Could consciousness be an illusion?

[Runewolf1973]

I think its more a philosophical issue more than a scientific thing. The interaction is the perception otherwise there wouldn't be a reaction. Why should qualia be magic? When I hear magic I think I of illusions, things that trick the mind into perceiving something differently. Our ability to interact and adapt to the environment is awesome but all this requires physical connections. Emotions and feelings are physical reactions.

Indeed. We live in a physical universe composed of matter and energy. We only "think" that parts of it are separate, or non-physical, or not connected (part of the illusion), but everything is connected in some way.

I practice a type of shamanic healing, which some would call "distant healing". The reason why this is possible and it works is because of those connections which we do not see.

 

[MD]

I think its more a philosophical issue more than a scientific thing. The interaction is the perception otherwise there wouldn't be a reaction. Why should qualia be magic? When I hear magic I think I of illusions, things that trick the mind into perceiving something differently. Our ability to interact and adapt to the environment is awesome but all this requires physical connections. Emotions and feelings are physical reactions.

There is the physical and non physical. Emotions and feelings are the same thing, they are comprised of the physical particles. But the subjective perception of emotions and feelings is not physical.

 

[Sha'irullah]

I don't think you fully understand why consciousness is such a mystery to almost everyone in the scientific and philosophical community. The perceptions you describe do not exist in physical reality. They somehow emerge from the physical interactions of the brain, but the physical interactions are simply particles and electromagnetics. How can they create perception? There is a gap between the physical and what we perceive, and this ontological gap is referred to as the Hard Problem of Consciousness. In my opinion it should be called the Impossible problem .

For example the color red. Red doesn't exist in physical reality, it's simply a wavelength of light which is nothing more than energy. But it hits the cones in our eyes and then is processed in our brain and somehow the experience of red appears to us. The same thing with emotions which are particles interacting with each other.

If you believe matter can create these completely novel properties in our minds, then matter is not the only substrate in the universe. The mind is a separate property which has come about through matter ie property dualism.

Then there's also the concept of intentionality, which basically is the idea that we assign meaning to things. We understand. Computers don't understand, there's a thought experiment by John Searle called the Chinese room experiment which expands upon this.

Stop stealing my answers , I was just gonna get into the good stuff. Oh well

 

[Runewolf1973]

There is the physical and non physical. Emotions and feelings are the same thing, they are comprised of the physical particles. But the subjective perception of emotions and feelings is not physical.

I believe that the reason why we can perceive or pick up on anything is because it is a physical reaction to something else which we are physically connected to whether we realize it or not. A butterfly flapping its wings in China can affect a person on the other side of the world whether they realize it or not...because everything connected via those energy fields which I believe are all around us.

 

[idav]

There is the physical and non physical. Emotions and feelings are the same thing, they are comprised of the physical particles. But the subjective perception of emotions and feelings is not physical.

What makes you say non-physical other than the mystery of it? Why is our perception of hunger any different, aside from complexity of the perception, different from other basic lifeforms seeking sustenance? Consciousness of now is percieving and reacting to physical stimuli, and isnt percieved anymore when the physical interactions cease.

I understand the issue with qualia but I think thats us getting caught up in the way we percieve when any type of interaction and notification system would do. There are a million ways to "see" an object, there is more than our limited sensory and there is more sensing going on the we can be aware of.

 

[idav]

Indeed. We live in a physical universe composed of matter and energy. We only "think" that parts of it are separate, or non-physical, or not connected (part of the illusion), but everything is connected in some way.

I practice a type of shamanic healing, which some would call "distant healing". The reason why this is possible and it works is because of those connections which we do not see.

I liked the way your op put it as a highly evolved form of interaction. One thing that I think tricks us into thinking something more is our real-time memory. Cause I can understand being able to just react to things, this would still be awareness, but remembering one second to the next and being able to have a cumulative reaction is quite remarkable.

