Happy Atheist Forum

Hello,

I accept that there is no Christian God yet sometimes I veer towards some sort of supernaturalism. One of my arguments against strict atheism/materialism concerns consciousness.

It seems that science will never be able to explain consciousness. Lets for a moment imagine that a scientist does explain consciousness. What might this explanation look like?

“We can see when we use the new polyionic radiation scanner to see beyond normal matter that we have discovered the X particle. As you can see, hundreds of these X particles coalesce together and this is what causes our consciousness. We can prove that it causes consciousness by interfering with the X particle with our polyionic radiation which as you can see causes the person to lose consciousness. The X particle is in effect, us; it is creating your experiences right now reading this.”

While such a discovery might advance science, it would also explain nothing. The above explanation is no better than our current explanation which is that consciousness is somehow caused by the brain. The above simply says that consciousness is somehow caused by an X particle. We are always left with this awful word somehow.

Somehow can never explain our experiences of being conscious, ie my experience of seeing, feeling, etc.

So while I see myself as a scientific person, it seems that there are some things that science can never understand. Religion can’t understand them either but that is another post. But I can see room for some sort of doctrine of the soul because there definitely seems to be something supernatural about our consciousness.

Have I made any sense with the above? Comments?

I don't think that there is anything supernatural about consciousness. I think our consciousness is something that is constructed in our brain through a physical process. Complex, yes...supernatural, no. If a region of the brain is damaged that allows you to see,  then you go blind. The "me" in the brain can also be affected if a region that handled emotion were damaged. I don't see why you should introduce an outside metaphyical form of self. Science has demonstrated very well how the "me" in my head can not exist beyond my body.

Welcome to the forum, Bill.

If consciousness were not directly tied to the way our bodies work naturally, then wouldn't it be impossible to use drugs to make a person become unconscious for a surgery?

I agree that our consciousness is something that is constructed in our brain through a physical process. Perhaps even the "me" in my head can not exist beyond my body.

But all this has explained nothing! This is what I am trying to say.

How can there ever be an explanation of my *experience* of seeing, hearing etc?

Quote from: "laetusatheos"Welcome to the forum, Bill.

Thanks.     I've been lurking for a few days now - such an awesome forum!

The experience may feel greater than the sum of its parts, but I don’t think there is more going on. From an objective stand point; the brain is more like a computer. Our brain is like hardware that stores information gathered by our senses. The right side of the brain is like sponge that soaks up everything experienced and the left side organizes all that information gathered in a useful way. The “me” in my head requires a machine to gather, store, retrieve and process info. Without that we don’t work right.

The experience or a subjective consciousness may be different from one person to another, but what is being experienced is the same. When I see the color red and you see the color red, there is really no way to know if you are seeing the same “color” I am seeing. We can use instrumentation to determine what wavelength is being measured, but your version of red may be different than what I think red looks like. Personally I think that we all “see” the same colors. What is interesting is though is that our visual range is very tiny compared to what is out there. I mean what color are radio waves, uv light, gamma rays? These waves lengths of light are invisible yet they are just as much there as visible light.

Now that I am done with my rant, my point is the experience of consciousness is rather limited. There is much more going on in the universe than what we humans can experience with our bodies alone. I think those limitations in our senses is good; it helps me understand how the brain really works. It shows how my body and brain could be improved and also shoots down the notion that we are more than our bodies.

Quote from: "jcm"The experience may feel greater than the sum of its parts, but I don’t think there is more going on.

I agree; it does feel greater than the sum of its parts but to say there is not more going on is really just a guess. And that is my whole point. That science can never know because of the nature of the problem. Eg. Like you say science can quantify colour with a wavelength number but science can *never* explain the experience of colour itself.

