My take on why indeed the study of consciousness may not be as simple

[Robin]

I think

You think, therefore consciousness creates itself.

Hmmm...

Perhaps you should be a little more explicit about this step.

 

[Dancing David]

I don't believe phenomenology is a model to explain, language/logic has this job, as much as a tool for the individual to sharpen observational skills. I do not want to replace the scientific method with a phenomenological method as much as sharpen the observational ability of the scientist.

I have found many naturalists who, without any formal training and relying on pure observation, have developed insights which have lead to further research using the scientific method in order to create a logical framework for there observations which then allows for effective communication thereof.

I am not fimiliar enough with behaviorism to comment.

Now the issue is that phenomenology is not sufficient in and of itself, but it is also subject to the scientific method. All things are.

here is the intro to cognitive behavior therapy, a good place to start on cognitive behaviorism. You will note it combines an objective phenomenology.

 

[PixyMisa]

So you're saying the guy who has won the Wolfe prize for mathematical physics and the Dirac prize for theoretical physics doesn't understand quantum mechanics at all?

Any evidence for this remarkable remark?

I can't find any references / quotes from physicists who disparage his opinions on quantum mechanics.

Here you go then.

Penrose is out by between 10 and 17 orders of magnitude. Quantum consciousness is drivel.

 

[Robin]

Why consciousness and QM are similarly-problematic scientifically: you cannot observe Schroedinger's cat when it is in the box and you cannot observe the noumenal brain that supposedly "produces" (insert some other nonsense word if you like) consciousness,...

Calling "produces" a nonsense word you are implicitly making the claim that you know that consciousness is not a product. Can you back up that claim?

If consciousness is not a product then it is a metaphysical primitive - so are you claiming that the observably complex process of consciousness is metaphysically primitive? If so can you back up the claim?

If not then your claim of "nonsense" is an unsupported assertion.

yet the questions science asks about QM and consciousness conceptually requires that we acknowledge these unobservable entities.

Why?

Claiming science can answer these questions without refering to metaphysics is to fail to understand what the scientific revolution was all about in the first place and to fail to acknowledge the absolute limitations of empirical science.

So what is it, precisely, that you think metaphysics can tell us that traditional science cannot?

 

[PixyMisa]

Do you think you can have a scientific experiment to create consciousness?

Sure.

 

[Dancing David]

The history of what we now call modern science can be traced back to a strategic decision taken by Galileo and certain other trailblazers at the dawn of the scientific revolution. This decision involved ceasing to ask metaphysical/ontological questions and concentrating on the empirical investigation of the material world - the OBSERVABLE material world.

So remove the word material and just say observable world.
That is what i do.

Somewhere later in that history, science also became closely associated with a metaphysical claim of external realism, materialism, physicalism or whatever-else you want to call it.

But it doesn't matter, if the univserse is consistent, that is all science requires, regardless.

For >99% of all scientific issues, this metaphysical claim was of no consequence - it made no difference to the actual practice of science whether you were talking about a directly-observed physical world as accepted by idealists and phenomenalists or the unobservable external material reality of the physicalists. The difference between that >99% and the <1% that includes consciousness and QM is that in these rare cases, the metaphysical assumption matters...BIGTIME.

And again I ask you,

How so, I don't understand?

If you try to approach them like normal science, taking no notice of the metaphysical problems raised, then you might as well just give up on being rational.

But you haven't stated the problem yet, the cat in the box is not a problem, the cat is a macro scopic object , the wave forms are stable and not in a 'superposition'.

Bottom line: you can't even ask the difficult questions regarding interpretations of QM and the nature of consciousness without straying outside the model of science established at the start of the scientific revolution by people like Galileo and Newton. Science doesn't do metaphysics and these are metaphysical issues. This is unavoidable. It is not down to lack of technology or the current state of science. It is to do with what it is possible to know and how it is possible to know it, which is the domain of philosophy, not science.

Why consciousness and QM are similarly-problematic scientifically: you cannot observe Schroedinger's cat when it is in the box and you cannot observe the noumenal brain that supposedly "produces" (insert some other nonsense word if you like) consciousness, yet the questions science asks about QM and consciousness conceptually requires that we acknowledge these unobservable entities. Claiming science can answer these questions without refering to metaphysics is to fail to understand what the scientific revolution was all about in the first place and to fail to acknowledge the absolute limitations of empirical science.

I respectfully disagree, one can apply observation and replication to metaphysics, people often don't like to. But it can be done.

But you have not answered the question, why would I need to worry about the metaphysics of QM?

 

[Robin]

"I think" certainly will not stand up to scrutiny by analytical philosophy and could be regarded as a metaphysical proposition resulting from poor syntax.

And this is a good thing because it keeps us interested in analytical work.
However at some stage I believe we need to start putting together that which we have torn asunder. I have not found any other way to do this other than
thinking.

But if time is only an illusion then process would be an illusion and the word "thinking" implies process - so we cannot have any more metaphysical confidence in the concept of "thinking" than we can in any other.

So we quickly find that everything is torn asunder again.

Maybe we should just cheerfully admit that we may never have any perfect knowledge.

 

[Robin]

The history of what we now call modern science can be traced back to a strategic decision taken by Galileo and certain other trailblazers at the dawn of the scientific revolution. This decision involved ceasing to ask metaphysical/ontological questions and concentrating on the empirical investigation of the material world - the OBSERVABLE material world.

