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Dualism is wholly wrong. There is no mind-body split. Even speaking of 'the brain' is just a rough convenience. Individual neurons stretch from that tangled
by otakucode 9y ago
Dualism is wholly wrong. There is no mind-body split. Even speaking of 'the brain' is just a rough convenience. Individual neurons stretch from that tangled mass of them up in your skull all the way down your spine and to the soles of your feet. Every nerve fiber extends from nearly every point in your body right into your brain. Perception pours in from every point, and it is all extremely important. Emotion, for instance, primarily arises from biofeedback. Remove the feedback of feeling your 'expression' of emotion and you will cease to be capable of 'feeling' that emotion.
Consciousness is not a 'thing', it is a property. Thus far we know of only one sort of system that can hold the property (human beings in our environment) although we do gain some information from observing humans of different configurations (such as seeing that people with total facial paralysis experience significant emotional dulling and substantial changes to their subjective personal experience over time) that hints at what things are important for different aspects. So far as we have evidence for, there is no reason to think that you might be able to, for instance, simulate solely a brain and have anything akin to consciousness. Just removing patterned sensory input from a typical person via sensory deprivation quickly results in their consciousness dissolving. So how a brain without a body and without an environment to perceive might ever have a hope of consciousness I've no idea.
- amelius 9y ago> Consciousness is not a 'thing', it is a property. But if consciousness is only a property that doesn't influence the actual physics, then how are we even able to talk about consciousness? Why would it occur to physical beings that something like consciousness exists?
- kazagistar 9y agoNot sure what that question means. An ocean wave is something that emerges from the basic laws of physics, but its not actually a "thing", its just a bunch of water exhibiting a property. The only difference between that and the human mind (and properties of it like consciousness) is the level of complexity and thus completeness of our ability to model it. The mind is a wave in an ocean of brain.
- amelius 9y agoOk, so by "not a thing" you mean "abstraction", rather than something which does not physically exist.
- klank 9y agoIt's a philosophical question about when does something begin to exist vs. it is just an abstraction comprised of constituent parts. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/material-constitution https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/material-constitution
- SubiculumCode 9y agoA 'bunch of water' and a 'wave' are both vague things. The declaration that one is a thing, and the other is not is disugenous. But let us suppose that what you meant is the water molecule is a thing..but is a water molecule more of a thing than a wave is a thing? I do not think so, for even if you speak of the individual atoms in a water molecule the atom is a collection of other parts, and nevertheless is fundamentally a wave-like distributed field. This insistence that one is a thing and the other simply an abstraction of the mind is hubris and artificial.
- hammock 9y agoA wave is a thing. I think what the commenter meant consciousness is a property, like red is a property. Red is not a thing. Things can be red.
- vorg 9y ago> if consciousness is only a property that doesn't influence the actual physics, then how are we even able to talk about consciousness? We conscious beings can talk about consciousness because we can never understand how consciousness arises from the actual physics, and can't talk about that. By not being able to comprehend how physics and conscious minds interact, our minds can talk about each separately. Perhaps the same principle extends to various components of physics, such as General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics -- maybe our consciousnesses are incapable of conceiving of the math that unites them. After all, Mathematics is simply only a product of our conscious minds.
- emeraldd 9y ago> Just removing patterned sensory input from a typical person via sensory deprivation quickly results in their consciousness dissolving. Do you have any basis for this statement?
- bigmanwalter 9y agoHe's likely talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank
- laythea 9y ago> Just removing patterned sensory input from a typical person via sensory deprivation quickly results in their consciousness dissolving. What about people born with out sight or hearing or both. Do those individuals not have a conscious?
- skissane 9y ago> Dualism is wholly wrong. What do you mean by "dualism"? Substance dualism, property dualism, predicate dualism, hylemorphic dualism, etc? Also, you speak as if dualism and some form of materialism or physicalism (there are many) are the only options available to us. What about idealism? Or neutral monism?
- newsmania 9y agoI would point out that metaphysically speaking, we have no way of knowing if we are in a simulator. For all we know, the universe could be just the matrix. However it is self evident that our conscious thoughts and experiences exist. This indicates that there is a clear conceptual distinction between our consciousness and the material world in which it resides. Consciousness is an incredible thing. Reducing it to a mere property is akin to pretending it doesn’t exist at all.