10 ms·

Materialism alone cannot explain the riddle of consciousness

20 points by devy 10y ago

JeremyBanks 10y ago
tl;dr: physics is incomplete and weird therefore let's assume something else is responsible. Or the author has elsewhere defined materialism in such a way that they're asserting almost nothing. Uncommon to see this kind of inane nonsense coming from a physicist, but unfortunately not unheard of.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Once Penrose started circling that drain, I had to accept that it's just a trap humans can fall into; any human. You're older, fear is taking over, you can't make headway with new discoveries, but you still want answers. Your choice is to accept the lack of answers and be afraid and uncomfortable, or invent them, and feel much better. http://i.imgur.com/Ag9ExDF.gif http://i.imgur.com/Ag9ExDF.gif Unlike the comic though, you can skip off the long path anytime onto the short path. It's hard to stay on the long path, especially when you realize that both paths end up falling off a cliff.
Koshkin 10y ago
TL;DR, quoting: We know that matter remains mysterious just as mind remains mysterious, and we don’t know what the connections between those mysteries should be. Classifying consciousness as a material problem is tantamount to saying that consciousness, too, remains fundamentally unexplained.
- qplex 10y ago
  Oh yes. By this logic: you cant explain anything unless you explain why there is anything instead of nothing.
  - woodandsteel 10y ago
    Absolutely. The basic problem is that, unless you are an absolute mystic and assume reality is basically a spirit and the human mind can unite with it completely, there is always a limit to human knowledge (as Merleau-Ponty said, materialism is also a metaphysical idealism). This is because any rational explanation ultimately rests on principles that we cannot explain, only accept. That is, human intelligence, the product of the human brain, is ultimately finite, limited. With quantum physics and consciousness, we may well have run up against such a limitation.
ithkuil 10y ago
Obligatory: "The talk" http://m.imgur.com/gallery/AMFVx http://m.imgur.com/gallery/AMFVx
ilaksh 10y ago
Philosophy is the obsolete precursor to science. I think scientists should be embarrassed to admit to any mind-body dualist belief. But if this guy is coming from the ancient Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti’s dualism, that may overlap a little bit with the actual scientific property of emergence. But emergence just means larger more complex systems get properties that their constituent parts don't have. We don't need fuzzy philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics to explain consciousness any more than we need them to explaining flocking behavior in birds. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism (see Buddhist philosophy section) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Philosophy is the obsolete precursor to science No, philosophy is more general than and includes science (hence, the Ph. in Ph.D.) Now, some historical philosophies seem to lack current utility given the existence of science and it's manifest utilitt, but that's a different issue.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Philosophers won't be going anywhere as long as they can safely pontificate from within gaps in our scientific knowledge, or at least, the gaps in the knowledge of so many people. It's even more tragic when old physicists turn into philosophers, but don't realize it. In the end, people with degrees need to justify those degrees, and in Philosophy that pretty much means... teaching philosophy. Unless you're writing books that do quite well... you're teaching (or not working in "philosophy"). When you pair that with the natural curiosity people have, and the fact that plenty of people lack the desire or capacity to seek those answers in something like QM, they will never die.
- Koshkin 10y ago
  > Philosophy is the obsolete precursor to science. To be fair rather than dismissive, philosophy (usually of something concrete, such as mathematics, mind, etc.) may be seen as a science that does not have a name yet. True, it may begin with an analysis of the subject that is very preliminary and that can be not very accurate and may even contain mistakes, but there is no limit to how complete and precise such philosophical analysis may become later on.
pc2g4d 10y ago
Wow, the negativity around here is shocking. Philosophy dares to poke at the structures built up by science, and people are aghast. The article basically says that, because there are wildly-different but equally-plausible interpretations of the underlying physics, materialism is not a fully defined platform to stand on---it's not free of unproven assumptions, but rather trades one set of assumptions for another. He raises genuine debates regarding quantum mechanics to illustrate this. Ultimately it's unlikely that any philosophy will be wholly consistent and not depend on contradictory assumptions. So what the author has pointed out isn't a fatal flaw per se in materialism. But it's fair to point out its current limits. And it's frustrating to see so many people close themselves off to that sort of analysis.
- xelxebar 10y ago
  Well, the article spends most of its time complaining about the ontology of modern physics, calling it "unclear" among other names. That kind of rhetoric stands more as a testament to the author's lack of mathematical maturity than anything physically meaningful. Perhaps there's a good point here about the current state of pedagogy in physics these days.
  - pc2g4d 10y ago
    "Adam Frank is professor of astronomy at the University of Rochester in New York and the co-founder of NPR's blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture where he is also a regular contributor. He is the author of several books, the latest being About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang (2011)." I'm assuming a professor of astronomy has a good command of the math, but maybe I'm wrong?
qplex 10y ago
To think that the observer should somehow not affect the measurement is the dualist position. From a materialist point of view the problem disappears because there is no mysterious mind of the observer that exists outside of reality. So then even the observation is just a physical event, that can have effects on other physical things. Mind you, a little twist to this is that (space)time also arises from the interactions of the basic particles, so to think that these interactions are somehow bound in time or space as we know it leads you off track quickly. To illustrate: There are two balls: one is black and one is white. You are given one of the balls in a a closed box. When you open the box, and see the color of your ball, you will instantly know the color of the other ball, even though nobody actually told you what the color of the other ball is.
woodandsteel 10y ago
In defense of the article, I would like to point out that science, like all other human endeavours, rests on philosophical assumptions. In addition, modern science rests on assumptions that were developed by philosophers. It is therefore entirely appropriate to point out that quantum physics undermines one philosophical theory, namely materialism. And that in turn implies that some other philosophical position is correct.
oldmancoyote 10y ago
The abusive tone of some of these comments poises the question: Is this abuse the result of fear as is usually the cause for abuse? Materialists have a huge personal investment in materialism. I imagine the very core of their world seems threatened. It looks very much like the behavior of reactionaries.

