[alancalverd]

You are asking me about an issue which was largely debatted in that other thread " What's the real origin of the scientific method ?" you even happened to participate in , ironically enough .
So, be serious and stop this uninformed non-sense of yours ,please , if you wanna be taken seriously at least

For as long as you argue by assertion, refer to supernatural authority, or refuse to define the subject you want to discuss, that won't happen. At least not in a science forum.

[David Cooper]

(I am well aware of some  silly childish games you have been playing here = irrelevent though =Grow up )

What games? Where is any of it irrelevant? What has growing up got to do with the price of fish?

A mechanical thinking system ? Come on,be serious  .Is the thought process mechanical ?If it is  mechanical, how would you explain human creativity, innovations, imagination,progress   ...?

Have you heard of the invention of the computer? Have you seen what a calculator can do for arithmetic and mathematics? The damn thing can outthink us in many calculations. What do you suppose happens when you take the same idea of mechanical computation and extend it into linguistics and general thought? We will have machines some day that can outthink us in any discussion on any subject, and all the thinking they do will be cause-and-effect mechanical. The alternative to a mechanical thinking machine would be a magical one. You clearly believe that the brain is a magical computer which therefore doesn't depend on mechanisms, but whenever the brain makes mistakes it displays the mechanical nature of the functionality within.

Creativity and innovations - problem solving. A machine needs to identify a problem and then calculate potential solutions. It took half a billion years for our brains to evolve to the point where they could do innovative and creative things, but we will program machines to match our abilities within a mere hundred years of the building of the first computers. Some creativity is guided by feelings, so when it comes to the arts it will be hard for machines to create things that satisfy us until we can find out what the algorithms of human aesthetics are. Some of these are known - we know that the golden ratio makes things better looking, so machines can already create arrangements of things that look more pleasing than random arrangements on that basis.

You seem to confuse the correlations or interactions between the 2 different "systems " : brain and mind ,with causation : i think that mind (mind is not just semantics, not just a word we invented ) and brain are 2 totally different "things" which do work together as one = a combination of dualism and monism then .
The brain  does not cause the mind  ; they just correlate or interacte with each other : how ? Beat me : i dunno .

Here you are trying to tell me about the workings of a system which you don't understand. I at least come to this with an understanding of the mechanisms of computation, but all you have to offer is "dont know"/magic. Who is the one playing a childish game here?

The mind is the one which is doing the most important work : thinking , feeling , experiencing , seeing ....= even seeing is not done by the brain, it's in fact done by the mind .

Is that a fact! Wow - you're good!

How can a  biological or mechanical system for that matter ever be able to think ,feel , experience or even see  things ....the developers of the so-called artificial intelligence have been having a hard time to make "sentient " machines that can at least "see " ...They will never be able to make those machines think, feel, experience or see things ...the way we do at least = machines can only simulate that .to some degree at least = they can never be conscious, ever .

I am one of the developers of artificial intelligence and my aim is not to make machines sentient. It appears to be impossible to make machines sentient, and it also appears to be impossible for us to be sentient because we are machines. It will be possible to make machines think though, and they already do. Thinking is just mechanical calculation. Machines can see too, and cameras are able to take photographs automatically whenever the subject smiles. That is machine vision.

I think that our biological neurological system is just a tool to report sensory "inputs " ( I do reject this materialistic mechanical reductionistic computer analogy )or  stimuli to our mind which acts upon that by sending ,somehow, feedbacks to the biological system to make it take action ...I dunno .

You can reject it all you like, but you're not qualified to make such a judgement (and when I say qualified, I'm not talking about certificates, but knowledge of the subject). You aren't interested in doing the work to learn about how computation works because you already have an answer that satisfies you, and that is belief in magic.

Don't you realise the fact that  your childish materialistic interpretations of scientific studies are just that = materialistic  childish  interpretations ?

Belief in magic is childish. Science is about the elimination of magic in order to understand how things really work.

When i was a child , i also used to 'think " that verything was  made of matter (not to mention that quantum physics have proven the fact that "matter is not really made of solid matter , i am way beyond that childish stage you are still stuck in .

That is hilarious. I'm going to print that out and put it up on the wall.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Strong Refutation of materialism in science ,materialism as a dogmatic conservative belief or "religion" , especially concerning that materialistic dogmatic magical approach of consciousness , the latter as a so-called emergent property from the complexity of the evolved brain : Enjoy,folks :

Just try to read the following strong refutation of materialism in science which gets confused with science by many people  ,  especially concerning the materialistic dogmatic magical approach of consciousness, the latter  as a so-called emergent property from the complexity of the evolved brain  ....written by a physicist :

http://www.superconsciousness.com/topics/science/why-consciousness-not-brain
   
Why Consciousness is Not the Brain
 FALL 2010


 
The Science of Premonitions
Author: Larry Dossey

Excerpted from The Science of Premonition: How Knowing the Future Can Help Us Avoid Danger, Maximize Opportunities and Create a Better Life by Larry Dossey. Copyright 2009 by Larry Dossey. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Physicist Freeman Dyson believes the cosmos is suffused with consciousness, from the grandest level to the most minute dimensions. If it is, why aren’t we aware of it?
For more articles about "Science", Click Here

“We don’t know who first discovered water, but we can be sure that it wasn’t a fish,” the old saw reminds us. Continual exposure to something reduces our awareness of its presence. Over time, we become blind to the obvious. We swim in a sea of consciousness, like a fish swims in water. And like a fish that has become oblivious to his aqueous environment, we have become dulled to the ubiquity of consciousness.

Why Consciousness is Not the Brain - The Science of Premonitions - Larry Dossey

In science, we have largely ignored how consciousness manifests in our existence. We’ve done this by assuming that the brain produces consciousness, although how it might do so has never been explained and can hardly be imagined. The polite term for this trick is “emergence.” At a certain stage of biological complexity, evolutionary biologists claim, consciousness pops out of the brain like a rabbit from a magician’s hat. Yet this claim rests on no direct evidence whatsoever. As Rutgers University philosopher Jerry A. Fodo flatly states, “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. So much for our philosophy of consciousness.”

