PWQs

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Win,

What the current scientific theories state is that consciousness is a physical process in the brain,
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I noticed this, via Ian, and I'd be interested to know exactly what the content of the theory is.

Then I suggest you do some reading in the fields of Neuroscience and modern Psychology.

Which is a trivially false statement.
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No it isn't. It isn't even false.

I guess that depends on how you define consciousness. I define it to be my thoughts, perceptions, awareness, feelings, memory, and intuition. The fact that my brain is aware of these things trivially demonstrates that they are causally efficacious.

You can define it to be something else, ala epiphenomenalism, but if you do so, I have no idea what it is, or why you think it is real.


Ian,

It is not ontological speculation, because I am not attributing any characteristics to this external reality that cannot be empirically verified. It is an epistemological position, not an ontological assumption.
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Saying it exists is the ontological presumption.

Only if I were claiming that it ontologically exists. I am not. I don't even know what that means.

And who gets to decide that it is an axiom?
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Whoever it is that is responsible for deciding what the word "science" means.
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Who has stated that the hypothesis that the world is physically closed is an axiom of science?

The scientific community. Scientists. You know, the people who have defined what science is. You can define it to mean something else if you want, but don't expect anybody else to care.

Did anyone argue against him that it ought not to be?

Only you.

Why does it need to be an axiom?
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Because without it the scientific method is not logically valid.
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Why not? Change in the world initiated by sentient beings could be explained in terms of intent and desires. I see no necessity in supposing the world must be physically closed.

If it is not causally closed, then there is no way to determine which observed effects are due to physical causes, and which are due to non-physical causes. This makes it impossible to actually determine what the physical laws are, rendering the scientific method completely impotent.

If you allow for influences which don't obey physical laws to influence things which do, you can no longer claim that those things do.
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Sorry you're confusing me here. Care to expand?

If object A is physical, and object B is non-physical, and object B has an effect on object A, then the behavior of object A cannot be described in terms of physical laws. Furthermore, there is no way to determine what the physical rules for anything are, because you can never determine whether a given observation was due to physical laws, or some sort of non-physical influence.

It's the old "how do you know Satan didn't put the fossils there?" problem. Since science can only address the physical, it cannot be used to determine which observed phenomena are strictly physical, and which are due to non-physical influences.

This leaves you two options

1) Arbitrarily decide, based on your religious/metaphysical beliefs, which phenomena are subject to physical laws, and which are not.

2) Discard science entirely.

Option number one renders the scientific method logically incoherent, because there is no logical way to determine when it does and does not apply. It becomes just another aspect of your irrational beliefs.

Look at it this way. If the physical World is the set of all things which obey physical laws,
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But it isn't. The physical world is the set of all things which can be discerned from a third person perspective.

You can define it that way, but that is not how science defines it, and that is what is important if you are making arguments about the limitations and validity of science.

then it must be causally closed. If it is not causally closed, then that implies that there are physical things which can be affected by things which do not obey physical laws. This in turn implies that these physical things do not function according to physical laws,
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No it doesn't imply this at all. Change might be initiated by a non-physical thing, but thereafter unfold according to physical laws.

If the change was initiated by a non-physical thing, then that event cannot be explained in terms of physical laws. This means that it is impossible to determine whether any observed event was initiated by something non-physical, which makes determination of the physical laws impossible.

As a practical example, consider the mind. Clearly the mind has an effect on the brain.
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How did you work this out?

The fact that my brain makes decisions based on my mental states. I know, you don't think my brain makes decisions based on mental states, but rather based on the neural correlates. But even then your brain is indirectly being effected by the mental state. The fact that your brain knows you possess mental states clearly demonstrates this.

Not at all. It just means that our non-physical consciousness is not causally efficaceous.
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Which is a trivially false statement.
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What you say here is quite patently false. If the world is causally closed then our behaviour is fully explicable in terms of physical processes.

The very fact that we are physically discussing consciousness clearly demonstrates that it is causally efficacious.

You can only say that it is trivial false if it is self-evidently true that experiential consciousness is one and the very same thing, or is a function of such processes. However we were considering the scenario of non-physical consciousness

The scenario of non-physical consciousness is only possible if the physical world is not causally closed. In the real World, consciousness is clearly causally efficacious. If it wasn't, our physical brains would have no idea that it even exists, and would not be here arguing about it.

