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On the other hand, as some particularly hardcore determinists might insist, the embarrassment anyone might feel about this -- or, for that matter, anything else -- is merely one more inherent manifestation of the only possible reality.Consciousness has always been a serious embarrassment for those who believe that everything is physical and that physics is the most authoritative account of the material world.
Okay, but there was once a time when, "through the eyes of physics", Einstein's space-time continuum, dark matter, dark energy, quantum mechanics, etc., were not understood to be crucial components factored into whatever, going back to the explanation for the existence of existence itself, reality itself might be.There is, it seems, nothing in matter or energy as seen through the eyes of physics that explains how a part of the material world might become aware of itself and the world surrounding it, as is the case with conscious subjects, such as readers of Philosophy Now. Physicalism cannot account for the emergence of minds from a purely physical reality.
So much more to the point [mine] to what extent are physicalist philosophers [or any other philosophers] able to take their arguments -- their definitions and deductions -- to the scientific community in order to confirm that indeed how they construe the brain functioning is in fact how it does function.Physicalist philosophers often try to tame the conscious mind by reducing it to the locus of functional connections between incoming sensory stimuli and outgoing bodily behaviour. Consciousness then becomes a tapestry of causal pathways passing through the nervous system of the organism.
Again, from my frame of mind [compelled or not], the dilemma revolves more around attempts to discover if the claims being made [by anyone] are in and of themselves wholly determined given the only possible material reality. Even pursuits by the scientific community may well be only what they could ever have been.Given that the links in this causal chain are physical events, most importantly neural discharges, the conscious mind can then be fitted comfortably into the physicalist world picture, so the physicalist claims.
Same thing? Could not the satisfaction and dissatisfaction that philosophers feel [about anything] not in turn just reflect the only possible reality?Quite rightly, this does not satisfy many philosophers.
This reminds me of the arguments that go back and forth in regard to artificial intelligence. Okay, the machines can beat a Grand Master at chess. The "easy" part?" But what about human emotions and psychological states? What about acquiring a sense of humor, an understanding of irony? Or the absence of a physical body, the equivalent of the id, the super-ego, the subconscious and unconscious mind?David Chalmers famously distinguished between ‘the easy’ and ‘the hard’ problems of consciousness. While functionalist stories, he argued, may account for some overt behaviour associated with being conscious, it cannot deal with the experiential (aka phenomenal or subjective) dimensions of consciousness – the ‘what it is like to be’ an entity having awareness. His hard problem is how brain activity can produce conscious awareness at all.
Of course, I'd be particularly interested in "the difference between wakefulness and sleep". And that is because I have yet to come upon argument that explains how the brain itself calls all the shots given our "behaviors" in dreams, whereas when we wake up the brain, what, kicks everything over to the autonomous components?In his most detailed development of the hard/easy distinction, Chalmers’ list of ‘easy’ problems in the philosophy of mind includes: how the brain can discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli; our capacity to describe our mental states; our ability to focus our attention, or deliberately to control our behaviour; how our cognitive systems acquire and integrate information; and the difference between wakefulness and sleep.
Then my part: the distinction between what an experience was like for you and what it was like for others. Given the same set of circumstances. The part that, in regard to value judgments, I root existentially in dasein.Yet for me, understanding all these aspects of consciousness is as hard as explaining experience. Attention, deliberation about one’s behaviour, and wakefulness, are also things about which we can ask the question, “What is it like?”
Not sure what he means by this. How is this applicable to our behaviors in dreams? How is it applicable in your dreams?Likewise dream-filled sleep. Indeed, if these features did not feel like anything – if there was nothing it was like to experience them – they would not be what they’re supposed to be.
Again, if some renditions of hard determinism are true, then what we think, what we feel, what we say and what we do in every single experience that we have from the cradle to the grave is necessarily embedded in the only possible reality. Then all of the "metaphysical" imponderables going back to how matter itself evolved into biological life.What’s more, difficult questions would remain about why they at least seem to feel like something. ‘Seeming to feel like’ is no more amenable to a physicalist explanation than ‘feeling like’, as seeming also presupposes experience.
Of course, that's the point I come back to over and again: that philosophers will tell you what they think about this. On the other hand, haven't philosophers been telling us what they think is going on when the brain thinks about thinking about things like this now for literally thousands of years?Be that as it may [above], most philosophers think that the phenomenal, or quality of sensation, of ‘what-it-is-like’ consciousness – qualia, such as the smell of cheese, the sight of red, and the feeling of pain – present an especial challenge to physicalism.
