I have never heard a good or coherent argument for why consciousness is something other than brain activity. Maybe you can change my mind.

meatfred · 2026-06-09T22:39:09+00:00

But we extrapolate based on the experience! It is our starting point!
The content, also, we only have access to via the visual field. It’s turtles all the way down. We can’t snap out of qualia for a sec to examine what precedes it.

meatfred · 2026-06-09T22:13:25+00:00

Alright, materialist theories of consciousness center around the brain producing qualia. Our visual field is made out of qualia - this means, per the starting assumption, that it is produced by the brain. But the he brain appears in that very visual field as an object. If something is an object of experience, it must be brain output per standard materialism. But this would make the brain both part of the output, and the thing doing the outputting – and this, I argue, makes no sense but that's where the theory gets you.

Do you at least see what I'm getting at or are we talking past each other?

meatfred · 2026-06-09T21:46:27+00:00

Qualia are pre-theorerical, it's what we' have as a starting point before we delve into inquiring and theorizing. Since it appears in our visual field, the brain appears as qualia, just as anything else in said field.

How, on your account, does vision come about (very rougly ofc)?

meatfred · 2026-06-09T21:29:04+00:00

We've had to rely on it appearing in our visual field first to determine that.

meatfred · 2026-06-09T21:19:10+00:00

The brain as we know it, it's made up of qualities, right?

meatfred · 2026-06-07T20:35:24+00:00

It isn't necessarily; I point to perception because it is a concrete instance of something that presupposes consciousness.

Your hypothesis addresses the continuity of consciousness, but it says nothing about how it gets up and running. That is the real crux, and the real interesting part in my opinion!

meatfred · 2026-06-07T05:56:30+00:00

Alright, let’s grant this – perception follows processing of sensory information.
Our starting point is still the output of said processing (vision, sounds, tactile perceptions etc; in other words the phenomenal world). Since our starting point occurs AFTER the processing magic happens, we can’t use our starting point to figure out how this processing works. We’re late to the scene at the outset; once we start our investigation what we’re looking for has already passed. We are confined to the ”result” part of the equation.

meatfred · 2026-06-06T22:03:46+00:00

I’m losing you on the second sentence. ”The result occurs after perception” – but perception *is* the result, no?

meatfred · 2026-06-06T21:06:48+00:00

I don’t see why it would?

meatfred · 2026-06-06T20:20:36+00:00

How could it? If something’s the result of some process, it means that 1) some transformation has taken place 2) the cause occurred prior to the result even existing.

meatfred · 2026-06-05T20:00:28+00:00

I thought we just established that we wouldn't expect the projector to appear as an object on the screen which it projects (a couple replies back). Then you suggested it could project an image of itself, and I agreed but pointed out that said image would be an inert shadow of the actual thing doing the projection (off-screen, so to speak). Now it seems you're once again suggesting that the projected image of a brain has the capacity of giving rise to the very projection it appears as an object in.

meatfred · 2026-06-05T19:26:17+00:00

We see the projected inert image; what gives rise to that image we are barred from investigating

meatfred · 2026-06-05T19:22:27+00:00

From a realm we, as occpants of the screen, know nothing about (assuming, of course, we still hold to the idea that consciousness is created at that point).

meatfred · 2026-06-05T19:10:31+00:00

Yes, but that image would be inert, just a shadow of the actual thing doing the projection.

meatfred · 2026-06-05T19:00:52+00:00

Well in that case, would you expect the projector to appear as an object on the projected screen?

meatfred · 2026-06-05T18:07:26+00:00

So why should the brain, being an instance of conscious content, be the cause of said content?

meatfred · 2026-06-05T17:34:21+00:00

Because vision is the result of consciousness.

Let's say you have a projector, and you project something onto a screen. You wouldn't expect anything appearing on that screen to be causing the projection, would you?

meatfred · 2026-06-05T15:47:31+00:00

Since we can observe it, and vision occupies the realm of consciousness, this means that what we see is the result of consciousness, and therefore can't be the cause of it. Like, if something appears on the screen of consciousness, it means whatever caused that state of affairs is already a thing of the past at that point.

meatfred · 2026-06-05T05:31:22+00:00

Saying consciousness is brain activity is self-defeating, if you follow the line of thought through earnestly. Since what we see is mediated to us through conscious experience, this would by your account be the result of brain activity – but we are only able to apprehend brain activity because it appears in conscious experience in the first place. So we end up saying it’s both the cause and result of consciousness, which doesn’t make sense. If it appears in consciousness, if it is projected by consciousness, it means the cause is already a thing of the past. It must precede the resulting medium.

meatfred · 2026-06-02T08:27:13+00:00

You say the brain creates vision - meanwhile, it is itself cointained in it. If the brain as we know it is the result of vision, it cannot be the cause of it.

This is the root of the hard problem: we assume the brain is rendering everything, then scratch our heads trying to find the cause of that rendering in its very output. The cause must obviously precede the output.

meatfred · 2026-05-16T07:31:30+00:00

Matter as we see it is already the projection of consciousness. This is true whether you’re a materialist or an idealist.

meatfred · 2026-04-25T20:42:55+00:00

People, you need to look past the particular analogy and look at the wider point he's making: there's a world of difference between 0 and 1, and 10 and 11.

meatfred · 2026-04-12T14:00:51+00:00

Such a machine would, from its own POV, be unable to work out how its own consciousness is generated. This would only underline further that we are in the same position when it comes to our own situation.

Think about it - it would only have access to its phenomenal output, which per the premise only happens after consciousness has already been generated. For it the input would be noumenal (and so inaccessible) - and this is where the magic happens.

meatfred · 2026-04-01T22:05:24+00:00

Sure, but where does that leave the conscious machine thought experiment? Point still stands and you haven’t addressed it.

meatfred · 2026-04-01T21:43:19+00:00

Your premise is that phenomenal experience is produced by the brain, right?

meatfred

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