The Consciousness Deniers

To reinforce my previous post, I might add this quote from Sir James Jeans, the British astronomer, physicist and philosopher.

Consciousness

Sir James Jeans, in an interview published in The Observer (London), when asked the question:

    Do you believe that life on this planet is the result of some sort of accident, or do you believe that it is a part of some great scheme?

replied:

    I incline to the idealistic theory that consciousness is fundamental, and that the material universe is derivative from consciousness, not consciousness from the material universe...

In general the universe seems to me to be nearer to a great thought than to a great machine. It may well be, it seems to me, that each individual consciousness ought to be compared to a brain-cell in a universal mind.

Careful Brian, he's leading you into a dead end. 

In the rush to get to work I forgot what my original point was.  It was triggered by Malf's but it is probably best aimed at those who believe there could be "non-physical" realities.  It was a point about physical and non-physical being convenient or inconvenient definitions when reality isn't actually dualistic; it's more of a blur of information that reacts and interacts and causes the "illusion" we call reality.  Perhaps the physical and the non-physical are made up of the same stuff ultimately and that makes definitions such as "physical" unhelpful in trying to understand consciousness.

Thanks for the warning though! 

Sci,

I actually think we have to think a bit more carefully about this issue:

A more general version of this question is this: How can one clump of stuff anywhere in the universe be about some other clump of stuff anywhere else in the universe—right next to it or 100 million light-years away?

...Let’s suppose that the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way red octagons are about stopping. This is the first step down a slippery slope, a regress into total confusion. If the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way a red octagon is about stopping, then there has to be something in the brain that interprets the Paris neurons as being about Paris. After all, that’s how the stop sign is about stopping. It gets interpreted by us in a certain way. The difference is that in the case of the Paris neurons, the interpreter can only be another part of the brain...

What we need to get off the regress is some set of neurons that is about some stuff outside the brain without being interpreted—by anyone or anything else (including any other part of the brain)—as being about that stuff outside the brain. What we need is a clump of matter, in this case the Paris neurons, that by the very arrangement of its synapses points at, indicates, singles out, picks out, identifies (and here we just start piling up more and more synonyms for “being about”) another clump of matter outside the brain. But there is no such physical stuff.

The problem is that (by analogy) we can and have built computers that 'know' about Paris (I am sure any materialist would argue this). The problem seems to be that their 'knowing' about Paris is entirely constructed out of our knowing about Paris.

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.

Good for him. Under the main headings of the various philosophies there seem to be many sub varieties dependent upon the individual one might read at the moment. So why get your knickers in a twist over someones opining?

But computers don't know anything. They just operate switches, setting individual switches on or off. If a computer is capable of knowing, then so is a light switch.

But computers don't know anything. They just operate switches, setting individual switches on or off. If a computer is capable of knowing, then so is a light switch.

I agree. These aren’t biological systems that have evolved, over billions of years, to give us the construct of awareness.

I agree. These aren’t biological systems that have evolved, over billions of years, to give us the construct of awareness.

Again, malf, your language gives you away. You could have said "to give us awareness" but instead you chose to insert "the construct" (noun).

noun
/ˈkɒnstrʌkt/

1.
an idea or theory containing various conceptual elements, typically one considered to be subjective and not based on empirical evidence.
"history is largely an ideological construct"

I also like to use that word when talking about this subject but I use it to describe the material world being a construct of consciousness.

Then there is the assertion that evolution has produced that "constuct" of awareness. The way you put it leaves no room for argument: it is a given. However, many who actually study the subject would disagree, so is it really a given? Not by a long stretch. Again, your wording might lead us to conclude that consciousness (or awareness) is the end result of those billions of years of evolution - something of a high order appearing in only the most evolved creatures on the planet. And again you would find disagreement. Even as far back as Charles Darwin himself there was a realisation that such a conclusion would not be justified. This is from an article by Christof Koch (once an avowed materialist, now a panpsychist) I found at the Scientific American site:

None other than Charles Darwin, in the last book he published, in the year preceding his death, set out to learn how far earthworms “acted consciously and how much mental power they displayed.” Studying their feeding and sexual behaviors for several decades—Darwin was after all a naturalist with uncanny powers of observation—he concluded that there was no absolute threshold between lower and higher animals, including humans, that assigned higher mental powers to one but not to the other.

As I mentioned, Koch used to be a materialist - and a hard-line materialist at that. Also in the Scientific American, John Horgan has this to say about his meeting with Koch back in 1994:

In Tucson Koch outlined a theory, jointly fashioned by him and Crick, that 40-hertz brain waves might be a key to consciousness. Although I was skeptical of that particular theory, I liked the hard-nosed, materialist, reductionist approach that Koch and Crick took toward consciousness.

But back to the later article by Koch and more to the point of this thread, he goes on to say the following:

Yet the mental is too radically different for it to arise gradually from the physical. This emergence of subjective feelings from physical stuff appears inconceivable and is at odds with a basic precept of physical thinking, the Ur-conservation law—ex nihilo nihil fit. So if there is nothing there in the first place, adding a little bit more won't make something. If a small brain won't be able to feel pain, why should a large brain be able to feel the god-awfulness of a throbbing toothache? Why should adding some neurons give rise to this ineffable feeling? The phenomenal hails from a kingdom other than the physical and is subject to different laws. I see no way for the divide between unconscious and conscious states to be bridged by bigger brains or more complex neurons.

Now, I am not a panpsychist and I would undoubtedly find much with which to disagree with Koch and his fellow panpsychists but I believe that the shift away from that hard materialist and neo-darwinist view of consciousness that Koch has personally undergone is being reflected at large. Your assertions seem to be carrying less weight than they used to.

Good for him. Under the main headings of the various philosophies there seem to be many sub varieties dependent upon the individual one might read at the moment. So why get your knickers in a twist over someones opining?

But you agree with him that the real things at the fundamental level of reality don't include consciousness? That there are only particles, energy, force, and whatever else you'd like to include as part of the physical world?

Sci,

I actually think we have to think a bit more carefully about this issue:

The problem is that (by analogy) we can and have built computers that 'know' about Paris (I am sure any materialist would argue this). The problem seems to be that their 'knowing' about Paris is entirely constructed out of our knowing about Paris.

How does a computer know anything? We project meaning on to machines, to a person who only knows Japanese my computer is just a interesting toy box.

In fact I'd say the same argument I quoted from Rosenberg applies to computers - the stuff on the screen + the keyboard are a particularly designed object meant to convey the meaning we as people have decided they do. We decide what thoughts they convey through our minds.

But you agree with him that the real things at the fundamental level of reality don't include consciousness? That there are only particles, energy, force, and whatever else you'd like to include as part of the physical world?

I do. But so what? It's just an opinion. This idea that consciousness is fundamental seems to appeal to the vaingloriousness nature some persons possess.