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

[Belz...]

Why are so many skeptics here so ignorant of basic facts?

If you think skeptics have a bad case of this, wait till you interact with woo-woos.

Lucid dreaming.

I average a couple of these every year.

I have to agree with Fudbucker on this specific issue. You absolutely can maintain your functions when dreaming.

But that doesn't change the fact that your "conscious" self when dreaming is generated after the fact by the brain just like it is when awake.

 

[acbytesla]

Why are so many skeptics here so ignorant of basic facts?

Lucid dreaming.

I average a couple of these every year.

How do you know you are aware of dreaming? Are you aware that you are dreaming while you are dreaming or do you just imagine it? None of this explains very much beyond that we have a working mind.

 

[Steve]

Sure there is. Do your cognitive powers disappear when you dream?

yes

 

[Fudbucker]

How do you know you are aware of dreaming? Are you aware that you are dreaming while you are dreaming or do you just imagine it? None of this explains very much beyond that we have a working mind.

You "wake up" in the middle of a dream, and continue dreaming. You've never had a lucid dream?

But even in normal dreams, you don't become retarded.

 

[BadBoy]

Waking Up with Sam Harris podcast has a very interesting chat with a guy called Anil Seth called "Consciousness and the Self #113 - 9th Jan 2018." Most importantly he defines what we mean by Consciousness which is often incorrectly interpreted to mean "The Self".

 

[IanS]

OK, so in stark contrast to science, the philosophers here can still offer no explanation for what is causing their so-called "consciousness".

There's really nothing here to discuss until philosophers explain how consciousness is produced without the "reality" of a brain. If they cannot do that then they have no case at all and their claim of solipsism is a worthless waste of everyones time (like so much else in philosophy).

 

[Darat]

Correct, and what you are experiencing right now (while presumably awake) you could also experience while dreaming, indicating that experience both while awake and while dreaming is dictated by the mind by rules ans laws of the mind.

Not for the likes of me. There is no way I can mistake a dream (as I understand people claim to have) for reality, they are totally and utterly different "experiences".

 

[Darat]

Not necessarily, things only seem physical, or we understand things to be physical because we've been conditioned to think there must be an independent physical world. The regularity and predictability we observe could stem from the commonness in our human minds, just as we notice regularity and predictability in our own perceptions, or from thought to thought. Either way science works.

No it doesn't. Science explanations (at the moment) are based on and require there to be an "external" reality independent of human consciousness.

 

[Darat]

Why are so many skeptics here so ignorant of basic facts?

Lucid dreaming.

I average a couple of these every year.

I've no idea, what seems amazing to me is how people can remain ignorant of basic facts even when they have been mentioned in this very same thread.

From the information I've provided in this thread - unless you wish to claim I am not conscious - dreams, whether lucid or not can have no bearing on whether there is a reality independent of human consciousness.

 

[IanS]

You don't need to assume anything (including materialism), which has been Larry's point for about a dozen pages now.

Science is not assuming "reality" in the way you are simplistically suggesting. Science is not merely assuming it without any investigation, or any evidence. The fact is that all known evidence shows that there is no genuine reason to doubt that the world around us is real in more-or-less precisely the way we all detect it and interact with it.

But still scientists don't actually just "assume" things as if they thought everything was a literal "certainty". Real scientists (in core sciences at least, i.e. physics, chemistry, most of maths and much of biology) never say they are "certain" about anything, they just do not think like that, because it's unscientific and a known massive mistake to proceed as if you could never be mistaken ... that was actually what was wrong with philosophy and theism, and that's actually what science changed from about 1600AD, i.e. new scientists (ex philosophers) started to make proper independent measurements and proper mathematical calculations rather than just believing they were always right as earlier philosophers had done (and as theists still do).

And the only reason for saying “more-or-less as we detect it”, is to say that of course modern science has always accepted that our explanations are refined and improved from time-to-time as more precise and new observations can be made … Newtons description of gravity was improved by Einstein, and it may be improved again in the future … quantum theory vastly improved and explained previous ideas about the structure of atoms, but QM is now really improved/extended by quantum field theory … the major “Theories” are rarely if ever thrown out as seriously wrong, they just get refined over the decades and centuries as more accurate measurements become possible.

