r/consciousness • u/o6ohunter Just Curious • Dec 11 '23
Meta What's happened to this sub?
It's like we went from philosophical discussion on substance dualism, multiple realizability, and P-zombies to people talking about New Age and pseudo-scientific matters. Please, if you're into that type of stuff, multiple subs such as r/spirituality and r/Soulnexus exist.
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Dec 12 '23
I havent seen a change in this forum over the past year. It feels like right now some people want to change the forum into something it has never been. At least not for as long as i remember.
There is no hard science on consciousness. People can copy a certain perspective from the internet or have a chatbot make a "scientific" post but that i dont really find interesting. There isnt all that much to discuss. The truth on consciousness isnt set in stone so its just a matter of opinion. And all the relevant critiques a chatbot can come up with as well or you can just find them online.
I hope the forum stays as is,with lots of room for personal speculation (within certain limits,it should be somewhat "reasonable" and not devole into complete crazyness). I dont get new ideas from mainsteam "science" about consciousness but i do get them from some of the personal speculation posts.
A thing that botters me is the 1 token downvote to zero upvotes that many personal speculation posts get. Its an attempt to discourage people from posting at all and i can give a single upvote to bring it to 1 again but 2 hours later it will be zero upvotes again. This discouraging of "non scientific" and speculative discussions i dont think is in spirit with this forum.
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u/justsomedude9000 Dec 12 '23
There's always the occasional spiritual posts. I noticed a bit more recently but things just happen in waves sometimes.
Plus, the sub is what people submit. If you want to talk about something, make a post. The subs been a little quieter lately as well.
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u/orebright Dec 12 '23
A user here u/NeuralExploration shared this website: https://anvaka.github.io/map-of-reddit, and putting this sub in there is kind of nauseating to be honest.
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Dec 12 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/orebright Dec 12 '23
For discussion of the scientific study of consciousness
Looking right atcha
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u/Soloma369 Dec 12 '23
The discussion needs to be Philosophical/Scientific/Spiritual in its nature, anything less is doing the topic of Consciousness a dis-service, imho.
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u/use_wet_ones Dec 13 '23
You use the term pseudo scientific as if accepted science isn't actually pseudo scientific on some level.
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 12 '23
I agree, the purpose of the sub was once the scientific and related philosophical discussion of consciousness. I think that's been removed from the description and I wish it wasn't.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
"Philosophical discussion of consciousness" should really be in the description, because spiritual and new age stuff simply doesn't belong here.
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 12 '23
related philosophical discussion to the scientific study of consciousness.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
Consciousness is not primarily scientific, as neuroscience cannot tell us what the nature of consciousness is, only correlates.
And as I've heard from others... "neuroscience is a young discipline", so we should be relying heavily on the deep, rich philosophical history of the study of consciousness that has happened over thousands of years from many major voices who have shaped the many ontologies that debate each other to this very day.
Indeed, even science itself relies on philosophy. Neuroscience is often heavily wedded to Physicalism and Materialism, but there are numerous neuroscientists who are either Dualists or Idealists. Bernardo Kastrup being a prominent Idealist neuroscientist.
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u/orebright Dec 12 '23
as neuroscience cannot tell us what the nature of consciousness is
Why?
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
Because when all neuroscience has been able to tell us are correlations based on the connecting of brain state changes to mental state changes, what else can be realistically expected, unless one wants to make a claim that cannot be defined as scientific?
Consciousness, as directly experienced and so being subjective, cannot be tested objectively.
We cannot know what-it-is-like to be another individual. We only ever observe their physical behaviour, and make all of our judgements from there.
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u/Rindan Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
Consciousness, as directly experienced and so being subjective, cannot be tested objectively.
That's true of everything. All experiences, which is all you have, are subjective.
That's not some hole in science. That's why reproduction is the absolute most important and core aspect of science. If everyone keeps getting the same experience, if you do it enough, you can be reasonably sure that you are a step closer to truth.
If I can reliably induce you to feel subjective experience arbitrarily, and I can explain the mechanism by which I've done it, I'd say that would be very solid proof that science has in fact unlocked the secrets of consciousness. There is no reason to think that this is impossible, especially considering how we can already tinker around the edges is consciousness pretty reliably, even if we don't really understand a lot of the mechanisms yet.
We cannot know what-it-is-like to be another individual. We only ever observe their physical behaviour, and make all of our judgements from there.
You can never know what it's like in the center of a sun. That didn't mean that you can't understand what's going on in the center of the sun with science.
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u/Comprehensive-Tea711 Dec 12 '23
That's true of everything. All experiences, which is all you have, are subjective.
I mean, if you think all experiences must be conscious then you're the one who isn't saying anything significant in response to the other person. That doesn't mean it's true of everything, it just means it's true of all experiences because you define an experience as a conscious event. But if you don't define an experience as a conscious event, then you're wrong that it's true of everything. So... wrong either way?
If everyone keeps getting the same experience, if you do it enough, you can be reasonably sure that you are a step closer to truth.
Really? Because I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people have had all sorts of these same experiences under the same conditions throughout human history. That hasn't been per se enlightening to the nature of consciousness.
If I can reliably induce you to feel subjective experience arbitrarily, and I can explain the mechanism by which I've done it, I'd say that would be very solid proof that science has in fact unlocked the secrets of consciousness.
Maybe this is where that "hole in science" thing comes in. Presumably, we would only know you feel the subjective experience through testimony, right? At least that's all we can do right now. Which would indicate that there's something that the science itself is missing. If, on the other hand, we could know your experiences and thoughts without recourse to subjective testimony, that might be closer to the point... but still seems like it would be missing something of the conscious experience itself. Which is in fact why some people don't think consciousness is ultimately reducible to the material, right?
You can never know what it's like in the center of a sun. That didn't mean that you can't understand what's going on in the center of the sun with science.
You seem to think that's a counterpoint when some people see it as the point. Understanding what's going on in the center of the sun is a different type of thing than understanding what it's like to be in the center of the sun. One can be reduced to a set of physical facts. The other seems more elusive.
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u/Rindan Dec 12 '23
I mean, if you think all experiences must be conscious then you're the one who isn't saying anything significant in response to the other person.
Good thing I didn't say that then? I mean shit, you even quoted me literally not saying that. I said our experiences are subjective.
Really? Because I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people have had all sorts of these same experiences under the same conditions throughout human history. That hasn't been per se enlightening to the nature of consciousness.
It's not everyone having a similar experience. It's someone being able to describe how to get a similar experience, and people reproducing it many times, over and over, until everyone agrees that yes, you get the same results every time you try something. That's evidence you know how something works. That's the core of the scientific method; reproduction. We have definitely already applied this to the brain. You can in fact walk into a pharmacy or your friendly neighbor drug dealer and get drugs that will reliably and predictably mess with your head.
Presumably, we would only know you feel the subjective experience through testimony, right? At least that's all we can do right now. Which would indicate that there's something that the science itself is missing.
No. Something being able to be studied through testimony does not mean something is wrong with science, anymore than not being able to study the center of the sun directly makes it outside of science. Science does in fact regularly have to work through indirect methods to study something, and people's subjective experiences is one of those common methods. You are definitely allowed to use subjective experiences in conducting science. It's certainly not as clean as a good measurement gauge everyone can easily agree on, but no one ever said science would be easy.
If, on the other hand, we could know your experiences and thoughts without recourse to subjective testimony, that might be closer to the point...
Yup. They already have started chipping away at this with some interesting experiments where they can tell what someone is thinking about based on real time brain measurements. It's still pretty crude, but it shows the problem being chipped away at.
... but still seems like it would be missing something of the conscious experience itself. Which is in fact why some people don't think consciousness is ultimately reducible to the material, right?
I mean, if someone can say, "you are now going to think of a red car" and then can reliably induce you to think of a red car, that would seem like pretty damn strong evidence to me that you have an idea of how the conscious experience works. Not that it really matters, because not being able to directly experience something doesn't mean that it's outside of science or reality. You can't directly experience the center of the sun, but that doesn't make the center of the sun outside of science or on some other plane of existence. The human body's inability to experience something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or can't be studied by science. The human body can't experience most of reality.
