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The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#31

Post by mvanvoorden »

king_magic wrote: post #24
csomar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hypothesis is worthy of pursuit, in my opinion. The article is not well written, however. If you say matter can't have consciousness then how does your brain have one? Your brain in made of matter. There are definitively varying degrees of consciousness and self-awareness. I don't think that someone who is an 1. atheist 2. knows that consciousness is made by the brain neurons or some processes; has the same self-…

Why is it so incredible to think that consciousness couldn’t emerge from the brain? All sorts of complex phenomena emerge from plain old non-magical matter. Why would matter be magically “conscious”? What possible physical mechanism could that magic be? (beside the absurdity of vibration, I suppose?)

What's absurd about vibration? Without vibration, there would be nothing. Nothing at all. Vibration is the foundation of all that there is and ever will be.

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#32

Post by whatshisface »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #30
saalweachter wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be very careful when deciding what can and can't be a scientific theory. Not being able to directly observe something isn't actually a problem. We can't directly observe black holes. We can't directly observe the center of the sun, in the foreseeable future. We can't directly observe the evolution of life on Earth. But we can use our theories to explain these things to also make predictions that can be ob…

Right, and therefore consciousness is unexplainable by science, because as far as science is concerned it doesn't even exist. There is no measurement that can be made to determine, for instance, if AlphaGo is a thinking, conscious mind, or merely an advanced algorithm. In scientific terms, there is no meaningful distinction.

>In scientific terms, there is no meaningful distinction.

That might be going to far. To an electric field an uncharged particle "doesn't exist," but that doesn't actually mean that uncharged particles don't exist. Likewise there could be particles that don't interact with any known force, or even particles that interact with nothing. The right thing to say is that the existence of those things is categorically unknowable, and that studying them may even be a waste of time, but you shouldn't say that they are known not to exist. It's a similar story for consciousness, which is at least purported to interact with things, although the interaction is one-way in the "wrong" direction.

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#33

Post by _Schizotypy »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #28
_Schizotypy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your brain has consciousness because of the networking of the neurons that make it up

How many neurons does it take to make a consciousness? The thing about consciousness is that you can't really define it. You know you have it because you experience it. You assume that other humans have it because they are like you. You might further assume that certain other beings have it because they are also like you in many ways (though you'd likely disagree with the idea that theirs is as meaningful as yours).…

We don't know that yet, but there isn't functionality without the network

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#34

Post by saalweachter »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #30
saalweachter wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be very careful when deciding what can and can't be a scientific theory. Not being able to directly observe something isn't actually a problem. We can't directly observe black holes. We can't directly observe the center of the sun, in the foreseeable future. We can't directly observe the evolution of life on Earth. But we can use our theories to explain these things to also make predictions that can be ob…

Right, and therefore consciousness is unexplainable by science, because as far as science is concerned it doesn't even exist. There is no measurement that can be made to determine, for instance, if AlphaGo is a thinking, conscious mind, or merely an advanced algorithm. In scientific terms, there is no meaningful distinction.

Ehhhhhh.

I was trying to say the opposite. Or rather, I was actually trying to say that phenomenon are rarely unscientific, only the explanations. You can have scientific and unscientific explanations of the origin of life on Earth.

You really only declare a phenomenon unscientific if we've spent a long time not being able to come up with any good scientific explanations. For instance, we commonly regard the question, "What happened before the Big Bang?" as outside the reach of science. But that's just provisional -- if someone came up with a really great theory that explained the nature of the universe before the Big Bang, and it produced testable predictions, then suddenly the question would in fact be inside the reach of science.

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#35

Post by amelius »

saalweachter wrote: post #25
amelius wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it can be called a theory, just not a scientific theory. Otherwise, it would not be possible to find any theory for consciousness, but in fact people are still trying to find one.

You have to be very careful when deciding what can and can't be a scientific theory. Not being able to directly observe something isn't actually a problem. We can't directly observe black holes. We can't directly observe the center of the sun, in the foreseeable future. We can't directly observe the evolution of life on Earth. But we can use our theories to explain these things to also make predictions that can be ob…

The "scientific method" is very clearly defined. See for instance:

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

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#36

Post by saalweachter »

ghthor wrote: post #23
saalweachter wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so sure. There are a ton of people who get taken seriously who really, really don't like the "consciousness is what the brain does" consensus of modern neuroscience, and they say a lot of stupid things trying to come up with an alternative.

