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

[Fudbucker]

So? And the ONLY reason we know what we do know is from science.

Really? I know I'm conscious because of science? I kind of took that for granted. Most of the important things I know are through self-discovery. Those truths are heard-earned. What flavor quarks make up a proton? Kind of trivial.

But since you think there is another way I CHALLENGE YOU to tell us how. Please expound on this other method to learn about the universe. Should we pray for an answer?

Introspection, of course, is one way. The unexamined life is not worth living, and all that.

 

[Fudbucker]

Yea, I think it's another version of woo. Sounds like a tech version of astrology. Bovine excrement piled high for the 21st century.

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

 

[acbytesla]

Really? I know I'm conscious because of science? I kind of took that for granted. Most of the important things I know are through self-discovery. Those truths are heard-earned. What flavor quarks make up a proton? Kind of trivial.

Now you're changing subjects. You said we only know about 5 percent of the universe or galaxy and my reply was the ONLY reason we know as much as we do is through science. My remark had nothing to do with consciousness, but about humanity's acquired knowledge and it's source.

Introspection, of course, is one way. The unexamined life is not worth living, and all that.

You think if you contemplate your belly button long enough that the answer of how consciousness develops will somehow pop into your mind? Get serious.

Sam Harris or maybe it was Lawrence Krause was discussing this on a YouTube video I recently watched. He basically dismissed that even if Einstein, Bohr and Feynman gathered in a room and meditated, they would not be productive.

 

[abaddon]

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

"I don't know" is a perfectly scientific answer.

"I don't know, therefore insert woo of choice" most certainly is not. You should know this by now.

And it isn't a case of spinning one's wheels at all because the answers are being discovered as we speak. Tough luck.

 

[acbytesla]

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

It has nothing to do with hope. It has to do with the track record. Whereas science hasn't provided answers for ever question we have, it's track record of success is real. In contrast, woo has provided answers for NOTHING and likely never will.

 

[Fudbucker]

It has nothing to do with hope. It has to do with the track record. Whereas science hasn't provided answers for ever question we have, it's track record of success is real. In contrast, woo has provided answers for NOTHING and likely never will.

I think we should leave it at: you have faith in the scientific track record; and I think past performance is no guarantee of future results.

I think [ETA] that sums things up pretty nicely.

 

[acbytesla]

I think we should leave it at: you have faith in the scientific track record;

It's not faith. Faith is the answer people give when they don't have a good reason. Because if you had a good reason you wouldn't need faith.

It's an understanding of reality. Science is the only method to date that has any success and woo has successfully answered nothing. Sure, it's possible that science may not be able to come up with the answer, but there is virtually no chance that woo will answer this question or any question.

and I think past performance is no guarantee of future results.

I think whats sums things up pretty nicely.

It may not be a guarantee, but it's pretty damn close. I'll hitch my wagon every time to the one method we know has the best chance at success to the other method which has never ever been successful.

 

[Minoosh]

Materialism has no room for gods, obviously, so if materialism leads to an absurdity, as I believe it does, the other two models become more believable.

Does materialism also fail to explain the origin of life? Because that strikes me as a more basic question: Create some primordial ooze, add sunlight and presto! Life! And if you believe in inanimate material suddenly becoming alive,you're practically going from materialist to dualist to theist right there.

So: Is the origin of life question also unsolvable, in the way that you believe the origin of consciousness is unsolvable?

I don't find materialism to be all that satisfying, philosophically. Do you believe that before there was conscious meat, there was unconscious meat; is it only in the higher animals that you see any necessity for a dualistic world view? What about during the dinosaur era, did the so-called problem of consciousness exist?

I like the idea of there being a body and soul, but I can't say when a body becomes ensouled. Materialism is all-of-a-piece; there is no metaphysical threshold (that I know of) that needs to be bridged. It leads to a more coherent picture, IMO. I ran around with a consciousness crowd for a while, the dualistic, non-emergent, anti-AI wing. They were a mix of serious theorists and New Age types, but not many doing hard-core neuroscience.

 

[Oystein]

I look forward to hearing your explanation as to how brains produce consciousness, given all this research you talk about.

And let me ask an obvious question: how will you know if a machine is conscious or not?

And let me ask another obvious question: what is consciousness?

Why do you ask me? It seems you deny consciousness exists, for you can't define or detect it. If you are right, then there is nothing to be explained.

 

[Oystein]

In other context, I was just reminded of Clarke's First Law, and I think it applies here:

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, they are almost certainly right. When they state that something is impossible, they are very probably wrong."​

I realize that none of us probably is a distinguished but elderly scientist, but the second half of the law I think applies to non-distinguished, non-elderly non-scientists as well.

 

[John Jones]

I think we should look in areas that might seem ridiculous. Ridiculous things sometimes turn out to be true.

Other people (mostly cranks) are starting to go this route: https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/universe-conscious-ncna772956[/QUOTE]

 

[MikeG]

..........I like the idea of there being a body and soul.........

This is all you've got in support of the idea of the existence of souls. It's all anyone has got.

 

[Porpoise of Life]

Science doesn't know, but the key is I believe science won't ever know. It's unequipped to solve that one.
[Snip]
Materialism has no room for gods, obviously, so if materialism leads to an absurdity, as I believe it does, the other two models become more believable.

There is no absurdity. Its just your personal unsupported belief that consciousness can't arise from organisation in matter.
"I don't want to believe that" isn't an argument.

