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Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#201

Post by orwin »

BasedAnon wrote: post #164
orwin wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Or rather what do you mean? We are able to track down and physically explain (thanks to MRI) the sentation, the objective part of consciousness (Chalmers's 'easy problems of consciousness'). That really exist and we can prove it (or we have an idea about experiments to run to prove it) I suppose here you're talking about the subjective sentation, the phenomenal experience, the 'hard problem', and you reference th…

>We are able to track down and physically explain (thanks to MRI) the sentation, the objective part of consciousness (Chalmers's 'easy problems of consciousness'). That really exist and we can prove it (or we have an idea about experiments to run to prove it) What we prove is an evidence that is filtered through our sensory faculties and experienced by our minds. Our minds still remain judge, jury and executioner and…

That's the beauty of illusionism, isn't it? You really have to think against yourself. If you can explain a person's reaction without 'knowing' his subjective experience, you do not need 'hard' consciousness to explain your reactions either. So you, right now, digesting this sentence and experiencing subjective thoughts, do not really experience those, you just have the illusion you do. Look at my second link.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#202

Post by cscurmudgeon »

jemmyw wrote: post #102
BasedAnon wrote: post #88

What's the deal with these things being lumped in with physics? This isn't physics this is just regular philosophy with some scientific sounding language. I feel like this is people reaching for religion but not wanting to admit it to themselves.

It's a shame to see so many comments engaged in this kind of pseudoscience. There's no evidence that consciousness is anything other than a state arising from the physical processes in our bodies. I'm open minded to hypothesis that are potentially testable, but people keep just repeating the implausible. I also hate that I keep reading that consciousness, or anything else, is a universe "hack" which is several levels…

> There's no evidence that consciousness is anything other than a state arising from the physical processes in our bodies.

Just because you didn't don't know about X doesn't mean X doesn't exist. Simple logic that even children learn quickly.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#203

Post by cscurmudgeon »

tsimionescu wrote: post #134
kklisura wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a shame to see so many comments engaged in this kind of pseudoscience. You have Roger Penrose [1] interested in link to say between consciousness and physics [2]. Would you consider that to be pseudoscience? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose [2] https://nautil.us/roger-penrose-on-why-consciousness-does-no...

Yes, Roger Penrose, despite his extraordinary career and contributions to science, has more recently been engaging more in this type of pseudoscience. It can and has happened to other extraordinary minds as well - Linus Pauling, one of the forefathers of quantum chemistry and molecular biology, but also a promoter of vitamin C as a panacea in his later years.

> pseudoscience

Repeatedly calling something pseudoscience doesn't make it so.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#204

Post by suggestion »

jemmyw wrote: post #193
suggestion wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would be be able to marry some conscious activity with MRI scans? Does the activity cause the changes on the scan or does the changes in the scan cause the activity? How does neuroplasticity result in physical changes to the brain through, for example, cognitive behavioral therapy? Do the thoughts alter the physical structure or does the structure cause the thoughts even before the structural changes?

Internal feedback loops. Activity from the existing structure further modifies that structure. That activity is that thoughts are. So sure but it's all physical.

That doesn't make any sense. If that's the case, the physical change should precede the changes in thought patterns.

Also, physicalism is about as empirical as falling in love. It's far from definitive, proven, fact.

There's no chemical emission that can force someone to have an exact thought, dream, or inner dialogue.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#205

Post by kozd »

swader999 wrote: post #161
blacksqr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What is this experiment to prove I'm not lucid dreaming? For decades magician and debunker of supernatural claims James Randi placed a new object on his dining table every month, and offered a million dollar prize to anyone who could tell him what the current object was. Of course the prize was never claimed. Ask a friend down your block to put something on their dining table. Do your OBE thing and write down what y…

Yeah I could try something like that. Maybe even stick a playing card that I don't look at somewhere. I don't really care about proving this to anyone else. My main reason is to try to talk to my daughter I lost last year. Been really hard...

