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Post by robert on Jul 28, 2018 23:35:40 GMT
Do you think that Science will ever solve the great mystery of what consciousness is or do you think that this mystery is unlikely to unravel by using the scientific method?
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Post by tangent on Jul 29, 2018 6:41:46 GMT
I might ask, what particular aspect of consciousness would you like science to solve?
One might ask the same question about other nebulous topics, such as culture, society, politics, religion. "Do you think that Science will ever solve the great mystery of what culture is? of what society is? etc."
I think, first, you must elaborate the question.
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Post by robert on Jul 29, 2018 11:53:29 GMT
The research on consciousness suggests that very little is known about the nature of consciousness itself. It is hard to elaborate on a particular aspect of consciousness when its very nature, or in other words 'what it is altogether' is not only vague but mysterious. My question is simply, do you think in the future consciousness will be better understood as a phenomenon or do you think it is outside the purvey of the empirical sciences? Consciousness is not something, like say quantum mechanics, which was discovered via theoretical physics attempting to grasp anomalies that arose through observational and practical science. But consciousness is something that did not arise as a model to explain a phenomenon. It, itself, is a phenomenon.
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Post by tangent on Jul 29, 2018 13:42:47 GMT
I think it's because we don't know what consciousness means, we can't conduct a scientific examination of it. It's a philosophical question, not a scientific one.
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Post by juju on Jul 30, 2018 0:29:56 GMT
I think it's both. It has traditionally been a preoccupation of philosophers, but I think nowadays more is being done in that area by neuroscientists and psychologists (although it still forms one of the main topics for philosophy lecturers and students every year;) ).
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Post by tangent on Jul 30, 2018 13:07:05 GMT
I agree there are aspects of consciousness that are the subject of scientific discussion. For example, a few years ago, I read a theory that said our consciousness was limited to the fleeting moments of our current perceptions and that everything else (my memory of the last word I typed, for example) existed only in our subconscious minds. But that doesn't try to explain what consciousness really is.
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Post by Kye on Jul 30, 2018 13:14:12 GMT
This discussion reminds me of what Augustine of Hippo has to say about memory and consciousness in the last part of his Confessions. A brilliant brilliant man, but maybe too uncomfortably theological for atheists.
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Post by tangent on Jul 30, 2018 13:36:41 GMT
Do tell us. Some of us are not atheists so we can take it.
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Post by Kye on Jul 30, 2018 13:47:19 GMT
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Post by Kye on Jul 30, 2018 13:58:45 GMT
Here's an example --although I prefer the book I own's translation into modern language (the original is of course in Latin): The paragraph following this one has the (very) old joke in it: "What was God doing before he created Heaven and Earth?" "He was preparing Hell for those who ask questions about the Mystery of God."
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Post by robert on Jul 30, 2018 19:25:21 GMT
I think it's because we don't know what consciousness means, we can't conduct a scientific examination of it. It's a philosophical question, not a scientific one. I think you tacitly answered the question of the OP.
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Post by robert on Jul 30, 2018 19:27:02 GMT
Here's an example --although I prefer the book I own's translation into modern language (the original is of course in Latin): The paragraph following this one has the (very) old joke in it: "What was God doing before he created Heaven and Earth?" "He was preparing Hell for those who ask questions about the Mystery of God." Brilliant. Augustine is one of my favorite philosophers. I studied him extensively in my undergraduate. Very good answer.
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Post by tangent on Jul 30, 2018 20:54:59 GMT
I think it's because we don't know what consciousness means, we can't conduct a scientific examination of it. It's a philosophical question, not a scientific one. I think you tacitly answered the question of the OP. Hah! Yes ☺
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Post by ceptimus on Aug 24, 2018 21:33:10 GMT
The way to tackle this problem is to first define what you think unconsciousness is - and then consciousness is just the process of not being unconscious.
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Post by Moose on Aug 26, 2018 23:54:42 GMT
I dunno if that quite works cep. I mean, my cats can be unconscious but when they wake up I would not consider them to be conscious .. at least not in the sense that I think that Robert means it.
