A. Okay. I also meant the entire mental dimension.
B. You presented emergence as a strange phenomenon in which mental phenomena suddenly burst out of matter, unrelated to the fundamental particles of matter. But if we look at the structure itself as an existing entity, ontological and not epistemological, then it makes perfect sense that such a structure would indeed create phenomena that do not exist in the building blocks. After all, the structure cannot be reduced to the fundamental particles.
Moreover, according to every theory we are forced to assume a structure that creates a conscious entity (or a mental one). What advantage is there in assuming that this structure is spiritual rather than physical?
Hope I was a bit clearer. And thank you very much for the reply.

You were not clearer. I see here a standard picture of emergence.

Do we agree that the problem with emergence is the ability to reduce the structure to the fundamental particles?
If so, that itself needs explanation or proof, otherwise it is simply begging the question.

Chinese. We apparently are not speaking the same language.

Too bad. I’ll try one last time.
What do you think is the problem with the emergent explanation?

See column 593.

It sounds like he means panpsychism and is saying:
Consciousness cannot emerge from particles that lack consciousness, but there is no need to assume that therefore consciousness is something spiritual; one can assume that consciousness was always there, even in the building blocks.
If I’m not mistaken, the Rabbi also wrote a column about that, didn’t he?

That was exactly my claim. Consciousness does not emerge from the particles. It arises from the structure. The idea is that the structure itself is a real entity, just as a spiritual soul can create consciousness.

That does not sound like what you said before. Now you are describing a classic emergence theory, along the lines of John Searle’s idea, which compares the emergence of consciousness from non-conscious particles to the emergence of liquidity from non-liquid molecules. In your words: the structure is a real entity.
Maybe you tried somehow to combine panpsychism with classical emergence, even though they seemingly cancel out the need for one another, or maybe it is just confusion.
The structure is a mental entity, not an ontological one. A structure is still a collection of particles, and if it has a new property, that property must derive from the properties of the parts.

I was not talking about panpsychism. I am indeed talking about emergence, but in relation to the claim that emergence is implausible because there is no way to get from phenomena that exist in the particles to new phenomena.
The discussion is exactly about this: is the structure an ontological entity or an epistemological one? I said that just as the spiritual soul is an entity that can create mental reality, there is no reason a material entity could not do the same. What advantage does a spiritual entity have over a physical entity? In both cases you are talking about a structure that generates consciousness.
You can describe it the other way around. Suppose you knew that there is a soul. What would your requirements be for its structure? It seems to me that we would expect it to be a unified entity, one that responds to changes, responds to its own changes, and so on. All these requirements are fulfilled by a material structure. At no point would I demand in advance that it be a spiritual entity.

And one more point. Even intuitively, it seems to me that the structure is a real entity. Think about complex structures like life—I’m not talking about mental reality but biological life. If there were no person perceiving that complexity, would there be nothing more here than a collection of molecules? I think that both intuitively and conceptually, the configuration itself is an objectively existing entity.
And that indeed means that we are not talking about some random arrangement that suddenly created mental reality, but rather that the structure itself exists no less than the fundamental particles do (perhaps a planned existence according to the principle of sufficient reason).

First, my view is that a structure is an epistemological entity, not an ontological one.
Second, even if we assume that a structure is an ontological entity, I still need to understand how consciousness could emerge from it.

My requirement of a structure is that it display the properties in it that explain consciousness. By contrast, I have no requirement at all of what I call a “soul,” because I did not create that concept in order to explain consciousness—as you seem to think.
I see consciousness as an entity that exists in its own right, just as matter exists. I simply choose to call it “soul” for convenience, but I am not claiming that there is some entity called soul that produces consciousness—consciousness is the soul.
I am dealing with an entity that cannot be explained through matter, and so I define it in a different category. Want to call that “spiritual”? Fine, works for me.

As for your second comment:

Okay… not critical for me.

In other words:
I am not arguing for a soul. I am only doing elimination.

I agree that the connection between some entity (physical or spiritual) and consciousness is indeed not self-evident. But in order to explain the correlation between mental reality and physical phenomena, it is not enough to identify consciousness with the soul. You need to posit an entity that can act on the body by means of thought, and vice versa.
If we do indeed posit such an entity, then surely you would agree with me that the way this entity produces consciousness is no clearer when it is spiritual.

And another thing. What you are arguing is of course not dualism. You are simply claiming that mental reality exists, period. No one disputes that. All the attempts to build a dualist or materialist theory are meant to describe the relation between mental reality and physical reality.