In spite of the complete absence of evidence, the belief that the brain produces consciousness endures and has ossified into dogma. Many scientists realize the limitations of this belief. One way of getting around the lack of evidence is simply to declare that what we call consciousness is the brain itself. That way, nothing is produced, and the magic of “emergence” is avoided. As astronomer Carl Sagan expressed his position, “My fundamental premise about the brain is that its workings – what we sometimes call mind – are a consequence of anatomy and physiology, and nothing more.” Nobelist Francis Crick agreed, saying “[A] person’s mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make up and influence them.”

This “identity theory” – mind equals brain – has led legions of scientists and philosophers to regard consciousness as an unnecessary, superfluous concept. Some go out of their way to deny the existence of consciousness altogether, almost as if they bear a grudge against it. Tufts University cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett says, “We’re all zombies. Nobody is conscious.” Dennett includes himself in this extraordinary claim, and he seems proud of it.

Consciousness can operate beyond the brain, body, and the present, as hundreds of experiments and millions of testimonials affirm. Consciousness cannot, therefore, be identical with the brain.

Others suggest that there are no mental states at all, such as love, courage, or patriotism, but only electrochemical brain fluxes that should not be described with such inflated language. They dismiss thoughts and beliefs for the same reasons. This led Nobel neurophysiologist Sir John Eccles to remark that “professional philosophers and psychologists think up the notion that there are no thoughts, come to believe that there are no beliefs, and feel strongly that there are no feelings.” Eccles was emphasizing the absurdities that have crept into the debates about consciousness. They are not hard to spot. Some of the oddest experiences I recall are attending conferences where one speaker after another employs his consciousness to denounce the existence of consciousness, ignoring the fact that he consciously chose to register for the meeting, make travel plans, prepare his talks, and so on.

Many scientists concede that there are huge gaps in their knowledge of how the brain makes consciousness, but they are certain they will be filled in as science progresses. Eccles and philosopher of science Karl Popper branded this attitude “promissory materialism.” “[P]romissary materialism [is] a superstition without a rational foundation,” Eccles says. “[It] is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists . . .who confuse their religion with their science. It has all the features of a messianic prophecy.”

The arguments about the origins and nature of consciousness are central to premonitions. For if the promissory materialists are correct – if consciousness is indeed identical with the brain – the curtain closes on premonitions. The reason is that the brain is a local phenomenon – i.e., it is localized to the brain and body, and to the present. This prohibits premonitions in principle, because accordingly the brain cannot operate outside the body and the here-and-now. But consciousness can operate beyond the brain, body, and the present, as hundreds of experiments and millions of testimonials affirm. Consciousness cannot, therefore, be identical with the brain.

In science, we have largely ignored how consciousness manifests in our existence. We’ve done this by assuming that the brain produces consciousness, although how it might do so has never been explained and can hardly be imagined.

These assertions are not hyperbolic, but conservative. They are consistent with the entire span of human history, throughout which all cultures of which we have record believed that human perception extends beyond the reach of the senses. This belief might be dismissed as superstition but for the fact that modern research has established its validity beyond reasonable doubt to anyone whose reasoning has not clotted into hardened skepticism. To reiterate a single example – the evidence supporting foreknowledge – psi researchers Charles Honorton and Diane Ferrari examined 309 precognition experiments carried out by sixty-two investigators involving 50,000 participants in more than two million trials. Thirty percent of these studies were significant in showing that people can describe future events, when only five percent would be expected to demonstrate such results by chance. The odds that these results were not due to chance was greater than 10 to the twentieth power to one.

One of the first modern thinkers to endorse an outside-the-brain view of consciousness was William James, who is considered the father of American psychology. In his 1898 Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University, James took a courageous stand against what he called “the fangs of cerebralism and the idea that consciousness is produced by the brain. He acknowledged that arrested brain development in childhood can lead to mental retardation, that strokes or blows to the head can abolish memory or consciousness, and that certain chemicals can change the quality of thought. But to consider this as proof that the brain actually makes consciousness, James said, is irrational.

Why Consciousness is Not the Brain - The Science of Premonitions - Larry Dossey

Why irrational? Consider a radio, an invention that was introduced during James’s lifetime, and which he used to illustrate the mind-brain relationship. If one bangs a radio with a hammer, it ceases to function. But that does not mean that the origin of the sounds was the radio itself; the sound originated from outside it in the form of an electromagnetic signal. The radio received, modified, and amplified the external signal into something recognizable as sound. Just so, the brain can be damaged in various ways that distort the quality of consciousness – trauma, stroke, nutritional deficiencies, dementia, etc. But this does not necessarily mean the brain “made” the consciousness that is now disturbed, or that consciousness is identical to the brain.

British philosopher Chris Carter endorses this analogy. Equating mind and brain is irrational, he says as listening to music on a radio, smashing the radio’s receiver, and thereby concluding that the radio was producing the music.

To update the analogy, consider a television set. We can damage a television set so severely that we lose the image on the screen, but this doesn’t prove that the TV actually produced the image. We know that David Letterman does not live behind the TV screen on which he appears; yet the contention that brain equals consciousness is as absurd as if he did.

My conclusion is that consciousness is not a thing or substance, but is a nonlocal phenomenon. Nonlocal is merely a fancy word for infinite. If something is nonlocal, it is not localized to specific points in space, such as brains or bodies, or to specific points in time, such as the present.

