I suggest other participants in this discussion take a look and decide for themselves. — T Clark
How?" is still a mystery, but the leading theory is that all structures of the brain operate in a complex network of unparralleled sophistiction. By produce, I mean emit, generate, or otherwise enable. Much like eyesight is produced by the brain, so too is consciousness
No one knows how, but God forbid anyone disagree that it's been proven to. — theRiddler
Yeah, but how do you explain the difference between someone being knocked out and someone being awake? Where is the difference? You might point the person's behavior, but I can act like I'm knocked out so how do you tell the difference between someone acting like they are knocked out and someone who is actually knocked out? And how would the person that goes from being awake, to knocked out to awake again describe the difference, and would there be a discrepancy between the two descriptions (yours and theirs), and if so why? If we can act, or lie with our actions, then there must be some difference between our behaviors and what we are presently aware (conscious) of.
I agree with everything except the notion that consciousness is a silly concept. How do you explain dreams, or the fact that I can act in some way that is contrary to my present knowledge?
Descriptive terms serve to describe things, but they aren’t themselves things, substances, or forces, and they shouldn’t be treated as such in any careful language.
When speaking about and analyzing things that exist, the human organism exists. This human organism is what we study and analyze to better understand his activity. “Consciousness”, however, doesn’t exist, and we should abandon the term. — NOS4A2
Yes, you not knowing how the brain produces consciousness yet insisting everyone believe it does is a strawman. — theRiddler
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
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
He is pointing to the way in which even pinning down aspects of the mind to a physical body and brain rests on how the body itself is seen, with the underlying question of what is body and mind exactly? — Jack Cummins
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. — Janus
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. — Janus
It's assumption all the way down, when it comes to (traditional) metaphysics, that is any absolutized claim about the nature of reality. — Janus
Physicalism and idealism are two such claims. — Janus
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
Plain ol’ idealism. Idealism in and of itself, re: Berkeley. Ok, sure. Surely not though.....er....you-know-who. — Mww
The only scientifically supported assertion (mine) on this thread is not the strawman. Your attempt to claim that I have asserted that I know how consciousness is produced without question is the strawman, and it is pathetic that you keep going with it, even though I have addressed it numerous times in this thread. You're basically just a creepy little troll with no argument, and too much emotion.
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
I saying no more than "it is what it is" (...) seems unimpeachable. — Janus
You may have missed the point of my later posts on this thread. Normally, I tend to ignore threads with extremist terminology, such as "unequivocal triumph". But GT mentioned "denizens of this forum" in a unflattering reference to those who do not accept his Scientism-based bible-thumping as philosophical arguments. So I tried one last time to convince him that this is not a Science forum, and that modern Philosophers are mainly focused on topics that don't lend themselves to empirical evidence. I never denigrated the work of empirical scientists. And all of my proffered "evidence" came from credentialed practitioners of various fields of science. So my comments were not in any sense anti-science, but merely pro-philosophy.. Apparently, he equates Philosophy with obsolete Religion conquered by triumphant Science..I know you believe that you wrote a reasoned unbiased unemotional post, but you didn’t come close to one. — Joe Mello
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? — Janus
I’ve seen people knocked out, but never a brain knocked out. People are far more than brains. — NOS4A2
When speaking of qualities or states of a human being, such as consciousness, happiness, sleepiness, etc. we are discussing qualities and states of the organism in its entirety, such as it exists. Since disembodied brains can neither function nor exist on their own—without blood, oxygen, the skeleton, flesh—it’s silly to say a brain can produce a quality that only an entire organism can display. — NOS4A2
In fact neuroscience cannot describe consciousness, but only brain function. Describing consciousness is the function of phenomenology. — Janus
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. — Janus
But where does phenomenology connect with causality in accounting for consciousness as the phenomena it decides is its subject of study? — apokrisis
"How?" is still a mystery, but the leading theory is that all structures of the brain operate in a complex network of unparralleled sophistiction. By produce, I mean emit, generate, or otherwise enable. Much like eyesight is produced by the brain, so too is consciousness. — Garrett Travers
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