Philosophy Now Forum

Terrapin Station wrote:

Wyman wrote:I'm sorry I wasn't very clear and jumped in on and ongoing conversation. I mean that I disagree with the notion that your arguments for your position are persuasive.

Well, if you'd asked me if I had any expectations of any of my comments being persuasive, so that people who didn't previously agree with my views would start to share my views, I'd definitrely say "No." (And that's what I'd always say when asked that.)

Although that would largely be a symptom of my views about psychological facts, about typical interpersonal behavior on the Internet, and so on.

The concept of a non-material "spirit" inside a material body is a religious belief with no grounds on factual evidence. People have consciousness because they have brains . . .

CL glibly dismisses 'spirits' in favor of 'consciousness,' as if the latter, because it is a currently acceptable term in contemporary science, is less ambiguous and problematic than 'spirits.' He packs all the dirty laundry in that one term hoping no one asks him to unpack it.

The idea that consciousness is ambiguous or problematic strikes me as quite bizarre, and it makes me wonder what the person's mind must be like, if it is like anything--maybe they're really a robot or something--who finds it ambigous and/or problematic. "Spirits" on the other hand is a vague fantasy term, unless the person is simply using it as a synonym for "consciousness" or something like that.

'Consciousness' is a vague term, fantasy or otherwise, so I don't see the harm in calling the 'mind' a spirit or ghost and 'consciousness' a state of that ghost - happy ghost, sad ghost, conscious ghost, sleeping ghost, etc.. I am inclined to maintain a materialistic view that does see the body as more or less a robot, in that there is no such thing as mind and consciousness. I don't see the middle ground that you and CL and many others are always trying to tread - or, I don't see why it is that you think such a view is so different from the OP. Consciousness is 'problematic' because it is difficult, if not impossible, to explain in a materialistic framework - or rather, explain away. Hence, the habit of positing 'minds' to fill that explanatory gap, as they say.

ypc wrote:Dear Forum readers...

i have attempted disprove the modern teaching of body being the self in this audio lecture. i was hoping that some of you can try to find some flaws in my arguments. I teach yoga philosophy classes and nobody ever challenges these points. A healthy challenge is good because it forces me to go deeper in my understanding. Actually this is not a theory to me...what i am saying i know to be true...its just that i want to communicate it in an irrefutable way, and possibly there are some angles that i have not seen that leave me open to criticism. thank you for your time

https://soundcloud.com/user-255793295-8 ... f-the-self

"The Self" is not a scientific object of enquiry.

Wyman wrote:'Consciousness' is a vague term, fantasy or otherwise, so I don't see the harm in calling the 'mind' a spirit or ghost and 'consciousness' a state of that ghost - happy ghost, sad ghost, conscious ghost, sleeping ghost, etc.. I am inclined to maintain a materialistic view that does see the body as more or less a robot, in that there is no such thing as mind and consciousness. I don't see the middle ground that you and CL and many others are always trying to tread - or, I don't see why it is that you think such a view is so different from the OP. Consciousness is 'problematic' because it is difficult, if not impossible, to explain in a materialistic framework - or rather, explain away. Hence, the habit of positing 'minds' to fill that explanatory gap, as they say.

Again, I was saying that if you simply call consciousness "spirit" or whatever, then that's not mysterious, since consciousness isn't mysterious.

Consciousness doesn't seem difficult to explain at all to me. It's just a property of certain materials. It's no more a problem to explain than any property of any material.

The difference between my view and the view in the original post of this thread is that the original post of this thread isn't taking consciousness to simply be a property of particular material.

Wyman wrote:

Conde Lucanor wrote:The concept of a non-material "spirit" inside a material body is a religious belief with no grounds on factual evidence. People have consciousness because they have brains.

CL glibly dismisses 'spirits' in favor of 'consciousness,' as if the latter, because it is a currently acceptable term in contemporary science, is less ambiguous and problematic than 'spirits.' He packs all the dirty laundry in that one term hoping no one asks him to unpack it.

No, look again: I didn't just oppose "consciousness" to "spirit". I explicitly stated "a non-material 'spirit' inside a material body" to refer to dualism, after which I presented a view from monistic materialism. You can still call it "spirit" or "consciousness", regardless, it's not disembodied from the brain.

If explanations of the hard problem of consciousness seem inadequate, how much more so is the dualism solution?
The fact that the explanation of consciousness is problematic, does not mean that the idea of soul/body, mind/brain duality is somehow better or validated.
It is for the very reason of the hopelessness of dualism that the hard problem of consciousness exists as a problem.

We are fooling ourselves if we seek such explanatory conclusions. All science at heart is simply describing in ever more detail what we observe about nature. There are no explanations when you peel back the description.

