Consciousness and the Soul

[nazz]

We can observe the brain working during consciousness, and we understand how certain factors contribute to consciousness better than we do many factors contributing to cancer. But we can not show how either "work".

We can observe the brain doing what it does and we understand that pretty well. How neurons fire and cause other neurons to fire. We've mapped out areas in the brain that relate to different conscious experiences. But no one has ever observed the brain creating consciousness. And no one ever will.

I don't see how this is different than doing the same for a conscious process like seeing

It's totally different. It would be more similar if while traveling up the woman's organs the sperm totally disappeared before reaching the uterus and then voila an inseminated egg magically appeared. But even that analogy does not go far enough. It would have to be an inseminated egg that only the woman could see!

We find not only that a brain regions aren't just active when you describe an object that you see, but also that we can guarantee 100% (unlike with sexual intercourse and pregnancy) that when we prevent these areas from communicating with others identified as necessary to process visual stimuli subjects universally can experience seeing something but not realize that they see it. We can conscious experiences on or off disconnecting, lesioning, or altering via e.g., electrical fields particular parts of the brain. We can describe how these conscious experiences word physically much the same way we can reproduction. However, as we are currently unable to explain how a single cell is capable of doing what it does, we are limited to imperfect explanations in both cases.

You've used this example three times and I got it the first time . Just as in my example I gave above you could say you could prevent the sperm from even entering the woman's body but so what?

The way we do this is the same for demonstrating that certain brain regions are responsible for conscious processes.

Not responsible, we've yet to demonstrate that. Just correlated.

In fact, in most cases evolutionary theory can't be tested in the same way, as we require proxy observations to stand in for the tens of thousands of years it can take for populations to exhibit significant genetic changes.

The point I was making with that was that these processes can at least account for some (I would argue not all but that's another subject) evolutionary developments. And it is something we can even observe happening in real time. So for what it does explain it is sufficient to explain causation.

Yes, but we've done this with conscious experiences.

No, I'm sorry we have not. We've not even come close. Heck, we have not even solved the Binding problem (though I think we will someday and I suspect the electromagnetic theory will be sufficient)

Gravity is spacetime curvature.

That's a way to talk about it in an understandable manner but my understanding is that should not be taken literally. And even so you have to explain why objects "roll downhill" into a gravity caused depression.

 

[RedJamaX]

But no one has ever observed the brain creating consciousness. And no one ever will.

First we have to fully understand how the brain operates, and we haven't gotten there yet. IBM is working on a synaptic neural net processor architecture that is based on the neural structure of a monkey. I believe this will be a huge step forward in understanding how the brain actually functions on a cyclic level. There will be a need for several iterations of this type of processor before we can fully apply the observations in comparison to our brains, but the first step to understanding where something derives from is to know how it works. And for consciousness, we lack to ability to see the data... we can map the neurons firing, but we can only associate that with the responses and observations of the person being observed. With the neural processor, we will be able to track actual data points... still a long way from full understanding.

Also, to the point of observing a brain "creating" consciousness... first we have to fully understand how the brain track data, then we have to kow how to monitor that to the level of each synapse. Then we will need to grow a baby in a test tube and monitor the entire process. Even if we get the first two... We'd be hard pressed to even be "allowed" to do the third process to a monkey, let a lone a human being.

I think the development of the neural processor technology will also help to address the "binding problem".

I'm curious, are you of the opinion that "consciousness" belongs to the realm of the supernatural, and therefore it is something that we will never achieve a firm understanding for?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Just as in my example I gave above you could say you could prevent the sperm from even entering the woman's body but so what?

Sexual reproduction is a good example to illustrate what I mean actually. You start with a correlation: pregnancy occurring after sexual intercourse. It doesn't happen all the time but often enough to explore the correlation as possibly causal. But it takes describing the process of insemination to demonstrate the causal connection.

Why does stopping the sperm matter? Because it is necessary for pregnancy (a cause). One can't get pregnant without it. Why does severing connections to stop or alter a conscious process matter? Because it is necessary for that conscious process (a cause).

But no one has ever observed the brain creating consciousness. And no one ever will.

This is true for cancer, all quantum coherence, particles (they are detected indirectly and imperfectly), the creation of cellular metabolism, and most functional elements necessary for life. You cannot observe causes. By definition (and with the possible exceptions of quantum retrocausation and closed-timelike curves), causes precede effects. The way we identify carcinogens is by observing whether particular chemicals tend to correlate with the appearance of cancer. The way we can tell that sex causes pregnancy is by observing that one led to the other and it never occurred without it. Your argument seems to depend on a semantic distinction that you don't apply in your other examples of causality. For example:

It's totally different. It would be more similar if while traveling up the woman's organs the sperm totally disappeared before reaching the uterus and then voila an inseminated egg magically appeared

