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

[Faustus5]

What is the basis for the idea that consciousness can only be explained by biological phenomena?

Golly gee, there seems to be this organ known as the brain. For a couple centuries now, we've known that it plays a central role in generating and managing consciousness, cognition, memory, and perception. Cognitive neuroscience has even been collating around a general consensus of how it does so in the Global Neuronal Workspace model, which enjoys explanatory success that has never been seen and never will be seen by any model focused on physics.

Biological phenomena require a cause and therefor they cannot be the origin of themselves by which it would be unlikely that they can explain consciousness.

You have to start somewhere and physics is entirely the wrong place to do so. You do not have to start at the beginning of the universe in order to study something that only emerged in very recent history.

The author, Maurice Goodman, is a researcher at. . .which may indicate that a certain level of credibility is applicable.

Garbage papers get published all the time and not every journal is known for only publishing credible, useful work. This looks like garbage to me, and the journal it was published in appears to be more associated with New Age junk than anything serious and legitimate.

At any rate, no one seems to be paying attention to this idea since nothing even resembling this guy's claims is even remotely part of the conversations that most cognitive neuroscientists are having with each other. Why waste your time with this sort of fringe stuff when so much exciting material is coming out of the mainstream of science and (to a much smaller extent) philosophy?

[Jklint]

This is an area where the saying "Something is better than nothing" makes all the difference in the world.

[Atla]

You will be surprised to learn that on this matter, a lot of respected philosophers with solid careers are insane. This issue is massive.

Nah, they are just deeper, more informed thinkers than you give them credit for.

I'll burst your bubble anyway, Western philosophy in general doesn't reach critical depths on several issues. And if they were more informed, they would know that the scientific process has already shown this. Seeing that materialism can't account for phenomenal consciousness isn't even difficult by the way.

[Terrapin Station]

What is the basis for the idea that consciousness can only be explained by biological phenomena?

The fact that the only thing we know with certainty is conscious is ourselves and we're biological entities. Further, we know with certainty--from ourselves--and with a high degree of probability--from others who are very similar to ourselves (whom we also know with a high degree of probability are conscious in the first place), that manipulation of brain parts affects consciousness in predictable ways.

Biological phenomena require a cause and therefor they cannot be the origin of themselves by which it would be unlikely that they can explain consciousness.

Huh? Consciousness is a property of brains, or rather a set of properties of brains (at least, with no good reason to believe that it's a property of any other sort of materials/structures/processes). No one is arguing that brains of their conscious properties are the ultimate historical causes of brains or their conscious properties. Why are you thinking that anyone is saying that "they're the causes of themselves"?

[LuckyR]

Perhaps you missed the part about him slowly losing his brain tissue over time. He definitely had more brain tissue when he formed his personality as a child (likely it was close to 100% as a child), went to school, got married etc than he had when the CT scan was taken.

It's likely that the man in this case had hydrocephalus from birth, says Feuillet. His medical records show that he was treated with a shunt at the age of 6 months, and again at 14 years old. But without further neurological problems the extent of his condition went un-noticed for decades.
https://www.nature.com/news/2007/070716 ... 16-15.html

The man is estimated to have been born in 1963 and was 14 years old in 1976.

CT scan was invented in 1972 and only became widely available in 1980 so that explains that any neurological evidence would have been empirical evidence (neurological exam). The specialists argue that "it is likely" that the man had the condition from birth which implies that they had no brain scan available to confirm it. "no further neurological problems" refers to the man's capacity to function normally.

It cannot be said that the man had a normal brain as a child since he was functioning normally at 44 years age with merely 10% brain tissue.

Uummm... not so much. Encephalography was invented in 1919, and shows hydrocephalus quite nicely, though mot as well as tomography, which supplanted it in the 70s.

[Faustus5]

And if they were more informed, they would know that the scientific process has already shown this.

Then without much effort you should be able to cite a mainstream scientific source saying this without any controversy. We both know you can't do this, so with a bit of self reflection you should be able to understand you have a LOT of work left to do to establish this position.

Seeing that materialism can't account for phenomenal consciousness isn't even difficult by the way.

It can account for phenomenal consciousness, and Daniel Dennett shows exactly how you go about it in Consciousness Explained. You just don't agree with his methods and assumptions, yet strangely can't seem to be able to articulate specifically where he gets things wrong.

Have you read so much as one thing he has ever written? Can you even explain in your own words without looking anything up what his theory of consciousness is, then explain what is mistaken about it? My history with folks like you is that the answers are very likely "No" and "No".

[Terrapin Station]

Oops, typo in my last post. That should have read, "No one is arguing that brains OR their conscious properties . . ."

