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.

[keithprosser3]

The idea that experience itself can be reduced to just a physical description is what I object to.

Something DI wrote I can agree with. Excuse me, I have go and lie down.
To paraphrase my post on another thread, any physical description can be written in Braille, but how do you put 'Red looks like this' into Braille?

[JohnA]

The idea that experience itself can be reduced to just a physical description is what I object to.

Something DI wrote I can agree with. Excuse me, I have go and lie down.
To paraphrase my post on another thread, any physical description can be written in Braille, but how do you put 'Red looks like this' into Braille?

The fact is that you and I 'experience' this red different too. So you can not even truely explain it to me. That is the thing, read my previous post. Your braille issue is not an issue, unless you prefer obscrantism.

School, wake up.

[keithprosser3]

I thought you were interested in what instantc was saying. I was explaining that. It's clear to me that you haven't read the thread and have no idea of the context what I posted so I am not going to waste more time on you than i have already.

[olavisjo]

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The fact is that you and I 'experience' this red different too. So you can not even truely explain it to me. That is the thing, read my previous post. Your braille issue is not an issue, unless you prefer obscrantism.

School, wake up.

Can you define "obscrantism" for us? It seems to be a rather new word.

[Haven]

It has everything to do with knowledge. In fact, she can't even have the preliminary knowledge of the laws of physics without having already experienced what those concept even mean.

Have you experienced the law of entropy? How about the second law of thermodynamics? Of course not. We don't come to know of the laws of physics through experience, we come to know of them through scientific analysis of physical data.

The problem I have is how anyone thinks they can reduce experience down to nothing but an idea of knowledge. What is it that is experiencing this knowledge?

The idea that experience itself can be reduced to just a physical description is what I object to.

Fundamental constituents of matter arranged in a certain manner we have decided to call "a living brain."

How can that be justified?

By appealing to the fact that experience results from the physical brain, which is a component of physical reality.

If it is being claimed that matter and energy cannot innately have an experience, nor atoms or electromagnetic fields, nor any other force fields. Then how can anyone expect me to believe that having an experience can be reduced to physical laws?

Matter and energy -- when arranged in the form we call a "brain" -- can have experiences.

What physical laws can you point to that would explain exactly what it is that is having an experience?

The law of gravity, abiogenesis, and evolution by natural selection, to name a few.

We can point to computer where there is electrical activity going on. A program is running. The computer can sense input, and respond to it. You can even build a computer to look like a human and program it to behave much like a human.

But where in all that is anything having an experience?

What would be having an experience? The Memory? The CPU? The Hard Drive? The output monitor? The input sensors?

The whole thing collectively?

And how is this explained using the laws of physics?

You're using the appeal to ignorance fallacy. The fact that we can't build a conscious computer yet doesn't mean such a thing is impossible, but your argument depends on its impossibility.

Where is there any law in physics that suggests that anything should be able to have an experience?

Physics doesn't (directly) comment on this, but the empirical sciences of biology, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology do successfully explain human consciousness by appealing only to the physical brain. No magic required.

[JohnA]

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The fact is that you and I 'experience' this red different too. So you can not even truely explain it to me. That is the thing, read my previous post. Your braille issue is not an issue, unless you prefer obscrantism.

School, wake up.

Can you define "obscrantism" for us? It seems to be a rather new word.

obscurantism

[instantc]

You're using the appeal to ignorance fallacy. The fact that we can't build a conscious computer yet doesn't mean such a thing is impossible, but your argument depends on its impossibility.

There are good logical arguments to suggest that it is a conceptual impossibility to reduce the experience to physical brain activity, which is why that position is not based on ignorance.

The initial implausibility and the seeming logical impossibility of narrow reductionism is enough to justify the skepticism that many have regarding the physicality of experience.

Notably, some things that have been thought to be conceptual impossibilities have been shown possible by neuroscience, which indicates that perhaps these other conceptual arguments aren't as relevant as thought before. As an interesting example, it has always been thought that it is impossible to experience pain without knowing whose pain it is. However, recently it has been observed that the alien hand syndrome may cause the patient to experience pain without knowing whose pain it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome

Where is there any law in physics that suggests that anything should be able to have an experience?

Physics doesn't (directly) comment on this, but the empirical sciences of biology, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology do successfully explain human consciousness by appealing only to the physical brain. No magic required.

This is an extraordinary assertion, please do elaborate.

[JohnA]

I thought you were interested in what instantc was saying. I was explaining that. It's clear to me that you haven't read the thread and have no idea of the context what I posted so I am not going to waste more time on you than i have already.

Maybe you should stop believing to know what I believe. Also, consider not to make assumptions about what I have read or not without reading what I wrote.

Your and instantc's Red explain is useless and belong to antiquity; it explains nothing - no data - as previous pointed out by someone else. Why this lingers is amazing since the school is out, but some refuse to go home. Amazing.

[keithprosser3]

As for it belonging to antiquity, Frank Jackson invented the basic form of the problem in 1982 and it is still an on-going subject of debate amongst philosophers, real ones as well as internet wanabnees.

I feel you may have rather rushed to the conclusion that I am somehow doubting the complete validity of science, and are riding in on your charger to the defence of objectivism in your usual over-aggressive and adversarial style. If you don't yet see the philosophical issues raised in this thread I don't know how to make you see them. But yelling that there isn't an issue to discuss isn't a useful contribution.

[olavisjo]

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The idea that experience itself can be reduced to just a physical description is what I object to.

Something DI wrote I can agree with. Excuse me, I have go and lie down.
To paraphrase my post on another thread, any physical description can be written in Braille, but how do you put 'Red looks like this' into Braille?

The fact is that you and I 'experience' this red different too. So you can not even truely explain it to me. That is the thing, read my previous post. Your braille issue is not an issue, unless you prefer obscrantism.

School, wake up.

It seems to me that you two agree that it is impossible to communicate the experience of red to someone else, so why the accusation of obscurantism.

We can look at the previous post where JohnA says "Therefore one could argue that reality is an abstraction", "easily explained" as if that explains anything, as if that was not a line out of the book of obscurantism.

Pot meet kettle.

You can read the rest of his post as if it is not pure obscurantism...

Sigh.

I can tell you still rely heavily on obscrantism!


All molecules, atoms, and even particles are all abstractions of more fundamental objects. Even natural law, math and logic are mere abstractions, descriptions of what we think it is. Therefore one could argue that reality is an abstraction, since we have no direct experience of it. We are merely interpreting signals coming from our material brain using an explanation. That is how we create our subjective experience which we mostly share to become mainstream explanations.

Our subjective experience comprises knowledge of or skill of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event.


There is your 'mystical' experience easily explained, no need for obscrantism.