can. In fact the function of our senses is to deliver information to our brains. I know Kant's point....
I was referring to notions like extension and time. We must have these notions if we are to interpret sensory information. On the other hand we cannot validate them, for the same reason that we cannot use science to validate the scientific method, or logic to verify logic. What is more, we do know that they are unreliable, for example our subjective notion of time will not fit with time in physics. We need the notion of 'the past', when we talk of cause and effect', yet we also know that there is no such thing.
Look, imagine light of two different frequencies in the optical spectrum. We see one as red one as blue. Now it is true that the red we see or the blue we see is not the thing as such that Kant refers to. But that does not mean that there is no information perceived for the frequency of the electromagnetic wave is reflected in the different experiencing, and if I ask you to get the red ball not the blue one you will be able to and if you ask what a red ball is or what an electromagnetic wave is I can show you.
I know which ball to get because I have learnt how other people respond to the word 'red'. I do not need to know what they see; they might all be seeing what I see as 'green', it would make no difference. We could all look at the spectrum, we could all agree that this was the frequency for 'red', and I would still remain unaware that the sensation I attached to the word 'red' was different to theirs.
All of this is accidental to our experiencing. It is a result of the nature of experiencing - the "what" of experiencing. But that "what" - nature - is as I describe it as you can confirm by just looking around you at the sensory apparatus on the heads of others or in a mirror at your own eyes and ears.

So while we can admit Kant's point we must not forget this other point that is a contingent real fact (or set of facts). Statements like "He is color blind so he can't read that sign" have empirical scientific validity - valid natural science. You can also see how we can be wrong. And we could be wrong about everything (Popper) but we also can be right and often are and there is a practical difference - a real aspect of the nature of our experiencing - that constitutes the "rightness" that I am describing.
I'd say that something is valid in science in the same way something can be valid in logic, or valid in football, i.e. because it conforms to the rules of that game. But none of these things are valid in an absolute sense, you cannot use one set of rules to validate a different subject, nor can a subject self-validate.

As with Kant's observations, we are aware both of the rules of the game we are playing, but also that we are playing, that everything we say is ultimately conditional.
Me: If I stood in front of some sort of monitor in which it showed particular neural pathways light up when I thought 'tree', the two would still not correspond. When I think 'tree' I am not thinking 'lights on a monitor'.


Ah, but they do "correspond" at least potentially, once we figure out the correspondence. Also that correspondence likely has symmetries on which we can base a set of rules. We probably will be able to even say: "If you construct a neurology in this state (particular pathways light up) then it will be experiencing the "thought of a tree". Correspondence is not identity. If we define neural pathways as capable of experiencing and then, through research correlate the material conditions under which experiencing happens with the experiencing that happens, and if that correlation is always present then we can successfully speak of the material experiencing. What we can't do is to identify experiencing with what is in the current description of physical law. The current notion of matter and how it works includes no experiencing. But that description can be modified.
'Correspond' is fine, it preserves a necessary difference.

And certainly we could stretch 'experiencing' in the way you suggest, but if we said a material thing like a neural pathways were 'experiencing' then we would want to ask; what particular material feature equates to the experience? If we said 'nothing in particular, all of them' , then why not also include the nervous system, the skin or retina, the object causing the experience, and so on? Until we are back to experience being a thing, but no particular thing.

I think that we are trying to mix two different games here, two different sets of rules.

