Addressing the Physicalist Delirium
The Physicalists on this and various other forums complain about three basic statements that I have made. They seem to show an emotionalism in their replies that reveals a hidden frustration with their inability to address the statements in any coherent way. They are getting more and more Delirious. They are self appointed Guardians of the knowledge base of Science but that knowledge base is empty with regard to questions about Consciousness. They will not admit that there is Zero Scientific understanding of Consciousness so they resort to Insults and other Diversionary tactics that only reveal their ignorance. If Science cannot deal with Something then that Something can only be Supernatural or Religious in their way of thinking. They therefore need to make that Something go away rather than trying to study it more and come up with a Scientific Explanation. This necessarily implies that they think that Science has obtained all the knowledge that it will ever obtain. But this is not the Science that I know. I have been taught and expect that Science is discovering New Phenomena all the time. Here are the three statements that annoy the Physicalists to the point of mental breakdown:
1) Science has Zero, I repeat Zero, understanding with regard to Consciousness.
2) Conscious experiences are in a whole different Category of Phenomena than any known Scientific Category of Phenomena.
3) The Conscious experience of Pain can give an Organism or Animal a statistical Evolutionary survival advantage that can affect the Evolution of that Organism or Animal.
As for the first statement, the Physicalists say things like: The Neural Activity IS the Conscious Activity and then they say that Explains it, end of discussion. This is Naïve and Shallow beyond all reasonableness. It isn't even a good Scientific guess. It is Pure Belief. It's so bad I have to think the Physicalists are not really serious when they say things like this but are just messing with me. They think that Measuring Neural Activity IS the same thing as Measuring the Conscious Activity. They are Measuring the Neural Correlates of Conscious experience not the Conscious experience itself. They treat the actual Conscious experience as if it did not even exist. I can not understand how they get to this point in their Physicalist delirium. To perpetuate the Physicalist Belief they must Deny the actual existence of the Conscious experience. The Conscious experience of something like the Redness of Red is a Self Evident reality of the Universe, and they deny it. The Conscious experience of Redness is something that Science cannot Explain. The Self evident reality of it is that it exists only in the Mind. They know the Redness exists in the Mind because they See it too but still they must deny this Self Evident Phenomenon of Consciousness because if it did exist Science would have to Explain it. But Science cannot Explain it at this point in time.
The second statement points out how the Physicalists might come to understand that Science doesn't have any Knowledge of what Conscious experience could be. If Conscious experience could be found to be in any known Category of Scientific Phenomena then Science would have had a lot to say about Consciousness by now. Instead we get Silence. Conscious experience is in a Category all by itself and this new Category of Phenomena has not been integrated into the Scientific knowledge base yet. Science does not know what to do with this Category of Phenomena. Since Science does not know what to do with this Category of Conscious Phenomena the Physicalists say it is Supernatural or Religious. It's neither of these, it's simply not understood yet. Don't be afraid you little Physicalists those scary Conscious experiences will not hurt you.
I think the third statement is completely sensible from even the most basic understanding of Evolutionary mechanisms. The Physicalists completely oppose this statement however. I don't know how they can justify thinking that the Conscious experience of Pain will not actually increase the statistical Evolutionary survival advantage for an Organism or Animal and thus influence Evolutionary outcomes for an Organism or Animal. And it is not just Pain but all the multitudes of other Conscious experiences that exist in the Universe. I suppose the opposition to this is because it admits the existence of Conscious experience which they Deny. So because they have to Deny Conscious experience they must Deny a basic premise of Evolution. They say that Evolutionary literature does not mention Conscious experience so therefore the Conscious experience of Pain cannot influence Evolutionary outcomes. This takes Shallow thinking and fear of what's outside the Box to extremes. I'll go so far as to say that if Evolutionary literature does not take into account Conscious experience then Evolutionary literature needs a Big Update.
1) Science has Zero, I repeat Zero, understanding with regard to Consciousness.
2) Conscious experiences are in a whole different Category of Phenomena than any known Scientific Category of Phenomena.
