prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What award did Brooksley Born receive in 2009?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 1: Brooksley Elizabeth Born (born August 27, 1940) is an American attorney and former public official who, from August 26, 1996, to June 1, 1999, was chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency which oversees the U S  futures and commodity options markets  During her tenure on the CFTC, Born lobbied Congress and the President to give the CFTC oversight of off-exchange markets for derivatives, in addition to its role with respect to exchange-traded derivatives, but her warnings were ignored or dismissed, and her calls for reform resisted by other regulators <ref name="nytimes">Goodman, Peter S  The Reckoning - Taking Hard New Look at a Greenspan Legacy, The New York Times, October 9, 2008 </ref> Born resigned as chairperson on June 1, 1999, shortly after Congress passed legislation prohibiting her agency from regulating derivatives 

Early life and education
Born graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School (San Francisco, California) at the age of 16  She then attended Stanford University, where she majored in English and was graduated with the class of 1961   She initially wanted to become a doctor, but a guidance counsellor at Stanford advised her against medicine, so she majored in English literature instead 

She then attended Stanford Law School, one of only seven women in her class   She was the first female student ever to be named president of the Stanford Law Review  She received the "Outstanding Senior" award and graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1964 

Legal career
Immediately after law school Born was selected as a law clerk to judge Henry Edgerton of the U S  Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit  It was during this time that she met her first husband, Jacob C  Landau, who was a journalist covering the Federal courts at the time  Following her clerkship, she became an associate at the Washington, D C -based international law firm of Arnold & Porter  Born was attracted to Arnold & Porter because it was one of the few major law firms to have a woman partner at that time, Carolyn Agger, who was the head of the tax practice  Born took a two-year leave of absence from Arnold & Porter to accompany her first husband to Boston, where he had received a fellowship  During that time she worked as a research assistant to law professor Alan Dershowitz 

Born's early career at Arnold & Porter focused on international trade law, in which she represented a number of Swiss industries and the government of Switzerland  She developed a practice representing clients in numerous complex litigation and arbitration cases involving financial market transactions  Among her high-profile cases was the matter of the Hunt Brothers attempt to corner the market in silver in the 1970s  She made partner at Arnold & Porter, after moving to a three-day schedule to help raise her second child, and eventually rose to be the head of the firm's derivatives practice 

Born was among the first female attorneys to systematically address inequities regarding how the laws treated women  Born and another female lawyer, Marna Tucker, taught what is considered to have been the first "Women and the Law" course at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law  The class exclusively concerned prejudicial treatment of women under the laws of the United States, past and present   Born and Tucker were surprised to discover that there was no textbook on the issue at the time   Born is also one of the co-founders of the National Women's Law Center  Born also helped rewrite the American Bar Association rules to make it possible for more women and minorities to sit on federal bench 

During her long legal career, and into her retirement, Born did much pro bono and other types of volunteer work  She was active in the American Bar Association, the largest professional organization of lawyers in the United States   Initially Born was named a member of the governing council of the ABA's Individual Rights Section, eventually becoming chairperson   Born and Tucker founded the ABA Women's Caucus, the first organization of female lawyers in the ABA   She held several other senior positions in the ABA, including being named the first woman member of the ABA's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary   As a member of the Judiciary Committee, Born provided testimony and opinion on persons nominated for federal judgeships  In 1980 she was named chair of the committee   As chair of the committee, Born was invited to address the U S  Congress regarding the nomination of Judge Sandra Day O'Connor to the U S  Supreme Court 

In 1993, Born's name was floated as a possible candidate for Attorney General of the United States, but Janet Reno was nominated 

In July 2009, Nancy Pelosi appointed Brooksley Born as a commissioner to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) 

Born and the OTC derivatives market
Born was appointed to the CFTC on April 15, 1994, by President Bill Clinton  Due to litigation against Bankers Trust Company by Procter and Gamble and other corporate clients, Born and her team at the CFTC sought comments on the regulation of over-the-counter derivatives, a first step in the process of writing CFTC regulations to supplement the existing regulations of the Federal Reserve System,  the Options Clearing Corporation, and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners  Born was particularly concerned about swaps, financial instruments that are traded over the counter between banks, insurance companies or other funds or companies, and thus have no transparency except to the two counterparties and the counterparties' regulators, if any   CFTC regulation was strenuously opposed by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, and by Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers  On May 7, 1998, former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt joined Rubin and Greenspan in objecting to the issuance of the CFTC's concept release  Their response dismissed Born's analysis and focused on the hypothetical possibility that CFTC regulation of swaps and other OTC derivative instruments could create a "legal uncertainty" regarding such financial instruments,  hypothetically reducing the value of the instruments  They argued that the imposition of regulatory costs would "stifle financial innovation" and encourage financial capital to transfer its  transactions offshore  The disagreement between Born and the Executive Office's top economic policy advisors has been described not only as a classic Washington turf war, but also a war of ideologies,  insofar as it is possible to argue that Born's actions were consistent with Keynesian and neoclassical economics while Greenspan, Rubin, Levitt, and Summers consistently espoused neoliberal, and neoconservative policies 

In 1998, a trillion-dollar hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) was near collapse   Using mathematical models to calculate debt risk, LTCM used derivatives to leverage $5 billion into more than $1 trillion, doing business with fifteen of Wall Street's largest financial institutions   The derivative transactions were not regulated, nor were investors able to evaluate LTCM's exposures   Born stated, "I thought that LTCM was exactly what I had been worried about"   In the last weekend of September 1998, the President's working group was told that the entire American economy hung in the balance   After intervention by the Federal Reserve, the crisis was averted   In congressional hearings into the crisis, Greenspan acknowledged that language had been introduced into an agriculture bill that would prevent CFTC from regulating the derivatives which were at the center of the crisis that threatened the US economy   U S  Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) asked "How many more failures do you think we'd have to have before some regulation in this area might be appropriate?"  In response, Greenspan brushed aside the substance of Born's warnings with the simple assertion that "the degree of supervision of regulation of the over-the-counter derivatives market is quite adequate to maintain a degree of stability in the system"  Born's warning was that there wasn't any regulation of them   Born's chief of staff, Michael Greenberger summed up Greenspan's position this way: "Greenspan didn't believe that fraud was something that needed to be enforced, and he assumed she probably did  And of course, she did "  Under heavy pressure from the financial lobby, legislation prohibiting regulation of derivatives by Born's agency was passed by the Congress   Born resigned on June 1, 1999 

The derivatives market continued to grow yearly throughout both terms of George W  Bush's administration  On September 15, 2008, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers forced a broad recognition of a financial crisis in both the US and world capital markets   As Lehman Brothers' failure temporarily reduced financial capital's confidence, a number of newspaper articles and television programs suggested that the failure's possible causes included the conflict between the CFTC and the other regulators Faiola, Anthony, Nakashima, Ellen and Drew, Jill  The Crash: Risk and Regulation - What Went Wrong, The Washington Post, October 15, 2008 

Born declined to publicly comment on the unfolding 2008 crisis until March 2009, when she said: "The market grew so enormously, with so little oversight and regulation, that it made the financial crisis much deeper and more pervasive than it otherwise would have been " She also lamented the influence of Wall Street lobbyists on the process and the refusal of regulators to discuss even modest reforms 

An October 2009 Frontline documentary titled "The Warning"  described Born's thwarted efforts to regulate and bring transparency to the derivatives market, and the continuing opposition thereto  The program concluded with an excerpted interview with Born sounding another warning: "I think we will have continuing danger from these markets and that we will have repeats of the financial crisis -- may differ in details but there will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap, over and over, until we learn from experience "

In 2009 Born, along with Sheila Bair of the FDIC, was awarded the John F  Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award in recognition of the "political courage she demonstrated in sounding early warnings about conditions that contributed" to the 2007-08 financial crisis   According to Caroline Kennedy, "Brooksley Born recognized that the financial security of all Americans was being put at risk by the greed, negligence and opposition of  powerful and well connected interests     The catastrophic financial events of recent months have  proved them [Born and Sheila Bair] right "  One member of the President's working group had a change of heart about Brooksley Born   SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt stated "I've come to know her as one of the most capable, dedicated, intelligent and committed public servants that I have ever come to know", adding that "I could have done much better  I could have made a difference" in response to her warnings 

In 2010, a documentary film Inside Job further alleged that derivatives regulation was ineffective from the Clinton administration on  Along with fellow whistleblower, former IMF Chief Economist Raghuram Rajan, who was also scorned by the economic establishment, Brooksley Born was cited as one of the authorities arguing that financial derivatives increase economic risk 

 Personal life 
Born is married to Alexander E  Bennett (also retired from Arnold & Porter)   She has five adult children - two from a previous marriage to Jacob Landau and three stepchildren  Notably, Born was named a partner at Arnold & Porter while working part-time so she could raise her two young children   When both of her children were school-age, Born returned to practice full-time 

References

External links
Attorney profile at Arnold & Porter
Brooksley Born (2009 Winner) of the Profiles in Courage Award, with acceptance speech transcript and NECN video

Profile at MarketsWiki
Speeches and statements
"Testimony Of Brooksley Born Chairperson of the CFTC Concerning The Over-The-Counter Derivatives Market", before the House Committee On Banking And Financial Services, July 24, 1998 
"The Lessons of Long Term Capital Management L P ", Remarks of Brooksley Born, Chairperson of the CFTC, Chicago-Kent-IIT Commodities Law Institute, Chicago, Illinois, October 15, 1998 
 Interview: Brooksley Born for "PBS Frontline: The Warning", PBS, (streaming VIDEO 1 hour), October 20, 2009 
Articles
Manuel Roig-Franzia  "Credit Crisis Cassandra:Brooksley Born's Unheeded Warning Is a Rueful Echo 10 Years On", The Washington Post, May 26, 2009
 Taibbi, Matt  "The Great American Bubble Machine", Rolling Stone'', July 9–23, 2009

1940 births
American women lawyers
Arnold & Porter people
Clinton administration personnel
Columbus School of Law faculty
Commodity Futures Trading Commission personnel
Heads of United States federal agencies
Lawyers from San Francisco
Living people
Stanford Law School alumni
21st-century American women
Stanford University alumni
Context 3: Paper Info

Title: Bistability between π-diradical open-shell and closed-shell states in indeno[1,2-a]fluorene
Publish Date: Unkown
Author List: Shantanu Mishra (from IBM Research Europe -Zurich), Manuel Vilas-Varela (from Department of Organic Chemistry, Center for Research in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Materials (CiQUS), University of Santiago de Compostela), Leonard-Alexander Lieske (from IBM Research Europe -Zurich), Ricardo Ortiz (from Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC)), Igor Rončević (from Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford), Florian Albrecht (from IBM Research Europe -Zurich), Diego Peña (from Department of Organic Chemistry, Center for Research in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Materials (CiQUS), University of Santiago de Compostela), Leo Gross (from IBM Research Europe -Zurich)

