u/MurkyEconomist8179

This is a cross post I made from the consciouness sub - since a lot of discussion around consciousness sometimes focuses too much on philosophical positions - I'd like to instead ground a discussion in some empirical observations and how that restricts what our views on conscious might be, and how we are under unique restrictions compared to under phenomena. This is the best below.

This does not even get to the hard problem of consciousness itself but even the easy problem as Charmer's conceived it involves the process of figuring which structural states or properties are needed for particular conscious experiences to appear for an organism. No one doubts conscious experience requires specific structures to be in place - a point adequately demonstrated by Paul Broca almost ~200 years ago after broader speculations for such an idea dating back far longer.

But here's the kicker: Until the elements are made clear, we don't even know what to look for when trying to understand phenomenology. Take organisms with simple nervous systems - they might have similar environmental responses to us, hunger, tactile reception, taste buds near their mouth - but nothing precludes these processes being done totally unconsciously, or the inverse - perhaps it is EXTREMELY vivid for them, we truly cannot distinguish these opposite alternatives if we don't know the relevant elements for phenomenology.

Now we know all kinds of relevant elements for neurology itself - neurons, transmitters, receptors etc the list goes on. This is why neurologically studying simple organisms goes off without a hitch (not that it's easy, don't be fooled by the name easy problem), we merely import our methodology and are sometimes even thankful for the easier processes - when your don't have to deal with ~80 billion neurons to map, as you do with the human brain you can even make a beautiful connectome with a ~ 300 neuron nematode nervous system. Despite this easy import of neurology, we find importing phenomenology works the exact opposite we have no idea what to infer about their phenomenological experience and we're probably a lot better inferring stuff about much more complex brains (other humans, closely related mammals, other mammals in general etc) because importing neurology unfortunately doesn't translate to an import of phenomenology.

Something to further illustrate my point is we leave the animal kingdom entirely (for those not familiar with animal phylogeny, nervous systems are entirely restricted to animals) Take something like a plant, does it have conscious experience? Importing neurology is very easy in this respect - it doesn't have any neurons! Job well done. You might even say we have a complete neurological understanding of a plant. However, does something about it's structure entail, as Nagel says, that 'there is something like it to be' a plant? We are even more clueless here than with simple animals. It could go completely in the dark, no phenomenology whatsoever, or it could meet some structural condition that does allow it to feel some experiences - even quite vivid ones. Again, we have no idea, we're even more clueless since we can't infer from much morphology in common (beings with no nervous system are pretty different to us) and we are left wondering.

I hope this outline shows that with whatever framework you subscribe to, that neurology is not a surefire way of getting at these important questions we are after and that the discrepancy between neurological and phenomenological information is made clear - because this is something any philosophical framework around consciousness has to be consistent with.

This does not even get to the hard problem of consciousness itself but even the easy problem as Charmer's conceived it involves the process of figuring which structural states or properties are needed for particular conscious experiences to appear for an organism. No one doubts conscious experience requires specific structures to be in place - a point adequately demonstrated by Paul Broca almost ~200 years ago after broader speculations for such an idea dating back far longer.

But here's the kicker: Until the elements are made clear, we don't even know what to look for when trying to understand phenomenology. Take organisms with simple nervous systems - they might have similar environmental responses to us, hunger, tactile reception, taste buds near their mouth - but nothing precludes these processes being done totally unconsciously, or the inverse - perhaps it is EXTREMELY vivid for them, we truly cannot distinguish these opposite alternatives if we don't know the relevant elements for phenomenology.

Now we know all kinds of relevant elements for neurology itself - neurons, transmitters, receptors etc the list goes on. This is why neurologically studying simple organisms goes off without a hitch (not that it's easy, don't be fooled by the name easy problem), we merely import our methodology and are sometimes even thankful for the easier processes - when your don't have to deal with ~80 billion neurons to map, as you do with the human brain you can even make a beautiful connectome with a ~ 300 neuron nematode nervous system. Despite this easy import of neurology, we find importing phenomenology works the exact opposite we have no idea what to infer about their phenomenological experience and we're probably a lot better inferring stuff about much more complex brains (other humans, closely related mammals, other mammals in general etc) because importing neurology unfortunately doesn't translate to an import of phenomenology.

