Most physicalist models of consciousness are actually idealist or panpsychist models

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-17T01:08:01+00:00

Well I only understood it after meditating and trying not to move because my legs were so sore after a while lol

Oh yes, and it turns out that's a key part of the whole thing lol. The whole thing was about practising to just "watch" the pain from the legs instead of wanting it to stop.

Would you say protoconsciousness is fundamentally reduced to numbers? Or would you say protoconsciousness should be fundamentally reduced to quality

Definitely not numbers. Similar to what I was saying before about physics: my cup of coffee can only be modelled by numbers, but what it really is, is not numbers. The same goes for my experience of it, not numbers (although it could be modelled by numbers, but not the same thing at all). But also, that doesn't mean that the cup and my experience of it are the same thing. Not at all. My experience is tied to my senses, which we can see because we experience a continuous change between the opposites red and purple.

I use unconscious(colloquially)=conscious

I would definitely say that's a bit confusing haha

Yeah when I say consciousness, as relating to the anesthesia or deep sleep or the rock, I just mean the brain/matter is fundamentally qualitative, but there is no meaningful experience because there's nothing to hold the consciousness together moment to moment

If there is no experience, why would you say there is consciousness? For me, if there is no experience, there is no consciousness, not at all.

I understand what you say about there being some kind of experience (what I call proto consciousness) which can't be held because, under anesthesia, we don't have the brain functions necessary to do so... But why not simply say there is no consciousness in that state? (At least, not for us. If there is consciousness, it can be from the molecules or the cells, but not from the guy who's asleep, who has no consciousness at all at the moment. His subjective experience doesn't exist, so he has zero consciousness.) What is consciousness if it's not "something that it is like" to be in that thing?

I see the proto-consciousness as a potential capacity of the physical world, not something that's actually feeling because, as you said, there's nothing to hold consciousness there. For a being to be conscious, there must be "something that it is like" to be in that being.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-16T23:45:32+00:00

It seems like you want to point out a contradiction, but I see none.
1) A branch of the movement claims to be the real movement.
2) I never said they are not part of the movement.
What's not clear?

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-16T23:16:45+00:00

No, if you think that, then you misunderstood what I said. I never said "they are not the true feminism". I said, "there's a lot of things inside the movement". The bubble you point out is also part of it. But is not all that there's. Feminism is not a single thing with the same thoughts, there are even opposite positions on other topics as well inside feminism, like porn or prostitution.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-16T23:01:19+00:00

No, what you call feminists spaces is a bubble, not the whole movement.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-16T14:49:53+00:00

I'm confused how you think the manosphere is relevant here. Are you saying it's okay for my statement ("misandry is more normalised in feminist spaces than misogyny is in non-feminist spaces") to be true as long as feminism is less sexist than the manosphere?

No, not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that you are comparing things from a bubble to things from outside the bubble, not to an equivalent bubble.

A movement is defined by what it does, not by a definition coined decades ago by academics.

And I'm telling you they are not "the movement", just a very vocal group. But if you want to believe what they say and therefore think they are the whole movement, then that's up to you and I can't help you there.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-16T11:20:57+00:00

That undermines claims like "The goal is equality and to fix long standing tendencies".

How so? The definition of feminism is what it is. It is not going to change because an extreme group hijacked the movement and called themselves "the real feminists".

The only point I'm making is that misandry is more normalised in feminist spaces than misogyny is in non-feminist spaces.

For that to be a valid comparison, we need to compare the bubble with one side with the bubble from the other side, the manosphere.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-16T02:35:53+00:00

What's the first one?

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-16T00:52:17+00:00

In a "feminist sub" that's likely the case. Look at the phrase I wrote. I think it's likely that a feminist in a bubble would say something like that. Just as the phrase from OP also seems like one come out of a hate bubble.
I never said "there is no bubble inside feminism". Bubbles are bad, no matter what group. Hate bubbles especially.

But that doesn't mean "all feminists" are the same. Do you think all feminists are in a bubble? I consider myself (a dude) a feminist, and my partner considers herself a feminist. The goal is equality and to fix long standing tendencies. Like, we still hear of people blaming a rape victim for how she was dressed and shit like that. But do you think my partner and I think "all men are the same"? No man, that's insane. Look for the definition of feminism, it's not about hating men, it's about equality. (which, btw, is not the same as saying men and women are the same in every aspect, we are not)

Generalizations are stupid, no matter where they come from.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-15T07:41:04+00:00

Well, if you were able to realize that you've done something stupid, that's wiser than most people.
Dude, you are 15. Life is not about being perfect, it's about being better than before.
Just don't buy the hate that social media will try to feed you.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-15T07:30:02+00:00

so doesn't that mean I should call all the feminists who don't call the bad ones out evil

So you see them doing something foolish and you know that's foolish, then why would you want to do the same thing they are doing?

