Physical can cause mental, but mental cannot cause physical. Does it imply that mental is an effect of physical?
Physical can result in mental, just as mental can result in physical, I think? Causality is more difficult to demonstrate, and I don’t think that I can do that. It appears that you can.
My actions, or yours, can result in thoughts, just as the opposite is also the case… 
In this Closer to Truth video, Alex O’Connor says:
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What do they contrast? I’d say physical phenomena on different levels of description.
Physical (including chemical and biological) processes are constituitive for mental states, which exist on a level of description where we can find psychological, social, or cultural properties. These are not real on the levels of atoms and molecules, but for conscious humans they are real.
What do you mean by “result in”? Can you give some real life examples of physical results in mental? And mental results in physical?
Being an effect in no way makes anything lack efficacy.
Not true. It causes cooling of the area in shadow. It causes animals to seek it out, or plants to avoid it. Likewise, all of your examples of an effect (magnetism, consciousness) are examples of something efficacious.
One can measure it, since a conscious person acts quite differently than one not conscious. But you perhaps want a meter with a quantitative output, which at best is an EEG which can distinguish conscious activity from otherwise. Subjectively one can note one’s own consciousness and act upon it, which is a measurement as much as any other. Given epiphenomenalism, one cannot act upon it. One cannot discuss it any more than I can make a character in a movie do my bidding.
I agree that shadows provide a counterfactually different scenario, and in that sense there are no references that are non-causal. For example, Spongebob Squarepants is causally efficacious in a counterfactual sense, however let’s distinguish real things that exist in nature versus the things that exist either as an omission of something that does exist (e.g., the sun’s photons hitting the pavement) or is entirely fictitious. If that’s not acceptable for you then let’s leave it there. As for your comment that we can distinguish conscious activity from otherwise, can you offer a physical measurement to show whether the latest LLMs are conscious if they were to insist that they are?
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You need to clarify what you mean by causality too. What do you mean in actuality when X caused Y? What is the difference between “X resulted in Y” and “X caused Y”?
Spongebob is an idea, a mental construct, shared among many. Like any well shared idea, it is very causally efficacious. I have no idea what you mean by ‘counterfactual’ here. That word is typically used to describe a state not measured, and the effects of the Spongebob concept are very much measured.
Anyway, I don’t see any distinction between such fictions and objects that are more than just concepts, at least in terms of either being causes of things or not.
A possible example of something not efficacious is an actual counterfactual like a photon that is emitted but never absorbed by anything ever. It’s wavelength grows longer over time to the point where it can no longer interact with anything. In effect, the emission is the end of its causal chain.
Depends on definitions. I was kind of using ‘awake’ or ‘aware’, both of which an EEG can detect, and is easy enough to apply to a computer device: on or off. Consciousness would be awareness and responsiveness to sensory input.
One could define it as ‘what it’s like to be like me’, in which case at best it’s confined to humans.
On the other hand, one could posit supernatural mechanisms and define consciousness as being externally controlled by one of those. Both of the latter two definitions would come up blank with the LLM, but I don’t find an LLM to be any different than say a file server, which, just like me, responds appropriately to, and displays awareness of, external input.
I know the question is not to me. One has to realize that Y has multiple causes. It’s a network, not a linear effect as is invoked by the phrase ‘causal chain’.
Hence a butterfly flap in the amazon (X) results in a hurricane a couple months later (Y). That is to say, had the butterfly not done that, the weather that subsequent day at point P would not have been ‘hurricane’.
To directly answer your question, I find your two wordings synonymous in that context, but in different contexts (such as deliberate actions), the two wordings might carry different meanings. ‘X unknowingly resulted in Y’, vs the latter wording that carries a somewhat stronger implication of knowing Y would result from X.
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If whatever causes a shadow had not blocked the sunlight, then whatever causal consequence of there being a shadow would not have occurred. Isn’t that what you meant by a shadow is causal? You didn’t mean to say that there are real objects called shadows that exist like atoms and molecules, correct?
Some experts are suggesting that LLMs are starting to become conscious. However, we don’t have a way to detect or measure this. This is what I meant when saying that “no one has seen any way to measure one’s consciousness since it subjective and an internal state.”
In any case, I’ll let you have the last word. I’m not really interested in debating how consciousness can be measured and confirmed by scientists or whether shadows exist and are causal. Thanks for the discussion.
No problems. If you have your own ideas on the question, you are welcome to join in.
“Result in” is a psychological judgement on events or objects in the world backed by your perception only.
