phaedrus

After seeing all those threads on materialsim, thought maybe we can get to the bottomline on the issue somehow (and the current status)

Where do you guys stand on the issue? Has science/philosophy been able to crack it or will it ever ? Will we ever be able to reduce everything to certain physical processes and be able to construct an "experience" from those electro-chemical processes? As Nagel said will we ever know “what it is like to be a bat”? Will we ever be able to find the neural correlate of consciousness? Can our "mind" study itself?

(off for the weekend to indulge in some vegetation )

[ March 02, 2002: Message edited by: phaedrus ]</p>

svensky

I dont think so. But then again I am a dualist.

Jason

Adrian Selby

It's hard to call, because many positions take the brain to be causally necessary for consciousness.

Personally, being an identity theory kind of guy, I'd say there was no causal relationship. The brain is conscious, it is the mind. I wonder whether people still stop short of a position like this because of the current explanatory weakness of the physical sciences with regard to the nature of the brain. I think its premature to rule science out, especially when in just a few hundred years we've gone from rudimentary biology to cracking the genome.

I still don't understand why people who think consciousness is something different from a brain might look at another functioning brain and not see that all there is, is a brain, and feel compelled to create causal relations, non physical properties etc. etc. I wonder whether its a rejection of the possibility that simple arrangements of matter can 'be' such refined experiences as we have and are.

Adrian

Theophage

I agree with Adrian, but with the clarification that the mind is a function or activity of the brain, and not the brain itself. A dead brain is still a brain, but since it no longer functions it no longer has a mind. Of course, mind is not the only function of the brain, the brain also regulates the body through more physical means (hormone production, heart beat regulation, etc.)

Laurentius

AVE
Here I come to rescue the mind from the dungeon where those taut materialists have cast it.

Being a dualist (an atheist one, though), I cannot refrain myself from denying the materialist dogma that the brain is one and the same with the mind. Not even biologists dare say: "Look: that's where the consciousness center is situated." And even if they did, psichologists would add their observations demonstrating that the mind makes a different reality, not completely separated from the physical one, but diverging from it.
AVE

John Page

Can't say for certain till we've figured it out. Three pointers to say we should keep looking in that direction are:

1. Lumps of Wood. These do not have brains or display the charateristics of consciousness.
2. Cats. These do have brains, albeit smaller than human beings, but do display a limited number of the characteristics of consciousness. (They sleep & wake, purr affectionately and will disdain you for food).
3. Brain Surgery. Neurological sciences show that features of consciousness (sense of self, sense of god, left hand knowing what right hand is doing etc.) can be correlated to parts of the brain.

Dualists are, in a way, right until we discover what the 'magic' is.

[ March 02, 2002: Message edited by: John Page ]</p>

Malaclypse the Younger

There does not need to be a particular place in the brain for consciousness to be "located" for materialism to be true.

excreationist

About correlations - if I let go of an apple, it falls to the ground. There is a correlation. There is also an explanation for it, but maybe God is just choosing to play by certain rules at that particular point in time.

In the same way, consciousness can be said to "correlate" with our brain's activity but some people can also offer explanations why the activity of our brains necessarily leads to or is consciousness.

To explain consciousness, you firstly need to define what it is.... well here's my work-in-progress framework:
Anyway, my main points are that aware things have self-learnt beliefs about how the world works and learn how to constantly seek and avoid things. These are internal opinions that the system has.

I think awareness/consciousness isn't very mysterious if you define it in certain ways (like I have done in a rough way).

We could get a rough idea about it, but not repeat their experiences since that would involve not having an analysing voice inside our head. And without that, we wouldn't be able to analyse what it is like.

I'm talking about *many* interacting systems such as a belief system and a motivational system. What do you mean by a "neural correlate"? A single neuron or spot that makes us conscious?

No, to analyse the contents of your short-term memory you'd have the old contents, plus the analysis. And that analysis would no longer apply to its current contents. And the brain state changes about 40 times a second so after you've done any thinking, your brain is no longer what you were initially analysing. I think we can analyse our own minds in a *general* way and maybe analyse though of others in the complete way, in the future. (Assuming brains can be totally scanned and the meaning of the contents of short-term memory can be decrypted - that might involve being able to scan the entire brain [100 billion neurons with 10,000 connections each] at 40 times per second so that the information content of long-term memory is up to date).

tronvillain

phaedrus:

At the moment I'm reading Dennett's Consciousness Explained again, so obviously I quite like his model. As Malaclype points out, "consciousness" does not need to be situated in a particular place in the brain.

It seems possible in principle, but then accurately predicting the weather is possible in principle. Also important is the level at which a useful explanation will be made - to explain or build computer programs using only ones and zeros (no higher level processes) is quite difficult.

Well, it's possible that there is there is nothing "what it is to be a bat" in the sense that we mean. It's also possible that one can only understand, rather than know, such a thing. Then we have the complexity and level problems...

I doubt there is a specific neural correlate for "consciousness."

Yes. Minds appear capable of studying things as or more complex than themselves. Obviously a mind can't emulate itself, but then human minds don't appear to be very good at running emulation anyway.

[ March 04, 2002: Message edited by: tronvillain ]</p>

Francois Tremblay

He he. I'm sorry to take a jab here, but the dualists' arguments sound to me too much like the "god of the gaps" argument. They cannot refute the evidence we have now, so they cry "but you haven't explained EVERYTHING !", as if that was evidence of anything.

I wonder how any sensible person can believe such a thing. Perhaps Laurentius can enlighten me ! Ave, ave (^_^)

[ March 03, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>