20 points by devy 10y ago

tl;dr: physics is incomplete and weird therefore let's assume something else is responsible. Or the author has elsewhere defined materialism in such a way that they're asserting almost nothing. Uncommon to see this kind of inane nonsense coming from a physicist, but unfortunately not unheard of.

M_Grey 10y ago
Once Penrose started circling that drain, I had to accept that it's just a trap humans can fall into; any human. You're older, fear is taking over, you can't make headway with new discoveries, but you still want answers. Your choice is to accept the lack of answers and be afraid and uncomfortable, or invent them, and feel much better. http://i.imgur.com/Ag9ExDF.gif http://i.imgur.com/Ag9ExDF.gif Unlike the comic though, you can skip off the long path anytime onto the short path. It's hard to stay on the long path, especially when you realize that both paths end up falling off a cliff.

Koshkin 10y ago

TL;DR, quoting: We know that matter remains mysterious just as mind remains mysterious, and we don’t know what the connections between those mysteries should be. Classifying consciousness as a material problem is tantamount to saying that consciousness, too, remains fundamentally unexplained.

qplex 10y ago
Oh yes. By this logic: you cant explain anything unless you explain why there is anything instead of nothing.
- woodandsteel 10y ago
  Absolutely. The basic problem is that, unless you are an absolute mystic and assume reality is basically a spirit and the human mind can unite with it completely, there is always a limit to human knowledge (as Merleau-Ponty said, materialism is also a metaphysical idealism). This is because any rational explanation ultimately rests on principles that we cannot explain, only accept. That is, human intelligence, the product of the human brain, is ultimately finite, limited. With quantum physics and consciousness, we may well have run up against such a limitation.