Let's imagine that we could tag sperm and ensure that we detected when one entered an egg. Let's further stipulate that every time this happened, we found that new processes started such as cell division, growth, specialization, etc., until we had an infant. Your question amounts to "we can't claim the sperm caused life". Why? Because we can't observe something we haven't really defined formally (or clearly) and that is by definitions we do have not caused by any one thing. Living systems are complex aggregates, like consciousness. We can observe a chain of cause and effects, such as the event of sperm entering eggs being followed by a series of processes as above. But we can't see the sperm "causing life" or even "causing" these processes other than by noting that at one moment we have an egg that isn't growing, dividing, etc., and right after the egg we have the effects (the processes) which can't be easily reduced to causes because we don't know how they work. Sure, we can sketch it out in great detail, but cellular metabolism of just one cell remains beyond any computational models that aren't simplified. The emergence of life from organic material like that of a sperm and egg is beyond our ability to explain fully and formally in terms of both sperm and egg, and systems biology takes as given that functional processes like metabolism are not, even in principle, explainable by cause and effect.

We can describe it, and we can show a causal chain, but we do this with consciousness in multiple ways. Consciousness is a functional process. Like cellular metabolism, it cannot itself be physical anymore than running or walking can. However, like metabolic-repair, the fact that we can't say "it's physical" simply means that we have labeled something we necessarily can only describe in terms of the various identifiable causes which are often both caused and causing that process.

Let's say I drop a glass and it breaks on the floor. Did I cause the glass to break? How would you observe me causing this? I drop the glass, but then gravity takes over. Does gravity break it? No, it hits the floor. Does the floor break it? No it requires a force acting on it like "gravity". But gravity didn't break it. And were the air pressure different, or the structural integrity of the glass changed, it wouldn't break (or would have already broken). You can always get out of causation linguistically/semantically.

A common model of causation is counterfactual definiteness. It's problematic for quantum physics (hence Einstein's quip about the moon still being there if you don't look), but it's good enough here. Counterfactual definiteness gives us causality by asking whether, if some action hadn't been taken, some event/effect/process/etc., would have happened anyway. If I hadn't dropped the glass, it wouldn't have broken. If they hadn't had sex, she wouldn't be pregnant. If they hadn't smoked 10 packs a day, they wouldn't have gotten cancer. And so on. We can cause conscious experiences physically using this model of causation (one of the strongest). It's even easier to do so with newer models that incorporate quantum causality, as these involve chance-raising.

You don't seem to have a very clear definition of causation that I can work with as you seem to use an intuitive one for everything but consciousness, which you treat exceptionally.

But even that analogy does not go far enough. It would have to be an inseminated egg that only the woman could see!

Instead, nobody can see it.

And even so you have to explain why objects "roll downhill" into a gravity caused depression.

They don't. There is no down in four dimensional space.

 

[George-ananda]

I'm curious, are you of the opinion that "consciousness" belongs to the realm of the supernatural, and therefore it is something that we will never achieve a firm understanding for?

Speaking for myself, I think the two positions here are:

Western Materialists; Matter is primary and consciousness is a product of matter

Indian-based Spirituality; Consciousness is primary and matter is a product of consciousness


......and never the twain shall meet

 

[nazz]

First we have to fully understand how the brain operates, and we haven't gotten there yet. IBM is working on a synaptic neural net processor architecture that is based on the neural structure of a monkey. I believe this will be a huge step forward in understanding how the brain actually functions on a cyclic level. There will be a need for several iterations of this type of processor before we can fully apply the observations in comparison to our brains, but the first step to understanding where something derives from is to know how it works. And for consciousness, we lack to ability to see the data... we can map the neurons firing, but we can only associate that with the responses and observations of the person being observed. With the neural processor, we will be able to track actual data points... still a long way from full understanding.

Also, to the point of observing a brain "creating" consciousness... first we have to fully understand how the brain track data, then we have to kow how to monitor that to the level of each synapse. Then we will need to grow a baby in a test tube and monitor the entire process. Even if we get the first two... We'd be hard pressed to even be "allowed" to do the third process to a monkey, let a lone a human being.

I think the development of the neural processor technology will also help to address the "binding problem".

I'm curious, are you of the opinion that "consciousness" belongs to the realm of the supernatural, and therefore it is something that we will never achieve a firm understanding for?

Consciousness is nonphysical. This is a fact. For this reason no amount of studying the brain will ever produce a causative model. At least part of the process is nonphysical even if it has physical precursors.

 

[nazz]

Why does stopping the sperm matter? Because it is necessary for pregnancy (a cause). One can't get pregnant without it. Why does severing connections to stop or alter a conscious process matter? Because it is necessary for that conscious process (a cause).

There is something you aren't getting here. We are talking about how the brain might cause consciousness and not how the brain might affect consciousness. Do you understand this distinction? If you severed the cortices of a human brain the manner in which a human mind operates will undergo a corresponding change. This is an undeniable fact. If you remove the engine from my car I can't drive it. I can get out of the car and do other things. I can get into another car with an engine and drive that. And what evidence exists suggests that is the case with the human mind as well. So what is being limited is the functionality of the car (the brain) and not the mind itself.

