Electrons, for example, are too small to be seen but can be inferred. In the unique case of consciousness, the thing to be explained cannot be observed. — alphahimself
Electrons, for example, are too small to be seen but can be inferred. In the unique case of consciousness, the thing to be explained cannot be observed. We know that consciousness exists not through experiences, but through the immediate feeling of our feelings and experiences. — alphahimself
In essence, we trick ourselves into believing that the empirical entities we study as scientists can be focused on independently of the conscious process that constitutes them. — Joshs
In our Philosophy of Science class, we have seen that Science focuses on the object, while the totality of reality is an interaction between subject and object. — alphahimself
Does it mean that science is not useful in some cases? — alphahimself
Don't you think that we underestimate the challenge of understanding the nature of consciousness by being convinced that we simply need to continue to examine the physical structures of the brain to determine how they produce consciousness? — alphahimself
Concepts are a mixture of objectivity and subjectivity. Broadly speaking, we can say that some concepts are very objective or less subjective than others. We trust the objectivity of those concepts that have been repeatedly tested and distrust the objectivity of those that do not meet rigorous criteria. — David Mo
You dont want to model subjectivity on the physical but show how models of the physical emerge out of subjective processes. — Joshs
I would only preliminarily say that anything reminiscent of Roger Penrose’s formulations of a quantum basis of consciousness is barking up the wrong tree. — Joshs
The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Pp35-6
We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.
However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.
So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory.
One way of formulating the hard problem is to ask: if we had a complete, canonical, objective, physicalist account of the natural world, including all the physical facts of the brain and the organism, would it conceptually or logically entail the subjective facts of consciousness? — Joshs
What this extreme emphasis fails to take into account is that the mind as a scientific object has to be constituted as such from the personalistic perspective in the empathic co-determination of self and other. — Joshs
Objectivity is a matter of intersubjective agreement on events which appear in different guises to each of us. — Joshs
If you would propose a theory of quantum consciousness can you explain why the observer effect in the double slit experiment occurs in response to experimental apparatus - as well as conscious observation. — counterpunch
From what I've read, — Enrique
Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. — Wayfarer
The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order
qualia's causal influence in nature via the mind — Enrique
Indeed, but it is not simple intersubjectivity, a simple matter of perception. The general criterion is what has been called the "adversity" index. — David Mo
A stone is always a stone and it is there. It is an immediate fact that only a fool -or a philosopher- would question. — David Mo
You, on the other hand give me five paragraphs of unintelligible jargon, that don't answer the question I asked. What am I to infer? Did you download a quantum mechanics jargon generator? — counterpunch
Tell me how quantum mechanics explains how there's a 'something' looking out through my eyeholes. What, in no more than a dozen words, is the relationship between the two? — counterpunch
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