“caused” or “causality” is also your psychological judgement on events or objects, but backed by your perception, reasoning and inference.
There is no such thing as “causality” to be perceived in the world, as Hume claimed. It is just your imagination on the perceptions of two events appearing in constant conjunction. You form the idea of causality by your habit and custom having seen the conjunction many times.
Likewise, there is no such thing as “consciousness” to be perceived in the world. There are only conscious actions, speaking and writings of folks.
It proves consciousness is just a word for being able to interact intelligibly with other beings and the world. You describe someone is conscious when the person has opened his/her eyes from unconsciousness, recognising you, and remembering the past, and talking to you intelligibly. Without that ability of the person, you won’t describe the person as being conscious.
It is like the case of free will or all other mental events they are talking about. There is no such thing existing or perceivable as “free will”. There are only actions, speakings and writings made by the agent from his/her decisions, which can be judged after the decisions have been made by others or the agent as "the actions, speakings or writings made from free will of the agent, which transforms into the unchangeable historicity for the agent.
From that statement, I can make out you are making some assumption on the connection between the butterfly flap in the amazon, and a hurricane, which sounds your conscious mental state on the claim, but at the same time also sounding imaginary and unfounded too.
Prior to your statement, I had absolutely nothing whatsoever on your mind whether it was conscious or unconscious.
So consciousness of your mind has manifested from your statement regarding your assumption.
If you were talking about something else, which is totally irrelevant to the topic or point of discussion, then I would have thought you could be unconscious or out of your mind, or just being silly.
So what we say, write and act in the society according to the situation in the course of interaction intelligibly and expectedly by others is the criteria for being conscious. Conscious is not something material or physical which can exist on its own. It is a word describing how corrigibly and intelligibly one interacts with others and the world.
Delegating consciousness as mere epiphenemona/an “emergent property” is, as usual, materialist-determinism posing as a monopoly on epistemology.
My thoughts often result in (my) actions; my actions often result in (my) thinking about them or their consequences. Mental and physical are not in competition or conflict; they are two aspects of one thing, I think.
Your reply seems to prove you are judging that your actions often result in thinking about them or their consequences. (Your) Mental and physical are not in competition or conflict; they are two aspects of one thing, you think.
Without that judgements and reflection, you only have your actions and thinkings.
The search for the origin of life is the real question, and whether we exist past death, or whether we exist before life, etc. Is consciousness the result of a complex system of matter that forms the person? Does it persist after that form is gone? I am of the opinion that the self persists, and that is the result of the process of conception and birth, and the experience of the surroundings. Does it affect anything? It does in the sense that it affects the form and what the form decides to do. After the death of the body? If consciousness, or souls, interact in some new place (if they aren’t indeed interacting in that place now as well), then yes, it causes an effect on other souls. Anything that is, can be measured- if not in observation, then in mass and form.
Exactly. Whether or not mind is wholly based in the brain, as most humans currently believe, the mind is real to all conscious humans, as you say. And, I can’t speak for anyone else, but my philosophy is philosophy for humans like me, not for Vulcans, Romulans, or Mr Data. So what seems real to me deserves consideration. Philosophical consideration, of course.
No, I don’t. I don’t have the interest in a semantic debate just at the moment.
As you know, the philosophy of causality, like that of Truth, or Love, or whatever, is much deeper than it first appears. So, no thanks to the semantic debate, as I’m just not convinced it will go anywhere useful or helpful. 
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Then they aren’t “experts”, IMO. There’s a lot to this, and I think a topic just started to discuss AIs, so I’ll stop here, in this topic. Perhaps this issue can be examined there?
This caught my eye, because it’s phrased in such a way as to highlight what I think is an important issue.
Does consciousness do the explaining? No. Rationality, or one of its synonyms, is what explains. The role of consciousness is surely different. By training my consciousness upon something, I have not therefore explained it. We could say that consciousness is the vehicle/doorway/substrate (so many less-than-adequate metaphors to choose from!) that allows rationality to emerge and make itself heard.
Why is this important? Because this conclusion does not follow:
It may be the case that only conscious beings can employ the rationality needed to explain anything. But if “consciousness” is the explanandum, the apparatus used to explain it – rationality – is not engaged in any circle, because it is not identical to consciousness.
The really circular effort would be to ask rationality to explain rationality! But I don’t think that’s what you mean here. You seem to be collapsing consciousness with rationality (or, again, whatever synonym you want to use to describe our explanatory faculties) and claiming an “inescapable recursiveness.”
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