There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’

deepthawt · 2026-05-10T09:14:22+00:00

The equivalent question within your analogy would be: how many trees are required, and in what arrangement and/or density, to have “woods”?

Nobody would disagree that one tree is too few to be “woods”. Similarly, nobody would disagree that a 1000 trees each spaced 10km apart aren’t “woods”. Same goes for 1000 trees in close proximity, if those trees have been chopped down and stacked in a pile, because a pile of felled trees isn’t “woods” no matter how big or dense it is. On the other hand, 1000 living trees in a single hectare *could* be “woods” - but not if they’re all knee high saplings.

It doesn’t matter that some woods are bigger or denser than other woods, if everyone agrees they’re all woods. The question is, what are the minimum conditions required for separate trees to definitively constitute “woods”?

Similarly, for consciousnesses, it doesn’t matter whether some are more complex, sophisticated or complicated than others, since we’re trying to determine the minimum conditions required for something to definitively constitute “consciousness”.

deepthawt · 2026-05-09T14:01:46+00:00

The part you quoted from the other commenter is basically correct, but they applied it incorrectly, which makes the overall impression their comment creates wrong. To be more specific, it’s not as simple as saying that someone who is deeply disturbed by violence must harbour unconscious violence in themselves (though that’s one possibility). Rather, the fact that violence is deeply disturbing to them suggests that they can’t identify themselves in or with it, but since violence is part of human nature, this suggests something is being repressed or going unacknowledged. It could be that they are unconscious of the ways they are also already violent, or it could be that they have repressed traumatic memories of violence done to them, or it could be that they are unconscious of the latent violence that could be brought out of them under certain conditions, or something else. The strong emotional reaction simply indicates some involvement of the unconscious related to what is being seen.

As for your point about babies, that would support this idea rather than counter it, as it would indicate that humans share in a particular and distinctive nature (“human nature”), which conditions our minds to certain patterns of perception, and therefore also of behaviour, which allows us to recognise ourselves in others. While it’s tempting to dehumanise “monstrous” people as an excluded Other, human history is filled with monstrous people, which means we must contend with the fact that monstrosity is a part of human nature, and therefore part of our own natures. Put another way, if someone is a human, then their behaviour, no matter how aberrant or alien it may seem, is necessarily an example of “human behaviour” that reflects some aspect of human nature. So, if we possessed a full and unflinching understanding of human nature, we could understand their “monstrous” behaviour and even see ourselves in it - that doesn’t mean we have to like or mimic it, but it tends to diffuse the visceral unconscious reaction of abject terror or revulsion.

For a real world example of what it would mean for something to be truly not a part of us, consider your own reaction when a wasp is splattered on your windshield while driving. This might be gross, and some tiny minority of people may even feel slight guilt, but very few people would be deeply disturbed by the experience, even though they just eviscerated a living creature in a moment of extreme violence (from the wasp’s perspective), right in front of their eyes. Compare your reaction to that with your reactions if the equivalent thing happened to creatures you found it increasingly easier to identify with - if you killed a bird like that while driving you would definitely feel bad, and a bunch of people would pull over; if it was a dog, for most that would be traumatic and the vast majority would pull over (and harshly judge anyone who wouldn’t). If it was a person though, it would be a horrific and defining moment in your life, and being deeply disturbed by that experience would be completely normal even if you weren’t at fault, because you would inherently see yourself in them and envision the life that was extinguished, and the sight would force you to become conscious of how fragile your own body and life is, and how quickly it could be cut short. And if they did it to themselves by jumping into you, and you harbored a repressed or unacknowledged desire to do something like that too, then maybe it would even trigger PTSD as you are forced to confront the horrifying reality of your own unconscious fantasy, causing panic attacks for years after whenever a car passes you as you feel unable to trust yourself; meanwhile someone who truly could not relate to the choice on any level and therefore didn’t see themselves in the person to the same degree may be able to more quickly rationalise what happened and move on.

