What's wrong with Materialism?

[George-ananda]

Thanks for that. So it's irrelevant to the individual that they're inside a Cosmic Consciousness, because it looks and behaves exactly as though it were reality?

Or how would it differ? (Other than philosophically, of course.)

It matters. Without that spark of Cosmic Consciousness we would have no consciousness. Comatose. Chemicals can not produce it.

 

[blü 2]

How does materialism define consciousness vis-à-vis the state of awareness?

With the best scientific hypothesis available at the time.

The leading one still seems to the Global Workspace Theory.

 

[blü 2]

It matters. Without that spark of Cosmic Consciousness we would have no consciousness. Comatose. Chemicals can not produce it.

I'd say that at present our explorations of brain function have encountered nothing in support of that idea; and a great deal of evidence shows that chemicals can turn consciousness on and off, and alter its nature, effectiveness, perceptiveness, and so on.

Surely that would be untrue if consciousness were divine and eternal?

But 'chemicals can not produce it' will be a falsifiable proposition before not too long, I suspect.

 

[George-ananda]

I'd say that at present our explorations of brain function have encountered nothing in support of that idea; and a great deal of evidence shows that chemicals can turn consciousness on and off, and alter its nature, effectiveness, perceptiveness, and so on.

Surely that would be untrue if consciousness were divine and eternal?

But 'chemicals can not produce it' will be a falsifiable proposition before not too long, I suspect.

In the Cosmic Consciousness theory.
The brain allows infinite eternal consciousness to have a finite and temporary experience. It is all a play/drama of the One in this theory.

Also I have found paranormal evidence supports consciousness without a brain. I know you accept none of that data.

 

[Runewolf1973]

How does materialism define consciousness vis-à-vis the state of awareness?

A complex, highly interactive state.

 

[Runewolf1973]

In the Cosmic Consciousness theory.
The brain allows infinite eternal consciousness to have a finite and temporary experience. It is all a play/drama of the One in this theory.

Also I have found paranormal evidence supports consciousness without a brain. I know you accept none of that data.

At what point in history did people start using the term "consciousness" to describe Brahman? Using the term consciousness just totally ruins it for me. It takes an otherwise quite wonderful belief system and turns it into something that sounds rather contrived and phoney. Yes, I can totally buy into the idea that there is some kind of a universal background from which all material things emerge, but I would never personally call that consciousness. Brahman? Sure. Unified Field? Sure. Consciousness is just so overused...and yet no one can agree on what it is. But that's just me. I hate vague, overused terms which everyone argues over.

 

[Runewolf1973]

It matters. Without that spark of Cosmic Consciousness we would have no consciousness. Comatose. Chemicals can not produce it.

From another perspective...we don't have consciousness, we interact in a complex manner giving us this "feeling" we call consciousness. We humans feel very aware of our surroundings and of ourselves, but that's only because we evolved this ability to interact in such a complex manner with our environment and with each other. Does a tree or a rock have the same level of awareness as humans? No, but both are still very much interactive with nature.

 

[blü 2]

In the Cosmic Consciousness theory.
The brain allows infinite eternal consciousness to have a finite and temporary experience. It is all a play/drama of the One in this theory.

Thanks for the clarification.

Also I have found paranormal evidence supports consciousness without a brain. I know you accept none of that data.

Indeed.

But I appreciate your setting out your point of view.

 

[George-ananda]

At what point in history did people start using the term "consciousness" to describe Brahman? Using the term consciousness just totally ruins it for me. It takes an otherwise quite wonderful belief system and turns it into something that sounds rather contrived and phoney. Yes, I can totally buy into the idea that there is some kind of a universal background from which all material things emerge, but I would never personally call that consciousness. Brahman? Sure. Unified Field? Sure. Consciousness is just so overused...and yet no one can agree on what it is. But that's just me. I hate vague, overused terms which everyone argues over.

Cosciosness or God are western terms. Brahman is an eastern/Hindu term. I am sorry that I am east and west and confusing things.

 

[Runewolf1973]

Cosciosness or God are western terms. Brahman is an eastern/Hindu term. I am sorry that I am east and west and confusing things.

I very much like the eastern terms.

 

[George-ananda]

From another perspective...we don't have consciousness, we interact in a complex manner giving us this "feeling" we call consciousness. We humans feel very aware of our surroundings and of ourselves, but that's only because we evolved this ability to interact in such a complex manner with our environment and with each other. Does a tree or a rock have the same level of awareness as humans? No, but both are still very much interactive with nature.