3) The Conscious experience of Pain can give an Organism or Animal a statistical Evolutionary survival advantage that can affect the Evolution of that Organism or Animal.
As for the first statement, the Physicalists say things like: The Neural Activity IS the Conscious Activity and then they say that Explains it, end of discussion. This is Naïve and Shallow beyond all reasonableness. It isn't even a good Scientific guess. It is Pure Belief. It's so bad I have to think the Physicalists are not really serious when they say things like this but are just messing with me. They think that Measuring Neural Activity IS the same thing as Measuring the Conscious Activity. They are Measuring the Neural Correlates of Conscious experience not the Conscious experience itself. They treat the actual Conscious experience as if it did not even exist. I can not understand how they get to this point in their Physicalist delirium. To perpetuate the Physicalist Belief they must Deny the actual existence of the Conscious experience. The Conscious experience of something like the Redness of Red is a Self Evident reality of the Universe, and they deny it. The Conscious experience of Redness is something that Science cannot Explain. The Self evident reality of it is that it exists only in the Mind. They know the Redness exists in the Mind because they See it too but still they must deny this Self Evident Phenomenon of Consciousness because if it did exist Science would have to Explain it. But Science cannot Explain it at this point in time.
The second statement points out how the Physicalists might come to understand that Science doesn't have any Knowledge of what Conscious experience could be. If Conscious experience could be found to be in any known Category of Scientific Phenomena then Science would have had a lot to say about Consciousness by now. Instead we get Silence. Conscious experience is in a Category all by itself and this new Category of Phenomena has not been integrated into the Scientific knowledge base yet. Science does not know what to do with this Category of Phenomena. Since Science does not know what to do with this Category of Conscious Phenomena the Physicalists say it is Supernatural or Religious. It's neither of these, it's simply not understood yet. Don't be afraid you little Physicalists those scary Conscious experiences will not hurt you.
I think the third statement is completely sensible from even the most basic understanding of Evolutionary mechanisms. The Physicalists completely oppose this statement however. I don't know how they can justify thinking that the Conscious experience of Pain will not actually increase the statistical Evolutionary survival advantage for an Organism or Animal and thus influence Evolutionary outcomes for an Organism or Animal. And it is not just Pain but all the multitudes of other Conscious experiences that exist in the Universe. I suppose the opposition to this is because it admits the existence of Conscious experience which they Deny. So because they have to Deny Conscious experience they must Deny a basic premise of Evolution. They say that Evolutionary literature does not mention Conscious experience so therefore the Conscious experience of Pain cannot influence Evolutionary outcomes. This takes Shallow thinking and fear of what's outside the Box to extremes. I'll go so far as to say that if Evolutionary literature does not take into account Conscious experience then Evolutionary literature needs a Big Update.
Comments (59)
The problem is that people see in your argument just the words "Science has zero understanding" and they stop reading there as they are offended by all the anti-science rhetoric they are confronted in our times.
Sure, there's a lot we don't know. That doesn't mean that Science is useless.
No-one said it was. I have said that science is misapplied, and it should not be. That's not the same thing. Science is very useful, but only within its own sphere of relevance.
False.
Let's start with that.
I'm attacking the Physicalists that push the, lets call it what it is, Lie that Science understands Consciousness even in the most fundamental way. Science really does have Zero understanding of Consciousness. I think most real Scientists would agree. My beef is with the dogmatic Physicalists on the different forums that don't want to debate about it. They just want to Insult anyone that defies their Beliefs. I don't know if most of these Physicalists even have a good Science background.
It's not anti Science to point out that Science does in fact have Zero understanding with regard to Consciousness. Most real Scientists would probably agree with the statement. The Physicalists have created this situation by pretending that Science has figured out Consciousness. The Physicalists will probably be the only people that are offended. It's Physicalist Lies like this that create the Anti Science rhetoric. In my case it's Anti Physicalist rhetoric. I suspect that the Physicalists who are the most uncivil, ironically have only a meager background in Physics.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2743249/
Science has made great progress with understanding the Neural Correlates of Consciousness. This is the Easy Problem of Consciousness. But Science has no Clue what actual Consciousness is. Exactly how does an experience like the Redness of Red in your Mind get generated from any kind of Neural Activity known to Science? The answer to this is the Hard Problem of Consciousness. And we truly have Zero understanding of this.
