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Yes, but this is a definition of something that exists. And on the contrary - the fact that, seemingly, it cannot be tested in materialistic terms, to me, makes

Yes, but this is a definition of something that exists. And on the contrary - the fact that, seemingly, it cannot be tested in materialistic terms, to me, makes it that much more interesting. In that sense it is not like a concept of God or ghosts or aliens - all of which are merely imagined and cannot be tested. The thing with consciousness is - you know it exists. In fact we can doubt many things, if not everything. But you can never doubt you are having a conscious experience right now.

Zigurd 4y ago
You seem to be claiming that your form of mysticism is rational, when other forms of mysticism are not. Some of your argument parallels that of the god of the gaps: when you say optical illusions say nothing about consciousness, or aphasias say nothing about consciousness, your definition of consciousness is just hiding from measurability.
- kkoncevicius 4y ago
  Here is what I think: I think the definition of consciousness I used here is the same that was used in the posted article. It is not "my definition". I also think that some people never thought about it and are so unfamiliar with the subject that they misinterpret and cannot imagine what the discussion is actually about. It is not God of the gaps in one fundamental way. God of the gaps arguments attempt to justify something invisible by saying you cannot measure it. Consciousness is something visible - in fact it's the only thing that's visible - yet we cannot measure it, and likely never will be able to. As Schrödinger put it: "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else." Or to take another grand physicist, Max Planck: "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness." Now these are people who thought a lot about both physics and consciousness. I think that when we do justice to both sides - the conclusion that one cannot arise from the principles of the other is inescapable. However, when we only immerse ourselves in materialism or only in spiritual new-age philosophies, we miss this scale of the problem of this mind-body gap the article talks about.
  - tasty_freeze 4y ago
    No doubt Schrodinger and Planck were very smart physicists. That doesn't make either one an authority on consciousness. I would be willing to bet there are other revered physicists who held different opinions. Appeals to authority when the person isn't an expert in that field are terribly weak. Even after reading all the comments in the thread, I will restate what I said: one must define what they mean by consciousness before discussing it. Even in the example here, you are quoting people talking about consciousness without defining what they mean by it. It seems that you accept that most things that people would ascribe to consciousness, eg, the ability to perceive their environment, store and retrieve relevant information, to synthesize theories and plans, to incorporate those meta thoughts into higher order thoughts (ie, self-referential knowledge), etc, can be explained by materialistic considerations. But you have another thing that you also call consciousness that is definitionally mystical, something physical explanations can make zero inroads to explaining. Please give some concrete examples of what cannot ever be explained.
    - kkoncevicius 4y ago
      > Appeals to authority when the person isn't an expert in that field are terribly weak. Hey, I agree. These were not as much appeals to authority as a reply to "your form of mysticism", just to get the focus off myself. > Please give some concrete examples of what cannot ever be explained. We can try it this way. We both look at a red apple. We both say it's "red". Can you device an experiment or some procedure to check wether we perceive red in the same way? Maybe what you see as "red" I see as "blue". Please note that this is not about which pathways fire upon seeing a light of a certain wavelength. Just assume we are both healthy and same regions are activated when looking at red light. Is the experience of red light the same for both of us and how to prove it, or check it?
Dudeman112 4y ago
You can't say something exists if you don't have a definition for it I mean, you can. It's just gonna be a loose statement that doesn't bind states of the universe to any meaningful description Just because you feel in your guts you have consciousness doesn't mean you have it
- kkoncevicius 4y ago
  > You can't say something exists if you don't have a definition for it There are many definitions for it, but for a definition to work the definition has to make sense for the person receiving it. Hence why the descriptions vary and can appear vogue. The first step is an attempt at showing to the other person what the discussion is about. So here is my another attempt: the sensation that appears in your "minds eye" when you see or imagine a red color. The awareness of this color is what consciousness is about. Perhaps it's so intimate that people don't think often about it and so it's hard to point to it, hence the difficulty with definitions. > Just because you feel in your guts you have consciousness doesn't mean you have it I can be an extreme sceptic and doubt anything. I can see a cat, close my eyes, open them again and see the same cat standing there. Was the cat there when I closed my eyes? I can certainly doubt that. Maybe it was quickly abducted and returned a moment later in the same place. Maybe some objects disappear when they are not looked at? Maybe there is no cat in the first place but this is a mirage or a hallucination of mine. Maybe I am now dreaming. All this I can doubt. What I cannot doubt is the fact that I am seeing a cat now. And the fact that I have a memory of seeing a cat before closing my eyes. So to the contrary - whatever you think you know can be doubted. The fact that you are having a conscious experience of something cannot be doubted. BTW, I liked the humorous response to this position from the posted article: > The ultra-materialists [...] go all in, they take the plunge, they crash the plane into the building: they deny that consciousness even exists! No, really. > Just shoot them, they won't notice.
  - 0134340 4y ago
    >The fact that you are having a conscious experience of something cannot be doubted. What makes you so sure? Just because you 'feel' you are experiencing consciousness doesn't mean other people are. How do you know other people are? By means of objective perspective from your subjective one? By doing so your consciousness already reached out into the material world and so you only validate materialism by acknowledging the presupposed immaterial consciousness of others. Honestly I don't think either materialism or immaterialism can be argued for without contradictions of some kind because one (immaterialism) argues the validity of the subjective experience while consequently delving in objectiveness, the experiences of others, any time you have to argue its point and relating it to others. Materialism as you, or someone else argued, is rooted also in a subjective experience so materialism can't discount the immaterial either. But why be either/or? Why can't both be valid? Because humans like to argue, I'd say. We like to compress information and when there's contradictions, we can't validate both because that kind of information doesn't compress well. Same reason we have to find one side to blame, it can't be both sides because that's just too complicated.

