Faith in science?

[mikkel_the_dane]

Be born.

Unless you are born into bad circumstances as per nature or nurture. Like how you actually didn't answer.

 

[Ponder This]

The problem of how a subjective world of experience is able to emerge from gooey material in our bodies is still a total mystery. As in, there isn't even one decent guess as to how subjective experience can come from matter as far as I can see.

If you think about all the biological processes that occur within us they seem to be reducible or explanable in terms of physiological concepts. For example, the nephron is the unit of kidney i.e. one nephron = one bit of kidney (roughly speaking). The nephron does what it does because of its shape, its composition and the surrouding fluid concentrations. You can model and explain how the nephron is able to filter out waste materials using these ideas from physiology. Digestion, muscle contraction, respiration, etc all seem to be explainable in much the same way; we look at the relevant structures and suggest models of action from the physiological concepts.

So taking our cue from other biological processes and assuming that consciousness is one of those maybe the magic comes from the particular way our brains are arranged in space. But this seems to get us nowhere. Neurons are a very peculiar shape and the agglomeration of neurons in the brain and rest of the nervous system is highly ordered (as in any unordering apparently leads to no consciousness or death). Impulses are carried around quickly by the particular method of cell-to-cell communication. A stimulus from my finger hitting these keys is carried to my brain and from there it whizzes about and fizzes and pops and whatnot and then I feel the keys. Where in that process is the feels?

There's a whole cascade of action/reaction going on when I see this screen. But none of it seems to imply blueness. There is always a gap.

Most days I'm confident (almost sure) that at some point, with enough work, we'll make the empirical and conceptual breakthroughs which will get us over the hump towards a science of consciousness.

Am I excercising faith in science?

Sorry if this post itself isn't highly ordered, this stuff confuses me no end.

I think established science is something that people who know the established science can use, but that both cutting edge science and claims by scientists have to be taken with a degree of skepticism by others. The problem with cutting edge science is that it is not established science yet. And the problem with claims by scientists is that scientists may be biased.
Inevitably, it becomes important to be able to evaluate claims by other means.

Will science eventually give us all the answers we seek? Probably not, because after this long science still doesn't have all the answers. But even if science could eventually get all the answers, people can't wait forever for science. People often need to take action now and don't have the benefit or luxury of waiting for science.

 

[Yerda]

This the fallacy of 'arguing from ignorance' I previously referred to. It does not work to be hypothetical as to what science can nor cannot know know nor in the future.

No, sir.

From wiki: Argument from ignorance, also known as appeal to ignorance, is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true.

If you read my posts I'm not arguing that anything is true or false because something else has or hasn't been proven true. I'm not actually making an argument at all. The point of the thread is to pose a question.

This is the problem, particularly when you lack the education needed to understand the present knowledge of science, and the limits of science.

Ok. Enlighten me.

No, and 'faith' does not apply to the sciences involved with consciousness, nor any other science..

Agreed, as I've stated previously I'm not "applying faith" to science.

 

[shunyadragon]

No, sir.

From wiki: Argument from ignorance, also known as appeal to ignorance, is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true.

If you read my posts I'm not arguing that anything is true or false because something else has or hasn't been proven true. I'm not actually making an argument at all. The point of the thread is to pose a question.

You just described by definition 'arguing from ignorance.' You are claiming cannot know the nature of consciousness (asserting your preposition is true) because you propose that it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true.

Ok. Enlighten me.

You need to study the science involved to know the science involved with consciousness. .

Agreed, as I've stated previously I'm not "applying faith" to science.

No.

 

[Yerda]

You just described by definition 'arguing from ignorance.' You are claiming cannot know the nature of consciousness (asserting your preposition is true) because you propose that it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true.

No, sir.

Again, I didn't make an argument and I haven't reached any conclusions from ignorance or otherwise. I asked a question.

If you read through the OP you'll get to the point where I state that I'm confident that science will solve the problem of consciousness. I'm asking whether my confidence is akin to faith.

You need to study the science involved to know the science involved with consciousness.

Which books or papers would you recommend?

 

[shunyadragon]

No, sir.

Again, I didn't make an argument and I haven't reached any conclusions from ignorance or otherwise. I asked a question.

If you read through the OP you'll get to the point where I state that I'm confident that science will solve the problem of consciousness. I'm asking whether my confidence is akin to faith.

Which books or papers would you recommend?