You simply said "zero understanding with regard to consciousness."
The neural correlates of consciousness aren't something with regard to consciousness?
If you want to make a more specific, qualified claim, make that claim from the start, and then we can address that.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10651872
If that sort of thing doesn't answer the question for you, you probably need to define just what question you're asking better.
Sorry, but this topic does expect a certain minimum of prior knowledge of the issues of Consciousness. If you are just playing word games then I can't help you. If you did not understand the question then please read http://TheInterMind.com. Other than that I basically don't understand your complaint.
I'm sending you a bill for needing to have my eyeballs rotated back to the front of my head.
Thank You for the link but that kind of thing is all about the Neural Correlates of Color perception and not about the actual experience of Color in the Mind.
Hence "If that sort of thing doesn't answer the question for you, you probably need to define just what question you're asking better." Just what sort of thing are you looking for that that sort of blueprint isn't giving you?
I've seen that affect before. Good luck with your recovery.
I want to know How any kind of Neural Activity can result in the experience of the Redness of Red, for example, in the Conscious Mind. Mapping the Brain and Measuring the Neural Correlates of Consciousness for Red is the Easy Problem. I want to know the answer to the Hard Problem. That is, the Conscious experience of Redness itself.
Why are you assuming that there's any difference?
That paper doesn't actually use the terms "asleep" or "awake"
Do you believe in God, or is that a software glitch?
An article about the promises and pitfalls of fMRI
Quoting Terrapin Station
There are two groups of people in the scientific and philosophical worlds: those who hold the view that there is an unsolved and probably insoluble hard problem, and those who hold the view that there isn't. It is impossible for either group to explain to the other group why they hold the view they hold.
No, but it does address consciousness as if it was binary - conscious or not-conscious - and physiological. Of course consciousness is a physiological thing, but it is also a mental thing. Examples of science treating consciousness in this physical way say nothing about whether science has any understanding of consciousness-as-a-mental-phenomenon, nor do they demonstrate any such understanding. You claim that science does have some understanding of consciousness, but your claims seem to be based on a physiological understanding of consciousness that is not relevant here. More to the point, your perception of consciousness as a purely physical phenomenon seems to say that you, and science, share a complete lack of understanding of what consciousness is. :chin:
"Also" there doesn't make any sense.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Sure they do. It would make no sense to say that they're not talking about consciousness as a mental phenomenon, as that's what consciousness is.
Your comment is akin to saying "Examples of science treating ferns in this physical way say nothing about whether science has any understanding of ferns-as-a-botanical-phenomenon."
The above is a sentence you could write. But it's not coherent just because it's a sentence you could write.
I'm familiar with this stuff, I'm just challenging aspects of it that make no sense.
Yes, it is, But that's not how the article you linked-to described it. It treats consciousness, as I said, as a physiological thing. The patient is conscious or not-conscious; awake or not-awake. This offers no indication that science has any understanding of conscious experience; what it feels like to a human to be conscious. Do you have any evidence at all to support your claim that things are other than I have described? :chin:
Because consciousness is a physiological thing. Mentality is a physiological thing. Experience, what something feels like, is a physiological thing. That was the point of my comment.
it's not about assuming a difference. It's when the Physicalists say "no further Explanation is needed" that I have a problem. They can't just say the Neural Activity IS the Conscious Activity, they have to Explain how that works. Without an Explanation it is just a Belief.
What makes any explanation necessary or not necessary? (I mean in general, not just re this issue.)
Also what makes any explanation sufficient/adequate or insufficient/inadequate? (Again, in general.)
And will you eventually assert that any/all aspects of consciousness can be wholly defined, described and explained in terms of brain activity (neurons, synapses, and so on)? Is that where you're heading with this?