This is true for cancer, all quantum coherence, particles (they are detected indirectly and imperfectly), the creation of cellular metabolism, and most functional elements necessary for life. You cannot observe causes. By definition (and with the possible exceptions of quantum retrocausation and closed-timelike curves), causes precede effects. The way we identify carcinogens is by observing whether particular chemicals tend to correlate with the appearance of cancer. The way we can tell that sex causes pregnancy is by observing that one led to the other and it never occurred without it.

What can be observed is an identifiable physical process involving physical things. Even if we lack the tools to directly observe what is happening the potential exists to do so. Even if we don't fully understand the processes the potential for understanding them exists. This is not the case with consciousness.

Let's imagine that we could tag sperm and ensure that we detected when one entered an egg. Let's further stipulate that every time this happened, we found that new processes started such as cell division, growth, specialization, etc., until we had an infant. Your question amounts to "we can't claim the sperm caused life". Why? Because we can't observe something we haven't really defined formally (or clearly) and that is by definitions we do have not caused by any one thing. Living systems are complex aggregates, like consciousness. We can observe a chain of cause and effects, such as the event of sperm entering eggs being followed by a series of processes as above. But we can't see the sperm "causing life" or even "causing" these processes other than by noting that at one moment we have an egg that isn't growing, dividing, etc., and right after the egg we have the effects (the processes) which can't be easily reduced to causes because we don't know how they work. Sure, we can sketch it out in great detail, but cellular metabolism of just one cell remains beyond any computational models that aren't simplified. The emergence of life from organic material like that of a sperm and egg is beyond our ability to explain fully and formally in terms of both sperm and egg, and systems biology takes as given that functional processes like metabolism are not, even in principle, explainable by cause and effect.

I'm not really familiar with the inability to explain cellular metabolism but I'll take your word for it that is the case. But it doesn't really matter. Unless there is some magic involved it is a physical process we will come to understand in the future. This is the case whenever we are dealing with physical things and physical processes. What makes consciousness different is its nonphysicality.

We can describe it, and we can show a causal chain, but we do this with consciousness in multiple ways. Consciousness is a functional process. Like cellular metabolism, it cannot itself be physical anymore than running or walking can.

Cellular metabolism, running and walking, are physical processes

Let's say I drop a glass and it breaks on the floor. Did I cause the glass to break? How would you observe me causing this? I drop the glass, but then gravity takes over. Does gravity break it? No, it hits the floor. Does the floor break it? No it requires a force acting on it like "gravity". But gravity didn't break it. And were the air pressure different, or the structural integrity of the glass changed, it wouldn't break (or would have already broken). You can always get out of causation linguistically/semantically.

Maybe but that's not what I am doing here. We can describe the physical process that causes dropped glasses to break and it is sufficient to explain why they do. Nothing is missing, nothing more is needed.

A common model of causation is counterfactual definiteness. It's problematic for quantum physics (hence Einstein's quip about the moon still being there if you don't look), but it's good enough here. Counterfactual definiteness gives us causality by asking whether, if some action hadn't been taken, some event/effect/process/etc., would have happened anyway. If I hadn't dropped the glass, it wouldn't have broken. If they hadn't had sex, she wouldn't be pregnant. If they hadn't smoked 10 packs a day, they wouldn't have gotten cancer. And so on. We can cause conscious experiences physically using this model of causation (one of the strongest). It's even easier to do so with newer models that incorporate quantum causality, as these involve chance-raising

Yes, so we can say if we don't simulate the brain in a certain manner there will not be a corresponding conscious experience. But again this is not explaining any causal process, just a correlation between physical and nonphysical processes. It doesn't even show that conscious experiences can't happen without a physical brain if that consciousness is not embodied.

You don't seem to have a very clear definition of causation that I can work with as you seem to use an intuitive one for everything but consciousness, which you treat exceptionally.

I don't know how more clearly to state it.

Instead, nobody can see it.

We could see it though.

They don't. There is no down in four dimensional space.

That is why I used quotation marks. Anyway this is an unimportant tangent.

***
I may not be able to further respond till after friday. Going camping.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

There is something you aren't getting here. We are talking about how the brain might cause consciousness and not how the brain might affect consciousness. Do you understand this distinction?

I do. Which is why I've been tried first to convey how correlation entails causation and when that failed I moved on to approach causation directly. Like correlation, affecting something is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition of causation. That is, there cannot be a cause without a correlation and there cannot be a cause without an influence (something affecting something else). If I break a glass, I affect it. Me dropping a glass will be correlated with it's breaking. How does one go beyond showing correlation? If there is no causal relationship between to events/processes, then it is possible to have one without the other.

If you severed the cortices of a human brain the manner in which a human mind operates will undergo a corresponding change. This is an undeniable fact. If you remove the engine from my car I can't drive it. I can get out of the car and do other things.

And what would be the corresponding other things such that this analogy makes sense? if I prevent you from having certain conscious experiences, or make you have them, I have affected your conscious experience. I have caused you to experience things consciously through physical manipulations. Can you give me an example of two processes/events that have no causal connection but one cannot occur without the other?

