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Old 16th May 2018, 09:52 PM   #121
Nonpareil
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
Can you provide a link - or any reference to anyone with even a foggiest idea of how the brain generates consciousness?
I didn't say that we knew yet, but to say that there have been no strides made towards understanding it is blatantly false. Google "integrated information theory" or related fields if you're interested; whether or not you agree with their conclusions, they are undoubtedly making strides.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Assuming that something exists external to you because it seems that way is the same kind of shaky reasoning.
It is not an assumption. It is a conclusion, because things meet the definition of being external.

Read my posts before responding, please. This is not a complicated concept.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Ah then, so you will provide some explanation as to how matter becomes conscious? I can't wait.
I didn't say that I could. See the above reply to Larry.

And again, the point that you keep ignoring is that materialism does not need to explain how consciousness arises from matter in order to demonstrate that it does, in the same way that I don't need to know how gravity works in order to demonstrate that water flows downhill.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
And a system of conscious toilets? Seriously? Who's the woo peddler now?
Stop strawmanning. It only makes you look like a fool.
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Old 16th May 2018, 10:36 PM   #122
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Originally Posted by xjx388 View Post
But I wouldn't call it a belief, I would call it a theory on a par with relativity, evolution, etc. Sure, we don't have all the answers, but given the evidence, the theory is well-supported.

Materialism is not a scientific theory. Scientific theories can be proved by a rigorous method: hypothetical-deductive. You never will found a discussion about materialism in a scientific review.
Materialism is a philosophical theory.
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Old 16th May 2018, 10:46 PM   #123
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
Can you provide a link - or any reference to anyone with even a foggiest idea of how the brain generates consciousness?
Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Putting that aside, materialism suffers from a catastrophic defect: it can't explain how consciousness arises from matter. Not only has it made no progress on this,..
This is not a “catastrophic” defect. It is a limitation of human knowledge. In any case, some important progress has be done in demonstrating the correlation between brain alterations and modification of mind states. This is a serious hint of causal relation brain-mind that suggest the advantages of a materialist point of view of consciousness. What is absolutely unproductive in the study of mind is idealism.

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Old 17th May 2018, 12:36 AM   #124
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Originally Posted by Nonpareil View Post
To be fair to Larry, I do think that this is a bit backwards. The initial burden of proof does, in fact, lie upon the materialist position. It's just that it meets that burden.

I've mentioned several times now that Larry's position comes down to nothing but word games, and I meant it. The materialist position is, at its core, extremely simple: something exists outside of our minds.

This is an assertion, and like all such assertions, it must meet the burden of proof. It just happens that the burden of proof is, in this case, trivially easy to meet.

Look around you at any object. Interact with it in any way that you see fit. Notice that, while you can touch, hear, taste, smell, and otherwise interact with that object, it doesn't have any direct means of interacting with your mind except through these senses. Likewise, it is not affected by mere thought, and its existence apparently persists when you stop thinking about it, as you can see by leaving the room for a while and then coming back.

"Internal with respect to the mind" and "external with respect to the mind" are not just labels that can be slapped onto objects without justification. They have meanings, and definitions, and requirements to meet those definitions.

Objects like your keyboard and mouse do not behave as though they are part of your mind. They do not meet the definition of "internal", because they do not behave in any respect as though they are internal. Therefore, they are labeled external, and materialism meets its burden of proof. It is no longer an assertion, but a conclusion, and one which is supported by literally everything that you experience.

Larry's brand of idealism relies on the idea that he can simply apply the label of "internal" to these objects anyway, and that this is sufficient to not only make idealism viable but to make materialism untenable. This is, of course, complete nonsense, since words have meanings and you can't just change them around like that.

At best, all Larry's position results in is the idea that "Okay, there are a bunch of things that act as though they're external, but we can't call them external because... because. So now we have to come up with a new word, but nothing about the objects and their behavior has actually changed."

