We don't know if consciousness is physical, Period.

[AgnosticBoy]

On another thread, one member stated the following regarding consciousness:

Where you are begging the question is when you assume that the mind (i e. Something immaterial) is responsible for that, when the brain (network of neurons plugged to stimulus from the outside world + a bunch of accidents of evolution) can perfectly be pointed as the source of those behavior.

Before assuming something immaterial is responsible for a phenomenon, starts by proving something immaterial exist to begin with.

Not only am I skeptical of this claim, which is a common claim made by atheists, but I also get annoyed by the level of confidence that people have in the above claim. If the researchers that study consciousness acknowledge that it presents a 'hard problem', then why should I believe any claims that explain consciousness as being physical? In my view, there are good reasons to doubt that consciousness is material or physical. The way I look at it is that even if consciousness is physical, it is still unlike any other physical phenomenon in the Universe. The main reason for that is that the presence of subjectivity. As it stands, subjective experiences can only be observed by the subject. Also, they are not measurable nor observable from the third-person point-of-view. Don't all of those characteristics sound familiar to some thing else? Immaterial or non-physical (also being unobservable, not measurable, etc.)?

Please debate:
1. Is it arrogant to claim that consciousness is physical?
2. Are there good reasons to doubt that it is physical? Or do you agree with the point from the post I quoted at the beginning of this post?

[Swami]

"1. Is it arrogant to claim that consciousness is physical? "

Scientists call it the greatest mystery, while atheists think they have solved it. That is the height of arrogance.

Scientists have not even discovered consciousness in its pure form. Science in its current form can only study it indirectly, and it will remain as such until find a way to make first-person methods reliable.



"2. Are there good reasons to doubt that it is physical? Or do you agree with the point from the post I quoted at the beginning of this post?

Consciousness is part of all existence. It is only a mistake to limit it to the physical. It is physical, nonphysical, and all in-between. Such things would not even exist unless someone was aware of it which is why materialism makes no sense.

[Gracchus]

[Replying to Swami in post #111]
Which scientists call it the 'greatest mystery'? Scientists using active brain scans can map where thoughts arise. When the brain is chemically or physically de-activated, there is no consciousness. Consciousness is just neurochemical feedbacks in the brain. If you are discussing consciousness without some knowledge of neuroscience, you are like a kindergartener discussing quantum mechanics.

[Swami]

[Replying to Gracchus in post #112]

Gracchus states:
"Which scientists call it the 'greatest mystery'?"

World's Smartest Physicist Thinks Science Can't Crack Consciousness
I’ve been writing a lot lately about consciousness, the ultimate enigma. I used to think why there is something rather than nothing is the ultimate enigma. But without mind, there might as well be nothing.

Recently, physicist Edward Witten came out as a mysterian. Witten is regarded with awe by his fellow physicists, some of whom have compared him to Einstein and Newton.
I think consciousness will remain a mystery. Yes, that's what I tend to believe. I tend to think that the workings of the conscious brain will be elucidated to a large extent. Biologists and perhaps physicists will understand much better how the brain works. But why something that we call consciousness goes with those workings, I think that will remain mysterious. I have a much easier time imagining how we understand the Big Bang than I have imagining how we can understand consciousness...

Consciousness explained or described? | Neuroscience of Consciousness | Oxford Academic (oup.com)
In all fairness to the accounts of consciousness discussed above, and to the many other accounts that we have not discussed, none claims to solve the hard problem of consciousness. By asserting that they do not, we are neither condemning nor even criticizing them. We are, however, asserting that they are not true theories of consciousness but rather ought to be thought of as (competing) laws of consciousness. They describe the kind of states or nature of brain activity that underlies consciousness without pretending to explain why.

Gracchus states: "Scientists using active brain scans can map where thoughts arise. When the brain is chemically or physically de-activated, there is no consciousness. Consciousness is just neurochemical feedbacks in the brain."

https://personal.lse.ac.uk/ROBERT49/tea ... rs1995.pdf
Materialists hope that we will one day be able to explain consciousness in purely physical terms. But this project now has a long history of failure. The problem with materialist approaches to the hard problem is that they always end up avoiding the issue by redefining what we mean by ‘consciousness’. They start off by declaring that they are going to solve the hard problem, to explain experience; but somewhere along the way they start using the word ‘consciousness’ to refer not to experience but to some complex behavioural functioning associated with experience, such as the ability of a person to monitor their internal states or to process information about the environment. Explaining complex behaviours is an important scientific endeavour. But the hard problem of consciousness cannot be solved by changing the subject.