So what is being limited is the functionality of the car (the brain) and not the mind itself.

The mind, like metabolic-repair, is a function of the physical system. It is not reducible to it in part because it is a description given to a process and we cannot, even in theory, describe it accurately through physical means. If we could completely characterize any physical system, we wouldn't need to talk about metabolic-repair. We wouldn't need to talk about respiratory systems, blood-oxygenation, nerve signal transduction, etc. We could describe everything in terms of atoms. We can't. that's why we talk about functional processes like consciousness and metabolic-repair. These are conceptual simplifications. Consciousness presents an additional difficulty, of course, because unlike the purely mechanical processes involved in metabolic-repair that could, in theory, be described formally we don't know how to formalize what is essentially meaning itself.

What can be observed is an identifiable physical process involving physical things.

Is gravity a physical thing?

This is not the case with consciousness.

Now we're back to the logical assertion that consciousness can't even in principle be shown to be physical. But you have only supported this by assuming that consciousness should be experienced as physical if it were, which isn't a very good assumption as far as I can tell.

We can describe the physical process that causes dropped glasses to break

We can't even describe the physical process that makes glass stay in it's shape.

But again this is not explaining any causal process

That's the strongest definition of causation out there (wiki). Too strong, in fact, because (among other things) it seems that there is counterfactual indefiniteness.

It doesn't even show that conscious experiences can't happen without a physical brain if that consciousness is not embodied.

Embodied has a particular definition when you are talking about consciousness & cognition. It's not the one you mean, fyi. Also, using the colloquial definition of embodied, assuming that consciousness isn't embodied to show that, under these conditions, it isn't embodied doesn't do much.

I don't know how more clearly to state it.

Hm. I thought perhaps you'd be more familiar with causation/causality as they are discussed in philosophy. I realize that I have no reason to assume that now, and that I just sort of stamped you with the label "philosopher" just because you are familiar with certain philosophical discourse (an unwarranted and stupid assumption). The wiki link I provided gives some details.

Going camping.

Have fun!

 

[nazz]

I was very rushed in my last response trying to get out of a motel. I don't think I did it justice. I have a few more minutes before I get on the road.

I do. Which is why I've been tried first to convey how correlation entails causation and when that failed I moved on to approach causation directly. Like correlation, affecting something is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition of causation. That is, there cannot be a cause without a correlation and there cannot be a cause without an influence (something affecting something else). If I break a glass, I affect it. Me dropping a glass will be correlated with it's breaking. How does one go beyond showing correlation? If there is no causal relationship between to events/processes, then it is possible to have one without the other.

OK, no disagreement there. And this is where the great question comes in. Can consciousness exist without a physical brain. I've maintained that what evidence exists suggests it can.

And what would be the corresponding other things such that this analogy makes sense? if I prevent you from having certain conscious experiences, or make you have them, I have affected your conscious experience. I have caused you to experience things consciously through physical manipulations.

Well maybe. But all we can really establish is the correlation, the correspondence. It's near perfect*, this must be admitted, and that is strong circumstantial evidence the two are truly correlated and that since the brain activity precedes the conscious experience it really looks like it is causing it.

(*I say near perfect because I read about a case of a man with a brain tumor who would act in violently angry ways yet reported he felt no corresponding emotion when he did them. In regard to the questions we are considering that may be significant)

Can you give me an example of two processes/events that have no causal connection but one cannot occur without the other?

I don't think I can. That point is not in dispute.

The mind, like metabolic-repair, is a function of the physical system. It is not reducible to it in part because it is a description given to a process and we cannot, even in theory, describe it accurately through physical means. If we could completely characterize any physical system, we wouldn't need to talk about metabolic-repair. We wouldn't need to talk about respiratory systems, blood-oxygenation, nerve signal transduction, etc. We could describe everything in terms of atoms. We can't. that's why we talk about functional processes like consciousness and metabolic-repair. These are conceptual simplifications. Consciousness presents an additional difficulty, of course, because unlike the purely mechanical processes involved in metabolic-repair that could, in theory, be described formally we don't know how to formalize what is essentially meaning itself.

It might be helpful if you further explained how you think the mind is like metabolic repair in a cell. What is it that we don't understand about the latter and how is that like what we don't understand about the causation of consciousness?

Is gravity a physical thing?

No it isn't but I am not talking about what makes a glass fall but what makes it break. If it strikes a surface with sufficient force the bonds which hold it together will break. Is this not the case?

Now we're back to the logical assertion that consciousness can't even in principle be shown to be physical. But you have only supported this by assuming that consciousness should be experienced as physical if it were, which isn't a very good assumption as far as I can tell.

Well I disagree Can you give me an example of some physical thing or process which has no physical evidence? At least evidence we could come to discover and understand?

We can't even describe the physical process that makes glass stay in it's shape.

Why not?

Embodied has a particular definition when you are talking about consciousness & cognition. It's not the one you mean, fyi. Also, using the colloquial definition of embodied, assuming that consciousness isn't embodied to show that, under these conditions it isn't embodied doesn't do much.