It is semantic nonsense in its purest form.

Well, actually none of that changes what I said, or what I explained to Larry about why his sentence is wrong. It's simply a matter of use of English language, not a matter of anything else as to why Larry's sentence is wrong.

I am not claiming to know that external reality does exist, I did not say that at all and I don't think you will be able to find any example of me saying that, here or anywhere else.

What Larry's sentences say is that external reality does not exist. His sentence actually states that as a fact (without any caution or doubt at all). But what I have said to him is that, he cannot claim that external reality does not exist ... because he does not know that it does not exist, and cannot actually prove that it does't exist. But he keeps writing sentences that say it does not exist ...

... he keeps writing sentences that claim “you cannot touch anything outside of your mind” (see his quoted words below) – well that is wrong isn't it! The answer is, "Yes!", it certainly is wrong. Not because it's certain that you can touch real objects, but wrong because Larry cannot claim that it's impossible to touch real objects that are outside of your mind. Here is his sentence (just one of many) -

Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
this is something you can easily prove to yourself right now: touch or point to anything outside your mind.
You can't do it - because everything you see, touch, etc. lies within your experience. You can't see, touch, etc. anything outside of experience.
This is what is meant by: Materialism is a belief.
I'm not suggesting that Materialism is an unjustified or incorrect belief, but it is a belief.

As I've said in the above replies to Larry - if he means anything sensible at all, then what I expect he meant to write was something to say that because we rely entirely upon our brain (he calls it a "mind") for any "experience" of what may or may not be real objects in a real external world, we cannot say for sure that the external object actually do exist ... it might be possible that the object is just an illusion created as "experience" within our mind .... but that is NOT what his sentences say ... what his sentences repeatedly say is that the external objects definitely do not exist at all! ... he say's they have no existence except within your "experience" mind ... look again at his sentences (below) -

" touch or point to anything outside your mind.
You can't do it - because everything you see, touch, etc. lies within your experience.

You can't see, touch, etc. anything outside of experience"



His words specifically and explicitly claim that "you cannot touch anything outside of your "experience" " ... well that sentence claims that the object that you think you are touching (outside of your "experience" mind/brain) does not exist! ... its say's the object only exists within your "experience" mind/brain/thoughts.
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Old 17th May 2018, 01:10 AM   #125
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Putting that aside, materialism suffers from a catastrophic defect: it can't explain how consciousness arises from matter.
...snip...,
Er whilst the detail was unknown for a long time people did work out the general gist of that quite some time ago.ago....
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Old 17th May 2018, 01:17 AM   #126
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
It is the truth, no one has even a wild guess how matter becomes conscious, how matter generates the first person experience. I don’t see this as a catastrophe or even a problem.

Larry, we have been over this in virtually every single thread where you ever post on this forum/site. You make that same statement over-&-over again virtually every single time you make posts in any thread at all. You are obsessed by making that claim, as well as obsessed by making the claim that "we cannot touch any real objects outside of our "experience" mind/brain" ... and you are manifestly wrong with both statements.

As far as what is called "consciousness" is concerned - as you well know, in the previous threads about so-called "out of body experiences", where people were arguing that intelligent souls continued to exist as our consciousness after death (i.e. claiming that intelligent "consciousness" somehow filled the universe), it was shown by myself and others with numerous references to properly published genuine research in psychology, medicine and neuroscience (papers & books that all contained within them scores of other references), that all modern research agrees that what we call the "mind" is quite definitely an effect or set sensations produced by the brain ... if you take away the brain (e.g. if the brain is truly dead or destroyed) then all signs of any consciousness are gone ... there is zero evidence of any consciousness without a living/functioning brain.

