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Consciousness

Scorpion said:
You are all talking rubbish again. Consciousness has not been explained by science.I wasted money on Daniel Dennett's book, 'consciousness explained' only to find out it was just his pet theory. So I tweeted him and said "why didn't you call your book consciousness explored, then I would not have wasted money on it". Naturally I received no reply.
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What you really mean is that science has shown there isn't any space for your fantasy and you don't like that.

All you are is a doughnut of water mixed with a few other chemicals.
 
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It seems some people can't even comprehend what the 'hard problem' even is.

It isn't "How does the brain work?", it's "How can my experience of the world even exist for me to contemplate it?"

It's like asking someone to explain what driving a car is like, but all they tell you is how the car works.
 
Thermal said:
Right, but calling it "a process" doesn't exactly clear things up either. Sounds scientific, but provides no greater insight.
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Yes it does.

The only hard problem with consciousness is that people want it to be something special. Actually there is another problem and that is our everyday language (at least in English) still makes it seem as if something hasn't been answered as to what consciousness is but that's an artifact of language.
 
ThatGuy11200 said:
It seems some people can't even comprehend what the 'hard problem' even is.

It isn't "How does the brain work?", it's "How can my experience of the world even exist for me to contemplate it?"

It's like asking someone to explain what driving a car is like, but all they tell you is how the car works.
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You've just demonstrated exactly the second point I made in my previous post. Thanks.
 
Belz... said:
No, he's saying that subjective experience isn't as special as some people want it to be.
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Seems to me that something utterly unique and without comparison in the universe as we know it and is the totality of our self awareness and existence qualifies as "special".
 
Thermal said:
Seems to me that something utterly unique and without comparison in the universe as we know it and is the totality of our self awareness and existence qualifies as "special".
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How could you even begin to suspect that it's unique or different from any other process, since you are the only data point, from your point of view?

You are speculating that humans' unique combination of abilities, allowing them to express what their consciousness perceives, and in the way you do, somehow means the consciousness is special. It might be more complex than other examples -- for instance that of a frog -- but there's no reason to believe that it's of a different sort.
 
Darat said:
Oh, and as is now obligatory for me in these discussions - I found out only a few years back that I am a p-zombie. I lack an essential part of what people assume is "consciousness" - I have no "mind's eye". When someone says "imagine an apple" - those are just words for me, I do not have the "qualia" of a "red apple" unless my eyes are looking at a red apple. I cannot "see" my mother's face by "remembering" it, I can only see her face if she is in front of my working eyes.

It's called aphantasia.
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"P-Zombie", or maybe "Aphantasist", might make for a really cool custom title!
 
Darat said:
Oh, and as is now obligatory for me in these discussions - I found out only a few years back that I am a p-zombie. I lack an essential part of what people assume is "consciousness" - I have no "mind's eye". When someone says "imagine an apple" - those are just words for me, I do not have the "qualia" of a "red apple" unless my eyes are looking at a red apple. I cannot "see" my mother's face by "remembering" it, I can only see her face if she is in front of my working eyes.

It's called aphantasia.
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Hold on, hold on. You've spoken about this before, but it now occurs to me:

There's this commonly asked question, What is/are qualia? (What's the singular, qualium? Whatever.) You condition might suggest an answer, isn't it?

You apparently don't have qualia. Most people do. So if the exact cranio-neurological process that is different in you (and in others with your condition) than it is in most others, can be isolated, then what we'll have right there is an exact precise answer, we'll know exactly what leads to qualia.
 
Chanakya said:
There's this commonly asked question, What is/are qualia?
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They're nothing. They don't exist. They are a philosophical/spiritual construct that doesn't appear to make sense in physical reality. There is no point at which the wavelengths we associate with "red" become "redness". "Red" photons hit neurons which transmit bioelectrical information to the brain, which processes it in a particular way. There's no special "quality" of redness in any of that. It's an illusion.

You apparently don't have qualia. Most people do.
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How would you even know this?
 
Detritus debris rubble trash garbage discards! Sewage! Sewerage! By extension, brummagem and kitsch!