Not following that last sentence but what I mean by "embodied" is a conscious mind connected to a physical body.

Hm. I thought perhaps you'd be more familiar with causation/causality as they are discussed in philosophy. I realize that I have no reason to assume that now, and that I just sort of stamped you with the label "philosopher" just because you are familiar with certain philosophical discourse (an unwarranted and stupid assumption). The wiki link I provided gives some details.

Well I do consider myself a philosopher but truth be told I am not that familiar with formal philosophy. I guess we need to determine what it is you are not understanding about my definition regarding a demonstration of causation.

Have fun!

Thanks. I am on an extended trip and am planning to go down into Death Valley today and I assume I will have no internet access there. But if I do I will try to get back to this sooner. I'd really like to get down to what is causing the disconnect in our communication if possible and perhaps a good place to start might be to see where we are in agreement and go from there.

It also might be helpful if I explained what my own speculations are regarding how conscious experience arises and how it may connect to what is happening in the brain. Because despite my insistence we can't actually demonstrate such a connection actually exists I am of the opinion that it does.

 

[RedJamaX]

Consciousness is nonphysical. This is a fact. For this reason no amount of studying the brain will ever produce a causative model. At least part of the process is nonphysical even if it has physical precursors.

In an earlier post you had responded to me saying that any living creature with any sensory receptions at all (even just one of the five senses) would classify that creature as being conscious. And I agree. But, by that assessment, there is no need to identify consciousness as anything beyond physical sensory response.

Unless, if what you are identifying as "consciousness" is the entire collective process of the operation of the brain... inputs (sensory), processing of those inputs, and then calculating a response. Even though this is "non-physical" by that definition, it still requires those physical mediums to exist.

Let me rephrase my original question... Do you believe that "consciousness" most definitely exists without a physical brain? Or do just think that it's possible because we don't know for sure at this time?

All of the "evidence" I have seen that's been presented to justify that claim has been allegorical, anecdotal and completely circumstantial. Until the evidence is measurable by way of an experiment which can be duplicated with consistent results, it is not enough evidence.... (getting the same anecdotal, circumstantial evidence does not count)

Personally, I think that as we continue to develop our understanding of the brain, central nervous system, electromagnetic forces... etc, we will finally understand how it all ties in together. You must not forget... 2,000 years ago, people were certain that Lightning was supernatural, and there was NO way we could every understand where it comes from... other than the gods. And for the last 400 years, everything which was thought to be supernatural, once it was discovered how that thing happens, it has NEVER been by way of anything supernatural. And so that will come to pass for all those things we currently don't fully understand as well.

 

[ZenMonkey]

Greetings, from the nightmarish loka of SW.

What is the relation, in your opinion, of the Consciousness and Soul. I've heard several people claim that consciousness is dependent on mind, which is dependent on body, but I'm not convinced.

I heard someone claim that the soul is just super-consciousnes, and that the body's mental/conscious states were mere manifestations of that single consciousness (could not find a link, sorry. :sorry1

How do you feel about the soul and it's relation to consciousness?

My view is that consciousness is dependent on the brain. The soul is simply a persons inner self and has nothing to do with consciousness at all. The soul is like the hard drive of a PC. It contains our life story. It records all we've experienced, all we've learned, and all we've become through these experiences. It is ethereal, intangible, immaterial, yet it stores everything we experience in life.


When we die, our brains cease to function, and as a result we are not conscious of anything. I believe the soul moves on to be judged, and from that judgment, the soul moves on to host another body/person. At which point, we become living souls again. Even so, we are not aware that we had past lives, but our brains still draw from all our inner soul has become. This is how we progress as individuals.


So no! The soul is not conscious as I understand it.

 

[George-ananda]

Nazz is off on a camping trip, so I’m throwing in my two cents.

All of the "evidence" I have seen that's been presented to justify that claim has been allegorical, anecdotal and completely circumstantial. Until the evidence is measurable by way of an experiment which can be duplicated with consistent results, it is not enough evidence.... (getting the same anecdotal, circumstantial evidence does not count)

Well, as just one example, Remote Viewing has been replicated with consistent results in many laboratories giving some combined fantastic odds against chance. This has been confirmed by one of the leading experts in statistical analysis. The conclusion was: something for which there is no current explanation is going on. Poor methodology can not explain away the results. Now this does not prove that consciousness is non-physical but it is one piece of evidence in that direction.

Now on to ‘anecdotal evidence’. As there is no way to directly study these alleged phenomena, I when wearing my science hat, can only shrug when I hear the stories. However, I, as an individual, will intelligently consider these phenomena in forming my personal view of the universe. I have many beliefs science can not prove/disprove.

 

[RedJamaX]

Well, as just one example, Remote Viewing has been replicated with consistent results in many laboratories giving some combined fantastic odds against chance.

sources? I have always done my best to at least look into the other claims...

This has been confirmed by one of the leading experts in statistical analysis. The conclusion was: something for which there is no current explanation is going on. Poor methodology can not explain away the results.

