On the Topic of Consciousness

[Divine Insight]

Maybe we should break this out.....

This topic is an offshoot from another thread which was on another topic altogether.

This thread is "On the Topic of Consciousness"

I wouldn't pass judgements. My biggest question is why you have a brain type that is willing to jump into the unknown with some assurance, while I seem to have a brain type that doesn't. If I don't know, I leave it at not knowing.

I don't think it comes down to just the brain alone. I think there are many other factors involved. Clearly even from a secular point of view it is recognize that the brain "evolves" as we grow as individuals based much on how we experience life, etc.

For example the very concept of the "unknown" may mean something entirely different to me than it does to you. I mean, sure we could get out a dictionary and look up the term, but that really wouldn't help much because what you believe you know and what I believe I know are going to clearly be two different things. Especially considering my last sentence of the above paragraph. Our knowledge and beliefs evolve in our own brains based upon our own experiences, which clearly are not going to be the same experiences.

Consciousness: I don't know of any scientist that makes his or her living studying it who declares they know what it is.

This is true, but there may be quite a few scientists who feel like Daniel Dennett. Even though he is just a philosopher.

[youtube][/youtube]

I don't disagree with much of what Dennett says about how the brain functions. I don't disagree at all. But he doesn't touch on the real issues as far as I'm concerned. Near the very end of the above video he state a kind of Deepity of his own, "It's not that the Emperor has no clothes, but rather the clothes have no Emperor". The idea intended to imply that we are attempting to push too much onto consciousness that doesn't need to be there.

But for me none of this is satisfying.

I don't disagree with the fact that the brain is indeed a functional portal for the experiences that we have in this incarnated life. Therefore everything he observes and states about how the brain functions and how it "creates" much of our experience, is not in question for me.

But none of that even begins to address the issue of exactly what it is that is actually having this experience. In other words, if the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having an experience? The brain itself?

This becomes a problem for me, because insofar as we know, the brain itself is made of nothing more than matter and energy. If neither matter, nor energy are capable of having an experience, they why should a brain that is made of nothing more than matter and energy become an "Emperor" in its own right?

This is not an easy question, and I wouldn't hesitate to put this question to Dennett himself. In fact, I would like to hear his thoughts on this. Maybe he does address this sort of issue in one of his many lectures. If you find a lecture where he addressed this heart of the matter please share and I'll be glad to take a gander at it.

I've watched several of his lectures, and thus far I haven't been convinced of his conclusions.

To say it is supernatural vs natural seems a leap.

This is statement here goes back to what I had mentioned above, concerning how you and I may very well think differently due to our different experiences in life.

You speak of the term "supernatural" as though that's a meaningful term.

I have been a scientist my entire life. Isaac Newton, and certain Greek philosophies like Zeno and others were my childhood heroes. Albert Einstein was my next hero as I grew in my scientific knowledge. And today I hold many scientists in high regard and marvel at what they were able to discover and prove.

Just the same, in all of this, I have come to the profound realization that to date we cannot say what the true nature of reality genuinely is. Therefore does it even make any sense to speak of the supernatural, when we can't even say with certain what is natural?

So I'm not prepared to accept the insinuation that I'm "jumping off to assume something supernatural". All I'm doing is recognizing that we can't say where the boundaries of the natural world truly are.

So I don't feel that I'm actually leaping anywhere. I'm just recognizing that we can't know that things need to be restricted to what we believe to be a finite physical existence.

In fact, if you go back to Dennett's very argument perhaps you can see an irony there. He is proclaiming that we can't know nearly what we think we can know, yet he seems to think that he can make very clear conclusions from this evidence that our brains clearly trick us.

That's almost an oxymoron right there. If what Dennett says is true, that our brains can fool us considerably, then perhaps the entirety of physical reality is itself an illusion that we are being tricked into believing. What we believe to be "brains" may not be physical entities at all.

My position is that we know consciousness is affected by natural events, and we know nature exists... seems a very small slide to presume consciousness is a natural phenomenon. But not knowing, sure, I can't say it's not - but I haven't been offered ONE example of the supernatural. So, I simply can't presume it's supernatural. I can't even think of why I'd consider the supernatural when the supernatural has such a horrible track record.

Well, our difference of views here may indeed amount to the extremely different way we view the "supernatural". For you to say that the supernatural has a bad track record implies that you associate the term with just about any guess that anyone might come up with (and especially specific claims that have indeed been shown to be false).

