Science and Ideology

"it is much more parsimonius to believe that their function is rooted in matter than any alternative" ... because the science almost completely explains their function or at least spiking behavior at the molecular level and their spiking behavior has been shown to encode the expected relevant information in a number of instances.

I assume your statement that you "feel we should accept that science has no evidence", is a poor choice of wording as you stated feelings shouldn't dictate a world view, but rather science. I don't know why you assert this conclusion w/o your reasoning.

There is nothing wrong with thought and life and the like having a mechanical basis, it says something wonderful about the potential of matter rather than something negative about humanity, life, though, or people.

 

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Perhaps surprisingly it is not at all scientifically controversial to say that that there is no evidence whatsoever that consiousness arise from matter.

I completely accept that states of human consciousness are affected by electro-chemical events in the brain, perhaps even quantum mechanical events. The evidence for this is inarguable (well almost).

However on the key questions there is absolutely no agreement even amongst scientists. None of the options and variants, dualism, supervenience, epiphenominalism, monism, mysterianism, etc etc, are without problems, and each faces serious logical or scientific objections.

Consciousness has been called 'the last frontier of science' and I would agree that it is. Of course lots of people have opinions, but it is not correct to claim that there is a scientific view on this one. There is just the opinion of different groups of scientists, and this is far from unanimous. Even materialism is brought into question.

You seem to take your lead from neouroscience. It is true that the neuroscientific community commonly assume that consciousness can be explained by them, after all everyone has to justify their grant applications, but they get a lot of flak from philosophers and from other areas of science. (Much of it can be found in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, imo the best journal on the scientific end of the topic.)

There really is no evidence that consciousness can be scientifically explained, and as yet there isn't even an agreed scientific definition. The most common definition in consciousness studies is 'what it is like', (after Nagel) but for obvious reasons science cannot adopt this. Francis Crick goes so far as to argue that we shouldn't even try to define it yet.

Still, it's interesting to argue about it. (I learn by arguing). If you want to give your definition and opinion I'll have a go at giving the standard arguments against it. (There'll be some, since there's standard arguments against every current scientific theory of consciousness).

 

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I would define consciousness as aware of one's own thought processes (not all of them necessarily). All that takes is some brain circuitry that allows one to watch oneself think. One has senses that follow what goes on outside your head, so it doesn't seem so far fetched that one has senses that can follow what goes on inside.

I would say most science can't be proven if one wants to be very picky, even if certain things can be proven they're usually discussed in inaccurate but simpler language, and many subtle ideas are not easily discussed due to semantic issues. Which interestingly seems to lead to science being largely integrated in individuals heads rather than in more useful text based formats. It's a real shame and probably part of the reason science is taught so poorly.

Pragmatically one does not deal with well understood science when doing research, but rather poorly understood science. I think limiting yourself to something that you consider proven is missing the vast majority of science.

I would disagree that consciousness is the last frontier of science, there are many open areas that are at least as interesting. Basically anything that is highly ordered and deals with large numbers of things is not understood. Cellular function, evolution, ecology ... just to name a few.

In fact we know so little about biology it's amazing. For instance, an expert on microbial diversity once stated in a lecture I saw that less than 0.2% of bacteria can be cultured and we've actually cultured less than 0.2% of those that can be cultured. Of those that we have cultured only a few are well studied.

 

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Hmm. Do you consider that pain is a thought process? Do you consider that consciousnes is a thought process?

 

I would define pain as a sense, but consciousness a thought process. I'm not sure consciousness would be one of the thought processes that one has to be aware of to be conscious or not.

 

Sci: couple of relevant questions.

Do you believe in free will?

Do you believe that a conscious mind is a material thing, or does it need to have some immaterial component?

 

This is the trouble. It's difficult to define consciousness in a way that doesn't lead one into tricky problems.

Pain is an experience, we must be conscious of it in order for it to exist. Therefore, by your hypothesis, pain must be a thought process.

What is conscious of this thought process? It can only be another thought process ad infinitum. Suddenly you are looking at a theory based on higher order thoughts ('HOT' theories in the jargon). The infinite regression of HOTs to which they give rise leads most people to dismiss such theories as illogical, although they have useful aspects and may be a part of the mechanism of mind.

Some form of HOT theory may be true, but it would not be a scientific theory unless some ultimate entity that is not a thought is hypothesised that brings an end the regression of thoughts conscious of thoughts. Then we're back where we started, for what could that be?

There are a few theorists who think that HOTs are at least a potential answer, but only a few.

 

BBH, I believe in free will in a sense and determinism in a sense. My will is free to choose within a certain set of choices, but deterministic so it will choose in a consistent fashion.