If you think this you clearly don't understand what science means. Quite bad considering you claim to be a scientist. FYI it is a metaphysical theory, and an impressively stupid one at that.
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What is metaphysical about it?
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To say that A and B are one and the very same thing, when they appaer to be utterly different from each other, and we merely have a correlation between them, is at the very minimum, to take a gigantic leap of faith to say nothing of its highly questionable intelligibility.

Intuitive arguments like this have no place in a logical argument. Your claim that mental processes "appear to be utterly different from each other" is not only a highly subjective judgement call, but also one which many people would disagree with (myself included).

It is a falsifiable hypothesis, and the most parsimonious falsifiable hypothesis that is consistent with the available data.
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You can't falsify it. There is absolutely no way one could falsify such a crazy hypothesis.

Do you even know anything about this scientific theory, other than that it contradicts your beliefs? I don't think you have the slightest idea what you are talking about.

and one for which there is considerable supporting evidence.
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There is no evidence whatsoever. How many times do you need to be told this???
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You can tell me this as many times as you like. Until you actually provide some sort of reasonable argument to back up this claim, you are just blowing hot air.
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No, you are required to produce the evidence.

The evidence is published in publicly available journals and books. Go read about the subject if you don't believe me.

Your "that isn't consciousness, that is just the neural correlate" argument holds no water, because at the very least, it begs the question.
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So what evidence do you have that consciousness just simply is its neural correlates. Come on, you've claimed you've got plenty. I await with baited breath

The fact that it is a falsifiable theory which has been extensively tested. That is the only kind of evidence that there is for anything.

Dr. Stupid

 

[Win]

Stimp:

Then I suggest you do some reading in the fields of Neuroscience and modern Psychology.

Don't you know what the content of the theory is?

I guess not.

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Win,

Then I suggest you do some reading in the fields of Neuroscience and modern Psychology.
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Don't you know what the content of the theory is?

I guess not.

you're saying that like the content of the theory is something I could just post here in a few paragraphs. It is not.

If you just want a brief overview of the content of the theory, then I can do that. The theory is that all of our mental processes, thought, memory, emotion, feelings, intuition, perception, and so on, are neurological processes in the brain. The theory is that the brain is a complex systems of neural networks, and that all of these mental processes are examples of sophisticated pattern-matching processes, which the brain learns how to do.

This theory is supported by considerable evidence, including the fact that pretty much all of our mental processes have been shown to be manipulatable through manipulations of the brain, as well as the fact that when a portion of the brain is destroyed, loss of such functions can occur, only to be "re-learned" by other portions of the brain.

Dr. Stupid

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Stimp:



Don't you know what the content of the theory is?

I guess not.

Have you ever tried it?

I guess not.

I did. Hard stuff, but the final results are spectacular.

Dualism is dead.

 

[Win]

Stimp:

Nothing that you've posted supports the contention that "consciousness is a physical process in the brain," taking consciousness to mean qualia.

I'm still waiting for the "theory" that supports your contention.

Maybe I should read some more in the fields of, what was it, oh yes, "Neuroscience and modern Psychology?"

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Stimp:

Nothing that you've posted supports the contention that "consciousness is a physical process in the brain," taking consciousness to mean qualia.

I'm still waiting for the "theory" that supports your contention.

Maybe I should read some more in the fields of, what was it, oh yes, "Neuroscience and modern Psychology?"

Start with neuroscience. Get back in a year

 

[Win]

Lucifuge:

Start with neuroscience. Get back in a year

What aspects of neuroscience, exactly, do you think I fail to understand?

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Lucifuge:



What aspects of neuroscience, exactly, do you think I fail to understand?

The binding problem, neurone firing, chemical reactions asocciated to perception, chemical reactions associated to will, chemical reactions associated with pure tought for a start.

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Win,

Nothing that you've posted supports the contention that "consciousness is a physical process in the brain," taking consciousness to mean qualia.

I never said anything about qualia. I still have yet to hear a coherent definition for the term. Instead I stated exactly what I mean by consciousness.

Maybe I should read some more in the fields of, what was it, oh yes, "Neuroscience and modern Psychology?"

Maybe you should start by deciding what it is you mean by consciousness. Are you talking about the mental states that we all know we have, like thought, memory, perception, etc...? Or are you talking about something else? If the latter, then what are you talking about, and why do you think it is real at all?

Dr. Stupid

 

[Interesting Ian]

Win,



you're saying that like the content of the theory is something I could just post here in a few paragraphs. It is not.

If you just want a brief overview of the content of the theory, then I can do that. The theory is that all of our mental processes, thought, memory, emotion, feelings, intuition, perception, and so on, are neurological processes in the brain. The theory is that the brain is a complex systems of neural networks, and that all of these mental processes are examples of sophisticated pattern-matching processes, which the brain learns how to do.