The analogy was the one of the university. The person is being shown round, he sees the chapel, the library, the common room, but keeps asking 'but where is the university?' I think consciousness is a broad, emerging, general property, but we are trying to detect it through a microscope.
If that is what mind is then you are right that minds exist. But that just refers to the experiencing. That experiencing, the "mind" as you have defined it, can be accurately described as being done "by" that brain, that same brain that is seen from the outside. Look in a mirror and point and say "That brain is experiencing this experiencing of being in a mirror pointing at the mirror." You can trace the light, look at the eyes, predict what will happen if you darken the room or take a knockout drug. All of the science - and science is scios, it is knowing - can be done right there.
If I say 'that brain' then I am differentiating it from 'my brain', the one that is treating the image in the mirror as an object. If I 'look at the eyes' then they cannot be my eyes; the one thing my eyes can't look at is themselves. Yes, certainly I recognise myself in the mirror, but that is because I am distinct from my own body. It isn't that I disagree with you, it is more that I consider my separateness from my own reflection is more significant than the connection.
I agree that we *could* use the word as you say but I highly recommend using the term "information" exclusively for Shannon information. There is a whole body of knowledge in the science of information that can then be indexed and we can clarify the distinctions between a mere property of symbols - information - and the knowledge it can communicate.
I only know of Shannon information what I have looked up since you mentioned it. I can see it is a useful idea, but I would have to read more and think about it. My own notions tend to be drawn from analytic philosophy which comes at the subject from a different direction.
I agree with this basically. Parsing the word "purpose" get's very involved. But I agree that that separation comes first. Actually, it is original. We find ourselves already in the world according to Heidegger. Sartre, in "Being and Nothingness" gave a very detailed phenomenological account of that "not" that you used...
And, as you correctly detect, I was drawing on Sartre, who I find persuasive on this point. In these sort of discussions one does not want to start name dropping, because it often comes across as an argument from authority; 'If you read 'Being and Nothingness' thoroughly you would see where you are going wrong...' But if we already knew what the other person had looked at it would save time if we could just refer, rather than having to try to give quick summaries of that philosopher's thinking. The other name I could have dropped (re language) would be Wittgenstein.
Look, you can have even statistical causality. If p then 50% of the time q. Logical inference is not causality although it is related. It takes a bit to parse that.
I don't think logic is connected to causality; if it was 'If P then Q' (50% of the time) then we would not have assumed 'If P then Q'. But this is taking us well off the subject.
Justintruth
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Justintruth »

It isn't about whether I know what is happening in China, it is about the aspect of any 'seeing' (by anyone, anywhere) that can be called a fact.
Lets just focus on this one thing. Do you think that it is a fact whether, in someone other than yourself, some kind of seeing occurred?

I am at this point not asking whether you can determine what the fact is, but rather whether it is a fact that someone other than yourself saw.
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Dalek Prime »

Justintruth wrote:
It isn't about whether I know what is happening in China, it is about the aspect of any 'seeing' (by anyone, anywhere) that can be called a fact.
Lets just focus on this one thing. Do you think that it is a fact whether, in someone other than yourself, some kind of seeing occurred?

I am at this point not asking whether you can determine what the fact is, but rather whether it is a fact that someone other than yourself saw.
How about an an acceptable likelihood, instead of a hard boiled fact?
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Londoner »

Justintruth wrote: Me: It isn't about whether I know what is happening in China, it is about the aspect of any 'seeing' (by anyone, anywhere) that can be called a fact.

Lets just focus on this one thing. Do you think that it is a fact whether, in someone other than yourself, some kind of seeing occurred?

I am at this point not asking whether you can determine what the fact is, but rather whether it is a fact that someone other than yourself saw.
I'm doubtful if I could claim 'X a fact', when if somebody asked me 'And what is X?' I'd have to reply 'I don't know'.

My position is that something like 'seeing' is not just one thing, so its facticity depends on the context. If I say 'I see a dragon' then other people may respond; 'No you don't', meaning 'we can't see it', in other words they reject the empirical claim that is often implied by our saying we 'see something'.

But they may also accept that I do see the dragon, in that I am having a hallucination, or a dream. They think 'people can have hallucinations' is an empirical fact, and looking at my behaviour they may judge that I am being truthful about what I think I see, but that 'I can see a dragon' is not something they can confirm as a fact.

And there is something between the two. Even if we can all see the dragon, that the dragon is 'real', is not a claim that we are having an experience which is identical in every respect. To say 'we can see the dragon' is an agreement between people about language, it does not require that our experience is totally identical, or that our understanding of 'dragon' is totally identical.

I think that this is the case with all facts. They are facts within a context, facts for a purpose.