Quote from: "jcm"The experience or a subjective consciousness may be different from one person to another, but what is being experienced is the same. When I see the color red and you see the color red, there is really no way to know if you are seeing the same “color” I am seeing. We can use instrumentation to determine what wavelength is being measured, but your version of red may be different than what I think red looks like. Personally I think that we all “see” the same colors. What is interesting is though is that our visual range is very tiny compared to what is out there. I mean what color are radio waves, uv light, gamma rays? These waves lengths of light are invisible yet they are just as much there as visible light.

I agree with the point you are making here as well; again it is exactly my point! There is so much more of the universe that we miss with our paltry 5 senses! But I don’t understand how this “shoots down the notion that we are more than our bodies.” I think you are just guessing here. If anything, to say that there is more to the universe than what we can see makes it *more* likely there is a soul, not less.

laetusatheos, to directly answer your question about drugs:

Quote from: "laetusatheos"If consciousness were not directly tied to the way our bodies work naturally, then wouldn't it be impossible to use drugs to make a person become unconscious for a surgery?
 

I agree, consciousness is directly tied to the way our bodies work. This is not what I am disputing. I am saying that there is something supernatural about it because science can never explain it.

Here's my two cents on the matter, and I'm certainly not the first to bring this point up. Just because something can't be explained though science is no reason to accredit it to the supernatural and higher beings.

Long before the invention of RADAR, people believed that the only way planes would be able to effectively navigate across country would be to have large signs everywhere to direct them. It's an excellent example how we can not conceive how future sciences will advance, just like you can't conceive how science would explain consciousness.

Quote from: "bill456"I agree;

Quote from: "bill456"I agree

Quote from: "bill456"I agree,

Bill, I like your attitude!

Consciousness falls in this interesting place between science and philosophy. It's like love. It can be explained by biochemistry to a point, psychology to a point, and philosophy to a point. In explaining consciousness, science is part of the puzzle; an important part, in fact.

QuoteI agree with the point you are making here as well; again it is exactly my point! There is so much more of the universe that we miss with our paltry 5 senses! But I don’t understand how this “shoots down the notion that we are more than our bodies.” I think you are just guessing here. If anything, to say that there is more to the universe than what we can see makes it *more* likely there is a soul, not less.

Science has done a great job at showing us the parts of the universe. We can use technology to see the extraordinarily vast and extraordinarily small. Everything in this universe is built up from sub-atomic particles. Matter is everywhere and in everything. Depending on the combination of particles you get stuff like rocks, oxygen, water, etc. This stuff in the universe is divided into two groups, living and non-living. What separates living from non-living matter is information. The information in our dna is what separates us from non-living matter. So if you look at all forms of life from algae to a human you will see an evolution -- each step becoming more and more complex. All life from simple to complex has shown to not require a soul to function so why does consciousness require one. Do all forms of life have souls or do only humans get them? Why would consciousness automatically give you a soul? It seems unlikely that a human would have something extraordinary about them when it can be shown that that there is nothing fundamentally different about a human compared to everything else.

Quote from: "Willravel"Bill, I like your attitude!

Lol. Its difficult not to agree with people on this forum because everyone is rational. Imagine me having this debate on a religious forum - a religious person would not only be able to tell me that souls exist, but also that he has knowledge of this soul after death, and that he can influence where it goes after death by following the tenets of his particular religion and that other religions do not work.

Quote from: "ShimShamSam "Here's my two cents on the matter, and I'm certainly not the first to bring this point up. Just because something can't be explained though science is no reason to accredit it to the supernatural and higher beings.

This is a good point but slightly wrong imho. Just because something can't be explained though science is no reason to accredit it to religion. This is because religion has no way of knowing that science doesn’t have. But you used the word supernatural instead of religion. Supernatural is just that, it is what is left when science has failed to explain.

Or, it is so complicated for our tiny brains, that it is indistinguishable from magic:

Quote from: "Arthur C. Clarke"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

So when I use the word supernatural, it could be that the process is entirely natural but that our brains are too limited to understand, and calling it magic, or supernatural, is entirely justified because it is indistinguishable from magic for our tiny brains.

