Can we think of consciousness as a force of nature?

Yes one might well. And unless one is capable of imagining "processes of information exchange without entities", it might be very hard to accept this notion.
You have talked about code, and how everything is code. Code is information. And quantum physicists tells us that on the smallest scales matter stops being solid. At the sub atomic levels there is no matter, only information.

So we know that matter is information.
Consciousness deals strictly with information.
Is it so incredible and fantastic that something that is surrounded by information, and deals strictly with information, might also be information?

I am not really saying consciousness preceded matter. I am saying that the two seem mutually implicit. You can't have one without the other.

'Observe' in physics is just a poetic usage of the term 'measurement'. It has absolutely nothing to do with consciousness. Subatomic particles are measured by bombarding them with other particles in order to 'see' them, which in turn disrupts superposition. Similarly we could never 'observe' absolute zero because any attempt to measure it would be injecting the system with particles and therefore heat.

And you think this speaks against the idea of this thread?
You could argue that "measurement" is merely a specification of "observation", and in the end, what we have to do to get a response, wether it is simply turning the eyeball or rigging up some machine to measure and translate the information to something I can relate to, it is all just an extension of that single motive, to observe.

But you agree that superposition is not matter?
Information or potential are the words particle physicists seem to prefer.
So you bombard that with more information and you get information, which then can be processed in the physical brain, which is also information.
Sounds reasonable to assume that this process of information interacting with information is fundamentally a process more akin to consciousness than "dead matter".

What are you suggesting in your reference to Decartes' dualism, that within the head is supernaturalism and outside of the hear naturalism? LOL

I am not entirely sure to be honest.
It seems to me that when Descartes arrived at his cogito ergo sum, he created a base assumption of consciousness.
To him, the proof of his existence was not the substance of his body, but the thoughts in his head.
But if Descartes had believed in a reality where matter and consciousness are mutualy implicit, or where consciousness was thought of as a natural phenomenon rather than as a strictly human skill, he may have thought quite differently. His thoughts would then be a part of what he was required to explain, and the incredible intuition and intellect this man must have possessed could have taken him, and us, in a totally different direction.

Yes but that picture is one in which the world could be - actually at a time in the future - devoid of conscious entities and if it were then those "physical objects" would still be there in the material sense of the word. The "picture" contains the possibility of non-being of conscious entities with the continued being of non-conscious entities.

That does not mean that the picturing itself does not require consciousness. But my point is that these ideas are not really contradictory. We can have consciousness as an inherent aspect of existence but once existence exists then that which does exist could be a world consisting of physical objects which are objective including some from which we see. Further there is material causality in the picture. Further that causality can affect consciousness as it does in birth, death, when you get drunk etc. So you end up with both being true.

Do you not believe that there was a time before there were conscious entities and that at that time there were physical objects and that in the future there could be a time when there are not conscious entities and yet their still would be physical objects?

It is not just the reality of picturing the constitutes what is real. It is the content of the picture. The picture we are seeing is one of physical entities which do not require us seeing them to exist. Any other view, while consistent with observation, falls to a principle akin to Ocham's razor. It is just simpler to assume that my car is in the garage when I am not there.

That does not mean that there is no creation ex nihilo. Material causality is based on a world being in the first place and continuing to be according to certain rules. But it does seem that it is that way.

"....if we divide reality into physical and conscious phenomenon, how can we know that one phenomenon is more fundamental than the other?"

The answer to me is that what you are calling conscious phenomenon if I take it to mean "experiencing" is more fundamental. The objective physical world is an aspect of what we are experiencing. It is a fact of experience. A fact that is actually subject to change but which given the long record of observation is unlikely to change. According to physical law it will not change. But that physical law is subject to experiment. And therein lies the key to the whole answer. That phrase "subject to experiment" is already the determination that experience is more fundamental than physical law.

But where you have to be careful is your phrase "conscious phenomenon". Technically that is a can of worms. Consciousness is not a phenomenon. It is an aspect of experience that is phenomenom-ing to put it in shorthand. There is no conscious substance.