Whilst those do indeed qualify as "supernatural", they may not qualify as the type of "supernatural" that I consider. In fact, the type of "supernatural" that I consider is actually quite natural. It simply amounts to nature that we haven't yet discovered or understood, so it's only in that sense that it seems to be supernatural to us, when in reality it may be perfectly natural.

Given this, there only seems to be the natural. Just because we don't know how consciouness works doesn't means it's because of the gods, or the supernatural or something else, or even "natural vs. I don't know".

Nature exists.
Consciousness exists.

Given these two facts, why presume we can't explain consciousness eventually?

I already gave my answer to this earlier in this post. I'll repeat it here for clarity.

Copy and pasted from earlier in this very same post:

But none of that even begins to address the issue of exactly what it is that is actually having this experience. In other words, if the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having an experience? The brain itself?

This becomes a problem for me, because insofar as we know, the brain itself is made of nothing more than matter and energy. If neither matter, nor energy are capable of having an experience, they why should a brain that is made of nothing more than matter and energy become an "Emperor" in its own right?

This is not an easy question, and I wouldn't hesitate to put this question to Dennett himself. In fact, I would like to hear his thoughts on this. Maybe he does address this sort of issue in one of his many lectures. If you find a lecture where he addressed this heart of the matter please share and I'll be glad to take a gander at it.

End of copy and paste

Yes, consciousness exists. And something is having an experience.

But what is it that is having an experience?

Energy and matter?

Electromagnetic fields?

Something else? Many people have suggested that the thing that is having an experience is some sort of "emergent property of complexity".

I suppose this is a valid philosophical idea, but it seems pretty strange to me that an abstract idea of an emergent property could have an experience.

So I'm still left with a deeper mystery.

To simply say that "consciousness" is a natural result of nature, still leaves me asking, "Who is the Emperor that is having this experience?"

If the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having the experience of conscious awareness? The clothes?

It just seems strange to me that the clothes (i.e. matter and energy) should be able to have an experience.

So this simply leaves the door to the "supernatural" (i.e. nature that we simply don't yet understand) wide open.

I'm not saying that the secular view is necessarily wrong. I'm simply saying that the purely secular view seems every bit as strange to me as the supernatural view.

In other words, that view doesn't "hit the spot" as being an obvious conclusion to accept either.

I'm not going to automatically accept Dennetts "Deepity" that "The clothes have no Emperor" as being the profound answer to this question. That's just as absurd as any other Deepity, IMHO.

So this is where I'm coming from.

I'm not claiming that the supernatural necessarily has to exist. But I am claiming that, insofar as I can see, it's on precisely equal footing with any other conclusions at this point.

Seeing that they are on the same footing, I don't mind using intuition and gut feelings to consider one over the other. So with that in mind, I confess that I lean toward the mystical view. But clearly I could be wrong.

[scourge99]

we can imagine logical and real world impossibilities. So the ability to think up an idea doesn't tell us if its actually true.

Perhaps you are right and conceivability doesn't entail possibility, can you show this to be the case?

Please don't misrepresent or misunderstand what i said. I don't give a damn about possibility. Its a weasel word. You can talk about possibility until you are blue in the face and I won't care. I care about what is actually true and can be shown to be true, not about what is "possible".


Here are some examples of things that i can conceive that are impossible: that i can time travel, that i can travel faster than light, that there is an even integer greater than 0 that is not the sum of two primes ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbach%27s_conjecture ). We know these things to be untrue to the same degree of certainty we can claim to know anything that is not true.

Furthermore, your example doesn't demonstrate acquiring knowledge about the real world. It demonstrates that theories about the real world can be discredited by logical analysis (your logical analysis of Aristotelian physics is flawed, as i explained before, but we can just assume it isn't for the sake of argument). Showing a theory as logically flawed is not equivalent to proving a theory about the real world is true. Do you understand that difference?

They are two sides of the same coin.

No, they aren't. You are profoundly mistaken if you think showing something as false is equivalent to showing something as true. There are significant differences.

Consider Noether's theorem,

I don't understand Noether's theorem. Its way over my pay grade as far as I can tell. I have a feeling the same goes for you.