Quote from: "ShimShamSam "Long before the invention of RADAR, people believed that the only way planes would be able to effectively navigate across country would be to have large signs everywhere to direct them. It's an excellent example how we can not conceive how future sciences will advance, just like you can't conceive how science would explain consciousness.

Exactly. The problem with this is that before radar people could have imagined a hypothetical technology that would allow people to communicate. If they in fact didn’t imagine such a hypothetical, it doesn’t change the fact that they could have. They could have imagined communication between planes using telepathy. Eg. Right now we can imagine hypothetical technologies to allow us to time travel, produce food and objects from energy, teleport, etc (all from Star Trek ). But there is no hypothetical technology we can imagine that would allow us to understand consciousness. And this makes consciousness unique. I made an attempt to imagine such a technology in my first post:

Quote from: "bill456"We can see when we use the new polyionic radiation scanner to see beyond normal matter that we have discovered the X particle. As you can see, hundreds of these X particles coalesce together and this is what causes our consciousness. We can prove that it causes consciousness by interfering with the X particle with our polyionic radiation which as you can see causes the person to lose consciousness. The X particle is in effect, us; it is creating your experiences right now reading this.

Any hypothetical technology or actual technology that may be invented in the future may advance science and our understanding, but it will have explained precisely nothing about our experience of consciousness.

Quote from: "jcm"All life from simple to complex has shown to not require a soul to function so why does consciousness require one. Do all forms of life have souls or do only humans get them? Why would consciousness automatically give you a soul? It seems unlikely that a human would have something extraordinary about them when it can be shown that that there is nothing fundamentally different about a human compared to everything else.

When I use the word soul, I mean something supernatural about our consciousness, or something sufficiently complex that it is indistinguishable from magic. I prefer not to use the word soul at all. But yes, dogs, cats, octopi, monkeys, probably mice, lizards, etc all show signs of consciousness. Animal consciousness is equally inexplicable and also could have a supernatural/indistinguishable from magic explanation.

Hey its been a couple of days now and no reply?

Ok... I'll pitch in.

I can see both sides here, but I'm leaning toward Bill's view.

As for the brain being a computer... meh!

Man compares the brain to whatever the leading edge of technology is.  Our brain is like a steam engine... waffle iron... clock... So now it's like a computer - or not.

I'm waiting for the day that a computer (or whatever supercedes them) can become truly "Self-Aware"...

Whatever that means.

Part of the issue here is that the words are loosely defined.
"Love", "Self-Aware", "Cheese Danish", "Consciousness", "Lederhosen"...

Ok, I'm spent,
JoeActor

BTW Bill, I'm one of the few "Agnostic Theist" holdouts here - welcome!

I used to think consciousness was a good argument against naturalism as well. It is very counterintuitive to think of unconscious animals somehow evolving consciousness. Anyway, I have a naturalistic explanation for consciousness, check it out:

Click here (http://ide.synthasite.com/sites/D396/D79e/Db28/D92f/U402881b218f006a20118f2982be97693/402881b218f006a20118f29952c676df/mainpage.php)



edit:  Switch, I fixed your url so that it doesn't stretch the screen to scroll horizontally...hope you don't mind.  -laetus

Quote from: "joeactor"BTW Bill, I'm one of the few "Agnostic Theist" holdouts here - welcome!

I am not impressed with the atheist response towards consciousness not just on this forum, but at large. I would hate to become a theist though even if only an agnostic one.

Quote from: "Switch89"Anyway, I have a naturalistic explanation for consciousness, check it out

Lol your explanation doesn’t explain anything. It says that consciousness doesn’t exist! To be fair to you though, I am going to check out one of Daniel Dennett’s books on consciousness to investigate further your arguments here. I’ll check back here when I’m done but I am not expecting to be impressed with an argument that says consciousness doesn’t exist. It’s a ridiculous argument because consciousness self evidently exists. To deny it exists is ironically a bigger act of faith than any religious person.

This is why I am also investigating Ayn Rand’s explanation of consciousness which seems not to explain anything but is the most logically satisfying so far.