All we can say is that matter in the form of cerebral tissue in a healthy body supplied with stimulus and the vital chemicals of nutrition and oxygen gives rise to consciousness. We can describe the ways in which specific types of experience map out onto the brain, and show that where those specific parts of the brain are damaged, drugged or missing; such predictable consequences appear in the conscious experience. So much so that dualism is more and more ridiculous. But this shall never explain why this occurs the way it does; no more than we can say why matter organises itself the way it does into atoms.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:If explanations of the hard problem of consciousness seem inadequate, how much more so is the dualism solution?
The fact that the explanation of consciousness is problematic, does not mean that the idea of soul/body, mind/brain duality is somehow better or validated.
It is for the very reason of the hopelessness of dualism that the hard problem of consciousness exists as a problem.

We are fooling ourselves if we seek such explanatory conclusions. All science at heart is simply describing in ever more detail what we observe about nature. There are no explanations when you peel back the description.

All we can say is that matter in the form of cerebral tissue in a healthy body supplied with stimulus and the vital chemicals of nutrition and oxygen gives rise to consciousness. We can describe the ways in which specific types of experience map out onto the brain, and show that where those specific parts of the brain are damaged, drugged or missing; such predictable consequences appear in the conscious experience. So much so that dualism is more and more ridiculous. But this shall never explain why this occurs the way it does; no more than we can say why matter organises itself the way it does into atoms.

I think that dualism has wrongly attributed mental phenomena as something that isn't physical. The mind and the body are seen as nonidentical, or made of different substances. That is, a physical substance and a mental substance. I agree with you that science can explain how the brain works according to physical laws, but I am of the opinion that the brain also works according to a different set of physical laws,viz., quantum laws. This has given rise to the appearance that the mind is something different to physical laws.

Ginkgo wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:If explanations of the hard problem of consciousness seem inadequate, how much more so is the dualism solution?
The fact that the explanation of consciousness is problematic, does not mean that the idea of soul/body, mind/brain duality is somehow better or validated.
It is for the very reason of the hopelessness of dualism that the hard problem of consciousness exists as a problem.

We are fooling ourselves if we seek such explanatory conclusions. All science at heart is simply describing in ever more detail what we observe about nature. There are no explanations when you peel back the description.

All we can say is that matter in the form of cerebral tissue in a healthy body supplied with stimulus and the vital chemicals of nutrition and oxygen gives rise to consciousness. We can describe the ways in which specific types of experience map out onto the brain, and show that where those specific parts of the brain are damaged, drugged or missing; such predictable consequences appear in the conscious experience. So much so that dualism is more and more ridiculous. But this shall never explain why this occurs the way it does; no more than we can say why matter organises itself the way it does into atoms.

I think that dualism has wrongly attributed mental phenomena as something that isn't physical. The mind and the body are seen as nonidentical, or made of different substances. That is, a physical substance and a mental substance. I agree with you that science can explain how the brain works according to physical laws, but I am of the opinion that the brain also works according to a different set of physical laws,viz., quantum laws. This has given rise to the appearance that the mind is something different to physical laws.

It seems to me that as we learn more about what we have called QM, we eventually dovetail with "physical laws". As QM is at the periphery of known science, science has offered us what is nothing more than a new dualism in separating Quantum phenomena was traditional causality.
Qm implies physical reality, even if it is not yet deterministically predictable by it. It is perfectly possible that QM simply represents a series of unknown causality. We'll just have to wait and see.

Right now there is no doubt that cerebral matter is the necessary (if not sufficient) cause of consciousness, and altering cerebral effects directly changes the experience of consciousness. And working with that assumption is fruitful where QM is speculative.

Conde Lucanor wrote:

Wyman wrote:

Conde Lucanor wrote:The concept of a non-material "spirit" inside a material body is a religious belief with no grounds on factual evidence. People have consciousness because they have brains.

CL glibly dismisses 'spirits' in favor of 'consciousness,' as if the latter, because it is a currently acceptable term in contemporary science, is less ambiguous and problematic than 'spirits.' He packs all the dirty laundry in that one term hoping no one asks him to unpack it.

No, look again: I didn't just oppose "consciousness" to "spirit". I explicitly stated "a non-material 'spirit' inside a material body" to refer to dualism, after which I presented a view from monistic materialism. You can still call it "spirit" or "consciousness", regardless, it's not disembodied from the brain.

But no one has supplied a meaningful description of consciousness in 'monistic' materialistic terms. There is always an appeal to 'mind' as something different from the brain. And consciousness is described as a state of minds, not brains. They describe the mind as if it is a thing created and supported by the brain, and yet not the brain and so not material.

Wyman wrote: But no one has supplied a meaningful description of consciousness in 'monistic' materialistic terms. There is always an appeal to 'mind' as something different from the brain. And consciousness is described as a state of minds, not brains. They describe the mind as if it is a thing created and supported by the brain, and yet not the brain and so not material.