The radio and TV analogies can be misleading, however, because consciousness does not behave like an electromagnetic signal. Electromagnetic (EM) signals display certain characteristics. The farther away they get from their source, the weaker they become. Not so with consciousness; its effects do not attenuate with increasing distance. For example, in the hundreds of healing experiments that have been done in both humans and animals, healing intentions work equally well from the other side of the earth as at the bedside of the sick individual. Moreover, EM signals can be blocked partially or completely, but the effects of conscious intention cannot be blocked by any known substance. For instance, sea water is known to block EM signals completely at certain depths, yet experiments in remote viewing have been successfully carried out beyond such depths, demonstrating that the long-distance communication between the involved individuals cannot depend on EM-type signals. In addition, EM signals require travel time from their source to a receiver, yet thoughts can be perceived simultaneously between individuals across global distances. Thoughts can be displaced in time, operating into both past and future. In precognitive remoteviewing experiments – for example, the hundreds of such experiments by the PEAR Lab at Princeton University – the receiver gets a future thought before it is ever sent. Furthermore, consciousness can operate into the past, as in the experiments involving retroactive intentions. Electromagnetic signals are not capable of these feats. From these differences, we can conclude that consciousness is not an electric signal.

Then what is it? My conclusion is that consciousness is not a thing or substance, but is a nonlocal phenomenon. Nonlocal is merely a fancy word for infinite. If something is nonlocal, it is not localized to specific points in space, such as brains or bodies, or to specific points in time, such as the present. Nonlocal events are immediate; they require no travel time. They are unmediated; they require no energetic signal to “carry” them. They are unmitigated; they do not become weaker with increasing distance. Nonlocal phenomena are omnipresent, everywhere at once. This means there is no necessity for them to go anywhere; they are already there. They are infinite in time as well, present at all moments, past present and future, meaning they are eternal.

Researcher Dean Radin, whose presentiment experiments provide profound evidence for future knowing, believes that the nonlocal events in the subatomic, quantum domain underlie the nonlocal events we experience at the human level. He invokes the concept of entanglement as a bridging hypothesis uniting the small- and large-scale happenings. Quantum entanglement and quantum nonlocality are indeed potent possibilities that may eventually explain our nonlocal experiences, but only further research will tell. Meanwhile, there is a gathering tide of opinion favoring these approaches. As physicist Chris Clarke, of the University of Southampton, says, “On one hand, Mind is inherently non-local. On the other, the world is governed by a quantum physics that is inherently non-local. This is no accident, but a precise correspondence ...[Mind and the world are] aspects of the same thing...The way ahead, I believe, has to place mind first as the key aspect of the universe...We have to start exploring how we can talk about mind in terms of a quantum picture...Only then will we be able to make a genuine bridge between physics and physiology.”

When scientists muster the courage to face this evidence unflinchingly, the greatest superstition of our age – the notion that the brain generates consciousness or is identical with it – will topple. In its place will arise a nonlocal picture of the mind.

Whatever their explanation proves to be, the experiments documenting premonitions are real. They must be reckoned with. And when scientists muster the courage to face this evidence unflinchingly, the greatest superstition of our age – the notion that the brain generates consciousness or is identical with it – will topple. In its place will arise a nonlocal picture of the mind. This view will affirm that consciousness is fundamental, omnipresent and eternal – a model that is as cordial to premonitions as the materialistic, brain-based view is hostile.


 

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

(I am well aware of some  silly childish games you have been playing here = irrelevent though =Grow up )

What games? Where is any of it irrelevant? What has growing up got to do with the price of fish?

A mechanical thinking system ? Come on,be serious  .Is the thought process mechanical ?If it is  mechanical, how would you explain human creativity, innovations, imagination,progress   ...?

Have you heard of the invention of the computer? Have you seen what a calculator can do for arithmetic and mathematics? The damn thing can outthink us in many calculations. What do you suppose happens when you take the same idea of mechanical computation and extend it into linguistics and general thought? We will have machines some day that can outthink us in any discussion on any subject, and all the thinking they do will be cause-and-effect mechanical. The alternative to a mechanical thinking machine would be a magical one. You clearly believe that the brain is a magical computer which therefore doesn't depend on mechanisms, but whenever the brain makes mistakes it displays the mechanical nature of the functionality within.

Creativity and innovations - problem solving. A machine needs to identify a problem and then calculate potential solutions. It took half a billion years for our brains to evolve to the point where they could do innovative and creative things, but we will program machines to match our abilities within a mere hundred years of the building of the first computers. Some creativity is guided by feelings, so when it comes to the arts it will be hard for machines to create things that satisfy us until we can find out what the algorithms of human aesthetics are. Some of these are known - we know that the golden ratio makes things better looking, so machines can already create arrangements of things that look more pleasing than random arrangements on that basis.

You seem to confuse the correlations or interactions between the 2 different "systems " : brain and mind ,with causation : i think that mind (mind is not just semantics, not just a word we invented ) and brain are 2 totally different "things" which do work together as one = a combination of dualism and monism then .
The brain  does not cause the mind  ; they just correlate or interacte with each other : how ? Beat me : i dunno .

Here you are trying to tell me about the workings of a system which you don't understand. I at least come to this with an understanding of the mechanisms of computation, but all you have to offer is "dont know"/magic. Who is the one playing a childish game here?

The mind is the one which is doing the most important work : thinking , feeling , experiencing , seeing ....= even seeing is not done by the brain, it's in fact done by the mind .

Is that a fact! Wow - you're good!

How can a  biological or mechanical system for that matter ever be able to think ,feel , experience or even see  things ....the developers of the so-called artificial intelligence have been having a hard time to make "sentient " machines that can at least "see " ...They will never be able to make those machines think, feel, experience or see things ...the way we do at least = machines can only simulate that .to some degree at least = they can never be conscious, ever .

I am one of the developers of artificial intelligence and my aim is not to make machines sentient. It appears to be impossible to make machines sentient, and it also appears to be impossible for us to be sentient because we are machines. It will be possible to make machines think though, and they already do. Thinking is just mechanical calculation. Machines can see too, and cameras are able to take photographs automatically whenever the subject smiles. That is machine vision.

I think that our biological neurological system is just a tool to report sensory "inputs " ( I do reject this materialistic mechanical reductionistic computer analogy )or  stimuli to our mind which acts upon that by sending ,somehow, feedbacks to the biological system to make it take action ...I dunno .

You can reject it all you like, but you're not qualified to make such a judgement (and when I say qualified, I'm not talking about certificates, but knowledge of the subject). You aren't interested in doing the work to learn about how computation works because you already have an answer that satisfies you, and that is belief in magic.