Figure

Fig  1 | Non-benzenoid non-alternant polycyclic conjugated hydrocarbons a, Classical nonbenzenoid non-alternant polycyclic conjugated hydrocarbons: pentalene, azulene and heptalene b, Generation of indacenes and indenoindenes through benzinterposition and benzannelation of pentalene, respectively Gray filled rings represent Clar sextets c, Closed-shell Kekulé (left) and openshell non-Kekulé (right) resonance structures of QDMs Note that meta-QDM is a non-Kekulé molecule All indenofluorene isomers, being derived through benzannelation of indacenes, contain a central QDM moiety d, Closed-shell Kekulé (top) and open-shell non-Kekulé (bottom) resonance structures of indenofluorenes Compared to their closed-shell structures, 1 and 5 gain two Clar sextets in the openshell structure, while 2-4 gain only one Clar sextet in the open-shell structure Colored bonds in d highlight the ortho-and para-QDM moieties in the two closed-shell Kekulé structures of 5  e, Scheme of on-surface generation of 5 by voltage pulse-induced dehydrogenation of 6 (C20H14) Structures 7 and 8 represent the two monoradical species (C20H13) 
Fig  2 | Characterization of open-shell indeno[1,2-a]fluorene on bilayer NaCl/Au(111) a, DFTcalculated wave functions of the frontier orbitals of 5OS in the triplet configuration for the spin up (occupied) level (isovalue: 0 002 e -Å -3 ) Blue and red colors represent opposite phases of the wave function b, Corresponding DFT-calculated spin density of 5OS (isovalue: 0 01 e -Å -3) Blue and orange colors represent spin up and spin down densities, respectively c, Probability density of the SOMOs of 5OS (isovalue: 0 001 e -Å -3 ) d, DFT-calculated bond lengths of 5OS e, Constant-height I(V) spectra acquired on a species of 5 assigned as 5OS, along with the corresponding dI/dV(V) spectra Open feedback parameters: V = -2 V, I = 0 17 pA (negative bias side) and V = 2 V, I = 0 17 pA (positive bias side) Acquisition position of the spectra is shown in Supplementary Fig 7 f, Scheme of many-body transitions associated to the measured ionic resonances of 5OS Also shown are STM images of assigned 5OS at biases where the corresponding transitions become accessible Scanning parameters: I = 0 3 pA (V = -1 2V and -1 5 V) and 0 2 pA (V = 1 3 V and 1 6 V)  g, Laplace-filtered AFM image of assigned 5OS STM set point: V = 0 2 V, I = 0 5 pA on bilayer NaCl, Δz = -0 3Å The tip-height offset Δz for each panel is provided with respect to the STM setpoint, and positive (negative) values of Δz denote tip approach (retraction) from the STM setpoint f and g show the same molecule at the same adsorption site, which is next to a trilayer NaCl island The bright and dark features in the trilayer NaCl island in g correspond to Cl -and Na + ions, respectively Scale bars: 10 Å (f) and 5 Å (g) 
Fig  3 | Characterization of closed-shell indeno[1,2-a]fluorene on bilayer NaCl/Au(111) a, DFTcalculated wave functions of the frontier orbitals of closed-shell 5 0 (isovalue: 0 002 e -Å -3 ) The wave functions shown here are calculated for the 5para geometry b, DFT-calculated bond lengths of 5ortho (top) and 5para (bottom) c, Constant-height I(V) spectra acquired on a species of 5 assigned as 5para, along with the corresponding dI/dV(V) spectra Open feedback parameters: V = -2 V, I = 0 15 pA (negative bias side) and V = 2 2 V, I = 0 15 pA (positive bias side) Acquisition position of the spectra is shown in Supplementary Fig  7  d, Scheme of many-body transitions associated to the measured ionic resonances of 5para Also shown are STM images of assigned 5para at biases where the corresponding transitions become accessible Scanning parameters: I = 0 15 pA (V = -1 5 V) and 0 2 pA (V = 1 7 V)  e, Laplace-filtered AFM image of assigned 5para STM set point: V = 0 2 V, I = 0 5 pA on bilayer NaCl, Δz = -0 7 Å  f, Selected bonds labeled for highlighting bond order differences between 5para and 5ortho For the bond pairs a/b, c/d and e/f, the bonds labeled in bold exhibit a higher bond order than their neighboring labeled bonds in 5para g, Laplace-filtered AFM images of 5 on bilayer NaCl/Cu(111) showing switching between 5OS and 5para as the molecule changes its adsorption position The faint protrusion adjacent to 5 is a defect that stabilizes the adsorption of 5  STM set point: V = 0 2 V, I = 0 5 pA on bilayer NaCl, Δz = -0 3Å  STM and STS data in c and d are acquired on the same species, while the AFM data in e is acquired on a different species Scale bars: 10 Å (d) and 5 Å (e,g) 
NMR (300 MHz, CDCl3) δ: 7 51 (m, 2H), 7 40 -7 28 (m, 5H), 7 27 -7 20 (m, 2H), 7 13 (d, J = 7 7 Hz, 1H), 2 07 (s, 3H), 1 77 (s, 3H) ppm  13C NMR-DEPT (75 MHz, CDCl3, 1:1 mixture of atropisomers) δ: 141 2 (C), 141 1 (C), 140 0 (C), 139 4 (2C), 137 5 (C), 137 4 (C), 136 0 (3C), 134 8 (C), 134 5 (C), 134 1 (C), 134 0 (C), 133 7 (C), 133 6 (C), 131 6 (CH), 131 2 (CH), 131 1 (CH), 130 7 (CH), 129 8 (CH), 129 7 (CH), 129 5 (CH), 129 4 (CH), 129 0 (CH), 128 9 (CH), 128 7 (2CH), 128 6 (2CH), 127 2 (CH), 127 1 (CH), 127 0 (CH), 126 9 (CH), 126 7 (CH), 126 6 (CH), 20 6 (CH3), 20 5 (CH3), 17 7 (CH3), 17 5 (CH3) ppm MS (APCI) m/z (%): 327 (M+1, 100) HRMS: C20H16Cl2; calculated: 327 0702, found: 327 0709 
NMR (500 MHz, CDCl3) δ: 7 93 (d, J = 7 6 Hz, 1H), 7 85 (d, J = 7 5 Hz, 1H), 7 78 (d, J = 7 7 Hz, 1H), 7 65 (d, J = 7 4 Hz, 1H), 7 61 (d, J = 7 5 Hz, 1H), 7 59 (d, J = 7 7 Hz, 1H), 7 47 (ddd, J = 8 4, 7 2, 1 1 Hz, 1H), 7 42 (dd, J = 8 1, 7 0 Hz, 1H), 7 35 (m, 2H), 4 22 (s, 3H), 4 02 (s, 3H) ppm  13C NMR-DEPT (125 MHz, CDCl3) δ: 144 1 (C), 143 3 (C), 142



ground_truth: In 2009, Brooksley Born received the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award.

prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What happens to the high resolution of what we focus on at dawn or dusk?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 2: Inner Reality Unveiled
Inner Reality Unveiled
by DragonFly on April 18th, 2018, 10:54 pm
There is no direct (literal) view of the actual reality 'out there'  Our inner viewport is ever only that of the model (qualia) of inner and outer reality built by the brain  We see/sense nothing but this model made inside the brain 
We don't see across a room or any scene but only across the model of the room/scene  We don't look through a microscope at an actual object but only look at a model of that object  You get the idea  A reflective color spectrum is used to make it look like that more distinctive color is a surface property of an object modeled 
The brain doesn't model everything, as a lot of it would be clutter, and for what remains as useful to portray the brain still doesn't have the resources to model everything at high resolution and so thus whatever we focus on gets all the high res detail put into it just in the nick of time when we look/focus  At dawn or dusk this high resolution becomes a bit less on what we focus on so that what's off to the left or right can be better noted in the dim light 
So far, nothing astounding here to us, although maybe to everyday folk that we only ever see the inside of the head/brain—the model 
Of course, the shocks get worse, such as that our intentions cannot be those of first cause, self-made people, but from prior causes that we weren't able to choose and be responsible for  What is left, in short, is the freedom of action for these inbuilt intentions to operate, at least when not prevented by the weather or any other controlling factors, which 'freedom of action' amounts to compatibilism 
Other notes on the above are that while we can never know if everything is deterministic, although we know that a lot is, whatever is indeterminate diminishes our modeling and our consistency 
Re: Inner Reality Unveiled
by DragonFly on April 20th, 2018, 3:14 pm
To continue, many feel that the model/qualia is very rich, but there's not anything to compare it to  Some creatures have a fourth primary color to work from and some have more smells and better hearing  Our colors (reflective spectrum) go through some averaging because of the various close frequencies about, but they still have a lot of pop to them  The model seems to be super real, where it has the focused detail, meaning better than real, or super real or surreal; surely colors win out over a bunch of waves (if they could be seen), these colors being very distinctive, which high contrast is what the model seems to be about  Away from the center of focus, the model has to be worse than cartoonish 
Other qualia properties are intense, too, such as pain being able to be very painful, to the max, and such 
Qualia are based on initial isomorphic maps, meaning topographical, when representing the territory  For sounds, the map is for tones from the air vibrations, and for smell it is scents from the molecule shapes; for touch it is a body map  The isomorphism may get carried through even three levels of models, whereafter it seems to become more symbolic and less isomorphic, perhaps indicating that the information is ready to turn into qualia, the point at which the 'hard problem' manifests  It is thought that at least four levels of modules are required for the 'magic' of phenomenal transformation to occur; we have the problem surrounded but not yet solved  Perhaps it is enough to have a truth in lieu of its proof—that there is ontological subjectivity, meaning that it exists, although it may not be fundamental or miraculous 
So, in sum so far, direct realism is an illusion, but is a very useful illusion, which we might better call a fine representation by the model, since the word 'illusion' is more about what's wrong as not really showing its object as substantial and really being behind it  Dreams, then, would be better called illusions; further they demonstrate the power of the structure of the model  When we inspects objects in dreams they look just as good as when we see them awake, although backgrounds come and go inconsistently and there are narrative gaps (all of a sudden we are driving a vehicle without ever having gotten into it, plus the controls are a mystery )
Another illusion is the feeling of having all of the information in a qualia scene as instantly available, as well as feeling that it is all happening in real time, plus that one is directing it all right then and there 
by mitchellmckain on April 21st, 2018, 4:33 am
Yes and all those security cameras in the banks and stores must be a joke because anybody watching cannot see us but only see images on a display screen 
by DragonFly on April 21st, 2018, 12:05 pm
mitchellmckain » April 21st, 2018, 3:33 am wrote: Yes and all those security cameras in the banks and stores must be a joke because anybody watching cannot see us but only see images on a display screen 
You forgot that what the brain maps and models is a reliable representation of what's out there and in here 
by mitchellmckain on April 21st, 2018, 12:16 pm
DragonFly » April 21st, 2018, 11:05 am wrote:
I was being sarcastic in order to point out this very fact  Whether images on a display screen or human consciousness, they are reliable representations and that means they do see what is really out there  The fact that this is indirect is not without logical implications, but not to the extent that you can say we do not apprehend an objective reality 
by TheVat on April 21st, 2018, 12:29 pm
The evolutionary argument is a strong one, also, for the accuracy of our sensory representations of the external world  If you think a tiger's tail is a pretty flower, and try to pluck it, you won't be around long to reproduce 
I invite anyone who thinks that bus hurtling down the street is nothing but a model in the brain to step in front of it 
Your impression of the bus may be indirect, but it has a direct causal chain of connections to the actual bus out there  You are a photon collector, absorbing photons bounced off a bus  That way, it doesn't have to be you that's bounced off the bus 
by DragonFly on April 21st, 2018, 2:19 pm
Mentally healthy responders need not worry about any unreliable representations due to there being no direct realism  As I showed, the representations are even improvements that bring out what is distinctive and important, as well as my indicating of an 'out there'  (The sarcasm thus fell doubly flat, run over by the bus, either because that mode is the nature of the person or this short thread wasn't read well )
The world out there indeed comes to us (we don't reach out and probe it but for such as feeling our way in the dark), via photons for sight, and similarly comes to us in other ways for the other 'distance' senses  That the brain projects the objects back out there where they are, with depth (objects whose radiation came into us) is very useful  This trivia is mentioned here for completeness, for non scientific readers, but all the like herein is not contested 
Back on track now, with derailment attempts ever unwelcome, but actual meaty posts extremely welcome, many neurologists note that awake consciousness doesn't easily get snuffed out, for a people may have many and various brain impairments yet they remain conscious, which, in short, without going through them all, indicates that there probably isn't any one 'Grand Central Station' where consciousness originates but that it may arise from any suitable hierarchy of brain modules 
Consciousness, like life, requires embodiment, and is now thought to have been around in some form since the Cambrian explosion  As evolution proceeds via physical processes it rather follows that consciousness does too  Billions of years of small steps from a stable organism platform can acculuminate into what otherwise seems a miracle, but then again, miracles are instant  When extinction events wipe everything out, the process just starts up again, and probably has, several times over 
Since qualia are structured, such as I described, plus healing the blind spot and more that wasn't put here, this again suggest that qualia have to be constructed from parts the brain has made from interpretations via physical processes 
How the phenomenal transform springs out remains as the central mystery of all  We think that there are larger mysteries, such as if there is any ultimate purpose to Existence, but this one is easy, for it can be shown that there can be no ultimate purpose  (There can be local and proximate purpose ) More an this another time or place 
by mitchellmckain on April 21st, 2018, 4:00 pm
I shall interpret the above as a request for a detailed point by point response to the OP 
DragonFly » April 18th, 2018, 9:54 pm wrote: There is no direct (literal) view of the actual reality 'out there'  Our inner viewport is ever only that of the model (qualia) of inner and outer reality built by the brain  We see/sense nothing but this model made inside the brain 
But this is wrong, derived from delusional semantics as if "seeing" meant absorbing the objects themselves into our brain and mind  Of course, "seeing" means no such thing  "Seeing" means gathering data to construct a mental model of an external reality  We don't, in fact, "see" this inner model at all  This "model" is a product of speculation and abstraction in meta-conscious process of self-reflection 
Our inner viewport is thus one of looking out at the outer reality and not one of looking at the model  We do see across a room -- USING a mental model  We do not see the mental model except by speculative imagination  The most we can say is that by using such a process of mental modeling in order to see, there can be deviations due to a variety of neurological and mental processes being involved, including the role of beliefs in our interpretations  Thus our perceptions cannot be fully separated from our beliefs and our access to the world is fundamentally subjective  The objective can only be fully realized by a process of abstraction through communication with others 
DragonFly » April 18th, 2018, 9:54 pm wrote: The brain doesn't model everything, as a lot of it would be clutter, and for what remains as useful to portray the brain still doesn't have the resources to model everything at high resolution and so thus whatever we focus on gets all the high res detail put into it just in the nick of time when we look/focus  
DragonFly » April 18th, 2018, 9:54 pm wrote: Of course, the shocks get worse, such as that our intentions cannot be those of first cause, self-made people, but from prior causes that we weren't able to choose and be responsible for  What is left, in short, is the freedom of action for these inbuilt intentions to operate, at least when not prevented by the weather or any other controlling factors, which 'freedom of action' amounts to compatibilism 
Your philosophical conclusions here will not be mistaken for scientific observations  Your interpretations are based on your own presumptions which I reject as incorrect  The process of human intention and action is certainly a complex one but the fact remains that the first causes do exist  People may be capable of simply watching much of their life pass by as an minimally participating observer (with all sorts of fatalistic and compatibilist dodges and delusions of objectivity), but others choose to take ownership of the first causes within them as a fully responsible participants in their own life 
Also as I have mentioned numerous times before, there is nothing absolute or guaranteed about this freedom of will  It can certainly be greatly diminished by a great number of things such as drugs, illness, habits, and even beliefs  This just means that we are ill advised to judge others according to our own perception and choices 
DragonFly » April 18th, 2018, 9:54 pm wrote: Other notes on the above are that while we can never know if everything is deterministic, although we know that a lot is, whatever is indeterminate diminishes our modeling and our consistency 
We can know that the experimental results show that there are events not determined by any hidden variables within the scientific worldview  People are free to ignore these results and stubbornly cling to presumptions to the contrary but they are being unreasonable if they expect other people to accept the conclusions which they are deriving from such willfulness 
And to head off the typical strawmen, I am not claiming that determinism has been disproven any more than the scientific evidence for evolution disproves divine intelligent design  Science is not a matter of proof, but of accepting that what the evidence and experimental results show us are the basis of what is reasonable to accept until there is evidence to the contrary 
mitchellmckain » April 21st, 2018, 3:00 pm wrote: But this is wrong, derived from delusional semantics as if "seeing" meant absorbing the objects themselves into our brain and mind  Of course, "seeing" means no such thing  "Seeing" means gathering data to construct a mental model of an external reality  We don't, in fact, "see" this inner model at all  This "model" is a product of speculation and abstraction in meta-conscious process of self-reflection 
Yes, the view point is within the model  We don't literally 'see' across a room  The model gets 'viewed' and navigated and noted and whatnot  The outer reality is not able to be viewed directly but is usefully "looked out at" through a representation  Do you directly see wave frequencies air vibrations, and molecule shapes? I didn't mean 'seeing' in the sense of eye stuff, but I note the word problem 
mitchellmckain » April 21st, 2018, 3:00 pm wrote:
Yes, I was reading a large road sign with many words and the words at the bottom didn't come into focus until I got down to them  Our computers have many more terabytes than the brain has 
mitchellmckain » April 21st, 2018, 3:00 pm wrote: Your philosophical conclusions here will not be mistaken for scientific observations  Your interpretations are based on your own presumptions which I reject as incorrect  The process of human intention and action is certainly a complex one but the fact remains that the first causes do exist  People may be capable of simply watching much of their life pass by as an minimally participating observer (with all sorts of fatalistic and compatibilist dodges and delusions of objectivity), but others choose to take ownership of the first causes within them as a fully responsible participants in their own life 
Total libertarians do claim that they are first cause, self made people at every instant  How does this work? A theory of conscious intentions happening without any underlying physical processes ('you') behind them is the toughest sell of all proposals on the will, so it's no wonder that this 'being free of the will' can't be shown  Plus, why does one want this? Perhaps a distaste for having a will that wills things in the subconscious dark  These trillions of connections firing are not portrayed in consciousness, thank goodness 