I gave you this reference before, but you need to read this, because it explains with a long list of references to recent research papers, why consciousness is only an effect created by the physical functioning of the brain (i.e. a complex set of electro-chemical interactions with the sensory system etc.), and it explains in great detail how all sorts of experiments have shown that various quite specific "conscious experiences" can be created, and manipulated (e.g. turned on and off) just by subjecting a patient to tiny electrical pulses, and/or by use of various chemical drugs, and/or by deprivation of oxygen etc. ... the effects are quite dramatic, clear and specific, and the patient/subject experiences various situations of "conscious experience" that seem to the patient exactly like the "conscious experience" that the patient has in normal life ... but in this case (in these experiments), those very real seeming experiences were created in the patients "consciousness'' (i.e. in their brain or "mind") entirely by artificial means in the laboratory.

From experiments like that, we do now know a great deal about how the sensation that we call "consciousness" is produced. It's simply an effect i.e. a set of very complex and sophisticated sensations (i.e. extremely highly evolved in humans), produced by what is now a fairly well understood chemical functioning of the structure that we call the "brain" ... here's the reference to the book -

Stanislas Dehaene Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts, Penguin Random House, Dec. 2014.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Consciousne...nislas+dehaene


And by the way, since you (or others) probably will not read any of that book - iirc, Stanislas Dehaene is a French professor of psychology who leads an active research group that has published a lot of papers on this subject, many of which are described and referenced in the book, along with many descriptions and references to recent published research from other scientists in this field.

Last edited by IanS; 17th May 2018 at 01:19 AM.
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Old 17th May 2018, 01:33 AM   #127
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Originally Posted by David Mo View Post
This is not a “catastrophic” defect. It is a limitation of human knowledge. In any case, some important progress has be done in demonstrating the correlation between brain alterations and modification of mind states. This is a serious hint of causal relation brain-mind that suggest the advantages of a materialist point of view of consciousness. What is absolutely unproductive in the study of mind is idealism.
We've gone beyond that, we now have causation for some "thoughts" for some "experiences", in other words we can describe exactly what we have to do to cause "X". And it doesn't involve anything but "matter".
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Old 17th May 2018, 02:29 AM   #128
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Originally Posted by Darat View Post
We've gone beyond that, we now have causation for some "thoughts" for some "experiences", in other words we can describe exactly what we have to do to cause "X". And it doesn't involve anything but "matter".
Can you put here some article in this sense? It would be interesting to comment.
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Old 17th May 2018, 02:31 AM   #129
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
It is the truth, no one has even a wild guess how matter becomes conscious, how matter generates the first person experience. I don’t see this as a catastrophe or even a problem.
Even if that were true, there is also no mechanism for how idealism produces individual experience and simultaneously a kind of seemingly objective reality. 'It's all mind that appears like stuff' isn't any better than 'it's all stuff and some of it produces minds'.
In fact, it's worse, since there are no workable models for it, and it cant even really be tested...
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Old 17th May 2018, 02:48 AM   #130
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Putting that aside[...]

Putting that aside Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
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Old 17th May 2018, 04:23 AM   #131
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Originally Posted by David Mo View Post
Can you put here some article in this sense? It would be interesting to comment.
The book IanS recommends is a great start, I'll look for any abstracts of any other stuff when I'm back on my PC.
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Old 17th May 2018, 04:58 AM   #132
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Originally Posted by Scorpion View Post
Thought ultimately remains under control of the thinker. Chemical imbalance and brain damage can influence changes in our behaviour. But the brain does not have the last word, we do.

It is my consistent view that I am the thinker, not my brain, and I retain spiritual beliefs precisely because I have battled with schizophrenia for fifty years.
If you you speak of had the last word you would be the physician that healed thyself - of schizophrenia.

