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]

Top stuff, Ola.

I have to say I have to deny that I am an obscurantist, if only that I don't want instantc tarred with that brush either. I am trying to draw attention a subtle point that remains as an outstanding puzzle. I can't explain it because as things stand it has no accepted explanation, and as I say it is a bit subtle. JohnA doesn't seem to get it, which is ok, but doesn't seem all that willing to try, which is not so ok.

I am at least trying to be clear and honest. That is not obscurantism.

[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.

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.

I do not understand you post at all.

I told you already what this experience is. Read my posts and tell em what is so unclear.

If you find fault with it, tell me, but do not just offer me a fallacy of assertion.

It is not impossible to communicate it, hence we have science that tells us what it is, to strip out subjectivity.


Go for it.

The floor is yours! Let the obscurantist in you shine!

[Divine Insight]

It is not impossible to communicate it, hence we have science that tells us what it is, to strip out subjectivity.

It's impossible to strip the subjectivity out of subjective experience.

There mere fact that you think this is possible shows that you don't understand the problem of subjective experience at all.

Clearly you do not comprehend the problem being discussed.

[JohnA]

It is not impossible to communicate it, hence we have science that tells us what it is, to strip out subjectivity.

It's impossible to strip the subjectivity out of subjective experience.

There mere fact that you think this is possible shows that you don't understand the problem of subjective experience at all.

Clearly you do not comprehend the problem being discussed.

So the facts in science is subjective?

[Divine Insight]

It is not impossible to communicate it, hence we have science that tells us what it is, to strip out subjectivity.

It's impossible to strip the subjectivity out of subjective experience.

There mere fact that you think this is possible shows that you don't understand the problem of subjective experience at all.

Clearly you do not comprehend the problem being discussed.

So the facts in science is subjective?

Actually, yes, that is true. Everything we know about science has been obtained through subjective experience. The entire philosophy of science is dependent upon the faith-based belief that there actually exists a material world "out there".

But even disregarding this obvious truth, subjective experience and never be made objective.

The arguments that you are putting for in the name of science do not hold water, nor are they the concrete scientific facts as you dishonestly claim. Although I supposed it's a bit brash of me to suggest that you are making a dishonest claim. What may far more likely be the truth is that you simply don't understand.

When we look at a computer we see electromagnetic fields doing their thing in what appears to be organized patters. We know where the memory takes place, where the Central Processing takes place, how sensors input data. We even know who the software runs because we're the ones who created it.

You could use your very same arguments and apply them to a computer. You could say, "Look, we have just described everything a computer does, therefore we can explain why it is having an experience"

But is that a valid argument? Of course. In fact, most people probably assume that a computer doesn't have an experience. Where do we have any reason to presume that it does?

The same is true of the human brain. If all we had were the scientific evidence (the facts) that you claim science has about the brain, we would still have absolutely no scientific reason to jump to the conclusion that humans are having a subjective experience.

The only reason we jump to that conclusion is because we are humans and we actually have the experience. But there is absolutely nothing in all of science that shows why a human brain should be able to have an experience anymore than a computer has an experience.

So you sir, are totally misrepresenting what science can actually know.

Like I say, this can only be for one of two reasons. You either don't truly understand the limitations of science, or you are being purposefully dishonest.

No scientist to date has won the Nobel prize for having shown scientifically how a brain can have an experience. For you to say, "School's Out" is dishonest. Or at least it's false. If there's no dishonesty on your part, then it can only be due to ignorance on your part.

Science has not explained how a human brain can have an experience. If someone taught you that it can I suggest you request your tuition be refunded because what they taught you is false information.

[keithprosser3]

I wonder if JohnA is saying science can't investigate the issue, i.e. accepting that there are areas where science cannot go. That would put him right in your Mystical camp, wouldn't it DI?

[JohnA]

I wonder if JohnA is saying science can't investigate the issue, i.e. accepting that there are areas where science cannot go. That would put him right in your Mystical camp, wouldn't it DI?

I (and other users) have explained already what you think your and DI's obscure definition/referral of 'experience' is.
Unfortunately, I can not make you understand it. That is your job, not mine.

Seems like you keep on referring to mystical 'stuff'. I think you are assuming that science it at its humdinger pinnacle, but you are . there are many things that science can not yet explain, but why the obverse to DI's position?

[Wootah]

So you sir, are totally misrepresenting what science can actually know.

Like I say, this can only be for one of two reasons. You either don't truly understand the limitations of science, or you are being purposefully dishonest.

No scientist to date has won the Nobel prize for having shown scientifically how a brain can have an experience. For you to say, "School's Out" is dishonest. Or at least it's false. If there's no dishonesty on your part, then it can only be due to ignorance on your part.

Science has not explained how a human brain can have an experience. If someone taught you that it can I suggest you request your tuition be refunded because what they taught you is false information.

Moderator Comment
Hi DI,

There is no need to accuse or paint people as being either ignorant or dishonest. Just state what you think, rebut the arguments and disagree all you like but try and leave people feeling respected while doing it please.

Please review the Rules.


______________

Moderator comments do not count as a strike against any posters. They only serve as an acknowledgment that a post report has been received, but has not been judged to warrant a moderator warning against a particular poster. Any challenges or replies to moderator postings should be made via Private Message to avoid derailing topics.

[keithprosser3]

double post - first for a few days.

[keithprosser3]

It is evident that one side or the other of the argument doesn't understand the issue.

To put the issue - as I see it - back in to concrete, how do you translate
'Red looks like this.' into Braille?

All I said was that it's a bit of a tricky puzzle. It seems JohnA doesn't agree.