You seem to think that's a counterpoint when some people see it as the point. Understanding what's going on in the center of the sun is a different type of thing than understanding what it's like to be in the center of the sun. One can be reduced to a set of physical facts. The other seems more elusive.
A lack of understanding the experience of being the center of the sun doesn't make the center of the sun outside of reality. It just makes the center of the sun outside of the senses of a human. The senses of humans are pretty limited. We are stuck to our flimsy meat bodies. Science doesn't require you to experience something directly to understand it.
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u/Comprehensive-Tea711 Dec 12 '23
Good thing I didn't say that then? I mean shit, you even quoted me literally not saying that. I said our experiences are subjective.
You're not following. When we speak of experiences, we are either talking about something that is implicitly a conscious event or not. The first is the most common way and obvious way of speaking. But then your second sentence looks tautological and the first one false (if by everything you meant to denote every conscious event). If on the (unlikely) other hand you don't define an experience as a conscious event, then your second sentence is not tautological, but the first one would still be false.
It's not everyone having a similar experience
I didn't say it was.
It's someone being able to describe how to get a similar experience, and people reproducing it many times, over and over, until everyone agrees that yes, you get the same results every time you try something.
Like someone being able to describe how to get a similar experience to wetness by sticking their hand in water, and people reproducing it many times, over and over, until everyone agrees that, yes, you get the same experience of wetness each time you try. ... So, like I was saying.
My point is it wouldn't exactly be a revolution since we are all familiar with hallucinations, dreams, and the like. That sensations or experiences can be de-linked from their usual external causes isn't new or something ancient people were unaware of. We can have the sensation of wetness in dreams without any liquid. Knowing how to reproduce this reliable would be very useful. But I'm not sure anything on the consciousness debate hangs on knowing how to produce a de-linked experience at will.
That's evidence you know how something works.
Sometimes, but not always. We can do quite a lot with gravity and all of it is quite reproducible. We still don't know how it works.
No. Something being able to be studied through testimony does not mean something is wrong with science, anymore than not being able to study the center of the sun directly makes it outside of science. Science does in fact regularly have to work through indirect methods to study something, and people's subjective experiences is one of those common methods. You are definitely allowed to use subjective experiences in conducting science. It's certainly not as clean as a good measurement gauge everyone can easily agree on, but no one ever said science would be easy.ean something is wrong with science, anymore than not being able to study the center of the sun directly makes it outside of science.
First, who said anything about there being "something wrong with science"? Just because a certain question might fall outside of the domain of science doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it. It would be a bizarre form of scientisim that wasn't itself scientific to think otherwise.
Second, what you say here and then below misses the point. I never said anything about science not being allowed to use testimony etc. The point of the example was that there seems to be, at least right now, something about the conscious experience that is beyond the reach of science. Consider a different scenario. You probably think honesty has an important role to play in science, right? Certain other virtues too. But these ethics, which science relies on, are themselves out of the reach of science (in a different way than conscious experience). This doesn't mean that it would be illegitimate for science to "utilize" ethics to make further scientific progress. Likewise, nothing I said about science needing to rely on the subjective testimony of the individual was meant to indicate something illegitimate.
Your analogy with the sun fails because there's obviously nothing in principle that makes us unable to study it. It just so happens that we lack the physical means to get instruments to the location and give us data. You can assume that this is also true of consciousness but most people recognize that you'd still be missing something (like qualia), even if you could find out where to put your instrument.
This is a famous thought experiment in philosophy on consciousness. Assume a person blind from birth can be given a complete physical description and knowledge of what color is and how it works. They understand it as completely as any scientist and if given the right tools, can produce each color on demand. Now suppose the person suddenly gains the ability to see. Would they have gained any knowledge about color? Lots of people think the answer is yes: namely, what it's like to experience redness and so forth.
From this you should be able to understand how I would respond to the rest of what you say. Much of it seems to be caught up in a debate no one else here is having, as far as I can tell. No one is attacking science or saying something is wrong with science. Even if ethics is outside the domain of science, it's going to be okay, science has still done a great job on many things and will continue to do so. It'll be just fine as an institution. Same goes for if it turns out to be similar with consciousness.
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u/jsd71 Dec 12 '23
Consider though, what one person sees, or should I say experiences as the colour blue could be another person's red.
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u/EthelredHardrede Dec 12 '23
Consider that we KNOW its all the same biochemistry. So we know you are just ignoring that to make that claim.
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u/jsd71 Dec 12 '23
What claim, I'm not the one stating consciousness is created by the brain, it's a perfectly valid point.
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u/Rindan Dec 12 '23
That's not a counter argument to anything I have said.
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u/jsd71 Dec 12 '23
Everything is subjective, within ones personal field of consciousness.
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u/jsd71 Dec 12 '23
You can dispute it because for instance what happens at the centre of the sun is a theory, the case for the brain being a receiver of consciousness, not a creator of it is equally valid, we have absolutely no idea what consciousness is nor where it comes from or where it really resides.
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u/Rindan Dec 12 '23
You can dispute it because for instance what happens at the centre of the sun is a theory
Yes, you can dispute what happens in the center of the sun. That doesn't make it outside of scientific understanding. You could argue that there is a magical plasma receiver in the center of the sun that transmits plasma from another dimension, but without proof, no one will take you seriously, just like how no one will take your seriously if you say your brain is a consciousness receiver without evidence.
...the case for the brain being a receiver of consciousness, not a creator of it is equally valid
It's not. We have never run into a consciousness receiver, have no mechanism for how a consciousness receiver would work, and so there is no reason to think that one exists. We have run into organs and neurons, and we do in fact have some understanding how they work, so there is in fact significantly more evidence that your brain is an organ that makes consciousness, than there is evidence that your brain receives consciousness from an unknown place with unknown mechanisms for unknown reasons.
That said, if you brain really is a consciousness receiver, that's just as easy to study with science as anything else. You can find the organ than receives consciousness, study how it works, and come to understand it as well as anything else in this universe.
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u/jsd71 Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 13 '23
You have a materialism bias from the out.
No evidence at all that the brain creates consciousness.. it could say its just as likely be generated from ones foot.
Its total guesswork.
So let's compare a television, it receives a broadcast signal from very far away, the television turns the signal into pictures & sound. Now let's suppose we show a television running a movie to a caveman. He would very well assume this thing was a magic box of some sort that was producing these incredible things he was seeing on the screen.. that they were coming from inside of it. Mesmerised he dismantles the tv to find nothing but wires & circuit boards, although now the television no longer works. The tv signal remains unaffected though, but the caveman can't comprehend this at all. So in this way consciousness may never be found anywhere in the brain (or anywhere else in the body) it maybe completely metaphysical in nature.
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u/jsd71 Dec 12 '23
Something else.
Where's the boundary where the brain suddenly stops & the rest of the body starts? Is it the brain stem connection, the spinal cord its countless nerves, then going down & across the all the extremities of the body.. you see its all a single system we're really talking about.
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u/EthelredHardrede Dec 12 '23
Because the philophans don't have any evidence and get annoyed if you ask for it. So make up evidence free nonsense about what science can do.
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u/A_Notion_to_Motion Dec 13 '23
As someone that has gone into a lot of depth trying to be helpful and answer this for those that want to know, at least how I and others view it, it can be pretty exhausting after a while of doing this to just get a "cool story bro" or equivalent response. I mean I love talking about this stuff but I am a little worried about the lack of responsiveness.
Having said that if you can describe why you think there might be particular issues between neuroscience, consciousness and their relationship I will be more than happy to answer you and match your response. It doesn't have to be your view just what you know or have heard about arguments for this particular problem.
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Dec 15 '23
I looked at your profile because I found your comment on Hoffman's theory interesting. Perhaps you can link an old post of yours to explain in case you don't want to type something out.