[scourge99]

your logical analysis of Aristotelian physics is flawed, as i explained before, but we can just assume it isn't for the sake of argument

I'd gladly take credit for it, but unfortunately it's not my analysis, but rather a well-known thought experiment first used by Galileo. I'm not here to debate over commonly known facts, you can read about the same thought experiment here for example.

http://www.philosophical-investigations ... xperiments

Richard Dawkins discusses and agrees with the same thought experiment here

we can imagine logical and real world impossibilities. So the ability to think up an idea doesn't tell us if its actually true.

Perhaps you are right and conceivability doesn't entail possibility, can you show this to be the case?

Furthermore, your example doesn't demonstrate acquiring knowledge about the real world. It demonstrates that theories about the real world can be discredited by logical analysis (your logical analysis of Aristotelian physics is flawed, as i explained before, but we can just assume it isn't for the sake of argument). Showing a theory as logically flawed is not equivalent to proving a theory about the real world is true. Do you understand that difference?

They are two sides of the same coin. Consider Noether's theorem, which can be mathematically proven and shows that the law of conservation of energy holds in any logically possible universe with any given set of laws of physics, including this one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem. Both this and Galileo's thought experiment give us scientifically useful information about the real world that we live in.

Thought experiments are useful in trying to articulate a theory, or concept.

However, it doesn't mean a darn thing unless the principle can be verified through an actual experiment. Take, for example, the EPR paradox experiment. Einstein, Poldolsky and Rosen came up with it to show that QM was false. .. by coming up with a consequence of QM that wasn't thought about at the time, dealing with entanglement and 'spooky action at a distance'. They intended to show that QM was totally inadequate.

Because of experimental data, starting with bells theorem in 1964, and further experiments starting in 1976, they showed the conclusions in the EPR paradox paper were wrong. The world of QM really is that strange, and it is only a paradox in that the predicted actions do not make sense in the classical physics sense.

I completely agree. I don't mean to imply or say that thoughts experiments or navel gazing is useless. Its a useful tool. But its of limited use in its application to the real world because of the reasons i mentioned: mainly that we can imagine things that are impossible. Hence the need to verify with real-world experiment.

[Divine Insight]

I don't know what or how thinking abstractly or having an ego can be except in the way we humans perceive it. That is, i have no idea what it means to talk about "creating more elaborate illusions of separation". Just as I don't know what its like to be a chimpanzee or a bat. It seems like pure speculation. And I'm sure you are well aware of what i think about speculation that has no recourse to ANY evidence, experience, or basis.

I disagree. Once we have recognized the ego for what it truly is, we can then transcend the ego and know exactly what it's like to perceive the world as a Chimpanzee might.

Why should this require speculation? Once we understand what the ego is, we can see past it. No speculation required.

After all, if as a secularist, your claim is that it is indeed the brain that is having an experience then surely you can understanding using that same principle how and why Chimpanzees and other animals are also having an experience.

So for a secularist this should be a no-brainer.

Surely you don't think that only humans are having an experience?

Yet chairs are real and not just a concept. They have "legs" and can be sat upon even though they are just made of atoms. And atoms don't have legs and cannot be sat upon. But describing it this way doesn't mean I've somehow forgotten that a chair is just a bunch of atoms. That legs are just an abstraction, etc. You seem to like to accuse people of not recognizing this.

But you don't seem to be fully understanding what's going on.

To begin with the concept of a "chair" is itself a human abstraction in terms of labeling things. Would a stump or a log be considered to be a "chair"? You can certainly sit on a log or a stump.

A chair is just atoms doing what atoms do. Atoms obey the Pauli exclusion principle of not being able to exist in the same place at the same time. Atoms have electrical charges that can form bonds between them and repel each other away, etc.

Is a "chair" (or a log or a stump) doing anything different from what atoms do?

No, it's not. In fact, it's doing exactly what atoms do. It's bonding together, occupying space according to the Pauli exclusion principle, and exerting electrical forces on anyone who tries to violate the Pauli exclusion principle or override it's natural electrical forces.

A chair is not doing anything new that atoms don't already do.

To claim that "legs" are an "emergent property" of atoms is nonsense. Nothing new has "emerged". And this is true even when those atoms are assembled into complex structures like say a Ferrari. It's still just atoms doing what atoms do. No new "properties" have arisen. Everything that a Ferrari can do can be explained entirely by the fact that it's just atoms behaving as atoms behave.

