And I've had a hard time understanding how scientists revel in evidence, yet think. Thinking has no evidence. There's no evidence for the empirical method, it was born of thought. "Science" (personifying it here), from a certain persepective is stuck at the level of sensorium. The senses have nothing to say, they're dumb. Any time we have a thought, idealism has entered the domain. Scientists are exceedingly ignorant of this point. The entire enterprise of science lies on a foundation for which there is no evidence because it is idealism. A heavy contradiction to put it mildly.
I oriented in science until realizing it can't address truth. It makes sense for the half of reality which is physical...but to only see half of reality is a chimerical chase...especially when the part of reality closest to each of us is without evidence. — Anthony
If you have trouble grasping how the mechanics and electronics of our minds turn into feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, that doesn't have anything to do with consciousness. — T Clark
The scientific tools for looking at it closely are relatively new. — T Clark
In the context of me saying we have no idea what the mechanism is, I am happy to have someone from the 'we know a lot about it' camp couch it as unknown. I would think however that people probably react in a variety of ways to both what is or what we consider unknown and to what we consider mysterious. Mysterious it seems to me adds in that there is a surprising element to the phenomenon. I don't think that's ridiculous if one is coming from a physicalist viewpoint.It's not just word play. It has significant consequences. If you call something a mystery, you treat it differently than if it were just unknown. — T Clark
He's not mixing in his personal mysteries, he is saying that it strikes him as mysterious. Which is probably true, unless is lying or quite bad at introspection. Mysterious and unknown both cover situations where our limited knowledge encounters something that seems real. One focuses on the epistemological absence, they other add feelings having to do with how the not known thing strikes us given our paradigms. This doesn't take away from any of his arguments.If you want to mix your personal mysteries in with science and philosophy, that's fine, but it undermines the credibility of your argument. — T Clark
How do you look at consciousness closely? Measuring brain activity is not looking at consciousness, it isn't seeing what the person sees or thinks or feels. — leo
If you think biology could be derived in principle from chemistry, and that chemistry could be derived in principle from fundamental physics, then you think biology could be derived in principle from fundamental physics. Fundamental physics claims to describe the fundamental constituents of the universe and how they move, through equations of motion. These equations allow to derive where some particle will be at some point in the future, or what probability there is to detect one in some location, or even how some arrangement of matter is going to move or change, but by construction they can't allow to derive that any arrangement of matter perceives or thinks or feels anything at all.
Or if you think biology couldn't be derived in principle from fundamental physics and you invoke some emergence to account for the existence of consciousness, then that amounts to invoking magic, to say there is some magical stuff happening that makes a bunch of moving particles become conscious. To say that we don't know yet how consciousness emerges from these particles but one day we'll find out, is just wishful thinking, it's logically impossible without sprinkling magic in the middle. Believing that it's possible is not proof that it's possible, it's just blind faith. — leo
In the context of me saying we have no idea what the mechanism is, I am happy to have someone from the 'we know a lot about it' camp couch it as unknown. I would think however that people probably react in a variety of ways to both what is or what we consider unknown and to what we consider mysterious. Mysterious it seems to me adds in that there is a surprising element to the phenomenon. I don't think that's ridiculous if one is coming from a physicalist viewpoint. — Coben
He's not mixing in his personal mysteries, he is saying that it strikes him as mysterious. Which is probably true, unless is lying or quite bad at introspection. Mysterious and unknown both cover situations where our limited knowledge encounters something that seems real. — Coben
It's not just word play. It has significant consequences. If you call something a mystery, you treat it differently than if it were just unknown. I think it was Alan Watts who said that what we call mysteries are parts of ourselves that we're not aware of. That makes a lot of sense to me. If you want to mix your personal mysteries in with science and philosophy, that's fine, but it undermines the credibility of your argument. — T Clark
Of course looking at brain activity associated with conscious experience is "looking at consciousness." Consciousness is something other than personal experience. All mental phenomena are something other than personal experience. — T Clark
Although biology must be consistent with the principles of chemistry and physics, it cannot be derived in principle from either or both. It operates on principles and according to "laws" that are not predictable from the laws of physics or chemistry. And so on on up the line. This is what people mean when they talk about "emergence." — T Clark
Consciousness and other mental experiences are emergent phenomena of biological anatomy and physiology. And that's why it's not a mystery, any more than the emergence of chemistry out of physics is a mystery. It's not magic, it's the way the world works. — T Clark
Definition of consciousness: a person's awareness or perception of something
So no, looking at brain activity associated with conscious experience is not looking at that conscious experience. That's like saying "of course looking at a fossil associated with a dinosaur is looking at a dinosaur". — leo
obviously if you define consciousness as brain activity then there seems to be no great unknown about it, it's just a matter of associating observed brain activity with reports of the person whose brain activity is observed. But that's not how consciousness is defined. — leo
There are physicists like Dirac who claimed that the whole of chemistry can be derived from the laws of physics: The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble. It therefore becomes desirable that approximate practical methods of applying quantum mechanics should be developed, which can lead to an explanation of the main features of complex atomic systems without too much computation. — leo
In the same way it is imagined that molecular biology could be derived from chemistry, cellular biology from molecular biology, and so on, but that in practice it is simpler to find laws at a given level than to infer them from the laws of the level below. — leo
If you say that laws at a given level emerge but couldn't be derived even in principle from the laws of the lower levels, then what is it that makes them emerge, at what point is the magic infused to make these new laws appear? You're saying we couldn't find a mechanism that would explain how cells behave based on how molecules behave, so what is the additional thing that cells are made of which isn't molecules? If it can't be described in any way then it might as well be magic. — leo
Your definition doesn't say "the un-observable, personal experience of a person's awareness or perception of something." It's perfectly possible to talk about consciousness as an objective fact about a state of mind.
