• The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    I know. Nerurologists know. We're right. — Philosophim
    :ok:
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    The findings of neuroscience are important in science but may not contain all that is known about consciousness because it can describe consciousness but is not consciousness itself. — Jack Cummins

    In fact neuroscience cannot describe consciousness, but only brain function. Describing consciousness is the function of phenomenology.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    Depending on the chronology of “traditional”. Some metaphysics doesn’t make absolutized claims about the nature of reality, i.e., that there is one necessarily, isn’t a claim about its nature. — Mww

    True, to say that there is an absolute nature of reality, even though we cannot say what it is, doesn't seem to be an absolutist claim. Although I do wonder sometimes whether the idea is coherent. Saying no more than "it is what it is" (Biblical echoes there) seems unimpeachable.

    Plain ol’ idealism. Idealism in and of itself, re: Berkeley. Ok, sure. Surely not though.....er....you-know-who. — Mww

    I see Kant's idealism as a kind of (proto) phenomenology. It is Kant, as I understand it, who was first to show that absolutized claims about the nature of reality cannot hold pure rational water. We know reality only as it appears to us.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    China is one and a half times the size of the USA.

    Check for yourself: https://thetruesize.com     — FreeEmotion

    Russia is shown there as being almost twice the size of China.
  • Reductionism and the Hierarchy of Scale
    But those rules can't be the result of an evolutionary process - they must pre-exist it. — Wayfarer

    Why couldn't they evolve as the system evolves, as, for example, Sheldrake conjectures?
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    Actually.....having thought about it overnight......if consciousness is external, then it affects the brain. If consciousness is internal, the brain is its cause but at the same time, only affects itself........

    ......which makes the brain affected either way, and affects being that upon which experiments are presupposed.....

    (Enter silly little lightbulb thingy here)     — Mww

    Right, so if consciousness is thought as fundamental then the brain and its sensual body is a structure of consciousness, designed by consciousness to focus itself in order to experience otherness. Something like that, anyhow...

    It's assumption all the way down, when it comes to (traditional) metaphysics, that is any absolutized claim about the nature of reality. Physicalism and idealism are two such claims.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    I would argue that phenomenology brackets both the external and the internal world as understood according to scientific naturalism, and it does so for ontological reasons, which are used to justify it’s methodology. The notion of phenomenology as introspection is a common but mistaken assumption. — Joshs

    Right, but I wasn't specifically referring to introspection by "internal". (That said introspection is certainly part, and an ineliminable part, of phenomenology, as the latter also consists in reflection on experience, which would be impossible without introspection in the form of memory). What I had in mind was subjective experience.

    So, the idea is that science generally brackets (leaves out of consideration) subjective experience and focuses on the objective, while phenomenology generally brackets the objective world and focuses on how we, subjectively, experience ourselves and it, ourselves in it.

    If you, as Heidegger does, count phenomenology as ontology then obviously ontology is part of phenomenology. But that is a non-traditional conception of ontology.

    From the perspective (and I maintain it is just a perspective) of phenomenology consciousness is prior, just because of its focus on subjective experience. From the perspective of science (and it is also just a perspective) consciousness is not prior, since it never what is being studied, because the subject of study here is simply the objects as they are encountered.

    Science is not an ontology either, it is a methodology, as it makes no necessary assumptions about the independent existence of its objects.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    ↪Joshs
    Right, it all depends on perspective and on what is being counted as fundamental, which is what I've been trying to point out to the real gone one.

    As I see it, phenomenology brackets the external world for methodological reasons and science brackets the internal world for methodological reasons. Neither are justified in making ontological claims that are beyond the ambit of their methodologies.

    By the way, do you have a position to claim? Or are you just a skeptic? — Real Gone Cat

    Skeptic. If anything I lean towards the view that the brain produces consciousness, but I acknowledge that is a groundless bias. That should have been clear to you from the start if you had actually read what I wrote.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    Ahhhh....I see. What you meant by grounding presupposition? I was going there myself, with “the philosophical admissions of the cognitive scientist himself”.

