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> I don't see any reason why the presumed features of our subjective experience should be "reflected" in the physical working of our brains. If subjective expe

> I don't see any reason why the presumed features of our subjective experience should be "reflected" in the physical working of our brains. If subjective experience has absolutely no physical correlates then wouldn't that make it strictly supernatural? It's a coherent position, but it turns consciousness into an article of religious faith.

kenning 9y ago
Forget religion and consider that the only thing you know for sure is that you exist, because your subjective experience is occurring right now. The tendency of science is towards naturalism, to the point that anything else is considered nonsense, but who knows what's really happening?
- lafar6502 9y ago
  Consciousness connects the symbols with real world, it’s the awareness by understanding abstract concepts and maintaining some model of reality. Without that you wouldn’t be more conscious than a thermometer. So maybe it’s just some self-referring logical model that is totally independent of physical world but at the same time needs the physical world to provide some hosting hardware
- throwaway76025 9y ago
  You’re describing solipsism.
montyf 9y ago
Consciousness is supernatural and metaphysical by virtue of it existing outside the natural and physical world. This is true even if we could prove that some formations of matter correlated or even had a one-to-one relationship to consciousness. It's easy to see that the experience of, say, reading this post exists nowhere in this physical universe. In fact, consciousness is the only supernatural phenomenon that we know of, and we even have first-hand, moment-to-moment proof of it.
- tensor 9y ago
  >It's easy to see that the experience of, say, reading this post exists nowhere in this physical universe. Never mind easy, I can't see the truth of your proposition at all. Why wouldn't my experience exist in this physical universe? Everything else does and we've never found evidence of a single thing that doesn't. That I experience a feeling of existing in no way at all implies it's not based in physics.
  - montyf 9y ago
    > Everything else does and we've never found evidence of a single thing that doesn't. Right, consciousness seems to be in its own, unique realm in some way. > That I experience a feeling of existing in no way at all implies it's not based in physics. That must be some trippy physics. It's probably safest to be agnostic about it, but it just seems absurd to me to imply that a mathematical formula can produce feeling or experience. How can you describe the experience of qualia mathematically? I think this is the Materialist view gone a step too far. Still, can't rule out any possibility if we're searching for the truth.
    - matt-attack 9y ago
      They said the same thing about flesh. It cannot simply be made of the same material the makes up rocks and sand. But it is. They said the same thing about thoughts, that they are the domain of the soul. But we've now seen that they're entirely physical and measurable constructs. Same was said about mental disorders. Turns out they're physical deficiencies. Wouldn't we learn at some point to stop presuming complicated things to be non-physical?
      - lerno 9y ago
        Let’s assume it is a physical process. We can then recreate it away from a body. We run the experiment. Something is now experienced. Who is it that experiences?
- taneq 9y ago
  Either this is begging the question, or you're defining consciousness explicitly as something that doesn't actually exist.
danidiaz 9y ago
I was thinking in a naturalist way, it's just that the hypothesis seems naive to me. As I read it, it says more than simply "minds are products of brains": it says that certain characteristics of our subjective conscious experience must have "implementations" that mirror those characteristics quite directly. I suppose computer analogies are cliché, but consider virtual memory: it gives the illusion of a huge contiguous memory space, when in reality the machine has nothing of the sort. Our brains are much more complex than computers and I suspect extrapolating between "abstraction levels" will be even more risky there. I also don't see why "Integrated Information Theory" with its "formal calculus" is really required for the methodology of studying patterns of neural activity and trying to match them with self-reported states of consciousness.

kenning 9y ago

Forget religion and consider that the only thing you know for sure is that you exist, because your subjective experience is occurring right now. The tendency of science is towards naturalism, to the point that anything else is considered nonsense, but who knows what's really happening?

lafar6502 9y ago
Consciousness connects the symbols with real world, it’s the awareness by understanding abstract concepts and maintaining some model of reality. Without that you wouldn’t be more conscious than a thermometer. So maybe it’s just some self-referring logical model that is totally independent of physical world but at the same time needs the physical world to provide some hosting hardware
throwaway76025 9y ago
You’re describing solipsism.

montyf 9y ago

Consciousness is supernatural and metaphysical by virtue of it existing outside the natural and physical world. This is true even if we could prove that some formations of matter correlated or even had a one-to-one relationship to consciousness. It's easy to see that the experience of, say, reading this post exists nowhere in this physical universe. In fact, consciousness is the only supernatural phenomenon that we know of, and we even have first-hand, moment-to-moment proof of it.

tensor 9y ago
>It's easy to see that the experience of, say, reading this post exists nowhere in this physical universe. Never mind easy, I can't see the truth of your proposition at all. Why wouldn't my experience exist in this physical universe? Everything else does and we've never found evidence of a single thing that doesn't. That I experience a feeling of existing in no way at all implies it's not based in physics.
- montyf 9y ago
  > Everything else does and we've never found evidence of a single thing that doesn't. Right, consciousness seems to be in its own, unique realm in some way. > That I experience a feeling of existing in no way at all implies it's not based in physics. That must be some trippy physics. It's probably safest to be agnostic about it, but it just seems absurd to me to imply that a mathematical formula can produce feeling or experience. How can you describe the experience of qualia mathematically? I think this is the Materialist view gone a step too far. Still, can't rule out any possibility if we're searching for the truth.
  - matt-attack 9y ago
    They said the same thing about flesh. It cannot simply be made of the same material the makes up rocks and sand. But it is. They said the same thing about thoughts, that they are the domain of the soul. But we've now seen that they're entirely physical and measurable constructs. Same was said about mental disorders. Turns out they're physical deficiencies. Wouldn't we learn at some point to stop presuming complicated things to be non-physical?
    - lerno 9y ago
      Let’s assume it is a physical process. We can then recreate it away from a body. We run the experiment. Something is now experienced. Who is it that experiences?
taneq 9y ago
Either this is begging the question, or you're defining consciousness explicitly as something that doesn't actually exist.

danidiaz 9y ago

I was thinking in a naturalist way, it's just that the hypothesis seems naive to me. As I read it, it says more than simply "minds are products of brains": it says that certain characteristics of our subjective conscious experience must have "implementations" that mirror those characteristics quite directly. I suppose computer analogies are cliché, but consider virtual memory: it gives the illusion of a huge contiguous memory space, when in reality the machine has nothing of the sort. Our brains are much more complex than computers and I suspect extrapolating between "abstraction levels" will be even more risky there. I also don't see why "Integrated Information Theory" with its "formal calculus" is really required for the methodology of studying patterns of neural activity and trying to match them with self-reported states of consciousness.