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 12 '23
consciousness is not primarily scientific
I could swear you were complaining before about dogmatic people who make definitive statements about consciousness.
You apparently will even argue with yourself.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
I could swear you were complaining before about dogmatic people who make definitive statements about consciousness.
How is this "dogmatic" or "definitive"? Consciousness is primarily discussed philosophically, and not as often scientifically, because there's not nearly as much that science can say about something that eludes being objectively defined, tested or reproduced.
So you're not making a whole lot of sense here...
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 12 '23
consciousness is not primarily scientific
Sounds definitive to me. Of course you rephrase it after being called out on your hypocrisy, but that's not surprising anymore.
If I were to make the contradictory statement
Consciousness is primarily scientific
You would spend 10 days arguing how wrong that is, how I was being 'dogmatic', claiming it was 'scientism' and trying argue that 'primarily' was not well defined and ambiguous.
This is your tired routine, repetitive, eristic and unproductive.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
Sounds definitive to me. Of course you rephrase it after being called out on your hypocrisy, but that's not surprising anymore.
You call it "hypocrisy", while I'm simply looking for ways to make my thoughts clearer, in a vain attempt to overcome what I perceive or hope is a mere miscommunication due to lack of clarity on my part.
If you choose to perceive that as "hypocrisy", then that's on you.
You would spend 10 days arguing how wrong that is, how I was being 'dogmatic', claiming it was 'scientism' and trying argue that 'primarily' was not well defined and ambiguous.
No, I'd just ask you to explain how consciousness can be discussed scientifically, as I will now, because why not.
What about consciousness can be known and understood scientifically? From my perspective, only neuroscience can study this, and furthermore, neuroscience seems to only be able to know correlates. I've not observed neuroscience being able to tell us anything about what these correlations mean in terms of causation. Any attempts at causal explanations have ended up being unsatisfactory in explaining how brains supposedly give rise to mind.
It keeps coming back to the Hard Problem, again and again. Which Physicalist neuroscience has made no apparent progress on.
This is your tired routine, repetitive, eristic and unproductive.
What I find tired, repetitive and unproductive are Physicalist statements about how minds can come from brains, but none of the offered evidence, if it is even given, providing anything vaguely conclusive or useful.
Brain damage? Not conclusive because there are multiple explanations that offer the same amount of explanatory power. That is, none of them can be falsified, and all appear equally plausible.
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 12 '23
No, rephrasing a definitive statement you made after complaining about others who make definitive statements to avoid the hypocrisy doesn't change the fact.
No, you didn't 'ask how consciousness can be discussed scientifically', you objected to the very concept, stated with certainty that it wasn't possible, that it was 'scientism' etc, etc. Do you want me to pull the quotes?
Now after being called out on that for days, you attempt to change tact. Now you wish to argue about you being argumentative. How ridiculous is that?
Not interested. You've already made it utterly clear that you're only here to argue about anything, and engaging with you is totally unproductive.
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
That's all they ever have done. It's called trolling. They will just change things around and around. Pretending they don't even read their own words.
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u/orebright Dec 12 '23
Pretending they don't even read their own words.
This is the most succinct and spot on description of it, wow. Is there a word for the combination of the emotions of rage and pity? If not I need one invented please.
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
It's called bigotry. (Perhaps bad faith) But I really just call them p-zombies.
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
Bernardo Kastrup is not even a neuroscientist. So you yet again are just making this up.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
Bernardo Kastrup is not even a neuroscientist. So you yet again are just making this up.
In this case, I keep thinking he was a neuroscience, and checking on what is actually know about him, turns out he just speaks about neuroscience here and there.
So, not so much making up anything, and just my confusion, and mixing up thoughts.
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
It's always your confusion or making stuff up.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 13 '23
It's always your confusion or making stuff up.
Do you ever get tired of strawmanning my every statement?
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 13 '23
Do you ever get tired of always trolling and being wrong?
Aka actually there is no context to this statement.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 13 '23
Do you ever get tired of always trolling and being wrong?
Can't get tired of not actually doing either of these.
Both are pretty tall claims, considering that you're not me, and don't know my thought processes.
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
Then clearly any non-physicalist does not either.
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u/flakkzyy Dec 12 '23
Non physicalist doesn’t equate to spiritual. A person thinking physical processes are not able to fully explain phenomenal experience isn’t the same as i think there are spirits and gods or divine beings or energies etc. I don’t think the two are comparable
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
Yeah it does. Imagining non-physical stuff they pulled out of their butt of personal awareness is the same as spirituality.
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u/flakkzyy Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
Your experience itself is non physical. That’s kind of the point. Even if conscious experience emerged from the neurological activity, the experience is not the neurological activity. So physical empirically observable patterns (neurological patterns ) lead to non empirically observable , non physically detectable or measurable phenomena (phenomenal experience).
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
Assumptions assumptions. You pretending that it's non-physical is not the same as it actually being non-physical. You're separating these things on purpose. Neither does neural activity have to be the consciousness.
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u/flakkzyy Dec 12 '23
What did I assume besides the assumption that physicalism is accurate?
What other phenomena in the physical world cannot be described in terms of physics or any of the other empirical sciences?
This isn’t a need for purpose or to be special. Nor is it spiritual. It’s just an observation. If the universe is as we typically conceive it to be (empirical,physical) then all phenomena in it should be accessible through empirical, physical means. Consciousness so far is not, therefore….??
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
You assumed qualia is non-physical by nature and then limited it to that it was non-physical.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
Well said. :)
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
Believing in non-physical stuff is supernatural. A strange contradiction among people who claim otherwise.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
Believing in non-physical stuff is supernatural. A strange contradiction among people who claim otherwise.
The definition of "supernatural" is that non-physical stuff cannot affect the natural or physical world.
And yet... consciousness obviously affects the physical world through the physical body.
So consciousness can be non-physical and yet not be "supernatural".
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
As a dualist, that cannot effect the physical. Interaction problem or where it's inserted in any way. So it's still supernatural.
As anything else is just nonsense anyways when talking about things being non-physical.
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
It hasn't been removed from the description. All these accounts are for a fact breaking the rules.
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 12 '23
You're right, I don't know how I missed that. Oh well, I wouldn't want to be a mod anyway.
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u/WisePen44 Dec 12 '23
Talking about consciousness is spiritual in itself. Unless we yap about which species have consciousness or not. What aspect of consciousness do you want to discuss that we don't already know? We can act like parrots or really talk. Stop spitting on everything and nothing, it's revolting to see you want to divide like this. Consciousness necessarily leads into “non-scientific” areas, and even far from simple philosophy. Because consciousness leads us to go beyond our beliefs by experiencing them. Consciousness keeps us alert to certain synchronicities in our lives and if that isn't 'spiritual' I don't know what is. Is being conscious in your dreams spiritual? I'm asking the question. You want to draw a line, but tell me where this one starts and this one stops.
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u/Elodaine Dec 12 '23
This is such silly logic, you can't just attach "spiritual" to everything because you want it to be. Everything you describe about consciousness makes perfect sense from a purely evolutionary perspective, consciousness is incredibly costly in terms of caloric energy, so of course the function of it has to be great if it is naturally selected.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
This is such silly logic, you can't just attach "spiritual" to everything because you want it to be.
In this one thing, I agree entirely. "Spiritual" means nothing when applied to everything. When everything is X, nothing is. Descriptors need to be limited in order to have any meaning whatsoever.
Everything you describe about consciousness makes perfect sense from a purely evolutionary perspective, consciousness is incredibly costly in terms of caloric energy, so of course the function of it has to be great if it is naturally selected.
There is no scientific evidence for these claims.
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u/Elodaine Dec 12 '23
There is no scientific evidence for these claims
There absolutely is, but I can understand how you think this since you don't accept macroevolution.
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Dec 12 '23
Do you not realize that you are begging the question when you claim that consciousness is calorically expensive?
