5 ms·

I asked about this on HN a short while ago, and most people try to address consciousness as it not really existing because it's created by your mind. I hated t

by jmtame 18y ago

I asked about this on HN a short while ago, and most people try to address consciousness as it not really existing because it's created by your mind. I hated that psychology and neurology could explain how dopamine makes you feel happy, but beyond that, there were only chemicals, axons, dendrites, and synapses. It's like saying sodium ion channels fluctuate to carry an electrical signal, but in the big picture, it's difficult to understand how exactly that allows me to think about "reality" different from others (assuming others do). The resounding answer I got, although unsatisfactory in my mind, was that our brain is either very complex or very simple. Neurons are vastly capable of amazing things, or we're just creating this all up as we go and we've even defined this concept of reality based on a bunch of data that was given to us and which we for the most part accept without thinking much about it. Then again, how do I even know you exist. For all I know, my brain is making this all up, and everything that exists is nothing but a figment of my imagination (solipsism). And then I encounter another person who says the same thing (I'm telling you, I exist too, and I was wondering the same about you), and that's supposed to be where we hit an infinite loop and crash. Our operating systems seem to be a notch above the market's.

randallsquared 18y ago
"For all I know, my brain is making this all up," If you're going that far, why not take another step: for all you know, the entire context that convinced you that you have a 'brain' is something your mind made up, too. Ultimately, there is nothing that you can't be wrong about.
jerf 18y ago
One of the great dangers of brain research today is that as we find the "explanation" for things, we will conclude they are just illusions and not real. Well, the thing is, we're pretty sure at this point then that everything is "an illusion", by this standard. Religious experience, love, red, pain, it's all just an illusion brought on by neurons firing in certain patterns, right? Moving into the computer realm, the text box I am typing this into is an illusion brought on by clever programming, as is the browser. It's not an isolated series of claims of illusoriness, you need to consider the whole of them at once, including not just the politically popular ones (religion), but everything that argument makes sense for (red, mathematics, scary). I submit to you that this view, while popular, is silly. How can everything be an illusion? That stretches the meaning of "illusion" beyond sensibility. I propose to you that the "illusion" is in fact the real thing, and what you considered reality was in fact an illusion brought on by your ignorance of how things truly work. Finding a neural explanation for an experience does not make it illusory, it merely brings it into the fold of things you partially understand, displacing your previous ignorant ideas about what is "real". Failing to take this view is, IMHO, extraordinarily dangerous to yourself. This text box is not an illusion. It is a text box in every way that matters. I send it keystrokes, it puts up text, you read it later. What more do you want? Red is not an illusion. It impinges upon my eyes, I see it and process in certain characteristic manners, all of which are every bit as real as anything else. Higher levels of organization are not "illusions" merely because they are not atomic. My car is made of nuts and bolts and fabric and metal, and it is those things, profoundly, but it is also a car. My brain and self is made of neurons and glia and blood flow and individual firings, but it is also my self, nevertheless. My text box is no less real for being built twenty layers deep on various more atomic APIs. To apply this directly to a contentious point, establishing the neural location of religious experiences does prove or disprove them any more than establishing the neural locations of "pain" proves pain isn't real. To disprove a worldview, you need to use logic of the form "Given your worldview, this fact about the world conflicts", and "I found your religious experiences in the brain" doesn't fit that mould. Christians, Muslims, and other religions with creator gods will claim that the creator god put the circuits there because they tap something real. Hindus may not claim a creator god put it there (I know less about Hinduism), but they will still claim it is there because it taps something real. And so on, for many religions. I'm not saying this disproves the atheistic, Darwinistic view of religion the "I found the neurons" discovery engenders for such people. I'm saying it doesn't disprove most religions to any greater extent, either; it's basically null evidence on that front. (And heck, while I'm making controversial statements, may I also add that IMHO this viewpoint very nicely harmonizes the traditionally disparate "Western" and "Eastern" views of the world, and that they not only need not be at loggerheads but actually fuse into something quite nice.)
- pchristensen 18y ago
  I like this. Even though the way you perceive it is an illusion, something's there outside the illusion. And the way we perceive things has such good internal consistency (usually) that it has to be a pretty good approximation of what's really out there. Plus, everything has to be perceived one way or another - what would it even mean to "see things as they really are" when it comes to matter, light, etc?
jodrellblank 18y ago
and that's supposed to be where we hit an infinite loop and crash. Since the other person is a figment of your imagination their claim to be conscious is no different - a figment of your imagination. There's no need to crash, it's all your subjective reality. (or, really, my subjective reality).