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Old 17th May 2018, 07:21 AM   #133
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Originally Posted by IanS View Post
What Larry's sentences say is that external reality does not exist. His sentence actually states that as a fact (without any caution or doubt at all). .
I never claimed an external reality doesn't exist - I claimed it was a belief - there's a big difference. Both Myriad and Nonpariel have provided explanations / thoughts on why believing in a physical external reality is rational and justified - which we as individuals can either accept or deny.
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Old 17th May 2018, 07:27 AM   #134
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
I never claimed an external reality doesn't exist - I claimed it was a belief - there's a big difference. Both Myriad and Nonpariel have provided explanations / thoughts on why believing in a physical external reality is rational and justified - which we as individuals can either accept or deny.
You are using "belief" as a synonym for fact.
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Old 17th May 2018, 07:39 AM   #135
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Originally Posted by Darat View Post
The book IanS recommends is a great start, I'll look for any abstracts of any other stuff when I'm back on my PC.
Obviously, I had not time to read this book, but judging from some abstracts, reviews and quotes Deahaene holds up a similar theory than mine. There is still a long way to explain the neurological basis of consciousness. He uses many concepts of psychology and philosophy, subjectivity and introspection included. But there is an important progress in the neural explanation of consciousness.

Perhaps you can add some more.
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Old 17th May 2018, 07:42 AM   #136
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The whole duality thing, mind/body

Evidence that consciousness arises solely from brain processes:

-Injuries to the brain cause changes in memory, personality, thinking, behavior and perception.
-People who suffer from brain degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s have changes in states of consciousness along with the same changes as we see in injuries.
-Neurosurgeons can elicit changes in speech and behavior by stimulating or removing certain brain areas.
-When someone is brain dead, there is no consciousness at all.

Evidence that consciousness is separate from brain processes:
-





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Old 17th May 2018, 08:45 AM   #137
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
It is the truth, no one has even a wild guess how matter becomes conscious, how matter generates the first person experience. I don’t see this as a catastrophe or even a problem.

Well you've said exactly that (word-for-word the exact same sentence) so many times in previous threads, that you really must know by now that the sort of scientists who work in this field (i.e. psychologists, researchers in neuroscience, and various practitioners in certain areas of medical research), have published numerous papers in recent decades showing that what we call “consciousness” is an effect produced by normal functioning of the brain (in all “higher” animals, not just humans), and it arises from perfectly normal processing of sensory input.

It is not, as you keep trying to claim, a complete and utter mystery.

But just because we do not yet have a really detailed explanation of exactly how our brain creates such a seemingly vivid and detailed awareness of the world around us, that does not entitle you to claim that it's all a total mystery with no scientific explanations of any kind at all. Really that is, from you, nothing more than you attempting the usual “argument from ignorance” in which you seek to claim that just because we do not yet understand everything about the way the brain works to produce the sensation of consciousness, that means you are entitled to claim that we know absolutely nothing at all about it, and to thereby imply that it must involve some spiritual or quasi-religious mystery outside/beyond of the remit of mere science.

IOW - what you are doing here, is no better than rampant creationists who keep insisting that science has no explanation for how humans came to exist, because they say we cannot answer the fundamental question of exactly how any life ever began in the first place (many of them would even deny that Man ever evolved from anything).

However, apart from all of that – in one of the previous threads about a year or two ago, where I think you were involved and making all the same claims you are making here, one or two other anti-science posters were also claiming that we had not even the first notion of how such a thing as consciousness could possibly be produced by a brain within a living body alone (i.e. without some mysterious god-like agency). And after being asked several times, I eventually gave a fairly long explanation of what I think is the most likely way in which science would eventually explain the effect that we perceive as “consciousness”. Do you remember that? Do you remember that explanation? No? Well I can repeat it again for you if you really cannot remember, but it's a waste everyones time and goodwill if when people give you genuine considered credible explanations, you really take absolutely no notice, never properly consider what is being explained to you, and instead just continue to repeat your same untrue and deeply unscientific claims in thread after thread.

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Old 17th May 2018, 09:01 AM   #138
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Originally Posted by xjx388 View Post
Evidence that consciousness arises solely from brain processes:

-Injuries to the brain cause changes in memory, personality, thinking, behavior and perception.
-People who suffer from brain degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s have changes in states of consciousness along with the same changes as we see in injuries.
-Neurosurgeons can elicit changes in speech and behavior by stimulating or removing certain brain areas.
-When someone is brain dead, there is no consciousness at all.

