On the Topic of Consciousness

[Divine Insight]

Maybe we should break this out.....

This topic is an offshoot from another thread which was on another topic altogether.

This thread is "On the Topic of Consciousness"

I wouldn't pass judgements. My biggest question is why you have a brain type that is willing to jump into the unknown with some assurance, while I seem to have a brain type that doesn't. If I don't know, I leave it at not knowing.

I don't think it comes down to just the brain alone. I think there are many other factors involved. Clearly even from a secular point of view it is recognize that the brain "evolves" as we grow as individuals based much on how we experience life, etc.

For example the very concept of the "unknown" may mean something entirely different to me than it does to you. I mean, sure we could get out a dictionary and look up the term, but that really wouldn't help much because what you believe you know and what I believe I know are going to clearly be two different things. Especially considering my last sentence of the above paragraph. Our knowledge and beliefs evolve in our own brains based upon our own experiences, which clearly are not going to be the same experiences.

Consciousness: I don't know of any scientist that makes his or her living studying it who declares they know what it is.

This is true, but there may be quite a few scientists who feel like Daniel Dennett. Even though he is just a philosopher.

[youtube][/youtube]

I don't disagree with much of what Dennett says about how the brain functions. I don't disagree at all. But he doesn't touch on the real issues as far as I'm concerned. Near the very end of the above video he state a kind of Deepity of his own, "It's not that the Emperor has no clothes, but rather the clothes have no Emperor". The idea intended to imply that we are attempting to push too much onto consciousness that doesn't need to be there.

But for me none of this is satisfying.

I don't disagree with the fact that the brain is indeed a functional portal for the experiences that we have in this incarnated life. Therefore everything he observes and states about how the brain functions and how it "creates" much of our experience, is not in question for me.

But none of that even begins to address the issue of exactly what it is that is actually having this experience. In other words, if the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having an experience? The brain itself?

This becomes a problem for me, because insofar as we know, the brain itself is made of nothing more than matter and energy. If neither matter, nor energy are capable of having an experience, they why should a brain that is made of nothing more than matter and energy become an "Emperor" in its own right?

This is not an easy question, and I wouldn't hesitate to put this question to Dennett himself. In fact, I would like to hear his thoughts on this. Maybe he does address this sort of issue in one of his many lectures. If you find a lecture where he addressed this heart of the matter please share and I'll be glad to take a gander at it.

I've watched several of his lectures, and thus far I haven't been convinced of his conclusions.

To say it is supernatural vs natural seems a leap.

This is statement here goes back to what I had mentioned above, concerning how you and I may very well think differently due to our different experiences in life.

You speak of the term "supernatural" as though that's a meaningful term.

I have been a scientist my entire life. Isaac Newton, and certain Greek philosophies like Zeno and others were my childhood heroes. Albert Einstein was my next hero as I grew in my scientific knowledge. And today I hold many scientists in high regard and marvel at what they were able to discover and prove.

Just the same, in all of this, I have come to the profound realization that to date we cannot say what the true nature of reality genuinely is. Therefore does it even make any sense to speak of the supernatural, when we can't even say with certain what is natural?

So I'm not prepared to accept the insinuation that I'm "jumping off to assume something supernatural". All I'm doing is recognizing that we can't say where the boundaries of the natural world truly are.

So I don't feel that I'm actually leaping anywhere. I'm just recognizing that we can't know that things need to be restricted to what we believe to be a finite physical existence.

In fact, if you go back to Dennett's very argument perhaps you can see an irony there. He is proclaiming that we can't know nearly what we think we can know, yet he seems to think that he can make very clear conclusions from this evidence that our brains clearly trick us.

That's almost an oxymoron right there. If what Dennett says is true, that our brains can fool us considerably, then perhaps the entirety of physical reality is itself an illusion that we are being tricked into believing. What we believe to be "brains" may not be physical entities at all.

My position is that we know consciousness is affected by natural events, and we know nature exists... seems a very small slide to presume consciousness is a natural phenomenon. But not knowing, sure, I can't say it's not - but I haven't been offered ONE example of the supernatural. So, I simply can't presume it's supernatural. I can't even think of why I'd consider the supernatural when the supernatural has such a horrible track record.