Similarly a mind can be reduced to the workings of a brain. Yet a mind can have experiences even though neurons in a brain do not have experiences. But that doesn't mean we've somehow forgotten that a mind is fundamentally just a bunch of neurons firing in a brain. SO despite what you think, there is no contradiction or problem in treating the mind as an actual entity anymore than there is a problem with treating a "chair" as an actual entity.

But there is a huge difference here. Extremely HUGE DIFFERENCE.

A mind cannot be said to just be a complex arrangement of atoms that are just doing what atoms do

Do atoms have an experience? If not, then how can it be said that a mind is just atoms doing what atoms do

Now they are clearly doing something entirely new that they were totally incapable of doing prior to this. This cannot be compared with a Chair, or even something as complex as a Ferrari.

All atoms can do is obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and bond together or repel each other via electrical forces. There is nothing innate to an atom that implies that atoms should be able to have an experience.

So this whole idea of "emergent properties" is a faulty idea that fails to recognize when something truly "new" has actually emerged.

Nothing NEW has emerged in a Chair or a Ferrari. But something totally NEW and unlike atoms has indeed become apparent in the Mind. So where is there any reason to believe that this property has merely "emerged" from atoms?

You talk about your dislike of speculation, yet here you are making the greatest speculation of all. You are speculating that an experience of awareness should be able to emerge from constituents that don't innate have that ability in the first place.

That, to me, is an extreme and unwarranted speculation on your behalf.

You act like this should be obvious. I say, no way. It's not even remotely obvious that this is the explanation for an experience of awareness. It's not obvious at all. On the contrary it's nothing more than totally ungrounded speculation.

We have no reason to believe that anything made of atoms should ever be able to experience anything. How would that new property arise from constituents that didn't already innately have that property to begin with?

Your chair or even a Ferrari doesn't even remotely come close to a valid analogy of properties arising from atoms. Both chairs and Ferraris are just atoms doing what atoms do. There is nothing new there. No "new properties emerging". That's a misguided notion that has unfortunately become way too popular.

A chair being just a bunch of atoms, versus being an abstraction are two entirely different things. An abstraction is a concept of pure thought that has no physical reality. A chair is not an abstraction.

Yes it is. A chair is just atoms. Chairs don't really exist. They are an abstraction of a certain configuration of atoms. But no one wants to talk about things as configurations of atoms. Its much more simple and useful to just talk using high-level abstraction like "chairs".
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Sure, the concept of "chair" is a human abstraction. But that really has nothing to do with atoms. Like I say, is a log or stump a chair? Is a rock a chair? I can sit on a rock you know. Humans can even see a "Chair" in cloud formations abstractly. In fact, aren't there even star constellations based on thrones seen in the sky.

You seem to be confusing human abstraction with what atoms do. Atoms don't become "chairs". They are simply capable of forming into solid objects that can be sat upon. In fact, any actual "Chairs" that truly qualify as a "Chair" are no doubt manufactured by man. Although it is true that sometimes nature has formed natural objects that make amazingly good chairs.

But the very concept of a "Chair" is a human abstraction. It has nothing at all to do with emergent properties of atoms. Atoms are simply the constituents from which chairs can be made. And no new properties have arisen in the manufacturing of a chair. Atoms are still just doing what atoms do.

Yet we can still talk about "chairs" as a meaningful and useful concept that accurately describe the world for most everyday occasions. No need to backpedal into this , know-nothingness, "all is one", "science has lost its balls". Its just a red-herring. A conversation stopper that you deploy to avoid actually engaging in a discussion head-on

I'm trying to engage the topic head-on. You are the one going off on tangents proclaiming that since chairs are made of atoms but seen abstractly from the vantage point of humans as being abstract object we should jump to the speculation from this that human experience should also be considered nothing more than an emergent abstract property of atoms.

I don't see that as being a valid chain of argument.

The macro world does appear to have a Newtonian nature to some degree. But scientists keep reminding us that there are not two different realities. There is only one reality and that appears to be the quantum world.

You are wrong. The micro world can and is abstracted away in almost every scenario.

What do you mean by "abstracted away"?

For example, we don't need to worry about atoms when discussing sociology.

That actually supports my stance that mind is something other than atoms. What good would it do to discuss the properties of atoms when trying to speak about sociology (interactions of minds) when clearly mind does not even remotely possess properties that atoms possess?

