Consciousness

[ruby sparks]

As to science, science can never be totally objective, but it can help us understand some things about consciousness that pure subjectivity can't.

As to tricks, hey, maybe your conscious experience is full of them. How would you know? You could be completely fooled.

 

[bilby]

At this point I can only speculate as to what kind of things it might be.

It might be a cellular effect, some effect of cellular activity.

It might be some electrical effect, the effect of an electric current running in a certain pattern, possibly through some kind of biological switches. This is probably the most likely answer IMO. Since we can see with computer chips what kinds of things can be done by running current through switches.

It might be a magnetic effect of some kind, possibly involving the flow of electric current and the flow of iron in the blood.

It might be some unknown quantum effect.

It might be some other effect I am not even considering.

It might be a combination of two or more effects.

I can only speculate at this point what it might be. I have no idea what it is objectively.

So, would it be fair to say that you are at least inclined to think of it as arising out of what we might call 'physical' causes?

It's not a trick question. I'm not about to jump down your neck if you say yes.

Consciousness is complicated. I don't think anyone can fully explain it, not yet anyways. Maybe never.

"Physical" just means we know about it. There is evidence for it's existence.

It is possible there are things we don't know about yet. It is possible us humans here on our little planet have not been exposed to all the evidence yet. There may be evidence we don't even see as evidence now. Like possibly some quantum effect that is necessary for the generation of consciousness.

Actually, that's not possible. 'We' - as in people who have actually bothered to learn the physics - know that there are no such effects that are significant at large enough scales to influence neural activity. The unknown is limited to large scales (eg galaxies) and high energies (eg Higgs Bosons). No unknown quantum effects can exist at human scales with energies small enough to avoid that human catching fire, or being blasted into plasma.

You might be right; but only to the extent that all of quantum theory might be wrong. (Hint - it isn't).

But thanks for the woo. No twenty first century conversation is complete without an ignoramus trying to support nonsense by reference to 'quantum', and by claiming that, because they don't know, we don't know, so anything goes.

It's shit logic; but then, that appears to be your forte.

 

[untermensche]

Are you claiming all quantum effects occur on a measurable scale?

In the brain?

Nonsense!!!

Prove it. I heard your claim and it is worthless.

 

[bilby]

Are you claiming all quantum effects occur on a measurable scale?

No. Quite the reverse; I am claiming that quantum effects become insignificant at measurable scales in the brain, and are therefore irrelevant to consciousness, which must be acting at the (vastly larger) scale of neurons.

In the brain?

Nonsense!!!

I agree, but this MORON seems to have other ideas:

There may be evidence we don't even see as evidence now. Like possibly some quantum effect that is necessary for the generation of consciousness.

Prove it. I heard your claim and it is worthless.

You need to get your hearing checked out; It's almost a poor as your thinking.

 

[untermensche]

No. Quite the reverse; I am claiming that quantum effects become insignificant at measurable scales in the brain,

Any scale could be amplified.

You're talking nonsense.

 

[bilby]

No. Quite the reverse; I am claiming that quantum effects become insignificant at measurable scales in the brain,

Any scale could be amplified.

A large pool of Nobel prize winning physicists who spent their entire lives working on the Renormalization Group, such as Ken Wilson, disagree with you.

It is demonstrably possible to detail all of the behaviours of a large scale system without requiring a detailed understanding of the behaviours of the smaller scale entities that comprise it.

That's why it was possible for people to do physics before the 20th century - Newton had no idea about quantum theory, but was nevertheless able to derive laws and theories that worked - they produced answers that were accurate at the scales he was working at.

You're talking nonsense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

 

[untermensche]

A large pool of Nobel prize winning physicists who spent their entire lives working on the Renormalization Group, such as Ken Wilson, disagree with you.

That link says nothing of the kind. Show me the discussion of the possible quantum effects of the matter that makes up the brain.

You are clueless.

 

[untermensche]

At 1:55:50 Freeman Dyson says the following.

"I'd like to come back to this issue of "wonder tissue". The fact is in physics we are dealing with "wonder tissue" all the time. Ordinary matter behaves in very counter-intuitive ways when you look at it carefully....It would be strange in a way if our central nervous systems didn't in fact make some use of these very strange properties of matter. In that sense I think it is not unreasonable that Quantum Mechanics has something to do with it. Not that anybody has a model yet for a quantum mechanical neuron."

This is what a real physicist thinks about the idea of quantum effects involved in the activity of the brain.

 

[bilby]

A large pool of Nobel prize winning physicists who spent their entire lives working on the Renormalization Group, such as Ken Wilson, disagree with you.