Why Can't Science Explain Consciousness? | Live Science
The problem of consciousness, however, is radically unlike any other scientific problem.
So how can science ever explain it? When we are dealing with the data of observation, we can do experiments to test whether what we observe matches what the theory predicts. But when we are dealing with the unobservable data of consciousness, this methodology breaks down. The best scientists are able to do is to correlate unobservable experiences with observable processes, by scanning people's brains and relying on their reports regarding their private conscious experiences.

By this method, we can establish, for example, that the invisible feeling of hunger is correlated with visible activity in the brain's hypothalamus. But the accumulation of such correlations does not amount to a theory of consciousness. What we ultimately want is to explain why conscious experiences are correlated with brain activity. Why is it that such activity in the hypothalamus comes along with a feeling of hunger?

[Gracchus]

[Replying to Swami in post #113]

When you want an opinion about plumbing do you ask an accountant? Professor Witten is a mathematician and not a neuroscientist. I haven't read his book on geometry, but I might if I ever have the $80 dollars and the time to spare.
Of course, neuroscience will remain a mystery to those who have never familiarized themselves with that field. I also doubt that you understand the "Big Bang" or even the nature of spacetime.
Nor do you even seem to understand the meaning of the term "theory" in the context of science. In science a theory is not a hunch or a guess, it is a well-supported explanation of one or more phenomena. For your information and instruction, activity in the brain is the feeling. This activity is triggered by chemical reactions carried by neurotransmitters, hormones, other blood chemistry, and even includes chemicals given off by gut bacteria.
Materialists don't hope that consciousness will be explained by brain activity. But at least some see the evidence as explaining consciousness. There is no reason to suppose anything other than the activity of the brain to explain consciousness.
And I wasn't trying to change the subject. Neuroscience is the subject. Consciousness can be explained as chemistry, as flows of matter-energy in spacetime, without resorting to any mysterious "woo".

If you are really interested in learning why I hold this opinion I can refer you to a series of lectures by Dr. Robert Sapolsky given at Stanford University on the biology of human behavior. Or you can continue to believe that everyone is just as ignorant of the subject under discussion here as you seem to be. But I suspect that continuing to respond to your posts is, metaphorically, playing chess with a pigeon.

[Swami]

[Replying to Gracchus in post #114]

Gracchus:
When you want an opinion about plumbing do you ask an accountant? Professor Witten is a mathematician and not a neuroscientist.
Of course, neuroscience will remain a mystery to those who have never familiarized themselves with that field. I also doubt that you understand the "Big Bang" or even the nature of spacetime.

Swami responds:
You do not realize that this is the first big error in Western science. Consciousness is not just a neural phenomenon. Consciousness is the activity of the entire Universe. This subject matter requires a multi-disciplinary approach involving physics, biology, psychology, and more,...

Gracchus:
For your information and instruction, activity in the brain is the feeling.
There is no reason to suppose anything other than the activity of the brain to explain consciousness.

Swami responds:
If what you say is true, then explain how someone is able to experience beyond their brain? How are people able to sense the entire Universe? How are they able to sense information about the future? How are they able to sense the mind of others?

All of this phenomenon is best explained if consciousness is not limited to brain.

Gracchus:
If you are really interested in learning why I hold this opinion I can refer you to a series of lectures by Dr. Robert Sapolsky given at Stanford University on the biology of human behavior.

Swami responds:
I have read too much on what Western authors have to say about consciousness. I find their perspective to be very limiting. Over 20 years, I discovered that some Eastern traditions, particularly Hinduism, Yoga, and Buddhism, have all been devoted to exploring consciousness. This tradition dates back over a millennia. I've taken this tradition seriously. Using the Eastern perspective as a guide has led me to discover the nature and origin of consciousness and the Universe.

Only an ego-driven scientist would not want to explore the traditions of different cultures while continuing in the same failed approach.

Later on I will post more scientists that acknowledge that a "theory" of consciousness is nonexistent.

[Swami]

[Replying to Gracchus in post #114] Pt. 2

Christof Koch is a neuroscientist

There is no theory of consciousness. The leading hypotheses have failed.
" In 1998, neuroscientist Christof Koch bet philosopher David Chalmers that the mechanism by which the brain’s neurons produce consciousness would be discovered by 2023. Both scientists agreed publicly on 23 June, at the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) in New York City, that it is still an ongoing quest — and declared Chalmers the winner.