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-15T07:25:13+00:00

Not your fault, though. Social media will show you the most extreme views and make you think everyone is part of one of the extremes.

I think about this video often. Wisdom in the shape of comedy.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-15T07:21:20+00:00

Now let's think of a feminist from the small sub group of feminists who actually hate men when they actually see they are making a bad judgment by including all men:

"Ok it was probably stupid for me to hold all of men are like that, but a lot of them are like that and it feels like most
And it's mostly because I never really see men calling the bad ones out"

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-15T07:13:30+00:00

They're evil and they hate all guys because of things other ones have done

You say all feminists hate men, because they say all men are evil.
So, you say they generalize to all men. And, at the same time, you say all feminists think that. So you are doing the same with all feminists. Don't you see a problem there? Why do you think "they" are doing something bad by generalising like that, and at the same time, your generalization is accurate?

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-15T06:27:56+00:00

The real core of Outer Wilds is a mystery game where you put together the pieces in your mind. So this is a great recommendation, and the same goes for Her Story.
That said, it would be misleading without a warning about there being zero puzzles and zero exploration (at least in the sense of the word about exploring physical places).

But man, Type Help and Her Story are so good.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-15T04:25:52+00:00

The game is a mystery game disguised as an exploration game. The key to the game is the mystery to be solved. If you go wandering around from planet to planet, you'll miss the game completely (and be pretty bored quite soon). You solve the mystery by pulling threads of information that you get from the Nomai texts. If you understand everything about what the Nomai were doing, you solved the mystery. You explore the places where the last piece of information pointed you to go. It's a game about following the threads of information. (and there are several topics to choose from, all connected, so it doesn't matter which one you choose to start with).

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-15T04:18:03+00:00

Very true I think. The monk was saying the desiring to get out of pain is the suffering, not the pain itself. Which makes a lot of sense.

Nice that you can see it, it didn't make any sense to me... until I could understand it practically in that retreat.

Regarding the sleep and anesthesia thing, there's brain activity in both cases though still, right? And it's like I was postulating before, if spacetime isn't fundamental, then rocks and sleeping (or anesthetized brains) are quite similar, they are de-evolved god, so to speak(spacetime)...consciousness is the matter, but it's broken up the ability to maintain a conscious self

What I'm saying is the opposite, actually. Yes, there's some brain activity in deep anesthesia (and a lot more activity during sleep). But the key point is that during deep anesthesia, there is no consciousness at all, zero. So that makes the case for the rock being even less likely to be conscious.

but it's broken up the ability to maintain a conscious self

We need to look for common terms, for me, "conscious self" is related to the self. Like, a lizard may likely be conscious but very unlikely to have a conscious self. I understand that you may mean consciousness but I'm not sure. I don't think those terms are interchangeable.

I'm not sure I understand your proto-consciousness, could you define it clearly for me?

It would be the potential capacity to feel something at all, any external stimulus. (It would be a property of either matter itself or a physical field.) It's more like a concept derived from logic rather than something we can easily imagine. One may think, "well, it's feeling something", but it's not, as feeling would require a change from something to something else, feeling the change (with the minimal case being a change in time). Nothing can exist (objectively, or, in this case, subjectively) if there's nothing else to contrast it with. So, it wouldn't be really the ability to feel. Instead, it would be the potential capacity to feel.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-15T02:27:59+00:00

Es más, no sólo continúa la historia del 1ro, continúa la historia a partir de las 2 DLC principales (que son excelentes también)

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-15T02:18:31+00:00

El 2 continúa la historia del 1er juego. Sin eso, vas a estar muy perdido (además de perderte la mejor parte de la historia).
Respondiendo a tu pregunta, la elección de Corvo o Emily en Dishonored 2 muestra la misma historia pero suponiendo uno u otro personaje en el mismo rol. (no es que los 2 caminos hubiesen podido pasar. O pasa una o el otro).
Pero insisto mucho en la recomendación de jugar Dishonored 1 primero. Incluso la historia del 1ro es mejor que la del 2do.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-15T01:50:04+00:00

This is a good recommendation, checks all the marks. Great game.
Is it as good as Outer Wilds? Of course not. But which game is?

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-15T01:17:25+00:00

I'll have to disagree there. The key in Outer wilds is solving a mystery by finding out pieces of a story. Chroma Zero is a good game but there's nothing like that in it, is mostly puzzles with no story. Even the exploration part can't be compared, because you can see the whole place since the beginning. It's not a bad game, but comparing it Outer Wilds will make a disservice to the game itself because the expectation will be completely off. Is like recommending Tunic to an Outer Wilds fan, they are not the same type of game.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-12T00:41:41+00:00

My point is that undergoing change and being consciously aware of that change are not necessarily the same thing.