Evidence that consciousness is separate from brain processes:
-

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There is no experiential evidence that conscious experience comes from our brain, nor does conscious experience share any properties of a brain (as a seperate unit or grouping of matter inside the skull).
Nor do we experience consciousness as an epi-phenonomon, as something that might arise from the purring of a kitten or the flushing of a million toilets.
Consciousness is not mysterious or abstract, it's real and substantial - that's our experience.
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Old 17th May 2018, 09:15 AM   #139
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When you sever the corpus callosum connecting the 2 halves of the brain you have 2 separate personalities in the same body. In one instance a man with this tried to hit his wife with one hand controlled by one half of the brain while the other hand grabbed his hand to prevent the attack and protect his wife.

Isn't that interesting?
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Old 17th May 2018, 09:25 AM   #140
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Originally Posted by IanS View Post
Well, actually none of that changes what I said, or what I explained to Larry about why his sentence is wrong.
No, because I don't disagree with what you said except in that slight detail about materialism needing to meet the burden of proof first.

Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
There is no experiential evidence that conscious experience comes from our brain
Save literally everything that we know about the brain and consciousness.

Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
nor does conscious experience share any properties of a brain
Because consciousness is not a brain. Consciousness is what a brain does. Alter brain function and you alter consciousness.
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Old 17th May 2018, 09:27 AM   #141
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Originally Posted by Nonpareil View Post
I didn't say that we knew yet, but to say that there have been no strides made towards understanding it is blatantly false. Google "integrated information theory" or related fields if you're interested; whether or not you agree with their conclusions, they are undoubtedly making strides.
What causal explanation does IIT give for how consciousness arises from matter? What evidence is there for IIT? How is it perceived among people who actually study working brains? And IIT has it's own peculiarities. Is an abacus falling through the air conscious? The beads are sliding. Information is being processed....



Quote:
It is not an assumption. It is a conclusion, because things meet the definition of being external.
It's a conclusion based on the assumption that things are as they seem to be.

Quote:
Stop strawmanning. It only makes you look like a fool.
Please. You've been here awhile. Every example I gave has been presented here on these threads by materialists: conscious brains made out of ropes and pulleys, trains, toilets, and in one memorable thread it was suggested people writing down 1's and 0's could achieve a "conscious instant". I think RocketDodger believed that, although I may be getting that mixed up.

Take a look at this comic: https://xkcd.com/505/

Do you believe it's possible your conscious awareness is a result of some guy pushing rocks around on an endless plain? No, of course you don't. It's not even in the realm of possibility is it? But there are those that do think it's quite possible, and the logic is spelled out in the comic. I don't know if they're around anymore.

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Old 17th May 2018, 09:31 AM   #142
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Originally Posted by jrhowell View Post
Why the obsession with flushing toilets?
I think it's hilarious. Can you imagine such a system begging not to be "unplugged"?

Quote:
The basic idea is that consciousness is a complex process that can be carried out by a vast number of entities working together, each not conscious in their own right.

That doesn't seem absurd to me. No more than thinking that a huge number of individual transistors that can each only switch between off and on could be combined to form the computer I am using to type this.
Is your computer conscious? And if you think computers will some day be conscious, explain how flipping a bunch of switches a certain way can generate conscious experience.
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Old 17th May 2018, 09:37 AM   #143
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
It is the truth, no one has even a wild guess how matter becomes conscious, how matter generates the first person experience. I don’t see this as a catastrophe or even a problem.
It is the truth, no one has even a wild guess how MIND becomes conscious, how MIND generates the first person experience.

It is the truth, no one has even a wild guess how IDEALISM becomes conscious, how IDEALISM generates the first person experience.