OK. You are coming from a materialist perspective there. I do not think interactions can produce Consciousness. Consciousness to me is fundamental and not a production of matter.

 

[Runewolf1973]

OK. You are coming from a materialist perspective there. I do not think interactions can produce Consciousness. Consciousness to me is fundamental and not a production of matter.

Well...interactions certainly do not create "Cosmic Consciousness". Our brains really do not have to produce consciousness either, they just have to operate sufficiently to allow for us to interact in a complex manner with our environment.

 

[SalixIncendium]

With the best scientific hypothesis available at the time.

The leading one still seems to the Global Workspace Theory.

How does materialism reconcile the illusory aspects of the theory? From the article...

"Susan Blackmore challenged the concept of stream of consciousness in several papers, by stating that "When I say that consciousness is an illusion I do not mean that consciousness does not exist. I mean that consciousness is not what it appears to be. If it seems to be a continuous stream of rich and detailed experiences, happening one after the other to a conscious person, this is the illusion."[2] Blackmore also quotes William James: "The attempt at introspective analysis in these cases is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks."[citation needed]

Baars is in agreement with these points. The continuity of the "stream of consciousness" may in fact be illusory, just as the continuity of a movie is illusory. Nevertheless, the seriality of mutually incompatible conscious events is well supported by objective research over some two centuries of experimental work. A simple illustration would be to try to be conscious of two interpretations of an ambiguous figure or word at the same time. When timing is precisely controlled, as in the case of the audio and video tracks of the same movie, seriality appears to be compulsory for potentially conscious events presented within the same 100 ms interval.[citation needed]"

Also, the article asserts that the theory does not address the question of what consciousness actually is.

"J. W. Dalton has criticized the Global Workspace Theory on the grounds that it provides, at best, an account of the cognitive function of consciousness, and fails even to address the deeper problem of its nature, of what consciousness is, and of how any mental process whatsoever can be conscious: the so-called "hard problem of consciousness".[3] A. C. Elitzur has argued, however, "While this hypothesis does not address the 'hard problem', namely, the very nature of consciousness, it constrains any theory that attempts to do so and provides important insights into the relation between consciousness and cognition."[4]"

So, in essence, materialism cannot reconcile consciousness as material or physical. Or am I missing something?

 

[blü 2]

How does materialism reconcile the illusory aspects of the theory? From the article...

"Susan Blackmore challenged the concept of stream of consciousness in several papers, by stating that "When I say that consciousness is an illusion I do not mean that consciousness does not exist. I mean that consciousness is not what it appears to be. If it seems to be a continuous stream of rich and detailed experiences, happening one after the other to a conscious person, this is the illusion."[2] Blackmore also quotes William James: "The attempt at introspective analysis in these cases is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks."[citation needed]

Baars is in agreement with these points. The continuity of the "stream of consciousness" may in fact be illusory, just as the continuity of a movie is illusory. Nevertheless, the seriality of mutually incompatible conscious events is well supported by objective research over some two centuries of experimental work. A simple illustration would be to try to be conscious of two interpretations of an ambiguous figure or word at the same time. When timing is precisely controlled, as in the case of the audio and video tracks of the same movie, seriality appears to be compulsory for potentially conscious events presented within the same 100 ms interval.[citation needed]"

Also, the article asserts that the theory does not address the question of what consciousness actually is.

"J. W. Dalton has criticized the Global Workspace Theory on the grounds that it provides, at best, an account of the cognitive function of consciousness, and fails even to address the deeper problem of its nature, of what consciousness is, and of how any mental process whatsoever can be conscious: the so-called "hard problem of consciousness".[3] A. C. Elitzur has argued, however, "While this hypothesis does not address the 'hard problem', namely, the very nature of consciousness, it constrains any theory that attempts to do so and provides important insights into the relation between consciousness and cognition."[4]"

So, in essence, materialism cannot reconcile consciousness as material or physical. Or am I missing something?

No matter whether consciousness works in the manner we subjectively experience, or actually in some other manner, it's still the result of the operations of the material brain and nothing else. The same is true of all we experience, whether as sober reflection, ratiocination, revery, posting on RF, optical illusions, the coffee state, the alcohol state, dreams, hallucinations and so on.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Well...interactions certainly do not create "Cosmic Consciousness". Our brains really do not have to produce consciousness either, they just have to operate sufficiently to allow for us to interact in a complex manner with our environment.

If our brains don't have to produce consciousness, then what is it that is aware? Aren't we just a mass of living tissue that has motor skills?