How could you not care about proving this to others? You seem to harbor some hope that you can talk to a passed loved one via this or a related means? If you could prove this isn't just lucid dreaming then you could have the help of other people interested in taking the same path. Think how many people you could help and how this would revolutionize science. Don't you want to validate the method by which you're investigating the world? Shouldn't that be step one? I'm completely dumbfounded by your response.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#206

Post by mannykannot »

DFHippie wrote: post #199
mannykannot wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Panpsychism -- or cosmopsychism or whatever -- is the Occam's razor solution. Occam's razor (the choice of the most parsimonious explanation) does not apply until you have candidate explanations, and at this point we don't have any. Simply supposing that consciousness is fundamental in some way is no more of an explanation than, say, simply supposing it to be an emergent phenomenon in certain complex physical syste…

The point is that that in one hypothesis you have two conditions and you must determine the boundary between them. In the other you have only one. You have no evidence to prove that there are two conditions that need to be distinguished; some boundary between them needs to be defined. The emergent phenomenon hypothesis requires this. Panpsychism doesn't.

Panpsychism only superficially looks as if it does not have boundaries because it literally says next to nothing about consciousness. Once one gets into the combination problem, or even the difference between how consciousness presents itself a living brain and the same brain dead, we can confidently expect there will be boundaries.

This is entirely moot, however, until you have a hypothesis that offers something in the way of an explanation. Panpsychism does not offer anything in the way of an explanation; it merely takes as axiomatic that all is consciousness, much like Thales' assertion that all is water.

I doubt Occam's razor has ever been relevant in choosing between worked-out hypotheses about natural phenomena, as it would require them to be indistinguishable except in the number of premises. If you can think of an exception, I would be happy to discuss it.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#207

Post by gaganyaan »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #203
tsimionescu wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Roger Penrose, despite his extraordinary career and contributions to science, has more recently been engaging more in this type of pseudoscience. It can and has happened to other extraordinary minds as well - Linus Pauling, one of the forefathers of quantum chemistry and molecular biology, but also a promoter of vitamin C as a panacea in his later years.

> pseudoscience Repeatedly calling something pseudoscience doesn't make it so.

You're rather missing their point. Great minds have fallen for pseudoscience. Why should we think Penrose is any different?

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#208

Post by jemmyw »

suggestion wrote: post #204
jemmyw wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internal feedback loops. Activity from the existing structure further modifies that structure. That activity is that thoughts are. So sure but it's all physical.

That doesn't make any sense. If that's the case, the physical change should precede the changes in thought patterns. Also, physicalism is about as empirical as falling in love. It's far from definitive, proven, fact. There's no chemical emission that can force someone to have an exact thought, dream, or inner dialogue.

There are always physical changes happening. External stimuli, and time based internal changes.

> If that's the case, the physical change should precede the changes in thought patterns.

Not precede, are. These aren't separate things.

> There's no chemical emission that can force someone to have an exact thought, dream, or inner dialogue.

How do you know that to be the case? It seems likely to me that an exact set of sufficiently complicated inputs and stimuli could generate an exact thought. Actually doing so would be too complex to figure out, but many physical systems are like that.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#209

Post by jemmyw »

amatecha wrote: post #191
jemmyw wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of reasons to believe it's physical. I mean, in some ways I can't believe I'm having to write "there are no ghosts" to a technically minded community. If consciousness was not physical then where is it? Why would it switch on and off with physical changes to brains? Why would you be able to get altered states of consciousness with chemicals, disease and age? Why would be be able to marry some conscio…

Yeah I’m not sure why someone would argue that consciousness isn’t physical. Take a conscious person and knock them hard in the head. Interesting, their consciousness is altered. Take drugs? Check it out, consciousness altered. People who experience head trauma have their personality permanently altered. In the course of life you will likely directly observe the effects of physical injury on a person’s consciousness,…

> Yeah I’m not sure why someone would argue that consciousness isn’t physical

Reading the comments, one thing that's been unsaid is whether each person discussing is religious/spiritual or not. My guess is that if you are religious then the idea of there being another layer in the universe goes without saying, and if you are not then it's ridiculous.

It's probably a waste of time debating across that line.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#210

Post by bashinator »

karmakaze wrote: post #43
bashinator wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> impossible to know anything about a universe that doesn’t include our perception of it The optimistic take for me is that this is a fundamental feature of the Universe.

Sounds true but is it? We can't perceive neutrinos.

Says the guy who knows about neutrinos.
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