    Call it....close enough?     — Mww

    Yeah, I don't think we are disagreeing. My point was only that a scientist could start either from the presupposition that the brain produces consciousness, or that it receives consciousness, and perform exactly all the same experiments as are being done in neuroscience. Those experiments tell us which parts of the brain are active when the person being monitored is involved in particular kinds of thought, emotion or activity.

    The point being that those experiments demonstrate nothing either way as to whether consciousness is received or produced by the brain.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    ↪Real Gone Cat
    Not mean, but stupid; a poor reader. I haven't claimed anything. I have explicitly stated that a couple of times. I have presented the speculative idea that the brain might receive rather than produce consciousness and asked for an outline of what difference that would be expected to make to the observed results of neuroscience research if it were the case.

    If you can't answer that, then be intellectually honest enough to admit it.

    As a partial answer to one of my questions, you admitted that no thoughts occur until "picked up" by the brain. So doesn't that make consciousness a product of brain? — Real Gone Cat

    I didn't "admit that " at all. I acknowledged that it is an imaginable possibility. You need to up your reading and comprehension if you want to have a decent discussion.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    I would even go so far as to declare, saying that philosophy, and he who merely poses as a philosopher, rejects empirically grounded cognitive science with respect to brain operation and demonstrable functionality, is a case of pathological stupidity. — Mww

    Yes, I agree completely. But the speculatively projected metaphysical or ontological implications of empirically grounded cognitive science are another matter altogether; that was all I have been trying to get across.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    ↪Real Gone Cat
    When you answer the questions I posed instead of going off on a number of sarcastic tangential rants that do nothing but reveal your own set of prejudices then I'll respond further.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    Meanwhile, the rest of the world goes on blissfully believing in : using medicine to help with depression and ADHD, wearing bike helmets to prevent concussions, brain-death being true death, and the like. — Real Gone Cat

    All those would still obtain if the brain was a receiver, as far as I can tell. If you think not, then explain yourself.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    I know you philosophy majors hate science, but come on. Receives from where? And why can't any of us remember our thoughts before the brain received them?

    GT is right on this account : wild speculation does not supersede testable science. You gotta bring more than "here there be monsters".     — Real Gone Cat

    I have asked and received no answer to the question as to how the experimental results would be expected to look any different if the brain was a receiver of consciousness rather than a producer of consciousness.

    I have skimmed through the linked papers and found nothing relevant to this question. I am not advocating that we should believe the brain is a receiver, I am merely entertaining the possibility and wondering what difference that would make, if it was the case, to what is observed. If Garrett can't answer that question then the possibility, however far-fetched it might seem, remains open.

    If no imaginable observable difference can be given, then the empirical investigation of the brain does not depend on adopting one ontological possibility over the other. The investigation has value despite any ontological commitments just because of what it reveals to us. It amazes me that even when I clearly state that I incline more to the view that the brain produces consciousness I still get accused of saying things like "here be monsters".

    As to your question, "receives from where?" the answer would be, assuming universality of consciousness as ontologically fundamental, simply from consciousness itself, from the "field" of consciousness, so to speak. Obviously, this would not be something which could ever be investigated and demonstrated to be true or false, empirically.

    As to your other question "And why can't any of us remember our thoughts before the brain received them?", why would we remember thoughts which we had not received, and thus had not had yet? Also the speculation is that consciousness and thus the ability to form thoughts might be received rather than produced by the brain, and that would not necessarily entail that the thoughts are not produced by the brain. The brain might "process" the experiences it receives into thoughts and feelings just as we imagine it does in the physicalist context.

    In any case, I am not proposing that anybody adopt this speculative view, and I introduced it just to show that our ontological commitments are really irrelevant to, and not justified by, our empirical investigations. Physicalism is equally speculative, even if it might seem more plausible due to our inbuilt modernist biases, and I am sure there are very good neuroscientists out there who are devout Christians, or Buddhists, or Muslims and so on; and I am sure their work is not compromised by their metaphysical beliefs.