That link says nothing of the kind. Show me the discussion of the possible quantum effects of the matter that makes up the brain.

Your inability to comprehend the material does not mean that it doesn't say what it actually says. It applies to ALL physical systems; of course it doesn't bother to discuss the matter than makes up the brain - that is the same as all the other matter in the universe.

You are clueless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

 

[untermensche]

Me and Freeman Dyson think you're nuts.

 

[ruby sparks]

As I said, what consciousness 'is' and how it arises and from where or what is not fully known, yet. Imo, it is possible that there is some ingredient, perhaps quantum, or if not that then perhaps something else.

However, it can still be studied. We can know more about it. Imagine if a lump of something landed on earth from outer space. We might not know what it is, but we can weigh it, heat it, try to dissolve it, compare it to other stuff, see if it floats, how hard it is, etc etc. We can know a lot about it and even say a lot about what it's not.

In the same way we can investigate consciousness without having to know the final answer to 'what it is'.

And maybe that's what we should stick to here, because I doubt if any of us is going to discover the final explanation.

Another possible route is to hypothesise, so we could say, for example, if there is some quantum ingredient, what would this mean for consciousness? What would something like consciousness be like it this were the case? Would quantum effects be able to give free will? Etc.

At the moment, some things we can say with some confidence is that consciousness arises from or as a result of brain activity, that it varies in experienced intensity and can be absent or present, that it is only involved in some bodily activities and not others, and so on and so on.

The key bone of contention here, for Uttermensche, is substance dualism. So, we could ask, if substance dualism were true, what would that add to what we can know about consciousness? How does substance dualism explain consciousness, where it comes from, what constraints it might have, etc etc.

In a nutshell, so far, uttermensche is critiquing the non-substance-dualism case. I would be interested to see a case for substance dualism in order to explore how well it matches the things we can study about consciousness.

 

[untermensche]

As I said, what consciousness 'is' and how it arises and from where or what is not fully known, yet. Imo, it is possible that there is some ingredient, perhaps quantum, perhaps something else.

However, it can still be studied. We can know more about it. Imagine if a lump of something landed on earth from outer space. We might not know what it is, but we can weigh it, heat it, try to dissolve it, compare it to other stuff, see if it floats, how hard it is, etc etc. We can know a lot about it and even say a lot about what it's not.

In the same way we can investigate consciousness without having to know the final answer to 'what it is'.

And maybe that's what we should stick to here, because I doubt if any of us is going to discover the final explanation.

I agree mostly but we know beyond doubt what consciousness is subjectively.

We know beyond doubt that the experience is you do "something" with your mind and your arm moves.

The experience is not the arm just moves like a reflex.

We know the difference between the leg jumping because the patella reflex was triggered and moving the leg somehow with the mind.

And those who claim the brain does it all and tricks the mind into thinking the mind is initiating the action are just making stories up. They should not be taken seriously. They do not have an objective understanding of any aspect of consciousness.

 

[ruby sparks]

As I said, what consciousness 'is' and how it arises and from where or what is not fully known, yet. Imo, it is possible that there is some ingredient, perhaps quantum, perhaps something else.

However, it can still be studied. We can know more about it. Imagine if a lump of something landed on earth from outer space. We might not know what it is, but we can weigh it, heat it, try to dissolve it, compare it to other stuff, see if it floats, how hard it is, etc etc. We can know a lot about it and even say a lot about what it's not.

In the same way we can investigate consciousness without having to know the final answer to 'what it is'.

And maybe that's what we should stick to here, because I doubt if any of us is going to discover the final explanation.

I agree mostly but we know beyond doubt what consciousness is subjectively.

We know beyond doubt that the experience is you do "something" with your mind and your arm moves.

The experience is not the arm just moves like a reflex.

We know the difference between the leg jumping because the patella reflex was triggered and moving the leg somehow with the mind.

And those who claim the brain does it all and tricks the mind into thinking the mind is initiating the action are just making stories up. They should not be taken seriously. They do not have an objective understanding of any aspect of consciousness.

Sorry. I added to my post while you were writing.

We know what it feels like, but we might be being fooled as to certain aspects of it. Psychological illusions are commonplace.

As to moving your arm, yes, on those occasions when my arm moves, a minority of them might be consciously intended, or feel like they were. These times likely involve a mixture on conscious and non-conscious processes.

It is not true to say that scientists do not have any objective understanding of any aspect of consciousness.

As to the brain doing it all, this is the key thing for you, I believe. So we should do that. What, to you, is the mind, and how does it interact with the brain? Sell me your alternative.

 

[untermensche]

We know what it feels like, but we might be being fooled as to certain aspects of it. Psychological illusions are commonplace.

