>Materialism is incoherent and leads to absurdities and it's gonna remain that way until you find a coherent mathematical model of consciousness.

Sorry when I said incoherent I mean inconsistent.

If it's possible to provide a coherent mathematical model of consciousness, then that model isn't incoherent/inconsistent.

I'm saying non-materialist models are normally inconsistent hence impossible.

>Even if it is all an illusion you have to show exactly how the illusion is constructed.

I'm saying that materialism is the only possible option since you can rule out all alternatives though reductio ad absurdum.

>You're just begging the question though. You're assuming materialism is correct even though that's exactly what's being contested.

Yes, I'm assuming materialism is correct. It's an educated guess.

But what I do know is that all the alternatives I've looked into lead to are incoherent and lead to absurdities. They all seem to lead to consciousness being an epiphenomena or that the brain is different and doesn't obey the laws of physics.

>Ok cool. Notice how you can't really claim "the sun does not exist trust me bro" and have people take your seriously, but somehow it's ok to say that about consciousness the way we experience it?
>
>If we are all mistaken about our own consciousness existing or mistaken about what it really is then it's on you to show us the truth, otherwise you're just posturing.

Consciousness is completely real in a materialist sense. What we experience is real and will be fully explained by biology and the like.

But this hard problem or whatever you are talking about is just an illusion which is logically incoherent and is impossible. The reason you struggle to understand how how it fits in with materialism is that you are talking about something inherently impossible under all real systems and models.

>They literally haven't though. What are you talking about exactly?

They have, let me reiterate. The explanation is simply "Qualia don't exist"

>It explains everything other than the "we" you mention. There is no mention of conscious experience in any of our physical models. The onus is on you to show how you get from those barren physical models to our rich experiences.

Depends on what the claim is. We would use occam's razor. On one had you have the most successful and predictive model/framework in human history.

If you want to claim some other model or idea that has never made a useful prediction ever, then the onus is on you.

Currently materialism hasn't explained the full details of how a thundercloud works, but no-one really thinks or expects there to be some non-materialist explanation.

So the default is materialism since it's been pretty successful for pretty much everything ever investigated. There is zero reason to think it can't explain conscious experience.

If you think there is some other model or theory which can explain it better then the "onus is on you to show how", or even make a single useful prediction.

>That's just plain not true. Nobody, materialists or otherwise, has a coherent model to explain even a single quale. IIT is the most coherent proposal so far but even that fails to explain even the most rudimentary quale.

Yep they have. The problem is "quale" as you define it doesn't exist, hence can't be explain by materialists.

I think the illusionist's might have put it better than me.

​

>What's backwards to me is ignoring the significance of your own conscious experience existing in favor of a model of the physical world that we know for certain is incomplete.

Well on one hand you have a model which explains everything we have ever studied, on the other hand you have a model which hasn't made a single useful prediction or insight ever.

Kind of makes sense to go for the model which hasn't explained everything than the model which has never made a single useful prediction.

>Westerhoff argues that rather than holding that mind comes before matter in a foundational account of epistemology

This just seems weird and backwards. So what if if our conscious experience of the world is the first thing that we experience or know? That doesn't make it fundamental. It seems quite clear to me that the materialist understanding of the world has a much better model. The brain(physical) gives rise to conscious thought.

Please can someone do a TLDR in plain english. It's like I become dyslexic when I try and read these kinds of articles.

There is just the easy problem to solve. Now the easy problem is going to be really hard to solve, but is solvable.

You are the one making the claims. You can’t lay the foundation of your argument on this point and then turn around asking me to be rove it wrong.

Anyway if I were, then I’d use a reductio ad absurdum style argument. If you do assume what is true then it leads you to the absurdities of the hard problem. You’ll end up with phenomenal experience being an epiphenomena, which is impossible. Or you end up claiming the brain doesn’t obey the laws of physics.

I guess soo, in respect to how Chalmers defines the hard problem I’m an illusionist.

I think it would.