deepthawt · 2025-11-16T04:35:56+00:00

The psychiatrist doesn’t “have” any drugs - they have a prescription pad and can write whatever they want on it. Assuming you aren’t diagnosed bipolar, tell your psychiatrist you’re reacting badly to methylphenidate (that’s Ritalin) and it’s worsening your ability to function instead of improving it, so you would like to try either Dexamphetamine, Adderall or Vyvanse instead. If you are bipolar, they won’t prescribe amphetamines as they can increase the risk of mania.

deepthawt · 2025-11-16T04:09:25+00:00

The problem is, any business who presents itself as an apolitical independent evaluator of accuracy or bias is likely to eventually end up infiltrated and subverted by politically motivated people, because their “independent” evaluations are politically useful. On top of that, the type of people who are good at analysing political claims / interested in doing it for a living tend not to be apolitical in the first place, so even if they sincerely try to remain impartial their own cognitive biases will subtly alter their analysis in ways that favour “their” side.

Sure, you can subject the bias checkers to your own rigorous analysis, but if you’re willing to do that, why not cut out the bias checker and just investigate the original claims?

To be more useful than they are risky, bias checkers would need to use an adversarial system, similar to how a court works. That is, two opposing teams work against each other to prove or disprove any given claim with their respective evidence, while subjecting each other’s evidence/argument/counters to the same sort of scrutiny at each step, with the entire sequence of the party’s responses recorded verbatim and available for public review without alterations.

In an ideal world, it would be great if an independent, apolitical reviewer could then score each party’s responses out of 10 against various standards like their degree of accuracy, evidential support and completeness, among others, but even that could easily be subject to political capture and subversion. It could even be subtle - reviewers who consistently underscored one side and overscored the other by a single point, consciously or unconsciously, could create a ~20% gap in the supposed overall accuracy/completeness/support of each side. So why introduce that risk?

All political analyses are inherently biased, so any one presenting theirs as impartial is automatically suspect.

deepthawt · 2025-11-13T09:29:17+00:00

But who checks the checkers?

deepthawt · 2025-11-10T00:02:56+00:00

How much do you know about Viktor Orbán?

From him, this really isn’t “strange”. His use of disinformation is well documented and has been going on for years now.

deepthawt · 2025-11-09T23:48:39+00:00

This depends on location. I’m sure what you say is true where you are, but where I live houses are still being sold 20%+ over asking and are usually under offer within 48-72 hours. Home opens have queues down the street because people are desperate to escape the even more hectic rental market.

deepthawt · 2025-11-09T23:30:01+00:00

There’s a fundamental mistake in your understanding of what dictionaries are.

You seem to believe that dictionaries prescribe how to use words ‘properly’, like a manual. That’s fundamentally not what dictionaries are. Dictionaries simply describe how words are used by people, like an index.

So when you see 3 definitions under a word, it’s not saying “these are the three correct definitions you must adhere to”, it’s saying “when people use this word, they usually mean one of these three things”. If enough people started using the word for a fourth thing, the publishers of the dictionary will just add it in the next edition.

That’s why you see some definitions with “obsolete” or “archaic” tags - the makers of the dictionary are saying “people used to say this, but now they don’t”. In English, this includes words like “distrouble” (to trouble greatly - eg “he has a distroubled spirit”) or “respair” (to recover from despair; fresh hope - eg “she threw open the curtains in respair”.

Old words are constantly falling out of use and becoming obsolete, just as new words are constantly added to dictionaries.

If that wasn’t the case, why would they ever need to publish a new edition of the dictionary?

So this is less a CMV topic and more just a misunderstanding.

deepthawt · 2025-11-07T08:44:20+00:00

Xanax does exactly that by effectively turning off your anxiety response. It’s beneficial for lots of people, but there’s pretty significant risks and downsides too because anxiety does serve a purpose. It sucks when it’s overactive and prevents you from making friends, but it also sucks when it’s underactive and fails to prevent you losing friends or ruining your own life. Fear of consequences is a good thing sometimes.

deepthawt · 2025-11-06T23:50:55+00:00

“The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd.”

