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> This is the part that gets me. I have a cohesive cognitive experience where I can sense and think many things simultaneously. I don't understand any reduction

> This is the part that gets me. I have a cohesive cognitive experience where I can sense and think many things simultaneously. I don't understand any reductionist explanation for the existence of my experience. It seems like an impossible thing for a collections of atoms in the brain to create. I only said that there's no spiritual force acting on the body. It's clearly evident by the fact brain damage can radically alter your personality. That wouldn't make sense with free will. But I never claimed to know anything at all about the perception of existence, that's a much more prickly discussion because any answer is basically impossible to actually prove. I personally see no contradiction with the reductionist model here though. You aren't one individual part of the system that has everything fed into you, you are the entire whole of moving parts in unison perceiving itself. The problem some people have with this is that they think that because they are one person and perceive one "them" that their must be a single "thing" making that perception. The idea of consciousness as an abstract emergent property is therefore hard to accept. You don't feel like a billion neurons, you feel like Dave (sorry if your not Dave and I ruined the immersion). But if those billion neurons are coordinating together to form a thought about feeling like Dave while juggling all those senses, the state exists in the system. Thus the abstract construct that believes itself is Dave exists in some ephemeral way. Dave exists because the state that makes up "Dave-ness" exists. And even if there's an ethereal component, ultimately that ephemeral state is what determines all perception. They're instrinsically tied and therefore trying to distinguish them doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Especially when there is no reason to believe the ethereal exists at all. I'll be completely honest, this paradigm shift was made easier for me from a couple acid trips back in the day. It's a lot easier to come to terms with if you're able to cast off the philosophical hindrance of an ego for a moment and think about how, say, an ant feels. And if the colony acts a single unit, does the colony experience "ant colony-ness" - whatever that may be? Does that emergence apply to molds? And why would this perception only apply to the biological state of nervous systems. Wouldn't such a perception of existence also apply to inanimate things like atoms "feeling" like an atom or enormous scales like ecosystems or planets as a whole? So in my opinion (feel free to laugh or disagree, haha) it only makes sense that this fundamental perception is shared by all things that exist at every level and in all combinations of state. The state of my full brain's experience and senses and thoughts exist, and therefore I do as well. A little twist on Descartes. :) Anyway, I find this desperate search for meaning lower and lower is counter productive. Your brain is segments. Your segments are nerves. Your nerves are cells. Your cells are organelles. Organelles are structures. Structures are molecules. Molecules are atoms. Atoms are, etc etc etc. Even if someone wants to look toward quantum mechanics for the soul, there would still not be one single place where this would happen, it would be the coordination of countless subatomic systems interacting and your experience of being you would still be emergent. Sorry if I rambled a bit there. I hope you have a fantastic day!

billytetrud 5y ago
> It's clearly evident by the fact brain damage can radically alter your personality. That wouldn't make sense with free will. Definitely, in the sense of some "other" thing other than your brain making the decisions. Its clearly our brains doing the thinking and deciding. >You aren't one individual part of the system that has everything fed into you, you are the entire whole of moving parts in unison perceiving itself. Well, yes. However, I can see how I could be a robot that does stuff and acts pretty much exactly like me. What I don't understand is how I can simultaneously see, hear, feel, think etc. Why do I have a feeling of singular consciousness? How can that kind of thing be distributed among many neurons, many atoms? > The idea of consciousness as an abstract emergent property is therefore hard to accept Yes. However, I think this is different than literally all other emergent phenomena. Emergent phenomena can really be thought of as abstractions. Eg friction is a phenomena that emerges from the properties of surfaces that create heat when rubbed together. Convection is a phenomena that emerges from the newtonian physics of particles bouncing around randomly. However, I can't understand consciousness as simply an abstraction of different parts of a brain interacting. > But if those billion neurons are coordinating together to form a thought about feeling like Dave while juggling all those senses The fact that someone can feel anything is already a big question mark to me. Any experience at all that isn't a single bit of information at a time seems irreconcilable with the singularity of consciousness we experience. > They're instrinsically tied and therefore trying to distinguish them doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me You're saying that if we had some kind of "soul" or "non-physical" thing that caused our experience, it doesn't make sense to distinguish it? I think it makes all the sense in the world, if it were possible. It makes as much sense as distinguishing between the heart and the lungs, or distinguishing between separate neurons in the brain. If we could distinguish it we could learn how to teleport people's consciousnesses one day, or upload them without destroying them. There are really incredible possibilities there, but no one would want to be teleported anywhere if the result at the end isn't them and their experience ends with stepping into the teleporter. > if the colony acts a single unit, does the colony experience "ant colony-ness" I don't know. I wouldn't think so. > why would this perception only apply to the biological state of nervous systems. Wouldn't such a perception of existence also apply to inanimate things like atoms "feeling" like an atom or enormous scales like ecosystems or planets as a whole? Great questions. I think its important that one day we figure out the answer. However, I don't think we're anywhere close, scientifically speaking. > it only makes sense that this fundamental perception is shared by all things that exist at every level and in all combinations of state You mean that every combination of material in the universe has its own separate perception? That seems highly unlikely. For example, while my nerves would be a completely valid combination, its such an absurd coincidence that I can experience only through mechanisms that my body can physically react to. The chair I'm sitting in isn't a persistent part of my experience, neither is this computer, neither is a rock on the other end of the universe. It seems like the only reasonable explanation is that experience is correlated with our nervous system in some way. It seems likely that the structure of our bodies somehow creates the experience we have. I just don't understand how. > the coordination of countless subatomic systems interacting Its very clear how an audio speaker creates sound. A signal causes a magnet to drive a large piece of material that in turn moves the atoms of the air in a wave, which propagates until it hits other non-air things, like your ear, etc etc. That kind of emergent phenonmenon is very clearly described in a reductionist fasion. You can point to any little piece of the sound and trace it back to its roots. Ie, you could take a molecule's velocity in the air that has been hit by the sound wave, and trace back the pattern of collisions that brought it there, tracing back its wave energy to the speaker driver, and the movement of the speaker driver to the electromagnet. Each piece of the "emergent phenonmenon" is separate the whole way through. Not so with our experience. You can point to where light comes into your eyes, and what parts of the brain fire off because of it. But the experience of it itself, and the combination of vision, sound, thoughts, is not explained so easily. The parts are there, but the reason that it causes an experience like what we have is not at all clear. I hope one day we figure it out!