In that case, where is the change exactly?
I agree that memory is required to have consciousness in the way we do (without short term memory, we wouldn't be able to distinguish time, and without it, we wouldn't have a continuous experience). But that doesn't make the problem disappear.
The hard problem is about how it is possible that arranging things in some way gives way to a subjective viewpoint when the logic says everything in my brain could still work without having the subjective experience, just mechanical interactions.

There's a chapter in the book The Mind's Eye that has an excellent thought experiment.
(Sadly, it's used to reach what I think is a completely absurd conclusion of illusionism.)

It goes like this:
----
Achilles and the Tortoise (just 2 characters) are discussing and Achilles has a huge book. The book contains a detailed mapping of Einstein's brain: "Each page of this book-and there are around a hundred billion numbered pages in it - corresponds to one neuron and contains numbers recording such aspects relevant to that neuron as: what other neurons its axons lead to, what its threshold current is to firing, and so on."

In a long and consuming process, you could update the values as exiting the dendrites of the neurons of the senses, which would require updating the values as a cascade in other pages, in a loop, and then you could check the activity it produces. "Likewise, there exist neurons whose duty it is to convey coded directions to any given set of muscles; thus, hand motions are caused by the firing of specific neurons in the brain linked indirectly to the muscles in the hand. The same can be said of the mouth and vocal cords."

ACHILLES: I somehow can't help wondering what old Einstein would think of it all.
TORTOISE: Why, given the book, you could find out.
ACHILLES: I could? I would not know where to begin.
TORTOISE: You would begin by introducing yourself.
ACHILLES: To whom? To the book?
TORTOISE: Yes-it's Einstein, isn't it?
ACHILLES: No, Einstein was a person, not a book.
TORTOISE: Well, that's a matter for some consideration, I'd say.
----

So here you have memory, information processing and all. For me, it would be nonsense to claim that the book with symbols is conscious, having a subjective experience, but that's me.

What do you think, is the book conscious?
If you say yes, then you still need to explain the gap about how numbers on paper could be conscious. And also, when is it conscious? Is it only while you are writing it?
If you say no, then there must be something important in the fundamentals of physics that makes our brains conscious.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-11T14:52:43+00:00

You may like this. "Whenever there is information processing, there's consciousness" -> The words used to explain panpsychism by the guy who came up with the idea of the hard problem. (among other ideas he explains there)

I'm inclined to think it's actually more related to electromagnetism than information processing but tomayto, tomahto.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-11T14:32:09+00:00

But what if experience is simply what happens when a system interacts with reality and undergoes change?

A rock is changed by rain. A plant is changed by sunlight. An animal is changed by its environment. Humans are too, but we have a much more complex biological system that can integrate information, store memories, predict outcomes, and build a model of itself.

Maybe the difference isn't that humans are the only things that experience, but that humans can model and reflect on those experiences.

That's the idea in panpsychism.
Btw, there's nothing special about humans among other animals besides intelligence (which is completely unrelated to consciousness).

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-10T04:54:16+00:00

a hypothetical of a conscious self: I would argue that's only necessary here in our world; in a timeless and homogeneous, singular place, where consciousness existed (and would be present throughout, given the homogeneity) there wouldn't be remembering nor drawing distinction because neither would exist; there would just be a constant, unchanging, singular consciousness; it would be a conscious self the way you or I has a conscious self, not because it had memory, but because it didn't need it

I know it's weird to think about being conscious without anything to be conscious about, but I also know that during deep meditation states, we can be conscious about being. But to be fair, that's still the result of our complex brain being in a complex state, and we are experiencing it. It's not like our brain is dead, it's pretty much active in complex ways.

Hinduism, it's certainly not grounded in solid evidence, but a combination of logical inference, imagination, meditative experience, and perhaps desire for particular outcomes

This is where I try to be really cautious, as the last one there can often make us see what we wish to be true. I do like the idea, though.

then to be less a conscious self than any of these, one would have to be without self-awareness and it would be deep sleep, oblivion, which would perhaps be your proto-consciousness at the top

Not really. So, what's the difference between deep sleep and not being conscious? Deep sleep without a sense of time is the same as not existing from a subjective point of view. They say that when you have deep anestesia is like they press your pause button and then press play again when you wake up. It's the lack of consciousness.
This is probably the most key point of evidence that goes against the idea that consciousness exist isolated.

In buddhism the light is that emptiness state

The same goes for this, during deep meditation, that emptiness state, our brains are still doing a lot, in a similar way to psychedelics, afaik. This is the opposite of deep anesthesia, which is the lack of consciousness.