Well, our difference of views here may indeed amount to the extremely different way we view the "supernatural". For you to say that the supernatural has a bad track record implies that you associate the term with just about any guess that anyone might come up with (and especially specific claims that have indeed been shown to be false).

Whilst those do indeed qualify as "supernatural", they may not qualify as the type of "supernatural" that I consider. In fact, the type of "supernatural" that I consider is actually quite natural. It simply amounts to nature that we haven't yet discovered or understood, so it's only in that sense that it seems to be supernatural to us, when in reality it may be perfectly natural.

Given this, there only seems to be the natural. Just because we don't know how consciouness works doesn't means it's because of the gods, or the supernatural or something else, or even "natural vs. I don't know".

Nature exists.
Consciousness exists.

Given these two facts, why presume we can't explain consciousness eventually?

I already gave my answer to this earlier in this post. I'll repeat it here for clarity.

Copy and pasted from earlier in this very same post:

But none of that even begins to address the issue of exactly what it is that is actually having this experience. In other words, if the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having an experience? The brain itself?

This becomes a problem for me, because insofar as we know, the brain itself is made of nothing more than matter and energy. If neither matter, nor energy are capable of having an experience, they why should a brain that is made of nothing more than matter and energy become an "Emperor" in its own right?

This is not an easy question, and I wouldn't hesitate to put this question to Dennett himself. In fact, I would like to hear his thoughts on this. Maybe he does address this sort of issue in one of his many lectures. If you find a lecture where he addressed this heart of the matter please share and I'll be glad to take a gander at it.

End of copy and paste

Yes, consciousness exists. And something is having an experience.

But what is it that is having an experience?

Energy and matter?

Electromagnetic fields?

Something else? Many people have suggested that the thing that is having an experience is some sort of "emergent property of complexity".

I suppose this is a valid philosophical idea, but it seems pretty strange to me that an abstract idea of an emergent property could have an experience.

So I'm still left with a deeper mystery.

To simply say that "consciousness" is a natural result of nature, still leaves me asking, "Who is the Emperor that is having this experience?"

If the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having the experience of conscious awareness? The clothes?

It just seems strange to me that the clothes (i.e. matter and energy) should be able to have an experience.

So this simply leaves the door to the "supernatural" (i.e. nature that we simply don't yet understand) wide open.

I'm not saying that the secular view is necessarily wrong. I'm simply saying that the purely secular view seems every bit as strange to me as the supernatural view.

In other words, that view doesn't "hit the spot" as being an obvious conclusion to accept either.

I'm not going to automatically accept Dennetts "Deepity" that "The clothes have no Emperor" as being the profound answer to this question. That's just as absurd as any other Deepity, IMHO.

So this is where I'm coming from.

I'm not claiming that the supernatural necessarily has to exist. But I am claiming that, insofar as I can see, it's on precisely equal footing with any other conclusions at this point.

Seeing that they are on the same footing, I don't mind using intuition and gut feelings to consider one over the other. So with that in mind, I confess that I lean toward the mystical view. But clearly I could be wrong.

[instantc]

There is no evidence that it is anything but a physical property of the brain.

On the contrary, as far as I can see, there is no evidence that it is anything else but a non-physical property of the brain.

Can you please show why you reject the fact the mind changes when the brain gets modified.. or altered with drugs

I don't, that's the point. Can you show me how the fact that altering the brain alters the mind shows that the mind is a physical property of the brain? As far as I can see, non-sequiturs don't get any non-sequiturer than this.

[instantc]

An operating system knows when there is something wrong, can diagnose itself, etc.
It has a kind of consciousness. It is aware. Now, we don't consider it "conscious", but really what is the substantial difference?

A computer might be able to process information and reproduce it in a different formation, but it doesn't experience any of that. Suppose you were born blind. Now, you would never know what it is like to experience the visible world, you would never know what the color red looks like. You might be able to build a machine that would help you to measure the colors of different things, and you might then be able to point out that a tomato is red and the coke label is a bit deeper red. But, you would never know what red looks like. That's why there is a qualitative difference between a machine that processes information and a machine that experiences information.