Our wish to understand whether our beliefs are justified or not?
This is similar to what I was getting at earlier. What in the world would it be for any phenomenon to be wholly defined, described and explained?
Justification is simply a matter of an individual feeling that they have good reasons to believe something.
Do you agree with that?
How exactly do you mean this? Surely people can feel like they have good reasons even if they do not, such as concerns empirical claims at least?
I don't want make any generalizations. But for this specific case the disparate nature of the Phenomenon of Neural Activity and the Phenomenon Conscious Activity demand an Explanation. The Neural Activity is in a Category of Phenomena that is quite different than the Category of Phenomena that Conscious Activity is in. It is not reasonable to say they are the same thing given their different basic realities.
The sufficiency of Explanation for this case would be to logically show how something like Neural Activity could produce, for example, that experience of the Redness of the Color Red in the Mind. With the Physicalist premise as stated you must just Believe that the Redness experience just happens with no Explanation.
That's funny. Might not be as consistent as I would like but the Capitalizations are not Random.
Are you saying that the explanations of neural etc. activity don't seem like consciousness to you, and you wouldn't count something as an explanation that doesn't seem like consciousness?
The explanations of neural activity are not consciousness FULL STOP.
How could they be?
Exactly. And explanations of photosynthesis, say, are not photosynthesis.
And explanations of how to play a C major seventh chord are not a C major seventh chord, and so on.
But if we want to explain consciousness, it's not sufficient to point to neural activity, unless the neural activity actually explains consciousness. But nobody has shown this to be the case.
Neurons firing and having a red experience aren't conceptually the same thing. It's a category mistake to say they are.
Explanations are sets of words, right?
Sets of words that make sense of some phenomenon, showing how such phenomena works and came to be. That sort of thing.
Sure. So neural activity isn't going to itself explain consciousness (if we read that literally). A person would have to explain consciousness.
What "makes sense of some phenomenon" is going to be different for different people, no?
But an explanation of how neural activity results in a red experience would show how some neural activity is conscious, and it would dissolve the hard problem, because you could reductively explain consciousness in terms of neuroscience.
The problem with that is the terms of neuroscience are conceptually different from the terms of experience. That makes it a category mistake to say an explanation of neural activity is the same as talking about having a red experience.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Make sense of it scientifically or philosophically.
Things make sense to individual people or not. Not to anything else.
Presumably you think that we have explanations of photosynthesis, for example, right? But those explanations, of course, are not themselves photosynthesis (the explanation is a set of words; photosynthesis is not a set of words), and they're not going to "seem like" photosynthesis, either--at least they shouldn't, because photosynthesis, again, isn't qualitatively anything like a set of words.
So what we'd need to look at is why you take the explanations of photosynthesis to be sufficient to "make sense of photosynthesis" to you, and why you take them to be sufficient to show how photosynthesis works and came to be, while you don't take explanations of how color activates different areas of the brain to "make sense of color experiences" to you, and why you don't take them to be sufficient to show how color experiences work or came to be.
Because photosynthesis can be understood in terms of chemistry, physics and biology, but experience cannot be understood in terms of brain activity.
Of course the explanation of photosynthesis isn't photosynthesis, but the explanation makes sense of what photosynthesis is. This is not the case for neuroscience when it comes to subjectivity.
Or to put it another way, we can write down the process for photosynthesis or simulate it. We don't know what that would mean for consciousness.
In what sense can you simulate it, though?
And statements like this, "Because photosynthesis can be understood in terms of chemistry, physics and biology, but experience cannot be understood in terms of brain activity" merely sound like arbitrary stipulations. Why can't experience be understood in terms of brain activity? We'd have to examine what the differences amount to re what's counting as "understanding" in the one case and not the other.
If Neural Activity seemed like Conscious Activity, in any sense of the word "Seemed", then we would have a starting point at least. But Neural Activity is in a Category of Phenomena that is quite different from the Category of Phenomena that Conscious Activity would be in. Seriously, are you implying that Neural Activity seems like Consciousness to you?