ithkuil 10y ago

Obligatory: "The talk" http://m.imgur.com/gallery/AMFVx http://m.imgur.com/gallery/AMFVx

ilaksh 10y ago

Philosophy is the obsolete precursor to science. I think scientists should be embarrassed to admit to any mind-body dualist belief. But if this guy is coming from the ancient Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti’s dualism, that may overlap a little bit with the actual scientific property of emergence. But emergence just means larger more complex systems get properties that their constituent parts don't have. We don't need fuzzy philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics to explain consciousness any more than we need them to explaining flocking behavior in birds. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism (see Buddhist philosophy section) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Philosophy is the obsolete precursor to science No, philosophy is more general than and includes science (hence, the Ph. in Ph.D.) Now, some historical philosophies seem to lack current utility given the existence of science and it's manifest utilitt, but that's a different issue.
M_Grey 10y ago
Philosophers won't be going anywhere as long as they can safely pontificate from within gaps in our scientific knowledge, or at least, the gaps in the knowledge of so many people. It's even more tragic when old physicists turn into philosophers, but don't realize it. In the end, people with degrees need to justify those degrees, and in Philosophy that pretty much means... teaching philosophy. Unless you're writing books that do quite well... you're teaching (or not working in "philosophy"). When you pair that with the natural curiosity people have, and the fact that plenty of people lack the desire or capacity to seek those answers in something like QM, they will never die.
Koshkin 10y ago
> Philosophy is the obsolete precursor to science. To be fair rather than dismissive, philosophy (usually of something concrete, such as mathematics, mind, etc.) may be seen as a science that does not have a name yet. True, it may begin with an analysis of the subject that is very preliminary and that can be not very accurate and may even contain mistakes, but there is no limit to how complete and precise such philosophical analysis may become later on.

pc2g4d 10y ago

Wow, the negativity around here is shocking. Philosophy dares to poke at the structures built up by science, and people are aghast. The article basically says that, because there are wildly-different but equally-plausible interpretations of the underlying physics, materialism is not a fully defined platform to stand on---it's not free of unproven assumptions, but rather trades one set of assumptions for another. He raises genuine debates regarding quantum mechanics to illustrate this. Ultimately it's unlikely that any philosophy will be wholly consistent and not depend on contradictory assumptions. So what the author has pointed out isn't a fatal flaw per se in materialism. But it's fair to point out its current limits. And it's frustrating to see so many people close themselves off to that sort of analysis.

xelxebar 10y ago
Well, the article spends most of its time complaining about the ontology of modern physics, calling it "unclear" among other names. That kind of rhetoric stands more as a testament to the author's lack of mathematical maturity than anything physically meaningful. Perhaps there's a good point here about the current state of pedagogy in physics these days.
- pc2g4d 10y ago
  "Adam Frank is professor of astronomy at the University of Rochester in New York and the co-founder of NPR's blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture where he is also a regular contributor. He is the author of several books, the latest being About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang (2011)." I'm assuming a professor of astronomy has a good command of the math, but maybe I'm wrong?

qplex 10y ago

To think that the observer should somehow not affect the measurement is the dualist position. From a materialist point of view the problem disappears because there is no mysterious mind of the observer that exists outside of reality. So then even the observation is just a physical event, that can have effects on other physical things. Mind you, a little twist to this is that (space)time also arises from the interactions of the basic particles, so to think that these interactions are somehow bound in time or space as we know it leads you off track quickly. To illustrate: There are two balls: one is black and one is white. You are given one of the balls in a a closed box. When you open the box, and see the color of your ball, you will instantly know the color of the other ball, even though nobody actually told you what the color of the other ball is.

woodandsteel 10y ago

In defense of the article, I would like to point out that science, like all other human endeavours, rests on philosophical assumptions. In addition, modern science rests on assumptions that were developed by philosophers. It is therefore entirely appropriate to point out that quantum physics undermines one philosophical theory, namely materialism. And that in turn implies that some other philosophical position is correct.

oldmancoyote 10y ago

The abusive tone of some of these comments poises the question: Is this abuse the result of fear as is usually the cause for abuse? Materialists have a huge personal investment in materialism. I imagine the very core of their world seems threatened. It looks very much like the behavior of reactionaries.