Okay, the libertarians among us might argue, "somehow" when matter evolved into biological life here on Earth, that life "somehow" evolved into us and we "acquired" free will. Yet how is that not but another "leap of faith" for philosophers?There is nothing in neural activity – which physically speaking is simply the passage of ions through semi-permeable membranes – that accounts for these experiences. After all, similar neural activity in the spinal cord, the cerebellum, and most of the cerebral cortex, is not associated with consciousness.
"Consciousness has always been a serious embarrassment for those who believe that everything is physical and that physics is the most authoritative account of the material world. There is, it seems, nothing in matter or energy as seen through the eyes of physics that explains how a part of the material world might become aware of itself and the world surrounding it, as is the case with conscious subjects, such as readers of Philosophy Now. Physicalism cannot account for the emergence of minds from a purely physical reality." — Raymond TallisPhilosophy Now wrote: ↑Wed May 08, 2024 9:14 pm Raymond Tallis sees through a physicalist confusion.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/161/Th ... llusionism
"Compare now what the neuroscientist can tell us about the brain, and what she can do with that knowledge, with what the dualist can tell us about spiritual substance, and what he can do with those assumptions. Can the dualist tell us anything about the internal constitution of mind-stuff? Of the nonmaterial elements that make it up? Of the nonphysical laws that govern their behavior? Of the mind's structural connections with the body? Of the manner of the mind's operations? Can he explain human capacities and pathologies in terms of its structures and defects? The fact is, the dualist can do none of these things because no detailed theory of mind-stuff has ever even be formulated. Compared to the rich resources and the explanatory successes of current materialism, dualism is not so much a theory of mind as it is an empty space waiting for a genuine theory of mind to be put in it.
(Churchland, Paul M. Matter and Consciousness. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. p. 31)
"If the rivals of materialism have any advantage it must be because there are some residual phenomena which they can explain better. Now, most of the phenomena which the supernaturalist throws in the naturalist's teeth are such as the supernaturalist himself has never explained."
(Williams, Donald Cary. "Naturalism and the Nature of Things." In Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays, 212-238. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1966. p. 234)
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"The candid student, in fine, cannot be blamed if he concludes that the only reason that physical realism [= materialism/physicalism—added] seems vulnerable at all is that it explains so much more so much better than other philosophies that the imperfections of its explanations are noticeable. As solipsism gains undeserved credit by being so preposterous that its bare possibility looks like evidence in its favor, so materialism suffers by having so few difficulties that one difficulty more or less makes a difference. A blasé public does not expect idealisms and dualisms to explain anything. With innocent cynicism, we appreciate that these philosophies were designed for a different purpose and are doing all that can be expected in a logical way if they avoid contradicting themselves and the obvious facts of experience. The physical realist seems constantly riding for a fall because he is on the only horse really entered in the chase.
It is most excellent testimony to the high confirmedness of physical realism that so many of its competitors renounce confirmation as a criterion. It is a tribute to its power of explaining the appearances that its competitors call it a philosophy of appearances (for we have seen that it is not a philosophy of appearances in any other sense), and that the persons who hate it are preeminently the persons who hate understanding, the mystery lovers. It is a tribute to the scientific advantage of materialism that the application of scientific method in philosophy is so often decried as a begging of the question in its favor and that materialism is called a presupposition of scientific method or scientific method is alleged to be limited to material reality. The logic of science has in sooth no presuppositions and no limitations. It is analytic and a priori, like 'Eggs are eggs', and inexorably germane to any possible world, monistic or dualistic, theistic or atheistic, chaos or cosmos. The hand-in-glove conformity of physical realism and scientific method is no logically preestablished harmony but the empirical fit of a beautifully concordant hypothesis with the facts.
Physical realism is not a foregone conclusion, but it is so lucid and probable that to defend it is, in this day, to defend integrity and understanding. To be loyal to it is to be loyal to philosophy, as to be loyal to philosophy is to be loyal to knowledge and to life. Materialism has often been patronized as a naive and childish philosophy, and this judgment of it is less unjust than most. Materialism is the philosophy of the preschool child as of a pre-Socratic and pre-Sophistic culture. It is the philosophy of limpid minds concerned only to know what most likely is actually the case, not yet distraught by the desire to turn ideation to the uses of compensation, obfuscation, or denial.