The mind, or consciousness, is what a human brain does, that is not to limit it exclusively to the human brain, but I don't have much experience with non-human brains.

Wyman wrote:But no one has supplied a meaningful description of consciousness in 'monistic' materialistic terms.

Where is the "meaningful description" of it in dualistic terms, though?

Heck, forget about the mind/body issue for a moment. Where is the meaningful description of what any nonphysical existent would be in the first place?

There is always an appeal to 'mind' as something different from the brain. And consciousness is described as a state of minds, not brains. They describe the mind as if it is a thing created and supported by the brain, and yet not the brain and so not material.

I don't know where you're getting that from. I'm an identity theorist, what used to be called a "central state materialist," and I'm certainly not the only one. We never say anything about the mind being different from the brain. We say that the mind is identical to particular brain states. You're acting as if everyone is an epiphenomenalist.

Wyman wrote:

Conde Lucanor wrote:

Wyman wrote:
CL glibly dismisses 'spirits' in favor of 'consciousness,' as if the latter, because it is a currently acceptable term in contemporary science, is less ambiguous and problematic than 'spirits.' He packs all the dirty laundry in that one term hoping no one asks him to unpack it.

No, look again: I didn't just oppose "consciousness" to "spirit". I explicitly stated "a non-material 'spirit' inside a material body" to refer to dualism, after which I presented a view from monistic materialism. You can still call it "spirit" or "consciousness", regardless, it's not disembodied from the brain.

But no one has supplied a meaningful description of consciousness in 'monistic' materialistic terms. There is always an appeal to 'mind' as something different from the brain. And consciousness is described as a state of minds, not brains. They describe the mind as if it is a thing created and supported by the brain, and yet not the brain and so not material.

That would be the same as saying that seeing is not the same as an eye, and then come up with the idea that they are configured duallistically, being the eye the material support of a non-material vision. Actually seeing is what the eye does and you cannot find them independently, as you cannot find a mind alone, without a brain.

Seems to me that brains don't provide consciousness, they regulate it.

Greta wrote:Seems to me that brains don't provide consciousness, they regulate it.

But if there were no brain and instead just simple reflexes involving the neurons of some sort of spinal cord there would be no consciousness.

Brain/ mind identity means that there is a brain-mind, and this entity can be appreciated as mind and as brain, however it's still the same entity.

Nevertheless brains and their associated chemicals do regulate consciousness but are not alone in this. Other consciousness regulators are endocrine hormones, the wider environment including other people, and accidental lesions of the brain-mind and the body proper.

Ginkgo wrote:
I think that dualism has wrongly attributed mental phenomena as something that isn't physical. The mind and the body are seen as nonidentical, or made of different substances. That is, a physical substance and a mental substance. I agree with you that science can explain how the brain works according to physical laws, but I am of the opinion that the brain also works according to a different set of physical laws,viz., quantum laws. This has given rise to the appearance that the mind is something different to physical laws.

Hobbes' Choice wrote: It seems to me that as we learn more about what we have called QM, we eventually dovetail with "physical laws".

Yes, I think it will eventually.

Hobbes' Choice wrote: As QM is at the periphery of known science, science has offered us what is nothing more than a new dualism in separating Quantum phenomena was traditional causality.

I don't think a quantum explanation for brain states presents us with a new type of dualism

Hobbes' Choice wrote: Qm implies physical reality, even if it is not yet deterministically predictable by it. It is perfectly possible that QM simply represents a series of unknown causality. We'll just have to wait and see.

I agree.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:
Right now there is no doubt that cerebral matter is the necessary (if not sufficient) cause of consciousness, and altering cerebral effects directly changes the experience of consciousness. And working with that assumption is fruitful where QM is speculative.

I agree. I feel as though if we can work out how physical laws work with quantum laws to produce consciousness then we would go along way to unlocking the mystery of consciousness.


I

Belinda wrote:

Greta wrote:Seems to me that brains don't provide consciousness, they regulate it.

But if there were no brain and instead just simple reflexes involving the neurons of some sort of spinal cord there would be no consciousness.

Brain/ mind identity means that there is a brain-mind, and this entity can be appreciated as mind and as brain, however it's still the same entity.

Nevertheless brains and their associated chemicals do regulate consciousness but are not alone in this. Other consciousness regulators are endocrine hormones, the wider environment including other people, and accidental lesions of the brain-mind and the body proper.

Maybe that's just a less sophisticated filter, giving simpler animals a more minimalist POV? Until we have a direct mechanism showing exactly how neuronal signals become a sense of experience, the claim that consciousness is generated by the brain is made on faith, as are other claims.