    If you and GT cannot back up your objections with any actual arguments then that is rather telling don't you think?
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    ↪Garrett Travers
    I don't have the time to read all those. As I said you really should produce the argument yourself, or at least point to the passages in those papers which make the argument. Or tell me just how we should expect the experimental findings to differ if consciousness was received by, rather than produced in, the brain.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    There's no evidence of this kind of assumption, and all the evidence that does exist suggest mine, and philosophim's position. — Garrett Travers

    I can't see any evidence in what I've read that is conclusive of either view. What evidence actually suggests that the brain produces rather than receives consciousness? Just cite one or two bits of evidence. As I see it there can be no empirical evidence that could show that, and I cannot see why neuroscientific results would not appear exactly the same in either case. I'm ready to be convinced otherwise though; but you'll need to argue convincingly for it or at least point me to the specific sections of papers that do so.

    Personally, I lean more towards thinking that the brain does produce consciousness, but I admit that is a personal assessment mostly based on my general accordance with the prevailing modern scientific mindset. In other words it just seems the more plausible view to me, but I acknowledge the other possibility cannot be definitively ruled out.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    Of course it comes from the brain. Ever seen a person get knocked out by hitting their head? How do you think that happens? Barring all the massive evidence at this point in scientific discovery, where does it come from then? I have a claim of where consciousness comes from, and have the entirety of neuroscience to back me up. What's your alternative? — Philosophim

    Anyone with physicalist presuppositions will say that of course it comes from the brain: where else? On the other side those who think consciousness or mind is ontologically fundamental will say that the brain is like a radio receiver; that it in some sense receives consciousness, doesn't produce it. Who's right? Who knows and how could the 'fact of the matter' ever be demonstrated?

    The discoveries and facts of neuroscience would be the same either way; that is they are consistent with either thesis.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    They even consider it as a subject matter of --or belonging to-- Neuroscience! And it's not only them: the whole scientific community (except a few cases) shares the same view. — Alkis Piskas

    I think a scientific approach to consciousness is fine, provided it doesn't claim a totalizing authority. The phenomenological approach is equally valid, but it should not claim a totalizing authority either. They are simply two different approaches from two different perspectives, and each brackets what it needs to to remain methodologically on track. There is much to learn from both approaches in my view. Why must we be partisan in this? Isn't partisanship rather a negative human tendency to be overcome?
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    Not sure there can ever be a convincing account, when the disparity between what the brain is doing (physics) is on one hand, and what the brain has done (metaphysics), is on the other. — Mww

    Yes, I tend to think such an account is impossible in principle because it would need to be some kind of weird hybrid between what Wilfrid Sellars termed the "space of causes" and the "space of reasons", or between a "third person " account and a "first person" account, or between science and phenomenology. And hybrids are not renowned for their fertility.

    I think that all accounts, all kinds of accounts, are reliant for their coherence on their contexts and the grounding presuppositions (themselves groundless) those contexts are based upon.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    ↪Garrett Travers
    Cheers. I may well have misunderstood you to be claiming more than you were.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    This is still something that doesn't makes. Moral culpability comes from the fact that we can conceptualize the nature of our actions, inhibit or initiate behavior, refine behavior, and make choices. It does not matter if it is natural. All is not permitted if we are naturally created. — Garrett Travers

    I don't deny that all of those are possible faculties of the body/brain, but they will only be realized by certain brains that are capable of them. And if they are realized by a particular body/brain they will simply inexorably happen (if determinism is the case), or in some sense randomly, but statistically reliably, happen (if indeterminism is the case) just as any other natural process does.

    What I have found missing from your account and from the papers you've linked is any coherent and convincing account of how to make a principled ontological distinction between an inexorably unfolding neural process and any other causal process.