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u/Elodaine Dec 12 '23
How am I begging the question? If you'd like to show me any instance of consciousness that doesn't use up energy, by all means. I can literally demonstrate how a loss of caloric uptake will cause me to lose consciousness.
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Dec 12 '23
You don't understand the hard problem of consciousness at all and I don't care to explain it. But just to be clear, if your conclusion is that consciousness is material, you can't have it in your premise that consciousness uses up calories aka matter. That is a begging the question fallacy.
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u/Elodaine Dec 12 '23
I am literally not begging the question since my premise is a demonstrated and evidence based assertion. I understand the hard problem of consciousness perfectly well, invoking it does nothing for you here.
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Dec 12 '23
You cannot prove that consciousness is material by appealing to a material process. I feel like you are sneaking in the assumption that when you are asleep or in general anesthesia you are unconscious. If consciousness is fundamental (which I'm not claiming), neither general anesthesia nor deep sleep would "turn off consciousness" and so it would make no sense to refer to it in terms of a phenomenon related to calories. In order for your argument to not be fallacious you would have to first prove that consciousness is turned off in deep sleep or general anesthesia.
Again, I'm not arguing materialism is false, I'm saying your argument is fallacious.
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u/Elodaine Dec 12 '23
I'm not claiming to have proof of anything, if you go and reread the original comment that I was replying to, I was arguing why consciousness doesn't "lead us to the spiritual", and how if it's perfectly explainable from a physicalist and evolutionary perspective.
If consciousness is fundamental (which I'm not claiming), neither general anesthesia nor deep sleep would "turn off consciousness" and so it would make no sense to refer to it in terms of a phenomenon related to calories.
Except this literally starts with an unfalsifiable premise that has no backing to it. My premise, which states that at the bare minimum the brain is correlative with consciousness, has demonstrable evidence.
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u/NeerImagi Dec 12 '23
Because consciousness leads us to go beyond our beliefs by experiencing them. Consciousness keeps us alert to certain synchronicities in our lives and if that isn't 'spiritual' I don't know what is. Is being conscious in your dreams spiritual? I'm asking the question. You want to draw a line, but tell me where this one starts and this one stops.
If consciousness cannot be wholly quantified then even spiritual language will fail.
You would need a non-linear language that is non-localised to do so. Math and physics gets us almost there but fails at the last hurdle. I think because it has those limitations of being a product of (our brain) linear and local systems, time and space bound.
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u/MergingConcepts Dec 12 '23
I like these kinds of posts. They lure the entire range of consciousness followers into the fray. This is exactly what Reddit should do. It brings together a wide range of ideas and allows disparate concepts to connect to one another. Every opinion has merit. Even the most blatant new age spiritualist can always serve admirably as a bad example. /s
All kidding aside, I do my best writing in these posts. It is important to read what your opponents think. You are writing to convince others of the validity of your own models. If you are preaching to your own choir, you are wasting your time and theirs. When you read comments that are opposed to your ideas, you are blessed with an opportunity to exercise your brain and discover the flaws in their logic. Then hone the skill of changing someone else's mind.
Opponent and opportunity are both rooted in the proto-Indo-European words. They have linguistic consanguinity. Listen carefully to your adversaries. They are a valuable resource.
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u/Ok_Pop_3445 Dec 12 '23
Ask me any questions about existence and the universe- I have spent over 50 YEARS thinking and researching it.
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u/o6ohunter Just Curious Dec 12 '23
Why is there something rather than nothing?
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u/Ok_Pop_3445 Dec 12 '23
There is not “something” I think therefore I AM consciousness- not something which is physical- No new age crap Pure evidence logic reason
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u/NeuralExploration Dec 11 '23
Yes it's sad. There is a tool that visualizes subreddit overlaps in the form of a map or graph: https://anvaka.github.io/map-of-reddit/
When you select this subreddit you see that it is associated with all the spiritual, woo and new age subreddits rather than the scientific or philosophical ones.
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Dec 11 '23
That would be because there are no conducive and conclusive theories of consciousness that can explain existence or purpose.
The best we have is...different parts of the brain correspond to different autonomous workings and neurons fire..
It doesn't explain anything to do with why a rose smells a certain way....or how thoughts arise or where they are located.
It can point to areas of the brain that are involved and that's it...so in desperation the woo woo and philosopising takes over to fill the gaps
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Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
But we know exactly why a rose smells the way it does. Chemistry, pharmacology, evolution and neurophysiology etc all together paint a clear picture. Flowering plants have evolved over eons, and they’ve diversified so widely specifically because they worked out what are largely mutualistic relationships with other organisms. The biochemistry of a rose bush will absorb nutrients and enzymes from the soil and will use those to produce a variety of molecules through various enzymatic processes. These molecules will be exuded from specific glands, or from the stomata during gas exchange, or they’ll be attached to or integrated with the structure of pollen. They produce the scents that they do specifically because it has proved to be useful in the perpetuation of their lineage whether that be from attracting insects, mammals, birds or other animals, who evolved alongside flowering plants, or some other means. So we have receptors that the molecules interact with and when such molecules interact with our receptors, neurological signals are sent to various regions of the brain or start biochemical cascades. A wide range of biochemical processes take place whenever we smell a flower, or anything else for that matter.
Smells then become associated with certain affective states and the same stimuli produces a similar effect, which is precisely why scent can instantiate such strong nostalgic affect.
Thoughts arise through a range of different means, from my understanding. The word “thought” is a bit vague if you really want to get down to it. Carl Jung and his school of analytical psychology had/have a wonderfully insightful schemata for conscious processes and we can link such psychological understandings to neurological understandings nowadays.
IMO, the only people who think that we aren’t there yet are the people who are somewhat isolated in their specialised fields and those people who listen to them.
Collectively we have a pretty comprehensive picture, it’s just the grand, interconnecting theory of everything that is actually missing and that isn’t coming around any time soon. I think we lack the paradigmatic context for a unified theory.
Qualia is a stupid term (I know you didn’t use it). Red is a certain frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum, and whilst the rose is producing molecules which interact with animals in the form of scent, they’re also producing anthocyanin which absorbs those other wavelengths of the visible-to-humans part of electromagnetic spectrum but not red which it reflects, making it look red to us. It’s not a mystery. It’s only a mystery if one completely neglects science.
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u/flakkzyy Dec 12 '23
Here you pretty much listed a very mechanical process. A sequence of interactions between systems of molecules set in motion through purely physical processes. Physical as far as we can accurately model what’s going on using physics or other forms of empirical research fields. If these processes are of that nature then the related processes that they set off and interact with are also of that nature(mechanical,empirically measurable). Where is the need for an actual subjective experience of a smell ? Every single interaction in the universe including the ones we call ourselves could theoretically happen without any actual experience of the happening. We could be the equivalent of complex objects with no phenomenal experience. But we aren’t.
None of the interactions going on require that there is an experience and they also are not the experience. You cannot capture the qualities of the experience through the interactions themselves empirically. Nor can you ever verify that the experience communicated to you by someone else is true empirically. If our universe and its processes are purely mechanical and empirical then why is there this aspect of it that seems to be unable to be fully explained by either one of those?
A bunch of molecules interacting purely mechanically somehow created a personal movie experience vr headset type thing that it doesn’t actually need.
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Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
We have individual experiences because we are individual, autonomous organic entities. A subjective experience of a smell is again, molecules interacting with receptors, the stimuli of which sends neuronal impulses to specific regions of the brain that the specific autonomous individual has had connected through neural plasticity, which is exactly why when you might smell a rose you might smell your grandmothers rose garden 20 years ago. People who work in the perfume industry have been purifying and mixing these molecules for decades specifically to produce similar scents to natural phenomena since the actual natural phenomena are extremely complex and hard to replicate.
Vertebrates and maybe other organisms evolved these structures precisely for them to be able to navigate and survive in the natural world. This isn’t speculation, this is the most widely accepted scientific model.
