[AndrewKemendo]

You nailed it which is that almost everyone I’ve met seems to believe in some version of dualism

If that’s even subtly your position then there’s no way to have a productive conversation about perception, reality/truth, epistemology and especially consciousness

It’s honestly maddening cause I’ve had great conversations about this with educated people, and all but only a handful, collapse into the other person relying on some nonfalsifiable dualist argument

[indoordin0saur]

> collapse into the other person relying on some non-falsifiable dualist argument

Are there any non-duelist, scientific theories out there that could plausibly be tested? I can't say I've seen any but if you know of any then I'm curious to hear about them. From what I've seen, anyone trying to explain phenomenal consciousness in scientific objective terms falls into at least one of these three strategies:

1.) Saying that consciousness "arises" inevitably or is an emergent phenomenon of a complex information processing system. There are a number of theories along these lines but they aren't falsifiable from what I've seen and usually at some point rely on some magic unexplainable step or are actually dualist.

2.) Defining consciousness just as the easily explainable stuff via biology, such as being awake vs. asleep.

3.) Dismissing the idea that subjective experience exists at all. I sometimes wonder if people arguing strongly for this are something like a philosophical zombie and there's nothing inside them experiencing.

[FloorEgg]

My intuition is that a single unit of consciousness is a wave/particle interaction, and that the kind of consciousness we experience has a particular volume and shape, some parts of which are fairly consistent between people and some parts which vary considerably. The more volume of consciousness the more diversity can fit into it.

My mental model includes integrated information theory and Karl friston free energy principle, and something about temporal computation on a physical graph structure.

Which camp would this fall into? 2 seems closest but kind of undersells it...

[indoordin0saur]

Even with information integration theory it doesn't explain any of the why or what is happening of subjective experience and there still seems to be a leap in there that has a mystical or mysterious aspect to it. Basically [specific mechanistic process explainable with physics] -> [mysterious missing step] -> [consciousness]

[AndrewKemendo]

I’m both confused and intrigued at this question

Every scientific theory that is predictably/measurably correct is not dualist by nature.

Dualism assumes that there’s a non-measurable variable (usually undefined) but nevertheless has a causal input in action determination

Dualism is precisely non-scientific if you are using the classic Baconian-Khaneman you epistemological process because it introduces variables that cannot be measured

[indoordin0saur]

Well do you know of any non-duelist and theoretically testable theories on consciousness? I'm just pointing out when the non-duelists are completely stumped no one should be surprised if alternative ways of thinking get thrown out there.

[AndrewKemendo]

There’s not consensus on what consciousness is defined as.

There are a lot of people out there who have their own versions of definitions but again there’s no consensus, I personally do not throw my hat in with any written definition other than my own and I’m hesitant to share that.

Saying that “dualists have an answer” doesn’t actually solve it if there’s no shared definition

Much like the term “intelligence” has no consensus, so being able to determine what is “artificial” versus “not artificial” intelligence continues to be this philosophical or almost religious position.

Creating a consensus on what the term “consciousness” means mechanically, would effectively destabilize the entirety of society. Imagine if the consensus definition of consciousness is applicable to all mammals. That means that there would be valid justification then to make it illegal to harm any mammal. You can see why this would incentivize people to not come to consensus on these things.

So in my perspective it is not socially feasible to find consensus and therefore a way to test it because religious leader might have incompatible definitions of consciousness than let’s say an epilepsy doctor.

As much as a scientists want to actually make progress in the world ultimately what holds us back are somewhat arbitrary social conventions because reasons.

[FloorEgg]

I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for, but Karl friston free energy principle seems to me the most scientific theory of consciousness. (At least that I've come across)

[km144]

I'm basically restating what you said, but it's amazing to me that the vast majority of people you will meet, even educated people, are casual dualists and free-will libertarians. If they happen to acknowledge materialism in some way (i.e. the acceptance of the idea that the brain's processes are just the interaction of physical matter), there is still zero chance they draw determinist conclusions from that acknowledgement. But I guess that tracks, given that most professional philosophers are apparently compatibilists for some reason I have never understood (the arguments get really confusing).

[AndrewKemendo]

I’ve studied this in extreme depth and my conclusion is that at a certain point most people just give up and take a position that gives them some kind of mental relief

For people who can’t self-delude, like Godel and Schopenhauer and Tesla, they kind of just go “mad” because it’s a giant epistemological hole they can’t solve.

Even the smartest the scientist are always going to choose self preservation in their cognitive capacity so they don’t feel bad over feeling bad and living in the contradiction

This is why it’s important for scientists to study Camus IMO