I would go further and say that we create misunderstandings and errors by confusing the context, by using the sort of reasoning that makes something count as a fact in one sphere in another. As a crude example, if discussing human behaviour I can argue that Mary fears James. But if I argued that one chemical feared another we would say I had a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works; if I tried to do science using the reasoning appropriate in psychology I would go wrong. And so with the dragon example, we would need to settle what sort of a claim was being made. We would normally do this by asking; 'How do you mean, 'see'?'
Justintruth
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Justintruth »

Dalek Prime wrote:
Justintruth wrote:
It isn't about whether I know what is happening in China, it is about the aspect of any 'seeing' (by anyone, anywhere) that can be called a fact.
Lets just focus on this one thing. Do you think that it is a fact whether, in someone other than yourself, some kind of seeing occurred?

I am at this point not asking whether you can determine what the fact is, but rather whether it is a fact that someone other than yourself saw.
How about an an acceptable likelihood, instead of a hard boiled fact?
Epistemically probability (likelihood) or ontological probability (likelihood)?

There is an ace of spades face up or face down on some table. There is a boy in the some room looking at a red card or under anesthesia. Isn't it a fact whether the card is face up and isn't it a fact whether the boy is seeing?

I was once under anesthesia. I report this fact to you now. But when I was under anesthesia, when I was under that drug, whether I was seeing a red card or was completely unconscious was a fact no? And it was a fact even before I mentioned it to you or you heard this question, right? I mean it was years before you even heard of it but I either was or was not conscious during that surgery no? And even if I forget or died on the table it was a fact still!

The epistemic uncertainty I get but it seems to me that whether someone that is in some other country is thinking or unconscious is a fact whether I know it or not.

To me, the experiencing that others do or do not do, are facts external to my own mind. Whether it happened or not does not depend on my knowing it and it really happens or doesn't.
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Dalek Prime »

Justintruth wrote:
Dalek Prime wrote:
Justintruth wrote:
Lets just focus on this one thing. Do you think that it is a fact whether, in someone other than yourself, some kind of seeing occurred?

I am at this point not asking whether you can determine what the fact is, but rather whether it is a fact that someone other than yourself saw.
How about an an acceptable likelihood, instead of a hard boiled fact?
Epistemically probability (likelihood) or ontological probability (likelihood)?

There is an ace of spades face up or face down on some table. There is a boy in the some room looking at a red card or under anesthesia. Isn't it a fact whether the card is face up and isn't it a fact whether the boy is seeing?

I was once under anesthesia. I report this fact to you now. But when I was under anesthesia, when I was under that drug, whether I was seeing a red card or was completely unconscious was a fact no? And it was a fact even before I mentioned it to you or you heard this question, right? I mean it was years before you even heard of it but I either was or was not conscious during that surgery no? And even if I forget or died on the table it was a fact still!

The epistemic uncertainty I get but it seems to me that whether someone that is in some other country is thinking or unconscious is a fact whether I know it or not.

To me, the experiencing that others do or do not do, are facts external to my own mind. Whether it happened or not does not depend on my knowing it and it really happens or doesn't.
So, that was a no?
Justintruth
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Justintruth »

Not exactly. The whole subject of likelihood takes a lot to parse.

Ok, one can be radically sckeptical and even try to attack "I hink therefore I am" etc. But still if I flip a coin there is a difference as to whether I show you or don't whether it is a head. Due to the stabilities or symetries in nature a model in which we assume that the coin either is or isn't a head can be used. Whether it is a head or tail is something true or false before we see it. Let's set aside quantum indetermiinacy and the measurement problem.

I am looking at the floor right now and color experiencing. Don't you think that color experiencing is external to your mind?
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Dalek Prime »

Justintruth wrote:Not exactly. The whole subject of likelihood takes a lot to parse.

Ok, one can be radically sckeptical and even try to attack "I hink therefore I am" etc. But still if I flip a coin there is a difference as to whether I show you or don't whether it is a head. Due to the stabilities or symetries in nature a model in which we assume that the coin either is or isn't a head can be used. Whether it is a head or tail is something true or false before we see it. Let's set aside quantum indetermiinacy and the measurement problem.