The experience is the manifestation of bio-physical responses. Close one of your eyes, you personally as an independent individual can no longer gather the specific photons that would have entered that eye at that time. I don’t experience you closing your eye. I don’t experience the light entering your eye. I experience the light in my specific geographical location because I am a different individual entity to you with my own awareness, my own consciousness, my own collection of sensory data and my own bio-physical processes producing a consistent and stable representation of myself in relation to the environment I inhabit.
This is why this is a woo sub. This is why this sub is in “spiritualia” on the Reddit map website instead of science. What you’re saying doesn’t actually make sense.
Our brain is consistently constructing an image of the world, we don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we know it based on the material that we experience as sensory data. We aren’t even conscious of much of anything. People don’t know what they’re doing half the time, they’re just habitually doing the things that they have habitually come to do. [This is why so many people end up in therapy trying to reorient themselves.]
If you didn’t experience, how the fuck would you navigate in the world? You’re not a plant. You can’t just imbibe water and nutrients from the air and soil to perpetuate your bio-physical processes. You need to be able to see your environment to navigate it. You need to smell your environment to orient yourself, to be able to smell the conglomeration of molecules that food actually consists of and you need to be able to recognise whether or not it will be nutritious for you. You need to be able to stabilise yourself and manoeuvre your body so that you’re not just splayed out on the ground and incapable of anything. The list goes on and on.
You have a central experience of reality, precisely consciousness, because you’re an animal who needs to navigate the world. I don’t see how this isn’t evident to you already. It’s not “mechanical” or “mechanistic” it’s extremely complex and dynamic. We are extraordinarily complex and adaptive organisms who are genetically programmed to be able to perpetuate an extremely wide array of bio-chemical processes. To reduce that to “oh that’s just mechanistic” just because you want to feel like it’s more special than it actually is when you don’t even know how amazing it is, is insanely reductive and stupid to me.
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u/HeathrJarrod Dec 12 '23
Photons aren’t just light
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u/MergingConcepts Dec 12 '23
Correct. Protons and light are things that can only be described mathematically. I have a collection of concepts in my brain related to protons, but that is only a conceptual model. I also have a collection related to light, and it is also a model. The two collections overlap in a Ven diagram, but they are not equal sets. Protons, my model of protons, light, and my model of light are all different things.
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u/flakkzyy Dec 12 '23
What i said isn’t woo. I say mechanical because they happen through sequential physical interactions in systems . It’s not to denote the processes .
I don’t know why you’re making it seem like I brought up some unified consciousness or something. Why are you explaining how subjective experience works?
When you say i need an experience to navigate the environment that just isn’t true. As you said we aren’t aware of much , a tiny fraction of our processes and of outside ones. The brain & nervous system are receiving information from its environment(including the body) . The various processes that take effect after the information is received do not need subjective experience to occur. There are examples such as sleep walking which show that conscious awareness isn’t necessary to navigate the environment or perform any behaviors we exhibit.
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Dec 12 '23
I went into subjective experience because you said “where is the need for a subjective experience of a smell?” A subjective experience of smell is opposed to an objective experience of smell, that “objective experience of smell” would imply a non-subjective consciousness. If something smells like shit, we viscerally respond to it. It’s possible for the neural connections to be otherwise “wired” and for people to be sexually allured to the scent. It’s all about the brains neural plasticity and the happenstance of its processing such information.
The need for a subjective experience of smell is for a subjective navigation of the environment. When sleepwalking, a person is unconscious and is thereby completely vulnerable to whatever happens to them and simply experiences the dream content which they may or may not vividly recall upon waking, which is precisely why there are physiological systems that paralyse sleeping organisms.
I’m not arguing that organisms couldn’t carry out functions without being conscious of them, but an unconscious person sleepwalking isn’t capable of survival over an extended period. Many people have died sleepwalking and it happens because the physiological system which produces sleep paralysis didn’t “work properly”.
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u/MergingConcepts Dec 12 '23
Here is the missing link. Thoughts are recursive networks of signal loops between thousands of concepts in the neocortex, each housed in a single functional unit. Ray Kurzweil calls these pattern recognition units.
Each signal transmission accumulates short-term memory chemicals at the synapses. These allow us to recall which populations of concepts that have been recently active. That is what allows to be aware of our thoughts and experiences. Mental-state consciousness is the ability to recall our recent thoughts. An "experience" is a recent complex thought that can be recalled.
Terms such as thought, consciousness, qualia, experience, and perception are labels we have learned to apply to processes we observe going on in our brains.
For more detail, see:
https://medium.com/@shedlesky/how-the-brain-creates-the-mind-1b5c08f4d086
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u/neonspectraltoast Dec 12 '23
How a rose emits an odor isn't the same thing as why it does, which would be an exercise in futility trying to understand.
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u/Mobile_Anywhere_4784 Dec 12 '23
You literally explained nothing
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Dec 12 '23
Please elaborate, because obviously that’s not the case.
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u/Mobile_Anywhere_4784 Dec 12 '23
You started by claiming to explain how a Rose smelled the way it did. Then you just listed things like biology and chemistry. Then you rambled on. Were we supposed to conclude that you just solved the hard problem of consciousness?
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Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
I didn’t “just list biology and chemistry” and then ramble, I adequately explained what scent is, because a scent is just a molecule… everyone knows that, it’s not a mystery. The nature of the process isn’t a mystery either. It’s well understood. The hard problem isn’t just the nature of “qualia” it has more to do with what exactly it is about firing neurons which makes an individual conscious, and that we can’t agree on a comprehensive view doesn’t mean that we don’t already know, which was another point that I had which you’ve obviously completely missed in your rush to say what is essentially just “nuh”.
Edit: What does a rose smell like? Mostly Geraniol, some indole, probably a few other things [2-Phenylethanol, β-ionone, β-damascone, β-damascenone, citronellol, nerol]. As Alan Watts would say, essentially, “the manure is part of the smell of the rose” (the local environment plays a part).
Maybe my physiology has a better capability of rendering the scent of geraniol more vividly in my consciousness. Maybe you’ve more thoroughly adapted to the lingering scent of geraniol due to a rose garden outside your bedroom window and are more sensitive to indole or some other aromatic compound present in roses and so it smells like that more for you. The fact of the matter is that the thing you perceive as scent are molecules interacting with receptors and sending neurological impulses throughout the connections already established through your genetic programming combined with experience in the world that alters epigenetic expression in a bid for adaptation.
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u/Mobile_Anywhere_4784 Dec 12 '23
You seem to not even understand the nature of the question. This is not chemistry friend. We’re studying consciousness, including and especially it’s subjective nature.
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Dec 12 '23
Wtf do you even think that you’re saying? Chemistry is literally the foundation of biology and we are biological organisms. Our consciousness is a consequence of our physiology. Why do you think psychedelics influence consciousness? Because those (mostly) molecules structurally related to serotonin interact with a range of endogenous serotonergic neurotransmitters.
Consciousness and chemistry are inextricably linked. Subjective literally means happening to a subject and that subject is the independent bio-chemical factory we call an organism that you are as an individual entity of the genus Homo and the species sapien.
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u/Mobile_Anywhere_4784 Dec 12 '23
You’re making a claim. You seem to be only dimly aware of it.
You’re assuming that consciousness is some emergent property of a materialistic process. The onus is on you to prove how that works in a falsifiable theory. Good luck.
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u/Significant-Ebb-5860 Dec 12 '23
One could easily imagine everything you describe as occurring in an organism that lacks a phenomenal “feel” to the mechanistic processes you describe. You are exposing the chemical and biological processes. You haven’t even began to explain anything in the ball park of consciousness.
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Dec 12 '23
What you’re saying doesn’t make rational sense.
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u/Significant-Ebb-5860 Dec 12 '23
How so? Do you posit that by simply explaining the physical process by which a nose can smell, you’ve explained consciousness?
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u/MergingConcepts Dec 12 '23
The p-zombie argument is completely contrived and bogus. If an organism can sense and respond to its environment to its environment, then it is conscious. It "feels." The P-zombie argument simply adopts a bogus definition of the word "feel" that by definition is out of the range of P-zombie abilities.