We don't need to worry about quantum mechanics when discussing biology.

How can you say that? Biology as we know it is entirely dependent upon DNA, and DNA is a molecule that is entirely dependent upon the structure of atoms, and atoms are totally depending and ruled by quantum mechanics.

It seems to me t hat you can't even discuss biology at all without quantum mechanics being important. Fortunately for medical purposes we can learn about biology on the macro scale. In other words we can talk about macro organs and their macro functions. But ultimately biology itself is deeply rooted in the structure of atoms and how they can come together to form DNA molecules. And that is indeed ruled by quantum mechanics.

I would say that it's actually you superficial view of biology that cause you to say that we don't need to worry about quantum mechanics to discuss biology. Clearly you are viewing "biology" here as merely the conveniently reduced topics that are taught in science and biology classes. But that is only the macro scale of what biology actually produces. In truth, biology is really contained entirely in the DNA information. Everything that is produced by that is simply the result of this quantum level of information.

And we don't need to worry about "waves of probability" when talking about how chemistry.

Actually we do. Where would you ever take a complete course on Chemistry without running into the Schrodinger equation?

No one is trying to apply classical physics down to explain the quantum world. what I am saying is that you don;t need to get distracted with the micro world when we are at the scale of the macro world? Do you understand that?

Of course I do. But it seems to me that you are not recognizing that everything that may appear to be at the macro scale actually is at the macro scale. How can you say that mind is even at the macro scale?

Where do you have any evidence that the thing that is having an experience has any macro size or attribute at all? You have no clue what it is that is having an experience. So how can you say that it would even be anything macro?

I have tried in several posts before to get that point across to you but you don't seem to get it.

I could say the very same thing to you.

So all this talk about "science has lost its balls" is a red-herring because consciousness and the mind is not a quantum-level phenomenon. Its in the MACRO WORLD!!!

How do you know that? Can you point to a MACRO OBJECT that is actually having an experience? And if so, where is your evidence that is indeed this object that you are pointing to that is having an experience?

And if it's just made of atoms, then why is it having an experience? That suggests that atoms themselves should have the innate ability to have an experience.

So I don't deny the reality of the physical world. I just deny the idea that the world is ultimately made of atoms. It's not. It's made of waves of potentiality.

I agree. But we aren't talking about things at that fine of grain. That you constantly try to divert the conversation to that scale is just a distraction. Its irrelevant.

It's not irrelevant at all. I'm addressing the deepest question of: "What is the true nature or reality"?

You seem to be suggesting that this question is meaningless and that we should just restrict ourselves to asking, "What is the nature of the the macro world?"

By why should we restrict our question to that when we have already learned that the entirety of the macro world owes its origin and existence to the micro world?

If the true essence of reality is the micro world, then why should we ignore the micro world?

The micro world give rise to the macro world. And "in reality" there is no macro world. All that truly exists is the micro world giving rise to a macro world.

So it's the micro world that is "reality", and the macro world is simply a manifestation of this underlying "reality".

What you seem to be doing is saying that every time I try to address the true nature of reality, I'm producing a red herring to distract away from what we know about the macro world.

But that's not at all what I am doing. I'm not producing any 'red herrings'. I'm just addressing the facts of what we know scientifically. We know that the micro would gives rise to the macro world and therefore cannot be swept under the carpet as a red herring as you continually try to do.

You seem to be the one who wants to use the macro world as a "red herring" to ignore the truth that the macro world is just a manifestation of a deeper underlying micro world.

I see no reason to accept your approach. I don't see where you are addressing the true nature of reality at all. Instead you appear to want to sweep it under the carpet and pretend that a classical Newtonian view of the macro world is all that is required to explain everything.

I reject that view. And I believe that science overall does too. It's that simple.

[instantc]

Perhaps you are right and conceivability doesn't entail possibility, can you show this to be the case?

Please don't misrepresent or misunderstand what i said. I don't give a damn about possibility.

You said, to quote you directly, that we can imagine logical impossibilities. If this is the case, then conceivability doesn't entail possibility. So how am I misrepresenting your position?