In essence, she doesn’t deny consciousness (because it self evidently exists) but treats it as an irreducible primary - it cannot be analyzed in terms of other concepts, and it is pre-supposed by all knowledge.

Quote from: "McQ"Does consciousness need to be more fully described than it is now? Sure, and each year, that very thing happens. It is much more accurately described than it was 10, 25, and 50 years ago. There is no reason to believe, despite your opinion, that it will not continue to be more fully described.

From the above paragraph I can see that you do not understand the problem. Or maybe you agree with the Dennett way of understanding consciousness?

Once I realised that what I have been discussing has actually already been discussed in philosophy before, I found this wikipedia page which contains two important articles - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness.

I would highly recommend anyone who is going to post to this thread to read the following two articles by two distinguished philosophers:

http://www.imprint.co.uk/chalmers.html- Here Chalmers is saying exactly what I have been saying except far more eloquently.
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/chalmers.htm- Here Dennett is refuting Chalmers.

I think Dennett’s views are nonsensical.

Quote from: "bill456"

Quote from: "McQ"Does consciousness need to be more fully described than it is now? Sure, and each year, that very thing happens. It is much more accurately described than it was 10, 25, and 50 years ago. There is no reason to believe, despite your opinion, that it will not continue to be more fully described.

From the above paragraph I can see that you do not understand the problem. Or maybe you agree with the Dennett way of understanding consciousness?

Once I realised that what I have been discussing has actually already been discussed in philosophy before, I found this wikipedia page which contains two important articles - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness.

I would highly recommend anyone who is going to post to this thread to read the following two articles by two distinguished philosophers:

http://www.imprint.co.uk/chalmers.html- Here Chalmers is saying exactly what I have been saying except far more eloquently.
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/chalmers.htm- Here Dennett is refuting Chalmers.

I think Dennett’s views are nonsensical.

I see, Bill. So if we don't agree with you, it is we who don't understand the problem, not you. Is that right? Nice. Well, you just let us know when we can crawl up out of our cribs to sit at your feet so you can explain this all to us.

Wow, what an ego you must have, man!

Somebody pass me the popcorn. I'm gonna sit back and watch the show now.

Quote from: "McQ"Bill, "Science" doesn't claim to fully explain or even fully (read, completely) "understand" anything. Not 100%.

I completely agree btw.

I think it is good that you are going to sit back and watch the show, but first, please read the articles I posted above and tell me whether you agree with Dennett or Chalmers.

"I am saying that there is something supernatural about it (consciousness) because science can never explain it."

I couldn't disagree with you more. From what I have read on your posts, it seems like you may be looking for an explanation that doesn't exist. If somebody wants an explanation, that's what religion offers. They fill in the gaps of "why" with all sorts of nonsense. But when we take a good hard, sober look at the facts, we'll never be able to answer the question "why". All we have are ideas that seem to explain the phenomena of consciousness as far as science can detect. The fact is our brains are made up of a few elements, the same that can be found throughout the universe. They are organized in such a way that we are able to sense some of our environment, enough at least for survival and a little extra. There is simply no reason to think there is anything supernatural about consciousness unless you're looking for that conclusion before you started.

Quote from: "myleviathan"But when we take a good hard, sober look at the facts, we'll never be able to answer the question "why".

I agree.

Quote from: "myleviathan"There is simply no reason to think there is anything supernatural about consciousness unless you're looking for that conclusion before you started.

As I've said before, by supernatural I mean something that may be natural but that our limited brains may not be able to distinguish from magic. So I think we are pretty much agreed on all points.

I think I am going to start a new thread specifically on Chalmers versus Dennett. I think that will be a more productive avenue for this to go down because this thread is bogged down in semantics. When I started this thread I didn't realise there was such an easy way to clarify the issues in the way that comparing Chalmers and Dennett does.

Ok, here's my new thread/poll. I've posted it under the Philosophy section which I think is more appropriate:

http://www.happyatheistforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1263