    Also, I have never encountered a coherent and convincing account of how our normal notion (the one our legal system and the common moral judgements of people are based upon) of moral responsibility could be compatible with the idea that we cannot in any sense really be causa sui moral agents.

    Now maybe we cannot help thinking in terms of moral responsibility and deserved punishment because that is way the brain (mind) has co-evolved with culture, and the needs of communities, but if determinism is the case then it would seem to follow that thinking that way is a kind of necessary illusion.

    Of course all is not permitted in any case just because societies cannot permit any and all behavior.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    However, that does not negate the falsifiable science that has been done, which has revealed the important elements of consciousness I have expounded upon here. — Garrett Travers

    Right, but I haven't disagreed with any of the experimental results of neuroscience. The tension I see is moving form those results to ontological claims such as that we are nothing but our brains. Because I still cannot but see the idea of moral responsibility as being inherently incompatible with the kind of determinism that follows inexorably from such claims.

    In my view if we wanted to accept the conclusion that all thoughts, decisions and actions are exhaustively determined by neural activity, then we should be prepared to drop the notion of moral responsibility and deserved punishment, as opposed to necessary restraint, altogether.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    But such a process is not an explanation for the smell, in the sense that it tells what a smell is. Only the smell experience can tell you that. And there is no explanation what it actually is. — EugeneW

    I agree with this. An experience is an experience, and no matter how closely we might be able to identify the neural correlates of an experience, we can never be justified in claiming that the experience is reducible to something which cannot be itself be directly experienced. Such a claim is necessarily unfalsifiable and hence is not a scientific claim at all (pace Popper).
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    ↪Garrett Travers
    OK, no worries.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    ↪Garrett Travers
    You've lost me then: what were you not speculating about?
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    ↪Garrett Travers
    Well, your speculation failed to be in accord with the facts. If you felt insulted that would be a different thing, but that would not be a matter of speculation.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    ↪Garrett Travers
    That'd be an appropriate comment if I had insulted you.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    ↪Garrett Travers
    I'm not dismissing science, but questioning your interpretation of what it entails; two very different things.

    Also, if you actually read what I wrote you would know that I don't have a position on the question of the nature of consciousness.

    I have no argument with the results of neuroscience, as far as they go.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    ↪Garrett Travers
    It wasn't an insult. Your being a fervent believer in Christianity explains your current status as fervent believer in what you think neuroscience has to show us. Proselytizing mindsets don't seem to change, but at most shift from one crusade to another: I've seen this phenomenon so many times.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    when I was a Christian devotee — Garrett Travers

    Ah, that explains it.
  • Is depression the default human state?
    ↪Merkwurdichliebe
    Fair enough, though I don't believe the judgements of the mind are made in a hermetically sealed vacuum; I tend towards thinking that they reflect something that is not dependent on the mind at all. But that's just me.
  • Material Numbers
    ↪ucarr
    So it would seem. Of course the other possibility is that numbers exist in the mind of God, but that one's impossible to argue. At least we know we do see number everywhere in the everywhere, and it's only the fact that we can imagine that there might be a universal mind, along with our preconceived ideas about the difference between the concrete and the abstract, that makes the environmental explanation seem like it might not be adequate.
  • Is depression the default human state?
    ↪Merkwurdichliebe
    It seems that it must be the skin; you cannot have diversity of skin without skins which differ. Of course you could have genetic diversity which explains the diversity of skin. But you would need genes in order to have genetic diversity, so we've just kicked the can back down the road.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    No, I don't think so. Had that been the case, you would have addressed something I've asserted with the data. — Garrett Travers

    You "don't think so" what? I don't need to see the data to know that it cannot support the kind of claim you are making. Yours is a metaphysical or ontological claim. Empirical data has no bearing on those.

    What you are claiming is undecidable, pure and simple. If not it could be demonstrated by experiment. Only philosophically uneducated people take scientific results to prove anything about ontology. I've raised questions and you've refused to even attempt to answer them.

