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If reality is relevant to the person and experiences of that person, not to mention their own psychological and mental state combined with that persons knowledge of reality and personal opinion plus the faction of science that they belong to. Then is this conversation ever going to end before all of your heads explode trying to force others into your version of reality?
Ummm... I know that I am new here but I have heard and read a fair bit about the topic and although it may invoke a poor response. I just though maybe I should ask.If reality is relevant to the person and experiences of that person, not to mention their own psychological and mental state combined with that persons knowledge of reality and personal opinion plus the faction of science that they belong to. Then is this conversation ever going to end before all of your heads explode trying to force others into your version of reality?I don't mean any offense and I don't want to sound patronizing because I can see that you have all taken a lot of time to learn about the subject and are all obviously very learned people. But what I mean is that unless you all had the same upbringing with the same genetics with the same learning, the same lecturers and the same brain chemistry then is it not possible that no one will ever agree on the subjector if they do agree it will only ever be on a majority basis. I personally have found that two people who watch the exact same event will almost always walk away experiencing different realities.I definitely enjoyed reading the argument as all sides made some very good arguments but I feel that this is one of those arguments thatwill probably carry on into the next millennia with people still arguing that a cat is not a cat but merely a perception of cat within a boxand that box doesn't exist unless someone makes the box and if no-one makes the box then the cat never existed and so on and so on. A very interesting subject and a good read so thanks guys.
He just replaced the materialistic magical identity theory with yet another inexplicable magic : consciousness as an alleged emergent phenomena .Consciousness cannot be an emergent phenomena though : we have already talked about that on many occasions , on that lengthy consciousness thread : even Cooper did reject it .
QuoteI disagree.
I disagree.
Why ? You're entitled to your own opinion though of course , needless to add .
Processes are materially based, but not material in themselves. “Life” and consciousness are materially based but they are also events in time, and that is why they are irreducible to just matter. That's it in a nutshell. Fire away.
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446679#msg446679 date=1418749239]Quote from: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2014 21:22:37He just replaced the materialistic magical identity theory with yet another inexplicable magic : consciousness as an alleged emergent phenomena .Consciousness cannot be an emergent phenomena though : we have already talked about that on many occasions , on that lengthy consciousness thread : even Cooper did reject it .QuoteQuoteI disagree.QuoteWhy ? You're entitled to your own opinion though of course , needless to add .I recognize that consciousness is an unsolved problem, so my “disagreement” is an opinion, based on which theories or approaches I believe have the best explanatory track record so far. In order to explain why I disagree, I would have to restate much of what I’ve said over the last year. If my comments weren’t very convincing the first time around, I doubt you’ll find them so a second or third time, even though my ideas have evolved or changed quite a bit with these discussions.
Never the less, I’ll summarize as briefly as possible my view of consciousness so far:1) Neuroscience or brain activity is a sufficient basis for mental activity as demonstrated by studies that show intact, functioning brain structures are required for mental activity to occur. Counterfactual dependence makes this unlikely to be a mere correlation.
2) I reject dualism and supernatural explanations because of lack of evidence and the interaction problem. There is no interaction problem if consciousness is an emergent property of brain activity
3) Consciousness and qualia are tightly linked to sensory detection, perception, and response in living things. More complex brains allow for greater processing of sensory information (perception) and more flexibility or options in response. If sensory detection and response were selected for in evolution, then arguably, processing of them, including consciousness and qualia, were selected for as well, and they are not epiphenomena.
4) Some biological functions of qualia include a) distinguishing between objects in the here and now from those in mental test simulations, b) to enhance discrimination and reduce noise, and c) to make connected and integrated, but qualitatively different, sensory information available to different processing systems in the brain simultaneously.
5) For consciousness and qualia to have been adaptive and selected for in evolution, they must causally affect our choices and behavior. If consciousness and qualia had no effect on behavior and were not adaptive, it would not matter if our subjective experience and qualia had any consistent correlation with reality, were consistent over time, or radically different from person to person. While it is (as yet) impossible to know if your subjective experience is like my subjective experience, for minds to have any common frame of reference, there must be significant similarity and consistency of qualia from person to person.
6) For consciousness to be adaptive there must be a limited form of free will, better described as choice, within boundaries set by genetics, environmental influences, subconscious and reflexive processes, and learned experience. At the same time, learning and brain plasticity also makes those boundaries less rigid.
7) Not everything we are consciously aware of is necessarily under conscious control.
Volition and choice are also mediated by structures and activity of the brain.
9) Even though computers can replicate mental processes without consciousness, that does not mean that consciousness does not facilitate information processing or learning in humans and other animals. In the same way that there are multiple strategies for locomotion, reproduction or energy conversion in nature, there may different methods of processing information in biological systems compared to machines.
10) I reject that consciousness must “look like” the system from which it emerges, or that the every or any component of the system must share all of the properties of consciousness, since that is not necessarily true of other emergent processes ( and thus, I reject Cooperism.)
Libet says “Yet, if you look into this neural activity and neural structures involved you would not see anything that looked like subjective experience.” However, if you looked at DNA, you would not see anything that “looks like” animals or the phenotypical traits that DNA gives rise to. The function of DNA would seem equally unlikely or magical without knowing about messenger RNA, amino acids, proteins, hormones, and regulation of gene expression, or metabolism. Looking just at DNA, you cannot “see” meiosis, alleles, sexual combination of gametes, cell differentiation, embryology, or natural selection, or any number of things or processes that would complete the picture of how DNA does what it does. Without that additional information, you would be left wondering how you can possibly get a giraffe or an oyster or an oak tree from the same damn molecule. Expecting consciousness to physically resemble neurons and neurotransmitters is like expecting to see a tiny anatomical drawing of a giraffe inside every giraffe cell. Processes are not things.
Processes are materially based, but not material in themselves. “Life” and consciousness are materially based but they are also events in time, and that is why they are irreducible to just matter.
That's it in a nutshell. Fire away.
In a nutshell ? I am scared of when you're gonna elaborate on all that .The above took me quite some time to finish lol
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 16/12/2014 19:45:18In a nutshell ? I am scared of when you're gonna elaborate on all that .The above took me quite some time to finish lol I thought that was rather concise, to summarize a years worth of my posts. Give us your view of consciousness in ten points, (And not simply 1) Materialism is false. 2) Materialism is false 3) Materialism is thus super duper false....)
before you look we could have proven—with an interference experiment—that each atom was a wave equally in both boxes.
After you look it was in a single box.
It was thus your observation that created the reality of each atom’s existence in a particular box.
That it is entirely possible that the reason consciousness is not as quantifiable is because we are not all in our minds experiencing the same version of consciousness but more sort of making up our own individual version of consciousness? is what I am perplexed about. I'm just curious to hear if this has been considered before or if there was anything in this line of thinking at all.
When you try to move on to QM that replaced the classical deterministic universe with the probabilistic one , your 'arguments " will fade or smelt away like snow under the bright lovely warm smiling sun .
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 16/12/2014 19:45:18When you try to move on to QM that replaced the classical deterministic universe with the probabilistic one , your 'arguments " will fade or smelt away like snow under the bright lovely warm smiling sun .Nothing I've said is incompatible with a probabilistic universe. You are the one making a special exemption for consciousness from that universe.