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Old 17th May 2018, 09:54 AM   #144
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We don't know everything, so it's MAGIC.

That's unfalsifiable.

Magic doesn't need to be falsifiable.
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Old 17th May 2018, 10:20 AM   #145
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Originally Posted by Dara Ó Briain
“Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.”
Quite.
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Old 17th May 2018, 10:53 AM   #146
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
What causal explanation does IIT give for how consciousness arises from matter? What evidence is there for IIT? How is it perceived among people who actually study working brains? And IIT has it's own peculiarities. Is an abacus falling through the air conscious? The beads are sliding. Information is being processed....
Google is your friend.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
It's a conclusion based on the assumption that things are as they seem to be.
No, it's a conclusion based only on entirely demonstrable facts. The only thing that materialism depends upon (that an external universe exists) is entirely provable. Saying "but what if somehow magically-" is pointless hand-waving with no actual weight behind it, and no one cares.

If you want anyone to actually pay attention to this line of "reasoning", you will need to actually supply a way in which things may not be what they seem, and show how this is a coherent explanation for observable fact.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Please. You've been here awhile. Every example I gave has been presented here on these threads by materialists
But is not being presented now, so no one cares, as this question is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether or not materialism is demonstrably true.

Stop attempting to derail the discussion.
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Old 17th May 2018, 10:59 AM   #147
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Originally Posted by Wudang View Post
When you sever the corpus callosum connecting the 2 halves of the brain you have 2 separate personalities in the same body. In one instance a man with this tried to hit his wife with one hand controlled by one half of the brain while the other hand grabbed his hand to prevent the attack and protect his wife.

Isn't that interesting?
With a small caveat, the two hemispheres still both connect to the midbrain and through it the lower brain.
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Old 17th May 2018, 11:22 AM   #148
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
There is no experiential evidence that conscious experience comes from our brain, nor does conscious experience share any properties of a brain (as a seperate unit or grouping of matter inside the skull).
Nor do we experience consciousness as an epi-phenonomon, as something that might arise from the purring of a kitten or the flushing of a million toilets.
Consciousness is not mysterious or abstract, it's real and substantial - that's our experience.
Do you hold that we also don't have "experiential" and evidence that we breathe or that we run?
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Old 17th May 2018, 11:25 AM   #149
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
What causal explanation does IIT give for how consciousness arises from matter? What evidence is there for IIT? How is it perceived among people who actually study working brains? And IIT has it's own peculiarities. Is an abacus falling through the air conscious? The beads are sliding. Information is being processed....





It's a conclusion based on the assumption that things are as they seem to be.



Please. You've been here awhile. Every example I gave has been presented here on these threads by materialists: conscious brains made out of ropes and pulleys, trains, toilets, and in one memorable thread it was suggested people writing down 1's and 0's could achieve a "conscious instant". I think RocketDodger believed that, although I may be getting that mixed up.

Take a look at this comic: https://xkcd.com/505/

Do you believe it's possible your conscious awareness is a result of some guy pushing rocks around on an endless plain? No, of course you don't. It's not even in the realm of possibility is it? But there are those that do think it's quite possible, and the logic is spelled out in the comic. I don't know if they're around anymore.
(Just a note, I'm not a materialist, I don't think there is really any utility in such philosophies I'm only interested in what works.)

How do you explain my lack of this rich "interior" world you have, am I not conscious?
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Old 17th May 2018, 01:03 PM   #150
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
I think it's hilarious. Can you imagine such a system begging not to be "unplugged"?

Is your computer conscious? And if you think computers will some day be conscious, explain how flipping a bunch of switches a certain way can generate conscious experience.
And yet, you had no problem with us being simulated by a "programmer" instead of God in the other thread. Computers being able to run a consciousness, or for that matter several billion consciousnesses is apparently OK with you, just as long as it's woowoo. It only becomes not ok if it's not conducive to your religious woowoo

As you say, it's rather hilarious
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Old 17th May 2018, 01:10 PM   #151
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
There is no experiential evidence that conscious experience comes from our brain, nor does conscious experience share any properties of a brain (as a seperate unit or grouping of matter inside the skull).

