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That's because consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, not part of fundamental physics. Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle phys

That's because consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, not part of fundamental physics. Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics, and somehow consciousness emerges out of that. Our theories of neuroscience aren't developed enough to explain it yet, but there isn't any reason to believe that there is something magical or non-physical going on.

iosystem 3y ago
How do we know consciousness is real, and we're not just the same as robots or a tv series? Couldn't every moment throughout the universe have been encoded in every atom before the Big Bang?
- mcronce 3y ago
  That's certainly possible, but it doesn't make your experiences any less real
  - dilyevsky 3y ago
    It certainly does because in this case there is no “you”
    - msarchet 3y ago
      You is a very loaded word here.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      "There is a thought now" has real experiences without anything we would normally want to call a real experiencer.
    - mcronce 3y ago
      And yet here you are reading that comment, writing this one... And those experiences are real.
      - dilyevsky 3y ago
        Says who?
        mcronce 3y ago
        You, me, and anybody else reading the comments. If you want to disagree on the metaphysics or whatever go ahead, but this is already proving to be a huge waste of time and I'm not particularly interested.
- Ycombigatorz 3y ago
  How do you know that when you touch a chair that that sensation is real?
  - msarchet 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia[1] - is what you are now describing mixed with a little bit of Maxwell's Demon[2] - something is intercepting between you and a true experience. Real, in the way I believe you are trying to express, is a complicated topic. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon
    - ben_w 3y ago
      I'm nit picking here, but I think you meant Cartesian demon?
perfmode 3y ago
Why believe consciousness arises from matter? Versus matter arising from consciousness?
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  Because we can change brain states (ie, manipulating a material object) to go from conscious to unconscious, which is strong evidence for the former. What evidence is there for the latter?
  - placebo 3y ago
    This is evidence that self-conscious beings can stop being self-conscious or that the content of what they are conscious of can change when the stuff that enables self-consciousness to occur is manipulated. It does not prove that consciousness is an emergent phenomena. Suggestions that consciousness is prior to physicalism (and in general prior to the whole division into subjective and objective realities made by a rational self-conscious agent) are not something new and are worth exploring.
paulrudy 3y ago
> consciousness is an emergent phenomenon That's a theory that has yet to be tested, not a certainty. <digression> > Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics... These are assumptions. They're very plausible and useful ones. They may turn out to be absolutely correct, but it's still worth noting that they are theories. "Every atom behaves..." so far, so good, yes it does. "...according to the laws of particle physics"-- presumably yes, with this caveat: The existence of a complete set of inviolable "laws" that explain _all_ physical behavior is an article of faith. It's a plausible potential outcome of the extremely practical process of collective scientific inquiry that so far seems to hold up, but still-- the concept of a set of laws as programs and constraints for absolutely all physical phenomena is fundamentally a philosophy. It has proven to be extremely useful, but it's not a proven or even probable fact. It's a powerful axiom. </digression> > ...and somehow consciousness emerges out of that. Back to the assumption that consciousness is a phenomenon that emerges from the physical activity of a brain: Is a (functional) brain both necessary and sufficient for consciousness to "emerge"? I don't know, I'm just a person interested in this stuff, but I think it's an important question without a definite answer. We tend to assume that having a brain is a necessary requirement for consciousness, but testing for consciousness (not to be confused with mere rationality) is difficult, as far as I know. I can't prove that a stone, plant, or region of spacetime has no consciousness. Even if we came up with a test for "consciousness", and that this test _did_ prove that a brain (or a similarly complex network) is necessary for consciousness to appear, there is still the issue of whether the brain is sufficient. How would we know? Whatever it is that we call consciousness may emerge from the complex physical phenomena of brain activity, as you said. Or the brain may be a catalyst for the phenomena we label consciousness. Or a brain (or human body) may only be a prerequisite for us, with our current capacities, to be able to observe the experience we have come to label "consciousness". "Light" used to mean only the visible spectrum, until we understood there was more to it: Light went beyond the limits of what we had up til then used to recognize its existence, and indeed it occurred even in what we had called "darkness", and blue things didn't contain blueness in and of themselves, nor were blue things producing blue light. I'm not advocating for any particular alternate theory, or proposing that consciousness operates outside of known physical constraints, I'm just a stickler for reminding ourselves what concepts are articles of faith, even in science itself

iosystem 3y ago

How do we know consciousness is real, and we're not just the same as robots or a tv series? Couldn't every moment throughout the universe have been encoded in every atom before the Big Bang?