Something to further illustrate my point is we leave the animal kingdom entirely (for those not familiar with animal phylogeny, nervous systems are entirely restricted to animals) Take something like a plant, does it have conscious experience? Importing neurology is very easy in this respect - it doesn't have any neurons! Job well done. You might even say we have a complete neurological understanding of a plant. However, does something about it's structure entail, as Nagel says, that 'there is something like it to be' a plant? We are even more clueless here than with simple animals. It could go completely in the dark, no phenomenology whatsoever, or it could meet some structural condition that does allow it to feel some experiences - even quite vivid ones. Again, we have no idea, we're even more clueless since we can't infer from much morphology in common (beings with no nervous system are pretty different to us) and we are left wondering.

I hope this outline shows that with whatever framework you subscribe to, that neurology is not a surefire way of getting at these important questions we are after and that the discrepancy between neurological and phenomenological information is made clear - because this is something any philosophical framework around consciousness has to be consistent with.

Curious as to weather there is an actual compelling evidence weather it is better to bulk/cut cycle or just recomp, or even some strange mix like bulking on training days and cutting on rest days, any solid research in this area and any worthwhile differences or are they all mostly the same with only minor differences?

Usually in nature, life in general is so varied as to where you can find an exception to every rule, even the most seemingly sensible, so what I find weird is that it seems even outside of mammals, noses never seem to ossify, why is that? Why is this such a rigidly followed rule across so many different animal groups? There are seemingly far more sensible conservations that have oddities but apparently this is no one of them and I can't really find a a satisfying answer as to why it should be so precluded from happening. What do you guys think?

Usually in nature, life in general is so varied as to where you can find an exception to every rule, even the most seemingly sensible, so what I find weird is that it seems even outside of mammals, noses never seem to ossify, why is that? Why is this such a rigidly followed rule across so many different animal groups? There are seemingly far more sensible conservations that have oddities but apparently this is no one of them and I can't really find a a satisfying answer as to why it should be so precluded from happening. What do you guys think?

Usually in nature, life in general is so varied as to where you can find an exception to every rule, even the most seemingly sensible, so what I find weird is that it seems even outside of mammals, noses never seem to ossify, why is that? Why is this such a rigidly followed rule across so many different animal groups? There are seemingly far more sensible conservations that have oddities but apparently this is no one of them and I can't really find a a satisfying answer as to why it should be so precluded from happening. What do you guys think?

Usually in nature, life in general is so varied as to where you can find an exception to every rule, even the most seemingly sensible, so what I find weird is that it seems even outside of mammals, noses never seem to ossify, why is that? Why is this such a rigidly followed rule across so many different animal groups? There are seemingly far more sensible conservations that have oddities but apparently this is no one of them and I can't really find a a satisfying answer as to why it should be so precluded from happening. What do you guys think?

This is a cross-post for a write up I did on /r/consciousness but given how many people criticize Alex's seeming drift away from "physicalist" theories of consciousness, I think it's important to present a real scientific and philosophical critique to show what problems exist with "physicalist" theories, and I would like to present that below.

I think one of the best ways to illustrate the gap between the physical properties of the brain, and phenomenological properties is to outline some concrete examples of what we know relating to other living organisms.

We know a decent bit about some information of the consciouss experienece of other people, and this is largely due to being able to communicate with languge and empathising with their experiences. Someone can tell us if they're in pain and we understand what that's like through going through pain ourselves, someone can tell us when they see a colour like red and we compare that to our own experience to infer what their consciouness might be like. People talk about how food taste good or bad, how it feels to run or to swim etc.

Despite all of this, we have arguably the most complex brain out of any organism on our planet and so here should become clear a strange disconnect here.

Take the organism Caenorhabditis elegans, a nematode with 302 neurons compared to our ~86 billion. You may know this little guy because he was the species where every single neuron of his was mapped by a group from Washington university.

Now let me ask you, what does it feel like for c elegans to eat, when it east bacteria and rotting waste? Is it a very dim conscious experience due to it's paltry number of neurons? Is it extremely vivid because there isn't this complex of stimuli to distract it? Maybe when it eats it's rotting waste it tastes far better than any meal i've ever tasted. Or does it experience no phenemology whatsoever because it's simple neurology does not allow for any sensations to be felt?

We do not know these things because even though it's nervous system is far more simple (and fully mapped as previously mentioned) we have no idea how these physical properties actually translate to the feelings and organism would experience, despite being so many orders of magnitude more simple than our own complex brains.

When I eat a burger with a group of friends, inferring from their reactions and what they say, there very well might be differences in the way we taste and enjoy the same meal, but it also might just be a fairly similar experience that each individuals personal variant is more or less representative of what it's like for all. There's no strong reason to think we can't more or less predict what it might be like for them.