Yes, as I said, some is indeterminate, so there is no ignoring  (You don't seem to read well, even when seeing it again when you quote it ) The more indeterminacy the worse we are able to carry our our ability to operate, which minimal and trivial capability is called 'freedom of action'  So be it  We have learned something  People want more than this, though, and so they will have to show that that's possible while still retaining the self/will  How is responsibility gained at any point when one was never responsible for prior causes toward one's being/self that couldn't be chosen?
So, prison time need not be assigned for retribution only, more compassion can be granted for those who did as they had to, and we come to better understand our place in the universe  Life is great for experiencing and living, and fatalism isn't recommended, for it could work against the enjoyment 
P S  There is no point at which ultimate purpose/intention could have been applied to what is eternal, as well as none to be applied to something springing from nothing (which, though impossible, I include for completeness, for the "springing" capability would still be an eternal 'something' )
It's fine with me if you want a fully formed Being with a system of intelligence to be there First, amid nothing else, but to stick to the template of ID, then a Higher ID had to be behind it, etc , or we could just forget about the one-off usage golden template of ID  The universe looks to be tuned, if it is, for mostly a lot of hydrogen gas in endless sparse spaces  It took ten billion years for us to be able to persist a bit in our rarity amid the waste  [/quote]
DragonFly » April 21st, 2018, 3:57 pm wrote:
Yes, as I said, some is indeterminate, so there is no ignoring 
Incorrect  You did not say "some is indeterminate " So either you do not write well, cannot understand the logic of your own words, or you make up things as an excuse to attack other people  In fact, this can be identified with a logical fallacy  "Whatever is indeterminate diminishes our modeling" means our modeling is diminished IF there is anything indeterminate  If A then B does not allow you affirm A, so by equating these two you have committed a logical fallacy  Furthermore it is amazing how far out on a limb you go to concoct such an attack  You said, "we cannot know if everything is deterministic," which is utterly inconsistent with a clam that "some is indeterminate," because if some is indeterminate then you would know that it is NOT deterministic 
DragonFly » April 21st, 2018, 3:57 pm wrote: Total libertarians do claim that they are first cause, self made people at every instant 
The philosophers who claim that we have free actions are called libertarians  The radical opposition that libertarians pose to the determinist position is their acceptance of free actions  Libertarians accept the incompatibility premise that holds agents morally responsible for free actions  Incompatibilism maintains that determinism is incompatible with human freedom  Libertarians accept that there are free actions, and in doing so, believe that we are morally responsible for some of our actions, namely, the free ones 
The libertarian ONLY claims that we do have free will actions and affirm the incompatibility of determinism with free will  There is no claim here that free will is absolute, inviolable, and applies to every action and thus that people are "self made at every instance "
Thus in the following it is clear you are burning an absurd strawman 
DragonFly » April 21st, 2018, 3:57 pm wrote: How does this work? A theory of conscious intentions happening without any underlying physical processes ('you') behind them is the toughest sell of all proposals on the will, so it's no wonder that this 'being free of the will' can't be shown  Plus, why does one want this? Perhaps a distaste for having a will that wills things in the subconscious dark  These trillions of connections firing are not portrayed in consciousness, thank goodness 
Someone only claims the opposition is selling something absurdly silly because they want to make something only slightly less absurd and silly sound reasonable by comparison  But to make sure you understand   
1  Nobody HERE is selling a theory of conscious intention without any underlying physical processes 
2  Nobody HERE is claiming any "being free of the will"
These are indeed nonsense 
1  As a physicalist with regards to the mind-body problem I oppose the idea of conscious intention without any physical processes  Nor would I assert that there are no unconscious processes underlying our conscious intentions  But as I explained in another thread just because there are such processes does not mean we have no responsibility for them or that our intention does not constitute a conscious cause of our action 
2  As a libertarian it is absurd to think free will means freedom from the will  What we reject is the attempt to separate the self from desires and will as if these were some external thing forcing people to do things  This is nothing but pure empty rhetoric on the part of the opposition  Freedom from the will is the OPPOSITE of free will  If you are not acting according to your desire then this is an example of actions without free will 
DragonFly » April 21st, 2018, 3:57 pm wrote: The more indeterminacy the worse we are able to carry our our ability to operate, which minimal and trivial capability is called 'freedom of action' 
Incorrect  This is only because you equate freedom with control  It is not the same thing  Besides the indeterminacy in the laws of physics is only with respect to a system of mathematical laws  It doesn't really say that nothing causes the result, but only that there are no variables to make the exact result calculable 
DragonFly » April 21st, 2018, 3:57 pm wrote: How is responsibility gained at any point when one was never responsible for prior causes toward one's being/self that couldn't be chosen?
Again it is because free will does not equal control  Free will only means you choose how to respond to the situation  It does require an awareness of alternatives, but it does not require an ability to dictate exactly what will happen in the future 
DragonFly » April 21st, 2018, 3:57 pm wrote: So, prison time need not be assigned for retribution only, more compassion can be granted for those who did as they had to, and we come to better understand our place in the universe  Life is great for experiencing and living, and fatalism isn't recommended, for it could work against the enjoyment 
While imprisonment may be an improvement over the old English law, the inadequacies are legion  It was indeed invented as a means of reforming the convicted even if it fails to accomplish this very well  To be sure, "retribution" is a lousy basis for a system of justice  But the point of "mercy" isn't just compassion but to acknowledge the fact that mistakes are part of the process by which we learn  Therefore, coming down on people like a load bricks for any mistake is counterproductive  On the other hand, we would be foolish not to consider whether a person in question is showing any ability to learn from their mistakes  If not, a change of environment/circumstances is probably called for, even if today's prisons largely fail to be environment needed 
Observe that this analysis of justice and mercy has nothing whatsoever to do with free will  The government of a free society should be founded upon what can be objectively established and free will is not one of these things  In the above consideration of justice and mercy, the question of whether a person truly has free will is completely irrelevant 
DragonFly » April 21st, 2018, 3:57 pm wrote: It's fine with me if you want a fully formed Being with a system of intelligence to be there First, amid nothing else, but to stick to the template of ID, then a Higher ID had to be behind it, etc , or we could just forget about the one-off usage golden template of ID  The universe looks to be tuned, if it is, for mostly a lot of hydrogen gas in endless sparse spaces  It took ten billion years for us to be able to persist a bit in our rarity amid the waste 
I consider Intelligent Design to be attack upon science -- shoving theology into a place where it clearly does not belong  Nor do I agree with intelligent design even in theology, for I think that evolution is more compatible with a belief in a loving God (because of the philosophical problem of evil)  Frankly, I consider design to be incompatible with the very essence of what life is 
DragonFly liked this post
Great post, Mitch 
I'm referring to "a lot is determinate", leaving room that some is indeterminate since QM finds this, and some brain doings may be at the micro-macro boundary and be affected, this degrading our ability to operate our intentions 
Here's a "libertarian" example/definition that may fit better:
“Hard Determinism and Libertarianism
Probing further into the free will-debate, we meet two different kinds of incompatibilist positions: hard determinism, which holds that determinism is true and that free will is not compatible with determinism, and libertarianism, which holds that we do have free will and that determinism is false  Given that these positions agree about the definition of determinism, we here actually have a genuine disagreement over fundamental ontological matters – a disagreement about whether determinism is true or not  This is a peculiar question to have strong disagreements about, however, since we know the final answer that we will ever get concerning the truth of determinism: that the state of the world is caused to be the way it is by its prior state at least to some degree, but to what degree exactly can never be known 
The libertarian position has often been criticized with the argument that even if determinism is not true, we still do not have free will, since our actions then simply are the product of a combination of deterministic and indeterministic events that we still do not ultimately choose ourselves, a view referred to as hard incompatibilism  Libertarians do not necessarily accept that this argument shows that we do not have free will, and the reason, or at least a big part of it, should not surprise anyone at this point: they simply define free will differently  According to libertarians, such as Robert Nozick and Robert Kane, one has free will if one could have acted otherwise than one did, and if indeterminism is true, then it may be true that we could have “acted” differently than we did under the exact same circumstances, and that we thereby might have free will in this sense  It should be pointed out, though, that critics of libertarianism are“rightly skeptical about the relevance of this kind of free will  First of all, the free will that libertarians endorse is, unlike what many libertarians seem to think, not an ethically relevant kind of freedom, and it does not have anything to do with the freedom of action that we by definition want  Second, the hard incompatibilist is right that no matter what is true about the degree to which the universe is deterministic, our actions are still caused by prior causes ultimately beyond our own control, which few of those who identify themselves as libertarians seem to want to acknowledge  And lastly, the fact that our actions are caused by causes ultimately beyond our own control does, if we truly appreciated, undermine our intuition of retributive justice, an intuition that libertarians generally seem to want to defend intellectually  So, as many have pointed out already, libertarians are simply on a failed mission 
Together with the want to defend retributive blame and punishment, what seems to be the main motivation for people who defend a libertarian notion of free will seems to be a fear of predeterminism, a fear of there being just one possible outcome from the present state of the universe, which would imply that we ultimately cannot do anything to cause a different outcome than the one possible  Libertarians and others with the same fear have artfully tried to make various models to help them overcome this fear, for instance so-called two-stage models that propose that our choices consist of an indeterministic stage of generation of possible actions, and then our non-random choice of one of them  (It should be noted, in relation to such models, that even if this is how our choices are made, our choice to choose one of these “alternative possibilities” will still be caused by prior causes that are ultimately completely beyond our own control  Nothing changes this fact, again because decision-making is the product of complex physical processes; it is not an uncaused event ) It is generally unclear what the purpose of such models is  Are they a hypotheses we should test? They do not seem to be  Generally, these models most of all seem like an attempt to make the world fit our preconceived intuitions, which most of all resembles pseudoscience 
Fortunately, there is plenty of relief available to the libertarians and other people who have this fear, and it does not involve any unscientific models – neither two-stage, three-stage, nor any other number of stages  The source of this relief is the simple earlier-mentioned fact that we can never know whether there is just one or infinitely many possible outcomes from the present state of the universe  This simple fact gives us all the relief we could ask for, because it reveals that there is no reason to be sure that there is just one possible outcome from the present state of the universe  And, to repeat an important point, we are then left with the conclusion that the only reasonable thing to do is to try to make the best impact we can in the world, which is true no matter whether there is just one possible outcome from the present state of the universe or not, since our actions still have consequences and therefore still matter even in a fully deterministic universe 
Some, especially libertarians, might want to object to the claim that we can never know whether determinism is true or not, and even claim that we in fact now know, or at least have good reasons to believe, that indeterminism is true  Here is neuroscientist Peter Tse expressing something along those lines: “Henceforth, I will accept the weight of evidence from modern physics, and assume ontological indeterminism to be the case ” (Tse, 2013, p  244)  Making this assumption is, however, to take a position on an unanswerable question  Again, rather than making strong claims about this question, we should stick to what we in fact know, namely that we do not know ”
Excerpt From: Magnus Vinding  “Free Will: An Examination of Human Freedom ” iBooks  https://itunes apple com/us/book/free-w     3363?mt=11
To extend the OP's implications of physical processes/causes dominating…
There are still real values in an existence with no ultimate purpose, this 'value' meaning good and bad valences and actions  It would be of great value to lessen suffering and improve well-being in humans and in all species  (Fixed wills are dynamic, simply meaning that they can learn and thus change to a better fixed will )
As for our model of reality, this is consciousness and it is ever our only view point inside the head in a brain, being what it is like to experience the world from the inside out 