Don't you realise the fact that  your childish materialistic interpretations of scientific studies are just that = materialistic  childish  interpretations ?

Belief in magic is childish. Science is about the elimination of magic in order to understand how things really work.

When i was a child , i also used to 'think " that verything was  made of matter (not to mention that quantum physics have proven the fact that "matter is not really made of solid matter , i am way beyond that childish stage you are still stuck in .

That is hilarious. I'm going to print that out and put it up on the wall.

Haha : you do seem to have a sense of humor though, after all  : good , because i thought you would react angrily at my latest words here above : i am delighted by the fact that i failed to predict your behavior : nice .
Ok, Mr. Einstein :

Just try to refute the above refutation of materialism in science , especially concerning that magical dogmatic materialistic approach of consciousness, here above , written by a physicist :

I would love to see you trying to refute that refutation : impress me .Make my day .
Thanks , appreciate .

P.S.: As i said earlier ,in another thread  , to dlorde : you , mr . David Cooper, is the true materialist here ,together with Dawkins and co club  ,dlorde and many other less true materialists do have a certain materialistic  vision ,combined  with  a sort of romantic magical materialism as well .

[David Cooper]

I think here we have the point where we differ, and it looks purely semantic. I'm simply saying that the sensation we have, that feeling, of awareness and self, is what we call consciousness.

If there really are feelings, that would indeed be consciousness. Mechanical awareness (as in a security light with a sensor which detects when it's dark and switches it on) is different from conscious awareness where there is a feeling of existing; a feeling of being aware. Consciousness is all about feelings.

Whatever it's provenance, whether based on valid or invalid data (and I don't think it is at all what it subjectively feels like, so I agree it doesn't exist as what it feels like), whether you call it an illusion or a fabrication, that feeling or sensation is consciousness.

Well, no. If it's an illusion and the feelings aren't real, then there is no consciousness. A novel asserts the existence of characters who live out adventures and experience feelings, but all of it is fiction - there were no feelings. A machine (whether silicon or biological) which generated fictions of feelings is not creating feeling - there is no consciousness, but merely a machine generating accounts of consciousness that aren't true.

Like many human concepts, it has an emergent quality itself, a kind of uncertainty principle, so that the closer you look at it, the more you try to define it, the vaguer it gets - because it's just a feeling associated with a set of brain states.

If the feelings are to be real, they have to be experienced by something, and that isn't something that can emerge out of complexity. If we can't point to something of substance (which isn't to restrict it to matter or energy, both of which may just be twists of a fabric of space) and say that it experiences the feelings, we're left with nothing experiencing the feelings, and if nothing experiences them, they can't be felt and can't be feelings.

On the free will point, there isn't such a thing, but there could indeed be a feeling of there being such a thing. That can be stuck in the pot with all the other qualia, but the big question is how to get an information system to access qualia and know anything of them. If it can't, any information it has about them is made up, unless there is some kind of intelligent sentience system which is capable of doing all the work of an information system and can directly manipulate the data in the information system to ensure that the claims about sentience contained in it are true, but an intelligent sentience system would then need to be an information system itself and would need to speak the same language as the other information system in order to know how to manipulate its data, so it doesn't take us any further on: the interface problem is merely transferred into the intelligent sentience system where the sentience side of things has to be converted into data by the information system side of things. There will always be a division between these two things because sentience and data belong to different systems - data requires representation and calculation apparatus, while sentience requires direct feeling without any representation. To translate direct experience of feelings into data about feelings appears to be impossible because the translation has to be done by the information system and the information system can't access the sensations.

That is the sticking point with consciousness. If there is a solution to this that makes consciousness as possible as it feels to us, it's going to take a radical change in approach to the way we look at computation, but so far the only alternative approach that has been suggested by anyone is the childish one of magic, though of course it may be that science is indeed just a pile of pants and that magic really is king.

[dlorde]

Well, no. If it's an illusion and the feelings aren't real, then there is no consciousness. A novel asserts the existence of characters who live out adventures and experience feelings, but all of it is fiction - there were no feelings. A machine (whether silicon or biological) which generated fictions of feelings is not creating feeling - there is no consciousness, but merely a machine generating accounts of consciousness that aren't true.

So what is your position on feelings and consciousness?

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

I think here we have the point where we differ, and it looks purely semantic. I'm simply saying that the sensation we have, that feeling, of awareness and self, is what we call consciousness.

If there really are feelings, that would indeed be consciousness. Mechanical awareness (as in a security light with a sensor which detects when it's dark and switches it on) is different from conscious awareness where there is a feeling of existing; a feeling of being aware. Consciousness is all about feelings.

Whatever it's provenance, whether based on valid or invalid data (and I don't think it is at all what it subjectively feels like, so I agree it doesn't exist as what it feels like), whether you call it an illusion or a fabrication, that feeling or sensation is consciousness.

Well, no. If it's an illusion and the feelings aren't real, then there is no consciousness. A novel asserts the existence of characters who live out adventures and experience feelings, but all of it is fiction - there were no feelings. A machine (whether silicon or biological) which generated fictions of feelings is not creating feeling - there is no consciousness, but merely a machine generating accounts of consciousness that aren't true.

Like many human concepts, it has an emergent quality itself, a kind of uncertainty principle, so that the closer you look at it, the more you try to define it, the vaguer it gets - because it's just a feeling associated with a set of brain states.

If the feelings are to be real, they have to be experienced by something, and that isn't something that can emerge out of complexity. If we can't point to something of substance (which isn't to restrict it to matter or energy, both of which may just be twists of a fabric of space) and say that it experiences the feelings, we're left with nothing experiencing the feelings, and if nothing experiences them, they can't be felt and can't be feelings.