No they are not.

We are not very often lost because of some illusion. They do happen rarely.

There is no reason to think we are being tricked in some way.

It is the same experience over and over with no other experience.

This "trick" hypothesis is laziness and not much else. It is simply wishing to have an answer even if there is no evidence for one.

It is not true to say that scientists do not have any objective understanding of any aspect of consciousness.

Nobody knows what it is objectively. An electrical effect? A quantum effect?

You can't know the aspects of something until you know what it is.

 

[ruby sparks]

ou can't know the aspects of something until you know what it is.

Yes you can. Same as you can measure the speed of an unidentified object in the sky or in space. That's just a simple example. There are aspects of consciousness which can be studied.

If we say there isn't then we might as well just wave our hands in the air and say nothing.

I think I get why you disparage science on this, because by and large your sort of dualism is not popular among scientists generally. But I think it would be going too far to say that the topic is unamenable to investigation entirely.

So for example, we can say that consciousness appears to be correlated closely with levels of brain activity. That's not something you could say from just sitting at home on the sofa thinking about the subjective experience, because you can't measure the levels of your own brain activity.

 

[untermensche]

ou can't know the aspects of something until you know what it is.

Yes you can. Same as you can measure the speed of an unidentified object in the sky or in space.

You know it is moving not still. That's all you need to measure speed.

That's like knowing the difference between a living and a dead parrot.

What is consciousness? Not what is it correlated to in terms of the whole system, we know when the system dies it is gone, what is it?

 

[ruby sparks]

ou can't know the aspects of something until you know what it is.

Yes you can. Same as you can measure the speed of an unidentified object in the sky or in space.

You know it is moving not still. That's all you need to measure speed.

That's like knowing the difference between a living and a dead parrot.

What is consciousness? Not what is it correlated to in terms of the whole system, we know when the system dies it is gone, what is it?

That was just a small example to illustrate the principle, that consciousness can be studied, even if it does not mean that we can or at least have yet gotten to a full explanation. There are many things we can examine about consciousness. Speed is just one of them.

And you'll have to stop asking me what consciousness is, because I don't know.

 

[untermensche]

You know it is moving not still. That's all you need to measure speed.

That's like knowing the difference between a living and a dead parrot.

What is consciousness? Not what is it correlated to in terms of the whole system, we know when the system dies it is gone, what is it?

That was just a small example to illustrate the principle, that consciousness can be studied, even if it does not mean that we can or at least have yet gotten to a full explanation. There are many things we can examine about consciousness. Speed is just one of them.

And you'll have to stop asking me what consciousness is, because I don't know.

There's a point to the question.

Suppose consciousness arises because of some quantum effect or even some electrical effect, or maybe a combination, of matter arranged like a brain?

What could we say about it objectively without even knowing which?

We can look at a brain functioning. But if we don't know what consciousness is what can we say about any of it? We can fiddle with it, shake it and kick it and see what happens.

But none of that, like shaking a television, will tell you what it is or how it functions.

And these studies that focus on activity in one tiny little part of brain and ignore all the rest as if it means nothing are insane.

 

[ruby sparks]

You know it is moving not still. That's all you need to measure speed.

That's like knowing the difference between a living and a dead parrot.

What is consciousness? Not what is it correlated to in terms of the whole system, we know when the system dies it is gone, what is it?

That was just a small example to illustrate the principle, that consciousness can be studied, even if it does not mean that we can or at least have yet gotten to a full explanation. There are many things we can examine about consciousness. Speed is just one of them.

And you'll have to stop asking me what consciousness is, because I don't know.

There's a point to the question.

Suppose consciousness arises because of some quantum effect or even some electrical effect, or maybe a combination, of matter arranged like a brain?

What could we say about it objectively without even knowing which?

We can look at a brain functioning. But if we don't know what consciousness is what can we say about any of it? We can fiddle with it, shake it and kick it and see what happens.

But none of that, like shaking a television, will tell you what it is or how it functions.

And these studies that focus on activity in one tiny little part of brain and ignore all the rest as if it means nothing are insane.

I've said it several times now, I think you underestimate what we can investigate about consciousness. I don't know how much you've read on the subject. There is some pretty amazing science out there.




ETA: it's already widely accepted that it probably arises, at least in part, from electrical effects. If you didn't know that, I'm wondering how much you've actually studied about this.

 

[untermensche]

I've said it several times now, I think you underestimate what we can investigate about consciousness. I don't know how much you've read on the subject. There is some pretty amazing science out there.

Suppose we want to study it objectively.

What are we studying?

What is consciousness objectively?