by RJG on April 22nd, 2018, 1:07 am
Direct realism is not possible  We humans can only experience 'experiences' (sensations; sense data), not the 'real' things or objects themselves  Furthermore, we have no way of knowing if these experiences represent 'real' objects, or are just simply products of illusion; hallucination, delusion, dream, mirage, etc 
For this reason, solipsism is a possibility (i e  it is just as plausible as it is not), and true self-awareness is not possible (i e  we don't experience objects, including those called 'self')
DragonFly wrote: There is no direct (literal) view of the actual reality 'out there'  Our inner viewport is ever only that of the model (qualia) of inner and outer reality built by the brain  We see/sense nothing but this model made inside the brain 
Braininvat wrote: I invite anyone who thinks that bus hurtling down the street is nothing but a model in the brain to step in front of it 
Isn't it possible to dream or hallucinate stepping out in front of a bus hurtling down the street? This does not mean that the bus (in the dream/hallucination) is actually 'real' 
One does not normally step out in front of a bus (even in dreams) because they think it is not real, - it is the 'fear' (that it might be real, and) being smashed by it, that compels one not to step in front of it 
Braininvat wrote: Your impression of the bus may be indirect, but it has a direct causal chain of connections to the actual bus out there 
Not necessarily  You are assuming there is an "actual" bus out there (instead of a possible "hallucinated" bus)  We have no way of knowing the cause of our mental impressions 
by wolfhnd on April 22nd, 2018, 3:31 am
A bus that we do not step in front of is an extremely low resolution concept of what a bus is  Only the people who design and maintain the bus really know what a bus is at a relatively high resolution  Even then the designer doesn't really know the bus on the street because a bus is not just a collection of parts but takes it's meaning from an even more complex social and physical environment 
If you're a realist you assume that the bus can in theory be defined down to it's subatomic particles and a high resolution image of what it is can be created  The problem is that human perspective such an approach strips meaning from the image 
The other problem is that the kind of truth that a purely scientific approach provides tends to confuse the thing itself with it's mathematical model  The kind of absolutism that math provides is always subjective first because the parameters are always finite but the environment from our perspective is practically infinite and second because the model is an approximation even if 2+2 is always 4  A reductionist approach is a practical necessity that doesn't satisfy the evolutionary imperative for meaning 
The old view that everything can be reduced to cause and effect is itself challenged by the accepted view that determinism itself breaks down at tiny scales  Myself I'm not bothered by the indeterminate because I'm a pragmatist and close enough seems to satisfy practical solutions, scientific issues and philosophical questions  The philosophers goal is to determine what constitutes close enough to preserve life and meaning 
mitchellmckain wrote: If you are not acting according to your desire then this is an example of actions without free will 
If you act according to your desires, then you are it's slave  There is no free-will in slavery 
We don't control our desires  Our desires control us 
by DragonFly on April 22nd, 2018, 10:40 am
“This distinction between subject and object is not just an interesting oddity  It begins at the level of physics in the distinction between the probability inherent in symbolic measurements and the certainty of material laws  The distinction is later exemplified in the difference between a genotype, the sequence of nucleotide symbols that make up an organism’s DNA, and phenotype, its actual physical structure that those symbols prescribe  It travels with us up the evolutionary layers to the distinction between the mind and the brain ”
“These concepts will help us see how neural circuits are structures with a double life: they carry symbolic information, which is subject to arbitrary rules, yet they possess a material structure that is subject to the laws of physics ”
Excerpt From: Michael S  Gazzaniga  “The Consciousness Instinct ” iBooks  https://itunes apple com/us/book/the-co     3607?mt=11
by Neri on April 22nd, 2018, 11:13 am
On this topic, I should like to associate myself with the views of Mitch and BIV and will only add s few additional comments 
The question is not whether our experience is equivalent in every way to what lies outside of us, for such a thing is impossible 
[A perception cannot be exactly the same as a material object, for the former depends upon a sentient being for its existence, whereas the latter does not  Further, it is impossible to know everything that may be predicated of any material object by merely perceiving it ]
The real question is: Do sense impressions correspond to material objects in such a way that they are effective in preserving us from dangers that lie outside of us?
This question veritably answers itself  Only a madman would deny the evidence of his own senses 
It is essential to understand that the correspondence of which I speak depends on the reality of motion [from which we derive the ideas of time and space] 
To keep ourselves safe, it is necessary that we have the ability to know when a material object is moving closer or further from us and to be able to recognize an object as a danger  This, the senses give us, for perceptions like all other experiences are memories [are preserved over time] 
An object is recognized as a danger through prior sensory experiences preserved as long-term memories 
In order to be recognized and remembered as a danger, a material object must have the power to produce a particular human experience of it 
That power is part of the nature of the object and is thus truly reflected in the perception of it—even though there may be more to the object than its power to yield a human perception 
To the reasonable mind, the above comments may properly be seen as statements of the obvious  The curious fact, however, is that a whole school of western philosophy has labored mightily to deny the obvious 
I agree; I'm only delving into the inner experience to see how it works and what may become of that 
by TheVat on April 22nd, 2018, 11:57 am
RJG, this tablet ate the quoted part of your post and somehow hid the submit button, so sorry about the missing comment    
No, I was not assuming the in-the-moment knowledge, but rather that facts about buses are physically verifiable when science is applied  It is not difficult to verify that I was neither dreaming nor hallucinating  We are saved from solipsism by the multiplicity of observers and their reports  We can open a book and read complex prose (something that can't be done in dreams) that reveals areas of knowledge utterly unknown to us and beyond our previous experiences  We have senses enhanced by instruments that can show us photons leaving the photosphere of the sun and bouncing off solid objects like buses in particular and regular patterns, etc  Inner phenomenal reality and external reality are seamlessly connected and interacting - it is only big cranium apes like us who erect a wall of demarcation between them  Or drugs or pathological conditions that disrupt the causal connections 
To say that sensory data is incomplete is not equivalent to saying that it is deceptive  We are deceived only if we imagine that our impressions are complete  Our brains are engineered to find relevant data, not complete data  ("engineered" probably needs quotes)
by TheVat on April 22nd, 2018, 12:00 pm
Had to use Quick Reply window to post the above  Anyone else losing the submit button after Full Editor has been open for a couple minutes?? I will try to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone 
by DragonFly on April 22nd, 2018, 1:58 pm
What else, for now:
“Finally, affective consciousness—emotionally positive and negative feelings—has its own brain circuits, it does not require isomorphic mapping, and it may be experienced as mental states rather than mental images (figure 2 5B; chapters 7 and 8)  Thus, isomorphic maps are only one part of the creation and evolution of subjectivity and “something it is like to be”; many other special and general features (table 2 1) are required to create sensory consciousness and ontological subjectivity ”
“Consciousness-associated attention has several subtypes, including bottom-up (exogenous) versus top-down (endogenous) attention 48 Bottom-up attention is driven by the importance of the incoming stimuli and leads to the animal orienting to things that happen suddenly in the environment  Top-down attention, on the other hand, involves proactive anticipation, maintaining attention by concentration and focusing on goals 
Excerpt From: Todd E  Feinberg  “The Ancient Origins of Consciousness ” iBooks  https://itunes apple com/us/book/the-an     6953?mt=11
by RJG on April 22nd, 2018, 2:58 pm
Neri wrote: The real question is: Do sense impressions correspond to material objects in such a way that they are effective in preserving us from dangers that lie outside of us?
Firstly, we are not consciously aware of the actual causers (the supposed 'real' objects themselves) of these "sense impressions"  We are only consciously aware of the actual "sense impressions" (i e  the actual physical bodily reactions; experiences) themselves,    and of course this is only after they occur (after they impact our body) 
Secondly, we all assume that these "sense impressions" are the result of something 'real' out-there  Whether from a misfiring (hallucinating) brain, or from sensory signals emanating from a real object itself, it is still nonetheless 'real'  We all assume these "sense impressions" are the automatic reaction/response from some 'real' stimuli 
Thirdly, what "preserves us from danger" is NOT the conscious awareness of our sense impressions, but instead, it is the body's automatic RESPONSE to this danger (STIMULI) that "preserves us from danger",    and not the conscious awareness of said response 
Fourthly, if the body auto-responds in a particular way then the likelihood of survivability is enhanced, and if the response is otherwise then it may be diminished 
Neri wrote: To keep ourselves safe, it is necessary that we have the ability to know when a material object is moving closer or further from us and to be able to recognize an object as a danger 
Not so  It is NOT the "knowing" or "recognizing" of the dangerous moving object that "keep ourselves safe"  It is the body's automatic reaction/response to this moving object (stimuli) that "keep ourselves safe" 
Remember, we can only be conscious of (i e  know or recognize) actual bodily reactions/events, and not of other 'external' events  We don't consciously know/recognize how we responded until 'after' we (our body) responds  Our consciousness (knowing/recognizing) is wholly dependent upon our bodily reactions/responses,    NOT the other way around 
Without something (e g  sense impressions; bodily reactions) to be conscious of, then there is no consciousness (   no knowing or recognizing!) 
Braininvat wrote: No, I was not assuming the in-the-moment knowledge, but rather that facts about buses are physically verifiable when science is applied 
Can't one hallucinate they are doing verifiable science?
Braininvat wrote: It is not difficult to verify that I was neither dreaming nor hallucinating   
   We can open a book and read complex prose (something that can't be done in dreams) that reveals areas of knowledge utterly unknown to us and beyond our previous experiences 
I'm not so confident/convinced of this  Have you seen the movie "A Beautiful Mind"?    or have had family members with mental issues?
Braininvat wrote: We are saved from solipsism by the multiplicity of observers and their reports   
   We have senses enhanced by instruments that can show us photons leaving the photosphere of the sun and bouncing off solid objects like buses in particular and regular patterns, etc  Inner phenomenal reality and external reality are seamlessly connected and interacting - it is only big cranium apes like us who erect a wall of demarcation between them 
Isn't it possible to hallucinate these "multiple observers and their reports",    and their "instrumentation" results?
Other than by 'blind faith', how can one really know that their perceptions are the 'true' representations of reality?    I think it is not possible,    I think we can only 'hope' that our personal view is of reality itself 
We can't perceive beyond our current ("suspect") perceptions 
How about that the 'knowing' is done by the brain that built the qualia showing the danger, for the brain thus already has the information available, in whatever form it uses to 'know' 
by TheVat on April 22nd, 2018, 4:50 pm
Isnt it possible to hallucinate these "multiple observers and their reports",    and their "instrumentation" results?
- RJG
For me, that level of arch-skepticism is an epistemic doldrums zone  As David Hume famously observed about a conference on epistemology on Europe, "on finishing their discussion, the participants all departed by means of the doors  " (or similar; don't have exact quote handy ATM)
Whenever I write numbers in dreams they change as I write them and when I read it often fills up with garbage 
I've been lucidly inspecting my dreams  Some flaws are that bugs appear as triangles  Yesterday, I was going to eat in a cafeteria but you had to bring your own plates from home, so I already suspected something  I did find a pile of plates and took one, but I was soon somehow holding the whole pile, which then happened again and again, so, as in these stuck cases, I clench my whole body and that wakes me up  Other times, for lesser problems or to be sure of the dream state, I am able to open one eye and see the window and then go back to the dream  And sometimes the dream perfectly shows an entire scene in fabulous detail, such as a mid summer dusk, with even those whirly things floating through the air 
by mitchellmckain on April 23rd, 2018, 4:00 am
DragonFly » April 20th, 2018, 2:14 pm wrote: The model seems to be super real,
To me, that seems like a completely nonsensical thing to say to  "Seems real" compared to what? By the only standard we have, it is real, for it is the only standard which we have for making such a measurement  What you say is practically Platonic in the implied imagination of some greater reality somewhere else 
DragonFly » April 20th, 2018, 2:14 pm wrote: So, in sum so far, direct realism is an illusion, but is a very useful illusion, which we might better call a fine representation by the model, since the word 'illusion' is more about what's wrong as not really showing its object as substantial and really being behind it 