As I pointed out several times much earlier in the thread - it's not just humans that detect the exact same reality. All animals, birds, insects, and even plants (even going right back to the first living organisms 3 billion years ago) detect exactly that same reality.

In fact an absolutely vast and quite unarguable mountain of evidence in astronomy and cosmology confirms all of that exact same universe of reality from billions of years before the Earth and earthly life ever existed ... going right back to our explanations of the big bang 13.8billion years ago.

All of that is completely consistent with reality (the exact reality that everyone and everything detects). And it's all completely inconsistent with claims of non-reality.

If despite all of that, philosophers want to claim that perhaps it's all an illusion, and that only our consciousness actually exists, then they have to explain how any such consciousness is produced without the reality of a brain. If they cannot do that then they have no argument at all ... no case, no explanation, and no evidence ... all they have is the completely worthless idea of saying that perhaps anything might be wrong and might be untrue ... that's actually the same as just saying that since science does not claim to "prove" anything as a matter of literal 100% certainty, they (philosophers) will oppose science with the juvenile idiocy of claiming that we should seriously believe that reality or anything else may be a myth ...

... it's a God-of-the-Gaps type argument that says "since science can't claim an absolute proof, we will use that as a "gap" to insert solipsist claims in there!".

 

[David Mo]

If despite all of that, philosophers want to claim that perhaps it's all an illusion, and that only our consciousness actually exists, then they have to explain how any such consciousness is produced without the reality of a brain. If they cannot do that then they have no argument at all ... no case, no explanation, and no evidence ... all they have is the completely worthless idea of saying that perhaps anything might be wrong and might be untrue ... that's actually the same as just saying that since science does not claim to "prove" anything as a matter of literal 100% certainty, they (philosophers) will oppose science with the juvenile idiocy of claiming that we should seriously believe that reality or anything else may be a myth ...

... it's a God-of-the-Gaps type argument that says "since science can't claim an absolute proof, we will use that as a "gap" to insert solipsist claims in there!".

No. The burden of proof doesn't fall on the solipsist.
The solipsist starts from a proposition that must be accepted by the realist: I have ideas. No realist can deny this without falling into a contradiction. "I don't have ideas" is contradictory, as anyone can see.

The solipsist affirms that some of these ideas appear regularly and independently of the will of the ego. The realist has to agree.
So, the realist says that happens because ideas are caused by something outside the mind.
The solipsist asks,"How do you know?"
It is now clear that the burden of proof falls on the realist.

[The thing is so simple that I don't understand how you don’t realize it].

Once again the same mistake:
The solipsist doesn’t affirm that his ideas are independent of the brain, because brain is only other idea for him. Even more, he can agree that many ideas of thoughts or emotions are linked to many ideas of brain. This causes no problem to him. But they are only ideas. If you want to say that brain is a thing with an external existence that is cause of ideas you must show it before.

 

[Belz...]

No. The burden of proof doesn't fall on the solipsist.
The solipsist starts from a proposition that must be accepted by the realist: I have ideas. No realist can deny this without falling into a contradiction. "I don't have ideas" is contradictory, as anyone can see.

The solipsist affirms that some of these ideas appear regularly and independently of the will of the ego. The realist has to agree.
So, the realist says that happens because ideas are caused by something outside the mind.
The solipsist asks,"How do you know?"
It is now clear that the burden of proof falls on the realist.

Indeed. The solipsist's position is impossible to prove, and perhaps to disprove.

Fortunately for us the realist's claim has been amply supported.

ETA: But as Darat has noted below, it's not "I have ideas" that should be the solipsist's starting point, but "I experience things".

 

[Darat]

No. The burden of proof doesn't fall on the solipsist.
The solipsist starts from a proposition that must be accepted by the realist: I have ideas. No realist can deny this without falling into a contradiction. "I don't have ideas" is contradictory, as anyone can see.

...snip...

Not at all - I could be a simulation that is programmed to "think I think". Or I could be an imagining of the solipsist and not a real person, just one of its playthings.

 

[IanS]

There is of course no such “burden of proof” upon scientists. Because they are not claiming to ever have a literal “proof” in the sense of absolute certainty. What science has as any “burden” is simply the need to provide evidence and the need to show that the conclusions which we draw from that evidence can be tested and checked with results that are consistent and repeatable. And of course that is precisely what science does. And does it in such vast extent and in such incredible detail that the extent of it is far beyond most peoples comprehension (certainly beyond the knowledge and comprehension of philosophers on forums like this).