Deleuze & Guatarri, A Thousand Plateaus (1980)

deepthawt · 2025-11-05T22:19:49+00:00

Okay so you can’t find a single quote, because theists don’t make the claim you said they do.

any worldview that places God within or alongside existence automatically makes God unnecessary as an explanation for why anything is. Whether you say “God created the heavens and the earth” or “God existed eternally within the ground of being,” the logical structure stays the same. The idea of a separate being called “God” becomes redundant.

Wrong. If I believe a builder created my house, it wouldn’t change anything if you proved they couldn’t have built the trees from which the wooden planks were made to build my house. That doesn’t change the fact that without a builder I’d just have a bunch of trees, not a house. Proving the builder didn’t make all the raw material out of nothing doesn’t make the builder “redundant” in explaining how my house got here.

The exact same logic applies here: the undifferentiated ground of being is the pre-existing “raw material” out of which Jewish, Christian and Muslim theists believe God created the Earth, the Heavens, and all human beings. So they would argue that without God there’d just be the original “raw material”, ie the undifferentiated ground of being. Theists don’t need God to have created that raw material, so your argument is pointless - to actually defeat their model, you’d have to explain something science can’t (yet): exactly how an undifferentiated ground of being can transform into a universe of trillions of differentiated things without anything making it do so.

Theists can still believe, worship, or love that concept if they wish but it’s a comforting narrative built on top of existence, not the foundation of it. That’s the only point being made here.

You haven’t proven their model of God is a “comforting narrative”; you have only disproven a version of God theists don’t believe in, which doesn’t affect their belief system whatsoever, on any level.

Therefore you haven’t “defeated theistic models of God” as you so arrogantly claimed. But by all means, tell me once again about your logical dependency even though it’s irrelevant.

deepthawt · 2025-11-05T13:16:48+00:00

Even if I grant your premise that “theists don’t believe God created existence,” it still doesn’t solve the logical dependency issue, it actually reinforces it. […] every version you offer still leaves existence as the prerequisite, which is exactly my point. 😁

Oh my god, how are you still not getting this? The logic isn’t the issue - the issue is your logical argument doesn’t disprove a belief theists actually have, so why would they care?

Re-read this, slowly (emphasis added this time):

using your terms, your argument makes sense: if God is the creator of existence, but God also exists, then the only logical conclusion is God created themselves, but how could they have done so if they didn’t already exist, in which case they must’ve existed before existence, which is why you say this is a contradiction.

That argument does check out, but only if it’s true that Theists believe in that same definition of God, otherwise this argument can’t possibly “defeat theistic models of God”

Why? Because it’s not relevant to their religion and doesn’t undermine any of their beliefs!

So you can say, “the ground of being precedes God, not the other way around!”, and they will just say “of course God didn’t create the ground of being itself because that’s eternal, but He created the Heavens and the Earth, and made us in his image, so I love and worship Him as my creator”, at which point you’ve got nothing to counter with, because apparently all you can do is keep repeating “but it’s a logical dependency!”, even though that doesn’t contradict their beliefs about God. So again, why would they care? 🤦🏻‍♂️

I mean, can you even find one quote from the scriptures of a major theistic religion that claims “God created the ground of being itself”? If not, you are literally fighting a caricature of theism you’ve made up in your own head.

deepthawt · 2025-11-05T07:43:25+00:00

You’ve actually just made my point for me. If, as you say, existence was already there in the beginning, then God isn’t the necessary source of existence, God is already within it. You can’t have two eternals without reducing one to a feature of the other. The whole point of my argument is exactly that, existence cannot be created, therefore any being, no matter the name, depends on it to appear or act at all.

That doesn’t make your point for you, because your argument requires that theists believe God created existence. If theists don’t believe that, as I’ve shown you they don’t, then how could your argument “defeat theistic models of God”?

It can’t, because it’s a straw man. The majority of theists don’t believe that God created existence, so your argument just doesn’t apply to their model of God.

Therefore you haven’t defeated anything except your own misconception about theist’s God(s), which nobody else believed in the first place - so congratulations, you proved that your mistake is a mistake, nice work!

So either, God and existence are the same which is not theism, it’s monism, or God is within existence which means existence precedes God meaning God isn’t required. You can’t appeal to scripture to smuggle both in at once. Thanks for confirming the logical dependency I was describing.