So remove the word material and just say observable world.
That is what i do.

And that is just what science does too. UE is verballing the scientific community by inserting the term "material" here. Science is the study of the observable world, mathematics is the study of the a priori.

The question that UE has to answer is what methods do we have of investigating the metaphysical/ontological questions that science cannot ask?

I would say that we have none.

As I always say, science is the worst epistemic system, apart from all the others.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Not this **** again.

Just won't go away, will it?

Conciousness.

Definition.

Go.

Who are you asking?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You forgot the third type -- those that know the problem appears hard but understand the solution is trivial and therefore the problem is not hard at all.

That'll be the second type then.

And it is funny, but I bet most of the materialists here are the third type. I wonder why you saw fit to not mention them?

I didn't mention them because they are identical to the ones who don't acknowledge a serious problem, which I'd already mentioned...

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Robin,

I'm not going to respond to the majority of your post about Neurath and the Vienna Circle because most people who will read this won't be able to understand the context of the discussion.

You appear to be saying that science should avoid one metaphysical assumption and make another metaphysical assumption.

What precisely is the metaphysical problem raised by interpretations of QM and the nature of consciousness?

The same one that was raised by Kant. What is the relationship between the the world as it appears to us and the world as it is in itself, how can we know the answer to this question and what does it have to do with things like time and causality?

OK, so that's more than one problem, but it's all interlinked.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Calling "produces" a nonsense word you are implicitly making the claim that you know that consciousness is not a product. Can you back up that claim?

I know that the claim that consciousness is a product is itself incompatible with materialistic monism. It becomes dualistic epiphenomenalism.

If consciousness is not a product then it is a metaphysical primitive - so are you claiming that the observably complex process of consciousness is metaphysically primitive? If so can you back up the claim?

I don't know what "observably complex process of consciousness" means. I know what complex neural activity is. I know how complex my own consciousness experiences are. But I don't know what your phrase means.

So what is it, precisely, that you think metaphysics can tell us that traditional science cannot?

It is the bridge between naive materialism and post-modernism. It's how you get from John Locke to Friederich Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

 

[rocketdodger]

That'll be the second type then.

I didn't mention them because they are identical to the ones who don't acknowledge a serious problem, which I'd already mentioned...

Oh, I see your point.

Yes, when one's lack of education and/or intelligence leaves them unable to distinguish between two very different positions, false dichotomies appear all over the place.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

But you have not answered the question, why would I need to worry about the metaphysics of QM?

David,

I think I have answered that question.

If you are treating assuming "material world" means "the material world which I observe" then you aren't a materialist. Your position is compatible with idealism.

Geoff

 

[rocketdodger]

David,

I think I have answered that question.

If you are treating assuming "material world" means "the material world which I observe" then you aren't a materialist. Your position is compatible with idealism.

Geoff

That's kinda funny, since "the material world" and "the material world which I observe" are one and the same.

So what was your point, again?

 

[Dancing David]

The same one that was raised by Kant. What is the relationship between the the world as it appears to us and the world as it is in itself, how can we know the answer to this question and what does it have to do with things like time and causality?

OK, so that's more than one problem, but it's all interlinked.

Well, it was it is and we can observe what we can observe. That is all.

When you show me something interesting with theories of time and a chain of causality then we can talk.

 

[Dancing David]

David,

I think I have answered that question.

If you are treating assuming "material world" means "the material world which I observe" then you aren't a materialist. Your position is compatible with idealism.

Geoff

Now that is funny because that isn't what i said at all, now is it.

I did not say material world at all. I said remove the 'material'.

Funny after your statement about straw arguments.

So what is the interesting issue about QM again? That is the point, what is it. there is no smeared out cat in the box, it is macro-scopic.

PS I am the one of the ones who has stated that materialism and idealism are idistinguishable.

 

[gentlehorse]

Ask proper scientists, ask philosophers, but don't bother asking a bunch of knee-jerk-responding, ignorant, arrogant "skeptics", because you should already know in advance what sort of response you will get. If there is a deep connection between the problems concerning QM and consciousness, this board is home to about the last people on Earth which would be willing to admit it. In short, most people here already believe they understand enough about these issues to be reasonably certain that any talk connecting consciousness and QM is woo-woo nonsense, but, if past experience is anything to go by, very few of them actually do understand those issues. It's their gut instinct which drives their opinions on this subject, not reason or scientific knowledge. Woo-woos talk about "quantum consciousness", therefore it must be nonsense.

For my part, my old friend, I simply haven't run across any arguments connecting consciousness and QM that have any explanatory power. This isn't to say that I haven't been moved and impressed by the use of language from time to time...

 

[PixyMisa]

The same one that was raised by Kant. What is the relationship between the the world as it appears to us and the world as it is in itself

The question is not meaningful. It is only possible to examine the world as it appears. Therefore it is only meaningful to discuss the world as it appears. There is no possible meaningful distinction between "the world as it is in itself" and "the world as it appears to us".

how can we know the answer to this question

We can't. The question is not meaningul.

and what does it have to do with things like time and causality?

Absolutely nothing.

 

[PixyMisa]

PS I am the one of the ones who has stated that materialism and idealism are idistinguishable.

This is true for those forms of idealism that are logically coherent. But some of the things labeled as "idealism" are really dualism in a funny hat.