On the free will point, there isn't such a thing, but there could indeed be a feeling of there being such a thing. That can be stuck in the pot with all the other qualia, but the big question is how to get an information system to access qualia and know anything of them. If it can't, any information it has about them is made up, unless there is some kind of intelligent sentience system which is capable of doing all the work of an information system and can directly manipulate the data in the information system to ensure that the claims about sentience contained in it are true, but an intelligent sentience system would then need to be an information system itself and would need to speak the same language as the other information system in order to know how to manipulate its data, so it doesn't take us any further on: the interface problem is merely transferred into the intelligent sentience system where the sentience side of things has to be converted into data by the information system side of things. There will always be a division between these two things because sentience and data belong to different systems - data requires representation and calculation apparatus, while sentience requires direct feeling without any representation. To translate direct experience of feelings into data about feelings appears to be impossible because the translation has to be done by the information system and the information system can't access the sensations.

That is the sticking point with consciousness. If there is a solution to this that makes consciousness as possible as it feels to us, it's going to take a radical change in approach to the way we look at computation, but so far the only alternative approach that has been suggested by anyone is the childish one of magic, though of course it may be that science is indeed just a pile of pants and that magic really is king.

Right : you know : i read your replies with great interest , i mean it , simply because you are the only true materialist here , in the right materialistic sense at least .
A true materialist in the above mentioned sense without that other magical romantic thinking of some so-called materialists such as our   dlorde   here  .

If you happen to be right about the "fact " that we are just machines which seem to need those sophisticated evolutionary so-called built-in in our systems illusions such as consciousness, feelings , emotions ....in order to survive, then you or others for that matter can be able some day to create  conscious  artificial intelligent machines exactly like us ,and maybe even some conscious intelligent machines that would even surpass us = the next level of evolution as some scientists like to call it .

But i , to be honest , no offense , do not only doubt such a "possibility probability " , but i do also think it is a childish one, sorry .
But then again, who knows .
Take care
All the best
Kind regards

[David Cooper]

Just try to refute the above refutation of materialism in science , especially concerning that magical dogmatic materialistic approach of consciousness, here above , written by a physicist :

I would love to see you trying to refute that refutation : impress me .Make my day .

I have nothing to offer that can impress you as I don't have a solution to the problem of consciousness. I agree with his main objection, but he offers no solution other than to move the problem elsewhere and pretend that that fixes it.

But consciousness can operate beyond the brain, body, and the present, as hundreds of experiments and millions of testimonials affirm. Consciousness cannot, therefore, be identical with the brain.

I don't see the evidence of it operating beyond the brain, but at the same time I see no reason why it shouldn't. This universe could be virtual and our consciousness could lie outside it, but this doesn't address the fundamental problem - it merely moves it elsewhere (the calculations will still need to be done somewhere, and for the claims about feelings to be true they will need to be generated by a calculating information system which has some way of accessing the experiencing of sensations - how it does that is something that still needs to be explained). Cutting up brains and looking for mechanisms in them may never reveal anything because the real mechanisms could be hidden and the apparent mechanisms of the brain may not be used when the brain is actually "running".

To reiterate a single example – the evidence supporting foreknowledge – psi researchers Charles Honorton and Diane Ferrari examined 309 precognition experiments carried out by sixty-two investigators involving 50,000 participants in more than two million trials. Thirty percent of these studies were significant in showing that people can describe future events, when only five percent would be expected to demonstrate such results by chance. The odds that these results were not due to chance was greater than 10 to the twentieth power to one.

I very much doubt that that is serious research, though I'm basing my initial judgement on the fact that I haven't heard of it before. It ought to be big news if it's true, so is it being suppressed or is it just being ignored because it's a pile of pants? Where can I read more about it? Has it been published in a serious science journal?

As Rutgers University philosopher Jerry A. Fodo flatly states, “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. So much for our philosophy of consciousness.”

That doesn't really matter. It could easily be the case that everything is conscious and experiences qualia all the time. The real problem is how anything can then express the thought that it is conscious and not merely get stuck at the point of feeling conscious.

This “identity theory” – mind equals brain – has led legions of scientists and philosophers to regard consciousness as an unnecessary, superfluous concept. Some go out of their way to deny the existence of consciousness altogether, almost as if they bear a grudge against it. Tufts University cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett says, “We’re all zombies. Nobody is conscious.” Dennett includes himself in this extraordinary claim, and he seems proud of it.

It is a superfluous concept in some ways, but we are set up in such a way as to believe the claims our brains generate about feelings and we can even imagine that we feel them directly. If the feelings aren't real, then we are deluded zombies, but we're pretty determined not to believe that's the case, as any well-deluded zombie should be. This nihilism would be a good solution to the whole problem if it wasn't for the fact that the illusion feels too damned good. How can the "I" in the machine be fooled into thinking it exists and into feeling sensations if there is no "I" in the machine to fool? If it was easy to dismiss the whole idea of the "I", we would just junk it and accept that we don't exist; that there are merely machines in existence which generate superfluous fictions about "I"s and the imaginary feelings they supposedly experience.

I certainly don't wake up every day to think, "Oh yes - I don't exist and all these feelings are fake." They feel too real. But if they are to be real, there has to be an explanation as to how they work, and maybe the only possible explanation for them is magic. Most of the things that used to be regarded as magic have been shown not to be magic at all, but as mechanistic. We're assuming that this will go on being the case with everything that has yet to be understood, though that may be a mistake. Then again, it also seems reasonable to suppose that even magic ought to run on some kind of mechanism, so it feels like a very poor explanation of anything just to stop at the point where you declare it to be magic and give up on looking for a mechanism.

Some of the oddest experiences I recall are attending conferences where one speaker after another employs his consciousness to denounce the existence of consciousness, ignoring the fact that he consciously chose to register for the meeting, make travel plans, prepare his talks, and so on.

That just shows poor judgement on the part of this physicist, because they wouldn't be employing their consciousness to denounce anything - they'd simply be mechanically denouncing it using machinery which generates fictions about feelings as it grinds through all the necessary computations.

Many scientists concede that there are huge gaps in their knowledge of how the brain makes consciousness, but they are certain they will be filled in as science progresses. Eccles and philosopher of science Karl Popper branded this attitude “promissory materialism.” “[P]romissary materialism [is] a superstition without a rational foundation,” Eccles says. “[It] is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists . . .who confuse their religion with their science. It has all the features of a messianic prophecy.”