>This argument rests on consciousness as a phenomenon only being knowable through being itself – that it cannot be inferred through other means. That if a non-sentient robot, would observe and communicate with us, be able to hold all key facts about us and our behavior in its cognitive system, it would never in principle be able to guess the existence of consciousness.

I disagree with this premise.

>That when we scream in pain there are not just observable signals that travel from A to B in our body triggering behaviors, but that we feel something when this happens

These aren't separate things. They are just different ways to describe the same thing. Pain is neural activity.

Exercise is good for you. They were comparing twins so it's controlling for genetics.

Just another study adding the mountain of evidence that leisure‐time physical activity(LTPA) is good for you.

>the twins with higher long‐term LTPA have higher physical fitness, reduced body fat, reduced visceral fat, reduced liver fat, increased lumen diameters of conduit arteries to the lower limbs, increased bone mineral density in loaded bone areas, and an increased number of large high‐density lipoprotein particles.
>
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9378553/

Stimulants are supposed to help you focus and concentrate. They have the same effects on normal people as those with adhd.

Soo those drugs are probably perfect for meditation.

There are probably all sorts of feedback loops between sleep, diet, exercise.

Depression is likely to cause poor sleep, which can then cause poor diet and people not feeling like exercising, etc.

It's important to try and concentrate on breaking some of these loops. The vast majority of people do almost everything wrong when it comes to their circadian rhythm, so by fixing all that can help improve things.

Interesting but isn't this related mainly to people not getting enough exercise rather than it being just related to sugar?

Or if it is diet then it's just processed foods that have high carb/fats.

>This is highlighted by the fact that 40% of the U.S population that isn’t obese or overweight, has metabolic dysfunction

That's interesting, do you have a link to a study about this?

Some useful info here, but the science isn't that clear on Metformin. The latest studies don't show that longevity increase in normal people. Also metformin negatively interferes with the benefits of exercise. So most people in the longevity field have stopped taking metformin. Exercise is just much better for health, dementia and longevity.

Good diet, exercise and sleep have as much if not more impact on depression than medication. Your brain needs good diet, exercise and sleep to function properly, it's no surprise that you will have brain disfunction like depression or dementia if you aren't doing all three.

>The diet may have a significant effect on preventing and treating depression for the individual. A diet that protects and promotes depression should consist of vegetables, fruits, fibre, fish, whole grains, legumes and less added sugar, and processed foods. In the public health nurse’s preventative and health-promoting work, support and assistance with changing people’s dietary habits may be effective in promoting depression. From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7084175/
>
>Current evidence supports the finding that omega-3 PUFAs with EPA ≥ 60% at a dosage of ≤1 g/d would have beneficial effects on depression Https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0515-5

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>People with insomnia , for example, may have a tenfold higher risk of developing depression From https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/depression-and-sleep-understanding-the-connection

Studies show that exercise is just as effective as medicine.

>Four trials (n = 300) compared exercise with pharmacological treatment and found no significant difference (SMD -0.11, -0.34, 0.12). From https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24026850/

Yeh, those quotes seem a bit suspect. Also all modern MOND theories still need dark matter to explain what we see.

It's going to be linked to someone's weight and how much they exercise.

>well for example, a person could eat well, exercise daily, and go to bed with time for 8hrs of sleep but if they have sleep apnea or insomnia (genetic conditions) theyre still not going to wakeup feeling rested.

OK I agree there may be some people with genetic diseases, but I think they would be in the minority. I would also class type 2 diabetes and apnoea as primarily environmental issues, due to them being overweight/obese rather than purely being a genetics issue.

I think for most people the above is impossible. In that for the vast majority of people if they have a regular routine, exercise, get the right amount of light at the right time, etc. then they won't have insomnia.

> we know that sleep is strongly influenced by genetics

I'd argue that very little is genetic compared to environmental factors.

This study used identical twins, so they were able to control for the genetic factor and measure the impact of environment.

So, while they say there was no genetic component, I think was it means is the genetic component has no material impact compared to environment.

While you think you are bad, I suspect that many people are way worse when it comes to messing up their circadian rhythm.