Imagine a copy of you that does the exact same choices, has the same logical capacities and physical qualities. The only difference being that it doesn't experience any of that, everything happens similarly, but the machine doesn't think or know anything. From the outside the two of you would be exactly the same, but there is a qualitative difference between the two of you, since you experience whatever it is you are doing, and the machine simply processes information without being aware of that information. Now, if you choose not to acknowledge this qualitative difference, as from the physical point of view the two are exactly the same, then you are both affirming my point and making further conversation pointless.

Daniel Dennett acknowledges this difference, and he simply believes that awareness arises from the right formation of physical matter, and that we might be able to discover that formation somewhere in the future. You seem to think that the case for materialism is much stronger than it actually is, I advice you to do some further investigation. In my opinion, the best case for materialism of the mind lies in occams razor on the one hand and in the fact that everything else in the world has been successfully reduced to physical activity on the other hand.

[Goat]

An operating system knows when there is something wrong, can diagnose itself, etc.
It has a kind of consciousness. It is aware. Now, we don't consider it "conscious", but really what is the substantial difference?

A computer might be able to process information and reproduce it in a different formation, but it doesn't experience any of that. Suppose you were born blind. Now, you would never know what it is like to experience the visible world, you would never know what the color red looks like. You might be able to build a machine that would help you to measure the colors of different things, and you might then be able to point out that a tomato is red and the coke label is a bit deeper red. But, you would never know what red looks like. That's why there is a qualitative difference between a machine that processes information and a machine that experiences information.

How do you know that? If we manage to develop a computer with rudimentary consciousness, how would we know? One of the fields of study computer scientists are playing with is 'Artificer intelligence', where robots learn , and interact with the environment. They aren't given 'knowledge', they are given learning algorithms.

I am sure we are not there yet... but how would we tell if we crossed a certain boundary?

[instantc]

An operating system knows when there is something wrong, can diagnose itself, etc.
It has a kind of consciousness. It is aware. Now, we don't consider it "conscious", but really what is the substantial difference?

A computer might be able to process information and reproduce it in a different formation, but it doesn't experience any of that. Suppose you were born blind. Now, you would never know what it is like to experience the visible world, you would never know what the color red looks like. You might be able to build a machine that would help you to measure the colors of different things, and you might then be able to point out that a tomato is red and the coke label is a bit deeper red. But, you would never know what red looks like. That's why there is a qualitative difference between a machine that processes information and a machine that experiences information.

How do you know that? If we manage to develop a computer with rudimentary consciousness, how would we know? One of the fields of study computer scientists are playing with is 'Artificer intelligence', where robots learn , and interact with the environment. They aren't given 'knowledge', they are given learning algorithms.

I am sure we are not there yet... but how would we tell if we crossed a certain boundary?

That's the huge problem, isn't it? I cannot even tell whether you or my dad are experiencing the world or not. The only thing I can be certain of is that I am experiencing it.

This is one reason why dualists believe that the mind is not a physical property. A machine could exhibit exactly identical physical properties, and still not be able to have an experience like us, thus being physically identical but still fundamentally different.

[Divine Insight]

Personally I think Occam swings it the other way. There may very well be an ‘uber-mind’ and I do not discount the possibility however there is absolutely no evidence of one, but there is the evidence of the physical world and the evolutionary process.

But there is no evidence of a physical world.

That is Newtonian thinking.

What can you point to that is actually "physical"?

Show me what it is that you believe is physical.

Jesus! Come one, dude. Let's not turn this into a laughing stock of conversations.

I'm dead serious. According to modern science everything that exists is nothing more than standing waves of potentiality. And nobody even has a clue how they work.

1. But they exist.
2. That's what we mean by material, or naturalism. This is like saying sound doesn't exist because if you take a snapshot of a portion of a wave, it's not a full wave, or sound...

This is sophistry.

If you are serious, our discussion is over. If you reject material all together than what is the discussion?


If you accept material exists, then why reduce the conversation to this?

You can wave it off and proclaim the discussion over if you like. That's your prerogative. But the fact is that science itself tells us that everything is the result of waves, and that science itself cannot show that these wave have any physical existence themselves.

