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

[Tommy Jeppesen]

It actually makes no difference whether reality is as we experience it or we are brains in vats or in a matrix or something
else because we have no choice in the matter but to exist within it and treat it as if it were real. Even if it could be shown
to be something else we could do absolutely nothing about it and so in this respect what it actually is is entirely academic

No, because while religious beliefs and scientific beliefs are the same as beliefs, they are different as how they rate evidence and so. If that matters to you, it also matters to you that there is no Objective Authoritative Evidence.
There is no Evidence for the fact, the reality is "fair". The moment you claim that, you have given the religious people as "get out of jail card", because you claim evidence where there is none.
The price the believers in "I have no beliefs" pay is that it is transparent that they have beliefs and they don't understand how knowledge and evidence work.
There is a reason for the saying that "the model/map is not landscape".

 

[ynot]

No, because while religious beliefs and scientific beliefs are the same as beliefs, they are different as how they rate evidence and so. If that matters to you, it also matters to you that there is no Objective Authoritative Evidence.
There is no Evidence for the fact, the reality is "fair". The moment you claim that, you have given the religious people as "get out of jail card", because you claim evidence where there is none.
The price the believers in "I have no beliefs" pay is that it is transparent that they have beliefs and they don't understand how knowledge and evidence work.
There is a reason for the saying that "the model/map is not landscape".

Evidence, please.

What credible religious evidence is there to be rated?

Evidence you're on the 20th floor of a building isn't "Objective Authoritative Evidence" so you would be happy to leave the building via a 20th floor window? Yeah right!

 

[MRC_Hans]

Or you can keep spinning your wheels and hoping that the answer is coming someday...

Skipped some of the thread, but I think your basic premise is wrong. Science HAS explained consciousness: It is a property of a functioning brain. Please state any properties of "consciousness" that could not be a property of a brain.

Hans

 

[ynot]

Normal/rational beliefs – Beliefs that could possibly be true according to current knowledge.
Example – “I have a black and white dog I call Spot”. Could be a lie but could also be true. Rational to believe it.

Paranormal/irrational beliefs – Beliefs that could NOT possibly be true according to current knowledge.
Example – “I have purple, flying, fire-breathing dragon I call Spit”. Can’t possibly be true according to current knowledge, essentially a certain lie or delusion. Irrational to believe it.

 

[ynot]

It actually makes no difference whether reality is as we experience it or we are brains in vats or in a matrix or something
else because we have no choice in the matter but to exist within it and treat it as if it were real. Even if it could be shown
to be something else we could do absolutely nothing about it and so in this respect what it actually is is entirely academic

There's reality as humans perceive it and there's reality as it really is. Perceived reality isn't necessarily actual reality. So what? Perceived reality is all we have and it's far better than fantasy reality

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Skipped some of the thread, but I think your basic premise is wrong. Science HAS explained consciousness: It is a property of a functioning brain.

That explanation seems to lack any explaining.

Please state any properties of "consciousness" that could not be a property of a brain.

How about you provide the explanation? To me an explanation should be something that would allow us to, at least in principle if not in practice, recreate the phenomena.

 

[Dancing David]

It actually makes no difference whether reality is as we experience it or we are brains in vats or in a matrix or something
else because we have no choice in the matter but to exist within it and treat it as if it were real. Even if it could be shown
to be something else we could do absolutely nothing about it and so in this respect what it actually is is entirely academic

This is why I support philosophical naturalism, regardless of ontology: dancing energy, godthought, BIVs or butterfly dreams, the end result is the same.

All you have is the apparent reality

 

[Darat]

Good posts myriad and Ians,

One thing to consider is that the experience of "I" could have come about as a byproduct of an organism modeling the world. Your jelly fish only has to model a world with three bits of information, too cold, too hot, just right, it doesn't need to model a world any more detailed than that to survive. But as part of the ever ongoing "fight" to survive some creatures created better models of their world or rather creatures with better models survived more than those with less accurate models.

This seems to be supported by the folklore concept of conciousnes we tend to use, so we assume creatures with more "complex" behaviours* have more consciousness than others. So we consider a dog to be conscious but not a jellyfish. (*we tend to assume creatures that act like us think like us)

So did we gain an "I" experience because we started to model the world with other proto humans in it and to do so we had to model the other human's behaviour? Our experience of "I" is created because we need to be able to predict what "they" will do, after all don't we often think "now if I was in their shoes what would I do?"