I can see no way in which it can be filled in, but I still leave the door open to a way being found - it may be that there's another possible way of looking at computation waiting to be discovered which will open the door to some kind of sentience-based processing taking place in some weird quantum soup outside of the universe, though having looked into things quantum I can't find anything there that goes against normal reason (most of the odd things are really just badly described), and reason continues to appear to bar the way to dealing with the key difficulty of turning direct experience of feelings into data about feelings.

Thoughts can be displaced in time, operating into both past and future. In precognitive remoteviewing experiments – for example, the hundreds of such experiments by the PEAR Lab at Princeton University – the receiver gets a future thought before it is ever sent.

Sounds like more fake science.

Furthermore, consciousness can operate into the past, as in the experiments involving retroactive intentions.

And some more. Where can I read more about these experiments?

The way ahead, I believe, has to place mind first as the key aspect of the universe...We have to start exploring how we can talk about mind in terms of a quantum picture...Only then will we be able to make a genuine bridge between physics and physiology.”

You can make it as quantum as you like, but you still need to account for the translation of experience of sensation to data about sensation. I keep coming back to that because it is THE problem with consciousness. "That hurt" is data. When we think about whether something hurt, we are processing data. When something actually hurts (if such a thing is even possible), it isn't happening in data - something is directly experiencing pain. To communicate the idea that pain was felt, even just to think about the idea that pain was felt, we have to move from experience of sensation to processing of information, and that's where we hit the crucial disconnect.

When scientists muster the courage to face this evidence unflinchingly, the greatest superstition of our age – the notion that the brain generates consciousness or is identical with it – will topple. In its place will arise a nonlocal picture of the mind.

It will be a nonlocal picture in which the fundamental problem is not addressed either. The physicist is not proposing a solution to the problem, but a way of fiddling around moving it somewhere else rather than addressing the central problem.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Well, no. If it's an illusion and the feelings aren't real, then there is no consciousness. A novel asserts the existence of characters who live out adventures and experience feelings, but all of it is fiction - there were no feelings. A machine (whether silicon or biological) which generated fictions of feelings is not creating feeling - there is no consciousness, but merely a machine generating accounts of consciousness that aren't true.

So what is your position on feelings and consciousness?

He explained that : evolutionary sophisticated built-in in our mechanical systems useful pragmatic illusions we take for real = that's the right materialistic approach interpretation explanation at the same time , in the right materialistic sense ,without magical romantic thinking then ,if i am not mistaken at least , but i think i am not .
You should try to join his club , if you wanna be consistent with yourself ,as a so-called materialist , at least .
Good luck indeed
Kind regards

[David Cooper]

Well, no. If it's an illusion and the feelings aren't real, then there is no consciousness. A novel asserts the existence of characters who live out adventures and experience feelings, but all of it is fiction - there were no feelings. A machine (whether silicon or biological) which generated fictions of feelings is not creating feeling - there is no consciousness, but merely a machine generating accounts of consciousness that aren't true.

So what is your position on feelings and consciousness?

I'm in two positions. In one of them I see consciousness as impossible. In the other, I refuse to see it as impossible and hope someone will come up with a completely new way of looking at the problem with some approach in which data and sentience can be mixed together in the same system and can speak the same language. I can't see any way of doing it, but that isn't the same thing as saying it's impossible. I keep hoping that a clue will jump out of some conversation which will lead to a breakthrough, and that clue is maybe as likely to come from a fruitcake as a scientist. If there's a solution, it will be found by someone who's looking in from an angle that normal people don't explore.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Just try to refute the above refutation of materialism in science , especially concerning that magical dogmatic materialistic approach of consciousness, here above , written by a physicist :

I would love to see you trying to refute that refutation : impress me .Make my day .

I have nothing to offer that can impress you as I don't have a solution to the problem of consciousness. I agree with his main objection, but he offers no solution other than to move the problem elsewhere and pretend that that fixes it.

But consciousness can operate beyond the brain, body, and the present, as hundreds of experiments and millions of testimonials affirm. Consciousness cannot, therefore, be identical with the brain.

I don't see the evidence of it operating beyond the brain, but at the same time I see no reason why it shouldn't. This universe could be virtual and our consciousness could lie outside it, but this doesn't address the fundamental problem - it merely moves it elsewhere (the calculations will still need to be done somewhere, and for the claims about feelings to be true they will need to be generated by a calculating information system which has some way of accessing the experiencing of sensations - how it does that is something that still needs to be explained). Cutting up brains and looking for mechanisms in them may never reveal anything because the real mechanisms could be hidden and the apparent mechanisms of the brain may not be used when the brain is actually "running".

To reiterate a single example – the evidence supporting foreknowledge – psi researchers Charles Honorton and Diane Ferrari examined 309 precognition experiments carried out by sixty-two investigators involving 50,000 participants in more than two million trials. Thirty percent of these studies were significant in showing that people can describe future events, when only five percent would be expected to demonstrate such results by chance. The odds that these results were not due to chance was greater than 10 to the twentieth power to one.

I very much doubt that that is serious research, though I'm basing my initial judgement on the fact that I haven't heard of it before. It ought to be big news if it's true, so is it being suppressed or is it just being ignored because it's a pile of pants? Where can I read more about it? Has it been published in a serious science journal?

As Rutgers University philosopher Jerry A. Fodo flatly states, “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. So much for our philosophy of consciousness.”

That doesn't really matter. It could easily be the case that everything is conscious and experiences qualia all the time. The real problem is how anything can then express the thought that it is conscious and not merely get stuck at the point of feeling conscious.

This “identity theory” – mind equals brain – has led legions of scientists and philosophers to regard consciousness as an unnecessary, superfluous concept. Some go out of their way to deny the existence of consciousness altogether, almost as if they bear a grudge against it. Tufts University cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett says, “We’re all zombies. Nobody is conscious.” Dennett includes himself in this extraordinary claim, and he seems proud of it.

