Is the Filter Theory committing the ad hoc fallacy and is it unfalsifiable?

I think the brain is affected by the consciousness, but the consciousness is just a model that the brain builds of its mental functioning.

How does the brain, a physical thing (i.e. made out of non-conscious atoms, ) build consciousness out of non-conscious electricity?

[Laird]

I think the brain is affected by the consciousness, but the consciousness is just a model that the brain builds of its mental functioning. This model of the brain's mental functioning feeds back into the brain's mental processes. It is as though consciousness walks unto the stage and becomes an actor in the play in which consciousness is being created.

Again, your terminology is off: consciousness isn't a model; it is that within and by which models are constructed and comprehended.

Even if your terminology is accepted though, your response that, on your view, consciousness is causally efficacious - and thus that your view is not subject to the otherwise fatal argument (from the inability to know we're conscious) that Titus provided and which I summarised - fails: a model is not a cause in the relevant sense. Your view remains stuck with a causally impotent consciousness which cannot "touch itself" - yet we know that our consciousness can and does touch itself (know of its own existence).

Even on dualism, the basic mechanics of the control of a tennis stroke must be similar to what I just described.

Granted: it's at least roughly in the ballpark (groan), albeit that on dualism, some of that which you attribute merely to (physical) neurons is better attributed to the mind.

Where exactly the duties divide out between brain and soul, and how the signals get back and forth between the two are not clear at all.

Fair enough, except that what is clear is that strictly mental functions - phenomenally experiencing in particular - are carried out by the mind (or that which you refer to as "the soul").

To me, dualism is an unneeded complication that does nothing to our understanding of the mental processes needed to play tennis or live life.

And yet, either it or idealism (or some other non-physicalist account such as neutral monism) is necessary, so as to allow for consciousness to have the causal power that we know that it does have, and which isn't available on accounts such as yours.

I think this view fits the available evidence far better than dualism.

And yet plenty of evidence is regularly discussed on this board for which dualism is a much, much better fit, and which has at least in part been shared in this thread (near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences in general, shared-death experiences, telepathy, psychokinesis, etc etc). I don't remember you having responded to it in any meaningful way yet.

(Huh, Sci, it turns out that I have a bit more stamina for this than I expected. Don't let my contributions inhibit you from your own line of inquiry though).

How does the brain, a physical thing (i.e. made out of non-conscious atoms, ) build consciousness out of non-conscious electricity?

If I knew the answer, I would be rich.

I would be happy to share my opinion as answers to a series of questions about consciousness. Could you write back with your answers to these questions, please?

What is consciousness?

Consciousness is a construct of the brain. It is basically an overall model of the many models that the brain builds of itself and the world.

How did it come into existence?

The brain constructs this model of a conscious self out of patterns of neurons firing that are based on a series of other patterns of neurons firing, that are ultimately derived from present and past base level neuron firings due to the body's senses.

What is it made of?

Consciousness is not a physical object. It is not made of anything. It is a set of states that is saved in constantly updating neuron memory in the brain.

How does consciousness know what the body senses?

The body's senses set up patterns in the neurons that combine with remembered neuron patterns to form an overall summary of the bodily senses that modify the model of what the consciousness (the "self") knows. All is driven by the brain's physical machinery (possibly in conjunction with some other factors).

How does the consciousness control the body?

It doesn't. Neurons work on a consensus basis with neurons throughout the brain contributing in parallel. There is no central control room.  These neurons build a consensus on what to do this millisecond, this second, this minute, this day, and this lifetime. All the neuron patterns that form all the mental models (including this model of self) participate in these decisions, with the winners taking control this millisecond, this second, this minute, this day, and this lifetime.

Why does consciousness feel so real?

Now that is a hard problem. I don't know.

What happens to consciousness when the body dies?

It's gone.

[Laird]

Again, your terminology is off: consciousness isn't a model; it is that within and by which models are constructed and comprehended.

A little better elaboration on what exactly is wrong with your terminology seems worth adding:

A model doesn't feel; a model doesn't experience; it is merely abstract and conceptual and thus cannot even in principle feel or experience - but these are precisely what define consciousness.

Granted: it's at least roughly in the ballpark (groan), albeit that on dualism, some of that which you attribute merely to (physical) neurons is better attributed to the mind.

"Roughly in the ballpark (groan)" doesn't do a lot to help me understand your views.

I know how these discussion can suck a person in to a lot of time commitment, so I don't mean to demand that you respond. However, if somebody out there has time to answer, I would appreciate if they would markup my original paragraphs as shown below to match what you think happens.

• At the lowest level, signals from senses like the eye and the sense of balance in the ear send signals to the brain. The brain organizes these signals into models, which are patterns of neuron firings based on these inputs from the senses. The brain compares these with previously saved models of these inputs. The brain can then identify what it sees based on what it had seen previously. It can also link these visual models to models of words that it hears and speaks, thus tying in words to match images. Thus, a person can see a tennis ball coming toward his racquet and think "that's the ball".

• These patterns of neuron firings associated with the sensing of the position of the ball and tennis racquet link to patterns of neuron firings that control motions. If one is playing tennis, for instance, and upper levels of the mind have decided to hit the ball, then the brain looks at these models of the ball's and racquet's positions and movements, and builds a model of the future movement of the arm and racquet needed to cleanly hit that ball. Deciding to execute on this plan, the brain's neural models direct other neurons which have models on how to move arm and body muscles such that they cause the racquet to hit the ball.

• Hitting that tennis ball cleanly and making it go where you want it to go is a very complex task. But if you have done it many times, your brain has saved models of what it means to hit a ball cleanly and calls on these models from its memory. Combining the inputs from the senses and its model of good strokes, the brain calculates the unique muscle movements needed to perform the stroke in this new situation. As the arm starts to move, there is constant feedback on the position of the racquet and ball, all of which are fed back into the models to make corrections to the stroke as needed. This basically all happens outside of the realm of consciousness. If you are a skilled tennis player, you might consciously decide to lob the ball into the far right corner of the court, for instance, and the brain takes over from there.