This is what QM is all about and what the three basic interpretations are all about.

The Copenhagen Interpretation

The Copenhagen Interpretation is basically "Just shut up and calculate", don't dwell on the fact that these waves have no physical substance. Just ignore that finding.

I might also add that the Copenhagen Interpretation is at a completely loss to explain quantum entanglement and other observed behaviors in the quantum world. To the Copenhagen Interpretation really isn't an interpretation at all, it truly is "Just shut up an calculate".

The Hidden Variables Interpretation

The Hidden Variables Interpretation can explain quantum entanglement, and basically all of quantum phenomenon. However, in order to do this it must introduce non-local variables that pretty much blow away our conventional ideas of the material world. Sure, in this view there exists a foundational physical world but that physical world obeys totally different laws of physics than does the macro world in which we actually have our experiences. That kind of physical world can actually be said to be a spiritual world for all intents and purposes because the types of things that go on in that physics would indeed be considered to be magic in terms of what we currently consider to be a physical world.

The Many Worlds Interpretation

This is even a weirder interpretation than the Hidden Variables Interpretation. This interpretations basically requires that all of reality is indeed nothing more than an illusion and some sort of psychic "thought-dream", because this interpretation (if it actually qualifies as such) requires that your very consciousness continually splits into many different conscious experiences basically infinitely many times every day of your life.

I might add also that this interpretation doesn't explain quantum entanglement either, so it's not even a complete interpretation, it's just a guess that doesn't really explain all the details that we observe.

~~~~~

The only one of these interpretations that can explain things like entanglement is the Hidden variables Interpretation. In a very real sense this only interpretation that actually has an answer. However, many physicists don't like the answer, because this answer basically says that the core of reality is not the "physical world" we thought it was, but rather it's a "physics that actually describes a worlds that has magical properties of a spiritual world".

This would actually be real physical properties, but they would be so bizarre to our way of thinking that they truly do define a physical world that is so magical that it would be no different from a spiritual world.

~~~~~~

When you say, "This discussion is over", you are basically saying, "I accept the Copenhagen Interpretations of QM, and I'm not worried about what it might actually take to describe reality. I'm happy living in a pseudo Newtonian mindset".

That's basically all you are really saying.

You are basically demanding that the physical world is straight-forward cause-and-effect, and you aren't interested in anything that might burst that bubble.

But our discovery, observations, and experimental confirmation of the weird behaviors of the quantum world have already burst that bubble.

This science of physics has lost it's balls. The Newtonian Billiard Ball universe cannot be reality. Something far more profound and mysterious is going on.

Goat is onto something when he says that our conscious awareness is nothing more than the result of a configuration of matter (waves). However, as I have already pointed out, if that is indeed the case, then all conscious awareness is the same thing. Every conscious awareness in the universe is the same awareness.

And this is what many people are trying to point out. We call it "mystic" because it's a mystery as to how it works. But how is that any different from physicists whose scientific investigations have led them to the mystical world of the quantum realm?

Physics has become mystical too, but the physicists refuse to confess that science has indeed led to mysticism. Instead, they cling to the Copenhagen stance of "Just shut up and calculate". In other words, just ignore the foundational physics of reality and just use what we know about it to calculate things we can do in our comfortable macro world.

And if someone presses you too hard just say, "This conversation is over".

[Goat]

An operating system knows when there is something wrong, can diagnose itself, etc.
It has a kind of consciousness. It is aware. Now, we don't consider it "conscious", but really what is the substantial difference?

A computer might be able to process information and reproduce it in a different formation, but it doesn't experience any of that. Suppose you were born blind. Now, you would never know what it is like to experience the visible world, you would never know what the color red looks like. You might be able to build a machine that would help you to measure the colors of different things, and you might then be able to point out that a tomato is red and the coke label is a bit deeper red. But, you would never know what red looks like. That's why there is a qualitative difference between a machine that processes information and a machine that experiences information.

How do you know that? If we manage to develop a computer with rudimentary consciousness, how would we know? One of the fields of study computer scientists are playing with is 'Artificer intelligence', where robots learn , and interact with the environment. They aren't given 'knowledge', they are given learning algorithms.

