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> There is no scientific evidence to support that there is some underlying, persisting system that drives consciousness - literally everything points to conscio
by zer8k 3y ago
> There is no scientific evidence to support that there is some underlying, persisting system that drives consciousness - literally everything points to consciousness being driven by brain activity.
Similarly, there's no scientific consensus on what consciousness even is. Neuroscience has some idea (e.g. "its related to brain activity") but that's it. The psychologists, in typical psychological fashion, have even less of an idea.
That's not to say the lack of evidence proves that your consciousness ascends to a higher plane after you die. Simply a fact that _consciousness_ is one of the millennium problems of brain science. You cannot tell yourself apart from a well programmed LLM. Does this imply the LLM is conscious? Well according to the Chinese Room Argument the answer is no. In a practical sense, your argument is leading you to that conclusion. In that case, the view is that people are just deterministic meat robots with some randomness component is probably accurate. However, even for stanch atheist the idea that they are nothing more than a deterministic meat computer featuring programmed self-death is understandably disturbing. It's hard to separate the thought of death (and your ideas around it) from your own self-preservation mechanism.
The next 100 years of neuroscience will be very interesting.
- insanitybit 3y ago> Similarly, there's no scientific consensus on what consciousness even is. It literally does not matter. We know that it is something that exists within the body, primarily if not exclusively the brain/nervous system. Therefor if the entire body dies you don't need any more information to know that consciousness is gone. It would require additional evidence to the contrary for one to take on the theory that consciousness somehow exists outside of the nervous system. What you're saying just flat out does not matter. What consciousness is does not matter. If you destroy someone's brain you can be assured that consciousness ends.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago> What you're saying just flat out does not matter. What consciousness is does not matter. If you destroy someone's brain you can be assured that consciousness ends. To be consistent with your first statement, the person making the claims should provide the proof. Do you have proof of this statement? The fact of the matter is that we don't know one way or the other, so anyone making claims about this will be doing so entirely on belief.
- insanitybit 3y ago> To be consistent with your first statement, the person making the claims should provide the proof. Do you have proof of this statement? Do I have proof that thoughts come from the brain? Uh lol excuse me if I don't rush to find sources for that claim
- angoragoats 3y agoBy “entirely on belief” do you actually mean “entirely on faith,” that is, belief without evidence? Because otherwise your statement is nonsensical — people can and do make claims without knowing something, otherwise science wouldn’t exist. The key is that when a person makes a claim, that claim needs to be supported by evidence. The grandparent post is pointing to the mountains of evidence that we have regarding the brain, and making a claim regarding death causing a ceasing of consciousness. If you want to claim that consciousness continues after death, you’d better bring some evidence along with that claim.