For us in America today the contrast between the high-hearted metaphysics of naturalism and all the fine evasions of obscurantism and agnosticism may be literally of epochal importance. The culture of America, by reason of its unique provenance, may choose either to be old or to be young, to be Alexandrian or to be Milesian. Whether we are thus at the end of a career or the beginning of one will in large part depend upon whether our citizens in this century learn their lessons from mystic evangels who would purge us of scientific understanding, from resigned sophisticates who set up languages and toy with thoughts of future possible sensations, or from philosophers who explore the nature of things."
(Williams, Donald Cary. "Naturalism and the Nature of Things." In Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays, 212-238. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1966. pp. 237-8)
Cool.iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed May 08, 2024 9:59 pm Of late, I have been experiencing mind games that truly baffle me. I use THC gummies to help me fall asleep.
About an hour or so after taking them, while lying in bed, the drug takes effect. Then for an hour or so I get these "images" in my head. Sort of half way between sober and stoned. A dream-like experience but not really a dream at all.
After a few days, I began to note this: that the awake me was actually able modify the "dreams", exercising some measure of control.
If? Sure, when you start there almost anything is possible.seeds wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2024 6:36 pmCool.iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed May 08, 2024 9:59 pm Of late, I have been experiencing mind games that truly baffle me. I use THC gummies to help me fall asleep.
About an hour or so after taking them, while lying in bed, the drug takes effect. Then for an hour or so I get these "images" in my head. Sort of half way between sober and stoned. A dream-like experience but not really a dream at all.
After a few days, I began to note this: that the awake me was actually able modify the "dreams", exercising some measure of control.
Now, how about allowing that to be a "foot in the door" that leads to the understanding that if it is indeed possible that life continues on after the death of the body,...
...and that if you (or, more specifically, your inner "I Am-ness") could somehow gain full awareness and full control of those dream substances, along with enough time (say, billions of years),...
...then it is plausible that at some point in the infinite future, you would eventually be able to willfully shape those substances into the same sort of stable reality that you see when you direct your consciousness outward into this universe.
Furthermore, say at some point in the infinite future you become so good at shaping your own personal dream substances into stable manifestations of "reality" that you are able to cause certain portions of it to acquire self-awareness (as in separate minds) in precisely the same way that you yourself acquired self-awareness (and your own separate mind), billions of years earlier in this universe.
In which case, what do you suppose those newly awakened beings/minds...
(again, beings created from your own dream substances)
...would discover as they tried to dissect and analyze the fabric of the reality in which they are suspended?
They would discover through something they call "quantum physics" that their entire "material" reality is created from an infinitely malleable substance that is capable of being formed into absolutely anything "imaginable."
They (or at least the more awake among them) would deduce that the fundamental and foundational substance from which all matter is created (including that of their own bodies and brains),...
...seems to be nothing more than an extremely advanced and highly ordered version of the same fundamental substance from which their own thoughts and dreams are created.
In other words, what I am suggesting is that the above scenario of an "I Am-ness" acquiring, again, full awareness and full control over its mental substances has already been achieved sometime in the infinite depths of past eternity, and that the manifestation of this universe is an example of what that control (combined with eternal life) can yield.
By realizing that your inner "I Am-ness" is capable of exercising a "measure of control" over an inner dimension of reality that, when dreaming, can sometimes seem almost as "real" as this outer dimension of reality,...
...you have thus, again, placed your foot inside a very important door.
In which case, I suggest that you keep knocking and pushing on that door and try not to let old assumptions and skepticisms get in the way of pursuing what may lie on the other side of that door.
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You, of course, are not obligated to believe any of this.iambiguous wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2024 9:50 pm If? Sure, when you start there almost anything is possible.
If not though?...
...I'm most interested, however, not in what others here [including myself] believe about this, but what they are able to demonstrate that all rational men and women are [philosophically or otherwise] obligated to believe in turn.
What does it mean to be "physical"? Sure, Dualism is not a valid position and neither is a "physical" monist position for the reasons being described in this article because one still has to account for the mind, illusion or not.Consciousness has always been a serious embarrassment for those who believe that everything is physical and that physics is the most authoritative account of the material world. There is, it seems, nothing in matter or energy as seen through the eyes of physics that explains how a part of the material world might become aware of itself and the world surrounding it, as is the case with conscious subjects, such as readers of Philosophy Now. Physicalism cannot account for the emergence of minds from a purely physical reality.