However since someone here brought that up as claim against science, there is in fact a burden of actual proof which does actually apply to philosophy when it claims human “consciousness” exists as a known “certainty” (which solipsism does apparently claim). If it's claimed to be a literal certainty, then it means they can produce a proof for the existence of consciousness … and that does not mean they can merely say that it seems certain to them, or that they can ask others to show how consciousness (or anything) might not exist … as soon as they claim “certainty”, then then they are lumbered with a burden of actual proof.

All of which just takes us straight back to what I said before – science has explained in great deal how and why we experience an effect that we call “consciousness”, and it's provided mountains of tested evidence to show that what we detect through our sensory system and our brain is a world of reality. So what then is the philosophical explanation of the cause of “consciousness” if they dispute that a physical “real” brain is needed?

 

[David Mo]

Indeed. The solipsist's position is impossible to prove, and perhaps to disprove.

Fortunately for us the realist's claim has been amply supported.

ETA: But as Darat has noted below, it's not "I have ideas" that should be the solipsist's starting point, but "I experience things".

All right, I have an experience. But the solipsist asks: And how do I know it is an experience of something? Can't it be that I have an impression that doesn't correspond to anything? It is the realist who must demonstrate that his experience corresponds to something "real", that is, outside of his consciousness.

When someone tells you that he has seen a ghost you ask how he knows it is not an illusion. That is very reasonable. The solipsist asks the same question about all impressions. And it is also reasonable.

 

[Darat]

All right, I have an experience. But the solipsist asks: And how do I know it is an experience of something? Can't it be that I have an impression that doesn't correspond to anything? It is the realist who must demonstrate that his experience corresponds to something "real", that is, outside of his consciousness.

When someone tells you that he has seen a ghost you ask how he knows it is not an illusion. That is very reasonable. The solipsist asks the same question about all impressions. And it is also reasonable.

Problem is that you are still making an assumption of an "I" - the "I" you think you are may not exist either, solipsism like all such ideas always starts with an assumption, i.e. that something exists.

All you are arguing about is the nature of the thing that you are assuming.

 

[David Mo]

Not at all - I could be a simulation that is programmed to "think I think". Or I could be an imagining of the solipsist and not a real person, just one of its playthings.

The solipsist doesn't says that the thinking Ego should be Darat, Ian, a devil, Solaris, a coffee machine or Marilyn Monroe's ghost. He only says that whatever "I" can be if "I" is thinking then "I" exists. And since I am thinking this or that I exist. I don't know about you.

 

[Belz...]

All right, I have an experience. But the solipsist asks: And how do I know it is an experience of something? Can't it be that I have an impression that doesn't correspond to anything?

I didn't mean that the something exists outside of the observer. But the fact remains that you experience something. It's not just a general feeling of consciousness. You experience events.

 

[Darat]

The solipsist doesn't says that the thinking Ego should be Darat, Ian, a devil, Solaris, a coffee machine or Marilyn Monroe's ghost. He only says that whatever "I" can be if "I" is thinking then "I" exists. And since I am thinking this or that I exist. I don't know about you.

You are still making the assumption that you exist.

Personally I think it is crazy to doubt that but if you want to be consistent and claim that we only know we exist then you have to assume that you do in fact exist. In other words just because you think you think and therefore you exist provides no evidence (in your framework) that you do exist. It's all just an assumption or assertions. It's why dialectics like "I think, therefore I am" are circular nonsense.

Assuming that a reality exists is no more an assumption than assuming you exist.

(Note I am not arguing for any kind of monism - I'm a non-philosophical pragmatist - if it seems to work I'll go with it, who cares if it aint in some deep and metaphysical way "real"?)

 

[Belz...]

Personally I think it is crazy to doubt that but if you want to be consistent and claim that we only know we exist then you have to assume that you do in fact exist. In other words just because you think you think and therefore you exist provides no evidence (in your framework) that you do exist. It's all just an assumption or assertions. It's why dialectics like "I think, therefore I am" are circular nonsense.

Depends what you mean by "you". If we mean "the observer" then they can absolutely assume it. It's self-evident that something is experiencing stuff. That something is called "you". Now, that's pretty much the limit of what you can say for certain, but then if you stop there that's not very useful as a philosophy.