Here are some examples of things that i can conceive that are impossible: that i can time travel

I'm guessing you mean that you can imagine yourself in the setting of, say, 1935 Germany. You being in the place you imagine to be Germany in 1935 isn't logically impossible. Nothing in this thought experiment contradicts the laws of logic.

that there is an even integer greater than 0 that is not the sum of two primes

This is interesting. Defenders of the conceivability argument claim that you cannot in fact imagine such integer. You are merely conceiving the context in which you are supposed to find that integer. You can imagine how you would feel if you found such integer, but you cannot imagine the integer that doesn't exist. I find this a fairly convincing counter-argument.

They are two sides of the same coin.

No, they aren't. You are profoundly mistaken if you think showing something as false is equivalent to showing something as true. There are significant differences.

Yes they are. Galileo's thought experiment showed us (1) that Aristotelian gravity theory was flawed, and (2) that the speed in which an object falls doesn't depend on its weight. So it both disproved a theory and proved a true proposition about the very world we live in.

I don't understand Noether's theorem. Its way over my pay grade as far as I can tell. I have a feeling the same goes for you.

We cannot personally verify each bit of information we use in our arguments. If a peer reviewed scientific article states that Noether's theorem can (1) be mathematically proven and (2) show that the law of conservation of energy holds with any given set of laws of physics, then I can use that information to make a plausible argument on a debate forum.

[Goat]

Yes they are. Galileo's thought experiment showed us (1) that Aristotelian gravity theory was flawed, and (2) that the speed in which an object falls doesn't depend on its weight. So it both disproved a theory and proved a true proposition about the very world we live in.

No, you are wrong. What Galileo's thought experiment showed the Aristotelian gravity theory MIGHT be flawed. It wasn't until we have physical confirmation via an actual experiment that we showed that it WAS flawed. Until we had input from the real world, we only had possibilities.

A thought experiment is a proposition. The actual experiment tests the proposition.

[instantc]

Yes they are. Galileo's thought experiment showed us (1) that Aristotelian gravity theory was flawed, and (2) that the speed in which an object falls doesn't depend on its weight. So it both disproved a theory and proved a true proposition about the very world we live in.

No, you are wrong. What Galileo's thought experiment showed the Aristotelian gravity theory MIGHT be flawed. It wasn't until we have physical confirmation via an actual experiment that we showed that it WAS flawed.

I think you couldn't possibly be more wrong here. In fact, the opposite of what you claim is true.

Galileo's thought experiment shows that Aristotelian gravity theory contradicts itself logically.

Galileo's experiment shows that Aristotelian gravity is flawed as certainly as we know that a married bachelor cannot exist.

It's the physical experiment that has an inductive nature and can never be 100% reliable, as David Hume has demonstrated.

So many people seem to have unjustified faith in the scientific method being superior over everything else, and your stance here is a prime example of this faith.

[keithprosser3]

So many people seem to have unjustified faith in the scientific method being superior over everything

It is at least superior to the unscientific method.

[instantc]

So many people seem to have unjustified faith in the scientific method being superior over everything

It is at least superior to the unscientific method.

What exactly is the unscientific method?

[Goat]

So many people seem to have unjustified faith in the scientific method being superior over everything

It is at least superior to the unscientific method.

What exactly is the unscientific method?

It's accepting books without question, and starting with conclusions, and rejecting evidence that does not match.. that is one of the unscientific method.

This is used by creationists, oh.. pardon me, 'creation scientists'. it is also used by theologians, and many , if not most people who indulge in metaphyiscs.

[Mithrae]

But these days I think pretty much everyone would agree that pigs do have conscious awareness - and probably snakes and fish too!

I don't think it is possible in principle to deduct from the behavior of an animal whether or not it has conscious awareness, you would need to be able to communicate with it in order to get the answer.

I agree that the presence or absence of consciousness and attributes of consciousness can't be ascertained from observing things' behaviour (or structure, for the present at least) - that's a central point of my views.

But communication is just another type of behaviour. Humans often communicate in a manner which does not correctly reveal the presence of conscious attributes; falsely giving the impression of pleasure or love or the like. Animals by their behaviour can communicate the (presumed) presence of conscious attributes like hunger or fear. And we can readily envisage - could probably even create - a computer programme which communicates its experience of consciousness indistinguishably from a human. How would we know whether or not it's lying?

How do we know that other humans - even those we know well - experience consciousness? We infer it, by analogy with our own structure and behaviour: If they've got similar bodies as we do, came into existence in the same way, and generally behave the same as we do (including their self-reported experience), it's reasonable to suppose that there's similar things going on in the darkness behind their eyes.

