mhc

Many people think we know how consciousness works.
We don't.
Some conscious experience can be correlated with brain states, but it remains very fluid.
Mind's utter dependence on brain may seem likely, but it remains unwarranted. We've not found a way to explain how brain could be identical to mind, in fact, it's difficult to even find a good way to think about it. Caution is called for. Even though it looks like turning the key in the ignition makes the car go, we can find that there are a lot more, and more essential, processes happening under the hood.

NialScorva

We can watch changes in the brain create changes in the mind. We can see changes in the mind predict changes in the brain. We have correlation going in both directions and are incapable of affecting one without affecting the other, so to call it anything except causality is pedantic nearly to the point of sophistry.

That causality doesn't rule out duality, however. One can posit inaccessible (or at least unaccessed) information that could distinguish, such as the "damaged radio" analogy for brain damage. However, it is a rather weak and ad hoc rationalization since we lack any evidence that requires the duality.


btw, do I smell an elephant?

John Page

Consciously, yes!

Greetings! John

rubbercok3000

So do some DMT in the rainforest to really feel the disembodied state!!! Hahahaha!!!

mhc

Well, there is *some* correlation. And the supervenience theory is open to argument. Pedantic to the point of sophistry? Perhaps. But the biggest scientific surprises often come out of the most facilely adopted scientific assumptions.

NialScorva

I didn't intend to invoke supervenience, rather I was shooting for skeptical reduction. I push the billard ball, it moves. I don't suppose a duality between the billard ball moving and my push, even though it's possible that there's an unknown cause that effects both of them. Similarly with the mind/brain, you poke the brain and the mind changes. The direct causal connection between the brain and mind is equally justified as saying the same about a billard ball and my finger, it's just that we're personally involved in the former, so the answer is somewhat unsatisfying.

Infinity Lover

One reason why we need brains is mobility. Any lifeform that has to move through it's environment negotiating obstacles unaided, requires a brain; there's even this little sea-creature (you'll have to excuse me for not knowing it's english name, but the translation of it's dutch name is 'seashaft') that, in it's initial life's stage, needs to move around untill it latches on to it's final destination, where it subsequently will feed off what floats by, pretty much like a plant, and the now overabundant brain it was born with dissolves in it's body.

Ian: there is no known, scientificly verifiable, indication that our personality and experiences are anything but a product of the brain. I hope you realize you appearantly assume there's some 'soul-like' element involved in spite of a complete lack of anything substantial to base that assumption on, and not because of whatever reason.
Mind you; that's merely an observation and not a judgement. I'll leave it open to debate (and up to you to decide) whether that's a good or a bad thing.

You could go for the overly familliar copout, that there isn't any reason to assume that we don't have some kind of soul, but then you're ignoring that not having any reason to do something, on it's own, is a perfectly good reason to not do it.

Infinity Lover

Would the ability to register and recognize what happens around and within you suffice? (that would make the extend to which you can do that your level of conciousness).

Ever been unconcious? When you are, you basicly end up missing a piece of film, and you're completely oblivious to what was happening inside of you or around you while you were unconcious. So I think I've pretty much nailed the main decisive criteria there.

I am wondering though, whether conciousness and awareness are interchangable terms, and if you could be called concious when you lack every conceivable form of sensory input.

Interesting Ian

Well, not really. Strictly speaking the concept of causality should only be applicable for entities playing fruitful roles in our theories about the world. Minds are not discernable from a third person perspective so are not amenable to a scientific explanation.

I am not proposing any dualism. I am a subjective idealist (sort of mental monist). I believe the onus is on you to render materialism or a materialist based metaphysic intelligible. I certainly do not agree that such a metaphysic is the prima facie more reasonable position.

You're not referring to Undercover Elephant are you by any chance? No I am not him. Having said that out philosophical positions are virtually identical i.e we both subscribe to a large degree to George Berkeley's philosophy.

Interesting Ian

It hasn't got anything to do with science really. We're talking about competing metaphysical hypotheses. I could equally well say there is no known, scientificly verifiable, indication that our personality and experiences are a product of the brain.

I merely question peoples unreasoned unquestioning presumption that the mind is a product of the brain. I just find it incredibly implausible. I could go into the reasons why if people are interested. For the purposes of this thread I just wanted people to assume that the self is not a product of the brain, and to give any possible hypotheses why we therefore have brains.