by jmtame 18y ago

randallsquared 18y ago

"For all I know, my brain is making this all up," If you're going that far, why not take another step: for all you know, the entire context that convinced you that you have a 'brain' is something your mind made up, too. Ultimately, there is nothing that you can't be wrong about.

jerf 18y ago

One of the great dangers of brain research today is that as we find the "explanation" for things, we will conclude they are just illusions and not real. Well, the thing is, we're pretty sure at this point then that everything is "an illusion", by this standard. Religious experience, love, red, pain, it's all just an illusion brought on by neurons firing in certain patterns, right? Moving into the computer realm, the text box I am typing this into is an illusion brought on by clever programming, as is the browser. It's not an isolated series of claims of illusoriness, you need to consider the whole of them at once, including not just the politically popular ones (religion), but everything that argument makes sense for (red, mathematics, scary). I submit to you that this view, while popular, is silly. How can everything be an illusion? That stretches the meaning of "illusion" beyond sensibility. I propose to you that the "illusion" is in fact the real thing, and what you considered reality was in fact an illusion brought on by your ignorance of how things truly work. Finding a neural explanation for an experience does not make it illusory, it merely brings it into the fold of things you partially understand, displacing your previous ignorant ideas about what is "real". Failing to take this view is, IMHO, extraordinarily dangerous to yourself. This text box is not an illusion. It is a text box in every way that matters. I send it keystrokes, it puts up text, you read it later. What more do you want? Red is not an illusion. It impinges upon my eyes, I see it and process in certain characteristic manners, all of which are every bit as real as anything else. Higher levels of organization are not "illusions" merely because they are not atomic. My car is made of nuts and bolts and fabric and metal, and it is those things, profoundly, but it is also a car. My brain and self is made of neurons and glia and blood flow and individual firings, but it is also my self, nevertheless. My text box is no less real for being built twenty layers deep on various more atomic APIs. To apply this directly to a contentious point, establishing the neural location of religious experiences does prove or disprove them any more than establishing the neural locations of "pain" proves pain isn't real. To disprove a worldview, you need to use logic of the form "Given your worldview, this fact about the world conflicts", and "I found your religious experiences in the brain" doesn't fit that mould. Christians, Muslims, and other religions with creator gods will claim that the creator god put the circuits there because they tap something real. Hindus may not claim a creator god put it there (I know less about Hinduism), but they will still claim it is there because it taps something real. And so on, for many religions. I'm not saying this disproves the atheistic, Darwinistic view of religion the "I found the neurons" discovery engenders for such people. I'm saying it doesn't disprove most religions to any greater extent, either; it's basically null evidence on that front. (And heck, while I'm making controversial statements, may I also add that IMHO this viewpoint very nicely harmonizes the traditionally disparate "Western" and "Eastern" views of the world, and that they not only need not be at loggerheads but actually fuse into something quite nice.)

pchristensen 18y ago
I like this. Even though the way you perceive it is an illusion, something's there outside the illusion. And the way we perceive things has such good internal consistency (usually) that it has to be a pretty good approximation of what's really out there. Plus, everything has to be perceived one way or another - what would it even mean to "see things as they really are" when it comes to matter, light, etc?

jodrellblank 18y ago

and that's supposed to be where we hit an infinite loop and crash. Since the other person is a figment of your imagination their claim to be conscious is no different - a figment of your imagination. There's no need to crash, it's all your subjective reality. (or, really, my subjective reality).