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Split Thread Science cannot explain consciousness, therefore....

We can simply look to our own experience, the mundane and day to day. Are we a parcel or unit of consciousness, moving about in a shared external brutish world? Is everything we’ve ever experienced, loved, despised; is everything about being a human life a running calculation occurring within the confines of our skull?
No, we are part of and intimate with the world. All the evidence we have shows the fundamental nature of consciousness-everything occurs within consciousness.
There is no evidence of anything lying outside consciousness.
Materialism is a model, and as with all models, it is not correct, it is not to be mistaken for reality. And like all models it has various degrees of utility.
 
Science cannot explain consciousness, therefore....consciousness remains unexplained.
 
LarryS said:
We can simply look to our own experience, the mundane and day to day. Are we a parcel or unit of consciousness, moving about in a shared external brutish world? Is everything we’ve ever experienced, loved, despised; is everything about being a human life a running calculation occurring within the confines of our skull?
No, we are part of and intimate with the world. All the evidence we have shows the fundamental nature of consciousness-everything occurs within consciousness.
There is no evidence of anything lying outside consciousness.
Materialism is a model, and as with all models, it is not correct, it is not to be mistaken for reality. And like all models it has various degrees of utility.
Click to expand...
Who’s having a really bad hair day then, with all that negative “mundane” and “brutish” view of life rant? If everything is created in your consciousness as you apparently claim, then the “mundane” and “external brutish world” is merely a figment of your own imagination. Why can’t you simply imagine a nicer world with plenty of peace, love and light? Can't be that hard. Heaps of others seem to be able to do it. I think it helps if you put your fingers in your ears, close your eyes, and go "La, la, la, la, la".
 
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LarryS said:
We can simply look to our own experience, the mundane and day to day. Are we a parcel or unit of consciousness, moving about in a shared external brutish world? Is everything we’ve ever experienced, loved, despised; is everything about being a human life a running calculation occurring within the confines of our skull?
No, we are part of and intimate with the world. All the evidence we have shows the fundamental nature of consciousness-everything occurs within consciousness.
There is no evidence of anything lying outside consciousness.
Materialism is a model, and as with all models, it is not correct, it is not to be mistaken for reality. And like all models it has various degrees of utility.
Click to expand...


The above is just an expression of wilful ignorance and belief in the supernatural.

It says that the correct answers will be known to us simply from what any of us can experience in our daily lives. If that were true then almost none of the many billions of things that science has discovered would have ever have been known ... we do not "experience" the molecular and atomic structure of things ... we are not aware of evolution taking place all around us ... your daily living experience would never have shown you anything at all about relativity or quantum effects or about galaxies and the age of the universe.

Instead you would be doing what Larry does in all these threads, which is to claim that science is not discovering true explanations for anything, and that instead the true understanding is to believe that effects such as "consciousness" are caused by some sort of inexplicable supernatural agency that also tells us the universe has no reality except in an unreal human imagination.

Frankly that's just a display of monumental anti-scientific ignorance and a self-indulgent belief in the supernatural (it's almost always part of a God belief … and that's a belief that arose entirely from an ancient world that was positively drowning in ignorance and superstition).
 
Toontown said:
Science cannot explain consciousness, therefore....consciousness remains unexplained.
Click to expand...

Some precisions:

Science cannot explain everything about consciousness then there are aspects of consciousness that are not scientifically explainable... now.

Is there some reason why science is not able of explain some aspects of the consciousness?
Can you consider another kind of explanation?
 
David Mo said:
Can you consider another kind of explanation?
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Sure (do tell) . . .

  1. What is this "other kind of explanation?"
  2. How does it work?
  3. What explanation of consciousness does it provide?

"Some precisions" would be appreciated in the answers.
 
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Ron_Tomkins said:
Science has already begun explaining a lot of traits of consciousness.

That said, on the other hand, it seems that a lot of individual people's consciousnesses cannot explain science.
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I think it might have been American research engineer and scientist, and past President of the IEEE, Emerson Pugh who once said

"If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t!”
 
I have claimed none of these-I have not referenced the supernatural nor did I disparage or even mention science. All I claimed is that ‘matter as primary’ is a model, as I would also claim ‘consciousness as primary’ is also a model.
I would also claim these models are also a way of seeing (perceiving, thinking and being present). Consciousness as primary is the more authentic, natural way of seeing-and when folks feel alienated and separate from experience, feel like a brain living in an alien world, they nurture a way back to the intimacy of living in consciousness.
 
Nonpareil said:
Incorrect.



Save for everything ever experienced by anyone, ever, you mean.
Click to expand...

No one has yet to find anything outside of consciousness. There is no thing outside of our being aware of it. Now, for specific questions and problems it’s perfectly rational to assume ‘matter as fundamental’.
 
