Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Dachshund]

Our perception of deep sleep or microbial senses is basically blackness - nothing going on.

Greta,

"Blackness" is not nothingness. Blackness is a state of being black - black, like the colour of black ink or black charcoal, etc. To be black is be something; blackness is not no-thing. There can be no such thing as nothing/ nothingness ( i.e. a state of non-being) Parmenides demonstrated this logically thousands of years ago, and it seems to me his argument is still watertight today ?

Regards

Dachshund

[Consul]

There is a meaningful distinction between seeing blackness/darkness and seeing nothing, and between hearing silence and hearing nothing.

[Consul]

There is a meaningful distinction between seeing blackness/darkness and seeing nothing, and between hearing silence and hearing nothing.

"Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence"
—Simon & Garfunkel

"Hearing silence is successful perception of an absence of sound. It is not a failure to hear sound. A deaf man cannot hear silence. A parallel comparison holds for seeing darkness. A blind man cannot see the darkness of a cave. His sighted companion can."

(Sorensen, Roy. "Hearing Silence: The Perception and Introspection of Absences." In Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays, edited by Matthew Nudds and Casey O'Callaghan, 126-145. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 126)

To hear silence is not to hear the sound of silence, since silence is defined as the absence of sound. But how can the absence of sound be heard when auditory experiences are defined as havings of sound-impressions? The hearing of silence seems paradoxical and hence impossible, but on the other hand there is a strong intuition that there is real difference between hearing silence and hearing nothing.

[Tamminen]

There is very strong scientific evidence that experiential states don't just correlate with, but are both causally and existentially dependent on neural states: Anesthesiologists can switch consciousness off or on at will through chemical manipulation of neural processes.

This is exactly what the mind/brain correspondence means. When I have a phenomenal state A, I have a brain state X. If I change my brain state to Y, my phenomenal state changes to B. If my phenomenal state changes spontaneously to B, my brain state changes to Y. A and X are descriptions of the same event in my relation to the world, but there is nothing that conceptually connects those descriptions to each other. When I see red, I see it in a phenomenal color space where colors have phenomenal relations to each other. This has nothing to do with the wave length of the photon that hits my retina and emits a signal to my visual cortex. There is no redness in my brain. Consciousness is a conceptually self-contained information system that gets its raw data through its material interface to the world. This interface is the body and its center is the brain.

[Sy Borg]

Greta: Still, imagining bliss in a microbe is a tad tricky!

Oh, I don't know, they probably don't feel separate at all from their environment. I've noticed they tend to have very small egos... very, very small.

... and every element is a personality ... dark, light, coloured, colourless, soft, hard, malleable, brittle, reactive, inert, shiny, dull, ordered, chaotic, gregarious, solitary, selective, shiny, dull, active, rare, common, quirky, dangerous, benign ...

[Dachshund]

Consul,

The last time I had an operation in hospital, I was rendered unconscious with an initial IV injection of midazolam, then kept unconscious during surgery with halothane gas.

I remember the surgeon's assistant injecting me with the midazolam, then saying , "Count down from 20, Dachshund". I got to 13 then the next thing I remember was being woken up by a nurse gently patting my cheek after my operation had been completed

I have no recollection of anything : any state/event/process occurring in the phenomenal domain ( not even an awareness of blackness and silence ) between the time I mumbled "13" and the time I awoke to see the nurse standing over me and feel her patting my cheek as I lay on a hospital bed. I was later, however, told that approximately 4 hours of time had, indeed elapsed (i.e. the time my surgeon told me it took to perform my operation). I might say that (mentally speaking) I was in OBLIVION for this time - that as far as I was concerned, my phenomenal consciousness had been completely BLANKED OUT. But what exactly is "OBLIVION", what is exactly is total BLANKNESS" in the context of human consciousness ?

What are your thoughts on the matter?

Regards

Dachshund

[Tamminen]

Consul:

There is very strong scientific evidence that experiential states don't just correlate with, but are both causally and existentially dependent on neural states

It depends on what we mean by causality. A chemical can cause a change in brain functions and, because of the brain/mind correspondence, the change shows itself as a change in consciousness. If we want to extend the concept of causality in this way, I have nothing against it.

