You would be left with only your memories that you're forced to reflect on, as your mind can do nothing else. But say then the virus erases your memory, then what is your mind? How conscious are you? We would not consider these things on their own part of consciousness but when removed so is then awareness. No other factors come into play.
Even if you are alive you are in no part conscious without all these things. — Dale Petersen
We know when the brain is affected so is our consciousness but miraculously, when we die & our entire brain fails, and no longer functions its thought our mind remains unchanged, unaffected as it passes into the afterlife. The ridiculousness of this idea seems monumental. — Dale Petersen
There is nothing un-materialistic about consciousness, just the remarkable emergent property of billions of years of evolution resulting in more complex & aware life on earth...
The mind & brain are not separate but the same thing. — Dale Petersen
does it make sense to talk about living organisms as something different from the physical and chemical actions and reactions that make it up? — T Clark
Again, with physics we talk about electrons and molecules. With life, we talk about cells and tissues. — T Clark
1, The mind & brain are not separate but the same thing. — Dale Petersen
Hi Pantagruel, can you show exactly where this fallacy applies?Post hoc ergo propter hoc is truly an insidious fallacy. — Pantagruel
When you remove all inputs to the human brain, there is nothing to be aware of and therefore not aware/conscious, just action potentials. What would it be like to be this way. Think about it now and imagine it.I am probably complicating matters further, but I am wondering where the unconscious comes in. — Jack Cummins
Please elaborate, what do you mean?but I do see the unconscious and unconscious as interconnected. — Jack Cummins
To answer your first question, I'll ask you that question, what would your mind/consciousness be without these things? Even if I missed an obscure sense we have, the same logic applies then to that. The point is you removing all inputs to the brain & their effect, so what is then your mind? I argue nothing. Try to imagine it. — Dale Petersen
To your second point. To reframe the thought, If you receive a brain injury that renders you unable to feel emotions, why would you then when your entire brain fails aka dies, would this ability come back to you, or would you then live in the afterlife emotionless forever. Basically, the point is everything we can attribute to our soul/mind/consciousness is dependent on certain regions of the brain, saying that there is nothing outside it that is part of the soul/mind/consciousness whatever would like to call it. Nothing un-materialistic. — Dale Petersen
I don't quite understand this. The physical and chemical actions and reactions that make it up is all that it is. That's what it is, entirely. Unless you can show otherwise? So why would you talk about it as something separate? Because a living organism is alive but the sum of its parts is not? Is that what you're saying? — Dale Petersen
When we know the cells and tissues are made from electrons and molecules why would you consider them separate? Where would you draw the line. I argue there is no line to be drawn. I really hope I have not misunderstood what you're saying. — Dale Petersen
Almost all attempts at this question seem to miss the mark by a huge margin. — Dale Petersen
Psychedelics augment consciousness rather than destroy it (unless you die from an overdose) -- so I think perhaps that could be said to expose our false sense of an objective reality, rather than anything against about the problem of awareness or consciousness itself. It is still consciousness just a different plane of consciousness...... — Cassandra
With all this though, I guess the mystery still eternally lies in the WHY though.
Even if consciousness emerges from all the components, still WHY ?
Leading us back to wonder about our origins and the purpose of complex brains and in turn consciousness emerging in form and matter..... the question of why and is there a reason or not !!!! — Cassandra
Reading into this too much I think, the point is to remove it as a variable because experience comes from inputs to the brain. So it's not important how you would do it but more so what it would mean to be without it. it just simplifies the argument. As you don't have memories without inputs, so it's just really a simplification of the argument because it must logically follow anyway. — Dale Petersen
I honestly don't see why that’s an issue. But I was using this argument to pre-empively refute the Soul & mind are separate arguments. — Dale Petersen
So would you agree that is like saying the code of a program/Mind follows different rules to the hardware/brain which runs it? — Dale Petersen
I disagree. I think the fact that you don't know how to remove memories or even if it can be done or what would happen if you did undermines your argument. — T Clark
Okay then do you agree then with the thought experiment? That he would pass into the afterlife without the ability to feel emotion? If he was missing it before passing?You were talking about an afterlife, which is a religious concept. I see no reason to believe the objections you raise would apply to a supernatural phenomenon. — T Clark
This probably isn't a good analogy. Let's say it is for discussion's sake. Are you saying the software is the hardware? — T Clark
I think the limits of consciousness is shown in my argument to be the inputs, our senses. Everything which takes in information. — Dale Petersen
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