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This article begs the question of our conciousness not being a physical process which is cool I guess If your peddling thoughts from a dualist from over a centu

by Grimm1 7y ago

This article begs the question of our conciousness not being a physical process which is cool I guess If your peddling thoughts from a dualist from over a century ago. I still have no reason however, not to believe our conciousness doesn't arise from the physical configuration and other processes therein related. To paraphrase "Science cant talk about this purely in physic terms." No, Science simply hasn't FOUND the way to talk about it in physical terms which I personally believe in time we will. To be absolutely fair, as you may have noticed I'm in the camp of people who think Kant is largely garbage so I'm have a natural bias against works using his thought on the matter.

paulddraper 7y ago
Science hasn't found or even begin to find a way to talk about this. It's not like a physicist looking at an amoeba. That's a very complicated physical system, but it seems obvious that each of the parts can be progressively broken down into the fundamental physical forces and particles. Consciousness....we can't even begin to talk about that in a fundamental physical way. The operation of the brain? Sure. But as far as we know, you could have an otherwise identical brain/computer firing circuits, producing actions, etc without consciousness. Which gets to the heart of the issue: we have no way to observe consciousness outside our own.
- greiskul 7y ago
  > But as far as we know, you could have an otherwise identical brain/computer firing circuits, producing actions, etc without consciousness. We don't know that at all. Can you describe how that would be like? Would a person with no consciousness not talk about their own consciousness? But talking about the self is an action. It seems pretty clear that the reason brains talk about their consciousness is their consciousness.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    Nothing of the sort is clear. If you train a GPT-2 instance on a corpus of the philosophy of consciousness which has been rewritten into the first-person singular, and you then ask it a question which it answers with a discourse on "my consciousness", is it conscious? Your argument here says that it is. You're assuming without evidence that consciousness is, and is only, an epiphenomenon of a sufficiently complex neural net, which you are of course welcome to do. But attempting to cloak that assumption in positive language, as you do here and elsewhere, is a bit of linguistic chicanery that doesn't deserve to pass entirely without comment.
    - greiskul 7y ago
      Ok, so is there anything at all that a brain "with consciousness" can do that a brain "without consciousness" can't? If not, your definition of consciousness is entirely meaningless.
      - paulddraper 7y ago
        This is miserably unsatisfying, but like I stated previously, consciousness cannot be externally observed with any known method. > is there anything at all The "what can it do" refers entirely to an internal characteristic known only to itself (or at least not known to me). Is that then a meaningless concept? Perhaps. But in that case, I would suggest there simply isn't a "meaningful" definition of consciousness. It's just the Turning Test.
        Retra 7y ago
        Consciousness has been observed externally many times using a very well known method: a vast number of analogous reactions to a large variety of stimuli. This is the very reason we aren't all solipsists and believe in human consciousness in others. And that's all that any agreed upon measurements and observations have ever been. Just because you can't (yet) quantify it or model it formally doesn't mean you can't observe it.
        throwanem 7y ago
        Creatures which we’d all agree do not possess consciousness also display “a vast number of analogous reactions to a large variety of stimuli”. What do you imagine it proves about consciousness that we do, too?
        Retra 7y ago
        I was being succinct. It is not the quantity of reactions that is important, but the type and nature. The quantity is simply what makes it a reliable measure.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
Your assumption that consciousness is only physical is merely that - another assumption. It proves nothing, and claiming otherwise begs the question. The problem is that all scientific results around the consciousness question derive from what people report about their personal experience. There's no other known way to answer any questions about consciousness, and science hasn't discovered any way to answer questions about the immaterial. Hence, from a scientific perspective, it's not a question for which an answer can be deduced from observation -- so questions about it are left to philosophical inquiry (reasoning inductively from first principles, instead of deductively from observation) or religion-based worldviews (which can be coherently accepted/rejected based on their correspondence to reality and internal consistency).
- root_axis 7y ago
  > assumption that consciousness is only physical is merely that - another assumption What does it mean for consciousness to be non-physical? If it is non-physical then it cannot have any impact on the physical world by definition.
  - tuespetre 7y ago
    This is exactly why I prefer to use the term 'real' rather than 'physical'.
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    > If it is non-physical then it cannot have any impact on the physical world by definition. Well, that depends on your definition. If non-physical things have no interface with physical things, then they might as well not exist -- their non-existence is tautological and the hypothesis is meaningless. So the only meaningful "non-physical" hypothesis is one that allows an interface with the physical.
    - root_axis 7y ago
      > the only meaningful "non-physical" hypothesis is one that allows an interface with the physical. I don't think that's meaningful, it sounds to me like a contradiction of terms. If it is non-physical but it can interact with physical objects as if it were physical, what is the label "non-physical" actually describing? In a world where there are physical entities but also non-physical entities with physical interactions, how is the non-physical entity distinct from the physical one in terms of observable reality?
moj 7y ago
> Science simply hasn't FOUND [...] I personally believe in time we will Lets call that Scientism. Beliefs about what may be discovered later are just beliefs, something that should be considered anathema to science itself. (Of course these beliefs may or may not come true, and curiosity about them may indeed provide insight that allows their eventual discovery.) But in the meantime unfounded beliefs may indeed hamper further scientific insight and discoveries. Ironic, given the history of science & faith, that science might be stymied by limitations of its own faith.
- VyperCard 7y ago
  Meta science is a science.
  - catawbasam 7y ago
    Faith that science will answer all the questions is not science.
    - peteradio 7y ago
      All questions that find an answer will have come through a science by definition of what science is.
      - ardy42 7y ago
        > All questions that find an answer will have come through a science by definition of what science is. No, that's a definition of scientism, which is very much pseudoscience. Your idea is so wrong that is excludes all answers to mathematical questions, which are, in fact, unscientific.
        peteradio 7y ago
        How are mathematical questions unscientific?
camelNotation 7y ago
> No, Science simply hasn't FOUND the way to talk about it in physical terms which I personally believe in time we will. Sure, but that's a largely useless belief. People don't put enough value on the usefulness of a belief. They seem to think it is all about what is true from a data perspective, but truth is only valuable as both thought AND action, with emphasis on action over thought. Example: - If you think gravity exists but don't behave as if it exists, you're gonna have a bad time because you will probably fall off a cliff, even though you're right about gravity in theory. - If you don't think that gravity exists, but still behave as if gravity exists, you'll be alright because you won't fall off a cliff, even though you're wrong about gravity in theory. If dualist thinking helps someone achieve the goals of a psychologist or therapist, then dualist thinking is more valuable than just waiting around for science to fill a gap it may never fill. And just because someone adopts a dualist perspective today doesn't mean they can't reject it tomorrow. There's no rule saying you have to believe the same thing your entire life. So if science comes up with a better explanation, the dualists can adapt then.
buboard 7y ago
You re about to enter an endless discussion about the semantics of words which will end nowhere.
Florin_Andrei 7y ago
> This article begs the question of our conciousness not being a physical process Not really. It could be just a more fundamental kind of physical thing.
crispinb 7y ago
Your position, sometimes labelled Scientism, is Faith.

