4 ms·

There are plenty of reasons to believe it's physical. I mean, in some ways I can't believe I'm having to write "there are no ghosts" to a technically minded com

by jemmyw 3y ago

There are plenty of reasons to believe it's physical. I mean, in some ways I can't believe I'm having to write "there are no ghosts" to a technically minded community. If consciousness was not physical then where is it? Why would it switch on and off with physical changes to brains? Why would you be able to get altered states of consciousness with chemicals, disease and age? Why would be be able to marry some conscious activity with MRI scans? There's quite a few bits of evidence to suggest it's physical even if we don't know how it works. There doesn't appear to be any evidence of another... what is a non physical process anyway? Surely there's only two options: the physics we know and the physics we don't know?

BasedAnon 3y ago
The difference is that you do not experience ghosts, but you do experience conciousness. >If consciousness was not physical then where is it? We can invert this and ask, if physicality is not ideal, then how do we come to know it? >Surely there's only two options: the physics we know and the physics we don't know? The third option is that physics is unable to interrogate itself.
- jemmyw 3y ago
  > We can invert this and ask, if physicality is not ideal, then how do we come to know it? Why would we ask that? Not ideal for what? It just is. > The third option is that physics is unable to interrogate itself. This is likely true. We are the product of physics and we can only delve so deep. It might be that we cannot see to the most fundamental level(s). That's not a third option though, that's just the state of any scientific investigation at any point of time. However, given all we have learnt so far, what we don't need to do is invent new gods for the levels we cannot see or the things we cannot yet understand. I mean, people will, evidently, but that's all just wishful thinking. Meanwhile there is slow progress to piece together how the brain works. My opinion is that we will figure it out but the answers about consciousness will be unsatisfactory. Just like right now, given the current understanding of physical processes even taking into account quantum systems having probabilistic outcomes, we have no free will. It's an answer, I find it a compelling one, but most folks don't like that answer.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    > Why would we ask that? Not ideal for what? It just is. I'm pretty sure GP was using "ideal" in the sense of "made up of ideas", as in the philosophical concept of idealism, which is essentially the opposite of materialism: idealism is the position that the real world is that of the mind, and physics and the physical world is an emergent property of our minds, not the other way around. Not that I think this is a real coherent position worth discussing.
    - jemmyw 3y ago
      Thanks that was insightful
    - skissane 3y ago
      > Not that I think this is a real coherent position worth discussing. Why is it not a "real coherent position worth discussing"?
      - tsimionescu 3y ago
        Because to me it seems that if it were made consistent, it would extend into solipsism. And if it does, I don't think it's worth discussing then.
        skissane 3y ago
        What is inconsistent about non-solipsistic idealism?
        hnfong 3y ago
        “the universe is the extension of the self” is precisely the idea we are talking about. IMHO it is the only thing worth discussing. And yes you can derive new “physics” with this idea alone.
        skissane 3y ago
        > “the universe is the extension of the self” is precisely the idea we are talking about. Idealists can take several possible approaches to the issue of how many people/minds exist: 1) Solipsism: only I exist, and everyone else is a figment of my imagination 2) Many minds: only minds ultimately exist, but many distinct minds exist (George Berkeley, John McTaggart) 3) Open individualism: I exist and everyone else exists too, but we are all ultimately the same person, and the idea that we are different people is an illusion (not necessarily an idealist view, but one open to an idealist to adopt; most famous notable proponent is Daniel Kolak; but Kolak in the introduction of his book I Am You extensively quotes the physicists Freeman Dyson and Erwin Schrödinger as expressing the same view) 4) Pan(en)theism: only one mind/person ultimately exists, but we are somehow "sub-minds"/"sub-persons" of that ultimate person. One might call that single ultimate person "God", albeit it is defining the term "God" in a very different way than classical Western theism does. Or, maybe we could call it the "Universe", or borrow Plato's term "the World Soul". (Maybe there is not much difference between (3) and (4), but (4) would view the distinction between different "sub-minds"/"sub-persons" as more "real" than (3) does.) 5) Panpsychism: everything in the universe (even individual atoms) is conscious, and hence has a distinct mind. This in a sense is a variant of (2), but proposes far more minds than Berkeley or McTaggart would ever have admitted. Not all panpsychists are idealists, but you can certainly be an idealist panpsychist Critics of idealism tend to focus on (1), but in practice (1) has never had any serious proponents. All