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Post by robert on Aug 27, 2018 8:51:22 GMT
What do you mean Moose? Are you saying that I find consciousness not something pets and other animals experience? I think they experience consciousness as we do.
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Post by whollygoats on Aug 27, 2018 14:18:58 GMT
Here....Try this on for size: Hacking Reality. And, from the same theorists at Quantum Gravity, we have more focused musings of this.
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Post by ceptimus on Aug 27, 2018 21:02:07 GMT
Consciousness means different things to different people.
Some people argue that you are conscious when you're asleep and dreaming - they use the word to describe what a normally working brain does.
For some people it holds a sort of religious signficance - it is another word for 'soul' to them.
Most people agree that things like rocks don't have consciousness.
For me, it's not an all-or-nothing thing. I would argue that all animals have consciousness to some degree, but I think it's mainly mammals and birds that possess consciousness similar to that which us humans experience: I think any consciousness experienced by ants and worms is a very different and much simpler thing.
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Post by tangent on Aug 27, 2018 21:41:31 GMT
I would argue that all animals have consciousness to some degree, but I think it's mainly mammals and birds that possess consciousness similar to that which us humans experience: I think any consciousness experienced by ants and worms is a very different and much simpler thing. I agree.
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Post by Moose on Aug 27, 2018 21:43:31 GMT
Robert .. no quite the opposite. I do not think that animals are 'conscious' in quite the same way that we are .
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Post by robert on Aug 28, 2018 2:26:33 GMT
I didn't say they are in the same way as we are. Clearly we are a unique species, as are most mammals. I am just stating they are conscious.
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Post by tangent on Aug 28, 2018 5:43:20 GMT
The difference, I think, between animals and humans is the FOXP2 gene, which facilitates reasoning. Notably, the ability to understand signs and symbols.
If, as you say, animals are not conscious, then perhaps an animal's awareness plus reasoning gives us consciousness.
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Post by robert on Aug 28, 2018 21:36:35 GMT
The difference, I think, between animals and humans is the FOXP2 gene, which facilitates reasoning. Notably, the ability to understand signs and symbols. If, as you say, animals are not conscious, then perhaps an animal's awareness plus reasoning gives us consciousness. Have you ever read the article by philosopher Thomas Nagel "What it is like to be a bat"? It is an interesting read and general definition of consciousness.
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Post by tangent on Aug 28, 2018 23:55:11 GMT
Have you ever read the article by philosopher Thomas Nagel "What it is like to be a bat"? It is an interesting read and general definition of consciousness. I've just read his article (or to be more precise, skimmed through it), and I'm not impressed with it. He starts off, "Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable." It would help me if I knew what is meant by the mind-body problem but I do not. Later on he says, "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism." I can grasp the first part of the sentence but the second part bewilders me. In any case, the structural form of the sentence suggests that the first part defines consciousness whilst the second part merely restates that definition in another way. And so I will continue. "An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism." Since a human being is an organism, we could legitimately substitute 'human being' for 'organism' in the above sentence if we wanted to decide whether human beings have consciousness." The definition then becomes, "A human being has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that human being." Well, I can confirm that there is something that it is like to be a human being, namely a human being. I conclude, therefore, that human beings must have conscious mental states. But by the same reasoning, I must conclude that a tree also has conscious mental states. Do you see what I'm getting at? His language is so woolly, it doesn't have any coherent meaning. It is left to the reader to construct something meaningful from his random thoughts and words. And if that happens, everyone will construct their own meaning. So to me, it's not an interesting read because I don't understand where the article is going. Is he trying to define consciousness or to say that it is not definable? And what has the bat got to do with it? It's just another animal. It's true, it has unusual senses, it is blind and it uses echo-location but there are blind humans who do the same. I think I'll just leave it for now that the definition of consciousness is an intractable problem.