In philosophy of mind, naïve realism, also known as direct realism or common sense realism, is the idea that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are  Objects obey the laws of physics and retain all their properties whether or not there is anyone to observe them [1] They are composed of matter, occupy space and have properties, such as size, shape, texture, smell, taste and colour, that are usually perceived correctly 
In contrast, some forms of idealism claim that no world exists apart from mind-dependent ideas, and some forms of skepticism say we cannot trust our senses  Naïve realism is known as direct as against indirect or representative realism when its arguments are developed to counter the latter position, also known as epistemological dualism;[2] that our conscious experience is not of the real world but of an internal representation of the world 
There is nothing of illusion in direct realism  There is only the foolish rhetoric implying that "direct" in "direct realism" means absorbing the actual object rather than data from those objects  The data IS from actual objects and does provide awareness of actual objects obeying the laws of physics  The implication that anyone is confusing the awareness of an object with the object itself is just ridiculous  Instead you can say that the process of perception is what makes illusions possible  Because we are interpreting data, then it is entirely possible for similar data to suggest something other than what is the case, such as the impression of water from a mirage -- at least until we learn the distinctions 
When you consider the philosophical alternative, plastering the word "illusion" on direct realism implies that idealism is the reality beneath it  And that is an implication I would refute most heatedly  As for indirect realism, as I explained above, I think it is carrying things too far to say that we are experiencing the model instead of reality  Instead I would limits the validity only to the idea that we use a model in the process of perception  In that sense you could say my position is in-between that of direct realism and indirect realism 
DragonFly » April 20th, 2018, 2:14 pm wrote: Dreams, then, would be better called illusions; further they demonstrate the power of the structure of the model  When we inspects objects in dreams they look just as good as when we see them awake, although backgrounds come and go inconsistently and there are narrative gaps (all of a sudden we are driving a vehicle without ever having gotten into it, plus the controls are a mystery )
I think it is unwise to make generalizations about dreams in such a manner  That is not my experience of dreams at all  My impression is that dreams consist of a mental (linguistic) narrative using memory to fill in the details  The only uniqueness in such experiences are the irrational combinations and discontinuities  Because of this, I have no sense this is anywhere near as good as when we see things awake, when we are interpreting fresh new sensory data  For me, this imparts a considerably dim character to the dream experience 
For me dreams are rather comparable to when I envision scenarios for my books  I see them in my mind's eye but not in a manner that is remotely comparable to my experience of reality through the senses  I am not suggesting that everyone experiences dreams this way  On the contrary, the phenomenon of schizophrenia suggests to me that some people can see things in their minds eye with the same vividness of the senses, for otherwise, how can they not know the difference?
DragonFly » April 20th, 2018, 2:14 pm wrote: Another illusion is the feeling of having all of the information in a qualia scene as instantly available, as well as feeling that it is all happening in real time, plus that one is directing it all right then and there 
Calling this illusion is a gross exaggeration  At most it is simply approximation 
by DragonFly on April 23rd, 2018, 11:37 am
'Imagination' (say, of things to happen in a book,) uses the model, too, but the scenes are about 90% transparent, probably so they don't get in the way of the real scenes about 
by DragonFly on April 23rd, 2018, 2:51 pm
Boggling idea of the Subject/Object Cut…
“The Schnitt and the Origins of Life
Physicists refer to the inescapable separation of a subject (the measurer) from an object (the measured) as die Schnitt  (What a great word!) Pattee calls “this unavoidable conceptual separation of the knower and the known, or the symbolic record of an event and the event itself, the epistemic cut 
There is a world of actions that exists on the side of the observer with the observer’s record of an event  There is also a separate world of actions on the side of the event itself  This sounds confusing, but think of the explanatory gap between your subjective experience of an event (I had so much fun body-surfing) and the event itself (A person went swimming in the ocean)  Alternately, you can think of the explanatory gap between the same subjective experience (This is fun) and the goings-on within the brain (Some neurons fired while a person was swimming in the ocean)  These are all just versions of the subject/object complementarity seen in physics  Here is the really wild part: Who’s measuring the events? To examine the difference between a person’s subjective experience and objective reality, do we need a scientist? Who’s measuring the scientist?
Pattee points out that neither classical nor quantum theory formally defines the subject, that is, the agent or observer that determines what is measured  Physics, therefore, does not say where to make the epistemic cut 4 Quantum measurement does not need a physicist-observer, however  Pattee argues that other things can perform quantum measurements  For example, enzymes (such as DNA polymerases) can act as measurement agents, performing quantum measurement during a cell’s replication process  No human observer is needed 
For Schrödinger, the joke was on us  He was trying to point out that there is something missing in our understanding  Pattee got it (in high school) and buckled down to attack the problem  Where should we put the cut, the gap, die Schnitt? With his consuming interest in the origins of life, he came to realize that human consciousness was way too high a layer in the architecture of all living organisms to put the epistemic cut between the observer and the observed, between the subjective experience and the event itself  There are umpteen layers between subatomic particles and human brains  There are plenty of layers between subatomic particles and brains in general (cat or mouse or fly or worm)  Putting the major epistemic cut that high led to the nonsense of Schrödinger’s cat existing as a quantum system  There was no pussyfooting around for Pattee: “I have taken the point of view that the question of what constitutes an observation in quantum mechanics must arise long before we reach the complexity of the brain  In fact, I propose … that the gap between quantum and classical behavior is inherent in the distinction between inanimate and living matter 
There you have it  Pattee proposes that the gap resulted from a process equivalent to quantum measurement that began with self-replication at the origin of life with the cell as the simplest agent  The epistemic cut, the subject/object cut, the mind/matter cut, all are rooted to that original cut at the origin of life  The gap between subjective feeling and objective neural firings didn’t come about with the appearance of brains  It was already there when the first cell started living  Two complementary modes of behavior, two levels of description are inherent in life itself, were present at the origin of life, have been conserved by evolution, and continue to be necessary for differentiating subjective experience from the event itself  That is a mind-boggling idea ”
by mitchellmckain on April 24th, 2018, 1:06 pm
The "like" on the above post is not to be construed as complete agreement with conclusions, but rather more with an abundant approval of the questions and issues raised 
DragonFly » April 23rd, 2018, 1:51 pm wrote: Boggling idea of the Subject/Object Cut…
Absolute agreement here! I have always considered quantum interpretations linking quantum decoherence with human consciousness to be absurd -- with one exception  The one interpretation which makes this link and is not absurd is the Everett Interpretation  THOUGH, I would not count this in its favor! Furthermore, it isn't actually necessary to the Everett Interpretation, for it is quite possible to shift the locus of the decoherence in this interpetation to agree with other interpretations 
DragonFly » April 23rd, 2018, 1:51 pm wrote: For Schrödinger, the joke was on us  He was trying to point out that there is something missing in our understanding 
Agreed! That is how I have always understood the Schrödinger cat thought experiment  It was not to seriously propose the existence of dead-alive cats but to highlight the absurdities which come from the way that quantum physics was usually being presented 
DragonFly » April 23rd, 2018, 1:51 pm wrote: Pattee got it (in high school) and buckled down to attack the problem  Where should we put the cut, the gap, die Schnitt? With his consuming interest in the origins of life, he came to realize that human consciousness was way too high a layer in the architecture of all living organisms to put the epistemic cut between the observer and the observed, between the subjective experience and the event itself  There are umpteen layers between subatomic particles and human brains  There are plenty of layers between subatomic particles and brains in general (cat or mouse or fly or worm)  Putting the major epistemic cut that high led to the nonsense of Schrödinger’s cat existing as a quantum system  There was no pussyfooting around for Pattee: “I have taken the point of view that the question of what constitutes an observation in quantum mechanics must arise long before we reach the complexity of the brain  In fact, I propose … that the gap between quantum and classical behavior is inherent in the distinction between inanimate and living matter 
And here is where we have a disagreement  While I totally appreciate pushing many things such as consciousness, learning, and creativity down to the lowest levels of the divide between the living and nonliving, I personally do not believe that this has anything whatsoever to do with the quantum measurement problem 
DragonFly » April 23rd, 2018, 1:51 pm wrote: There you have it  Pattee proposes that the gap resulted from a process equivalent to quantum measurement that began with self-replication at the origin of life with the cell as the simplest agent 
Furthermore, I think this focus on self-replication as the divide between the living and non-living may be a little behind the times  Metabolism first theories of abiogenesis and the study of prebiotic evolution strongly suggest that key features of the life process are located way before the development of self-replicating molecules such as RNA and DNA  On the other hand, perhaps this idea of self-replication can be extended to processes in prebiotic evolution in which there is a catalysis of chemical reactions which replenish the chemical components  After all, self-maintenance is a definitive feature of the life process and would suggest that any life process must include the regeneration of its components 
DragonFly » April 23rd, 2018, 1:51 pm wrote: The epistemic cut, the subject/object cut, the mind/matter cut, all are rooted to that original cut at the origin of life  The gap between subjective feeling and objective neural firings didn’t come about with the appearance of brains  It was already there when the first cell started living  Two complementary modes of behavior, two levels of description are inherent in life itself, were present at the origin of life, have been conserved by evolution, and continue to be necessary for differentiating subjective experience from the event itself  That is a mind-boggling idea ”
This would only work if you can make a logical connection with this definitive feature of life in a process of self maintenance  I have already suggested a connection between this and consciousness by pointing out that self maintenance requires some kind of awareness of self, both as it is and as it "should be " Without some sort of "should be" in some form there can be no self-maintenance  It should be noted that there are numerous quantitative features to this, such as the clarity with which this goal of self as it "should be" is represented, the determination/flexibility with which it is adhered to (or in other words the range of circumstances which can be handled in holding to this goal) 
by TheVat on April 24th, 2018, 1:52 pm
It seems likely a paramecium does no representing to a self, and is pretty much a cellular machine lacking sentience 
A paramecium is not full of Schnitt  It is not measuring or having goals or anything else  It is an automaton  To think otherwise would be to invite some sort of Bergsonian "elan vital" or other dualistic essence 
The problem with the term "observation" is that it's prejudicial in common parlance  It implies some sort of sentient observer  It implies a subjective aspect  So a more neutral term would be needed when a microbe registers a chance in its environment and contracts or expands or fires up the cilia or dumps the vacuoles or whatever  Or when a Bose Einstein condensate loses its coherence in a wet noisy puddle 
Braininvat » April 24th, 2018, 12:52 pm wrote: It seems likely a paramecium does no representing to a self, and is pretty much a cellular machine lacking sentience 
But it is not a machine for the simple reason that it is not a product of design  The only reasons for which it does things are its own reasons  It is a product of self organization, and the learning process which is evolution 
I certainly agree with the term "biological machinery," which is to say that there is no reason to distinguish things simply on the basis that one uses the interactions of organic chemistry  Thus I think the locus of difference between the living organism and the machine has to do with origins whether it is by design or by learning, evolution, and self-organization 
Braininvat » April 24th, 2018, 12:52 pm wrote: The problem with the term "observation" is that it's prejudicial in common parlance  It implies some sort of sentient observer  It implies a subjective aspect  So a more neutral term would be needed when a microbe registers a chance in its environment and contracts or expands or fires up the cilia or dumps the vacuoles or whatever 
But the problem with this is that the prejudice in language goes both ways with the presumption of an uncrossable divide between the sentient and the non-sentient, when all the evidence points to a continuum going all the way from the non-living to the living to the sentient  And this is not a linear continuum but a rapidly branching tree with many capabilities somewhat arbitrarily (or rather anthropomorphically) lumped into this term "sentience "
Context 3: 3 (C), 141 9 (C), 141 8 (C), 141 2 (C), 138 2 (C), 136 5 (C), 127 0 (CH), 126 9 (CH), 126 7 (CH), 126 6 (CH), 125 3 (CH), 125 2 (CH), 123 6 (CH), 122 2 (CH), 119 9 (CH), 118 4 (CH), 37 4 (CH2), 36 3 (CH2) ppm MS (APCI) m/z (%): 254 (M+, 88) HRMS: C20H14; calculated: 254 1090, found: 254 1090 