The materialistic interpretation of the world is to a large extent true (given the obvious caveats of the relativity of time and the wave particle duality) and that means that it is really physical - at least right now and over the history of science. The facts of neurobiology show that there is a relationship of material causation to consciousness.

The problem occurs when the interpretation of experience as experiencing is seen as being in conflict with an understanding of what is experienced. Material causality is equivocated with causality ex nihlo and the notion of time in physics is equivocated with temporality as a structure of being. It is those equivocations that are the problem. Experiencing is fundamental. What we experience has real properties that can be described by physics. The consciousness of them occurs from the point of view of a physical object. There are other physical objects from which I am told there is also experience. These are all real facts of my experience.

In a sense these interpretations are in conflict in the way one can change the interpretation of a line drawing of a cube. You can decide which side to see in front but cannot see both at once. It is however not totally subject to will. Most people have never experienced experience as experiencing. Still they have some of it. Look at the crowds at Yosemite park all staring up at the rocks. Are they all mystics? In one sense no. But still we will someday find out in neurobiology that they in fact are to some extent. That is why they are there.

In the same sense that an interpretation of a line drawing as having one face forward is in conflict with an interpretation of a line drawing with the other face forward just so is an interpretation of experiencing as experiencing in conflict with an interpretation of experiencing as being of a space with things in it one of which is me and in which I am separated from what I see. That is to say one can know both and understand them as true but one cannot achieve both at the same time. Experiencing experiencing experiencing is more fundamental because the experienced objects are subject to future disintegration. Of all possible experiencing only some of it is possibly interpretable as being objective. We are in one now. That is a real fact. But it is only a fact and all facts are subject to experience.

Therefore, in that sense, experiencing is more fundamental.

I do not entirely understand all of your explanations. Sentences like "Experiencing experiencing experiencing is more fundamental...." are hard to get the meaning of. Perhaps there is a clearer way to express what you mean?

If we think of reality as an internal state of relationship, we get the impression that all "substance" of this phenomenon interact, and it is this interaction we call reality.
Our vantage point within this is such that we identify with some of the substance, while relating to other substance.
There are both physical and conscious attributes to the substance we identify with. On a universal scale the two may be indistiguishable, but within the phenomenon there arises distinct variations of attributes of things, according to our perception, some things appear physical while others do not, even though they are still experienced.
So perhaps consciousness, or experience as you put it, is indeed more fundamental, but it seems to me that to a consciousness, solid objects are inevitable, since that which is perceived to not change or reacts very little to observation will neccesarily be percieved as something constant and unchanging.
But when we percieve matter, we are really percieving information which we then categorize according to the nature of that information into solid, liquid or gas.

I am not sure I disagree with your reasoning. Maybe it's just a matter of understanding your approach a little better.

No. All "pictures" are a function of what we call "us" interacting with what we call "not us". Existence is like a river which needs BOTH "banks" (us) and "current" (not us). There is no river without both components. Change the structure of the banks (to a non-human species say) and you change the river (existence). No banks=no observers=no interaction=no river=no existence).
There are no "objects" without "objectifiers". A frog will starve to death surrounded by "dead flies" because it can only perceive (interact with) "moving flies. In the frog's world "dead flies as food" don't exist. And we are merely more complex frogs.

Excellent presentation.

I think you should know that I can see cut clear to what actually you just admitted with that "not us" even if pointing to the transcendental...

...Suffices to say that all things are capable of interaction and through it of measurement..."conscience" is old and odd for a term, fits Literature far better than Philosophy...
(...I am sure I should n ´t shout out loud such blasphemous words...)

The frog's moving flies are what I mean by meaningful reality. Immobile flies have no meaning/existence for him, but they are, nevertheless, potential realities for someone or something.

Note that I said "what we call us/not-us". I made no claim for the independent existence of either, since each is predicated on the other. Your "things" interacting with "things" begs the question of a conscious observer doing the "thinging". The interplay between "thinking" and "thinging" , is encapsulated in the single word "calling". It is an aspect of "the observer realm" (Maturana), in which attempts at prediction and control operate. Our problem in these discussions (aka "languaging") is that "prediction and control" are usually deemed to be essential elements of a "satisfactory explanation". We are trying to cut cheese with cheese !