Around that time, both Koch and Chalmers had become involved in a large project supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, based in Nassau, The Bahamas, aiming to accelerate research on consciousness.

The goal was to set up a series of ‘adversarial’ experiments to test various hypotheses of consciousness by getting rival researchers to collaborate on the studies’ design. “If their predictions didn’t come true, this would be a serious challenge for their theories,” Chalmers says.

The findings from one of the experiments — which involved several researchers, including Koch and Chalmers — were revealed on Friday at the ASSC meeting. It tested two of the leading hypotheses: Integrated information theory (IIT) and global network workspace theory (GNWT).

Six independent laboratories conducted the adversarial experiment, following a pre-registered protocol and using various complementary methods to measure brain activity. The results — which haven’t yet been peer-reviewed — didn’t perfectly match either of the theories.

“This tells us that both theories need to be revised,” says Lucia Melloni, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, and one of the researchers involved.

“With respect to IIT, what we observed is that, indeed, areas in the posterior cortex do contain information in a sustained manner,” Melloni says, adding that the finding seems to suggest that the ‘structure’ postulated by the theory is being observed. But the researchers didn’t find evidence of sustained synchronization between different areas of the brain, as had been predicted.

In terms of GNWT, the researchers found that some aspects of consciousness, but not all of them, could be identified in the prefrontal cortex. Additionally, the experiments found evidence of the broadcasting postulated by advocates of the theory, but only at the beginning of an experience — not also at the end, as had been predicted.

So GNWT fared a bit worse than IIT during the experiment. “But that doesn’t mean that IIT is true and GNWT isn’t,” Melloni says. What it means is that proponents need to rethink the mechanisms they proposed in light of the new evidence.

Despite a vast effort — and a 25-year bet — researchers still don’t understand how our brains produce it, however. “It started off as a very big philosophical mystery,” Chalmers adds. “But over the years, it’s gradually been transmuting into, if not a ‘scientific’ mystery, at least one that we can get a partial grip on scientifically.”"
- Published in Nature

Dr. Christof Koch sitting with the Dalai Lama. Please observe which one is at the head of the table as that should tell you something

[Gracchus]

[Replying to Swami in post #115]
Swami: " Consciousness is the activity of the entire Universe."

Any organism is a manifestation of the universe. As the Hindu sage acknowledges, "Tat tvam así", or to put it another way, "Atman is Brahman". To the extent that the mental construct of the mind replicates actual reality, that is the property called the "Buddha Mind".

Swami: "This subject matter requires a multi-disciplinary approach involving physics, biology, psychology, and more,...""

Such diversity of approaches is helpful, but scarcely necessary. After all, the enlightened mind, realizing that separateness is an illusion, can reach the correct conclusion, even without understanding that mind is the overlapping fields of spacetime, flows of matter energy in vortices and feedbacks, that mind can also be seen as electro-chemistry, and as an active arrangement of neural dendrites and synapses. But minds can be explained by natural phenomena. No "woo" factors like "metaphysics" are necessary. Philosophical reasoning that is not based on observation of reality usually ends up splitting angel hair. (See: Reductio ad absurdum)

Swami: "I have read too much on what Western authors have to say about consciousness."

I would suggest that the quality of your reading would be more important than the quantity, and what neuroscience has to offer is only one source of supportive evidence for consciousness. There are many roads to truth, although neuroscience is probably the most direct method of understanding consciousness.

Swami: "Only an ego-driven scientist would not want to explore the traditions of different cultures while continuing in the same failed approach."

But one whose self-understood ego travels the path of the Buddha, destroying the illusion of separateness, can by diverse approaches, such as physics, chemistry and biology, reach the same conclusion, thus gaining confidence in that conclusion, which is based not on intuition, but by science.

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

― Buddha Siddhartha Gautama Shakyamuni

I am undoubtedly conscious (Cogito ergo sum!) and not a separate phenomenon from the rest of reality, and thus I, at least, am the universe conscious of itself. As I continue to explore using methods from neuroscience, astrophysics and fields of spacetime, I can refine and add wonderful fractal detail to my world view.

[boatsnguitars]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog ... -a-rainbow

Consciousness Is Like a Rainbow
Consciousness arises from particular circuits in the brain.
Updated July 15, 2023 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

KEY POINTS
Consciousness arises from specially evolved neural circuits in the brain configured to instantiate it.
Circuits tend to be specialized: The neural networks in the eyes are different from those in audition.
Consciousness is an achievement of specific neural processes; not all brain processes are associated with it.