Consciousness is all material in that all information is stored in some material encoding.

Canute, there is a difference between being conscious of something and consciousness. Senses are not thought processes in the sense they simply convey information without (for the most part - ie edge detection and such), transforming or manupulating it. They are clearly different and of a lower order than other thought processes.

There is no infinite regression problem. Your brain has a certain hierarchical structure such that there is not a structural infinite regression. If your brain is wired so that there is the possibility for some iterated process that can go on indefinitely there is also no scientific problem. Computers can get stuck in infinitie loops, but are not considered outside of science for that reason.

 

I want to clarify my free will post.

If I imagine me as something separate from the rest of the world, that something is not forced by the rest of the world to make a given choice. I don't think anyone would debate that.

That thing in isolation though I would believe to be deterministic, in that given a specific choice will be consistent in what it chooses (though it does change over time, but at any given time it will always make the same choice). This choice is what I consider to be free.

However what we start as we don't choose to be and the things that happen to us we don't choose and they influence our future decisions. So our will is not solely of our own making. In this way we are not free.

In any event, the state of things is exactly as I'd have it, so I'm happy enough. I guess what I want to say is that we're as free as we should be and any determinism is not a bad thing.

 

Are you saying that thoughts are phsyical things, or that cansciousness is physical? I understood that you were. If consciousness is physical then I don't see how freewill can exist unless physical determinism is false.

 

I'd say both thoughts and consciousness are physical.

I guess it's not that I'm saying free will exists so much as it's a nonsense concept in the first place. What your will decides is either deterministic or somewhat random. Neither really give's a person choice in a certain sense.

In the deterministic case we have choice in a certain reasonable sense, but also a defined character that will make our choice consistent. So I guess I'd say we have choice and it's as free as it could meaningfully be.

 

In that case freewill is an illusion. How do you overcome the 'explanatory gap' that exists between the physical and the experiential? This has confounded everyone so far. How is matter able to 'feel like' something?

 

The determinists claim that "feel like" is an after-the-fact response, a shadow of experience. They sometimes cite the Phi Effect as evidence of this viewpoint.

I am not personally a determinist... I think that the Phi Effect mostly serves to demonstrate that our experience of the universe is not complete. Which we already knew.

 

What I meant is a bit more subtle than it's an illusion, but if that's what you take it to mean that's fine with me.

Since no one would argue that various forms of matter have different qualities that can be measured, I assume you mean how is it that we internally represent and experience colors, textures, temperature, pleasure, pain, and the like. I don't know.

However it is odd to postulate that simply because one doesn't understand how the encoding and interpretory process works that it must be something non-physical. That just sounds to me like people's egos saying they want to be something more than matter without any reason why it is necessary to postulate it.

I guess in the end the reason I phrased things the way I did originally is that I think science is a method at getting closer to answers, but it never really says exactly how things are. It's all approximate and there is not a single rational interpretation of the data.

 

It is decidedly so.

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I think most people who believe that consciousness has a non-physical nature do so because they are trying to accomodate free will, which is difficult to explain in an entirely physical, deterministic universe.

Since I don't have quite the same conception of time as other people (not believing it to come prebuilt, which is the 4th dimension concept that is so popular these days) I don't quite believe that the physical universe is as deterministic as people say.

 

Just out of curiosity, where does the indeterminacy come from?

I believe in a mechanistic view of science and existence. Kind of like the atomistic view of the universe. Since I can't imagine a truly random mechanism, I can see no source of indeterminacy. Things can be related in very complicated nonlinear and indirect ways, but they are always linked by a deterministic causal chain of events.

 

Methinks you mean physicalists, (Buddhists are determinists).

I haven't come across that argument anywhere but here, (Wes I think), not explicitly anyway. It doesn't address the problem of how or why we feel, just delays things a bit.

 

Nooo. That's not it at all. There are sound logical objections to the hypothesis that consciousness is no more than matter. That's the reason so few people believe it, and nobody can show how it's possible, let alone find the mechanism.

Quite.

There is a rational one, not averyone agrees it's right though.

(Apologies, I just noticed I may be out of sync with the order of posts here).

 

Science's big brother is logic, and that should underly all decisions. Are you implying that morality is scientific?

 

I think morality can be informed by science. That doesn't mean that morality is a science.

For instance the more we understand the psychology of human beings and what can cause psychological damage the more one might consider actions that cause such damage immoral.

I also thing it can inform morality more generally and in more abstract ways. Though as I've learned in this thread such abstract aspects are either uncommon or something people feel uncomfortable discussing ...