Yes but we are not only talking about what "pictures" are. We are talking about what is "in" the pictures. And we are not just talking about Being but we are talking about the fact that things are. Look around you. Don't you see the objects around you? They are a fact. They are the content of the picture. The statement "We live in an objective world" has meaning and is valid as long as it is understood as a statement about the content of the picture. It is not a statement about experiencing experiencing experiencing. It is a statement about me being in a room looking at things where I am my body and it is looking at something that is not dependent on my looking at it. It is a theoretical construct validated by experience that affects perception. That interpretation expresses the nature of the world through the positing of objective entities the assumption of whose existence is used to provide explanation and prediction of experience and also which can and usually does condition our perception of experience just as the statement about experiencing experiencing experiencing can express the nature of existing and condition our experience of experiencing.

Further when you say "what we call 'us' interacting with what we call 'not us' I think you are also wrong there. That distinction between what we call "us" and what we call "not us" occurs also only "in the picture". There are not two banks. Only one occurring. The "picturing" itself does not have that distinction. There is no "picture" that "we" are "looking at". Its all experiencing.

But when we objectify its contents then there is the moon and me looking at the moon and there is the looking. And the moon is not just a picture - it is a thing. And that is something that needn't be but in fact is. You can not look at a desk and see a moon. It is a property of the natural world and our experience of experiencing from the point of view of an object (our brains) which cause in a material sense our consciousness. This is rightfully described by natural science objectively (again "objective" within the limits of the wave particle duality and the relativity of time ).

If not so why do we wear motorcycle helmets? Why protect our heads? And how would you know which head was yours?

I think you are expressing the meaning of existence well but are missing the contingent objective facts of the content of what we are experiencing. The world really is objective.

The frog may not perceive the still fly. But the still fly still is.

I am well aware of the difficulty´s Fresco...nevertheless it does n´t beg the question any more then the observer which does n´t know what he is observing...
..."observing" is bound to have a human description is quite true...
...what remains to be explained is if we do have any good reason to differentiate human observation from any other kind of observation aside the level of complexity involved...Occam´s Razor demands for one integrate explanation instead of multiplying the operative nature of the agents...

To my view observation is measurement...which is relation...a relation between two or more parts, where both/all together construct the function of that relation depending on the local conditions that constrain the mechanical processes by which (from their perspective) they observe each other...the 4 natural forces in nature establish the set of rules by which such process happens...that relation is nothing but transmutation of coding patterns in several forms or languages regarding the necessary "translation" that certain macro functions or "prime functions sets" introduce to the means and conditions by which a given perspective is build to a given "observer" and its intrinsic "computing" capability...

...an atom has far less computing capability then "you" a complex meta-phenomena of multi functional integrated systems...nevertheless as it affects the galaxy and the galaxy affect it, the "observation", or "code translation" becomes in place...

Best regards>FILIPE DE ALBUQUERQUE

...oh...you don´t have a clue...they are no more true (those "real things" that you spoke of) then the fact they do manifest themselves in "you"...whatever "you" means in extension...in fact that´s the issue...they believe in "minds" and minds is nothing other then a beautiful metaphor...a phenomena composed of several things and not a thing for itself in its own right..."Conscience" is another dangerous word that comes in a million degree variation for measurement...

...just think of virtual worlds that would be connected with your five senses input receptors and you will start to get it..."Physical" is about the rules and the "programming" in the relation of "things" with each other, nothing else..."things" themselves, from a smaller to a bigger scale, arise from such relations as organized sets (systems) of multiple variable interactions...they become macro functions relaying and computing the patterns in ever more complex languages...
"Forces" are rules or methods of conditioning such relations in such virtual worlds...as I have said in the past there´s no difference between "virtual" and "real", aside complexity from our standing point perspective...

First: "Experiencing experiencing experiencing" (This is not my idea. Wish I could remember the source in which I originally read the phrase.) So what does it mean?

On one level imagine a sentence that has a subject an active verb and an object. Like John sees a tree. Now this sentence can be interpreted the same way. Who or what subject is experiencing? Answer: Experiencing is experiencing. What is experiencing doing? Experiencing is experiencing. What is experiencing experiencing? Answer: Experiencing. Now you can see the meaning of the sentence by uttering it that way. I mean "Experiencing experiencing experiencing." Subject verb object.

