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If consciousness is not embodied that would imply metaphysics and body/mind dualism, e.i. something countrary what one might term the scientific world view.

by erokar 5y ago

zozbot234 5y ago
The most common naïve view among scientists is in fact quite close to body/mind dualism, much as phrased by Descartes. People who have examined the problem in depth tend to go for some form of pan-protopsychism, where the substrate for subjective phenomenology has to somehow be a part of the physical universe (since it clearly enters into causal relations with the rest of it!) but can also be expected to be rather physically simple, so that it can be consistently endowed with both "physical" and "subjectively experienced, phenomenological" features or states.
- derbOac 5y ago
  This is kind of where I'm at. To me clearly qualia are part of the physical world, but no amount of understanding of neurophysiology is going to account for their existence without positing "something else". My best guess is qualia and consciousness are like an EM field, something that exists and has some relationship with known physical entities but is distinct at the same time. It may be amplified by, say, some computational structure, but exists independent of it. At one time I had convinced myself that qualia were related to time, in the sense that it was the "substantive" manifestation of time as a dimension, but now I'm not sure what I was thinking. I suspect in the end consciousness will end up in the domain of physics rather than neurobiology and psychology alone.
qwerty456127 5y ago
Can consciousness be a part of "what one might term the scientific world view" at all? Is there an instrument (or a human expert) capable to measure consciousness and reliably tell a really good neural network vs a conscious human apart? What about a conscious vs an unconscious human? "what one might term the scientific world view" is great and very practical but not perfect. There certainly are legitimate questions it probably has no way to address. I feel pretty skeptical about exploring the nature of consciousness without employing techniques available in Buddhism, psychonetics[1] or something like that. These are fundamentally unscientific (although not imaginary - execution of the practices can be easily detected with EEG) but can at least let us observe the object of the study with at least some basic degree of objectivity, reason about it and do something useful with it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28838445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28838445

If consciousness is not embodied that would imply metaphysics and body/mind dualism, e.i. something countrary what one might term the scientific world view.

by erokar 5y ago

If consciousness is not embodied that would imply metaphysics and body/mind dualism, e.i. something countrary what one might term the scientific world view.

zozbot234 5y ago

The most common naïve view among scientists is in fact quite close to body/mind dualism, much as phrased by Descartes. People who have examined the problem in depth tend to go for some form of pan-protopsychism, where the substrate for subjective phenomenology has to somehow be a part of the physical universe (since it clearly enters into causal relations with the rest of it!) but can also be expected to be rather physically simple, so that it can be consistently endowed with both "physical" and "subjectively experienced, phenomenological" features or states.

derbOac 5y ago
This is kind of where I'm at. To me clearly qualia are part of the physical world, but no amount of understanding of neurophysiology is going to account for their existence without positing "something else". My best guess is qualia and consciousness are like an EM field, something that exists and has some relationship with known physical entities but is distinct at the same time. It may be amplified by, say, some computational structure, but exists independent of it. At one time I had convinced myself that qualia were related to time, in the sense that it was the "substantive" manifestation of time as a dimension, but now I'm not sure what I was thinking. I suspect in the end consciousness will end up in the domain of physics rather than neurobiology and psychology alone.

qwerty456127 5y ago

Can consciousness be a part of "what one might term the scientific world view" at all? Is there an instrument (or a human expert) capable to measure consciousness and reliably tell a really good neural network vs a conscious human apart? What about a conscious vs an unconscious human? "what one might term the scientific world view" is great and very practical but not perfect. There certainly are legitimate questions it probably has no way to address. I feel pretty skeptical about exploring the nature of consciousness without employing techniques available in Buddhism, psychonetics[1] or something like that. These are fundamentally unscientific (although not imaginary - execution of the practices can be easily detected with EEG) but can at least let us observe the object of the study with at least some basic degree of objectivity, reason about it and do something useful with it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28838445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28838445