I was posting on my kindle, as I often do, and I have a lot of problems with the autocorrect. It changed "or" to "of" as it often does.

[Skydude]

Conciousness is A trapped term, it is used too ambiguously to be of use at the neurological level. I support the theory that conciousness is An innate feature of the universe and it for A lack of A better term emerges from A series of related patterns of activity in relation to the surrounding existence

[Atla]

Then without much effort you should be able to cite a mainstream scientific source saying this without any controversy. We both know you can't do this, so with a bit of self reflection you should be able to understand you have a LOT of work left to do to establish this position.Then without much effort you should be able to cite a mainstream scientific source saying this without any controversy. We both know you can't do this, so with a bit of self reflection you should be able to understand you have a LOT of work left to do to establish this position.

You "know" huh, well good for you.
Just off the top of my head: the scientific process has shown for example that there the individual "I" as the entity it is usually understood in Western philosophy is illusory; that there are no actual distinct subjects and objects; that the universe is at least partially non-separable at all; that some form of indirect realism is the case; that abstract objects probably only exist as part of our thinking; that the classical conceptions of absolute space and time are indeed just ways how our experience is constructed; that nature isn't made of any actual substances; that "thingness" in general is suspect.

Combining these views pretty much leads us out of Western philosophy already, or we are forced to say that some of these things exist in some non-physical realms.

It can account for phenomenal consciousness, and Daniel Dennett shows exactly how you go about it in Consciousness Explained. You just don't agree with his methods and assumptions, yet strangely can't seem to be able to articulate specifically where he gets things wrong.

Have you read so much as one thing he has ever written? Can you even explain in your own words without looking anything up what his theory of consciousness is, then explain what is mistaken about it? My history with folks like you is that the answers are very likely "No" and "No".

The scientific process has also shown that there is also no sign of some metaphysical duality. Yet the existence of phenomenal consciousness (direct experiences, qualia + the first person view, whatever you want to call it) is undeniable, and materialism can't account for it. This was still pretty obvious 100-200 years ago when physics was mostly billiard balls flying around.

Dennett can cite a bunch of optical illusions, dismiss the Cartesian theatre, and talk about a multiple drafts idea, but that doesn't change the above. That only confirms that some form of indirect realism is the case, where the "model" in the head isn't a perfect representation of the outside world, but we already know that. That in no way explains what phenomenal consciousness is, and why the model in the head doesn't just "happen in the dark".

And the way Dennett treats "information" and "information-processing" is just plain nonsense, yes the father of cybernetics made the mistake of saying that information exists distinctely from matter and energy, which is simply not true, and Dennett took advantage of that.

[Skydude]

Then without much effort you should be able to cite a mainstream scientific source saying this without any controversy. We both know you can't do this, so with a bit of self reflection you should be able to understand you have a LOT of work left to do to establish this position.Then without much effort you should be able to cite a mainstream scientific source saying this without any controversy. We both know you can't do this, so with a bit of self reflection you should be able to understand you have a LOT of work left to do to establish this position.

You "know" huh, well good for you.
Just off the top of my head: the scientific process has shown for example that there the individual "I" as the entity it is usually understood in Western philosophy is illusory; that there are no actual distinct subjects and objects; that the universe is at least partially non-separable at all; that some form of indirect realism is the case; that abstract objects probably only exist as part of our thinking; that the classical conceptions of absolute space and time are indeed just ways how our experience is constructed; that nature isn't made of any actual substances; that "thingness" in general is suspect.

Combining these views pretty much leads us out of Western philosophy already, or we are forced to say that some of these things exist in some non-physical realms.

It can account for phenomenal consciousness, and Daniel Dennett shows exactly how you go about it in Consciousness Explained. You just don't agree with his methods and assumptions, yet strangely can't seem to be able to articulate specifically where he gets things wrong.

Have you read so much as one thing he has ever written? Can you even explain in your own words without looking anything up what his theory of consciousness is, then explain what is mistaken about it? My history with folks like you is that the answers are very likely "No" and "No".

The scientific process has also shown that there is also no sign of some metaphysical duality. Yet the existence of phenomenal consciousness (direct experiences, qualia + the first person view, whatever you want to call it) is undeniable, and materialism can't account for it. This was still pretty obvious 100-200 years ago when physics was mostly billiard balls flying around.

Dennett can cite a bunch of optical illusions, dismiss the Cartesian theatre, and talk about a multiple drafts idea, but that doesn't change the above. That only confirms that some form of indirect realism is the case, where the "model" in the head isn't a perfect representation of the outside world, but we already know that. That in no way explains what phenomenal consciousness is, and why the model in the head doesn't just "happen in the dark".