Zigurd 4y ago

You seem to be claiming that your form of mysticism is rational, when other forms of mysticism are not. Some of your argument parallels that of the god of the gaps: when you say optical illusions say nothing about consciousness, or aphasias say nothing about consciousness, your definition of consciousness is just hiding from measurability.

kkoncevicius 4y ago
Here is what I think: I think the definition of consciousness I used here is the same that was used in the posted article. It is not "my definition". I also think that some people never thought about it and are so unfamiliar with the subject that they misinterpret and cannot imagine what the discussion is actually about. It is not God of the gaps in one fundamental way. God of the gaps arguments attempt to justify something invisible by saying you cannot measure it. Consciousness is something visible - in fact it's the only thing that's visible - yet we cannot measure it, and likely never will be able to. As Schrödinger put it: "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else." Or to take another grand physicist, Max Planck: "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness." Now these are people who thought a lot about both physics and consciousness. I think that when we do justice to both sides - the conclusion that one cannot arise from the principles of the other is inescapable. However, when we only immerse ourselves in materialism or only in spiritual new-age philosophies, we miss this scale of the problem of this mind-body gap the article talks about.
- tasty_freeze 4y ago
  No doubt Schrodinger and Planck were very smart physicists. That doesn't make either one an authority on consciousness. I would be willing to bet there are other revered physicists who held different opinions. Appeals to authority when the person isn't an expert in that field are terribly weak. Even after reading all the comments in the thread, I will restate what I said: one must define what they mean by consciousness before discussing it. Even in the example here, you are quoting people talking about consciousness without defining what they mean by it. It seems that you accept that most things that people would ascribe to consciousness, eg, the ability to perceive their environment, store and retrieve relevant information, to synthesize theories and plans, to incorporate those meta thoughts into higher order thoughts (ie, self-referential knowledge), etc, can be explained by materialistic considerations. But you have another thing that you also call consciousness that is definitionally mystical, something physical explanations can make zero inroads to explaining. Please give some concrete examples of what cannot ever be explained.
  - kkoncevicius 4y ago
    > Appeals to authority when the person isn't an expert in that field are terribly weak. Hey, I agree. These were not as much appeals to authority as a reply to "your form of mysticism", just to get the focus off myself. > Please give some concrete examples of what cannot ever be explained. We can try it this way. We both look at a red apple. We both say it's "red". Can you device an experiment or some procedure to check wether we perceive red in the same way? Maybe what you see as "red" I see as "blue". Please note that this is not about which pathways fire upon seeing a light of a certain wavelength. Just assume we are both healthy and same regions are activated when looking at red light. Is the experience of red light the same for both of us and how to prove it, or check it?

Dudeman112 4y ago

You can't say something exists if you don't have a definition for it I mean, you can. It's just gonna be a loose statement that doesn't bind states of the universe to any meaningful description Just because you feel in your guts you have consciousness doesn't mean you have it

kkoncevicius 4y ago
> You can't say something exists if you don't have a definition for it There are many definitions for it, but for a definition to work the definition has to make sense for the person receiving it. Hence why the descriptions vary and can appear vogue. The first step is an attempt at showing to the other person what the discussion is about. So here is my another attempt: the sensation that appears in your "minds eye" when you see or imagine a red color. The awareness of this color is what consciousness is about. Perhaps it's so intimate that people don't think often about it and so it's hard to point to it, hence the difficulty with definitions. > Just because you feel in your guts you have consciousness doesn't mean you have it I can be an extreme sceptic and doubt anything. I can see a cat, close my eyes, open them again and see the same cat standing there. Was the cat there when I closed my eyes? I can certainly doubt that. Maybe it was quickly abducted and returned a moment later in the same place. Maybe some objects disappear when they are not looked at? Maybe there is no cat in the first place but this is a mirage or a hallucination of mine. Maybe I am now dreaming. All this I can doubt. What I cannot doubt is the fact that I am seeing a cat now. And the fact that I have a memory of seeing a cat before closing my eyes. So to the contrary - whatever you think you know can be doubted. The fact that you are having a conscious experience of something cannot be doubted. BTW, I liked the humorous response to this position from the posted article: > The ultra-materialists [...] go all in, they take the plunge, they crash the plane into the building: they deny that consciousness even exists! No, really. > Just shoot them, they won't notice.
- 0134340 4y ago
  >The fact that you are having a conscious experience of something cannot be doubted. What makes you so sure? Just because you 'feel' you are experiencing consciousness doesn't mean other people are. How do you know other people are? By means of objective perspective from your subjective one? By doing so your consciousness already reached out into the material world and so you only validate materialism by acknowledging the presupposed immaterial consciousness of others. Honestly I don't think either materialism or immaterialism can be argued for without contradictions of some kind because one (immaterialism) argues the validity of the subjective experience while consequently delving in objectiveness, the experiences of others, any time you have to argue its point and relating it to others. Materialism as you, or someone else argued, is rooted also in a subjective experience so materialism can't discount the immaterial either. But why be either/or? Why can't both be valid? Because humans like to argue, I'd say. We like to compress information and when there's contradictions, we can't validate both because that kind of information doesn't compress well. Same reason we have to find one side to blame, it can't be both sides because that's just too complicated.