 

[Runewolf1973]

I liked the way your op put it as a highly evolved form of interaction. One thing that I think tricks us into thinking something more is our real-time memory. Cause I can understand being able to just react to things, this would still be awareness, but remembering one second to the next and being able to have a cumulative reaction is quite remarkable.

Perhaps that ability to remember is partly due to the fundamental force of gravity. The matter in our brains is in some way capable of "clinging" to or holding a memory of it's previous interactions...like an attracting force that just does not want to let go. Part of those physical signals or that information our brains received or perceived remains bound (clings or attracts like gravity) to that matter which makes up our physical body. I don't know whether to call it energy, force, or what, but whatever it is, we attract it, we store it, and we emit it. Consider the Sun (an object composed of matter) and how it emits radiation and light and how it affects everything within it's radius. Now imagine every person or every object composed of mass no matter how small as being its or their own mini Sun or own source of energy. If the Sun emits radiation and light, what energies do we (as mini sun's) emit that affects everything around us within our radius? Everything is connected by these "fields" of energy or natural forces. That's just the way I see it anyway.


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[Runewolf1973]

It seems to me that a lot of people think the whole "problem" with consciousness will eventually be resolved through philosophy or some mystical or spiritual endeavor. It is my opinion that it will eventually be resolved or understood through physics and/or biochemistry.

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[idav]

It seems to me that a lot of people think the whole "problem" with consciousness will eventually be resolved through philosophy or some mystical or spiritual endeavor. It is my opinion that it will eventually be resolved or understood through physics and/or biochemistry.

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Yes or biophysics.

 

[Contemplative Cat]

its just logic.
Everything is reducible, until its not reducible
That's what people often call non-duality(nothing, not even monism)
God to exist would have to be created, thus could be reducible to nonexistence(assuming God is the first thing to exist.
non existence would not have been ever created because non-existence can not be reduced.

God (assuming god is real,in a abrahamic or even pagan sense)
It would not be the absolute, nor the Creator on account of it clearly being a creation.

You are the one using semantics, you are misusing words to reach an unjustified conclusion. You conclusion is justified but not through your reasoning.



You are paying no attention to the words which support your conclusion and you are actually refuting yourself. You are only making statements which prove yourself wrong. Again, you conclusion is justifiable but your methodology and reasoning behind it is counterproductive.

Instead of complaining you are to be providing the justification for your claim without making paradoxes and destroying your own argument.
I am also not being aggressive toward you, I am actually trying to help you.

I myself find the existence of a god irrelevant and not worth proving such a thing exist. I am interested in making sure you can make a philosophically sound debate.

 

[Runewolf1973]

Perhaps part of the misunderstanding was that I was not trying to make a philosophical debate, I was arriving to a materialistic conclusion. Whether my use of words (semantics) was appropriate or not, or whether my ideas made philosophical sense or not, the underlying message was derived through a solid, logical approach to an understanding of the physical world. Like I said earlier, the problem of consciousness will not be resolved though philosophy or spirituality, it will eventually be understood through science. I like Idav's term biophysics, that is more accurate.

But I guess this is all sort of a philosophy in and of itself. Lol.

I hope that made sense.



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[Contemplative Cat]

Anything is a concept superimposed upon nature.
This also applies to the grander concepts (such as consciousness and energy) that allow the mind to reach such a conclusion.

Same with God in Advaita. Its not thing, its a name for the irriducible, but it is not particularly needed.(the same could also be applied to concepts of a monad, nature, or the cosmos)

 

[Penumbra]

I don't see consciousness or awareness as being some mysterious thing that exists apart or independently of matter. The way I see it, consciousness or awareness is simply a highly evolved form of chemical interaction...the ability for things to interact. All matter interacts on a fundamental level...the fundamental forces. As things evolve or change form over time those chemical interactions may become more and more complex eventually leading to a higher state of interaction we call consciousness or self awareness. Therefore, that consciousness or awareness as we call it that humans have does not really exist in all things, but all things have to some degree an ability to interact or respond to external forces. All things are interactive, some things are just more interactive than others. Perhaps consciousness or even self awareness is somewhat of an illusion, there are only interactions which exist at varying levels.
This is also how I view what we call life. The only thing that makes one thing seem more lifelike, lively, or alive than another thing is the complexity of it's interactions and its ability to sustain those interactions. The more complex an organism is, the more it interacts with it's surroundings.
So how I see it, there is really no such thing as life or consciousness as some separately existing thing apart from matter, but there are those forms of matter which appear more lifelike, animate, or conscious than others due to their very complex nature.