Consciousness is like a rainbow in that it arises from a particular set of circumstances. For there to be a rainbow, several conditions must be met. Rainbows don’t just spring up everywhere. They are not an inherent property of matter or of the universe. Rainbows arise from these circumstances and not from just anything.

The same can be said for lasers, audio recording, digestion, memory retrieval, and air conditioning. These things do not spring from thin air: They stem from physical structures that are configured to instantiate these particular functions, just as the human eye evolved for seeing and the ear evolved for hearing, and eyes can’t hear, and ears can’t see. Similarly, in the study of vision, it is well-known that some neural circuits are devoted to certain kinds of perceptual analysis, such as “edge enhancement” (to detect the boundaries of objects) and motion detection (e.g., the Reichardt detector). Because of their arrangement, the neurons doing motion detection cannot do memory retrieval or music appreciation, and vice versa.

Consciousness is another achievement of the brain, instantiated by the activities of nerve cells and how they are configured to instantiate this particular cognitive phenomenon. And this is the mainstream view: Not all circuits in the brain are associated with consciousness, just as not all parts of a car are associated with, say, the navigational system. The circuitry of the car’s navigational system is different from that of the transmission.

Consciousness is (somehow) instantiated by neural activities configured to instantiate consciousness. There is overwhelming evidence that this is the case, as is known by any anesthesiologist. Not all brain circuits are involved with instantiating consciousness (see review of evidence here). For example, there is overwhelming evidence that the cerebellum, which has more neurons than the cortex, is not responsible for instantiating consciousness. All the neurons in the cerebellum do not “do” consciousness (see review of evidence here). They are wired in extremely sophisticated ways to do other things. There is something about the arrangement of the neural circuits associated with consciousness that permits them to instantiate this phenomenon, just as there is something about the components of a toaster that make a toaster capable of toasting toast. A blender cannot toast, and a toaster cannot blend.

Analogously, the neurons involved in the pupillary reflex are not involved in memory retrieval and are not configured to carry out such a process, just as a toaster is not configured to record music, and a television is not configured to make toast. To say that toast “emerges” from the complexity of a toaster does little to explain how a toaster works.

Someone who subscribes to panpsychism would disagree with this view because, according to the panpsychist standpoint, consciousness is a property of all matter. (This is not the traditional, mainstream view of the brain.) From this standpoint, consciousness is not an achievement of the brain; it is a freebie provided (somehow) by the universe and its matter.

A friend of mine who is a panpsychist explained to me that a doorknob is conscious. I asked if it is conscious in the way that you and I are conscious. He said, “No, it is not.” I then asked why not, and he replied that it has something to do with our brains. The doorknob has only a kind of “proto-consciousness,” and we, because of our brain circuitry, have “real consciousness.”

So the question now becomes, “What is special about our brain that allows it to produce real consciousness instead of just proto-consciousness (whatever that might be)?” My friend confessed that we have simply replaced one mystery with another. Moreover, my friend and I agreed that our new question (what is special about the brain that makes it "real" conscious) is worth solving and that to solve it, one must investigate not the doorknob but a subset of circuits in the brain.

References
Morsella, E., Godwin, C. A., Jantz, T. K., Krieger, S. C., & Gazzaley, A. (2016). Homing in on consciousness in the nervous system: An action-based synthesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences [Target Article], 39, 1-17.


Until non-Materialists show us actual data to the contrary, there is no reason to discount the idea that Consciousness arises from the physical brain - i.e., that it is Physical.
100 years ago, you'd have a good reason to doubt it. No longer.

[Clownboat]

Did you really mean to write this? It is the same analogy I've been trying to make. The thought process can look complicated, but it is really nothing more than the complicated interactions of the brain's physical components working as a system.

That might be true but I just said it better.

My point is that this theory cannot produce original thought. The crystalline structure of salt will always be cubic. The crystalline structure of calcite is trigonal. It does not change. These always form the same structure.

What do you think supplies humans with the ability imagine? For example, some humans imagining that the gods, spirits, souls or fairies supply consciousness? Does it take more than a functioning brain to imagine such things? Is there some external thing that supplies imagination?

What supplies humans with the ability to be creative? Is there some external soul or spirit supplying humans with creativity? Maybe it's fairies putting such thoughts into our heads?

I'm skeptical about such creative and imagined ideas myself. Well crap! What is supplying me with this skepticism?!? There just must be some external thing... right? Right!

Don't blame me for this, blame the fairies as my functioning brain has little to do with it... right?

[Swami]

There is no scientific explanation for consciousness.