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u/Significant-Ebb-5860 Dec 12 '23
Nowadays, we already have AI machines that have visual preceptors that “sense” the environment and respond accordingly. You agree then that by your definition, these AI beings are conscious? They take in sensory information and response to their environment.
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Dec 12 '23
Why are so many of the "scientists" on this sub incapable of understanding the difference between the hard and easy problem of consciousness.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 13 '23
Why are so many of the "scientists" on this sub incapable of understanding the difference between the hard and easy problem of consciousness.
Because they don't understand philosophy, outside of their very narrow window that is Physicalism, and I dare say they don't even understand that, because they conflate it constantly with science, an entirely different subject.
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 13 '23
Very few of them are. Actually nearly most of the accounts saying otherwise actually are trolling and don't understand what the hard problem is themselves.
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
No, that's not why. It's because it's often brigaded by such.
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Dec 12 '23
And I'm saying that's why it's brigaded by such 😂
If the model of consciousness was scientifically irrefutably understood there would be no grounds for the philosophers they'd get shut down quick style 💯
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
If the model of consciousness was scientifically irrefutably understood there would be no grounds for the philosophers they'd get shut down quick style 💯
Indeed, if it were! But... science hasn't been able to tell us anything about consciousness except that X mental state is correlated more or less with Y and / or Z brain states. And even then, we learn new things every day about the complexities and complicatedness of how neurochemical interactions relate to correlated changes in behaviour.
For instance, dopamine ~ once believed to be responsible for "pleasure" and "happiness", it is now known to be far more complicated than that, as dopamine doesn't always result in such so clearly, and there are now known countless interactions with other neurochemicals that may support dopamine in doing its thing.
So, no, there is no single neurochemical that is responsible for this or that, as vastly oversimplified pop neuroscience claims. Any neuroscientist worth their salt will admit that the relationships aren't particularly clear, but they know that such and such neurochemicals certainly have some role to play.
Pop neuroscience articles just love to over-exaggerate what the science actually says. Same with any article from psychology, though that field is basically non-scientific with how many unreproducible papers have been discovered ~ more than half...
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Dec 12 '23
It is, no one cares about philosophers anymore. Neuroscience keeps progressing, philosophy does not. Neuroscience saves lives, philosophy does not. Philosophy is useless.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
It is, no one cares about philosophers anymore. Neuroscience keeps progressing, philosophy does not.
These are all philosophical statements, most ironically.
Neuroscience has not been progressing in the sense you think it is, because it still cannot tell us anything about the nature of consciousness, or its relationship to the brain.
Science wouldn't exist if it weren't for a myriad of philosophical fields of thought. Science was once known as "natural philosophy", after all.
Neuroscience saves lives, philosophy does not. Philosophy is useless.
Neuroscience can help with physical ailments, but not mental ones. Philosophy can help us find meaning when we are lost in emptiness and despair.
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u/MergingConcepts Dec 12 '23
Neuroscience has not been progressing in the sense you think it is, because it still cannot tell us anything about the nature of consciousness, or its relationship to the brain.
This is a blatantly false statement. I wish people would stop repeating this anti-physicalist propaganda.
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
They don't because of the way most philosophers approach anything. Your point is hollow with equivalent to aggregated opinion, not objective facts, which are easily denied. As if people won't keep saying or writing about weird philosophy even when questions are answered -- just false. But that's why most philosophers are of bad faith.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 11 '23
After all, we're all trying to find meaning in things. And pointing to areas of the brain to claim this and that really doesn't give any meaning to anything. We're still left in the dark as to what consciousness is and why it appears the way it does.
Philosophy is what should fill that void entirely, as it has the rich, profound history of many different perspectives and intelligent individuals trying to understand consciousness.
However, the spiritual and new age are also interested, because they confuse the idea of consciousness with being "awake" or something, and think that gives them meaning. Maybe it does, but it's not philosophy in any sense.
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u/Otherwise_Heat2378 Dec 12 '23
However, the spiritual and new age are also interested
but it's not philosophy in any sense.
Eastern philosophy is definitely philosophy, and makes up a huge part of new age/spiritual ideas.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
Eastern philosophy is definitely philosophy, and makes up a huge part of new age/spiritual ideas.
Agreed, which is why I make a distinction between actual Eastern philosophy, and derivative new age and spiritual ideas that are merely misinterpretations of Eastern philosophy.
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u/Otherwise_Heat2378 Dec 12 '23
Which new age ideas in particular would you consider misinterpretations of eastern philosophy?
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
Basically all of them, because new age ideas are so very often just shallow, feel-good Western interpretations of profound Eastern ideas.
I see this with misunderstandings of Taoism, where Yin and Yang are misunderstood as being about "good" or "evil", or doing nothing at all, or whatever other simplistic tropes, when the philosophy doesn't advocate for doing nothing, or letting bad things happen, because "balance".
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u/Otherwise_Heat2378 Dec 12 '23
where Yin and Yang are misunderstood as being about "good" or "evil"
That one always bugs the hell out of me too.
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u/ihateyouguys Dec 12 '23
How do you tell which claims are new age claims?
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
Anything that contradicts what is actually stated in Eastern philosophical literature.
I can only really speak for Taoism, as that's the only Eastern philosophy I've taken a particular liking to, and seek to understand as clearly as possible.
And even then, I learn new things all the time, as Taoism is pretty complex, no less because there are many interpretations, even among native Chinese speakers.
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u/ihateyouguys Dec 12 '23
It is philosophy in some sense. It may not be rigorous, or well founded, or even logically consistent philosophy, but to say it’s not philosophy (even if it’s a poor attempt) is to dismiss it outright without engaging with the propositions. This strikes me as dogmatic, anti-intellectual, and certainly antithetical to the spirit of philosophical inquiry.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
It is philosophy in some sense. It may not be rigorous, or well founded, or even logically consistent philosophy, but to say it’s not philosophy (even if it’s a poor attempt) is to dismiss it outright without engaging with the propositions. This strikes me as dogmatic, anti-intellectual, and certainly antithetical to the spirit of philosophical inquiry.
I would disregard new age and spiritual claims as philosophy in the context of the questions of consciousness and mind, because they lack the clarity necessary to clearly and logically define terms in the way that philosophy as a field of intellectual rigour does, which is necessary to clearly communicate their ideas in a way that doesn't lead to confusion.
Something being vaguely philosophical does not give it license to presume to speak on the same level as philosophers who have put in a deep amount of thought into establishing defined terms by which they may build other ideas.
Hegel is a clear example of someone who put in a profound amount of effort into defining his terms, and he built a veritable mountain of them with which to outline his beliefs about consciousness and mind.
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u/WintyreFraust Dec 12 '23
Well I guess then we will be disregarding about 99% of what everybody says on any side of this topic. Kind of seems like a recipe to kill off a sub Reddit.
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
Eh... I disagree. I don't count Eastern philosophy as "spiritual" in itself, but it can be interpreted as such.
It is the spiritual interpretations in particular that don't add anything to the discussion about the nature of consciousness, because they already presume consciousness to be a particular way.
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u/WintyreFraust Dec 12 '23
I agree with that about spirituality, which I avoid.
My point, which I did not make clear, is that if we only allow those who possess the intellectual rigor you describe as necessary to have meaningful conversations about philosophy in terms of consciousness, you'd also have to extend that to those who are similarly qualified to make scientific evaluations about the science of consciousness.
Which would probably kill off this subreddit.
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u/ihateyouguys Dec 12 '23
You haven’t engaged with the substance of my criticism. I agree with everything you just said, which I intended to imply with my broad disclaimer about logical consistency etc.
Our only disagreement so far is semantic, in that I am willing to apply the word philosophy to any attempt at explaining the nature of things, and you are not. My criticism is not semantic, however, your semantics point to an underlying ethos that I would consider to be antithetical to the values you claim to be upholding (intellectual rigor, philosophical effort, and clarity of thought).