[Mosesquine]

All things that causally work are physical. All mental states causally work. Therefore, all mental states are physical.

Proof:
1. (∀x)(Fx → Gx)
2. (∀x)(Hx → Fx)
∴ (∀x)(Hx → Gx)
3. asm: ~(∀x)(Hx → Gx)
4. (∃x)~(Hx → Gx) 3, QN
5. ~(Ha → Gx) 4, EI
6. Fa → Ga 1, UI
7. Ha → Fa 2, UI
8. Ha & ~Ga 5, NEG of Cond
9. ~Ga 8, S
10. ~Fa 6, 9, MT
11. ~Ha 7, 10, MT
12. Ha 8, S
∴ 13. (∀x)(Hx → Gx) from 3; 11 contradicts 12.
Q.E.D.

All mental states are physical!!!

[Dachshund]

Consul:
There is very strong scientific evidence that experiential states don't just correlate with, but are both causally and existentially dependent on neural states
It depends on what we mean by causality. A chemical can cause a change in brain functions and, because of the brain/mind correspondence, the change shows itself as a change in consciousness. If we want to extend the concept of causality in this way, I have nothing against it.

Tamminen,

To be fair, you should read one or both of either U.T. Place's or Jack Smart's seminal papers on materialist ("Type") Identity Theory. I have provided the reference for Place's 1956 paper in a post above I sent to Felix. For J.J.C ("Jack") Smart's paper, just google the terms:" J.J.C Smart Sensations and Brain Processes 1959" and your computer will bring up a free access copy.

Both Place and Smart's papers are not lengthy documents, nor are they unreasonably dense in terms of their conceptual content. You could read each of them in 15-20 minutes. This is another good reason for you to have a look them, and then share your thoughts re the merit ( or lack of merit) in the general case they put forward with those physicalists/materialists you are currently challenging on this thread.

Their (Place and Smart's) basic argument is not so much that neurophysiological/neurobiochemical, etc; brain states/events/processes CAUSE phenomenal consciousness - as Consul has indicated in the quotation of his (?) above - but rather that they are IDENTICAL in a strict sense with the experience of diurnal/dream phenomenal consciousness; (in the same strict sense that, for ex, 7 x 7 is necessarily identical with 49), and in the same sense that a bolt of lightening is actually identical with a stream of minute electrically charged particles or a cloud in the sky is, in fact, identical with countless millions of tiny droplets of suspended water molecules in the atmosphere.

You will need to keep an open mind and be ready to use your imagination in order to properly grasp the essence of the argument that Place and Smart are expounding, but that's all.

Regards

Dachshund

[Chili]

To use the scientific method, you either measure something or posit that it is necessary to explain what is measured. We begin with animism - everything has a mind of its own and does what it wishes. As scientific understanding of cause and effect advances, one comes to believe that one no longer needs an indwelling "mind" to explain the behaviors around one - there is no consciousness out there to explain. The 'monism' of the universe doesn't have - nor does it need - consciousness. This is very different from believing something downright supernatural such as "material creates consciousness". Does materialism create God and ghosts as well?

[Consul]

The last time I had an operation in hospital, I was rendered unconscious with an initial IV injection of midazolam, then kept unconscious during surgery with halothane gas.

I remember the surgeon's assistant injecting me with the midazolam, then saying , "Count down from 20, Dachshund". I got to 13 then the next thing I remember was being woken up by a nurse gently patting my cheek after my operation had been completed

I have no recollection of anything : any state/event/process occurring in the phenomenal domain ( not even an awareness of blackness and silence ) between the time I mumbled "13" and the time I awoke to see the nurse standing over me and feel her patting my cheek as I lay on a hospital bed. I was later, however, told that approximately 4 hours of time had, indeed elapsed (i.e. the time my surgeon told me it took to perform my operation). I might say that (mentally speaking) I was in OBLIVION for this time - that as far as I was concerned, my phenomenal consciousness had been completely BLANKED OUT. But what exactly is "OBLIVION", what is exactly is total BLANKNESS" in the context of human consciousness ?

