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.

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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.

[Goat]

Is software running on your computer a physical property? Maybe we have a difference in definition?

It appears Dualists are slowly shifting their definitions to align with materialists...

As a matter of fact, the 'software' running on your computer IS a phyiscal property. It is a set of binary 0 and ones represent circuits that are on or off. You change the program, you change which 0's and 1's are on, as represented by the circuits in the CPU, and the physical memory.

[Ooberman]

Is software running on your computer a physical property? Maybe we have a difference in definition?

It appears Dualists are slowly shifting their definitions to align with materialists...

As a matter of fact, the 'software' running on your computer IS a physical property. It is a set of binary 0 and ones represent circuits that are on or off. You change the program, you change which 0's and 1's are on, as represented by the circuits in the CPU, and the physical memory.

Yes, that's my point. And perhaps I should have used "operating system". 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?

It seems there is no problem imagining an operating system in a Dualist framework, yet we don't. We intuitively know it's all "in the box".

I simply don't see why one would presume it can't be the same for a human brain?

[Goat]

Is software running on your computer a physical property? Maybe we have a difference in definition?

It appears Dualists are slowly shifting their definitions to align with materialists...

As a matter of fact, the 'software' running on your computer IS a physical property. It is a set of binary 0 and ones represent circuits that are on or off. You change the program, you change which 0's and 1's are on, as represented by the circuits in the CPU, and the physical memory.

Yes, that's my point. And perhaps I should have used "operating system". 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?

It seems there is no problem imagining an operating system in a Dualist framework, yet we don't. We intuitively know it's all "in the box".

I simply don't see why one would presume it can't be the same for a human brain?

The operating system IS a program. It is a set of on/off switches in the hardware. Not only that.. but you have to have a specific set of hardware to run that on. Each chip has it's own instruction set, and if the hardware is wrong, the operating system won't run. With many programs you can recompile to port it to a new hardware platform, but the operation system NEEDS a specific hardware platform. You have to make sure that the instruction set matches perfectly, because the interrupt handler the precise machine code to work correctly

[bernee51]

In the noosphere, all that exists is awareness.

The physiosphere is not aware...all that exists there is atoms and molecules.

Not even opinion.

Ironically I just watched an interview with Roger Penrose where he was disusing a very similar view. Well, actually he's looking at the Platonic view and the three worlds of a "Physiosphere" (or the physical world), a "Noosphere" (what he calls the mental world), and of course he adds a third world of "Mathematics".

Thanks for that…when I get a moment or two I will take a look

It was an interesting interview. In fact, let me see if I can find it again:

But still you are apparently looking to two different world somehow simultaneously existing, the noosphere (or mind) and the psysiosphere (the physical material world).

…..

I think I better understand where you are coming from now.

You do and you don’t.

I don’t hold that there are two different world simultaneously existing…there is only one existence and that existence….now….is made up of multifarious ‘holons’…whole parts. Before the emergence of the noosphere there was only the physiosphere and the biosphere. Likewise before the emergence of the biosphere there was only the physiosphere.

Yogic philosophers have a similar system (of which you are most probably aware)…the koshas.

I've considered those types of philosophical models and just personally found them to be lacking. That's certainly not to say that they can't be true. But it's sufficient to say that I have personally already considered them and have no further interest in pursuing those models further.

For me, I've decided that it makes more sense to imagine only one basis for reality. And it seems to me that this basis is either MIND or MATERIAL.

And I favor the MIND hypothesis as being more likely.

And so you would because that is the perspective from which you are looking. You are observing it from the noosphere and the ‘sphere of spirit’…loosely Manomayakosha and Vijnanamaya kosha.

It is essentially an egoic POV…the ego, ahamkara, will do anything to protect its self-belief in its primacy.

But I don't even see the need to divide reality into two spheres as you do. Why bother with two when a single sphere will suffice? I guess I'm kind of appealing to Occam's Razor here. If you can explain it using a simple model, there's no need to make it more complicated than this.

Agreed…there is only one reality…made up of holons.

Speaking of explaining it. I also see a reality of MIND explaining everything, where as I don't see a reality of MATERIAL explaining conscious awareness. For this reason, once again applying Occam's Razor, a reality made entire of MIND wins. Because it can then explain the illusion of the material world. Whereas it's not easy to see how that could work the other way around.

That you cannot see how the material can explain consciousness must mean that mind explains everything is, as I believe other shave pointed out, essentially the argument from ignorance.

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.

[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.

[Ooberman]

With respect to consciousness, specifically, what is the difference between the Idealist view and the Dualit view?

[Ooberman]

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.

[bernee51]

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.

We have sub-atomic particles which, as the pop in and out of existence, cohere and complexify into atoms and molecules...the bottom up approach.

And..I will take credit for eliciting your shortest ever post.

[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.

[Ooberman]

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?