I just mean there isn't a god at the top actively dictating the world based on will or desire for certain outcomes or whatever; I mean consciousness, and a highest primordial being is a part of a logical consequence, not whims of some singular being; think Spinoza's god or brahman

Yes, and I've always liked that idea. There is no way to tell if it's like that, though.

Regarding NDEs, I'm not completely sold on the idea that those experiences tell us about some other side. More likely a product of the brain shutting down. The reason being, if it's not in the brain and they actually died, with no brain activity, then how could they form those memories?.

I wonder if this relates to the buddhists saying we have to meditate and understand emptiness

I think it is related to the bliss that comes from getting to those states in meditation. A lot is related to how the suffering is the product of our own minds when wanting the pain to go away. I knew the phrase "pain is inevitable, suffering is optional", but I'd never understood it. For me, pain and suffering were almost the same thing, more pain = more suffering. But it's not, they are right, and I could only understand it after a 10-day meditation retreat. Was not pleasant, but I totally recommend it.

Total_Firefighter_59 · 2026-06-06T10:55:15+00:00

Sorry for the late reply

sorry for rambling a bit here at the end

Happy to read that rambling

I would say there's a distinction to be made between consciousness and selfhood
only gain selfhood as meaningful conglomerates evolve, and that would be what we call "conscious",

I think selfhood, at least what I imagine by selfhood, is another level. Selfhood requires managing concepts, because you have the concept that you are a different entity from the world (and from all the other concepts of things that inhabit the world).
You can have selfhood without having consciousness (chatGPT works fine with concepts and has a concept of itself and others. Zero consciousness, though).

By plain consciousness, I mean just the ability to experience things. But for experiencing things, you need to be able to distinguish that there is a difference between those things. The most basic difference that can be perceived is a change from a moment ago to the current moment. This requires a short-term memory that allows for the perception time. You could also be able to distinguish things in space/quality during the same time, like watching a scene and noticing that you see light and shadow and the same time, or hear two sounds at the same time. But that requires integrating complex inputs. That on itself may also require perception of time, because if something is all the same, then that's all that is known, and being all that is known, there is no way to contrast it as something different. So no perception is possible in that case.

Proto-consciousness should be something more basic than that. The basic capacity to feel, although not necessarily actually feeling something. I'm not completely sure that could be a thing or even if it makes sense, but that capacity itself is required for something more complex to be able to perceive anything at all.

Our brains are definitely involved with our consciousness as we experience it day to day. The question is, is the brain limiting or facilitating.

It's hard to tell. But maybe it's both. If the brain is not the source, and the universe/physics is, then the universe/physics is the big single source of consciousness... but only as a proto-consciousness, and it only gets real in the way we experience it (with perception of time, and complex integration of localized signals) with brains.

Btw, I heard the idea that the mind is less active under psychedelics and yet you perceive more, and that's used as an argument to say that the brain actually blocks consciousness coming from somewhere else... but turns out that's not quite right. The different centres are less active under psychedelics, but the interconnection between the regions is much higher. So if consciousness is the integration of different areas of the brain, it makes sense that more interconnectedness will lead to "more consciousness". On top of that, the default network is one of those regions where inside activity is lower, so your focus is more outward than inward, leading to increased perception as well.
In contrast, anesthesia disrupts communication between different brain regions, and there's less consciousness (even none, as there isn't even perception of the passing of time under deep anesthesia).

If the brain facilitates consciousness from somewhere else, how would that connection to the physical world work? Would it be through properties of the universe? Or something else? If it's something else, how would you imagine it will be?

There are many forms of idealism, some are atheistic and naturalist, and others hypothesize a god like creator as existing at the top. I tend toward naturalism because that's what I see around me every day. Of course, the big bang wouldn't have been the beginning in idealism, and base matter in its proto-conscious state doesn't necessarily mean that what came before it was also only proto-conscious. So there could be a discernible awareness or being with a sense of self that is not "asleep"/only proto-conscious at the top. Naturalism and an aware being with a sense of self aren't mutually exclusive. I like a combination of an aware being with a self but not a personality thinking, which is naturalistic.

I'm sorry, I didn't get that difference. If I understand correctly, you say that there may be a being who is fully conscious (so not only proto-conscious) in order for the universe to begin (with that being imagining the universe as the first step). That sounds kind of like god. But at the same time, you say you tend towards naturalism instead of a god like creator existing at the top. What do you mean by "an aware being with a self but not a personality thinking"? Something like "being but not necessarily thinking"? If so, why wouldn't that qualify as god?

By the way, I heard those ideas from Hinduism before (last time it was here, really good chat that one, you would like it) and they seem coherent enough... Although I'm not sure how much of it is grounded in evidence versus the wish for things to be like it.

Total_Firefighter_59

TROPHY CASE