serious idealists have espoused (2)-(5) (or maybe some other variation I've missed) See also the philosopher David Chalmers' paper in which he proposes his own taxonomy of idealisms, different from mine: https://philpapers.org/archive/CHAIAT-11.pdf https://philpapers.org/archive/CHAIAT-11.pdf As an idealist, my starting position is (2), although I have some sympathy for (4). > And yes you can derive new “physics” with this idea alone. I don't know exactly what you mean, but I'm not a fan of that kind of talk. We have to distinguish between physics the natural science, and the philosophical discipline of the philosophy of physics, which is a sub-discipline of the philosophy of science The idealism debate fundamentally belongs to metaphysics (although contemporary presentations often focus on it through the lens of philosophy of mind instead), but it has obvious consequences for other philosophical disciplines, including epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and indeed philosophy of physics But while adopting idealism must lead us to a different philosophy of physics, the actual content of physics the natural science is unchanged. Physics the natural science is ultimately just a bunch of mathematical tools for predicting future observations. Those tools, and how you use them, are exactly the same whether you are a materialist, an idealist, a dualist, or none of the above. The only difference is your answer to the philosophical debates about what those tools ultimately are, or what they ultimately mean.
suggestion 3y ago
>Why would be be able to marry some conscious activity with MRI scans? Does the activity cause the changes on the scan or does the changes in the scan cause the activity? How does neuroplasticity result in physical changes to the brain through, for example, cognitive behavioral therapy? Do the thoughts alter the physical structure or does the structure cause the thoughts even before the structural changes?
- jemmyw 3y ago
  Internal feedback loops. Activity from the existing structure further modifies that structure. That activity is that thoughts are. So sure but it's all physical.
  - suggestion 3y ago
    That doesn't make any sense. If that's the case, the physical change should precede the changes in thought patterns. Also, physicalism is about as empirical as falling in love. It's far from definitive, proven, fact. There's no chemical emission that can force someone to have an exact thought, dream, or inner dialogue.
    - jemmyw 3y ago
      There are always physical changes happening. External stimuli, and time based internal changes. > If that's the case, the physical change should precede the changes in thought patterns. Not precede, are. These aren't separate things. > There's no chemical emission that can force someone to have an exact thought, dream, or inner dialogue. How do you know that to be the case? It seems likely to me that an exact set of sufficiently complicated inputs and stimuli could generate an exact thought. Actually doing so would be too complex to figure out, but many physical systems are like that.
      - suggestion 3y ago
        If it seems likely to you, then you're not as much of an empiricist as you claim
amatecha 3y ago
Yeah I’m not sure why someone would argue that consciousness isn’t physical. Take a conscious person and knock them hard in the head. Interesting, their consciousness is altered. Take drugs? Check it out, consciousness altered. People who experience head trauma have their personality permanently altered. In the course of life you will likely directly observe the effects of physical injury on a person’s consciousness, just due to how often that kind of stuff happens.
- jemmyw 3y ago
  > Yeah I’m not sure why someone would argue that consciousness isn’t physical Reading the comments, one thing that's been unsaid is whether each person discussing is religious/spiritual or not. My guess is that if you are religious then the idea of there being another layer in the universe goes without saying, and if you are not then it's ridiculous. It's probably a waste of time debating across that line.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    For me it has very little to do with religiousness but rather calming down some rather frequent panic attacks in the middle of the night. The fact that thinking the wrong thing can erase your consciousness while thinking it, doesn't help from the group that believes thinking the wrong thing erases consciousness.
- imtringued 3y ago
  The difference is people like you mean consciousness = "consciousness as the average human experiences it", whereas others include every single potential conscious experience, including the delibitated one. From your perspective, a knocked out human isn't conscious the same way a corpse is not conscious, because he does not conform to the average human experience. Meanwhile others think that the knocked out human and the corpse and the average human are all conscious, but they experience their respective consciousnessess aka the consciousness of an average human, knocked out human or corpse. You could say that this is just a disagreement in what the word conscious means.
akomtu 3y ago
The idea that consciousness is physical doesn't mean it's mechanical. Physical world is made of fields with no clear boundaries, while mechanical system are made of isolated deterministic and immutable parts.

