Ian,
How do you define "physical realm"?
It's the realm that reductivist science studies.
Reductivist science? The only science I know of studies all empirically observable effects. Since consciousness clearly affects the brain (at the very least, if it is not brain activity it certainly affects brain activity), it clearly falls into this category. I don't know what you think "reductivist science" is, but I rather suspect that it is some bizarre misinterpretation of science which you think actually represents what scientists do.
It is either that which constitutes our sensory qualia, or that which is able to relate the patterns in our sensory qualia as part of our ongoing experiences.
I have never heard of any scientist attempt to define the category of things which they study in terms of metaphysical terms like "qualia". It is quite clear that you are basing your definition of "physical realm" of a misconception of science, and that therefore what you are calling the "physical realm" has absolutely no relevance to the question of whether science can actually study something.
I am well aware of what it requires, and I have argued that if consciousness is not the same as brain processes, but nevertheless affects such processes, then such consciousness would not be physical because the causal power of consciousness does not equate to consciousness itself.
Then you are defining consciousness to have aspects whose existence you could not possibly know about, which is self-contradictory given what the word "consciousness" is actually supposed to refer to. By definition, there can be no aspects of your consciousness which you are not aware of, and all of the aspects which you are aware of affect your brain activity in some way.
In other words such interaction between consciousness and brain processes would be interactive dualism rather than materialism.
What do interaction dualism and materialism have to do with
any of this? It does not matter to science one little bit whether materialism, or interaction dualism, or some other form of monism or polyism is true. It makes no difference to science. As far as science is concerned, all that matters is the interactions, not some mysterious ontological status of the things which are interacting.
Even if some form of interaction dualism is true, science simply doesn't care. It's all physical as far as science is concerned. In fact, science cannot even
tell the difference. Science just sees interactions, and attempts to understand and describe them.
Of course such interactive dualism is perfectly compatible with the idea that consciousness has its genesis in the brain and there is no "life after death". If you define such a position as a materialist one, then ok. But those who call themselves materialists would not normally subscribe to such an interaction. It seems to me that downward causation is not compatible with materialism.
Why do you keep bringing up materialism? Nobody hear is defending what you call materialism.
Well, you are correct that metaphysical positions cannot be known to be correct a priori. Nor can they be known to be correct a postiori.
Right, so brain/consciousness correlations do not constitute knowledge that the latter are the result of the former? I agree.
Wrong. That is an epistemological position, not a metaphysical one. That is, unless you
define "consciousness" in such a way as to implicitly assume that some set of metaphysical claims are true. But there is no reason to do so. In fact, doing so actually makes no sense, since in order to
determine whether those metaphysical claims are true in the first place, you need an epistemological system, and your definition of "consciousness" serves as some of the axioms of that system. It amounts to nothing more than begging the question.
But the hypothesis that consciousness is a set of brain processes is not a metaphysical hypothesis. Not unless your definition of "consciousness" implicitly stipulates that it includes aspects which cannot be empirically verified.
My understanding of consciousness does stipulate that and more. That is to say there are not only aspects of consciousness which cannot be empirically verified, but the whole of consciousness cannot be empirically verified.
Does your
definition of the term "consciousness" implicitly require this? If so, then see above. If not, then it is still the case that the hypothesis that consciousness is a set of brain processes is not a metaphysical hypothesis. It is an epistemological hypothesis. Your claim that consciousness cannot be empirically verified is also an epistemological claim. Metaphysics does not even enter into it at this point. It is simply a question of what is knowable and how we can know it. Now, you may have
concluded that consciousness cannot be empirically verified based on metaphysical assumptions, but that does not mean that my hypothesis is a metaphysical one.
All we can empirically do is discover relations between particular types of conscious experience and particular activity in the brain.
And? Why do you maintain that such evidence cannot be used to construct and test a falsifiable model of consciousness in terms of brain activity? After all, that is all it means to say that consciousness is a set of brain processes.
I do not have a definition of consciousness. I do not thi . . . . nay I know it is not possible to define.
I think you may be confused about what is meant by "definition" in this context. You seem to think that by "definition" I mean "complete description". I don't. The definition of a term is simply the set of criteria for stipulating what the term refers to. If you truly do not have a definition for the term "consciousness", then when you use it, you are just babbling nonsense.
I directly experience consciousness. My inner qualitative subjective feel is my consciousness,
See, that is a definition. It stipulates what you are referring to. Incidentally, nothing about the above definition
logically implies that consciousness cannot be a set of brain processes. That is a posteriori judgement.
and it is quite distinct from tables and chairs and electrons.
So is combustion, so what?
Indeed there is no similarity whatsoever. Given that it is utterly different from all physical things, I see nothing to be gained in labelling it as physical.
It is not utterly different from all physical things. On the contrary, it has in common with all other physical things precisely the
one characteristic which all physical things share: that it interacts with other physical things. That is the only necessary and sufficient criteria for something being physical, and it is the
only characteristic which all physical things share.
Whether we call consciousness physical or non-physical doesn't alter the fact that felt qualitative experiences have nothing in common whatsoever with rocks or tables.
And whether we call it physical or non-physical doesn't alter the fact that it interacts with other physical things, and can be studied scientifically through the process of empirical observation.
We only infer consciousness from our behaviour. This is in contrast to various physical entities which we indirectly observe.
Again, you are demonstrating your lack of understanding about how science, and epistemology in general, work. All known characteristics of all physical entities are
inferred. There is no such thing as direct observation in the sense you are using it here.
The reality of physical things is exhausted by the role they play in some fruitful theory describing the world. There is nothing more to an electron than such a role. But consciousness is not constituted by its causal powers. Rather it is constituted by raw experiences.
You are simply assuming here that theory could be constructed which successfully describes all aspects of our experiences. You have not provided any justification for asserting this.
I could as easily claim that there is some "meta-electron" which has all of the physical properties of the "electron", but which may not be exhausted by that scientific description. I have no more reason to believe that consciousness has such non-physical properties than I do to believe that these "meta-electrons" do. The mere fact that consciousness is "constituted by raw experiences", does not in any way imply this.
Huh? Why on Earth not? Consciousness affect behavior. I can therefore conclude all sorts of things about consciousness by observing behavior.
Hang on. So what can you conclude about the consciousness of a boulder as it rolls down a hill?
What kind of nonsense is that? What I can conclude is that boulders don't have consciousness at all.
Obviously nothing, so why are human beings special?
Because we have brains.
They ought not to be according to materialists.
Complete BS, and totally irrelevant, since nobody here is defending what you call materialism.
If we can infer nothing about a boulder's consciousness by observing its behaviour, then by the same principle we can infer nothing about the consciousness of other people by observing their behaviour.
That's like saying that since I can't infer anything about the orbital dynamics of a chicken from its behavior, that we can't infer anything about the orbital dynamics of planets by observing their behavior. It is complete nonsense. Why you would imagine that the notion that consciousness is physical should somehow imply that all things have it, is completely beyond me. It is quite possibly one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard you suggest.
Other peoples bodies behave as they do because of physical laws just as much as the rolling boulder does, or indeed any other physical process in the Universe.
Yeah, and? Why should that imply all physical processes are conscious?
What a complete load of nonsense. Come on, Ian. I
know you aren't this stupid.
Dr. Stupid