Agreed.
But that is a different question. I thought we were dealing with the question of essence and not the “psychophysical” question (which, by the way, is less interesting to me).

Are you trying to explain the very existence of consciousness, or its interaction with the physical?

And regarding your second comment:

What?
Who cares what I call consciousness?
If there is a non-material dimension to reality, then I am a dualist. If you want to say not necessarily an interactionist dualist, fine… as I said, that is another question.

Are you finally drifting in the direction of the interaction question?
I’ll look for a link on the site to a thread on the subject that I participated in.

I am not trying to explain the psychophysical phenomenon, but I am proving from the phenomenon itself that one cannot dispense with an entity that has consciousness. After we agree on the existence of that entity, I want to argue that it does not have to be a non-physical entity.

And regarding your second comment:
Regardless of the interaction question, nobody in the world explains mental reality using physical terms like mass, force, and the like. You are simply saying that besides physical reality (mass, force, charge…) there is also mental reality (emotion, thought, and so on…). That is a trivial statement.

I did not understand at all what you are saying.
Obviously we agree on a conscious entity; I also understood that you are trying to argue that it can be physical. I did not understand where there is any new argument here. Did you read the column on emergence that Rabbi Michi linked to?
What are you trying to say that you have not already said?

As for your second comment:
Then you are also a dualist. Redemption has come to Zion 😃.
Unfortunately you are mistaken when you write, “nobody in the world.”
That is precisely the materialist claim: that emotions and thoughts are an electric field in the brain and that there is nothing outside physical reality. If only my statement were trivial.

Now I am completely confused. You are saying that it is obvious to everyone that there is a “mental” reality outside the physical, while at the same time you argue that there is no extra-physical reality, because one can say that mental reality too is physical?

It seems I have exhausted my words for now. Thanks for the discussion!

I’ll sum up as well.
Precisely as someone who read the column, it is clear that anyone who claims there is nothing besides particles and the relations between them is simply denying reality. That is not who we are talking about.
We start from the assumption that there is both physical reality and mental reality, and we are trying to find an explanation or source for mental reality. You suggest that it simply exists, period. I think that also does not fit with the principle of sufficient reason and does not explain the interaction with the physical body.
The materialist explains mental reality as emergence from physical reality, and on that Michi argued that emergence from completely different categories is implausible.
I tried to address that question. My claim is:
If we define physical reality only as fundamental particles and the relations between them, then indeed it is implausible. But if we treat structure as an ontological entity, then not only is it plausible, it is no less plausible than a spiritual entity. I agree that this means it is not some random creation but something planned (because it is an entity that exists in its own right). The difference, in my opinion, between this and dualism is the question whether mental reality needs physical reality in order to exist.
Thanks to you too, and Sabbath peace.

I’ll just note that I do not find a significant difference between your theory and John Searle’s example.
It explains nothing; it simply ties the mental phenomenon to a physical entity—without being physical itself (in order to answer the interaction problem?!). Emergence is not solved, but it does not sound from your words like you are trying to solve it at all. You are only pointing out that we also do not find where it emerges from.
The theory gets a low score on speculative excess and complexity; I am also doubtful about some of its basic assumptions, and so I prefer to remain without a positive claim about the essence of consciousness.

As for the motivations in general for finding a theory:
The interaction question does not need a solution in my view (you can see questions on the site about the psychophysical problem). And the essence question is similar to the question “why is there matter” — either God will answer that, or you answer “that’s just how it is.”

Honestly, it’s a shame I responded, because once again I see all the problems and contradictions in your theory, and I no longer agree with my previous comment, and I have no interest in repeating the claims that already came up in the discussion. The theory basically says nothing. Either you are trying to argue that the mental phenomenon is not only parallel to the entity you call structure, but actually derives from it—and then maybe you are explaining the source of consciousness through strange speculation, but you are still left with problems about the nature of the derivation, the nature of the entity, and in general you are not saying very much. (It also does not explain the interaction, but that truly does not interest me.) Or you are saying that the mental phenomenon is parallel to this entity, and then you really have added nothing. It is obvious to all of us that mental phenomena run parallel to physical ones.

By the way, this entity that you call structure is also metaphysical.
So let’s just start calling “structure” spiritual from now on, and peace in the land.

I addressed that explicitly. I have no problem calling it “spiritual.” The essential difference is whether mental reality depends for its existence on physical reality or not.