mcronce 3y ago
That's certainly possible, but it doesn't make your experiences any less real
- dilyevsky 3y ago
  It certainly does because in this case there is no “you”
  - msarchet 3y ago
    You is a very loaded word here.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    "There is a thought now" has real experiences without anything we would normally want to call a real experiencer.
  - mcronce 3y ago
    And yet here you are reading that comment, writing this one... And those experiences are real.
    - dilyevsky 3y ago
      Says who?
      - mcronce 3y ago
        You, me, and anybody else reading the comments. If you want to disagree on the metaphysics or whatever go ahead, but this is already proving to be a huge waste of time and I'm not particularly interested.
Ycombigatorz 3y ago
How do you know that when you touch a chair that that sensation is real?
- msarchet 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia[1] - is what you are now describing mixed with a little bit of Maxwell's Demon[2] - something is intercepting between you and a true experience. Real, in the way I believe you are trying to express, is a complicated topic. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon
  - ben_w 3y ago
    I'm nit picking here, but I think you meant Cartesian demon?

perfmode 3y ago

Why believe consciousness arises from matter? Versus matter arising from consciousness?

satvikpendem 3y ago
Because we can change brain states (ie, manipulating a material object) to go from conscious to unconscious, which is strong evidence for the former. What evidence is there for the latter?
- placebo 3y ago
  This is evidence that self-conscious beings can stop being self-conscious or that the content of what they are conscious of can change when the stuff that enables self-consciousness to occur is manipulated. It does not prove that consciousness is an emergent phenomena. Suggestions that consciousness is prior to physicalism (and in general prior to the whole division into subjective and objective realities made by a rational self-conscious agent) are not something new and are worth exploring.

paulrudy 3y ago

> consciousness is an emergent phenomenon That's a theory that has yet to be tested, not a certainty. <digression> > Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics... These are assumptions. They're very plausible and useful ones. They may turn out to be absolutely correct, but it's still worth noting that they are theories. "Every atom behaves..." so far, so good, yes it does. "...according to the laws of particle physics"-- presumably yes, with this caveat: The existence of a complete set of inviolable "laws" that explain _all_ physical behavior is an article of faith. It's a plausible potential outcome of the extremely practical process of collective scientific inquiry that so far seems to hold up, but still-- the concept of a set of laws as programs and constraints for absolutely all physical phenomena is fundamentally a philosophy. It has proven to be extremely useful, but it's not a proven or even probable fact. It's a powerful axiom. </digression> > ...and somehow consciousness emerges out of that. Back to the assumption that consciousness is a phenomenon that emerges from the physical activity of a brain: Is a (functional) brain both necessary and sufficient for consciousness to "emerge"? I don't know, I'm just a person interested in this stuff, but I think it's an important question without a definite answer. We tend to assume that having a brain is a necessary requirement for consciousness, but testing for consciousness (not to be confused with mere rationality) is difficult, as far as I know. I can't prove that a stone, plant, or region of spacetime has no consciousness. Even if we came up with a test for "consciousness", and that this test _did_ prove that a brain (or a similarly complex network) is necessary for consciousness to appear, there is still the issue of whether the brain is sufficient. How would we know? Whatever it is that we call consciousness may emerge from the complex physical phenomena of brain activity, as you said. Or the brain may be a catalyst for the phenomena we label consciousness. Or a brain (or human body) may only be a prerequisite for us, with our current capacities, to be able to observe the experience we have come to label "consciousness". "Light" used to mean only the visible spectrum, until we understood there was more to it: Light went beyond the limits of what we had up til then used to recognize its existence, and indeed it occurred even in what we had called "darkness", and blue things didn't contain blueness in and of themselves, nor were blue things producing blue light. I'm not advocating for any particular alternate theory, or proposing that consciousness operates outside of known physical constraints, I'm just a stickler for reminding ourselves what concepts are articles of faith, even in science itself