My trivial answer is that it's simply the absence of consciousness; and since you don't have any experiences while being unconscious, you have no memories of an episode of unconsciousness. There is nothing it is like to be unconscious.

[Tamminen]

Dachshund:

To put it short: I would say that mind and body are identical in the sense that they are two conceptually incompatible perspectives to the subject's relation to the world. But the subjective perspective, consciousness, can never be ignored or explained by something else. It is the key for understanding reality.

Chili:

The expression "matter creates consciousness" was a bit metaphorical, meaning that consciousness has a material basis for its being. But I think consciousness is ontologically fundamental. Science starts with matter and does so blindly, because matter is what we meet every day as we live in this universe. And there is nothing wrong with that: science makes amazing progress. But philosophy should have a reflective attitude to our existence and start with our being in the world, not the world in itself. And therefore its starting point should be our immediate reality, consciousness. This is how I see the task of philosophy.

[Whyme]

Consider various empirical criteria by which we might say that we were "previously unconscious":

- We have the experience of waking up, without being able to recall anything over the time interval when we were asleep.

- We have a faint recollection of stirring throughout the night and have a feeling that time has passed.

- We have the experience of someone telling us "you were gone the whole time, and you never knew I was there"

In every situation in which we report having been previously unconscious, we are in fact making some sort of empirical report about our present situation. Therefore on the basis of these empirical circumstances alone, one cannot draw any metaphysical conclusions that one was literally unconscious in the past.

Only if one is a metaphysical realist concerning the past, will one be tempted to interpret one's present amnesia as constituting evidence that one was unconscious during this mind-independent past. But this conclusion is merely begging one's a priori metaphysical beliefs in a mind-independent past.

By contrast, a presentist who understands "the past" as in some way describing his present situtation, will merely interpret talk of "previous unconsciousness" as talk of present experiences that are irrelevant to one's present conception of 'the past'.

[Dachshund]

Dachshund:

To put it short: I would say that mind and body are identical in the sense that they are two conceptually incompatible perspectives to the subject's relation to the world. But the subjective perspective, consciousness, can never be ignored or explained by something else. It is the key for understanding reality.

Tamminen,

Please read U.T.Place's and/or J.J.C Smart's paper/s I have cited above. Perhaps U.T.Place's "Consciousness is a Brain Process", (1956) is the best one to choose if you are pressed for time.

At present you seem to have totally closed your mind - to have totally ruled out - even the possibility that the the subjective dimension of consciousness - the "something -it -is -like- to- be -a -bat" quality of the phenomenal domain that Nagel argued ( in his well-known paper of 1974) was absolutely irreducible might actually not be (absolutely irreducible). I believe that the argument the 20th century materialist(Type) Identity Theorists (Place, Smart and David Armstrong to add a third major proponent of IT) present have the intellectual muscle to - at the very least convince you - it is , indeed, POSSIBLE that you are mistaken (?)

Regards

Dachshund

[kordofany]

I've been listening to and reading Daniel Dennett, Patricia Churchland, David Chalmers, John Searle and Thomas Nagel the last couple of years, and have been thinking a lot about consciousness.
There was a time when I was convinced that the physical is all there is, but after looking into consciousness for a while, I've had to give up that assumption.

My reasoning goes like this: If it is assumed that the physical is all there is, then consciousness must reduce to the physical and then mental states don't actually exist (they're just chemical reactions). If physicalism, then eliminative materialism but eliminative materialism is false (because if I know anything, I know I have mental states). (I've also looked into behaviorism, identity theory and functionalism).

I also reject substance dualism ( I don't believe in souls). I can't make any sense of idealism. I do have some affinity for property dualism- the concept that consciousness itself is a basic property of the universe, but I acknowledge that it has issues as well.

What about you? What do you make of consciousness? Do you have a favorite theory? Who has influenced your thinking?

This is a very complicated question. It is complicated because science has not yet been able to understand consciousness. But what can give us a simple understanding of this dialectic. Is that certain diseases, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, are considered an imbalance in consciousness. However, a chemical drug can cause awareness of its stability. This means that the relationship between the brain and consciousness, such as the relationship between guitar strings and melody. The brain receives the data, translates it, puts it into a matrix. Thus consciousness arises.