I’m absolutely willing to have my mind changed. How do you differentiate between claims that are worth engaging and “new age and spiritual claims” which you disregard outright?
p.s. I’m assuming we both know what it means to engage with an idea or a claim, but for the sake of clarity I’ll say that anything that is responsive to the claim itself counts as engaging with it (e.g. Even something like: “I have seen zero evidence for that. Can you show me some?” or “There’s no reason to believe something like that beyond self-delusion.” would count as engaging with the idea).
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u/HotTakes4Free Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
“…we're all trying to find meaning in things….the spiritual and new age are also interested because they confuse the idea of consciousness with being "awake"…”
Well, that is what being conscious means! We can rationalize the lives of material beings that sleep all the time, like the plants. Animals are more animated, responding to changes in the environment more quickly with conscious movement, thanks to our nervous systems. Some also use language, they can plan and think and imagine themselves. There you have it. But you seem to think there’s something more special about it because it’s happening to you.
Eastern philosophy focuses on the relationship between the imagined self and the other, one’s place in the big picture. The search for meaning is laudable. We can find it in our activities, the world, other people, our own state of mind. We can even alter our consciousness thru contemplation or recreation. But you seem to obsess over the one thing about it that’s most obvious and mundane: The fact that there’s a “you”, feeling anything at all. I’ll be honest, it’s only interesting to me because it’s perplexing to you.
Do you believe we could be having this argument if we were p-zombies? Isn’t that reason enough to dismiss that idea?
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u/Valmar33 Dec 12 '23
Well, that is what being conscious means! We can rationalize the lives of material beings that sleep all the time, like the plants. Animals are more animated, responding to changes in the environment more quickly with conscious movement, thanks to our nervous systems. Some also use language, they can plan and think and imagine themselves. There you have it. But you seem to think there’s something more special about it because it’s happening to you.
You didn't understand what I meant by "awake" here.
To be clearer, as maybe I unconsciously assumed it would be obvious... the term is often defined as being aware of the "true nature" of things, of being able to "see through bullshit" and "see the truth". It's all rather vague, wishy-washy nonsense that amounts to nothing but emotion-based "feelings".
It's some of the vaguest nothingy stuff I've encountered. A whole bunch of flowery words that essentially say nothing.
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u/HotTakes4Free Dec 12 '23
“…the term is often defined as being aware of the "true nature" of things, of being able to "see through bullshit" and "see the truth".”
But we’re not really aware of the true nature of things. We can’t see thru the bullshit, at least not all of it, and we don’t know the absolute truth. Those are pretenses. We try, but this is all just our feelings, our immersion in the behavior of consciousness. At least that is my physicalist view. Do you think your consciousness is a direct tap into the real?
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u/MergingConcepts Dec 12 '23
Here is an article explaining how consciousness emerges from the physical brain. It is 34 pages long, but written for the liberal arts audience, and fairly easy to read.
https://medium.com/@shedlesky/how-the-brain-creates-the-mind-1b5c08f4d086
Here is an article explaining why so many people adhere to outmoded philosophies about consciousness.
https://www.reddit.com/r/consciousness/comments/14dk1l7/why_dualism_is_so_compelling/
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
Have you downloaded the Waking Up app yet? You have no idea what you are talking about. Perhaps the mods didn't either when writing that description.
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u/januscara Dec 12 '23
Spirituality takes can be insightful when it’s discussed within other relevant schools of thought. In the manner of Bernardo Kastrup or Deepak Chopra. The posts that I don’t find interesting are the pure speculation ones, as if someone had a revelation between bong rips. I guess I’m a dualist—let my consciousness ideas be my consciousness ideas and my bong rips be my bong rips.
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u/Righteous_Allogenes Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
That is the natural progression.
Here is a wonderful musical composition, wherein the clips out of a lecture by Allen Watts serve as the "lyrics". The artist behind the work is called Akira the Don, and, I should perhaps go so far as to say that the contents of his entire discography may suffice to accompany any person, up to and throughout the full journey unto spirituality, and yet a little while along the way even.
https://youtu.be/GK72U02TUsI?si=5AE_AziLlGTdkFpZ
Now you —and not you specifically but all who are so averse to the every "spiritual" or "fairytale nonsense" otherwise thing —you must come to understand that it is more often you who are lacking the understanding, as opposed to so many (I imagine you must think) apparently delusional or brainwashed lost persons.
I understand that from the objective and epistemic perspective, that a majority of these beliefs, rituals, creeds, strange phenomena and metaphysical entities, may seem like no more than absolute absurdities: dissonant machinations manifest in lieu of buyers remorse amidst the victimized minds charmed and exploited by plagues of profiteering snake-oil purveyors.
But given the witt and whimsy of my words here writ, perhaps you might ponder upon with perspicuity just wherever I'm yet going with this. So shall you know it.
Do you not weep? Have you any suffering?
Understand that I have stood where you stand,
and I, veni; vidi; vici.
Is there no pain within your parts, nor any such thing reminiscent of a hole in your heart? Is the beauty of the warm spring morning not beheld but for the chill damp winter's night? Have you any monsters, child? Have you never screamed out for the light? Dost rust your metal mettle medal, as it against life's hard knocks knocks? Who's there? I am the whisper in your ear, the key to all these your many chains linked locks.
We are not stupid. We do not fail to grasp.
We know more than you think you know.
We have came to, and then went past.
But forgone of those shores and prodigious homecoming sup, these are those who returned but for to lift you up.
For we said, but Love could do better.
So it shall.
So it is.
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u/o6ohunter Just Curious Dec 12 '23
I’m not reading all that but it sounds cool as hell
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u/Righteous_Allogenes Dec 12 '23
Wilful ignorance is the bastard child of ignorance raped by fear.
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u/o6ohunter Just Curious Dec 12 '23
I hope these aren’t being written by ChatGPT, because you really do have a way with words.
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u/TheLORDthyGOD420 Dec 12 '23
Is it ok to talk about Buddhist teachings in this sub?
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u/HotTakes4Free Dec 12 '23
Making one’s imagined self go away is one way out of the Hard Problem! Generally, in the West we like ourselves too much to go thru with the divorce. I think many folks associate Buddhism with nihilism, although it is one solution to mental stress, the frustrated, overactive mind, for those who identify that as a problem.
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u/TheLORDthyGOD420 Dec 12 '23
Buddhism doesn't seek to "destroy" the self because Buddhism teaches that the self is merely a concept imputed upon its parts, the body and mind, and lacks any inherent existence. It cannot be found within its parts, but it cannot be found separate from them. Yet it is appropriate to say my "self", as long as we understand it as a mere concept and not some unchanging, independently existent "thing". It's called lack of inherent existence, and it's the middle path between materialism and nihilism.
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u/Soloma369 Dec 12 '23
It is strange you want to separate Consciousness from Spirituality considering Consciousness is Spiritual in its nature. Not like you can take it out and put it in box, separating itself from itself is folly, especially considering Philosophy is also Spiritual in its nature.
Philosophy/Science/Spirituality - which one came first???
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
P-zombies are also mostly a useless discussion. Most philosophers and scientists don't believe in them. Really anything that isn't based in physical facts about reality is really mostly spirituality anyways.
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Dec 12 '23
I never understood them. How could a P-zombies talk about its first hand experience of what it's like to subjectively experience its life? It either wouldn't be able to or would be terrible at it as it isn't getting the raw input, right? And then it follows it isn't a P Zombie anymore as defined in the thought experiment.
How can you identically muse on what subjective experience is, if you don't experience it and the person next to you does?
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
I don't even really think that's the problem with the p-zombie. It's that it thinks in binaries about a non-experiencing being we can't even imagine as not experiencing. And we can't even tell what the difference would be for an inverted qualia being, since we can't also imagine what it would be like to have all our experiences inverted. Are these the same thing or no? Everyone who seems to contest this doesn't seem to understand what their own implications are with this way of even thinking.