We talk about consciousness of non-human animals and try to determine what types of observable behaviors show us what the animal's internal state is. — T Clark
I'm skeptical, but I'll see if I can track down the references. If you have something more specific, it would be helpful. — T Clark
Biology is not predictable using chemistry and physics. It's not a short cut, it's the only way we can know the principles of higher levels of organization - by observing them directly. Reductionism doesn't work. It doesn't reflect reality. — T Clark
The crux of the matter is that if the reductionist view is assumed (as it is by most physicists), then consciousness cannot arise from the more fundamental laws and from chance events, because these chance events are still constrained by the fundamental laws.
And if reductionism is not assumed, then one would have to explain for instance what is it about the behavior of a cell that doesn't depend on the behavior of the molecules that make up the cell, and if we can't describe that in any way then we might as well say something magical is going on, and similarly say that consciousness arises from the brain because something magical is going on.
But there is a way out of this conundrum: to stop assuming that our perceptions allow us to model what we are. Models of what goes on within our perceptions are not models of what gives rise to these perceptions. Then the question of reductionism becomes irrelevant, because then physics and chemistry and biology and neuroscience all together only tell a tiny part of the whole story, they only describe what goes on in one movie some of us are watching. — leo
Are you talking about the as of yet unknown or perhaps unknowable nature of qualia of perception and emotions? — Noah Te Stroete
I'm talking about the impossibility to explain consciousness in a materialist framework (by consciousness I refer to what a being experiences: perceptions, feelings, thoughts ...), or in other words the impossibility to explain what gives rise to our consciousness based on the contents of our perceptions alone (so if we claim to have a model that describes the fundamental laws that govern our universe, but it is impossible to derive from that model that anything experiences anything even in principle, then it's not a model of our universe, because at least something experiences something). Well we can always give an explanation by invoking magic (for instance say that consciousness arises from the brain because magic, or that it arises from some complex process we can't describe), but usually we expect more from an explanation, otherwise we can explain anything in any way we want. — leo
Just to make sure I understand - you think that consciousness rising up out of brain function is fundamentally different in kind than life rising up out of chemistry. And that this is the reason for the "hard problem" of consciousness. Is that right?
In what I've read, a lot of people equate the hard problem and vitalism. I'm assuming you disagree. — T Clark
Can the hard problem be solved by science? If so, where do we look? If not, that's just magic too. I've been following up on our previous discussion with some reading. — T Clark
I'm surprised. Maybe I wasn't paying close attention to what you have written. I thought we were talking about the hard problem of consciousness - the question of where and how our personal experience is generated through our bodies. Where it comes from. I thought you were arguing that emergence couldn't be the answer because it doesn't really exist so no new principles or behaviors can develop between one layer of organization and and the next. So that leaves the hard question unanswered. — T Clark
Now it seems to me that you are saying that consciousness is somehow applied to us from the outside, which would be vitalism as I understand it. Or are you saying that the physical world develops out of consciousness, since it is fundamental? How does that work? — T Clark
At the risk of taking a joke seriously - since you'd be conceding your position is not provable - it is possible to prove a negative. At least in the sense of proof outside of math and symbolic logic.No, it isn't — Pattern-chaser
For example, all of science is not proved... — Coben
That's just what your gut tells you.:razz:[Edited to add: and you can't prove a negative.] — Pattern-chaser
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