Your posts reflect more then just asking questions such as #107:

I talked about neurophysiology and neurotransmission and alluded to the importance of the ordering of the nervous system in my post. We know lots about the brain - I don't mean to imply otherwise. We don't have a theory of how the brain gives rise to experiences nor even a good guess as far as I can see.

An argument or question of faith in science is a contradiction.

 

[Yerda]

Your posts reflect more then just asking questions such as #107:

Go troll someone else

 

[shunyadragon]

Go troll someone else

Failure to respond to statement you made.

 

[Yerda]

Failure to respond to statement you made.

Fun chat. Have a nice evening.

 

[shunyadragon]

Fun chat. Have a nice evening.

Failure to respond to statement you made.

 

[cladking]

If you read through the OP you'll get to the point where I state that I'm confident that science will solve the problem of consciousness. I'm asking whether my confidence is akin to faith.

I believe it is just common sense.

Once we have a working definition for "consciousness" it can be studied scientifically.

I don't think we're very far from it right now but it might be many years before there exists meaningful or useful information about it.

 

[YoursTrue]

It is hard to have 'faith' in science, if you take 'faith' to mean what it does in religious references, ie Belief without evidence.

Science is about evidence, experiment, checking, re-checking, changing, refining, discarding, etc. Everything that religion isn't

That is not quite true. For instance, some religions have altered their viewpoints upon checking and re-checking and examining circumstances. And who knows? Still I see no evidence of evolution except that which is in the mind of those that believe in evolution. I mean, like statements without proof is dead. A lot of people believe a lot of things, some of which may be true (without evidence) and some of which may not be true (also without evidence).

 

[YoursTrue]

I believe it is just common sense.

Once we have a working definition for "consciousness" it can be studied scientifically.

I don't think we're very far from it right now but it might be many years before there exists meaningful or useful information about it.

I'm conscious about gravity because I am told it exists, it makes sense to me that things generally fall to the ground and don't go upward on their own 'steam.' Steam? Maybe I'm using the wrong word there...
Now the English language is what it is. Does gravity exist? Does existence mean it is alive? You tell me.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Science is an ever-growing box of tools and processes that we have adapted to fix so many problems and answer so many questions and on that basis I am confident that we'll get somewhere with this one. I do have a niggling feeling that this one is a bit special though.

Why do you think that?

But is the pattern the smell of coffee?

The "smell" is just an interpretation of us. "Smell" is not a universal objective thing.
Consider "sight" as an analogy, as that is easier to understand as we can visualize it.

Consider this picture:

Left is how we humans see that flower.
Right is how a bee sees the exact same flower.

So what is the "color pattern" of this flower?
Clearly, a bee would answer differently then we would, eventhough the exact same light waves are being "seen" by both.

I see this a lot. Some of us can't understand how some others can't see the problem and some others can't understand why we're having a problem to begin with. It might just be something to do with the ways we frame the world. That and words can be misleading slippery things.

Or we simply start at different positions and come at it from different angles.
Someone who's absolutely convinced that "souls" exist and that they are independent of the human brain, will obviously look at "consciousness" in very different ways compared to someone who doesn't believe such "souls" exist.

Regarding that last paragraph, do you categorise seeing red as the same thing as sensing red?

What I mean is, I could train a machine to correctly identify red objects (in theory). Maybe it has a light detecting system and can just pick the object that reflects light in the right part of the spectrum. But it isn't 'seeing' red. There is no experience of redness or of anything else. Is this difference meaningful to you?

Well, consider the picture above.
Would your machine see a yellow flower, or a white one with a red center?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I'm not questioning science. I'm asking if my confidence that science can solve a problem without evidence is faith or something like it.

It's not without evidence.
Science has a large and impressive track record of successfully solving such problems.
It's a tool of which the purpose is exactly that: solving such problems.

Does it guarantee it will be able to solve said problem? Off course not.
But it does make your confidence in its capability of solving such problems, not without justification.

So it's not (blind/baseless) "faith" at all.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Well... That I perceive is scientific. What I perceive is not. I seem to have some control over what I perceive but not total control. Scientific analysis would suggest that I am not alone or perhaps more accurately, not the center or creator of perception.

I don't see how this answered the question.
I'm also not seeing a practical example. Which I asked specifically for extra clarity.

 

[firedragon]

The problem of how a subjective world of experience is able to emerge from gooey material in our bodies is still a total mystery. As in, there isn't even one decent guess as to how subjective experience can come from matter as far as I can see.