I think the questions of whether consciousness is an illusion, and whether consciousness is material, are separate questions. If it's material, I don't think that makes it an illusion.

-As for the question of whether it's an illusion or not, I think the definition must be no. We can't prove if other people are conscious or not, but if we're consciously considering the question of whether we're conscious ourselves, then I think that alone just proved it for ourselves.

-The question of whether consciousness is material is harder to answer because nobody knows how consciousness works. It's one of the two biggest mysteries along with, "how/why does something exist rather than nothing?"

The argument that consciousness is material is pretty strong, imo. For personality traits, they can be altered or even totally inverted by brain damage, and memories can be erased with brain damage. Consciousness is similar. If consciousness were independent of the material brain, then one should expect that if the brain is damaged, the individual is still conscious in some other form. Like, if the brain is just the filter for consciousness to express itself in this world rather than generating consciousness, then if the brain is damaged and the person is in a coma, they should still be independently conscious in some other form, but just unable to express it, right? But, the vast majority of people put asleep for surgery or in deep comas, say they were not conscious during that time. Whenever I've been put asleep for a surgery, I was totally in oblivion- no remembrance of any perception, time, anything. A minority of cases have NDEs, but there are forms of dreams and hallucinations that can't be ruled out. The fact that consciousness can apparently be subjectively shut off for that individual by damaging the brain (meaning that the individual herself reported a lack of awareness at that time, rather than just other people viewing her as lacking awareness), is the biggest piece of evidence that the brain generates rather than merely expresses consciousness.

-The evidence that consciousness is non-physical, just seems to come down to the argument that since nobody has any idea how it works, it must be non-physical. But that's a fairly weak argument in my opinion; basically a God of the Gaps argument. If you were to go back in time and show a caveman your smart phone, lighting up and playing complex videos and all that, and saying that in your time you can talk to people on the other side of the world with it or access the global database of information and communication (internet) or take a picture of anything and send it anywhere, and that your people made it out of earth materials, he'd look around at the rocks and wood and bone and think, "how in the world could this be made out of physical stuff?" Since his time, we've discovered deeper or more subtle layers of reality such as electromagnetism for the smart phone, but also spacetime curvature, relativity, quantum mechanics, etc. Who knows what humans could discover about reality in the next few thousand years if our species somehow lives that long. I think calling consciousness non-physical because we don't know how it works even conceptually or loosely, is very premature, especially considering the above argument for causality by the brain. The other argument is the set of reports of NDEs and stuff, but they happen when the brain is still alive, and only in the minority of cases, and at least we know that the brain can be capable of deep hallucinations and dreams.

 

[Runewolf1973]

I think the questions of whether consciousness is an illusion, and whether consciousness is material, are separate questions. If it's material, I don't think that makes it an illusion.

-As for the question of whether it's an illusion or not, I think the definition must be no. We can't prove if other people are conscious or not, but if we're consciously considering the question of whether we're conscious ourselves, then I think that alone just proved it for ourselves.

-The question of whether consciousness is material is harder to answer because nobody knows how consciousness works. It's one of the two biggest mysteries along with, "how/why does something exist rather than nothing?"