LarryS said:
No one has yet to find anything outside of consciousness.
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Life is but a dream.

LarryS said:
There is no thing outside of our being aware of it.
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Last night I was a man dreaming I'm a butterfly. Today am I a butterfly dreaming I'm a man?

LarryS said:
Now, for specific questions and problems it’s perfectly rational to assume ‘matter as fundamental’.
Click to expand...
Specific questions and problems like reality and sanity perhaps?
 
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LarryS said:
I have claimed none of these-I have not referenced the supernatural nor did I disparage or even mention science. All I claimed is that ‘matter as primary’ is a model, as I would also claim ‘consciousness as primary’ is also a model.
I would also claim these models are also a way of seeing (perceiving, thinking and being present). Consciousness as primary is the more authentic, natural way of seeing-and when folks feel alienated and separate from experience, feel like a brain living in an alien world, they nurture a way back to the intimacy of living in consciousness.
Click to expand...
LarryS said:
No one has yet to find anything outside of consciousness. There is no thing outside of our being aware of it. Now, for specific questions and problems it’s perfectly rational to assume ‘matter as fundamental’.
Click to expand...
Massively conceited of you to believe that you alone are so special that the entire Universe (including all other humans) exists entirely and only as a figment of your consciousness.
 
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solipsism, so soon? Usually the high priests of Materialism play the solipsism card when they’ve completely run out of ideas.

The butterfly dream sequence was a bit desperate-don’t ya think?
 
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You can make a model out of anything being primary.

Shrimp is primary. A shrimpness field pervades the universe that enables us to experience shrimp. It also explains why evolution of life on earth tended toward generating shrimp in the first place, as well as why we evolved intelligence and language so as to be able to understand and appreciate shrimp. In fact everything is actually a form of shrimp, but our limited brains are incapable of recognizing the shrimp nature of most things.

The question isn't whether such concepts are models, but whether they're useful for anything.
 
LarryS said:
I have claimed none of these-I have not referenced the supernatural nor did I disparage or even mention science. All I claimed is that ‘matter as primary’ is a model, as I would also claim ‘consciousness as primary’ is also a model.

I would also claim these models are also a way of seeing (perceiving, thinking and being present). Consciousness as primary is the more authentic, natural way of seeing-and when folks feel alienated and separate from experience, feel like a brain living in an alien world, they nurture a way back to the intimacy of living in consciousness.
Click to expand...


"Matter" is not a "model". “Matter” is just a word that humans invented in language. It's just a word that refers to the all the things we detect around us (animals detect all the same things too ... in fact, so do plants). That's not a "model" in the sense of anyone saying "lets assume there are such things as solid objects, liquids, gases, ... everything" ... we are not merely "assuming" it or "proposing" it, instead it's simply everything that "exists" ... and what we mean by "exists" is all of that which we ever detect.

I have no idea what the second highlighted paragraph is supposed to mean at all. It sounds as if it's just an attempt to make-up a load of tenuous phrases so as to avoid the fact that all humans, all animals and plants, and even all inanimate "material” objects, also detect all the same things in the world around us.

But I think you have posted here many times before to support the usual philosophical objection that says “our understanding of the world comes to us only from using our senses and our brain, and that sensory system (inc. the brain) might be producing a completely false impression of everything”. However there are several very obvious problems with any such philosophical claim -

1. It's completely frivolous and in fact is nothing more than saying that if science cannot absolutely prove things as a 100% certainty, then it's perfectly reasonable for philosophers to claim that everything is quite likely to be totally untrue.

2. If philosophers make any such claim of saying our brain and senses might be fooling us in any significant way, then their suggestion/claim is utterly worthless until they show good evidence for that claim – they have to show that the universe is indeed not at all the way that science says it is ... and there's only one way to do that - they have to publish genuine research papers in the science research journals, to show that the theories of science are wrong ... but so far no philosopher has ever been able to do that ... so far the score is several million scientific papers explaining the universe in huge detail vs. philosophers alternative/objecting papers precisely None!... not a single one.

3. Philosophers must explain how it could ever be possible for any thinking intelligent animal (e.g. even inc. advanced aliens) to use any other method than a brain to determine the nature of the universe … what does the philosopher propose as an alternative to a brain? … and how is any alternative free from the same objections?
 
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LarryS said:
All the evidence we have shows the fundamental nature of consciousness-everything occurs within consciousness.
There is no evidence of anything lying outside consciousness.
Materialism is a model, and as with all models, it is not correct, it is not to be mistaken for reality.
Click to expand...

LarryS said:
solipsism, so soon? Usually the high priests of Materialism play the solipsism card when they’ve completely run out of ideas.
Click to expand...

I thought you were the one who brought it up?
 
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