    For example I asked you whether you thought that conscious awareness was prior or subsequent to its correlated neural process. Libet's experiment seem to show that it is subsequent; which, if true, would mean that the nature of conscious awareness may be completely determined by neural processes,

    Along these lines, the Churchlands believe that conscious awareness is epiphenomenal which means that it plays no part in decision-making. If this were true then the brain follows its own inexorable processes, thus being effectively a natural process.

    You want to claim that people are morally responsible, but such a claim would be absurd if we are nothing more than a natural process. From a purely rational perspective our moral status would be the same as any other natural process, notwithstanding the brain/body's much greater complexity.

    You have no answer for this objection, apparently, and so try to deflect the question, so as not to show the weakness of your position. At least the Churchlands are consistent in their eliminativism. And so is Dennett for the most part, although he too does not want to admit that there is no free will, and hence moral responsibility, even though everything he writes points to that conclusion. You can believe whatever you like, but at least be intellectually honest enough to be consistent.

    If you take pointing out inconsistencies in your position as insult then that's your problem, not mine.
  • Is depression the default human state?
    I disagree. Having skin is the default. — Merkwurdichliebe

    Of which no two are exactly the same.
  • Is depression the default human state?
    But is being depressed or even anxious the human default? — TiredThinker

    No, being diverse is the human default. When it comes to (existential angst) I think it mostly afflicts those for whom their lives are an issue that needs to be pondered.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    Ya know....and I know you do....it was said many moons ago, that human reason is very good at contradicting itself. So if brain machinations are the be-all-end-all, and human reason is the conscious manifestation of the be-all-end-all of brain machinations, then it is the case that the brain both adheres to the absolute necessity of natural law, and at the same time, ensures the inevitability of contradicting itself. Which would seem pretty hard to explain, methinks. — Mww

    Yep, nice concundrum! I predict we will continue to receive promissory notes for the 'be-all-and-end-all-explanation, from neuroscience, though. It might be like nuclear fusion; it was only fifty years away fifty years ago , it's only fifty years away today and will probably be fifty years away in fifty years.

    In any case in regard to any explanation which claims to be final; it flies in the face of science which is perennially provisional, and only warranted within its own limited empirical ambit, to boot.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    And no, it's pretty well asserted in neuroscientific community, even if there are still many mysteries to solve. — Garrett Travers

    Sure, a community that arguably shares the same basic presuppositions; presuppositions which cannot themselves be scientifically tested/

    No, fundamentalists say that the mind and body are separate, — Garrett Travers

    There are fundamentalists on both sides, and the fact that you don't recognize that speaks to your own presuppositions not to science per se.

    Just to be clear, I'm not arguing for either side; I am neither atheist nor theist. dualist nor monist; I like to keep an open mind on undecidables. That said I do have my leanings, but they are something I'd not care to argue for, being as how there is no objective measure of mere plausibility.

    You guys just keep either insulting me, or just saying I'm wrong. Which is weird. — Garrett Travers

    I haven't said you are wrong. I've merely thrown you some problems for your position which you've utterly failed to address. You may be wrong or you may be right, but where you are definitely wrong, in my view, is over-zealously overstepping the bounds of scientific warrant in regard to your claims.

    And if you read back over the threads you've participated in with an honest eye, I think you'll find that the move to insult has generally been initiated by you.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    So if everybody does this, but nobody does that....where should the productive emphasis reside? — Mww

    Yes, and in light of that what could it even mean to say we are nothing but our brains? That claim itself is anything but an empirically falsifiable one. It's not the neuroscience that says this, but an interpretation of what it purportedly entails. We could equally (and groundlessly ) claim that we are nothing but fundamental particles, or we are nothing but meat robots. These sorts of claims are made by those of a fundamentalist spirit that fails to realize the importance of perspective and context.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    ↪Garrett Travers
    At least you're able to admit that much.
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