by jemmyw 3y ago

BasedAnon 3y ago

The difference is that you do not experience ghosts, but you do experience conciousness. >If consciousness was not physical then where is it? We can invert this and ask, if physicality is not ideal, then how do we come to know it? >Surely there's only two options: the physics we know and the physics we don't know? The third option is that physics is unable to interrogate itself.

jemmyw 3y ago
> We can invert this and ask, if physicality is not ideal, then how do we come to know it? Why would we ask that? Not ideal for what? It just is. > The third option is that physics is unable to interrogate itself. This is likely true. We are the product of physics and we can only delve so deep. It might be that we cannot see to the most fundamental level(s). That's not a third option though, that's just the state of any scientific investigation at any point of time. However, given all we have learnt so far, what we don't need to do is invent new gods for the levels we cannot see or the things we cannot yet understand. I mean, people will, evidently, but that's all just wishful thinking. Meanwhile there is slow progress to piece together how the brain works. My opinion is that we will figure it out but the answers about consciousness will be unsatisfactory. Just like right now, given the current understanding of physical processes even taking into account quantum systems having probabilistic outcomes, we have no free will. It's an answer, I find it a compelling one, but most folks don't like that answer.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  > Why would we ask that? Not ideal for what? It just is. I'm pretty sure GP was using "ideal" in the sense of "made up of ideas", as in the philosophical concept of idealism, which is essentially the opposite of materialism: idealism is the position that the real world is that of the mind, and physics and the physical world is an emergent property of our minds, not the other way around. Not that I think this is a real coherent position worth discussing.
  - jemmyw 3y ago
    Thanks that was insightful
  - skissane 3y ago
    > Not that I think this is a real coherent position worth discussing. Why is it not a "real coherent position worth discussing"?
    - tsimionescu 3y ago
      Because to me it seems that if it were made consistent, it would extend into solipsism. And if it does, I don't think it's worth discussing then.
      - skissane 3y ago
        What is inconsistent about non-solipsistic idealism?
      - hnfong 3y ago
        “the universe is the extension of the self” is precisely the idea we are talking about. IMHO it is the only thing worth discussing. And yes you can derive new “physics” with this idea alone.
        skissane 3y ago
        > “the universe is the extension of the self” is precisely the idea we are talking about. Idealists can take several possible approaches to the issue of how many people/minds exist: 1) Solipsism: only I exist, and everyone else is a figment of my imagination 2) Many minds: only minds ultimately exist, but many distinct minds exist (George Berkeley, John McTaggart) 3) Open individualism: I exist and everyone else exists too, but we are all ultimately the same person, and the idea that we are different people is an illusion (not necessarily an idealist view, but one open to an idealist to adopt; most famous notable proponent is Daniel Kolak; but Kolak in the introduction of his book I Am You extensively quotes the physicists Freeman Dyson and Erwin Schrödinger as expressing the same view) 4) Pan(en)theism: only one mind/person ultimately exists, but we are somehow "sub-minds"/"sub-persons" of that ultimate person. One might call that single ultimate person "God", albeit it is defining the term "God" in a very different way than classical Western theism does. Or, maybe we could call it the "Universe", or borrow Plato's term "the World Soul". (Maybe there is not much difference between (3) and (4), but (4) would view the distinction between different "sub-minds"/"sub-persons" as more "real" than (3) does.) 5) Panpsychism: everything in the universe (even individual atoms) is conscious, and hence has a distinct mind. This in a sense is a variant of (2), but proposes far more minds than Berkeley or McTaggart would ever have admitted. Not all panpsychists are idealists, but you can certainly be an idealist panpsychist Critics of idealism tend to focus on (1), but in practice (1) has never had any serious proponents. All serious idealists have espoused (2)-(5) (or maybe some other variation I've missed) See also the philosopher David Chalmers' paper in which he proposes his own taxonomy of idealisms, different from mine: https://philpapers.org/archive/CHAIAT-11.pdf https://philpapers.org/archive/CHAIAT-11.pdf As an idealist, my starting position is (2), although I have some sympathy for (4). > And yes you can derive new “physics” with this idea alone. I don't know exactly what you mean, but I'm not a fan of that kind of talk. We have to distinguish between physics the natural science, and the philosophical discipline of the philosophy of physics, which is a sub-discipline of the philosophy of science The idealism debate fundamentally belongs to metaphysics (although contemporary presentations often focus on it through the lens of philosophy of mind instead), but it has obvious consequences for other philosophical disciplines, including epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and indeed philosophy of physics But while adopting idealism must lead us to a different philosophy of physics, the actual content of physics the natural science is unchanged. Physics the natural science is ultimately just a bunch of mathematical tools for predicting future observations. Those tools, and how you use them, are exactly the same whether you are a materialist, an idealist, a dualist, or none of the above. The only difference is your answer to the philosophical debates about what those tools ultimately are, or what they ultimately mean.