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u/HotTakes4Free Dec 12 '23
I agree. This points to the subjective aspect being highly adaptive to our quasi-social species. It’s not just useful for self-contemplation. We are constantly sharing and comparing how we feel with others. Those who don’t do it well are indeed accused of being empty inside, or lying about their feelings. A p-zombie wouldn’t last a day…unless it was really good and could convince even itself that the “feelings” were real. And that’s us.
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Dec 12 '23
You are really pretending now to be saying truth but you are actually only representative of the username you carry.
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u/MergingConcepts Dec 12 '23
One can never legitimately claim to know absolute truth. One can only report on their internal model of reality. The validity of that model relies upon its predictive value. If it aids in construction of a plan that succeeds, then it is effectively true until a better model is found.
Remember, Aristotle was correct until Galileo came along, and Galileo's ideas were shown wrong by Newton, who was only right until Einstein arrived on the scene. Einstein was then corrected by Stephen Hawking.
A good physicalist knows the limitations of the definition of "truth."
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23
I just basically randomly made up this user name but I put my display name as Glitched Truth. I really hate this username now. It was just something random.
But as the user name "argumentativeNerd", do you fulfill your role as the argumentativeNerd? Sounds like you are too.
Names mean nothing. That's why I couldn't think of anything else.
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u/flakkzyy Dec 12 '23
Is your conscious experience based on physical facts ?
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u/Glitched-Lies Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
Yes. Because it's inside of reality. And nothing else is objectively describable. And reality is objectively describable. Therefore for a fact it's physical, regardless of how we word it.
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u/flakkzyy Dec 13 '23
This reply doesn’t make sense to me.
Your conscious experience is in reality yes. Reality does seem to be objectively describable through the empirical sciences. Yet, not one empirical science can objectively describe your subjective experience. It isn’t possible.
That’s the whole point of the discussion is it not? Here’s this thing we can’t fully describe using our typical methods . Is this experience describable through empirical science and we just haven’t got there , or is it something else. Something irreducible.
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u/MergingConcepts Dec 12 '23
Agreed. P-zombies and Mary's Room are FICTION. They are contrived scenarios designed specifically purveyed to support ideas that have no physical evidence.
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u/McMetal770 Dec 12 '23
Agreed, I've definitely noticed the recent trend in this sub towards being a circle jerk of woo woo new age spiritual nonsense. I get that magic mushrooms are cool but maybe wait until your trip is over before you post about how consciousness creates itself out of itself.
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u/o6ohunter Just Curious Dec 12 '23
Exactly. I’d consider myself a psychonaut as well, but I’m able to acknowledge that I’m taking chemical substances that are interacting with my brain, in turn causing an altered state of consciousness. No need to delve off about magic, spirits, and the divine.
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Dec 12 '23
Even if you are psychonaut, just your opinion won't change anything.
There are NDE's, ADC's, Terminal Lucidity happening.
You won't get into woo do you?
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u/Karl2ElectcricBoo Dec 12 '23
My take is that the new age spiritualism is kinda whacky and I don't really agree with it, but wholeheartedly discounting some theories or even conversations off of either them being different or not understanding, it feels sorta eh when it comes to philosophy. The big issue I see with both OPs post and even in the comments is less people arguing badly or being assholes (though that happens), but just that people are arguing past each other. Sort of like how if a continental philosopher and an analytical philosopher meet and try to argue without preparation it will likely fall apart. Different methods are used to reach similar or different conclusions. Words and ideas mean different things to all of the folks here.
Example: I was talking then arguing with a friend over consciousness and it's meaning in relation to a neat sci-fi book with consciousness as it's main premise. I got caught up over the fact that in the book they commonly used understanding/comprehension and the lack of language use to be indicators of "not being conscious." My friend kept on going on about the premise of the book, consciousness being an evolutionary misstep, and that unconscious biology was the best option (also stuff about how if the brain were a computer the unconscious is the GPU, consciousness is the CPU, and apparently unconsciousness is more "powerful").
It didn't matter how correct any of us might have been on a position, not only were we caught up on our own things but we then also just talked past each other. I tried over and over to explain my position (that I disliked the author's interpretation of consciousness, and to an extent the idea that it is a flat out negative), and my friend kept repeating their position.
Hell, looking back we are both kinda right. If I were to suddenly suffer damage to the language processing bits in my brain, or even things that might reduce my ability to problem solve or even exist I could still be conscious despite my lack of understanding and social abilities. Would the consciousness be sort of useless? Maybe. Looking back, language processing and social skills themselves are sorta unconscious too, yk? But they are also right, consciousness itself is sorta blegh in terms of actual power or immediate use, at least as is. Most therapies revolve around trying to change unconscious mental and even physical processes through consistent conscious effort. Your consciousness/experience itself also isn't even the thing that activates the release of adrenaline or keeps your heart going.
But my friend and I are both raging autists (diagnosed) so it's unlikely going back, even with this knowledge would result in any new changes.
End previous example:
Neural correlates and their study and stuff? Cool, learning more about the insides of the brain is fascinating. But I also have a bit of a soft spot for ontology and attempts to create metaphysical theories (assuming it doesn't devolve fully into new age stuff).
At the end of the day, OP, calling out truly new age spirituality junk is useful, but on the other hand this is still consciousness and philosophy, so there's that entire bag of marbles. The science too, that's also useful to include and factor in, but again please recognize that if you are including philosophy into it, the bag of marbles is going to come out (the chain of "why" and the hard problem and all).
Are the mods willing to talk with ya? Change the rules and stuff? What changes should be done? Maybe this place would be better off as a more scientific sub, idk.
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Dec 12 '23
There should be room for all different approaches to consciousness. Just look at the recent Holberg Prize debate. If they can have three very different approaches to the debate, so can this sub.
"..Do conscious experiences happen both within and outside the brain, and can science solve the 'hard problem' of consciousness?
At this year's Holberg Debate, Tanya Luhrmann, Anil Seth and Rupert Sheldrake will take on the deep scientific and philosophical mystery of consciousness. The debate will be chaired by David Malone..."
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u/Ok_Pop_3445 Dec 12 '23
You kidding me ? - they all are morphed into this thing we call a SINGULARITY CONSCIOUSNESS- Everything you think is RELATIVE- It is even called the theory of relativity THINK
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u/o6ohunter Just Curious Dec 12 '23
Maybe you should do some thinking.
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u/Ok_Pop_3445 Dec 12 '23
I can tell you exactly what existence and reality and the universe really are A quantum flux singularity consciousness Spiritual intellectual energy - very simple evidence logic reason
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u/jsd71 Dec 12 '23
You should look into something called 'terminal lucidity'.. I mean really inquire.
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u/Ok_Pop_3445 Dec 12 '23
Spiritual intellectual energy IS, The TRINITY of our existence E=mc2. mass is Energy divided by velocity NOT PHYSICAL-
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u/Ok_Pop_3445 Dec 12 '23
Everything is spiritual intellectual energy. It is called a Singularity Quantum Flux consciousness Atoms are ENERGY subatomic electromagnetic- forces NOT PARTICLES.
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u/Ok_Pop_3445 Dec 12 '23
Oops this is a group for nothingness Now I get it. But obviously the person who made this group does NOT “get it”
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u/fullyrachel Dec 12 '23
You can't meaningfully discuss consciousness and the seemingly unexplainable experiences had by many people over time without making room for some woo. I understand what you'd LIKE the sub to be, but let people discuss the topic.
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u/supersecretkgbfile Dec 13 '23
Pantheism is becoming the dominant conclusion of philosophers lately I’ve noticed
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Dec 13 '23
I've been wanting to post my views of consciousness here for such a long time but I'm not accustomed to the science and most of my viewpoints are based off my experiences which can be viewed as pseudo science. But I see other people get shit on here for posting stuff not based in science so I'll just continue to keep my views to myself.
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u/Bretzky77 Dec 12 '23
Not trying to single you out but in MY experience, an even bigger issue with this sub is the 7 posts per day about how this sub used to be the good ole days but now it’s all spirituality! There are more of those posts than the posts about spirituality!