And how does experiential consciousness miraculously derive from these processes? What is logically inconsistant with supposing these physical processes occur without any accompanying experiences?

This theory is supported by considerable evidence, including the fact that pretty much all of our mental processes have been shown to be manipulatable through manipulations of the brain, as well as the fact that when a portion of the brain is destroyed, loss of such functions can occur, only to be "re-learned" by other portions of the brain.

Which of course is wholly irrelevant to showing that experiential consciousness is identical to processes within the brain. Indeed in my opionion it is even wholly irrelevant to the question of whether interactive dualism corrects depicts the relationship between mind and body.

 

[Win]

Lucifuge:

The binding problem, neurone firing, chemical reactions asocciated to perception, chemical reactions associated to will, chemical reactions associated with pure tought for a start.

All of these are fascinating, with the exception of "chemical reactions associated with pure thought."

You've been around here for a while. Surely you must know that I'm conversant with these issues.

Stimp:

Maybe you should start by deciding what it is you mean by consciousness.

Oh ... my ... god. You know what I mean. We've exchanged hundreds of posts. Surely we're not back to this now.

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Lucifuge:



All of these are fascinating, with the exception of "chemical reactions associated with pure thought."

What happens with the chemical reactions of abstract thinking? The "god experience" induced using TMS IS fascinating. The brain zones and chemicals liberated during an experience in abstract thinking has been widely studied. The expansion of the mind induced using TMS or LSD derivates are currently the work of many scientists.

You've been around here for a while. Surely you must know that I'm conversant with these issues.

Then it is my fault. But I don't remember you in my threads dedicated to the subject, months ago. Did we discuss the issue?

 

[Interesting Ian]

The "god experience" induced using TMS IS fascinating.

Do you believe this provides compelling evidence for a God?

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Do you believe this provides compelling evidence for a God?

Actually it is the other way around. What is more logical to conclude if we learn that all mystical experiences have a pretty mundane origin?

 

[Interesting Ian]

II
Do you believe this provides compelling evidence for a God?
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Luc
Actually it is the other way around. What is more logical to conclude if we learn that all mystical experiences have a pretty mundane origin?

The thing is we don't actually know what the origin of these experiences are. It coul;d be that appropriate alteration of the brain allows the mind or soul to access other realities.

What about the people who are artificially induced to have the "God experience". Do they believe the experience is unreal, an hallucination?

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Ian,

you're saying that like the content of the theory is something I could just post here in a few paragraphs. It is not.

If you just want a brief overview of the content of the theory, then I can do that. The theory is that all of our mental processes, thought, memory, emotion, feelings, intuition, perception, and so on, are neurological processes in the brain. The theory is that the brain is a complex systems of neural networks, and that all of these mental processes are examples of sophisticated pattern-matching processes, which the brain learns how to do.
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And how does experiential consciousness miraculously derive from these processes?

It doesn't miraculously derive from those processes, it is those processes. As for the details of how it works, that is what the scientists are busy trying to figure out.

What is logically inconsistant with supposing these physical processes occur without any accompanying experiences?

What do you mean "accompanying experiences"? The theory is that these physical processes are the experiences.

Note that I am not claiming that all other alternative hypotheses are necessarily logically inconsistent. So long as our scientific knowledge has not advanced to the point where we can logically deduce the existence of subjective experiences from observed brain activity, one could always speculate that there is something more to the mind than just those processes. But this is completely pointless speculation. As I have pointed out before, exactly the same thing could be said about most fields of science. Almost none of the behavior of molecules can be logically deduced from the laws of physics, but I don't see anybody claiming that this means there must be more to chemistry than just physics. We make the assumption that chemistry is reducible to physics, because that is the most parsimonious falsifiable hypothesis available. The mind/brain problem is no different.

Unless you have reliable evidence to demonstrate that consciousness is not reducible to brain activity, there is absolutely no logical reason to assume that there must be more to it than that.

This theory is supported by considerable evidence, including the fact that pretty much all of our mental processes have been shown to be manipulatable through manipulations of the brain, as well as the fact that when a portion of the brain is destroyed, loss of such functions can occur, only to be "re-learned" by other portions of the brain.
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Which of course is wholly irrelevant to showing that experiential consciousness is identical to processes within the brain.

It is not irrelevant at all. It is reliable evidence in support of the theory.