I am always weary of these types of confirmations.... the statistics analyst cannot possibly understand whether or not the methodology is poor when he is calculating probability of an event measured in a field that is not his field of study.

In either case, I would be curious to read about it, or see the documentary, etc.

 

[George-ananda]

sources? I have always done my best to at least look into the other claims...



I am always weary of these types of confirmations.... the statistics analyst cannot possibly understand whether or not the methodology is poor when he is calculating probability of an event measured in a field that is not his field of study.

In either case, I would be curious to read about it, or see the documentary, etc.

Well, here's a discussion of what I'm talking about

[youtube]qw_O9Qiwqew[/youtube]
Link

Fortunately the details about remote viewing experiments are very early in the video.

Curious to see what you and others think

 

[nazz]

In an earlier post you had responded to me saying that any living creature with any sensory receptions at all (even just one of the five senses) would classify that creature as being conscious. And I agree. But, by that assessment, there is no need to identify consciousness as anything beyond physical sensory response.

Sure there is. Because the actual experience is not physical in nature.

Unless, if what you are identifying as "consciousness" is the entire collective process of the operation of the brain... inputs (sensory), processing of those inputs, and then calculating a response. Even though this is "non-physical" by that definition, it still requires those physical mediums to exist.

Maybe, maybe not. Again, IMO, the evidence suggests it does not.

Let me rephrase my original question... Do you believe that "consciousness" most definitely exists without a physical brain? Or do just think that it's possible because we don't know for sure at this time?

I would just say the evidence suggests it is possible for consciousness to exist outside a physical brain.

All of the "evidence" I have seen that's been presented to justify that claim has been allegorical, anecdotal and completely circumstantial. Until the evidence is measurable by way of an experiment which can be duplicated with consistent results, it is not enough evidence.... (getting the same anecdotal, circumstantial evidence does not count)

It may not be enough evidence for you to believe but it is for me. And I think anyone would agree if they have really investigated that evidence with a truly open mind.

Personally, I think that as we continue to develop our understanding of the brain, central nervous system, electromagnetic forces... etc, we will finally understand how it all ties in together. You must not forget... 2,000 years ago, people were certain that Lightning was supernatural, and there was NO way we could every understand where it comes from... other than the gods. And for the last 400 years, everything which was thought to be supernatural, once it was discovered how that thing happens, it has NEVER been by way of anything supernatural. And so that will come to pass for all those things we currently don't fully understand as well.

We simply have no way to investigate the non-physical world. Science is restricted to studying only the physical.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I hope you enjoyed your camping trip!

I've maintained that what evidence exists suggests it can.

Could you either reiterate how the evidence does or point to past posts I could go over again? Thanks.

act in violently angry ways yet reported he felt no corresponding emotion when he did them

This is similar to the example of severing connections I've reiterated. Making someone process visual stimuli but preventing this from being conscious isn't really different from brain damage that causes a person to react emotionally but unconsciously.

Can you give me an example of some physical thing or process which has no physical evidence?

I was unclear. Earlier, it seemed like a primary reason you gave for saying that consciousness must be nonphysical is how we experience. We don't experience neurons firing we experience e.g., the sound of birds or the colors in a rainbow. I don't see that there is any good reason to assume that because we experience something physical as something nonphysical it must therefore be nonphysical. Integrators of information, whether cells, computers, or brains, put together the information in novel ways during processing and especially later stages. By the time the action potentials generated by the vibrations of one's eardrum cause activations in cortical areas they have already turned into something that is integrating with language processing centers, sensorimotor regions, emotional regulations networks, etc. The "mind' is what results from the integration of much of this information.

It might be helpful if you further explained how you think the mind is like metabolic repair in a cell...

Why not?
...

I guess we need to determine what it is you are not understanding about my definition regarding a demonstration of causation.

Since you left to go camping, I've taken some time to think for a while about something that occurred to me during this discussion. Namely, what "nonphysical" means. I don't have an answer (still thinking), but I do think that certain aspects of what I thought about bear pointing out, as they relate to everything above. What do we mean when we say something has a physical cause and how do we demonstrate this or show this?

Linguistically, cause and effect is easily expressed and easily expressed naively. For example, I might say that the reason I am craving cookies is because the environmental conditions tens of thousands of years ago made humans who craved sugars, fats, and salts more than other humans more likely to survive to pass on their genes. So the cause for my craving is my ancestors from so long ago we're all descended from them. On the other hand, I'm hungry. And when I'm hungry I crave things like foods high in sugars, fats, and/or salts. So hunger is the cause. But my stomach has connections to my peripheral nervous system and both are connected to salivary glands, cognitive-emotional regulation networks, etc., responsible for both producing signals that my stomach is empty and generating feedback loops that influence how hungry I feel and what I crave. However, each cell, electrical impulse, etc., is made up of things like electrons. So clearly everything is caused by tiny nonlocalized particles interacting with God-knows-what. As modern physics postulates that we cannot (even in theory) know with certainty particular aspects about quantum "particles", it could very well be that we will be forced to accept interpretations of quantum mechanics involving the postulation of quantum processes that are created by infinitely many universes. Such theories pretty much preclude any "ultimate" causal model in which we can explain anything and everything through particle physics.