If you think about all the biological processes that occur within us they seem to be reducible or explanable in terms of physiological concepts. For example, the nephron is the unit of kidney i.e. one nephron = one bit of kidney (roughly speaking). The nephron does what it does because of its shape, its composition and the surrouding fluid concentrations. You can model and explain how the nephron is able to filter out waste materials using these ideas from physiology. Digestion, muscle contraction, respiration, etc all seem to be explainable in much the same way; we look at the relevant structures and suggest models of action from the physiological concepts.

So taking our cue from other biological processes and assuming that consciousness is one of those maybe the magic comes from the particular way our brains are arranged in space. But this seems to get us nowhere. Neurons are a very peculiar shape and the agglomeration of neurons in the brain and rest of the nervous system is highly ordered (as in any unordering apparently leads to no consciousness or death). Impulses are carried around quickly by the particular method of cell-to-cell communication. A stimulus from my finger hitting these keys is carried to my brain and from there it whizzes about and fizzes and pops and whatnot and then I feel the keys. Where in that process is the feels?

There's a whole cascade of action/reaction going on when I see this screen. But none of it seems to imply blueness. There is always a gap.

Most days I'm confident (almost sure) that at some point, with enough work, we'll make the empirical and conceptual breakthroughs which will get us over the hump towards a science of consciousness.

Am I excercising faith in science?

Sorry if this post itself isn't highly ordered, this stuff confuses me no end.

Yes. You are indeed exercising faith in science, as everyone probably should and probably do one way or another anyway. Not blind faith though.

 

[firedragon]

Your lack of education in science is appalling. Get an education in basic science would help.

So even in science there is an arrogant dismissal and that superiority complex that makes one miss the point.

Great.

 

[Yerda]

Hi, again.

Why do you think that?

It's a hunch, but I guess it stems from the fact that experience is inherently subjective in nature. We want to find out how a subjective property comes from objective stuff and my impression is that we don't have the tools yet.

Given that, I'm still pretty sure that we'll get there (or that we can in principle) and that's the faith I was hinting at in the OP.

The "smell" is just an interpretation of us. "Smell" is not a universal objective thing.
Consider "sight" as an analogy, as that is easier to understand as we can visualize it.

Agreed. Smell is a word for an kind of experience.

Consider this picture:

View attachment 46903

Left is how we humans see that flower.
Right is how a bee sees the exact same flower.

So what is the "color pattern" of this flower?
Clearly, a bee would answer differently then we would, eventhough the exact same light waves are being "seen" by both.

If I had to make a definitive claim, I'd say neither. There are different ways to form an image of an object.

Out of curiosity, why do you ask?

Or we simply start at different positions and come at it from different angles.
Someone who's absolutely convinced that "souls" exist and that they are independent of the human brain, will obviously look at "consciousness" in very different ways compared to someone who doesn't believe such "souls" exist.

That's true. There are also atheists, like me, who have different perspectives.

I'm not saying I must be right. I'm happy to admit the possibility that the hard problem is a kind of illusion that results from confusion or mistakes.

Well, consider the picture above.
Would your machine see a yellow flower, or a white one with a red center?

I don't think it sees anything at all.

"What is it like to be a photoprocessing machine?" might be an amusing subject for a philosophy chat though.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Out of curiosity, why do you ask?

It just seemed analogous to the question you asked about the smell of coffee.

I'm not saying I must be right. I'm happy to admit the possibility that the hard problem is a kind of illusion that results from confusion or mistakes.

Indeed. This reminds me of a comment made by Neil deGrass Tyson in this clip on youtube called "the story telling of science". The discussion concerned unanswered questions and Richard raised the point that for him, the biggest question would be "what is consciousness?".

Neil then raised the point about how we might actually be asking the wrong question there.

See the exchange that followed here (it's timestamped in the clip link so that it immediately starts at that particular point)

EDIT: apparantly, timestamping doesn't work when embedding youtube videos... the part starts at 12:20

And off course, Bill Nye The Science Guy had to weigh in there with hilarity

I don't think it sees anything at all.

Ow... I don't know... if "seeing" is the process of capturing light waves and interpreting them to form an image, then I'ld say that a webcam surely "sees" things.

"What is it like to be a photoprocessing machine?" might be an amusing subject for a philosophy chat though.

"...especially on weed man..."

(for those who have seen the movie Halfbaked )