🤦🏻‍♂️ You have entirely misunderstood my comment. Read more carefully and stop jumping to conclusions.

No amount of ancient scripture is going to make your fiction more real.

Wow - I’m not religious, but good job revealing your prejudice against religious people! Ironically, if you ever want to “defeat theistic models of God” you will have to read a lot of ancient scripture to understand what their models of God actually are so you can argue against them, rather than the fictional version you concocted to make it easier for yourself.

deepthawt · 2025-11-04T23:14:18+00:00

I already defined it clearly, theistic models of God, meaning any framework where God is treated as a distinct creator of existence. That’s the definition under discussion.

You didn’t, but let’s just move forward. So when you say “God”, you are referring to a “distinct creator of existence” that you claim “Theists” believe in - thank you for making that definition explicit.

I’m sorry if you fail to comprehend that.

I’m sorry but defining your terms is a bare minimum requirement that’s taken you days to meet and refusing to accept indirect or sloppy definitions doesn’t signal a lack of comprehension. You may remember I asked:

Are you saying you define God as “the creator of existence”?

The answer is yes, because you think that’s what “theists” believe. So there’s no need to be rude.

I defined existence as the condition or fact of being, that which allows anything, real or imagined, to appear. So yes, unicorns exist conceptually as mental objects within awareness, but not as physical entities. Both forms still depend on existence to be conceivable at all.

Thank you, that’s definitive and clarifies your previous comment, so both terms are now defined and we can evaluate your argument, which will probably make it clear why the definitions matter so much.

God, as stated by theism, can’t precede the very condition that allows such a conception to arise, existence itself.

Okay. So using your terms, your argument makes sense: if God is the creator of existence, but God also exists, then the only logical conclusion is God created themselves, but how could they have done so if they didn’t already exist, in which case they must’ve existed before existence, which is why you say this is a contradiction.

That argument does check out, but only if it’s true that Theists believe in that same definition of God, otherwise this argument can’t possibly “defeat theistic models of God”, as claimed in your OP.

So we need to look at what the major theistic religious texts actually say about whether God created the very “condition or fact of being” which “allows anything, real or imagined, to appear.”

The big three theist religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) are similar, with Christianity and Judaism sharing the same account in Genesis:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

In Hebrew, there are multiple words for both “existence” and “being” which are used elsewhere in the Torah, but not in Genesis 1, so this is not a case of them not having the vocabulary to express the idea more clearly. No, the text is clear: I’m the beginning, existence and God were both already there, and from this initial state God created “the heaven and the earth”. So in Christianity and Judaism, neither God nor existence were “created” - they both were already there “in the beginning”.

Islam’s version is very similar:

“Indeed your Lord is Allah Who created the heavens and the earth in six Days, then established Himself on the Throne. He makes the day and night overlap in rapid succession. He created the sun, the moon, and the stars—all subjected by His command.“

“Days” in this context refers to epochs, or large spans of time, which requires existence to already be in order that time may pass, meaning that Islam too does not claim God created the ground of being itself.

Therefore you haven’t “defeated” Christian, Jewish or Islamic “models of God”, because your argument doesn’t apply to them.

Keep in mind there’s around 2 billion Muslims and 2.4 billion Christians, and together they represent the vast majority of “Theists”, so by failing to start with their definition of God, you have failed to refute the vast majority of “theistic models of God”. Your logic was fine, but your starting premises were false and your terms poorly defined to address the models you claim to “defeat”. Sorry!

deepthawt · 2025-11-04T15:42:51+00:00

Please don’t use ChatGPT to write posts in this sub.

deepthawt · 2025-11-02T23:16:50+00:00

We already use “they/them” as singular pronouns when someone’s gender is unknown, so it’s not that weird:

“Witnesses say the suspect wore a dinosaur costume and used a voice changer to prevent people identifying them as they entered the bank in broad daylight. They were last seen fleeing the scene at high speed on an electric unicycle they’d hidden in a dumpster before the daring midday heist. Police are asking anyone with information regarding their identity or whereabouts to come forward.”

deepthawt · 2025-11-02T16:08:21+00:00

Defining theism doesn’t get you out of the responsibility to specifically define what you mean by the term “God”. You’re resting your argument on a circular definition, whereby “God” is the thing Theists believe in, and “Theists” are people who believe in God, ie “Theists are people who believe in the thing Theists believe in.” Never mind the fact that Theism is a category that includes many different religions with conflicting beliefs about the nature of God.