So we have to rely on a different causal model. Namely, we wish to look at things like "cause" in terms of Events/Processes. The question "what caused the glass to break?" has only one verb that has tense: the verb "caused". The event in question, however, is the breaking of a class. The infinitive form of "break" makes this event atemporal: it is conceptualized not as occurring through time but as a singular "whole", an "event". We can't even really break down the event in real time. When did it start? When I dropped the glass? But it wasn't broken then. When it "hit" the floor? The moment the molecules of the glass first made contact with those of the floor, it didn't break. Very soon after, the vibrations of the matter of the glass were sufficient enough to begin the process of molecules dividing that would become visible breaks and eventually result in broken chunks of glass. But it is impossible to say when this start and probably even when we can agree to say the glass is breaking because of it.

In order to speak about causation, we need to understand that causes are conceptualized entities that do not correspond to anything that is necessarily identifiable as physical in the world:

"A simple representation of components to a system is the input/output block diagram. In this representation, each block represents an agent that effects a change on something, namely its input. The result of this interaction is some output. The abstract way of representing this is

where f is the process that takes input A into output B. Clearly B can now become the input for some other process so that we can visualize a system as a network of these interactions. The relational system represents a very special kind of transition this way. Rather than break everything down in the usual reductionist manner, these transitions are selected for an important distinguishing property, namely their expression of process rather than material things directly. This is best explained with an example. The system Rosen uses for an example is the Metabolism-Repair or [M,R] system. The process, f, in this case stands for the entire metabolism going on in an organism. This is, indeed, quite an abstraction. Clearly, the use of such a representation is meant to suppress the myriad of detail that would only serve to distract us from the more simple argument put this way. It does more because it allows processes we know are going on to be divorced from the requirement that they be fragmentable or reducible to material parts alone...
The transition, f, which is being called metabolism, is a mapping taking some set of metabolites, A, into some set of products, B. What are the members of A? Really everything in the organism has to be included in A, and there has to be an implicit agreement that at least some of the members of A can enter the organism from its environment. What are the members of B? Many, if not all, of the members of A since the transitions in the reduced system are all strung together in the many intricate patterns or networks that make up the organism’s metabolism. It also must be true that some members of B leave the organism as products of metabolism. The usefulness of this abstract representation becomes clearer if the causal nature of the events is made clear...
the mapping, f...is a functional component of the system we are developing. A functional component has many interesting attributes. First of all, it exists independent of the material parts that make it possible. This idea has been so frequently misunderstood that it requires a careful discussion. Reductionism has taught us that every thing in a real system can be expressed as a collection of material parts. This is not so in the case of functional components. We only know about them because they do something. Looking at the parts involved does not lead us to knowing about them if they are not doing that something. Furthermore, they only exist in a given context. “Metabolism” as discussed here has no meaning in a machine. It also would have no meaning if we had all the chemical components of the organism in jars on a lab bench. Now we have a way of dealing with context dependence in a system theoretical manner. Not only are they only defined in their context, they also are constantly contributing to that context. This is as self- referential a situation as there is. What it means is that if the context, the particular system, is destroyed or even severely altered, the context defining the functional component will no longer exist and the functional component will also disappear...
The semantic parallel with language is in the concept of functional component. Pull things apart as reductionism asks us to do and something essential about the system is lost. Philosophically this has revolutionary consequences. The acceptance of this idea means that one recognizes ontological status for something other than mere atoms and molecules. It says that material reality is only a part of that real world we are so anxious to understand. In addition to material reality there are functional components that are also essential to our understanding of any complex reality.

Mikulecky, D. C. (2005). The Circle That Never Ends: Can Complexity be Made Simple?. In Complexity in Chemistry, Biology, and Ecology (pp. 97-153). Springer

I do consider myself a philosopher

I meant in the sense that that's what you do (I didn't mean to imply that you weren't a philosopher in the important sense). I would like to consider myself a philosopher but when asked what I am/do I don't say "I'm a philosopher".

It also might be helpful if I explained what my own speculations

That would help, as apart from being interesting to know it would probably help the causality issue.

 

[nazz]

I hope you enjoyed your camping trip!

Actually it was cut short by a flat tire! But I may go back today.

Could you either reiterate how the evidence does or point to past posts I could go over again? Thanks.

Things like NDE's, past life memories, paranormal research

This is similar to the example of severing connections I've reiterated. Making someone process visual stimuli but preventing this from being conscious isn't really different from brain damage that causes a person to react emotionally but unconsciously.

Could be but seems to be the opposite of the example you gave previously.

I was unclear. Earlier, it seemed like a primary reason you gave for saying that consciousness must be nonphysical is how we experience. We don't experience neurons firing we experience e.g., the sound of birds or the colors in a rainbow. I don't see that there is any good reason to assume that because we experience something physical as something nonphysical it must therefore be nonphysical.