Exactly. Even the study of neurology requires conscious experience. All descriptions of the brain and it's neurons and their activities are visual descriptions. Observations are made, hypotheses proposed and then tested with more observations. Science itself is the act of categorizing ones observations (conscious experiences) to be able to make predictions of future observations (conscious experiences).Chalmers’ list of ‘easy’ problems in the philosophy of mind includes: how the brain can discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli; our capacity to describe our mental states; our ability to focus our attention, or deliberately to control our behaviour; how our cognitive systems acquire and integrate information; and the difference between wakefulness and sleep. Yet for me, understanding all these aspects of consciousness is as hard as explaining experience. Attention, deliberation about one’s behaviour, and wakefulness, are also things about which we can ask the question, “What is it like?” Likewise dream-filled sleep. Indeed, if these features did not feel like anything – if there was nothing it was like to experience them – they would not be what they’re supposed to be. What’s more, difficult questions would remain about why they at least seem to feel like something. ‘Seeming to feel like’ is no more amenable to a physicalist explanation than ‘feeling like’, as seeming also presupposes experience.
Agreed. Even though I know that a mirage is not a real puddle of water on the ground I still experience the "illusion". The cause of the "illusion" is explained as a product of the behavior of light and it's interaction with our eye-brain system. The causes of a mirage aren't waved away without some explanation as to how or why it appears in the first place. So why would describing the mind as an illusion be any different?There is an obvious objection to illusionism. How can I be wrong about the existence of something for which I have inescapable evidence? Of course, I can be mistaken as to the existence of something that I believe is out there because of my experiences: I may incorrectly think I have seen a red apple. Or I may incorrectly classify it as a plum. I cannot, however, be mistaken that I have had an experience of a colour (even though I might misname it because I have a poor grasp of colour terminology).
To me, the purpose of consciousness is learning. Consciousness is basically a sensory feedback loop where we make an observation, adapt our behavior, observe the effects of our behavior and then repeat until we become proficient. This is how we learn to ride a bike, drive a car, use a computer, etc. Once we become proficient we no longer need to devote conscious effort to the task. We can automate the tasks of riding a bike and driving a car and focus on other matters, like what we will have for dinner tonight or what you will talk about with your friends later in the day, etc.It is, however, far from clear why brain mechanisms should enter awareness at all. What purpose does consciousness serve? Most organic and all artefactual mechanisms proceed without being made aware of themselves. Granted that the clever things that go on in computers are, for we who use them, handily reduced to icons, just as Dennett notes – but that reduction is not for the benefit of the computer, but for the (conscious) user for whom the computer is simply a tool to support a certain range of activities. This is hardly analogous to our minds’ relationship to our brains.
Click.seeds wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2024 1:02 amYou, of course, are not obligated to believe any of this.iambiguous wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2024 9:50 pm If? Sure, when you start there almost anything is possible.
If not though?...
...I'm most interested, however, not in what others here [including myself] believe about this, but what they are able to demonstrate that all rational men and women are [philosophically or otherwise] obligated to believe in turn.
The bare minimum of what I am shooting for is for you to at least be open-minded to the fact that I am merely trying to give you a tentative insight into what God might possibly be.
Okay, but that frame of mind was brought about by the THC. In fact, back in the day when I had access to LSD...were all of these at times truly bizarre experiences also "God given"?
Okay, but the truly hardcore materialists believe you are suggesting only that which your brain, wholly in sync with the laws of matter, compels you to suggest. The part where they suggest free will is but a psychological illusion.
Believe me, if, after I am dead, my mind is still around at all, that's better than oblivion, right?seeds wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2024 1:02 amYou insist that the veracity of these ideas must somehow be "demonstrated" to you.
Well, from my perspective, there are only two ways in which my theory could be demonstrated to you.
One way is if you were to die and awaken into full consciousness and thus discover the full potential of your mind.
Look, I accept the fact that, given free will, those other than me have had personal experiences with God. Assuming of course that is not just one of many mental "conditions".seeds wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2024 1:02 amAnd the other way is for God to directly impart these ideas to you in the same way they were imparted to me in my "Burning Bush-like" encounter with God that I painstakingly described in this thread...
viewtopic.php?t=41452
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Information is also an abstraction, just like mathematics.Trajk Logik wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2024 3:20 pm Some physicalists propose that reality is simply a relation of mathematics, or that mathematics is fundamental. But mathematics is an abstraction.
In my opinion, reality is not physical or mental. It is informational. Information is fundamental.