 

[SalixIncendium]

No matter whether consciousness works in the manner we subjectively experience, or actually in some other manner, it's still the result of the operations of the material brain and nothing else. The same is true of all we experience, whether as sober reflection, ratiocination, revery, posting on RF, optical illusions, the coffee state, the alcohol state, dreams, hallucinations and so on.

This goes back to my original statement of what I find wrong with materialism. Although science still has not been able to put its finger on what consciousness is, materialism defines it as the emboldened above. Materialism rejects the metaphysics.

 

[Runewolf1973]

If our brains don't have to produce consciousness, then what is it that is aware? Aren't we just a mass of living tissue that has motor skills?

When you are "aware" of sunlight, it is because your body, eyes and brain are directly affected on a chemical and physical level by that light. Our brains interpret this interaction as awareness, but really what it is is a complex physical and chemical response to an outside force. Our various senses...touch, taste, smell, vision, hearing, etc...are all physical responses. Just because we can put all those responses together at one time in our brains we believe we are somehow magically "conscious" when really we are just interacting with our environment in a complex manner.

We are a mass of non-living, yet highly interactive matter with motor skills programmed by evolution.

 

[Runewolf1973]

No matter whether consciousness works in the manner we subjectively experience, or actually in some other manner, it's still the result of the operations of the material brain and nothing else. The same is true of all we experience, whether as sober reflection, ratiocination, revery, posting on RF, optical illusions, the coffee state, the alcohol state, dreams, hallucinations and so on.

If consciousness exists solely in the brain, then why are we conscious of things outside of the brain?

 

[Sanzbir]

Interesting. André Breton, so !W informs me, defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"; the meaning of 'psychic' here is not transparent to me, and the place of automatism in my favorite surrealists, starting with Magritte, is at least as unclear.

And it adds, he visited Haiti in 1945-46, and "sought to connect surrealist politics and automatist practices with [...] the ritual practices of Vodou possession," a link not obvious to me either.

The real, in my terms, is that which has objective existence.

The surreal, so my dictionary says, is from 'the evocative juxtaposition of incongruous images in order to include unconscious and dream elements'; and as a common adjective means 'dreamlike'. That sounds about right to me.

If you want a good detailed description of the idea of Surrealism and the idea of Surreality, I recommend André Breton's Surrealist Manifesto.

Or if you prefer a more fiction-based, shorter, and potentially easier read, H.P. Lovecraft's the Silver Key (one of his less-popular, non-horror stories) also does a good job at explaining Surrealism through the character of Randolph Carter, though it never actually uses the word "Surrealism".

But if I extend that as a worldview, then surrealism can only exist as a comment on the real. So the real is not denied, since if you take it away, surrealism has no point.

How do you address that?

In a sense you were right, it is a commentary on the belief in the real. If this belief in reality did not exist, there would be no "surrealism" because everyone would be a "surrealist" thus negating the need for such a term or such a critique on materialism.

Fundamentally Surrealism is a rejection of Materialism like, say, Atheism is a rejection of Theism. You would indeed be correct in that if Materialism was not existent Surrealism would not exist, just as Atheism would not exist if Theism did not.

Likewise Materialism requires the Surreal to exist, however. You take some of your experiences and say "These are dream" and some of your experiences and say "These are real", and us Surrealists reject the importance of that division.

Well, I have an imagination, I still enjoy SF, some fantasy, and a good ghost story; I respond to the active agency of deities in the Greek myths and the clear depictions of Olympus and the Underworld. But I don't think it's real.

In one way, I wouldn't doubt that. Like ghost stories &c, the surreal is a contrast to reality that underlines the nature of reality; which I think is exactly what surrealism sets out to do; but you as a surrealist may have another view, of course.

As a materialist you essentially see the contrast. The Surrealist philosopher rejects the idea of contrast, we think you put undue importance on what you deem to be "real".

When it came to 'self', Descartes was a dualist, which I decidedly am not.

Sorry, I didn't really mean Descartes' view of the self, I meant his proof of the self. I think from a framework of pure materialism, his proof of the self is valid, but I don't see any way one could prove the existence of other things.

I'm not familiar with that part of his work, but as a father of three I've watched concept formation in infants as they develop language ─ a process I find to be of hypnotic fascination. Concepts explain with attractive simplicity what Kant called universals, for instance.

Basically Descartes posits a proof of shapes because shapes exist as pure concepts. There is no physically real square, but the concept of a square as a four-sided two-dimensional shape of equal side lengths can exist. Descartes posits that if you can conceptualize a concept like a shape, then the concept is proven to exist by your conceptualization of that concept.

