• Caldwell
    1.3k
    So where do you get the consciousness from?bahman

    Is this a new question? Because in your opening post, you took it for granted there is consciousness. You were asking for why consciousness is local/or individual, not a streaming live on anywhere.
    So, explain this question to me. Are you asking the cause of consciousness?
  • bahman
    526
    Is this a new question? Because in your opening post, you took it for granted there is consciousness. You were asking for why consciousness is local/or individual, not a streaming live on anywhere.
    So, explain this question to me. Are you asking the cause of consciousness?
    Caldwell

    Well, consciousness is either the result of matter activity or intrinsic property of matter. There is no other option around. You were talking about a manifold. I asked whether this manifold is manifold of consciousness. You answered no. Then the only solution is that consciousness is the result of motion of manifold. This leads to the problem mentioned in OP.
  • Caldwell
    1.3k
    So the manifold is consciousness?bahman

    You said: So the manifold is consciousness. I said, no. They are not identical. Consciousness is, necessarily, individual in the world of materialist.
  • bahman
    526
    You said: So the manifold is consciousness. I said, no. They are not identical. Consciousness is, necessarily, individual in the world of materialist.Caldwell

    Did you read this post?
  • Caldwell
    1.3k
    If you're a materialist, then the world has parts, parts meaning you and other objects. Your consciousness must necessarily be in the same form -- it obeys space-time principle. It is local and individual. This is not negotiable. You can't argue your way out of this. I don't know why we keep beating around the bush.
  • gurugeorge
    514
    Consciousness is not personal or local, "consciousness" describes a process that includes the brain but is not limited to it - one's consciousness of an external object is a particular ad hoc physical process that includes the object, that induces it to exist in a way it wouldn't on its own, or in its interaction with some other object.

    Whatever "representation" there may be of an apple in the brain is not the thing that's consciousness of the apple (there may well be part of the "machine state" of the brain that represents the apple in a true, strict sense, but that representation is not red, round, juicy, etc., it's a purely mechanical register in biochemical "brain writing," for the purposes of calculation of, e.g. the trajectory of hand reaching out to touch it). The redness, roundness, etc., are a mode of the apple's existence that occurs only in interaction with the brain, they are properties the brain gives the apple the opportunity to manifest only in interaction with it (with the brain, sensory organs, etc.).

    Consciousness of the apple is a mode of the apple's existence that can only occur in conjunction with the brain when the brain intercepts certain of its effusions (light, chemical if you eat it, etc.). e.g. the colour of the apple is the very existence of certain subatomic properties of the apple's surface as it interacts with light and with the brain (one could say it's direct perception of those properties as they are, if that manner of speaking didn't mislead us into retreating back into the skull as the "seat of consciousness").

    Analogously, when two waves on water intersect, there's an "interference pattern" that's not the one wave, not the other wave, but a third physical thing that occurs only in the process of interaction.

    Consciousness is not in the brain, and it is not local (or rather, it's local in a slightly extended sense, to include its objects in their very physicality and bodying-forth, albeit in particular ways afforded to them solely by the brain's presence). Those have been the conceptual errors that have been holding us back from understanding, that have been causing the "Hard Problem", etc.
  • Cabbage Farmer
    301
    Materialists claim that consciousness is the result of process in matter.bahman
    I'm not sure what view you're attributing to the materialists here.

    I've never heard a materialist claim that consciousness is constituted by any sort of matter in any sort of motion. I'll agree they say that very specific sorts of matter in very specific sorts of motion constitute consciousness. But that claim's not the same as the less discriminate one you've sought to pin on the materialists in generating this farfetched argument.
  • bahman
    526
    If you're a materialist, then the world has parts, parts meaning you and other objects. Your consciousness must necessarily be in the same form -- it obeys space-time principle. It is local and individual. This is not negotiable. You can't argue your way out of this. I don't know why we keep beating around the bush.Caldwell

    My argument is on two bases. (1) World is made of parts, electron, proton, etc and (2) These parts interact with each other. This means that there is one process which tells you the state of the system, motion of all particles. This means that there should be one consciousness if consciousness is the result of motion of particles.
  • bahman
    526
    Consciousness is not personal or local, "consciousness" describes a process that includes the brain but is not limited to it - one's consciousness of an external object is a particular ad hoc physical process that includes the object, that induces it to exist in a way it wouldn't on its own, or in its interaction with some other object.gurugeorge

    Consciousness is personal and local. Are you aware of my experiences?
  • bahman
    526
    I'm not sure what view you're attributing to the materialists here.Cabbage Farmer

    Yes, it is.

    I've never heard a materialist claim that consciousness is constituted by any sort of matter in any sort of motion. I'll agree they say that very specific sorts of matter in very specific sorts of motion constitute consciousness. But that claim's not the same as the less discriminate one you've sought to pin on the materialists in generating this farfetched argument.Cabbage Farmer

    Materialist simply claiming that consciousness is the result of specific motion of matter.
  • gurugeorge
    514
    Are you aware of my experiences?bahman

    No but that's privacy, not my awareness being personal; although that word can be a bit misleading in this context (one wants to ask "private to whom?" but it's the common word used in philosophy for what I'm referring to, so we have to use it).

    An instance of consciousness is certainly private in the sense that it's unique and un-havable in another consciousness - e.g. the apple exists in a different way, in a different perspective, when interacting with your brain than with mine.

    But that doesn't mean consciousness is personal. The opposite of personal is impersonal, which is what consciousness actually is, because it's something that happens between person and object, it's not the sole property of the person, or of the lump of fat inside the skull; it's a property of the interaction, the interference pattern, between brain and object, and includes the object itself, it doesn't belong just to the person who (as we say) has consciousness or is conscious.

    IOW consciousness is a manner of existing of the object in its interaction with the brain, as well as something going on inside the brain or in the conscious person. Only if it were something that occurred in just the person alone (e.g. in the individual's brain or mind), would it be personal.

    That said, the uniqueness of that manner of the object's existing (in just that particular way for that particular brain), is what makes it private, and not something that can also happen between that same object and another brain.
  • Caldwell
    1.3k
    These parts interact with each other. This means that there is one process which tells you the state of the system, motion of all particles. This means that there should be one consciousness if consciousness is the result of motion of particles.bahman

    Ah. "Interact" but not interpenetrate.
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