And the way Dennett treats "information" and "information-processing" is just plain nonsense, yes the father of cybernetics made the mistake of saying that information exists distinctely from matter and energy, which is simply not true, and Dennett took advantage of that.

All energy including matter is information(something either is or isn't, everything is relative to something else) check out some stuff in the field of quantum neuroscience it's crazy interesting. There are Some theories that use patterns of quantum phenomena and the superposition of sub atomic particles to explain conciousness, integrative intelligence theory is one of them.

[Atla]

All energy including matter is information(something either is or isn't, everything is relative to something else) check out some stuff in the field of quantum neuroscience it's crazy interesting. There are Some theories that use patterns of quantum phenomena and the superposition of sub atomic particles to explain conciousness, integrative intelligence theory is one of them.

Such quantum theories are once again, only addressing Easy problems of consiousness (Penrose would disagree here I think). Of course it's quite likely that humans exist sort of "superpositionally" across an MWI-like landscape, but then again every other living and non-living thing does too (that's actually an important part of my metaphysics btw).

And if all matter and energy is information, then rocks are also information, this view is okay, but then we should drop matter and energy. That didn't really bring us closer to solving the Hard problem either.

[Skydude]

All energy including matter is information(something either is or isn't, everything is relative to something else) check out some stuff in the field of quantum neuroscience it's crazy interesting. There are Some theories that use patterns of quantum phenomena and the superposition of sub atomic particles to explain conciousness, integrative intelligence theory is one of them.

Such quantum theories are once again, only addressing Easy problems of consiousness (Penrose would disagree here I think). Of course it's quite likely that humans exist sort of "superpositionally" across an MWI-like landscape, but then again every other living and non-living thing does too (that's actually an important part of my metaphysics btw).

And if all matter and energy is information, then rocks are also information, this view is okay, but then we should drop matter and energy. That didn't really bring us closer to solving the Hard problem either.

Matter and energy are words we use to describe the information of what is and isn't existing in relation to ourselves(A self repeating pattern), my metaphysical view can be summed up with we are the universe experiencing itself and this includes the experience of the awareness of experience. Experience is being in A certain state in relation to everything else, there is no truly coherent conciousness, we are A self repeating pattern of events that is happening instead of not happening. The particles that make up A rock are having the experience of being A rock but existing/experiencing in the state of being A rock does not facilitate awareness of experience or existence. I feel the unperceiving or perceiving of things may be A better term to use instead of the loaded term conciousness.

[Skydude]

I'm just going to back out from this I apologize I jumped into A discussion without giving myself adequate time to explain my theory on conciousness.

[Atla]

Matter and energy are words we use to describe the information of what is and isn't existing in relation to ourselves(A self repeating pattern), my metaphysical view can be summed up with we are the universe experiencing itself and this includes the experience of the awareness of experience. Experience is being in A certain state in relation to everything else, there is no truly coherent conciousness, we are A self repeating pattern of events that is happening instead of not happening. The particles that make up A rock are having the experience of being A rock but existing/experiencing in the state of being A rock does not facilitate awareness of experience or existence. I feel the unperceiving or perceiving of things may be A better term to use instead of the loaded term conciousness.

Yeah, while experience is fundamental, awareness of experience probably requires a fairly advanced nervous system. But why would awareness of experience "cause" things to exist or not exist in relation to ourselves? I didn't get that part.

By information I mostly meant Shannon information by the way, from computer sciences. Shannon information is an abstract construct that got reified by bad thinkers, and is now very often used as an "explanation" for phenomenal consciousness.

[Faustus5]

Combining these views pretty much leads us out of Western philosophy already, or we are forced to say that some of these things exist in some non-physical realms.

Nope, it just updates Western philosophy to the 21st century. You seem to think Western philosophy never changes or learns things.

Yet the existence of phenomenal consciousness (direct experiences, qualia + the first person view, whatever you want to call it) is undeniable, and materialism can't account for it.

The existence of phenomenal consciousness is indeed undeniable. That it resembles the fantasies of some philosophers who want to pretend it has properties which materialism cannot account is extremely deniable. In fact, materialism can account for them, and Dennett shows one approach for doing so.

And the way Dennett treats "information" and "information-processing" is just plain nonsense. . .

Then I challenge you to make your first attempt at decent scholarship in this thread: cite him saying something about information in his own words, then explain why it is "just plain nonsense". If he's really that stupid and you are really better informed, this should be breathlessly easy for you!

. . .yes the father of cybernetics made the mistake of saying that information exists distinctely from matter and energy, which is simply not true, and Dennett took advantage of that.

I'm not aware of this. Let me make another request for scholarship: cite the father of cybernetics saying that information exists distinctly from matter or energy, in his own words.