Then you must think it's an illusion that our experiences are non-physical. Then I come back to where is the physical evidence of our experiences? And you say the physical activity of the brain. And round and round we go.

Integrators of information, whether cells, computers, or brains, put together the information in novel ways during processing and especially later stages. By the time the action potentials generated by the vibrations of one's eardrum cause activations in cortical areas they have already turned into something that is integrating with language processing centers, sensorimotor regions, emotional regulations networks, etc. The "mind' is what results from the integration of much of this information.

And my assertion is that there must be further processing in the non-physical realm to make that happen.

Since you left to go camping, I've taken some time to think for a while about something that occurred to me during this discussion. Namely, what "nonphysical" means. I don't have an answer (still thinking), but I do think that certain aspects of what I thought about bear pointing out, as they relate to everything above. What do we mean when we say something has a physical cause and how do we demonstrate this or show this?

I'm glad you asked this because I think I came up with an analogy that will make it clear. Imagine a box we cannot see into. We roll a white ball into the box and we see a black ball come out the other side. We notice three things:

1. The rolling of the white ball always precedes the rolling of the black ball
2. The black ball always rolls whenever we roll the white ball
3. The black ball never rolls without first rolling the white ball

You stated earlier that the existence of these three factors demonstrates causation. I disagree. Suppose we remove the box so we can see what is actually happening. And we do in fact see the white ball strike the black one and make it move. I think we can then say we have a clear case of causation. Perhaps there are other steps in the process but the white ball is definitely a causal factor. This is what science tries to do, to look into the box to see what is really happening.

But suppose we find something different when we remove the box. Suppose we see the white ball stop before making contact with the black one. And we further observe that whenever the white ball enters the box a little hammer pops up and hits the black ball causing it to roll out the other side. And we find that there is an operator in another room who pushes a button to make the hammer strike the black ball. We would have to conclude that we were wrong to think the white ball caused the black one to move even though it certainly seemed that was the case.

For this reason the existence of those three previously mentioned factors cannot always be interpreted as a demonstration of causation.

But let's go on with this example. Let's say that when we open the box we see the white ball stop before making contact with the black one and no matter how much we examine everything inside the box and the entire area around it we can find absolutely nothing that looks like a physical cause for the movement of the black ball. Yet the black ball always moves whenever the white one does and it never moves without it.

This I think is the situation of something like quantum entanglement. But this is still not entirely like what we find with the brain and the mind. We have to alter the example further. Now we have a box with multiple openings into which we can roll various balls. And there is a speaker mounted on the outside of the box. Whenever we roll one of the balls into a slot we hear through the speaker things like "I see an elephant, I hear music, I smell a rose, I taste an orange, I feel a tickle", etc. But when we open the box all we find is balls rolling in and stopping at various places in the box. We certainly see no elephants, hear no music, smell no roses, taste no oranges, nor feel no tickles. And we see no person inside the box.

This is the situation with the brain. Scientists have looked into the "box" and all we see are neurons firing in a chain along various pathways that dead end. And when they do the person reports experiences of various types. But we as observers never see the experiences themselves nor the process that creates them. Why? Because they are by their very nature non-physical.

Not only that but we cannot even say for certain that the rolling of the balls (the firing of the neurons) is what is truly causing the experience for the reasons I stated above. As investigators of the phenomenon of consciousness we are truly in the dark. We are at a scientific dead end.

I meant in the sense that that's what you do (I didn't mean to imply that you weren't a philosopher in the important sense). I would like to consider myself a philosopher but when asked what I am/do I don't say "I'm a philosopher".

Oh, okay. I'm retired right now but yeah I never worked as a professional philosopher!

That would help, as apart from being interesting to know it would probably help the causality issue.

Okay, but I have to say at the outset that I am beginning to doubt my own speculations. I'm beginning to think there is no good way to explain consciousness at all and that perhaps this is a clue to an even deeper truth. But I will leave that aside for now.

Now it is possible that what is happening is similar to the situation I gave above. Something like an operator is causing conscious experiences to arise whenever the physical events occur. This as I previously mentioned is one philosophy of mind (occasionalism, psychophysical parallelism). I can't rule it out, I have no way of doing so, but it is equally true that I also have no good reason to believe that is the case.

So where my speculations have taken me is to imagine that consciousness is some kind of non-physical "substance" that reacts to the neural patterns in the brain. I have likened this to light sensitive film in a camera. Light enters the camera's aperture and strikes the film and an image appears. But it is not simply the entrance of the light which causes this. If we had some other substance in the camera no image would appear. It requires a special type of substance, in this case light sensitive film, to complete the process. IOW, the production of the image is a function of the inherent characteristics of the film itself. Now it is true that the film won't develop an image without the light striking it but it is equally true that no image will develop without the reaction of the film to the light.

The light entering the camera is obviously an analogy to the perceptual information entering the brain along the various neural pathways. And consciousness is the film which develops. BOTH are necessary elements of the process. Just sending information into the brain is not enough. But to have a conscious experience information must be introduced to develop an experience in our consciousness.