There. Now I'm talking rubbish!
 
Belz... said:
They're nothing. They don't exist. They are a philosophical/spiritual construct that doesn't appear to make sense in physical reality. There is no point at which the wavelengths we associate with "red" become "redness". "Red" photons hit neurons which transmit bioelectrical information to the brain, which processes it in a particular way. There's no special "quality" of redness in any of that. It's an illusion.
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That's my impression too. But the way Darat phrased his post, led me to this line of thought.

If some people don't have qualia, then clearly it is something, right?


How would you even know this?
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No doubt there is, or might be, an neuro-biological answer to that, but as for the experiential part of it, Darat's already answered this question in different ways across different posts.

(Darat can correct me if I've misunderstood anything here, but, as I gather, it isn't that he lacks qualia altogether, but that he lacks qualia when such isn't directly in his experience. That might go some way in explaining what qualia are, or aren't. In precise neuro-biological terms, I mean.)
 
MarkCorrigan said:
Yes it has Scorpion. Consciousness is directly affected by the functioning of the brain. This is why brain damage can cause changes in personality, and why magnets can affect people's morality. We can deliberately do things to the human brain which directly affect the persons consciousness. There is no such thing as a soul.

Remember when I asked you about split brain people? Remember what happened? You threw up a handwaving defence and when it was pointed out that your assumptions were false you ignored the question.
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Different aspects of consciousness doubtlessly operate through different parts of the brain. As for the split brain, I know nothing about split brains and I doubt any on else does either. It must be a very rare event therefore it cannot have had much study done on it.

I do however know something about split personalities, because I had borderline split personality myself during middle age. On reflection I realized each personality was a fragment of the whole self.
 
Darat said:
What you really mean is that science has shown there isn't any space for your fantasy and you don't like that.

All you are is a doughnut of water mixed with a few other chemicals.
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I am a survivor of chemical imbalance of the brain, and I can assure you I had the last word in my mind, and not my chemicals.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
The mind is an emergent property of a functioning brain. There is no hard problem of consciousness. Once the brain is turned off the mind stops. When you die this is permanent.
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Everything I have learned after 75 years tells me your statement is entirely wrong.
 
Now you're just assuming that because you don't know about it noone does. Yes, they do Scorpion. When someone has their brain spilt each half of their body acts like a different person, not only down to how they may reach for things but down to preferences in clothing.

In fact just to show up your appeal to personal incredulity for exactly what it is and just how shallow it is, here is a result I got after googling "split brain research". It is the first google result.

Here is the abstract:
For several decades, split-brain research has provided valuable insight into the fields of psychology and neuroscience. These studies have progressed our knowledge of hemispheric specialization, language processing, the role of the corpus callosum, cognition, and even human consciousness. Following a recent empirical paper by Pinto et al. (2017a) and review by Volz and Gazzaniga (2017), a debate has ensued about the nature of conscious perception of visual stimuli in split-brain patients. This exchange is an ideal platform for generating discussion about both the implications of recent findings and the interpretation of results from split-brain studies in general.
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Decades Scorpion. They've been studying this for decades.


How do you explain that with the concept of a soul?

Further, when does the soul (for want of a better word) attach to the body it is inhabiting? During conception? Well what about monozygotic twins then? Does the sould somehow split in two?

At birth? Does that mean that the foetus isn't complete? What about premature babies that survive?

At some point during gestation? Ok, when? At what point is the foetus ensouled? Do the reactions of the foetus prior to this point not matter?
 
Scorpion said:
Everything I have learned after 75 years tells me your statement is entirely wrong.
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Unfortunately for you, the research into this area indicates that I am right and you are mistaken in what you think you have observed.

Again, this isn't something that noone has looked into Scorpion. People who are likely far smarter than you or I and who definitely have far more expertise in this field have been researching this for decades and there has not been one iota of evidence for the mind being anything but the result of chemical and electrical impulses generated by a functioning brain.
 
"Soul." Call it a soul you intellectually dishonest cowards. Don't hide the word behind "consciousness."
 
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