It is a superfluous concept in some ways, but we are set up in such a way as to believe the claims our brains generate about feelings and we can even imagine that we feel them directly. If the feelings aren't real, then we are deluded zombies, but we're pretty determined not to believe that's the case, as any well-deluded zombie should be. This nihilism would be a good solution to the whole problem if it wasn't for the fact that the illusion feels too damned good. How can the "I" in the machine be fooled into thinking it exists and into feeling sensations if there is no "I" in the machine to fool? If it was easy to dismiss the whole idea of the "I", we would just junk it and accept that we don't exist; that there are merely machines in existence which generate superfluous fictions about "I"s and the imaginary feelings they supposedly experience.

I certainly don't wake up every day to think, "Oh yes - I don't exist and all these feelings are fake." They feel too real. But if they are to be real, there has to be an explanation as to how they work, and maybe the only possible explanation for them is magic. Most of the things that used to be regarded as magic have been shown not to be magic at all, but as mechanistic. We're assuming that this will go on being the case with everything that has yet to be understood, though that may be a mistake. Then again, it also seems reasonable to suppose that even magic ought to run on some kind of mechanism, so it feels like a very poor explanation of anything just to stop at the point where you declare it to be magic and give up on looking for a mechanism.

Some of the oddest experiences I recall are attending conferences where one speaker after another employs his consciousness to denounce the existence of consciousness, ignoring the fact that he consciously chose to register for the meeting, make travel plans, prepare his talks, and so on.

That just shows poor judgement on the part of this physicist, because they wouldn't be employing their consciousness to denounce anything - they'd simply be mechanically denouncing it using machinery which generates fictions about feelings as it grinds through all the necessary computations.

Many scientists concede that there are huge gaps in their knowledge of how the brain makes consciousness, but they are certain they will be filled in as science progresses. Eccles and philosopher of science Karl Popper branded this attitude “promissory materialism.” “[P]romissary materialism [is] a superstition without a rational foundation,” Eccles says. “[It] is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists . . .who confuse their religion with their science. It has all the features of a messianic prophecy.”

I can see no way in which it can be filled in, but I still leave the door open to a way being found - it may be that there's another possible way of looking at computation waiting to be discovered which will open the door to some kind of sentience-based processing taking place in some weird quantum soup outside of the universe, though having looked into things quantum I can't find anything there that goes against normal reason (most of the odd things are really just badly described), and reason continues to appear to bar the way to dealing with the key difficulty of turning direct experience of feelings into data about feelings.

Thoughts can be displaced in time, operating into both past and future. In precognitive remoteviewing experiments – for example, the hundreds of such experiments by the PEAR Lab at Princeton University – the receiver gets a future thought before it is ever sent.

Sounds like more fake science.

Furthermore, consciousness can operate into the past, as in the experiments involving retroactive intentions.

And some more. Where can I read more about these experiments?

The way ahead, I believe, has to place mind first as the key aspect of the universe...We have to start exploring how we can talk about mind in terms of a quantum picture...Only then will we be able to make a genuine bridge between physics and physiology.”

You can make it as quantum as you like, but you still need to account for the translation of experience of sensation to data about sensation. I keep coming back to that because it is THE problem with consciousness. "That hurt" is data. When we think about whether something hurt, we are processing data. When something actually hurts (if such a thing is even possible), it isn't happening in data - something is directly experiencing pain. To communicate the idea that pain was felt, even just to think about the idea that pain was felt, we have to move from experience of sensation to processing of information, and that's where we hit the crucial disconnect.

When scientists muster the courage to face this evidence unflinchingly, the greatest superstition of our age – the notion that the brain generates consciousness or is identical with it – will topple. In its place will arise a nonlocal picture of the mind.

It will be a nonlocal picture in which the fundamental problem is not addressed either. The physicist is not proposing a solution to the problem, but a way of fiddling around moving it somewhere else rather than addressing the central problem.

Thank you for your reply i will read carefully  later on , later alligator ...kidding

You are an honest consistent  guy with yourself ,a guy with integrity ,without self-deceit ,without self-delusions , without magical thinking , or self-illusions : i do respect and salute that in you, as a person , i mean it  .


Take care

[David Cooper]

If you happen to be right about the "fact " that we are just machines which seem to need those sophisticated evolutionary so-called built-in in our systems illusions such as consciousness, feelings , emotions ....in order to survive, then you or others for that matter can be able some day to create  conscious  artificial intelligent machines exactly like us ,and maybe even some conscious intelligent machines that would even surpass us = the next level of evolution as some scientists like to call it .

Not quite. We could make machines which copy us right down to the generation of fake claims of consciousness and the ability of the machines to get so stuck in their thinking that they believe non-existent feelings exist and that an "I" is in there feeling them, but they would not actually be conscious.

[David Cooper]

Thank you for your reply i will read carefully  later on , later alligator ...kidding

You are an honest consistent  guy with yourself ,a guy with integrity ,without self-deceit ,without self-delusions , without magical thinking , or self-illusions : i do respect and salute that in you, as a person , i mean it  .