The argument that consciousness is material is pretty strong, imo. For personality traits, they can be altered or even totally inverted by brain damage, and memories can be erased with brain damage. Consciousness is similar. If consciousness were independent of the material brain, then one should expect that if the brain is damaged, the individual is still conscious in some other form. Like, if the brain is just the filter for consciousness to express itself in this world rather than generating consciousness, then if the brain is damaged and the person is in a coma, they should still be independently conscious in some other form, but just unable to express it, right? But, the vast majority of people put asleep for surgery or in deep comas, say they were not conscious during that time. Whenever I've been put asleep for a surgery, I was totally in oblivion- no remembrance of any perception, time, anything. A minority of cases have NDEs, but there are forms of dreams and hallucinations that can't be ruled out. The fact that consciousness can apparently be subjectively shut off for that individual by damaging the brain (meaning that the individual herself reported a lack of awareness at that time, rather than just other people viewing her as lacking awareness), is the biggest piece of evidence that the brain generates rather than merely expresses consciousness.

-The evidence that consciousness is non-physical, just seems to come down to the argument that since nobody has any idea how it works, it must be non-physical. But that's a fairly weak argument in my opinion; basically a God of the Gaps argument. If you were to go back in time and show a caveman your smart phone, lighting up and playing complex videos and all that, and saying that in your time you can talk to people on the other side of the world with it or access the global database of information and communication (internet) or take a picture of anything and send it anywhere, and that your people made it out of earth materials, he'd look around at the rocks and wood and bone and think, "how in the world could this be made out of physical stuff?" Since his time, we've discovered deeper or more subtle layers of reality such as electromagnetism for the smart phone, but also spacetime curvature, relativity, quantum mechanics, etc. Who knows what humans could discover about reality in the next few thousand years if our species somehow lives that long. I think calling consciousness non-physical because we don't know how it works even conceptually or loosely, is very premature, especially considering the above argument for causality by the brain. The other argument is the set of reports of NDEs and stuff, but they happen when the brain is still alive, and only in the minority of cases, and at least we know that the brain can be capable of deep hallucinations and dreams.

To put it quite simply, I agree with you.

 

[MD]

The argument that consciousness is material is pretty strong, imo. For personality traits, they can be altered or even totally inverted by brain damage, and memories can be erased with brain damage. Consciousness is similar. If consciousness were independent of the material brain, then one should expect that if the brain is damaged, the individual is still conscious in some other form. Like, if the brain is just the filter for consciousness to express itself in this world rather than generating consciousness, then if the brain is damaged and the person is in a coma, they should still be independently conscious in some other form, but just unable to express it, right? But, the vast majority of people put asleep for surgery or in deep comas, say they were not conscious during that time. Whenever I've been put asleep for a surgery, I was totally in oblivion- no remembrance of any perception, time, anything. A minority of cases have NDEs, but there are forms of dreams and hallucinations that can't be ruled out. The fact that consciousness can apparently be subjectively shut off for that individual by damaging the brain (meaning that the individual herself reported a lack of awareness at that time, rather than just other people viewing her as lacking awareness), is the biggest piece of evidence that the brain generates rather than merely expresses consciousness.

-The evidence that consciousness is non-physical, just seems to come down to the argument that since nobody has any idea how it works, it must be non-physical. But that's a fairly weak argument in my opinion; basically a God of the Gaps argument. If you were to go back in time and show a caveman your smart phone, lighting up and playing complex videos and all that, and saying that in your time you can talk to people on the other side of the world with it or access the global database of information and communication (internet) or take a picture of anything and send it anywhere, and that your people made it out of earth materials, he'd look around at the rocks and wood and bone and think, "how in the world could this be made out of physical stuff?" Since his time, we've discovered deeper or more subtle layers of reality such as electromagnetism for the smart phone, but also spacetime curvature, relativity, quantum mechanics, etc. Who knows what humans could discover about reality in the next few thousand years if our species somehow lives that long. I think calling consciousness non-physical because we don't know how it works even conceptually or loosely, is very premature, especially considering the above argument for causality by the brain. The other argument is the set of reports of NDEs and stuff, but they happen when the brain is still alive, and only in the minority of cases, and at least we know that the brain can be capable of deep hallucinations and dreams.