I am sure we are not there yet... but how would we tell if we crossed a certain boundary?

That's the huge problem, isn't it? I cannot even tell whether you or my dad are experiencing the world or not. The only thing I can be certain of is that I am experiencing it.

This is one reason why dualists believe that the mind is not a physical property. A machine could exhibit exactly identical physical properties, and still not be able to have an experience like us, thus being physically identical but still fundamentally different.

Yet.. when it comes to dualism, can you show that there is something seperate and different from the brain? Each emotion, each though plays on neurons in the brain. It can be tracked via an MRI. Where is the evidence there is something other than that?

[Ooberman]

It simply continues to be an extended argument from ignorance.

1. You can't explain it,
2. Quantum Theory says things are more incomprehensible than we can imagine...
3. Therefore, muffins. "


Or whatever conclusion they want: therefore, the mind is not material. It's a complete non sequitur.


None of this is following or suggesting something other than what we see in an MRI, etc. Maybe the resolution of the MRI isn't good enough, or we have some gaps in our knowledge, but we are seeing brain activity for a reason - it's there, we know it's there and we know how to record it/view it.



Dualists, you need to provide SOMETHING, not an over-extended argument from ignorance.

[instantc]

Dualists, you need to provide SOMETHING, not an over-extended argument from ignorance.

I have provided you arguments for property dualism, and you haven't even attempted to answer them, which seems to be due to your obvious lack of counter-arguments. Conceivability argument, indivisibility argument and so forth all aim to prove that the mind is not a physical property. Please take your time and respond to these, instead of yelling about random nonexistent fallacies, and then we can continue.

[instantc]

Yet.. when it comes to dualism, can you show that there is something seperate and different from the brain?

For the eleventh time, dualists and materialists agree that the mind is a property of the brain, not a separate entity. Why do you keep beating the straw man, while I have pointed this out to you specifically a number of times?

Each emotion, each though plays on neurons in the brain. It can be tracked via an MRI. Where is the evidence there is something other than that?

Emotions and thoughts are produced by neural activity, that's all science can show us. Whether the pain in my head is in fact identical to the C-fibers firing in the brain has not been answered yet. I have provided a number of arguments to show that it is not, you have made claims and assertions but haven't provided a single argument to support them (the fact that altering the brain alters the mind is equally consistent with dualism and materialism and does nothing to support your claims).

1. Can you show that emotions and thoughts are identical to fibers firing in the brain?

2. Can you respond to the arguments as to why they are not (conceivability argument, indivisibility argument, argument from qualitative difference and so forth, all presented in the previous posts)?

If you cannot take either one of these challenges, you cannot support your assertions, nor can you respond to the dualist arguments, what is left for you to defend here?

[Divine Insight]

It simply continues to be an extended argument from ignorance.

1. You can't explain it,
2. Quantum Theory says things are more incomprehensible than we can imagine...
3. Therefore, muffins. "


Or whatever conclusion they want: therefore, the mind is not material. It's a complete non sequitur.

This is a fallacy and misrepresentation on your part.

I'm not saying "Therefore muffins".

All I'm doing is accepting the things that have indeed been observed and experimentally verified in the study of quantum mechanics and recognizing that this science does indeed bring into question our entire picture of a physical reality that is separate in space and time.

Even Einstein's General Relativity brings into question the very nature of time itself before we even consider Quantum Mechanics.

So I'm not saying, "Therefore muffins".

I have no need to assume anything beyond what has already been experimentally observed to be true.

None of this is following or suggesting something other than what we see in an MRI, etc. Maybe the resolution of the MRI isn't good enough, or we have some gaps in our knowledge, but we are seeing brain activity for a reason - it's there, we know it's there and we know how to record it/view it.

And I don't deny any of that. I've already stated that I totally accept the function of the biological brain concerning the human condition.

That isn't being argued.

Dualists, you need to provide SOMETHING, not an over-extended argument from ignorance.

Dualism may not be what you think it is. In fact, even the term "dualism" suggests that two different things are going on, when in fact that may not even be the case. That very view right there is already a view of "reductionism".

If I'm going to be branded with a label let it be Holism (not dualism).