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Consciousness is fundamental, not emergent.

by zarmin 6y ago

kordlessagain 6y ago
Roger Penrose says it's emergent because quantum mechanics is emergent. You can also find stuff by David Bohm saying something similar regarding Bohmian mechanics or de Broglie-Bohm theory. Here is Hameroff and Penrose's paper on Orch OR: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188#fg0030 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S157106451....
- goodGood00 6y ago
  I don’t get the point of the argument anymore? If it emerges from the fundamental features that themselves emerges from “lower” features, isn’t anything “higher up” going to happen? It did for us so it always would? These guys are really circling for semantics not theories of reality and consciousness. Has anyone considered English is just a terrible system for this sort of reasoning? I’ll give a virologist and other applied math types props for data driven and concrete outcomes. These post-modernists are just deconstructing/reconstructing in circles for book sales, IMO. If they can output something concrete humanity can use give them all the gold in the world. Otherwise it’s just a book club to me anymore
ncmncm 6y ago
Only your own consciousness is fundamental, i.e. directly experienced. All others are deduced to exist, from clues. But your own consciousness's origin is not fundamental; that is also deduced from clues (i.e., "apparently stuff that exists once didn't"). But any model of our own consciousness that fails to encompass others' as similar is sterile. We are all found to have brains; and damage to brains, or even to the stuff that feeds brains, alters or snuffs out consciousness. Brains turn out to be made of nerve cells, that are like other cells but specialized for processing information. Stimulating an individual nerve cell can trigger a thought, memory or sensation, repeatably. QED, consciousness is a phenomenon of nerve cells processing information. Anything else is woo. How you would build a thing that is conscious is not known. But we have existence proof that it's possible, so the rest is a matter of engineering. Philosophers and deists can do whatever the hell they want, but will have nothing meaningful to contribute.
sullyj3 6y ago
What specifically do you mean by fundamental? Not made out of other things?

Consciousness is fundamental, not emergent.

by zarmin 6y ago

Consciousness is fundamental, not emergent.

Roger Penrose says it's emergent because quantum mechanics is emergent. You can also find stuff by David Bohm saying something similar regarding Bohmian mechanics or de Broglie-Bohm theory. Here is Hameroff and Penrose's paper on Orch OR: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188#fg0030 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S157106451....

goodGood00 6y ago
I don’t get the point of the argument anymore? If it emerges from the fundamental features that themselves emerges from “lower” features, isn’t anything “higher up” going to happen? It did for us so it always would? These guys are really circling for semantics not theories of reality and consciousness. Has anyone considered English is just a terrible system for this sort of reasoning? I’ll give a virologist and other applied math types props for data driven and concrete outcomes. These post-modernists are just deconstructing/reconstructing in circles for book sales, IMO. If they can output something concrete humanity can use give them all the gold in the world. Otherwise it’s just a book club to me anymore

ncmncm 6y ago

Only your own consciousness is fundamental, i.e. directly experienced. All others are deduced to exist, from clues. But your own consciousness's origin is not fundamental; that is also deduced from clues (i.e., "apparently stuff that exists once didn't"). But any model of our own consciousness that fails to encompass others' as similar is sterile. We are all found to have brains; and damage to brains, or even to the stuff that feeds brains, alters or snuffs out consciousness. Brains turn out to be made of nerve cells, that are like other cells but specialized for processing information. Stimulating an individual nerve cell can trigger a thought, memory or sensation, repeatably. QED, consciousness is a phenomenon of nerve cells processing information. Anything else is woo. How you would build a thing that is conscious is not known. But we have existence proof that it's possible, so the rest is a matter of engineering. Philosophers and deists can do whatever the hell they want, but will have nothing meaningful to contribute.

sullyj3 6y ago

What specifically do you mean by fundamental? Not made out of other things?