And you throw around this challenge to science to define consciousness for you, as if that somehow strengthens your position.
If you don't even have a working definition, how can you claim that consciousness is outside the scope of scientific understanding?

 

[Darat]

...snip....

If materialism is true, then consciousness arising from a lump of meat is an ongoing miracle which science has utterly failed to explain. And probably never will.

You are confusing your lack of knowledge and understanding for the current state of understanding behaviours such as "consciousness".

 

[Bikewer]

Neuroscience is a subject of interest to me, and I subscribe to a couple of neuroscience blogs on Tumblr. They are both quite active.
I also just read the Robert Ornstein book, “The Evolution of Consciousness” which explores the subject in some detail.

While contemporary neuroscience, like contemporary cosmology and astrophysics, can’t tell us everything about how our little “3-pound universes” work, we are gaining more and more knowledge of these things on an ongoing basis.

It’s been said that we’ve learned more about brain function in the last 10 years than we have in all of previous history.

In all of that, I’ve never seen even the slightest indication that anything other than the electrochemical activity of “The most complex stuff in the universe” is necessary to explain consciousness.
To all evidence it’s tied inextricably to the activity of the brain, which is easily demonstrated by the profound effects on consciousness that occur when one tampers with or damages the brain.
Damage this area...That bit of function is lost. Stimulate that area, a memory may be reliably elicited. Introduce psychoactive chemicals, and predictable effects occur. Alter the brain’s internal chemical balances even slightly, and profound effects may occur. Just drop the blood-sugar level a few points and the person becomes incoherent, confused, and eventually unconscious.
The overall solution to the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness may be as knotty as is the nature of the Dark Matter.... But it’s in the area of neuroscience that it will be sussed out, not spiritual mumbo-jumbo.

 

[acbytesla]

Neuroscience is a subject of interest to me, and I subscribe to a couple of neuroscience blogs on Tumblr. They are both quite active.
I also just read the Robert Ornstein book, “The Evolution of Consciousness” which explores the subject in some detail.

While contemporary neuroscience, like contemporary cosmology and astrophysics, can’t tell us everything about how our little “3-pound universes” work, we are gaining more and more knowledge of these things on an ongoing basis.

It’s been said that we’ve learned more about brain function in the last 10 years than we have in all of previous history.

In all of that, I’ve never seen even the slightest indication that anything other than the electrochemical activity of “The most complex stuff in the universe” is necessary to explain consciousness.
To all evidence it’s tied inextricably to the activity of the brain, which is easily demonstrated by the profound effects on consciousness that occur when one tampers with or damages the brain.
Damage this area...That bit of function is lost. Stimulate that area, a memory may be reliably elicited. Introduce psychoactive chemicals, and predictable effects occur. Alter the brain’s internal chemical balances even slightly, and profound effects may occur. Just drop the blood-sugar level a few points and the person becomes incoherent, confused, and eventually unconscious.
The overall solution to the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness may be as knotty as is the nature of the Dark Matter.... But it’s in the area of neuroscience that it will be sussed out, not spiritual mumbo-jumbo.

Thank you for this post. I've never really thought this was an unsolvable mystery.

I'm convinced that life and consciousness is all about the right recipe. Put the proper ingredients together under the right conditions and life will materialise every time. And given enough time and the right conditions simple life will eventually evolve into more complex life and that life will develop consciousness.

That we don't know today precisely what those conditions exactly are is not a failure of science. Things take time and require resources and the right technology and some times that technology hasn't been invented as of yet.

Man is in his technological infancy. I think about the massive amount of knowledge we have acquired in just the last few years and I am awestruck. But we didn't get here with mumbo jumbo.

There is no evidence of a universal consciousness or spirit. And more importantly, why would anyone think there is?

 

[Mojo]

It certainly does matter. If materialism leads to an absurd conclusion, like the existence of conscious pieces of meat, it's devastating for the theory.

Am I the only one that doesn't find "conscious pieces of meat" to be an absurd conclusion?

I mean, they're all around me. I am one. Why would I find it absurd? This seems like an argument from incredulity, like he's just trying to word it in a way that sounds strange even though it's an incredibly normal thing.

Calling them "pieces of meat" makes them sound like dead slabs of steak or something, and I agree that would be absurd. But we're talking about living brains, right? That's not absurd at all.

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

 

[Thor 2]

It certainly does matter. If materialism leads to an absurd conclusion, like the existence of conscious pieces of meat, it's devastating for the theory. I think it reached that point long ago. Consciousness has always been the achilles heel of materialism.

Well to me the idea of consciousness being achieved by a non material being is far more absurd.

Oh, but hang on we can always bring in the "this is God we are talking about and we just don't understand it" clause. That's taken care of that.

 

[Mojo]

Well to me the idea of consciousness being achieved by a non material being is far more absurd.

Oh, but hang on we can always bring in the "this is God we are talking about and we just don't understand it" clause. That's taken care of that.

But as Fudbucker said, "the problem is that there should have been hints of an explanation after all this time." And religion has had a lot more time than science to come up with a hint of an explanation.

 

[Donn]

I think it would be a catastrophic failure if materialism continues to come up empty trying to explain something as fundamental as consciousness. I would eventually start looking at other theories, wouldn't you?

You'd look into the ridiculous and, to start making sense of it, find... dah-dah-dah-dah-bam-ting! You're back to the old sciency ways.

What tedious hypocrisy; that you couldn't bear the courage of your conniptions!