Now here is the real problem. Understanding that sentence is not possible without being the experiencing experiencing experiencing. The only way I can explain it (I know I am being repetitive - excuse me) is to imagine the line drawing of a curve. You can look at one of the squares as being forward in the figure. Then you can, through an act of will, try to see the other square as forward and the one that was forward now in the rear. Then after you try for a few seconds - suddenly - it changes. So it is with experiencing experiencing experiencing. First you must look out of your eyes and try to "see" experience that way. Then after a time, perhaps, just as suddenly as a cube changes sides, it happens. And you must see then that that is what "Being" is. Being is being. It is a kind of verb. Time... or better "time-ing" is fundamental to it. And you will wonder how you could ever have not seen it. But in a while you will no longer be able to see it that way except you will remember it and know its meaning.

It is not enough to understand what I am saying you have to see it. You have to look up from the words at the room around you and try to see what I mean. If you do it will unlock philosophy.

The idea of "substance interacting" is not correct. There is no interaction at the foundation of reality. It is a monism and the nominal case which is the essence of what substance refers to merges with the verb. There are not two substances "consciousness" and "reality" - in fact there is no substance only experiencing. And in fact it turns out that even in the objective interpretation there is only one substance. It is achieved by nihilating or removing the notion of perceptions from the interpretation of the thing. It is not my seeing a rock. It is the rock. And the rock is over there not where the seeing is. The seeing is over here in my head separated by the distance between me and it. And that seeing is not substantive. That is why people identify consciousness with the brain and why they say rocks are independent of consciousness. Because there is no other substance there! And if "to be" is only "to be something" to "be substantial" to "be concrete" rather that to be a "mere abstraction" then consciousness is really nothing. That is the objective interpretation.

The notion of substance is a valid interpretation of the nature of reality and within that interpretation there is a notion of the being of substance. But this only a natural entity posited. A kind of constancy is required for its validity. Above all it is an interpretation of the natural world. It is not an interpretation of existing itself. The fact that the natural world is objective is an accidental property of existing itself.

We do identify with our brains in the objective interpretation, but our brains are, like all other objects, merely a fact. They are not essential to existing. You can see this by imagining that the world kind of melts in front of you. Colors kind of swirl and you try to look down at your body but there is no possibility as there is only swirling color then the color goes monochromatic.

That is a logical possibility. But saying it "could happen" ignores the result of natural science which says we are our brains and there are these things which are interacting in space etc. and were your brain to melt you would cease to experience. Natural science excludes the logical possibility that I just described. Says it won't happen. And it doesn't. At least it hasn't in recorded history or in my experience.

That natural science however is true only based on existence - that is based on experiment which is incapable of completely removing the possibility. But it is true in that sense - within that limit. It is undeniable. Look around you. Even within relativity and quantum mechanics it is to a large extent true. This is the source of a lot of the frustration that materialists feel when they confront descriptions of existence. The objective world is right there. You are looking at a computer. Do you know see that? Materialism expresses a lot of the nature of our experience and even, to the extent that an assembly of of molecules into a brain causes experience in the material sense of causality it describes the *fact* of our existence. For example I was born on a certain day at a certain place. This is a very valid assertion.

Of course I am saying that this is merely a "fact" and so is subject to observation and in fact the normal materialist view of naive realism is compromised by quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. Technically the naive form is unscientific. But that does not mean that a large part of objectivity doesn't survive in these theories. Sorry for the long post.

Instead of tying a knot into your head for the actual meaning of"experiencing" just read above and stop babbling nonsense...

..And I suggest that you contemplate the reason why there are two different verbs in Spanish for different aspects of "to be". Your use of "is" is both linguistically and philosophically simplistic (e.g Try looking up the philosophical debate between endurance and perdurance theories to account for "persistence"). Most of your prose above merely re-iterates my point that "explanation" usually kowtows to our disposition to "predict and control". But as Fritjof Capra points out, such a human disposition is both parochial and chauvinistic when it comes to thinking about "the bigger picture".