As I said in the quoted poste, even on dualism, the basic mechanics of the control of a tennis stroke must be similar to what I just described.

One problem that I have with dualism is that it is notoriously undefined. We keep hearing that somehow soul and mind are intertwined, but the exact nature of this intertwinement are undefined. What does what? The result is that the dualist answers to questions can apparently quickly change on the spot to match the immediate question, but then switch to another, contradictory view when asked another question. Arguing with that is like trying to nail jello to the wall. Does somebody care to rewrite the above paragraph to give me a solid argument I can address, rather than addressing jello? 

A little better elaboration on what exactly is wrong with your terminology seems worth adding:

A model doesn't feel; a model doesn't experience; it is merely abstract and conceptual and thus cannot even in principle feel or experience - but these are precisely what define consciousness.

I think the model of consciousness includes the modeled concept that these things feel a certain way. Why can that not be part of the model?

Do non-physical entities feel and experience? How can a non-physical entity even do anything? Isn't "non-physical entity" an oxymoron? If you think non-physical entities exist, how do they do things that physical things can't do? Is it magic? If not, how is it different to say "a non-physical entity did this physically impossible thing" instead of "magic did this physically impossible thing"?

And yet plenty of evidence is regularly discussed on this board for which dualism is a much, much better fit, and which has at least in part been shared in this thread (near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences in general, shared-death experiences, telepathy, psychokinesis, etc etc). I don't remember you having responded to it in any meaningful way yet.

True, I haven't addressed things like near-death experiences. I find this evidence weak, but I certainly am not an expert on this. I do want to learn more about it.

My main point is that mental functioning is more consistent with the brain being the seat of mental activity, rather than some "non-physical entity" such as a soul. Nobody can even seem to define this brain - soul working relationship, yet alone show how it fits the known facts of neurology.

I don't think consciousness is simply a phenomenon.

Can you describe something that is not simply a phenomenon? If you can't that sentence doesn't make sense.

It is a key part of the life of intelligent creatures.

OK - I'll buy that!

Without it, the neurons would not have a unified purpose.

So do the neurons make the consciousness or is the consciousness something else that gives them a 'unified purpose'?

But consciousness, as I see it, is a construct of the brain that builds the highlights of all our mental activities, and builds the model such that the self is in charge of all this. That constructed self feeds back into the rest of the brain as a conscious self, and influences future decisions, which then become part of the modeled self. Thus, the consciousness is aware of its own reported consciousness.

I simply can't unravel that lot - did you invent it yourself, or can you give us a reference?

I hope that perhaps you are beginning to realise just why consciousness is such a big problem for science - it is incredibly hard to figure out how it relates to the physical brain - if indeed that is where it is produced.

David

How does the brain, a physical thing (i.e. made out of non-conscious atoms, ) build consciousness out of non-conscious electricity?

Yeah I was wonder[ing] this as well.

If I run electricity through a nail, does the nail become conscious? I would presume not.

But what about something like a modern video game console, my laptop, or a server farm? Lot of non-conscious information processing going on, but nobody seems to seriously believe any of these are conscious. Even a driverless car is not thought to be conscious by most.

The reasoning seems to be for the same reason the nail with electricity running through it [is] not conscious.

Contrast to "mere" cells, where the Nobel biologist George Wald isn't sure if these are conscious or not.

I have come to the end of my scientific life facing two great problems. Both are rooted in science; and I approach them as only a scientist would. Yet both I believe to be in essence unassimilable as science. That is scarcely to be won­dered at, since one involves cosmology, the other consciousness...

...I used to show students a film made by the French zoologist Faure‑Fremiet on the feeding behavior of protozoa. Many of our sturdiest concepts of the apparatus required for animal behavior are mocked by these animalcules, par­ticularly by the ciliates; for in one cell they do everything: move about, react to stimuli, feed, digest, excrete, on occasion copulate and reproduce. In this film one saw them encountering problems and solving them, much as would a mam­mal. I remember best a carnivorous protozoon tackling a microscopic bit of muscle. It took hold of the end of a fibril, and backed off at an angle, as though to tear it loose. When the fibril would not give, the protozoon came in again, then backed away at a new angle, worrying the fibril loose, much as a dog might have done, worrying loose a chunk of meat. It was hard, watching that single cell at work, not to anthropomorphize. Did it know what it was doing?

But then, ciliate protozoa are the most complex cells we know. How about a cell highly specialized to perform a single function in a higher organism, a nerve cell for example, that can only transmit an impulse? Once, years ago, I was visiting the invertebrate physiologist, Ladd Prosser, at the University of Illinois in Urbana. He took me into his laboratory, where he was recording the electrical responses from a single nerve cell in the ventral nerve cord (which takes the place of our spinal cord) of a cockroach. It was set up to display the electrical potentials on an oscilloscope screen, and simultaneously to let them sound through a loudspeaker. I was hearing a slow, rhythmic reverberation, coming to a peak, then falling off to silence, then starting again, each cycle a few seconds, like a breathing rhythm. Prosser remarked, “That kind of response is typical of a dying nerve cell.”

“My God!” I said, “It’s groaning! You’ve given it a voice, and it’s groaning!”

Was that nerve cell expressing a conscious distress? Is something like that the source of a person’s groaning? There is no way whatever of knowing.

So that is the problem of mind -- consciousness -- a vast, unchartable domain that includes all science, yet that science cannot deal with, has no way of approaching; not even to identify its presence or absence; that offers nothing to measure, and nothing to locate, since it has no location.