It's less of consensus, more of an IOU. Materialist science just says, we can't explain it now, but we will explain it in the future. Materialist biology is saying the same about the forms of plants being caused by the DNA, we can't explain it now but we will in the future. There are some scientists that aren't materialists, Rupert Sheldrake, that dont expect materialistic science to be able to explain consciousness…

Exactly how consciousness arises from the brain is still a work in progress, sure. But that's just the classic moving goalpost we see any time someone doesn't like what's objectively pretty solid evidence.

The overwhelming evidence against any form of dualism -- either the classical Decartes-style or the modern quantum-magic style -- and in favor of consciousness being what the brain does is how damned easy it is to produce altered states of consciousness through physical manipulations of the brain. Psychotropics, anesthetics, TMS, direct electrical stimulation of the brain, and the removal of brain tissue due to accident or as treatment for an underlying condition all paint a pretty solid picture that you can alter the mind, the subjective experience of being, by altering the brain.

Any alternate hypothesis that consciousness doesn't reside in the electrochemical behavior of neurons faces an uphill battle; you're demonstrating the identity of the brain and consciousness every time you go out drinking.

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#37

Post by king_magic »

mvanvoorden wrote: post #31
king_magic wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it so incredible to think that consciousness couldn’t emerge from the brain? All sorts of complex phenomena emerge from plain old non-magical matter. Why would matter be magically “conscious”? What possible physical mechanism could that magic be? (beside the absurdity of vibration, I suppose?)

What's absurd about vibration? Without vibration, there would be nothing. Nothing at all. Vibration is the foundation of all that there is and ever will be.

Ugh. It’s not magic. Things vibrating together is not magic. This is a level of absurd reverence for a concept that’s as ridiculous as a magic sky god whose blood is also maybe wine.

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#38

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

whatshisface wrote: post #32
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and therefore consciousness is unexplainable by science, because as far as science is concerned it doesn't even exist. There is no measurement that can be made to determine, for instance, if AlphaGo is a thinking, conscious mind, or merely an advanced algorithm. In scientific terms, there is no meaningful distinction.

> In scientific terms, there is no meaningful distinction. That might be going to far. To an electric field an uncharged particle "doesn't exist," but that doesn't actually mean that uncharged particles don't exist. Likewise there could be particles that don't interact with any known force, or even particles that interact with nothing. The right thing to say is that the existence of those things is categorically unkn…

> The right thing to say is that the existence of those things is categorically unknowable, and that studying them may even be a waste of time, but you shouldn't say that they are known not to exist.

But that isn't what I said, I said that from a scientific perspective there is no meaningful distinction, which is exactly what you're saying. Its existence or lack thereof is irrelevant because it cannot be measured.

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#39

Post by jnurmine »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #28
_Schizotypy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your brain has consciousness because of the networking of the neurons that make it up

How many neurons does it take to make a consciousness? The thing about consciousness is that you can't really define it. You know you have it because you experience it. You assume that other humans have it because they are like you. You might further assume that certain other beings have it because they are also like you in many ways (though you'd likely disagree with the idea that theirs is as meaningful as yours).…

Perhaps consciousness is not a crisp yes/no choice but a gradient... Dolphins are conscious but to a degree less than humans, likewise mice less than dolphins and so on.

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#40

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

saalweachter wrote: post #34
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and therefore consciousness is unexplainable by science, because as far as science is concerned it doesn't even exist. There is no measurement that can be made to determine, for instance, if AlphaGo is a thinking, conscious mind, or merely an advanced algorithm. In scientific terms, there is no meaningful distinction.

Ehhhhhh. I was trying to say the opposite. Or rather, I was actually trying to say that phenomenon are rarely unscientific, only the explanations . You can have scientific and unscientific explanations of the origin of life on Earth. You really only declare a phenomenon unscientific if we've spent a long time not being able to come up with any good scientific explanations. For instance, we commonly regard the questio…

The difference is that we can conceive of such testable predictions, even if we don't have any currently. That's because they'd be objectively observable.

I challenge you to even conceive of what a "test for consciousness" would look like. Let's imagine you have one. How confident in it will you be when the first person who fails it says "but I am conscious!"?

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