Take care

Thanks for that, but the reality is that we're all stuck here. None of us want magic in our model, but we have yet to find a way to remove it without becoming nihilists, and nihilism feels highly unsatisfactory - you only have to pinch yourself to provide yourself with a serious objection to it. We feel as if we are substantially more than soulless machines making false assertions about feelings that don't exist. But we shouldn't be surprised that this problem won't break open for us because it has always been the biggest puzzle of them all and has blocked the way of anyone who has tried to tackle it. It is important though that we pin down and understand the fundamental problem before we waste time trying to solve it, and that is what I have attempted to do. When I look at the writings of other people on consciousness though, most of them appear to be completely bonkers, so the odds tell me that it's likely that I am completely bonkers too and am just too stupid to realise it. The most bonkers ones do all have something in common though, and that is that they make the mistake of thinking consciousness can emerge out of complexity without depending on an injection of magic, and that appears to be the mainstream "scientific" position on consciousness. These people need to ask themselves what they are causing to suffer when they torture a biological machine, because if it isn't the atoms or smaller particles, and if it isn't the energy locked up in the system, and if it isn't the fabric of space in from which these other things might be built, then what is it? Sentient geometrical arrangements or sentient pluralities just don't do it for me. Torturing a mere pattern and trying to make it suffer is pretty way out. Even so, it's not beyond possibility that there could be sentiences elsewhere linking in to biological machines and being sentient for them without it happening by magic, as would be the case if this world is virtual and the real us are sitting somewhere on the outside with all our inputs and outputs wired into it, so when you think of it like that it doesn't really matter so much that they're wanting consciousness to emerge out of complexity. Yes, that's a point I have always missed in the past, right up to the moment of writing this. They can make the link to something sentient in any way they like and it doesn't really matter. What matters is how that sentience is supposed to interface with an information system to inform the information system as to its existence (the existence of sentience). That is the key problem which needs to be tackled if any real progress is ever to be made towards understanding consciousness as a real phenomenon. If anyone can crack this single little problem and find a way to turn experience of sensation into knowledge of sensation, the whole thing will open up and we will be able to work out what we really are: we will be able to point to the soul (meaning the sentient "I" in the machine - no other baggage attached beyond being something that can feel).

[alancalverd]

We could make machines which copy us right down to the generation of fake claims of consciousness and the ability of the machines to get so stuck in their thinking that they believe non-existent feelings exist and that an "I" is in there feeling them, but they would not actually be conscious.

So your definition of "conscious" is...?

[dlorde]

Thoughts can be displaced in time, operating into both past and future. In precognitive remoteviewing experiments – for example, the hundreds of such experiments by the PEAR Lab at Princeton University – the receiver gets a future thought before it is ever sent.

Sounds like more fake science.

PEAR was, initially at least, a serious attempt to investigate a wide range of claimed paranormal phenomena, from remote viewing to mentally biasing mechanical and electronic randomisers, precognition, etc. They did thousands of experiments over many years, with annual reports & reviews, and, in general, reported a slight (but significant) excess of anomalous results. Their methodologies and analyses were often criticised, and attempts at replication were less successful. Mainstream consensus is that nothing of interest was demonstrated.

Furthermore, consciousness can operate into the past, as in the experiments involving retroactive intentions.

And some more. Where can I read more about these experiments?

This may be a reference to Daryl Bem's experiments on 'Retroactive Facilitation of Recall'. His methodology and analyses were criticised, particularly when he modified and added new analyses after the data was obtained. Several attempted replications were unsuccessful.

[dlorde]

So what is your position on feelings and consciousness?

I'm in two positions. In one of them I see consciousness as impossible. In the other, I refuse to see it as impossible and hope someone will come up with a completely new way of looking at the problem with some approach in which data and sentience can be mixed together in the same system and can speak the same language. I can't see any way of doing it, but that isn't the same thing as saying it's impossible. I keep hoping that a clue will jump out of some conversation which will lead to a breakthrough, and that clue is maybe as likely to come from a fruitcake as a scientist. If there's a solution, it will be found by someone who's looking in from an angle that normal people don't explore.

Thanks for such a concise summary.

I suspect that we'll need a combined approach to get close to understanding it - a synthesis of investigating the progressive increase in consciousness & awareness in animal and infant developmental studies, large scale emulation projects (Blue Brain, etc.), and scanner studies of different conscious states and their transitions. 

[David Cooper]

So your definition of "conscious" is...?

That's difficult due to ambiguity. I'd like to say that being conscious means you are experiencing phenomena relating to consciousness, namely qualia (which can include a feeling of existing or of understanding something), but you could be doing that while at the same time being officially unconscious from the point of view of anyone observing you from the outside and finding you completely unresponsive.

[alancalverd]

I don't see a problem with ambiguity. If you use a word to mean two different things, just tell us both meanings!

What I do see as a problem is that you have defined conscious in terms of consciousness and not being unconscious. So you would define a cow as exhibiting or experiencing bovine phenomena, and not being an uncow. Not a particularly useful contribution to a discussion on the evolution or ecological function of a cow.

[David Cooper]

PEAR was, initially at least, a serious attempt to investigate a wide range of claimed paranormal phenomena, from remote viewing to mentally biasing mechanical and electronic randomisers, precognition, etc. They did thousands of experiments over many years, with annual reports & reviews, and, in general, reported a slight (but significant) excess of anomalous results. Their methodologies and analyses were often criticised, and attempts at replication were less successful. Mainstream consensus is that nothing of interest was demonstrated.
...
This may be a reference to Daryl Bem's experiments on 'Retroactive Facilitation of Recall'. His methodology and analyses were criticised, particularly when he modified and added new analyses after the data was obtained. Several attempted replications were unsuccessful.

Thanks for hunting that out and confirming my (/our) expectations.

I suspect that we'll need a combined approach to get close to understanding it - a synthesis of investigating the progressive increase in consciousness & awareness in animal and infant developmental studies, large scale emulation projects (Blue Brain, etc.), and scanner studies of different conscious states and their transitions. 

The Blue Brain type of approach may get somewhere if it ever gets to the point where it starts reporting feelings, and then it might be possible to trace back those claims to see what evidence they're based on, but it could take thousands of years to untangle the functionality of the neural nets. I don't expect to find out the answer unless we can find ways to extend our lives considerably, though there's always the chance that someone will find an explanation for consciousness (of a kind that enables it to be real) just by thinking their way into the problem in an unusual way. Maybe exploring Buddhist meditation would help...

[David Cooper]

I don't see a problem with ambiguity. If you use a word to mean two different things, just tell us both meanings!

That's what I did, in effect. I just phrased it in the manner I thought it. You should be able to untangle the two resulting definitions from it yourself.

What I do see as a problem is that you have defined conscious in terms of consciousness and not being unconscious.

No, I very specifically mentioned qualia. No qualia, no consciousness.

So you would define a cow as exhibiting or experiencing bovine phenomena, and not being an uncow. Not a particularly useful contribution to a discussion on the evolution or ecological function of a cow.

No. you're again missing out the key bit about it mooing.