Nor do we experience consciousness as an epi-phenonomon, as something that might arise from the purring of a kitten or the flushing of a million toilets.

Consciousness is not mysterious or abstract, it's real and substantial - that's our experience.

Consciousness is nothing more than our ability to experience. This ability arises from brain processes; when we change brain structure or chemicals, we change experience. Take LSD, get drunk, sustain a head injury...these things all alter our experience of consciousness. If my brain doesn’t get enough oxygen, I lose consciousness . All my senses are directly connected to my brain. Sever those connections and I lose those senses which alters my ability to perceive.

We have plenty of experiential AND experimental evidence that consciousness is solely the product of the brain. We have no evidence or experience that consciousness is a separate thing from our brains.

What would be good evidence of consciousness being separate? Evidence of the survival of this consciousness after brain death, would probably be the best. Alas, there is no such evidence. Given that all of our experience and all the data we have on brain function shows us that consciousness arises from the brain, how can you possibly say that, “there is no experiential evidence that conscious experience comes from the brain?”


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Old 17th May 2018, 03:50 PM   #152
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Is your computer conscious? And if you think computers will some day be conscious, explain how flipping a bunch of switches a certain way can generate conscious experience.
The same way that flipping a bunch of switches can control an autonomous vehicle or a personal assistant that can answer questions or numerous other things that computers can already do, if not all that well yet. At the heart of it is processing sensory data, generating an internal representation of relevant aspects of the external world, and using that to plan actions that meet pre-programmed goals.

Personally I don't see that much difference between an a grid of RGB values that form an image in a computer's memory and electrical pulses exchanged by neurons that seem to us to be qualia.
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Old 17th May 2018, 03:55 PM   #153
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Originally Posted by xjx388 View Post
Consciousness is nothing more than our ability to experience. This ability arises from brain processes; when we change brain structure or chemicals, we change experience. Take LSD, get drunk, sustain a head injury...these things all alter our experience of consciousness. If my brain doesn’t get enough oxygen, I lose consciousness . All my senses are directly connected to my brain. Sever those connections and I lose those senses which alters my ability to perceive.

We have plenty of experiential AND experimental evidence that consciousness is solely the product of the brain. We have no evidence or experience that consciousness is a separate thing from our brains.

What would be good evidence of consciousness being separate? Evidence of the survival of this consciousness after brain death, would probably be the best. Alas, there is no such evidence. Given that all of our experience and all the data we have on brain function shows us that consciousness arises from the brain, how can you possibly say that, “there is no experiential evidence that conscious experience comes from the brain?”


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Though I agree there are people that do cite out of body experiences and near death experiences as direct evidence to contradict your cavalier assertion. Which is precisely what it is. Though we both agree we both need to recognize the obvious weakness inherent in that assertion. Are you able to show that whatever constitutes our identities cannot continue post mortem?
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Old 17th May 2018, 04:03 PM   #154
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Originally Posted by Steve001 View Post
Though I agree there are people that do cite out of body experiences and near death experiences as direct evidence to contradict your cavalier assertion. Which is precisely what it is. Though we both agree we both need to recognize the obvious weakness inherent in that assertion. Are you able to show that whatever constitutes our identities cannot continue post mortem?
I cannot. But I am not making the claim that it can. I'm willing to consider whatever evidence such a claimant might have. I have not seen any so far that shows that such experiences are anything more than fabrications, confabulations or hallucinations.

I think the cavalier assertion is that such reports are evidence of duality.
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Old 17th May 2018, 04:31 PM   #155
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Originally Posted by Nonpareil View Post
Google is your friend.
Your claim, your burden of proof. Does IIT explain consciousness or not?