I am looking at the floor right now and color experiencing. Don't you think that color experiencing is external to your mind?
Photons are external, yes. And colour experiencing is an awkward, transitional thing, as Russell explained, dependant on how that external light hits the eye. That is, if light is flooding onto his desk, it looks almost white, no matter the colour of the desk under differing light conditions.

Neither here nor there though. The OP is about the why's of consciousness, and I've stated there is no why. It just occurred, and is.
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by attofishpi »

waechter418 wrote:Why is Consciousness
B.cause as in the second cause perhaps.
Justintruth
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Justintruth »

Dalek Prime wrote:
Justintruth wrote:Not exactly. The whole subject of likelihood takes a lot to parse.

Ok, one can be radically sckeptical and even try to attack "I hink therefore I am" etc. But still if I flip a coin there is a difference as to whether I show you or don't whether it is a head. Due to the stabilities or symetries in nature a model in which we assume that the coin either is or isn't a head can be used. Whether it is a head or tail is something true or false before we see it. Let's set aside quantum indetermiinacy and the measurement problem.

I am looking at the floor right now and color experiencing. Don't you think that color experiencing is external to your mind?
Photons are external, yes. And colour experiencing is an awkward, transitional thing, as Russell explained, dependant on how that external light hits the eye. That is, if light is flooding onto his desk, it looks almost white, no matter the colour of the desk under differing light conditions.

Neither here nor there though. The OP is about the why's of consciousness, and I've stated there is no why. It just occurred, and is.
There is a kind of natural causality that is based on symmetries within what we are conscious of. And there is our ability to act in that also. Those causal relationships are. "There is no why to them. They just occur", as you say. But the fact is that they do occur. And so there are causal relationships contingent on being within what is, within nature and determined by natural science. And within those relationships is a unique subset that have to do with causing consciousness. So the why of consciousness? It's because your mother and father mated and the whole bio-causal chain resulted in a neurology. It is the sun that keeps it going, providing the energy of the food chain etc. And those relationships are what will also cause you to die. It's as real as that and that does not mean that it is not subject to being as you say. That really is Popper's point. It is always possible it will just go another way logically. But as near as we can tell the laws of physics have been the same - time is homogenous.
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Re: Why is Consciousness

Post by Dalek Prime »

Justintruth wrote:
Dalek Prime wrote:
Justintruth wrote:Not exactly. The whole subject of likelihood takes a lot to parse.

Ok, one can be radically sckeptical and even try to attack "I hink therefore I am" etc. But still if I flip a coin there is a difference as to whether I show you or don't whether it is a head. Due to the stabilities or symetries in nature a model in which we assume that the coin either is or isn't a head can be used. Whether it is a head or tail is something true or false before we see it. Let's set aside quantum indetermiinacy and the measurement problem.

I am looking at the floor right now and color experiencing. Don't you think that color experiencing is external to your mind?
Photons are external, yes. And colour experiencing is an awkward, transitional thing, as Russell explained, dependant on how that external light hits the eye. That is, if light is flooding onto his desk, it looks almost white, no matter the colour of the desk under differing light conditions.

Neither here nor there though. The OP is about the why's of consciousness, and I've stated there is no why. It just occurred, and is.
There is a kind of natural causality that is based on symmetries within what we are conscious of. And there is our ability to act in that also. Those causal relationships are. "There is no why to them. They just occur", as you say. But the fact is that they do occur. And so there are causal relationships contingent on being within what is, within nature and determined by natural science. And within those relationships is a unique subset that have to do with causing consciousness. So the why of consciousness? It's because your mother and father mated and the whole bio-causal chain resulted in a neurology. It is the sun that keeps it going, providing the energy of the food chain etc. And those relationships are what will also cause you to die. It's as real as that and that does not mean that it is not subject to being as you say. That really is Popper's point. It is always possible it will just go another way logically. But as near as we can tell the laws of physics have been the same - time is homogenous.
I still have to read Popper. I hear he is the one who initiated negative utilitarianism (ie. Individual happiness is just as, or more important than, the group, as in classical positive utilitarianism.) I owe him a lot for that.

Not just symmetries, btw. Also asymmetries. My core philosophy is based partly on asymmetries, which I won't get into.
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