But we observe many similarities of structure and behaviour in other mammals also. That's not to under-rate the importance of the breadth and depth of communication which human language provides; without others' self-reported experience I might agree that I'd be unjustified in supposing that anything but myself is conscious (if I could even imagine those concepts in that extreme hypothetical). But I think you're over-rating its importance. A month-old baby can't communicate its consciousness to you any more than a dog or cat can - even less so, in fact - so would you with-hold judgement as to its capacity for conscious awareness?

Even if you would, I reckon we can at least understand each other's perspectives here. You are asking why we should suppose other things to be conscious.

But since we all, even you, do suppose that some other things are conscious, I'm asking why we should suppose anything to be nonconscious. To date I've seen no reasonable justification for that very common view - though in the 'self vs. other' distinction of infancy, from which we only gradually recognise even other human selves, I might have a good guess why it's so common.

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Is consciousness a basic aspect of reality?

Consciousness is an important element of reality - a universe with consciousness is different from one without it. Without consciousness, there are a no values, no good or evil, no goals or aspirations. When consciousness comes into existence it brings with it such things as values and 'mattering', perhaps also such things as love, duty and justice.

The importance of the advent of consciousness is such that I have called it 'The second big bang'. To aphorise, the first big bang brought about matter, the second brought about mattering. I believe a large part of the 'problem of consciousness' is that conventional science has developed to describe our universe as if consciousness did not exist. Hence science is very good at explaining 'how', but can say nothing about 'why'. It can say a lot about pair-bonding, but nothing about love. Our version of science has implicitly outlawed considering consciousness, so naturally it is going to have problems explaining consciousness. The problem is how to expand the realm of science to include consciousness without science becoming any less 'sciencey'.
btw - I don't offer any solutions.

I agree with all but two parts of this. Firstly (obviously) the presumption that there was a time before consciousness came into existence, and secondly that science's problems with consciousness come from how it developed. I think that science is grounded in observation, as Scourge and Goat have amply highlighted - and it must be, or else how is it different from the philosophies from which it developed? - and consciousness cannot be observed. I can't imagine there's any way around that problem, at least until some psychic or sci-fi future in which consciousness can be observed, without redefining science.

Your idea of the supposed development of consciousness being akin to a second big bang seems quite similar to the ideas of Sam Harris in the article I linked earlier, The Mystery of Consciousness. The distinction between matter and mattering, as you put it - or between objective and subjective, between quantitative and qualitative stuff - is about as fundamental to our language and way of thinking as anything I can imagine. Furthermore we can neither observe nor experience anything to be nonconscious, we can only note that some things lie outside of our conscious experience. So the idea of a 'nonconscious' reality which came before consciousness is defined as the negation of consciousness.

In other words, that idea of reality being generally nonconsciousness (and entirely nonconscious before the evolution of certain life-forms) involves introducing as stark a dichotomy as I have ever seen. And yet that gap cannot be bridged; the development of consciousness cannot yet be explained. While I haven't read much on the subject, everything I have read suggests that asserting the production of consciousness from nonconscious stuff is - as Dr. Harris the noted atheist and neuroscientist suggests - no different from proposing a miracle.

That doesn't mean it's incorrect of course; who knows what we'll learn in centuries to come? But we can only work with the best of our current knowledge. So if the best of our current knowledge suggests -
> that there is consciousness outside our individual minds
> that as yet there is no good justification for supposing reality generally to be nonconscious
> that as yet there is no explanation for the production of consciousness from nonconscious reality
- then by far the most reasonable presumption, given our limited knowledge, must be that consciousness is probably a characteristic of reality in general. We have no reason to suppose that we are miracles. We have no reason to claim that we are special or unique. The experience of our own tiny sphere of existence should not be negated in the rest of reality - if anything it should (very tentatively) be extrapolated.

Whilst maintaining a healthy scepticism/agnosticism and hope for future advances in knowledge, it should be recognised that at present the most reasonable view is something along the lines of a conscious reality - an idealism or panpsychism or pantheism.

More to the point (since that obviously doesn't get us very far at all!) the materialism or physicalism quietly presumed and often asserted outright in many arguments against or alternatives to various theisms should be recognised as a less reasonable view.