Quote:
No, it's a conclusion based only on entirely demonstrable facts. The only thing that materialism depends upon (that an external universe exists) is entirely provable. Saying "but what if somehow magically-" is pointless hand-waving with no actual weight behind it, and no one cares.
Now that is strawmanning.

Quote:
If you want anyone to actually pay attention to this line of "reasoning", you will need to actually supply a way in which things may not be what they seem, and show how this is a coherent explanation for observable fact.
Materialism cannot explain consciousness. It cannot, in principle, explain consciousness. All the explanations end in absurdities and/or paradoxes (blind people understanding what it is to see simply by learning about brain states). Therefore, some other "ism" is needed. Therefore, things are not what they seem.



Quote:
But is not being presented now, so no one cares, as this question is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether or not materialism is demonstrably true.

Stop attempting to derail the discussion.
Who cares if it's being presented now? The point is that's where materialism leads on this mind/body problem: to absurdities. The materialists we used to have in the forum's heyday understood this. Because they're not here doesn't somehow invalidate their points. The threads are still searchable. Look them up.

If materialism cannot explain consciousness, if ti can't even go down the path of explanation without absurdity, then some other metaphysical foundation is needed. Necessarily, that's either dualism or idealism. Naturally, either of those are relevant to the "whole duality thing, mind/body".

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Old 17th May 2018, 04:34 PM   #156
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Originally Posted by Darat View Post
(Just a note, I'm not a materialist, I don't think there is really any utility in such philosophies I'm only interested in what works.)

How do you explain my lack of this rich "interior" world you have, am I not conscious?
You don't have a lack of an interior world. You feel pain, right? Orgasms feel good? Then you're conscious.
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Old 17th May 2018, 05:00 PM   #157
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
(blind people understanding what it is to see simply by learning about brain states)
You still haven't explained why knowing about a brain state should be the same as experiencing a brain state.
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Old 17th May 2018, 05:15 PM   #158
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Originally Posted by xjx388 View Post
I cannot. But I am not making the claim that it can. I'm willing to consider whatever evidence such a claimant might have. I have not seen any so far that shows that such experiences are anything more than fabrications, confabulations or hallucinations.

I think the cavalier assertion is that such reports are evidence of duality.
I'm happy to see you understand. Here's a forum where one can hone their debate skills. I got tired of beating my head against the wall there. Maybe you'll have better success. http://psiencequest.net/forums/index.php

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Old 17th May 2018, 07:49 PM   #159
Nonpareil
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Your claim, your burden of proof. Does IIT explain consciousness or not?
That isn't my claim. I am simply stating that your claim that there have been no strides made towards understanding consciousness is blatantly false. Whether or not integrated information theory serves as a complete explanation is irrelevant, and it's hardly the only example.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Materialism cannot explain consciousness.
Asserting this does not make it true.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Who cares if it's being presented now?
People trying to have a coherent discussion without derailing it.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
The point is that's where materialism leads on this mind/body problem: to absurdities.
You claiming that something is absurd does not make it so. Nor does you stating that the only possible materialistic explanations for consciousness are necessarily absurd make that so.

Even accepting, for the sake of argument, that materialism has no explanation for how consciousness arises from matter, this doesn't actually change the fact that we know that it does.
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Old 17th May 2018, 07:51 PM   #160
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
It is the truth, no one has even a wild guess how matter becomes conscious, how matter generates the first person experience. I don’t see this as a catastrophe or even a problem.
Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
There is no experiential evidence that conscious experience comes from our brain, nor does conscious experience share any properties of a brain (as a seperate unit or grouping of matter inside the skull).
Nor do we experience consciousness as an epi-phenonomon, as something that might arise from the purring of a kitten or the flushing of a million toilets.
Consciousness is not mysterious or abstract, it's real and substantial - that's our experience.
I don't see how you can hold both of these things to be true.

And what's this about "our" experience? How do you know how anyone else experiences consciousness?
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