suggestion 3y ago

>Why would be be able to marry some conscious activity with MRI scans? Does the activity cause the changes on the scan or does the changes in the scan cause the activity? How does neuroplasticity result in physical changes to the brain through, for example, cognitive behavioral therapy? Do the thoughts alter the physical structure or does the structure cause the thoughts even before the structural changes?

jemmyw 3y ago
Internal feedback loops. Activity from the existing structure further modifies that structure. That activity is that thoughts are. So sure but it's all physical.
- suggestion 3y ago
  That doesn't make any sense. If that's the case, the physical change should precede the changes in thought patterns. Also, physicalism is about as empirical as falling in love. It's far from definitive, proven, fact. There's no chemical emission that can force someone to have an exact thought, dream, or inner dialogue.
  - jemmyw 3y ago
    There are always physical changes happening. External stimuli, and time based internal changes. > If that's the case, the physical change should precede the changes in thought patterns. Not precede, are. These aren't separate things. > There's no chemical emission that can force someone to have an exact thought, dream, or inner dialogue. How do you know that to be the case? It seems likely to me that an exact set of sufficiently complicated inputs and stimuli could generate an exact thought. Actually doing so would be too complex to figure out, but many physical systems are like that.
    - suggestion 3y ago
      If it seems likely to you, then you're not as much of an empiricist as you claim

amatecha 3y ago

Yeah I’m not sure why someone would argue that consciousness isn’t physical. Take a conscious person and knock them hard in the head. Interesting, their consciousness is altered. Take drugs? Check it out, consciousness altered. People who experience head trauma have their personality permanently altered. In the course of life you will likely directly observe the effects of physical injury on a person’s consciousness, just due to how often that kind of stuff happens.

jemmyw 3y ago
> Yeah I’m not sure why someone would argue that consciousness isn’t physical Reading the comments, one thing that's been unsaid is whether each person discussing is religious/spiritual or not. My guess is that if you are religious then the idea of there being another layer in the universe goes without saying, and if you are not then it's ridiculous. It's probably a waste of time debating across that line.
- imtringued 3y ago
  For me it has very little to do with religiousness but rather calming down some rather frequent panic attacks in the middle of the night. The fact that thinking the wrong thing can erase your consciousness while thinking it, doesn't help from the group that believes thinking the wrong thing erases consciousness.
imtringued 3y ago
The difference is people like you mean consciousness = "consciousness as the average human experiences it", whereas others include every single potential conscious experience, including the delibitated one. From your perspective, a knocked out human isn't conscious the same way a corpse is not conscious, because he does not conform to the average human experience. Meanwhile others think that the knocked out human and the corpse and the average human are all conscious, but they experience their respective consciousnessess aka the consciousness of an average human, knocked out human or corpse. You could say that this is just a disagreement in what the word conscious means.

akomtu 3y ago

The idea that consciousness is physical doesn't mean it's mechanical. Physical world is made of fields with no clear boundaries, while mechanical system are made of isolated deterministic and immutable parts.