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Post by robert on Aug 29, 2018 0:13:09 GMT
Well that is the point of the article, namely to present to us a phenomenon, as consciousness, that we do not understand. At best, all we can do is present a vague, general description or loosely-compiled definition of it. He is stating that consciousness cannot be clearly defined enough to qualify as an objective fact that science can analyze sufficiently. Also, the bat analogy is used to illustrate how consciousness expresses itself to the experiencer. 'What it is like to be...x,' fill in the blank, is all one can say of consciousness objectively. Consciousness, therefore, is an entirely subjective, experiential, entirely phenomenological experience, it is not merely a fact IN the world but it is how the fact OF THE world is presented to the experiencer. I don't know if this is a salient explanation, but it is the best I have for now
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Post by tangent on Aug 29, 2018 0:16:11 GMT
Your explanation makes a lot of sense. I genuinely didn't get that from the article. I often find that academic articles can only be understood by people who understand them.
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Post by ceptimus on Aug 29, 2018 6:55:02 GMT
I think the "mind-body problem" is only a "problem" for those people that believe the mind (or 'soul') is a thing that exists outside the scientifically observable material world. Those people are called dualists and believe in dualism: the philosopher Descartes is the best known early example.
The problem is that, if you believe in free will, then you must agree that the mind is able to affect the body - and you can easily demonstrate that the state of your body can affect the state of your mind by, say, whacking your thumb with a hammer. So even though dualists believe that the mind exists independent of the body, it seems like there must be some connection between the two - a tiny 'hook' if you like, that connects the material world to the immaterial one. But the existence of such a 'hook' would contradict the foundation of dualism - since at least part of that hook would have to exist in the material world, it would be open to scientific study - and that study would then drag ever-increasing areas of the immaterial world into the material one.
There is no "mind-body problem" for materialists who believe that "mind" or "consciousness" are not things outside the normal material world. For a materialist, the thing we experience as consciousness is just the complicated electrochemical activity generated inside human, and presumably animal brains - it's something we don't understand yet, and maybe humans aren't smart enough to ever fully understand it - but that's no reason to invoke explanations that rely on immaterial things, which would forever remain beyond the reach of scientific study.
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Post by robert on Aug 29, 2018 9:07:55 GMT
I think the "mind-body problem" is only a "problem" for those people that believe the mind (or 'soul') is a thing that exists outside the scientifically observable material world. Those people are called dualists and believe in dualism: the philosopher Descartes is the best known early example. The problem is that, if you believe in free will, then you must agree that the mind is able to affect the body - and you can easily demonstrate that the state of your body can affect the state of your mind by, say, whacking your thumb with a hammer. So even though dualists believe that the mind exists independent of the body, it seems like there must be some connection between the two - a tiny 'hook' if you like, that connects the material world to the immaterial one. But the existence of such a 'hook' would contradict the foundation of dualism - since at least part of that hook would have to exist in the material world, it would be open to scientific study - and that study would then drag ever-increasing areas of the immaterial world into the material one. There is no "mind-body problem" for materialists who believe that "mind" or "consciousness" are not things outside the normal material world. For a materialist, the thing we experience as consciousness is just the complicated electrochemical activity generated inside human, and presumably animal brains - it's something we don't understand yet, and maybe humans aren't smart enough to ever fully understand it - but that's no reason to invoke explanations that rely on immaterial things, which would forever remain beyond the reach of scientific study. Actually there is a problem for materialists as well since consciousness itself is not experienced as a material thing. What this results in is reducing consciousness to neural activity. But it is impossible to align a neural event with a conscious one. We can observe a neural event and observed evidence of conscious states occurring simultaneously, but we cannot observe conscious states objectively, only experience them. So, this is a REAL problem for materialists as well as idealists, or dualists. Materialism AND dualism are both EQUALLY incapable of accounting for the mechanism by which consciousness exists. This is problem because it is the means by which we experience, NOT objects within experience itself. We don't sense or perceive consciousness, we simply ARE conscious.
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Post by tangent on Aug 29, 2018 11:27:26 GMT
We don't sense or perceive consciousness, we simply ARE conscious. Some of us more than others, especially on a Monday morning
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Post by ceptimus on Aug 29, 2018 12:42:50 GMT
We don't sense or perceive consciousness, we simply ARE conscious. You could say the same thing about being alive - we don't perceive being alive, we simply ARE alive. But you don't (I think) find people arguing that materialism AND dualism are both EQUALLY incapable of accounting for the mechanism by which we are alive.
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