What I'm saying is that no explanation of anything seems like what it's explaining.
If someone says, "This explanation of neuronal activity (etc.--again, it's not just neuronal activity) doesn't seem like consciousness. Therefore this explanation of neuronal activity can't be an explanation of consciousness," I don't think, "Yeah, that's a good argument." What I think is, "Wait a minute--for this person, there are explanations (about anything) that seem like what they're explaining?? How in the world would that work for this person?"
Basically I think that the person must not really understand what explanations are and what the relations are between explanans and explanandum.
So you are playing some kind of Semantic game with this. There exist Explanations for Neural Activity. There are no Explanations for what Property in the Neurons is the cause of Conscious Activity. There is in fact Zero understanding of what that Consciousness Property of Neurons could be. The Explanatory Gap is Huge in this case.
You'd have to explain how you're reading it that way, because that comment makes no sense to me.
Your argument is based on the explanation not seeming like consciousness. But no explanation seems like what it's explaining. Explanations for neural activity do not SEEM like neural activity. That's the nature of explanations. There's nothing semantic about that. It's that you're using a rather odd double standard and/or you don't really understand the relationship between explanans and explanandum.
It's a Semantic game and it's a Diversion from the issue which was: How can Neural Activity produce Conscious Activity? We need an Explanation for that question, and not some Dive into the meaning of the word "Explanations". If what you are saying is relevant to answering that question then I apologize because I don't get what you are driving at.
"If you're going to forward an argument hinging on explanations, you'd better have a theory of explanations that is coherent, consistent, etc."
Objecting to critically looking at your theory of explanations isn't a good argument.
I don't have a theory of Explanations. Where did you get an idea like that? Ok then what did I say that seems like a theory of Explanations. All I ever intended was to get an Explanation for how Neural Activity can produce or lead to Conscious Activity. Nothing exotic about this question. It just needs an answer.
Right, so the first thing I typed there was, ""If you're going to forward an argument hinging on explanations, you'd better have a theory of explanations that is coherent, consistent, etc."
Ok, I give up. What is your theory of Explanations? Lets just use your theory and answer the question: How does Neural Activity produce Conscious Activity?
Neural activity is something that we see with the eyes through some instrument. According to the physicalists everything is deep down made of particles whose sole property is to move one another in a certain way, as described in the mathematical equations that make up their theories. So according to the physicalist, neural activity is merely motion of particles in the brain.
Then indeed the physicalist is faced with the problem that the experience of red or of a high-pitched sound or of love is not made of moving particles, it is something of its own. The physicalist may see that certain patterns of his own neural activity correlate somewhat with certain feelings he experiences, but at no point in his mathematical equations there is the possibility of there being any feeling at all, for all there is in his equations is particles in motion with the sole ability to provoke motion. He could make endless simulations from his models and at no point would he find the emergence of a feeling, of a conscious experience. That's the case with all modern fundamental physical theories, general relativity, quantum field theories, the standard model of particle physics, string theory and so on, their equations are missing something fundamental about existence.
The best they could do is say that maybe all conscious experiences correlate perfectly with a corresponding pattern of particle motions, but that still wouldn't explain how conscious experiences emerge from particle motions at all, and if they claim that there is nothing to explain beyond the correspondence at the very least they would need to include in their equations the potential of particles to elicit conscious experiences, which they haven't done. As it stands these equations are empirically wrong, and you test that every time you have a conscious experience.
Then the view that conscious experiences have a one-to-one correspondence with particle motions and thus serve zero survival advantage is hard to reconcile with the theory of evolution, if what we desire and feel doesn't cause anything and choice is an illusion then why did we evolve that at all? And why does it feel bad when something threatens our survival, that would be quite the extraordinary coincidence.
A more coherent view than the widespread physicalist one would be that particles are not all that is, that it's not just that particles have the ability to elicit feelings through their relative motions but that there is more than particles, that particles are only one aspect of the "more", that our eyes are one tool we have to see the universe and what we feel is another tool, which we really shouldn't discard as an unecessary byproduct.