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>What exactly do you mean by "consciousness"? I mean exactly what you mean by consciousness. There is no big mystery here. I take it you are a believer of a "

• benpbenp 13y ago
  There is a gigantic mystery which you are sweeping under the rug. Sure, a purely materialistic conception of the universe is very neat and appealing. But you are at risk of missing something of fundamental importance to the overall nature of being if you simply shut down any possible additions to this conception. The mystery is this: Why can't we observe consciousness? No, literally, we cannot observe it. The scientific process at least requires a starting observation, some phenomenon which requires explanation, something you can point to and say, "What's that?". The sun rising and setting. Brownian motion. Whatever. Consciousness on the other hand is merely the fact that the universe exists from a perspective. You only ever have access to one perspective, your own, you can never observe any other instance of perspective "out there", "in the world". It is not a thing, an "object". It is a subject, "you".
  • hackinthebochs 13y ago
    I don't shut down any possible additions to the concept of consciousness, I just require that any additions be motivated by need. At this point in our understanding there simply is no need to presume some sort of metaphysical happenings. The brain being the sole generator of consciousness currently appears to be powerful enough to explain everything we know about consciousness. Add on to that all the evidence brain activity correlating with conscious experience, exciting the brain in specific locations generating conscious experience, and brain damage in various locations having clear and permanent affects on consciousness, and we have strong evidence that the brain is in fact all there is. We may not be able to "observe consciousness directly", but we have constrained its possible whereabouts to "within the brain". Sure, more work needs to be done, but we are far from completely ignorant here.
    • lutusp 13y ago
      > The brain being the sole generator of consciousness currently appears to be powerful enough to explain everything we know about consciousness. Yes, that's reasonable, but it leaves out how it's done, what mechanism is responsible. Until that question is answered, until we have a proven mechanism, we can't assume that the brain is the sole repository of consciousness. My point is this will become a respectable scientific theory when we can explain how consciousness arises in brain tissue, rather than simply showing that it's so by observation. Until then we're in the position of the the blind men and the elephant, each with a different impression of an unseen source.
      • hackinthebochs 13y ago
        >we can't assume that the brain is the sole repository of consciousness. Assume is the wrong word here. If there is no need for metaphysics then defaulting to materialism is the rational choice. Science is always a process involving probabilities and materialism is currently the most probable scenario. It then makes sense to make further predictions based on our current materialist understanding.
        • lutusp 13y ago
          >> we can't assume that the brain is the sole repository of consciousness. > Assume is the wrong word here. But until we have a solid theory about consciousness, with the possibility of proving a claim to be objectively true or false, all we have are assumptions. > Science is always a process involving probabilities and materialism is currently the most probable scenario. But consciousness is by definition a non-material phenomenon, so that's the wrong approach. I don't mean to trivialize any of the aspects of this issue, because it's very complex and there are many uncertainties, but consciousness can't be reduced to a question of materialism, for the simple reason that many of its manifestations lie outside the material realm. Also, science isn't always a question of probabilities. Science requires falsifiability, and a theoretical falsification isn't based on probability, but certainty. If I see a black swan, I have falsified the all-white-swans theory, not to some probability, but absolutely. This is not to diminish the importance of probability in scientific work. > It then makes sense to make further predictions based on our current materialist understanding. Yes, that does make sense, but it's not the whole story. If consciousness were open to unambiguous measurement, in a way that forced different observers into agreement (experimental objectivity), then I would concur. But we aren't there yet.
• negativity 13y ago
  Well, okay... There are at least two important facts to consider, when contemplating a conscious entity's perception of reality, as an individualized experience. 1. A distinct entity's experience is owned with individuality as a singleton object, while the entity persists in a recognizable, and integral state. (the thing is the thing while it's still the "same" thing, and remembers that it's the thing) 2. Consciousness is not a characteristic constrained in any way to biology or any other preferential form of implementation. ("things" aren't necessarily people, or even animals or plants) I'll never deny the concept of Boltzmann Brains or the potential for artificially intelligent sentient beings born out of man-made (or any other form of) electronics. I'll happily recognize that nuclear medicine has identified the reality that the atomic-scale contituents of our corporeal forms transition through a complete turn-over of all molecular members in less than a decade; That by the time we age to 20 years, we are effectively completely replaced by different matter. With all these ideas in mind, I don't take lightly the idea of jumping the gap from one state of existence to another. At astronomical scales, life seems to be very rare. If life actually is rare, relatively speaking, considering ratios of void to matter, ratios of matter to life, and then ratios of life to self-aware, perceptive, communicative intelligence, then we must approach this whole scenario with the mindset that it is very difficult to provoke living entities, and very easy to render the living as dead and inert. I know that I was dead before I was alive, because there was a period of time pre-dating my existence. The period before my birth can be regarded as a period when I was dead. Given that fact, it's not that I fear death, or wring my hands about my "soul." I was once dead before, and so I shall be again. Once that truth is squared away, the only thing left to worry about is getting swindled out of this only life I'm capable of living and remembering at the moment. I am the medium, and I care about the otherwise abivalent information. Me. There's a major reason why I think it's dangerous to casually bandy about the idea of swapping out neurons with electronics, however small and unobtrusive, however perfect a replacement. It's the same reason why we'd hesitate to firebomb a city of humans and replace it with a city of robots. Economically the robot city performs as an equal to, or better than the human city it replaces, but the robot city is likely to be fundamentally and profoundly different from the human settlement it has supplanted. The country and its global trading partners around the world won't feel the difference, and human life goes on everywhere beyond the robot city, without skipping a beat. The broader scope of human civilization will survive, even if we trim a whole city from the herd. Thus, the decision to eliminate the city is obviously a simple one, isn't it? But then, there's also the ethical concept of robbing the human inhabitants of their own agency, simply because we can easily replace them with an equivalent. Chopping out our own brains, and substituting them with what might be little more than an elaborate textile mill is questionable behavior indeed. We haven't gotten to the bottom of what life is yet, so I don't think we shouldn't be so trigger-happy about replacing it, even in exchange for all our mortal foibles. At the moment, all I'm prepared to identify about life, and the life I lead, is that my sense of self rides on top of a collective of amoeba-like cellular animals. My sense of self is unaware of this community of cellular creatures (neurons) without the assistance of surgery, microscopes, and unwitting/unwilling, sacrificial third-party predecessors as test subjects. Everything other than these curious neuron creatures seems to be optional to my sense of self (arms, legs, heart, lungs, liver...). After that, the rest of my existence is, pretty much, mysterious so far. I think we have a lot of ground to cover before we start killing off our neurons. Even if they're bound to die off anyway. There are likely to be other packs of real, live, human neurons still roaming about, after mine die off, and if I leave behind a heap of machines as a placeholder for what might no longer actually be me, how will I know for sure that I'm not bequeathing a huge, serious, weird problem for my normal human peers after I'm gone?