 

[acbytesla]

That explanation seems to lack any explaining.

How about you provide the explanation? To me an explanation should be something that would allow us to, at least in principle if not in practice, recreate the phenomena.

What are you suggesting? That man creates a functioning brain?

Don't you get it? We have billions of humans with brains and almost all of them demonstrate consciousness to one degree or another. Animals display traits of consciousness as well. And we don't know of anything that doesn't have a brain that demonstrates those traits. That provides the repeatability that confims the premise. ** AI seems to be approaching this possibility as well.

 

[Darat]

What do you mean by fundamental? If you mean at the quantum level then this is true as we can only experience it at the classical level
But is not all reality merely on a spectrum with no absolute division? The notion of fundamental you are using is arbitrary and subjective

Actually we do in a way interact at the quantum scale as well as the macro scale in some things. For example a nerve impulse can be started by a single photon hitting a cell in the retina.

 

[MRC_Hans]

That explanation seems to lack any explaining.

How about you provide the explanation? To me an explanation should be something that would allow us to, at least in principle if not in practice, recreate the phenomena.

Well, the problem here is that "consciousness" is poorly and inconsistently defined. For non-materialists, the definition seems to be "whatever science cannot explain", and for materialists, it is simply "how a sufficiently complex brain functions".

One of traditional check-points is "self awareness", but ... how is that defined? There is the mirror test, but obviously that quite illogically excludes not only blind individuals, but also individuals with no experience with mirrors, not to mention individuals to whom visual appearance has no importance.

And, you could easily program a computer to recognize its own mirror image.

So, IMHO, the real problem is defining consciousness. But that is not really science's problem.

Hans

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

What are you suggesting? That man creates a functioning brain?

I addressed that. An explanation should allow us to do that in principle if not in practice. (ETA: The Sun for example. We have sufficient understanding that we could create a Sun in principle even though not in practice)

Don't you get it? We have billions of humans with brains and almost all of them demonstrate consciousness to one degree or another. Animals display traits of consciousness as well. And we don't know of anything that doesn't have a brain that demonstrates those traits. That provides the repeatability that confims the premise. ** AI seems to be approaching this possibility as well.

I have no idea why you are pointing this out to me.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Well, the problem here is that "consciousness" is poorly and inconsistently defined.

I don't see any need to get hung up on definitions. I'd accept the Turing test, which is pretty much all we've ever had for evaluating whether our fellow humans are conscious.

 

[MRC_Hans]

I don't see any need to get hung up on definitions. I'd accept the Turing test, which is pretty much all we've ever had for evaluating whether our fellow humans are conscious.

Another definition. If you have debated on the internet for some time, you will have encountered humans that could NOT pass the Turing test. And a computer emulating them would consequently pass it.

You might say that humans not passing the Turing test are not conscious, but with what merit?

Hans

 

[ynot]

I don't see any need to get hung up on definitions. I'd accept the Turing test, which is pretty much all we've ever had for evaluating whether our fellow humans are conscious.

Too funny, and stupid.

Before having sex with your partner do you subject them to a Turing test to make sure they're conscious? After all, you wouldn't want to rape an unconscious person would you?

 

[acbytesla]

I addressed that. An explanation should allow us to do that in principle if not in practice. (ETA: The Sun for example. We have sufficient understanding that we could create a Sun in principle even though not in practice)


I have no idea why you are pointing this out to me.

Perhaps I misunderstood your post. It seemed to that you may have been suggesting because man could not himself create a functioning brain that demonstrated traits of consciousness, that naturalism/materialism was false. Mea culpa if I was wrong.

 

[ynot]

Another definition. If you have debated on the internet for some time, you will have encountered humans that could NOT pass the Turing test. And a computer emulating them would consequently pass it.

You might say that humans not passing the Turing test are not conscious, but with what merit?

Hans

And computers passing proves they are conscious.

 

[acbytesla]

And computers passing proves they are conscious.

Which leads me to the following question. Will computers develop their own religions?

 

[ynot]

Which leads me to the following question. Will computers develop their own religions?

Only if we program heaps of emotion code in them.

 

[acbytesla]

Only if we program heaps of emotion code in them.

It is my understanding that computers are now capable of writing code.