The Consciousness Deniers

Non-physical and physical are not equivalent concepts that only differ by name. Even if you and Brian use the word "nature" differently.

One is... idealism, duality, perhaps ~ the other is physicalism. One basically denies the reality of consciousness altogether, and the others do not.

Name the way(s) physicalism denies the reality of consciousness?

Who?  What am I if consciousness is only an illusion?  Who is it who will be haunted?

What I wrote was only a remark to something you implied on another post.

Name the way(s) physicalism denies the reality of consciousness?

The very post above by Alex Rosenberg who you called a damn fool? He thinks the universe consists of only that which is measurable in physics.

I'm not sure they can think anything if opinions are illusions but maybe we should let that one pass for the sake of ease of communication. 

Ah, but Rosenberg is a "physicalist", "materialist", or whatever palatable term skeptics want to use.

He makes a rather coherent [case] for why physicalism means we can't have thoughts, and it would be interesting to see what response skeptics have.

To me the obvious answer is he's wrong, that I have thoughts (Cogito Ergo Sum), and thus physicalism is false.

Can physical processes cause conscious awareness?

Possibly.

In the absence of any described non-physical processes, it’s probably too early to take that option off the table.

Could you give an example of a physical process?

I believe there are theories which take consciousness as potentially or definitively fundamental that describe processes that are at least partially non-physical ("partially" b/c I'm including Panpsychic & Dualist theories obviously involve something that we would count as "physical").

I think Rosenberg's argument shows why physical processes (assuming such things exist, I am doubtful) cannot explain/cause thought. So if we are counting that as part of conscious awareness then anyone holding to Cogito Ergo Sum would have to reject the possibility.

The very post above by Alex Rosenberg who you called a damn fool? He thinks the universe consists of only that which is measurable in physics.

Perhaps the problem here is not so much that anyone denies consciousness, but in the narrow, rigid way in which you predefine it. From that position, others proposising diverse possibilities and more flexibility seem easy to dismiss.

Could you give an example of a physical process?

Cloud formation and precipitation.

Perhaps the problem here is not so much that anyone denies consciousness, but in the narrow, rigid way in which you predefine it. From that position, others proposising diverse possibilities and more flexibility seem easy to dismiss.

What are these "diverse possibilities"?

It seems to me the problem is the rigid definition of the material/physical lacking any mental properties but also being the only fundamental stuff out of which said properties arise/emerge. 

I accept the possibility of Hylozoism (that matter has some life essence), or the possibility that the objects of the world are both primal substance and property conferring "Platonic" Forms, or that what we call "matter" is really just a set of events that have an internal subjectivity + external objectivity, that it's all really "Information" (depending how that's defined), etc.

But when the physical is defined as lacking any aspect of the mental, this leads to the conclusion that physicalism is false.

And it isn't just me and other immaterialists who see the problem ->

Chomsky, a noted atheist who's previously said he thinks mind arises from the body, nevertheless recognizes the issue and notes the oddities that arise when trying to solve the body problem, let alone the mind/body one.

Rosenberg, and other physicalist/materialist/naturalists who are "eliminativists", accept the offered definition of the material/physical and thus conclude we cannot have thoughts. Personally I think this would be the argument from absurdity against physicalism but one can only lead a horse to water and all that...

Perhaps the problem here is not so much that anyone denies consciousness, but in the narrow, rigid way in which you predefine it. From that position, others proposising diverse possibilities and more flexibility seem easy to dismiss.

I tend to agree about the confusion about the definition of consciousness and I believe we have discussed it here previously. For my part, I envisage consciousness in two ways which are clearly connected but may be viewed independently for clarity when addressing one or the other. The first is consciousness as the fundamental stuff of reality - that from which all else arises and from which all is composed. The second is more to do with human awareness, particularly self-awareness, and how this awareness comes about and its relationship to the biological machinery from which it appears to emanate.

So, if I were a physicalist, I might see the evolution of consciousness taking a similar route to manifestation as that we (physicalists) presume all other observed phenomena must have taken: tracing back to the big bang and stepping forward through gas clouds, star and galaxy formation producing elements which combine into molecules and, somehow those molecules become so complex as to give rise to DNA and organic life which then, somehow becomes conscious. The fact that there are probably some astonishingly massive odds against much of that happening at all, let alone the questionable nature of existing theories as to how it could happen, is a matter for another discussion.

But being an idealist, I see human consciousness as a particular configuration of the fundamental stuff of reality. I see a natural imperative for Consciousness (Big C) to explore its scope and possibilities and it does so by creating environments in which consciousness (small c) can manifest and experience a multitude of local realities. These realities being "real" to those who are taking part in the experience of them but which are, essentially, virtual. Constructs of Consciousness.

Cloud formation and precipitation.

So this right? ->



So if we are talking about definitively observed and accepted processes we all agree are occurring in some fashion, it seems we have processes that at the least seem external to any human mind, but also the internal decision making + habitual processes that at least seem to be different from the external processes.

Yet from the neutral starting point aren't all of these processes just observations without any definitive answer as to whether they are occurring in Physicalist reality, an Idealist one, or something in between? Or is it all functionally Dualist, b/c we have the interiority of the Mind interacting w/ the externalities of the World? Even the external processes are really a consensus between conscious observers...

But re: the external processes even if we fully accept they are "physical" in the sense no human consciousness is involved with the process....I remain unconvinced they are "physical" in the sense that there is causation without some involvement of consciousness. Take the steps of the water cycle illustrated above. How do these steps work? How does the change of the water cycle process occur? What ensures the stability of the causal chains of the process? If we list the steps of the process as events A_1->A_2->...->A_n why can't A_1 sometimes just lead to the final step A_n or result in, say, some novel event B like water freezing instead of evaporating at a particular temperature?

This all gets us into the question of Causality, and how Consciousness might offer an answer to the mystery of change in Nature...kinda cool b/c it speaks of something outside human minds/souls/etc which is what we all usually talk about across all the years of posting (can you believe it's been at least 5-7 years?! )