Thank you for your comment. I am not an AI or cognitive scientist. I try to grapple with these complex issues through the lens of my background in medicine and pathology, as well as through reading popular science books and listening to podcasts. In my field of pathology, we assign names to entities based primarily on morphology at the microscopic level, supplemented by clinical, proteomic and genomic data. In clinical practice, when we assign a name-a diagnosis-we often forget why we are doing this in the first place. Ultimately, it is all about prediction. We want to know how a tumor, for example, is going to behave, regardless of our classification. At this point in my career, while I recognize the power of this approach to offer reasonable predictions in the majority of cases, there remains a significant proportion of cases where we simply do not know, given the complexity of the human body in both health and disease. This is a long-winded way of saying that there is nothing purely objective in existence. Everything comes to us through the lens of our conscious awareness, which is colored by our past experiences and cultural conditioning. We can, however, recognize an intersubjective domain because we humans are similar self-organizing systems with a similar conscious component and shared cultural artifacts. It is striking to me that we are often surprised when we realize that each of us perceives the world differently, yet most of the time we fail to recognize this fact. This was highlighted by the dress phenomenon in 2015. Regarding predictive coding and AI, I think there is now consensus that both brains and large language models (LLMs) use predictive models. Predictive coding in the brain is a deeply hierarchical process, which Karl Friston or Mark Solms (I think) has likened to an onion, with a dominant automatic core regulating many unconscious processes in our bodies (blood pressure, temperature, oxygen levels, etc.) and a thin peripheral conscious layer concerned with willful, volitional actions under conditions of uncertainty or where attentional resources are required. Predictive models, however, are too general to fully explain consciousness and "free will," as they also underlie other automatic regulatory processes. For me, understanding consciousness in functional terms currently seems the most helpful. It involves the integration of all experiences, past and present, from within the body and the external environment to create a useful virtual model of a "self" embedded in the world. This model somehow helps predict and control the future, ultimately serving to keep us alive and functioning. At this time, I guess I am comfortable with the compatibilist view of "free will," and while I don't really know what the word "objective" could mean in this context, I fully subscribe to the idea that we are participants in creation. I love this quote from Iain McGilchrist: "The kind of attention we pay actually alters the world: we are, literally, partners in creation. This means we have a grave responsibility; a word that captures the reciprocal nature of the dialogue we have with whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves."

@@TheAwakenedCosmos Even 'consciousness' is different in individuals. Many people, for example, do not have an inner monologue. How does that effect decision-making? In the end, everything is objective as there is only one reality, one truth, one cause (or set of causes) for any given event. In this context, objectivity is truth. Not as seen through the lens of a human, which is very subjective, but often not truth. Let's say you make a decision that is the perfect decision for that situation. Could you have made any choice other than the one you made or was it inevitable that you could only have made the choice you made due to biological mechanics of the brain? There is zero proof that anything has ever affected a decision other than the biological makeup of that person at the moment and their experiences that shaped it. Even if you change your mind, could you have done anything different? There is zero proof of it in any science experiment.

@@DrakeStardragon Regarding truth and objectivity, to me, this comes down to how we obtain our knowledge of anything. Conscious experience is the only access we have to what's out there. From this perspective, considering consciousness as fundamental (idealism) seems like a logical conclusion. However, for some reason, this view isn't appealing to me. My thinking leans more toward self-organization, where complexity arises from simpler forms through evolution. When a conscious being is created (I suppose this may apply to true conscious AGI in the future), the process of modeling the world begins. This is a virtual computational process that takes data from sensory impressions and active engagement to construct a game engine. Around the age of three in humans, a self emerges as a model of the organism itself embedded in the world. This self-model perceives the world through the limited capacity of the sensory apparatus, tuned to a specific range of object sizes, speeds, and the narrow spectrum of visible light and sound waves that were advantageous for survival in ancestral environments. The totality of our knowledge hinges on our interaction with and manipulation of the world through conscious experience, both individually and collectively. The only thing I can be certain of is my own consciousness. Our unique cultural evolution, particularly the development of symbolic languages, gave rise to a higher-order collective reasoning process that runs on interconnected minds. This process enabled us to create better explanations of the world and use these explanations to develop tools (most importantly the scientific method) that further probe and expand our understanding of "reality". While some people may feel this is a mechanistic reductionist view, I don't see it that way because I think the distinction between the physical and metaphysical is just a mental construct-labels we created that aren't very helpful when thinking about existence as a layered, hierarchical process of self-organization with increasing complexity. To me, the conscious and spiritual realms fit comfortably within this conceptualization. If some people claim there is a more objective absolute way of seeing "reality" and "truth", there will be no way to disprove it. However, believing or disbelieving it doesn't hold much significance for me because my "ego tunnel" is the only way I experience anything. It seems that the most pragmatic thing for me to do in this mysterious and often difficult existence is not to look for absolute answers but to continue to try to align my model of the world with good explanations (from science, philosophy and spiritual traditions) and values that enhance our well-being and flourishing as individuals and society.

@@TheAwakenedCosmos When you talk about truth and objectivity coming down to how we gain our knowledge of anything. That is subjective truth, not objective truth. This is not something that mysterious or unknown. In fact, in the least, objective truth is the default that we can assume. To me, its a truism. Every detail in existence, from how/why the universe exists to everything that influenced the thoughts you're having now, as you read this, have just one answer for how/why they happened. That is the objective truth. To be able to manipulate any single detail takes will (tempered by knowledge). The ability to manipulate all of them would be absolute knowledge. Free will. To me, free will is an absolute. You can't enforce your will on everything/anything until you understand everything/anything. As far as your subjective truth. I pretty much agree with. But. Metaphysical? Spiritual? Eh. Human concepts. Most of which exist just to explain the unknown. Not that I am not open to things outside known reality. Just no proof yet. But that's a different topic.