by Grimm1 7y ago

paulddraper 7y ago

Science hasn't found or even begin to find a way to talk about this. It's not like a physicist looking at an amoeba. That's a very complicated physical system, but it seems obvious that each of the parts can be progressively broken down into the fundamental physical forces and particles. Consciousness....we can't even begin to talk about that in a fundamental physical way. The operation of the brain? Sure. But as far as we know, you could have an otherwise identical brain/computer firing circuits, producing actions, etc without consciousness. Which gets to the heart of the issue: we have no way to observe consciousness outside our own.

greiskul 7y ago
> But as far as we know, you could have an otherwise identical brain/computer firing circuits, producing actions, etc without consciousness. We don't know that at all. Can you describe how that would be like? Would a person with no consciousness not talk about their own consciousness? But talking about the self is an action. It seems pretty clear that the reason brains talk about their consciousness is their consciousness.
- throwanem 7y ago
  Nothing of the sort is clear. If you train a GPT-2 instance on a corpus of the philosophy of consciousness which has been rewritten into the first-person singular, and you then ask it a question which it answers with a discourse on "my consciousness", is it conscious? Your argument here says that it is. You're assuming without evidence that consciousness is, and is only, an epiphenomenon of a sufficiently complex neural net, which you are of course welcome to do. But attempting to cloak that assumption in positive language, as you do here and elsewhere, is a bit of linguistic chicanery that doesn't deserve to pass entirely without comment.
  - greiskul 7y ago
    Ok, so is there anything at all that a brain "with consciousness" can do that a brain "without consciousness" can't? If not, your definition of consciousness is entirely meaningless.
    - paulddraper 7y ago
      This is miserably unsatisfying, but like I stated previously, consciousness cannot be externally observed with any known method. > is there anything at all The "what can it do" refers entirely to an internal characteristic known only to itself (or at least not known to me). Is that then a meaningless concept? Perhaps. But in that case, I would suggest there simply isn't a "meaningful" definition of consciousness. It's just the Turning Test.
      - Retra 7y ago
        Consciousness has been observed externally many times using a very well known method: a vast number of analogous reactions to a large variety of stimuli. This is the very reason we aren't all solipsists and believe in human consciousness in others. And that's all that any agreed upon measurements and observations have ever been. Just because you can't (yet) quantify it or model it formally doesn't mean you can't observe it.
        throwanem 7y ago
        Creatures which we’d all agree do not possess consciousness also display “a vast number of analogous reactions to a large variety of stimuli”. What do you imagine it proves about consciousness that we do, too?
        Retra 7y ago
        I was being succinct. It is not the quantity of reactions that is important, but the type and nature. The quantity is simply what makes it a reliable measure.