Saying that the fact that the extensive testing of the mind/brain theory is not relevant to showing that the mind is a brain process, is like saying that the extensive testing of the chemistry/physics theory is not relevant to showing that chemistry is reducible to physics. It demonstrates a complete and utter lack of understanding of what scientific evidence is.

Indeed in my opionion it is even wholly irrelevant to the question of whether interactive dualism corrects depicts the relationship between mind and body.

I don't know what that is even supposed to mean.

I will say that it doesn't have to say anything about any form of dualism. Any hypothesis which is less parsimonious than the mind/brain theory must be rejected until such time as the theory is falsified. And any unfalsifiable hypothesis, no matter how parsimonious, must be rejected for being unverifiable, and thus completely useless.


Win,

Maybe you should start by deciding what it is you mean by consciousness.
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Oh ... my ... god. You know what I mean. We've exchanged hundreds of posts. Surely we're not back to this now.

Recall our previous discussions. My argument with your philosophical views has always been that I don't think your definitions are meaningful. This issue of consciousness is at the core of the issue. If you define consciousness in terms of things I am aware of, like thought, memory, perception, etc..., then I know what you are talking about, and can try to make arguments about it. But anytime I make such arguments, you assert that these things are not, in fact, what you are talking about. Instead, you are talking about something which you claim is completely unknowable, yet which my brain somehow knows about. None of this makes any sense to me.

It is my opinion that all of the mental processes that I am aware of could be reducible to physical activity in the brain, which is to say that I have not seen any reasonable argument for why they could not be. In addition, this theory is the most parsimonious falsifiable hypothesis available, and is supported by substantial evidence. I have no reason to believe that the mental processes whose existence my brain is aware of, could not be reducible to brain processes, and I have no reason to believe that mental processes that my brain is not aware of, actually exist at all.

Dr. Stupid

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

The thing is we don't actually know what the origin of these experiences are. It coul;d be that appropriate alteration of the brain allows the mind or soul to access other realities.

We know the origin: First EMF stimulation, then God experience. Other realities? Not really, same mind, same universe, same chemicals, same pre and post mental state.

What about the people who are artificially induced to have the "God experience". Do they believe the experience is unreal, an hallucination?

No, they experience the "real thing". With appropiate training and feedback, some can produce it at wish. Not so different of a "high" state produced at will with over oxigen inhalation, just more intense.

 

[Interesting Ian]

II
The thing is we don't actually know what the origin of these experiences are. It coul;d be that appropriate alteration of the brain allows the mind or soul to access other realities.

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Luc
We know the origin: First EMF stimulation, then God experience. Other realities? Not really, same mind, same universe, same chemicals, same pre and post mental state.

So if if inniating a change in A brings about some change in B then necessarily A not only causes B, but B must originate from A?

Are you sure you really wish to maintain this??

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What about the people who are artificially induced to have the "God experience". Do they believe the experience is unreal, an hallucination?
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No, they experience the "real thing". With appropiate training and feedback, some can produce it at wish. Not so different of a "high" state produced at will with over oxigen inhalation, just more intense.

So they believe the experience is genuine, that they truly experience God? This being so is it rational to suppose that the person who hasn't had such an experience will more correct in his opinion of the nature of this experience than those who have actually undergone the experience?

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

So if if inniating a change in A brings about some change in B then necessarily A not only causes B, but B must originate from A?

Are you sure you really wish to maintain this??

Are you still addict to strawmen II?. I will put the facts here:

1.- ECG and CAT show that mystical experiences by yogis and other mystics (excuse the redundance) are produced AFTER some changes in the electrical and chemical activity of the brain.
2.-Those changes, when replicated in test subjects using TMS show the same "god experience".
3.- Some subjects can trigger those changes at will, having the same experience.

Is it clear now? who produces the effect? God? The subject? The stimuli?

So they believe the experience is genuine, that they truly experience God? This being so is it rational to suppose that the person who hasn't had such an experience will more correct in his opinion of the nature of this experience than those who have actually undergone the experience?

II, the experiments have been done also in mystics!. They report the same experience no matter the originIt's the real thing!.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ian said:

What's wrong with that?

Nothing, if you like POOF ! as an explanation of things.

The denial of atheism and its associated family of beliefs.

Meaningless. Define atheism.

Win said:

All metaphysics. Plato's Forms, Berkeley's Idealism, Materialism.

All meaningless and not quite as fun as masturbation.

Ian said:

What do you think of Stimpy's claim that his particular version of materialism is devoid of any metaphysical elements?

What's a metaphysical element?

~~ Paul