billytetrud 5y ago

> It's clearly evident by the fact brain damage can radically alter your personality. That wouldn't make sense with free will. Definitely, in the sense of some "other" thing other than your brain making the decisions. Its clearly our brains doing the thinking and deciding. >You aren't one individual part of the system that has everything fed into you, you are the entire whole of moving parts in unison perceiving itself. Well, yes. However, I can see how I could be a robot that does stuff and acts pretty much exactly like me. What I don't understand is how I can simultaneously see, hear, feel, think etc. Why do I have a feeling of singular consciousness? How can that kind of thing be distributed among many neurons, many atoms? > The idea of consciousness as an abstract emergent property is therefore hard to accept Yes. However, I think this is different than literally all other emergent phenomena. Emergent phenomena can really be thought of as abstractions. Eg friction is a phenomena that emerges from the properties of surfaces that create heat when rubbed together. Convection is a phenomena that emerges from the newtonian physics of particles bouncing around randomly. However, I can't understand consciousness as simply an abstraction of different parts of a brain interacting. > But if those billion neurons are coordinating together to form a thought about feeling like Dave while juggling all those senses The fact that someone can feel anything is already a big question mark to me. Any experience at all that isn't a single bit of information at a time seems irreconcilable with the singularity of consciousness we experience. > They're instrinsically tied and therefore trying to distinguish them doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me You're saying that if we had some kind of "soul" or "non-physical" thing that caused our experience, it doesn't make sense to distinguish it? I think it makes all the sense in the world, if it were possible. It makes as much sense as distinguishing between the heart and the lungs, or distinguishing between separate neurons in the brain. If we could distinguish it we could learn how to teleport people's consciousnesses one day, or upload them without destroying them. There are really incredible possibilities there, but no one would want to be teleported anywhere if the result at the end isn't them and their experience ends with stepping into the teleporter. > if the colony acts a single unit, does the colony experience "ant colony-ness" I don't know. I wouldn't think so. > why would this perception only apply to the biological state of nervous systems. Wouldn't such a perception of existence also apply to inanimate things like atoms "feeling" like an atom or enormous scales like ecosystems or planets as a whole? Great questions. I think its important that one day we figure out the answer. However, I don't think we're anywhere close, scientifically speaking. > it only makes sense that this fundamental perception is shared by all things that exist at every level and in all combinations of state You mean that every combination of material in the universe has its own separate perception? That seems highly unlikely. For example, while my nerves would be a completely valid combination, its such an absurd coincidence that I can experience only through mechanisms that my body can physically react to. The chair I'm sitting in isn't a persistent part of my experience, neither is this computer, neither is a rock on the other end of the universe. It seems like the only reasonable explanation is that experience is correlated with our nervous system in some way. It seems likely that the structure of our bodies somehow creates the experience we have. I just don't understand how. > the coordination of countless subatomic systems interacting Its very clear how an audio speaker creates sound. A signal causes a magnet to drive a large piece of material that in turn moves the atoms of the air in a wave, which propagates until it hits other non-air things, like your ear, etc etc. That kind of emergent phenonmenon is very clearly described in a reductionist fasion. You can point to any little piece of the sound and trace it back to its roots. Ie, you could take a molecule's velocity in the air that has been hit by the sound wave, and trace back the pattern of collisions that brought it there, tracing back its wave energy to the speaker driver, and the movement of the speaker driver to the electromagnet. Each piece of the "emergent phenonmenon" is separate the whole way through. Not so with our experience. You can point to where light comes into your eyes, and what parts of the brain fire off because of it. But the experience of it itself, and the combination of vision, sound, thoughts, is not explained so easily. The parts are there, but the reason that it causes an experience like what we have is not at all clear. I hope one day we figure it out!