Hypothesis for consciousness apart from the physical body

[SeaPriestess]

Is there one?

Why not?

I would think some radical off the wall brainiac genius scientist of some sort would at least come up with something.

Anyone?

[Divine Insight]

There can be no hypothesis for a consciousness apart from some physical form.

Why not?

Because information requires that some physical form be in formation.

In other words, the very concept of "information" is meaningless if there isn't some physical arrangement that represents the information in question.

How could it be possible to have consciousness without information? What would it even mean to be conscious if there were no information to be conscious of?

And it's meaningless to speak of information that isn't related to some form of organized formation.

In fact, even physical forms don't necessarily represents any meaningful information without context.

For example a computer program that is designed to run on one computer will not work on another computer of a different design because the "information" would be gibberish to the other computer.

So even when we have physical information that information is limited in its meaningfulness and usefulness.

So there can be no meaningful "hypothesis" of a consciousness that doesn't at least have enough "physics" to represent, and process, information.

Sure, we can pretend in our imagination that such a condition could exist, but that's no support for the reality of that idea. In fact, even in our imagination we are actually thinking of the consciousness as being in some formation. Otherwise it would make no sense to us at all.

Even our imagination is taking place in the physical formation of our brain activity.

So no, the idea of consciousnesses without physics makes no sense even as a hypothesis.

[William]

[Replying to post 2 by Divine Insight]

What would it even mean to be conscious if there were no information to be conscious of?

Even if there were no physical information in formation, if consciousness existed in such a state, then there would still be consciousness. So consciousness would be conscious of itself.

Thus that would be information.

If consciousness did not exist then information wouldn't either.

If the universe existed without consciousness, the universe would not be information.

[Swami]

[Replying to post 2 by Divine Insight]

I assume you view consciousness as being information. Consciousness can not simply be information because it has a subjective aspect.

[SeaPriestess]

Ok, well, instead of responding to the 3 of you individually (because my head is spinning), I'll just say this:

Plenty of theories were once unproven because they couldn't be tested but then they were, we (well the geniuses) discovered the proof and now it's what we know and believe. Why can't someone at least pose a theory/hypothesis that our consciousness can remain "aware" outside of the physical body configuration?

[SeaPriestess]

Because when I think about quantum physics, parallel universes and particles communicating with each other at a distance, I think "holy cow! Why couldn't our consciousness also have an awareness that goes beyond the "physical"?"

[Neatras]

[Replying to post 6 by SeaPriestess]

Well, for one thing, when we learned about quantum mechanics, we didn't find any consciousness particles. So asserting "consciousness is detachable from the body because quantum theory is strange" is illegitimate. It remains nothing more than an assertion.

It's about time we hash out the definition of Parsimony. To be parsimonious with epistemology is to make the fewest number of unfounded assumptions about reality; this is because we're prone to making bad decisions when we have unjust assumptions. So when we whittle away our assumptions down to the bare minimum (eliminating almost everything initially), we have to define a set of rules we want to work by.

Secularists and theists alike both make the assumption that reality exists. Anyone wanna debate me on that? Didn't think so.

Secularists and theists alike both act as if their senses are sometimes accurate.

Secularists and theists alike both act as if their behaviors affect their surroundings and allow them to respond to physical changes they observe in reality.

Under these rules, we can begin formulating a set of logical frameworks that allow us to understand and legitimately predict what happens in reality.

No matter what, we have never observed any case where consciousness exists independent of a physical body. So what's the parsimonious thing to conclude? That consciousness is therefore detachable from the physical body?

[Divine Insight]

Is there one?

Why not?

I would think some radical off the wall brainiac genius scientist of some sort would at least come up with something.

Anyone?

Actually there are scientists who have "hypothesized" the possible existence of consciousness beyond the human physical body. However those ideas do indeed depend upon the physics of quantum mechanics as a physical substrate that retains the consciousness. So even in those models consciousness would still require a physical form.

The two most prominent scientists who have proposed this idea are Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff. However, it should be noted that they haven't been able to provide any evidence to support this hypothesis.

The main idea behind this hypothesis is that there exists an external Platonic World of "Pure Mathematics", as many mathematicians have come to believe. However, there are also many mathematicians who don't see this idea as being necessary for mathematics to exist. I tend to agree with the latter mathematicians, and I hold this to necessarily be true because things like a "perfect circle" and a complete irrational number cannot even exist in pure thought. They are logically self-contradictory concepts. So they defy themselves on grounds of pure logic the existence of which the idea of a Platonic World depends upon in the first place.

In short, until we have a trouble-free mathematical formalism (which we don't currently have), we can hardly hold our ideas of mathematical formalism up as evidence for the existence of a Platonic World.

So the ideas of Penrose and Hameroff are quite speculative having no rigorous foundation or evidence. Unless you want to consider the existence of a Platonic World of pure thought as being a "rigorous" concept. But in truth, it's not. It's basically not much more than a religious idea actually.

[William]

[Replying to post 6 by SeaPriestess]

Ok, well, instead of responding to the 3 of you individually (because my head is spinning), I'll just say this:

Plenty of theories were once unproven because they couldn't be tested but then they were, we (well the geniuses) discovered the proof and now it's what we know and believe. Why can't someone at least pose a theory/hypothesis that our consciousness can remain "aware" outside of the physical body configuration?

Because when I think about quantum physics, parallel universes and particles communicating with each other at a distance, I think "holy cow! Why couldn't our consciousness also have an awareness that goes beyond the "physical"?"

There is theory/hypothesis that our consciousness can remain "aware" outside of the physical body configuration.

Check out post #20 in the "Near Death Experiences of Christians and others." thread.

[AgnosticBoy]

Is there one?

Why not?

I would think some radical off the wall brainiac genius scientist of some sort would at least come up with something.

Anyone?

Is there one?

Why not?

I would think some radical off the wall brainiac genius scientist of some sort would at least come up with something.

Anyone?

A scientific hypothesis would need to provide a testable explanation for why consciousness can exist apart from the body. If that's what you're looking for then I'm not aware of any. There is evidence that certain types of conscious or subjective activity, like mental imagery, is less than physical. This alone doesn't mean that consciousness exists separately and that's because it still depends on the brain.