But predicting what it's like for the simplest of organisms doing the same thing? Or even going outside of animals, even though they do not have nervous systems, do other organisms like plants meet some physical condition that allows them to experience sensation? Or is it precluded because they do not meet this criteria.

We have no clue. The simpler you go and the further you get from humans the less we know about what their consciouss experience is like. This is precisely why it can't be reducible. We know a lot about the neurology of c elegans, and the lack of neurology of a plant. We know absolutely nothing about their consciouss experience, and there seems to be many plausible answers to the fact of the matter as I tried to outline with my questions.

In a different science like physics, it's a lot easier to track the properties of a simple object (a ball down a hill) than a complex system (a million balls rolled into a pit, interacting with each other and changing their trajectory)

With consciousness it's the exact opposite, we know far more about our own complex consciouness and very little of the more simple counterparts DESPITE knowing so much about their neurology. This is why these properties can not be talking about the same thing. If conscious experience were reducible to these physical properties (the ~300 neurons of c elegans) we should be able to know so much more about what conscious properties it experiences with such a simple arrangement.

I'm going through some of Stephen Hawkin's writings and one thing he was particularly interested in was the possibility of very small and very (comparatively) hot black holes that did not form through stellar processes but instead formed in the early universe

Apart from the theoretical possibility, he mentions that this could be consistent with some of the gamma radiation we see emitted because that is the type we would expect these black holes to admit. I'm wondering, have there been any major developments to confirm or deny these tiny hot black holes? Pretty sure this was in the 80s he was writing about this so contemporary might still be pretty old haha

I think one of the best ways to illustrate the gap between the physical properties of the brain, and phenomenological properties is to outline some concrete examples of what we know relating to other living organisms.

We know a decent bit about some information of the consciouss experienece of other people, and this is largely due to being able to communicate with languge and empathising with their experiences. Someone can tell us if they're in pain and we understand what that's like through going through pain ourselves, someone can tell us when they see a colour like red and we compare that to our own experience to infer what their consciouness might be like. People talk about how food taste good or bad, how it feels to run or to swim etc.

Despite all of this, we have arguably the most complex brain out of any organism on our planet and so here should become clear a strange disconnect here.

Take the organism Caenorhabditis elegans, a nematode with 302 neurons compared to our ~86 billion. You may know this little guy because he was the species where every single neuron of his was mapped by a group from Washington university.

Now let me ask you, what does it feel like for c elegans to eat, when it east bacteria and rotting waste? Is it a very dim conscious experience due to it's paltry number of neurons? Is it extremely vivid because there isn't this complex of stimuli to distract it? Maybe when it eats it's rotting waste it tastes far better than any meal i've ever tasted. Or does it experience no phenemology whatsoever because it's simple neurology does not allow for any sensations to be felt?

We do not know these things because even though it's nervous system is far more simple (and fully mapped as previously mentioned) we have no idea how these physical properties actually translate to the feelings and organism would experience, despite being so many orders of magnitude more simple than our own complex brains.

When I eat a burger with a group of friends, inferring from their reactions and what they say, there very well might be differences in the way we taste and enjoy the same meal, but it also might just be a fairly similar experience that each individuals personal variant is more or less representative of what it's like for all. There's no strong reason to think we can't more or less predict what it might be like for them.

But predicting what it's like for the simplest of organisms doing the same thing? Or even going outside of animals, even though they do not have nervous systems, do other organisms like plants meet some physical condition that allows them to experience sensation? Or is it precluded because they do not meet this criteria.

We have no clue. The simpler you go and the further you get from humans the less we know about what their consciouss experience is like. This is precisely why it can't be reducible. We know a lot about the neurology of c elegans, and the lack of neurology of a plant. We know absolutely nothing about their consciouss experience, and there seems to be many plausible answers to the fact of the matter as I tried to outline with my questions.

In a different science like physics, it's a lot easier to track the properties of a simple object (a ball down a hill) than a complex system (a million balls rolled into a pit, interacting with each other and changing their trajectory)

With consciousness it's the exact opposite, we know far more about our own complex consciouness and very little of the more simple counterparts DESPITE knowing so much about their neurology. This is why these properties can not be talking about the same thing. If conscious experience were reducible to these physical properties (the ~300 neurons of c elegans) we should be able to know so much more about what conscious properties it experiences with such a simple arrangement.