For a materialist, thus, I think you would be forced to say that the basic shapes do not exist, as there is no materially real square. There is no materially real triangle.

I accept the point. I expressly acknowledge that I assume three things to be true (and I do that because in each case I can't offer a rationale for it without first assuming it is true ─ also a point Descartes made, though with somewhat different results): that a world exists external to the self, that the senses are capable of informing us about that world, and that reason is a valid tool.

Fair enough, but you do not place the same belief in these senses when it comes to, say, a dream. Salvador Dali's senses informed him of the reality of these elephants. So at some point in time you make the distinction of "this thing I see is physically real, but this other thing I see is not."

The point is that anyone who posts on a net site like this must assume at the least the first two of those assumptions as well (and nearly all will acknowledge the third), so we have a very basic but essential common ground to proceed on.

True, but I don't think you hold that standard at all times. You would not, for instance, say the vampires I saw last night were materially real even though I saw and touched them. In that instance you would reject my sensory information, would you not??

I don't think dreams are a problem, any more than doodling during a boring lecture is a problem, except that in deep-sleep dreams the brain, perhaps in the course of something else like laying down long-term memory, but that's just one hypothesis.

I don't really care what dreams are, to be honest. You're welcome to whatever hypothesis you wish.

scatters bits of narrative memory all over the place, which is why such dreams never have a plot.

From experience, no. Those dreams can and (at least for me) often do have "a plot".

Is that the fundamental difference between us? That you think the contents of dreams have objective existence, are more than just artifacts of brain function?

No, it's not that we think dreams are real. We don't give reality as much importance as you do. We're fine with things being surreal rather than real.

(though I do love how amusing the people out there who think dreams are somehow objectively real are. Like the people who think dreams are seeing into alternate realities or nonsense like that. I usually like giving them my most absurd dreams to test that theory. )

It's basically we think you put undue importance in the real and obsess over what is real to your own detriment.

Because what is real is ultimately an artifact of brain function as well. We think you arbitrarily choose what brain function artifacts to pretend are more important than the others.

puts it rather well. But if you look at my three assumptions above, which I note from your conduct you share, the first one states a distinction between subjective and objective, and the second one says how.

So on the back of those assumptions I don't see a problem.

The same would be true if you asked me to prove solipsism wasn't true, or that I wasn't an element in a tron game or a dream in the mind of a goddess (Aphrodite, I'd hope): I assume a world exists external to the self, and that my sensory information informs me of it,

Again, you don't consistently hold those assumptions. You don't have the faith in something you see while you dream that you have faith in what you see while you are waking.

Vampires are certainly not real, but as of this last week I've been seeing, hearing, and touching them myself.

Furthermore, with the prevalence of mental illness and the famously proven manipulation you can do with eyewitness testimony, the assumptions you make are quite irrational to make. The idea that your perceptions of the materially real are sound representations of that world are hilariously bad assumptions (See Loftus and Palmer).

Sure I make the same first and third assumptions, but my second assumption is just that my senses are "capable of perceiving the world sufficient enough for my understanding of it." The way I perceive the world is certainly different then the way you do. But I don't make the assumption that the world I experience is the objectively real one, nor do I think it is the same world as experienced by you or other people.

As one example, for me, sound has color and this is an obvious fact of reality, as is plainly perceived by my own ears. Though this basic, undeniable fact of the world of my reality seldom translates over to other people. "The human voice is blue" is as obvious of an observable truth for me as "the sky is blue", though I doubt this is true for your perception of the world.

Memory is unreliable and no two human brains perceive the world in exactly the same way. So I don't accept your second assumption.

Hence I don't have to worry about being a butterfly until some Kafkaesque metamorphosis overtakes me. So far so good.

So if you for some reason had the same dream as Chuang Tzu, would you then (while dreaming) worry about being a butterfly and cease worrying about being Blü 2?? In the moment of a dream do you assume it is all materially real until you awaken??

And if that's the case, well, are you dreaming now??

 

[blü 2]

Although science still has not been able to put its finger on what consciousness is, materialism defines it as the emboldened above. Materialism rejects the metaphysics.

Materialism will accept the supernatural when the supernatural has a satisfactory definition and a satisfactory demonstration.

Meanwhile the supernatural is found in stories and dreams, and (just as its name suggests) not in nature. Things are either in nature ─ real, have objective existence ─ or they're imaginary (and/or non-existent).

And brain research will continue on the materialistic basis which is scientific method, and keep exploring consciousness and all the aspects of working brains and their health and disorders; and benefits will continue to flow from the increases in our understanding.

How should they proceed instead, in your view?