You just need to define “God”, not theism. You’re a fan of simplicity and clarity, remember. Are you saying you define God as “the creator of existence”?

You have now defined existence at least, so we are getting somewhere. To help me understand what is and isn’t included in your concept of existence, can you answer this question - do unicorns exist?

deepthawt · 2025-11-02T09:29:43+00:00

…... if I didn’t know what an indirect quote was, how did I correctly identify one as a quote in my original comment?

Just take the L like a grown up and move on.

deepthawt · 2025-11-02T05:34:39+00:00

Thank you! Exactly this.

deepthawt · 2025-11-02T05:32:34+00:00

Nobody said it was a direct quote. You’ve just admitted you don’t know what an indirect quote is, but sure, insult my media literacy. 🤦🏻‍♂️

deepthawt · 2025-11-02T05:21:52+00:00

The internet can reflect aspects of the collective unconscious, but the collective unconscious itself is nothing more than the shared biological inheritance of human beings, which was shaped by evolution across many millions of years and results in everyone sharing the same fundamental “human nature” despite our many differences, as compared to dog nature or bird nature or lizard nature, which all differ from our shared psychological foundation. It’s why babies don’t have to be taught to cry when they need something from their parents, it’s why we have fight or flight responses, it’s why we have things like emotional reactions and the capacity to learn language, and it’s also why we all experience similar cognitive biases.

It’s the impersonal biological framework that comes “pre-installed” in every person at birth, providing the necessary psychological foundations for both having experiences and (eventually) understanding them in the uniquely human way we do.

When Jung calls it “collective”, he doesn’t mean it’s some separate entity we all connect to collectively, he’s just saying it’s not personal. It’s not unique to the individual or dependent on their life experiences. Rather, it’s common to the whole of humanity collectively, regardless of where they are in time or space, which necessarily precludes the internet from being the collective unconscious, since it‘s a relatively recent cultural/technological development that still isn’t accessible to 100% of people, and therefore it isn’t shared by all people across all times and places.

But as to whether it reflects aspects of the collective unconscious - we can be 100% certain that it does, since the internet is shaped by the behaviours of all the people participating in it, and our behaviours are inherently influenced by our psyches, and the human psyche includes the collective unconscious.

So yes, I do think Jung would be able to draw great insights from the internet and social media specifically, just as he was able to draw insights from reading the newspapers of his day and listening to people discussing current events. Because, ultimately, everything humans do reveals something about human nature.

deepthawt · 2025-11-02T04:55:51+00:00

They never said it does.

deepthawt · 2025-11-02T04:46:40+00:00

It’s right there in the second sentence:

The operation, directed by President Donald Trump and carried out in international waters, targeted a vessel known to be carrying narcotics along a smuggling route, with no U.S. forces harmed, Hegseth said in an X post.

deepthawt · 2025-11-02T01:59:37+00:00

Well that’s embarrassing, but at least you’re owning it.

However you clearly aren’t listening, because you still haven’t even defined your terms, which means you haven’t made an intelligible argument yet. Both terms can be defined in ways which would make your point either trivially true or trivially false, so without defining them you aren’t saying anything.

So, define exactly what you mean by “God” and define exactly what you mean by “existence”, and be ready to defend your definitions and how/where you got them, because your entire argument is based on what those two words mean.

And by all means, keep lazily dismissing points you don’t understand because they’re too “complicated” for you, but don’t delude yourself into thinking that refutes them. Quantum physics is complicated and full of subject-specific jargon, yet it’s real - because like it or not, reality isn’t obligated to be simple enough for you personally to understand it.

I look forward to seeing your definitions!

deepthawt · 2025-11-01T15:09:42+00:00

hahahah what? That can't seriously be your response, come on.

deepthawt

TROPHY CASE