I disagree with the argument that consciousness is physical simply based on the fact that the physical substrates which give rise to the conscious experience are correlated but not causal. They're called the neural correlates of consciousness for that very reason. Yes one can argue that dopamine causes pleasure, but pleasure is not a physical thing, it's a subjective inner experience. We have no idea how dopamine causes pleasure, all we know is that increasing amount of it gives us more pleasure. If you want to invoke the principle of strong emergence, then you are basically acknowledging that matter can give rise to completely novel properties in nature never seen before, aka magic (I mean Gandalf/Harry Potter magic, not the illusory kind). And one can argue that strong emergence is a form of property dualism. The conscious experience is completely different from the physical substrates which give rise to it.

There are no colors, no sounds, no feelings, no emotions and no meaning in physical reality. And these are all irreducible. Red doesn't break down into smaller red. Most people who support dualism (whether it be property or substance) don't deny that the brain is intricately involved in the creation of consciousness. They're simply saying that the experience itself is not purely due to the brain, that there is another property at play here and that property is perhaps another fundamental layer of the universe we haven't come across as of yet.

 

[Runewolf1973]

I disagree with the argument that consciousness is physical simply based on the fact that the physical substrates which give rise to the conscious experience are correlated but not causal. They're called the neural correlates of consciousness for that very reason. Yes one can argue that dopamine causes pleasure, but pleasure is not a physical thing, it's a subjective inner experience. We have no idea how dopamine causes pleasure, all we know is that increasing amount of it gives us more pleasure. If you want to invoke the principle of strong emergence, then you are basically acknowledging that matter can give rise to completely novel properties in nature never seen before, aka magic (I mean Gandalf/Harry Potter magic, not the illusory kind). And one can argue that strong emergence is a form of property dualism. The conscious experience is completely different from the physical substrates which give rise to it.

There are no colors, no sounds, no feelings, no emotions and no meaning in physical reality. And these are all irreducible. Red doesn't break down into smaller red. Most people who support dualism (whether it be property or substance) don't deny that the brain is intricately involved in the creation of consciousness. They're simply saying that the experience itself is not purely due to the brain, that there is another property at play here and that property is perhaps another fundamental layer of the universe we haven't come across as of yet.

Hypothetically speaking, if some other "fundamental layer" has existed since the beginning of time, would it not be because it has just always naturally existed along with all the other fundamental layers or forces? If this other hidden aspect or fundamental layer does in fact exist, why would it have to be considered "supernatural"?

Or put it this way... If science were to discover or prove that this other fundamental layer or property actually does exist, would it still have to be considered something "supernatural"? What if science discovered that God actually existed...would God still be something supernatural to us? Or would we think he must have just always existed...naturally?

It seems to me that just right up to the point when we discover that something previously unknown to us actually does exist, it no longer becomes supernatural to us, it becomes natural. At one time diseases or sicknesses used to be considered of supernatural origin. We generally end up realizing that all these things we previously thought were supernatural actually have a basis in physical reality.

I don't believe in "supernatural" things. I believe the are naturally existing unknowns to science, and there are those things we dream up or imagine which simply do not exist.


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[idav]

Yes one can argue that dopamine causes pleasure, but pleasure is not a physical thing, it's a subjective inner experience.

I agree but even with that it can still be a purely physical process. The subjectivity of any particlar sense means nothing to the physical process of it. We could stop the five senses before it hits the brain and all you would have is data with no way to sense or experiene, know way to know the data. Sensing it in the brain is experiencing it yet anywhere else in the brain is just a physical process? There is no evidence to suggest neurons need to sense any differently, by physical processes, same as the arm knowing when to obey commands. Why do you have to say its magic just because isnisnt fully explained. The physical, matter, atoms are not all that mundane, we cant I see most of it with the naked eyes, that why we use mechanical eyes to see things better.

 

[ametist]

No it is not. Probably the only thing that is real.

 

[Runewolf1973]

No it is not. Probably the only thing that is real.

Okay, now give an explanation why you would think so.

 

[Contemplative Cat]

No one can seem to identify consciousness empirically, but everyone realizes its there.