TimTheTinker 7y ago

Your assumption that consciousness is only physical is merely that - another assumption. It proves nothing, and claiming otherwise begs the question. The problem is that all scientific results around the consciousness question derive from what people report about their personal experience. There's no other known way to answer any questions about consciousness, and science hasn't discovered any way to answer questions about the immaterial. Hence, from a scientific perspective, it's not a question for which an answer can be deduced from observation -- so questions about it are left to philosophical inquiry (reasoning inductively from first principles, instead of deductively from observation) or religion-based worldviews (which can be coherently accepted/rejected based on their correspondence to reality and internal consistency).

root_axis 7y ago
> assumption that consciousness is only physical is merely that - another assumption What does it mean for consciousness to be non-physical? If it is non-physical then it cannot have any impact on the physical world by definition.
- tuespetre 7y ago
  This is exactly why I prefer to use the term 'real' rather than 'physical'.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  > If it is non-physical then it cannot have any impact on the physical world by definition. Well, that depends on your definition. If non-physical things have no interface with physical things, then they might as well not exist -- their non-existence is tautological and the hypothesis is meaningless. So the only meaningful "non-physical" hypothesis is one that allows an interface with the physical.
  - root_axis 7y ago
    > the only meaningful "non-physical" hypothesis is one that allows an interface with the physical. I don't think that's meaningful, it sounds to me like a contradiction of terms. If it is non-physical but it can interact with physical objects as if it were physical, what is the label "non-physical" actually describing? In a world where there are physical entities but also non-physical entities with physical interactions, how is the non-physical entity distinct from the physical one in terms of observable reality?

moj 7y ago

> Science simply hasn't FOUND [...] I personally believe in time we will Lets call that Scientism. Beliefs about what may be discovered later are just beliefs, something that should be considered anathema to science itself. (Of course these beliefs may or may not come true, and curiosity about them may indeed provide insight that allows their eventual discovery.) But in the meantime unfounded beliefs may indeed hamper further scientific insight and discoveries. Ironic, given the history of science & faith, that science might be stymied by limitations of its own faith.

VyperCard 7y ago
Meta science is a science.
- catawbasam 7y ago
  Faith that science will answer all the questions is not science.
  - peteradio 7y ago
    All questions that find an answer will have come through a science by definition of what science is.
    - ardy42 7y ago
      > All questions that find an answer will have come through a science by definition of what science is. No, that's a definition of scientism, which is very much pseudoscience. Your idea is so wrong that is excludes all answers to mathematical questions, which are, in fact, unscientific.
      - peteradio 7y ago
        How are mathematical questions unscientific?

camelNotation 7y ago

> No, Science simply hasn't FOUND the way to talk about it in physical terms which I personally believe in time we will. Sure, but that's a largely useless belief. People don't put enough value on the usefulness of a belief. They seem to think it is all about what is true from a data perspective, but truth is only valuable as both thought AND action, with emphasis on action over thought. Example: - If you think gravity exists but don't behave as if it exists, you're gonna have a bad time because you will probably fall off a cliff, even though you're right about gravity in theory. - If you don't think that gravity exists, but still behave as if gravity exists, you'll be alright because you won't fall off a cliff, even though you're wrong about gravity in theory. If dualist thinking helps someone achieve the goals of a psychologist or therapist, then dualist thinking is more valuable than just waiting around for science to fill a gap it may never fill. And just because someone adopts a dualist perspective today doesn't mean they can't reject it tomorrow. There's no rule saying you have to believe the same thing your entire life. So if science comes up with a better explanation, the dualists can adapt then.

buboard 7y ago

You re about to enter an endless discussion about the semantics of words which will end nowhere.

Florin_Andrei 7y ago

> This article begs the question of our conciousness not being a physical process Not really. It could be just a more fundamental kind of physical thing.

crispinb 7y ago

Your position, sometimes labelled Scientism, is Faith.