abstract

Indenofluorenes are non-benzenoid conjugated hydrocarbons that have received great interest owing to their unusual electronic structure and potential applications in nonlinear optics and photovoltaics  Here, we report the generation of unsubstituted indeno[1,2-a]fluorene, the final and yet unreported parent indenofluorene regioisomer, on various surfaces by cleavage of two C-H bonds in 7,12-dihydro indeno[1,2-a]fluorene through voltage pulses applied by the tip of a combined scanning tunneling microscope and atomic force microscope 
On bilayer NaCl on Au(111), indeno[1,2a]fluorene is in the neutral charge state, while it exhibits charge bistability between neutral and anionic states on the lower work function surfaces of bilayer NaCl on Ag(111) and Cu(111)  In the neutral state, indeno[1,2-a]fluorene exhibits either of two ground states: an open-shell π-diradical state, predicted to be a triplet by density functional and multireference many-body perturbation theory calculations, or a closedshell state with a para-quinodimethane moiety in the as-indacene core 
Switching between open-and closed-shell states of a single molecule is observed by changing its adsorption site on NaCl  The inclusion of non-benzenoid carbocyclic rings is a viable route to tune the physicochemical properties of polycyclic conjugated hydrocarbons (PCHs)   Non-benzenoid polycycles may lead to local changes in strain, conjugation, aromaticity, and, relevant to the context of the present work, induce an open-shell ground state of the corresponding PCHs  
Many nonbenzenoid PCHs are also non-alternant, where the presence of odd-membered polycycles breaks the bipartite symmetry of the molecular network   Figure shows classical examples of non-benzenoid non-alternant PCHs, namely, pentalene, azulene and heptalene  Whereas azulene is a stable PCH exhibiting Hückel aromaticity ([4n+2] π-electrons, n = 2), pentalene and heptalene are unstable Hückel antiaromatic compounds with [4n] π-electrons, n = 2 (pentalene) and n = 3 (heptalene) 
Benzinterposition of pentalene generates indacenes, consisting of two isomers s-indacene and as-indacene (Fig  )  Apart from being antiaromatic, indacenes also contain proaromatic quinodimethane (QDM) moieties (Fig  ) , which endows them with potential open-shell character  While the parent s-indacene and asindacene have never been isolated, stable derivatives of s-indacene bearing bulky substituents have been synthesized  
A feasible strategy to isolate congeners of otherwise unstable non-benzenoid non-alternant PCHs is through fusion of benzenoid rings at the ends of the π-system, that is, benzannelation  For example, while the parent pentalene is unstable, the benzannelated congener indeno[2,1-a]indene is stable under ambient conditions (Fig  )  
However, the position of benzannelation is crucial for stability: although indeno[2,1a]indene is stable, its regioisomer indeno[1,2-a]indene (Fig  ) oxidizes under ambient conditions   Similarly, benzannelation of indacenes gives rise to the family of PCHs known as indenofluorenes (Fig  ), which constitute the topic of the present work 
Depending on the benzannelation position and the indacene core, five regioisomers can be constructed, namely, indeno [ Practical interest in indenofluorenes stems from their low frontier orbital gap and excellent electrochemical characteristics that render them as useful components in organic electronic devices  
The potential open-shell character of indenofluorenes has led to several theoretical studies on their use as non-linear optical materials and as candidates for singlet fission in organic photovoltaics   Recent theoretical work has also shown that indenofluorene-based ladder polymers may exhibit fractionalized excitations 
Fundamentally, indenofluorenes represent model systems to study the interplay between aromaticity and magnetism at the molecular scale   Motivated by many of these prospects, the last decade has witnessed intensive synthetic efforts toward the realization of indenofluorenes  Derivatives of 1-4 have been realized in solution , while 1-3 have also been synthesized on surfaces and characterized using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), which provide information on molecular orbital densities , molecular structure and oxidation state  
With regards to the open-shell character of indenofluorenes, 2-4 are theoretically and experimentally interpreted to be closed-shell, while calculations indicate that 1 and 5 should exhibit open-shell ground states   Bulk characterization of mesitylsubstituted 1, including X-ray crystallography, temperature-dependent NMR, and electron spin resonance spectroscopy, provided indications of its open-shell ground state  
Electronic characterization of 1 on Au(111) surface using scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) revealed a low electronic gap of 0 4 eV (ref  )  However, no experimental proof of an openshell ground state of 1 on Au(111), such as detection of singly occupied molecular orbitals (SOMOs) or spin excitations and correlations due to unpaired electrons , was shown 
In this work, we report the generation and characterization of unsubstituted 5  Our research is motivated by theoretical calculations that indicate 5 to exhibit the largest diradical character among all indenofluorene isomers   The same calculations also predict that 5 should possess a triplet ground state 
Therefore, 5 would qualify as a Kekulé triplet, of which only a handful of examples exist   However, definitive synthesis of 5 has never been reported so far  Previously, Dressler et al  reported transient isolation of mesityl-substituted 5, where it decomposed both in the solution and in solid state , and only the structural proof of the corresponding dianion was obtained 
On-surface generation of a derivative of 5, starting from truxene as a precursor, was recently reported   STM data on this compound, containing the indeno[1,2-a]fluorene moiety as part of a larger PCH, was interpreted to indicate its open-shell ground state  However, the results did not imply the ground state of unsubstituted 5  Here, we show that on insulating surfaces 5 can exhibit either of two ground states: an open-shell or a closed-shell 
We infer the existence of these two ground states based on high-resolution AFM imaging with bond-order discrimination and STM imaging of molecular orbital densities   AFM imaging reveals molecules with two different geometries  Characteristic bond-order differences in the two geometries concur with the geometry of either an open-or a closed-shell state 
Concurrently, STM images at ionic resonances show molecular orbital densities corresponding to SOMOs for the open-shell geometry, but orbital densities of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) for the closed-shell geometry  Our experimental results are in good agreement with density functional theory (DFT) and multireference perturbation theory calculations 
Finally, we observe switching between open-and closed-shell states of a single molecule by changing its adsorption site on the surface  Synthetic strategy toward indeno[1,2-a]fluorene  The generation of 5 relies on the solution-phase synthesis of the precursor 7,12-dihydro indeno[1,2-a]fluorene (6)  Details on synthesis and characterization of 6 are reported in Supplementary Figs 
  Single molecules of 6 are deposited on coinage metal (Au(111), Ag(111) and Cu(111)) or insulator surfaces  In our work, insulating surfaces correspond to two monolayer-thick (denoted as bilayer) NaCl on coinage metal surfaces  Voltage pulses ranging between 4-6 V are applied by the tip of a combined STM/AFM system, which result in cleavage of one C-H bond at each of the pentagonal apices of 6, thereby leading to the generation of 5 (Fig  ) 
In the main text, we focus on the generation and characterization of 5 on insulating surfaces  Generation and characterization of 5 on coinage metal surfaces is shown in Supplementary Fig    )  Blue and orange colors represent spin up and spin down densities, respectively  c, Probability density of the SOMOs of 5OS (isovalue: 0 001 e -Å -3 ) 
d, DFT-calculated bond lengths of 5OS  e, Constant-height I(V) spectra acquired on a species of 5 assigned as 5OS, along with the corresponding dI/dV(V) spectra  Open feedback parameters: V = -2 V, I = 0 17 pA (negative bias side) and V = 2 V, I = 0 17 pA (positive bias side)  Acquisition position of the spectra is shown in Supplementary Fig    f, Scheme of many-body transitions associated to the measured ionic resonances of 5OS 
Also shown are STM images of assigned 5OS at biases where the corresponding transitions become accessible  Scanning parameters: I = 0 3 pA (V = -1 2 V and -1 5 V) and 0 2 pA (V = 1 3 V and 1 6 V)  g, Laplace-filtered AFM image of assigned 5OS  STM set point: V = 0 2 V, I = 0 5 pA on bilayer NaCl, Δz = -0 3
Å  The tip-height offset Δz for each panel is provided with respect to the STM setpoint, and positive (negative) values of Δz denote tip approach (retraction) from the STM setpoint  f and g show the same molecule at the same adsorption site, which is next to a trilayer NaCl island  The bright and dark features in the trilayer NaCl island in g correspond to Cl -and Na + ions, respectively 
Scale bars: 10 Å (f) and 5 Å (g)  To experimentally explore the electronic structure of 5, we used bilayer NaCl films on coinage metal surfaces to electronically decouple the molecule from the metal surfaces  Before presenting the experimental findings, we summarize the results of our theoretical calculations performed on 5 in the neutral charge state (denoted as 5 0 ) 
We start by performing DFT calculations on 5 0 in the gas phase  Geometry optimization performed at the spin-unrestricted UB3LYP/6-31G level of theory leads to one local minimum, 5OS, the geometry of which corresponds to the open-shell resonance structure of 5 (Fig  , the label OS denotes open-shell) 
The triplet electronic configuration of 5OS is the lowest-energy state, with the openshell singlet configuration 90 meV higher in energy  Geometry optimization performed at the restricted closed-shell RB3LYP/6-31G level reveals two local minima, 5para and 5ortho, the geometries of which (Fig  ) exhibit bond length alternations in line with the presence of a para-or an ortho-QDM moiety, respectively, in the as-indacene core of the closed-shell resonance structures of 5 (Fig  )  
Relative to 5OS in the triplet configuration, 5para and 5ortho are 0 40 and 0 43 eV higher in energy, respectively  Additional DFT results are shown in Supplementary Fig    To gain more accurate insights into the theoretical electronic structure of 5, we performed multireference perturbation theory calculations (Supplementary Fig  ) based on quasi-degenerate second-order n-electron valence state perturbation theory (QD-NEVPT2) 
In so far as the order of the ground and excited states are concerned, the results of QD-NEVPT2 calculations qualitatively match with DFT calculations  For 5OS, the triplet configuration remains the lowest-energy state, with the open-shell singlet configuration 60 meV higher in energy  The energy differences between the open-and closed-shell states are substantially reduced in QD-NEVPT2 calculations, with 5para and 5ortho only 0 11 and 0 21 eV higher in energy, respectively, compared to 5OS in the triplet configuration 
We also performed nucleus-independent chemical shift calculations to probe local aromaticity of 5 in the openand closed-shell states  While 5OS in the triplet configuration exhibits local aromaticity at the terminal benzenoid rings, 5OS in the open-shell singlet configuration, 5para and 5ortho all display antiaromaticity (Supplementary Fig  ) 
The choice of the insulating surface determines the charge state of 5: while 5 adopts neutral charge state on the high work function bilayer NaCl/Au(111) surface (irrespective of its openor closed-shell state, Supplementary Fig  ), 5 exhibits charge bistability between 5 0 and the anionic state 5 -1 on the lower work function bilayer NaCl/Ag(111) and Cu(111) surfaces (Supplementary Figs  ) 
In the main text, we focus on the characterization of 5 on bilayer NaCl/Au(111)  Characterization of charge bistable 5 is reported in Supplementary Figs    We first describe experiments on 5 on bilayer NaCl/Au(111), where 5 exhibits a geometry corresponding to the calculated 5OS geometry, and an open-shell electronic configuration 
We compare the experimental data on this species to calculations on 5OS with a triplet configuration, as theory predicts a triplet ground state for 5OS  For 5OS, the calculated frontier orbitals correspond to the SOMOs ψ1 and ψ2 (Fig  ), whose spin up levels are occupied and the spin down levels are empty 
Figure shows the DFT-calculated bond lengths of 5OS, where the two salient features, namely, the small difference in the bond lengths within each ring and the notably longer bond lengths in the pentagonal rings, agree with the open-shell resonance structure of 5 (Fig  )  Figure shows an AFM image of 5 adsorbed on bilayer NaCl/Au(111) that we assign as 5OS, where the bond-order differences qualitatively correspond to the calculated 5OS geometry (discussed and compared to the closed-shell state below) 
Differential conductance spectra (dI/dV(V), where I and V denote the tunneling current and bias voltage, respectively) acquired on assigned 5OS exhibit two peaks centered at -1 5 V and 1 6 V (Fig  ), which we assign to the positive and negative ion resonances (PIR and NIR), respectively  Figure shows the corresponding STM images acquired at the onset (V = -1 2
V/1 3 V) and the peak (V = -1 5 V/1 6 V) of the ionic resonances



ground_truth: It becomes a bit less so that what's off to the left or right can be better noted.

prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What are the two ground states observed for indeno[1,2-a]fluorene on NaCl surfaces?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 3:  To draw a correspondence between the STM images and the molecular orbital densities, we consider tunneling events as many-body electronic transitions between different charge states of 5OS (Fig  )  Within this framework, the PIR corresponds to transitions between 5 0 and the cationic state 5  
At the onset of the PIR at -1 2 V, an electron can only be detached from the SOMO ψ1 and the corresponding STM image at -1 2 V shows the orbital density of ψ1  Increasing the bias to the peak of the PIR at -1 5 V, it becomes possible to also empty the SOMO ψ2, such that the corresponding STM image shows the superposition of ψ1 and ψ2, that is, |ψ1| 2 + |ψ2| 2 (ref 
)  Similarly, the NIR corresponds to transitions between 5 0 and 5 -1   At the NIR onset of 1 3 V, only electron attachment to ψ2 is energetically possible  At 1 6 V, electron attachment to ψ1 also becomes possible, and the corresponding STM image shows the superposition of ψ1 and ψ2  The observation of the orbital densities of SOMOs, and not the hybridized HOMO and LUMO, proves the open-shell ground state of assigned 5OS 
Measurements of the monoradical species with a doublet ground state are shown in Supplementary Fig    Unexpectedly, another species of 5 was also experimentally observed that exhibited a closedshell ground state  In contrast to 5OS, where the frontier orbitals correspond to the SOMOs ψ1 and ψ2, DFT calculations predict orbitals of different shapes and symmetries for 5para and 5ortho, denoted as α and β and shown in Fig   
For 5ortho, α and β correspond to HOMO and LUMO, respectively  The orbitals are inverted in energy and occupation for 5para, where β is the HOMO and α is the LUMO  Fig  shows an AFM image of 5 that we assign as 5para  We experimentally infer its closed-shell state first by using qualitative bond order discrimination by AFM 
In high-resolution AFM imaging, chemical bonds with higher bond order are imaged brighter (that is, with higher frequency shift Δf) due to stronger repulsive forces, and they appear shorter   In Fig  , we label seven bonds whose bond orders show significant qualitative differences in the calculated 5ortho, 5para (Fig  ) and 5OS (Fig  ) geometries 
In 5para, the bonds b and d exhibit a higher bond order than a and c, respectively  This pattern is reversed for 5ortho, while the bond orders of the bonds a-d are all similar and small for 5OS  Furthermore, in 5para bond f exhibits a higher bond order than e, while in 5ortho and 5OS bonds e and f exhibit similar bond order (because they belong to Clar sextets) 
Finally, the bond labeled g shows a higher bond order in 5para than in 5ortho and 5OS  The AFM image of assigned 5para shown in Fig  indicates higher bond orders of the bonds b, d and f compared to a, c and e, respectively  In addition, the bond g appears almost point-like and with enhanced Δf contrast compared to its neighboring bonds, indicative of a high bond order (see Supplementary Fig  for height-dependent measurements) 
These observations concur with the calculated 5para geometry (Fig  )  Importantly, all these distinguishing bond-order differences are distinctly different in the AFM image of 5OS shown in Fig  , which is consistent with the calculated 5OS geometry (Fig  )  In the AFM images of 5OS (Fig  and Supplementary Fig  ), the bonds a-d at the pentagon apices appear with similar contrast and apparent bond length 
The bonds e and f at one of the terminal benzenoid rings also exhibit similar contrast and apparent bond length, while the central bond g appears longer compared to assigned 5para  Further compelling evidence for the closed-shell state of assigned 5para is obtained by STM and STS  dI/dV(V) spectra acquired on an assigned 5para species exhibit two peaks centered at -1 4 V (PIR) and 1 6 V (NIR) (Fig  ) 
STM images acquired at these biases (Fig  ) show the orbital densities of β (-1 4 V) and α (1 6 V)  First, the observation of α and β as the frontier orbitals of this species, and not the SOMOs, strongly indicates its closed-shell state  Second, consistent with AFM measurements that indicate good correspondence to the calculated 5para geometry, we observe β as the HOMO and α as the LUMO 
For 5ortho, α should be observed as the HOMO and β as the LUMO  We did not observe molecules with the signatures of 5ortho in our experiments  We observed molecules in open-(5OS, Fig  ) and closed-shell (5para, Fig  ) states in similar occurrence after their generation from 6 on the surface  We could also switch individual molecules between open-and closed-shell states as shown in Fig  and Supplementary Fig   
To this end, a change in the adsorption site of a molecule was induced by STM imaging at ionic resonances, which often resulted in movement of the molecule  The example presented in Fig  shows a molecule that was switched from 5para to 5OS and back to 5para  The switching is not directed, that is, we cannot choose which of the two species will be formed when changing the adsorption site, and we observed 5OS and 5para in approximately equal yields upon changing the adsorption site 
The molecule in Fig  is adsorbed on top of a defect that stabilizes its adsorption geometry on bilayer NaCl  At defect-free adsorption sites on bilayer NaCl, that is, without a third layer NaCl island or atomic defects in the vicinity of the molecule, 5 could be stably imaged neither by AFM nor by STM at ionic resonances (Supplementary Fig  ) 
Without changing the adsorption site, the state of 5 (open-or closedshell) never changed, including the experiments on bilayer NaCl/Ag(111) and Cu(111), on which the charge state of 5 could be switched (Supplementary Figs  )  Also on these lower work function surfaces, both open-and closed-shell species were observed for 5 0 and both showed charge bistability between 5 0 (5OS or 5para) and 5 -1 (Supplementary Figs  ) 
The geometrical structure of 5 -1 probed by AFM, and its electronic structure probed by STM imaging at the NIR (corresponding to transitions between 5 -1 and the dianionic state 5 -2 ), are identical within the measurement accuracy for the charged species of both 5OS and 5para  When cycling the charge state of 5 between 5 0 and 5 -1 several times, we always observed the same state (5OS or 5para) when returning to 5 0 , provided the molecule did not move during the charging/discharging process 
Based on our experimental observations we conclude that indeno[1,2-a]fluorene (5), the last unknown indenofluorene isomer, can be stabilized in and switched between an open-shell (5OS) and a closed-shell (5para) state on NaCl  For the former, both DFT and QD-NEVPT2 calculations predict a triplet electronic configuration 
Therefore, 5 can be considered to exhibit the spin-crossover effect, involving magnetic switching between high-spin (5OS) and low-spin (5para) states, coupled with a reversible structural transformation  So far, the spin-crossover effect has mainly only been observed in transition-metal-based coordination compounds with a near-octahedral geometry  
The observation that the switching between open-and closedshell states is related to changes in the adsorption site but is not achieved by charge-state cycling alone, indicates that the NaCl surface and local defects facilitate different electronic configurations of 5 depending on the adsorption site 
Gas-phase QD-NEVPT2 calculations predict that 5OS is the ground state, and the closed-shell 5para and 5ortho states are 0 11 and 0 21 eV higher in energy  The experiments, showing bidirectional switching between 5OS and 5para, indicate that a change in the adsorption site can induce sufficient change in the geometry of 5 (leading to a corresponding change in the ground state electronic configuration) and thus induce switching 
Switching between open-and closed-shell states in 5 does not require the breaking or formation of covalent bonds , but a change of adsorption site on NaCl where the molecule is physisorbed  Our results should have implications for single-molecule devices, capitalizing on the altered electronic and chemical properties of a system in π-diradical open-shell and closed-shell states such as frontier orbital and singlet-triplet gaps, and chemical reactivity 
For possible future applications as a single-molecule switch, it might be possible to also switch between open-and closed-shell states by changing the local electric field, such as by using chargeable adsorbates   Scanning probe microscopy measurements and sample preparation  STM and AFM measurements were performed in a home-built system operating at base pressures below 1×10 -10 mbar and a base temperature of 5 K  Bias voltages are provided with respect to the sample 
All STM, AFM and spectroscopy measurements were performed with carbon monoxide (CO) functionalized tips  AFM measurements were performed in non-contact mode with a qPlus sensor   The sensor was operated in frequency modulation mode with a constant oscillation amplitude of 0 5 Å  STM measurements were performed in constantcurrent mode, AFM measurements were performed in constant-height mode with V = 0 V, and I(V) and Δf(V) spectra were acquired in constant-height mode 
Positive (negative) values of the tip-height offset Δz represent tip approach (retraction) from the STM setpoint  All dI/dV(V) spectra are obtained by numerical differentiation of the corresponding I(V) spectra  STM and AFM images, and spectroscopy curves, were post-processed using Gaussian low-pass filters 
Au(111), Ag(111) and Cu(111) surfaces were cleaned by iterative cycles of sputtering with Ne + ions and annealing up to 800 K  NaCl was thermally evaporated on Au(111), Ag(111) and Cu(111) surfaces held at 323 K, 303 K and 283 K, respectively  This protocol results in the growth of predominantly bilayer (100)-terminated islands, with a minority of trilayer islands 
Sub-monolayer coverage of 6 on surfaces was obtained by flashing an oxidized silicon wafer containing the precursor molecules in front of the cold sample in the microscope  CO molecules for tip functionalization were dosed from the gas phase on the cold sample  Density functional theory calculations  DFT was employed using the PSI4 program package  
All molecules with different charge (neutral and anionic) and electronic (open-and closed-shell) states were independently investigated in the gas phase  The B3LYP exchangecorrelation functional with 6-31G basis set was employed for structural relaxation and singlepoint energy calculations  The convergence criteria were set to 10 −4 eV Å −1 for the total forces and 10 −6 eV for the total energies 
Multireference calculations  Multireference calculations were performed on the DFToptimized geometries using the QD-NEVPT2 level of theory , with three singlet roots and one triplet root included in the state-averaged calculation  A (10,10) active space (that is, 10 electrons in 10 orbitals) was used along with the def2-TZVP basis set  
Increasing either the active space size or expanding the basis set resulted in changes of about 50 meV for relative energies of the singlet and triplet states  These calculations were performed using the ORCA program package   Nucleus-independent chemical shift (NICS) calculations  Isotropic nucleus-independent chemical shift values were evaluated at the centre of each ring using the B3LYP exchangecorrelation functional with def2-TZVP basis set using the Gaussian 16 software package  
Starting materials (reagent grade) were purchased from TCI and Sigma-Aldrich and used without further purification  Reactions were carried out in flame-dried glassware and under an inert atmosphere of purified Ar using Schlenk techniques  Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) was performed on Silica Gel 60 F-254 plates (Merck) 
Column chromatography was performed on silica gel (40-60 µm)  Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra were recorded on a Bruker Varian Mercury 300 or Bruker Varian Inova 500 spectrometers  Mass spectrometry (MS) data were recorded in a Bruker Micro-TOF spectrometer  The synthesis of compound 6 was developed following the two-step synthetic route shown in Supplementary Fig  , which is based on the preparation of methylene-bridge polyarenes by means of Pd-catalyzed activation of benzylic C-H bonds  
Supplementary Figure | Synthetic route to obtain compound 6  The complex Pd2(dba)3 (20 mg, 0 02 mmol) was added over a deoxygenated mixture of 1,3-dibromo-2,4-dimethylbenzene (9, 100 mg, 0 38 mmol), boronic acid 10 (178 mg, 1 14 mmol), K2CO3 (314 mg, 2 28 mmol) and XPhos (35 mg, 0 08 mmol) in toluene (1:1, 10 mL), and the resulting mixture was heated at 90 °C for 2 h 
After cooling to room temperature, the solvents were evaporated under reduced pressure  The reaction crude was purified by column chromatography (SiO2; hexane:CH2Cl2 9:1) affording 11 (94 mg, 76%) as a colorless oil  The complex Pd(OAc)2 (7 mg, 0 03 mmol) was added over a deoxygenated mixture of terphenyl 11 (90 mg, 0 27 mmol), K2CO3 (114 mg, 0 83 mmol) and ligand L (26 mg, 0 06 mmol) in NMP (2 mL) 
The resulting mixture was heated at 160 °C for 4 h  After cooling to room temperature, H2O (30 mL) was added, and the mixture was extracted with EtOAc (3x15 mL)  The combined organic extracts were dried over anhydrous Na2SO4, filtered, and evaporated under reduced pressure  The reaction crude was purified by column chromatography (SiO2; hexane:CH2Cl2 9:1) affording compound 6 (8 mg, 11%) as a white solid  in AFM imaging due to their reduced adsorption height compared to the rest of the carbon atoms 
We attribute this observation to the significantly different lattice parameter of Cu(111) (2 57 Å) compared to Au(111) and Ag(111) (2 95 Å and 2 94 Å, respectively) , such that the apical carbon atoms of the pentagonal rings of 5 adsorb on the on-top atomic sites on Au(111) and Ag(111), but not on Cu(111) 
Our speculation is based on a previous study of polymers of 1 on Au(111) by Di Giovannantonio et al  , where both tilted and planar individual units of 1 were observed depending on whether the apical carbon atoms of the pentagonal rings in 1 adsorbed on the on-top or hollow sites of the surface, respectively 
Given the strong molecule-metal interaction, we found no electronic state signatures of 5 on all three metal surfaces  STM set point for AFM images: V = 0  e, Frontier orbital spectrum of 5 -1   In the anionic state, ψ2 becomes doubly occupied and ψ1 is the SOMO  Filled and empty circles denote occupied and empty orbitals, respectively 
For each panel, zero of the energy axis has been aligned to the respective highest-energy occupied orbital 



ground_truth: Open-shell π-diradical state and closed-shell state with a para-quinodimethane moiety.