heeltap,

Searle wrote:By `consciousness' I simply mean those subjective states of sentience or awareness that begin when one awakes in the morning from a dreamless sleep and continue throughout the day until one goes to sleep at night or falls into a coma, or dies, or otherwise becomes, as one would say, `unconscious'.

I wouldn't say this is the definition of consciousness, but we know what he is taking about. It is also overly presumptuous to say that stones and shingles are not conscious, all we know for sure is that they are not conscious like us.


He says that he has the answer and then calls it tentative soon after, and ultimately he is in the same speculative position any one who is not a neuroscientist is.

From the link provided:

Conscious states are caused by lower level neurobiological processes in the brain and are themselves higher level features of the brain. The key notions here are those of cause and feature... Of course, like any causal hypothesis this one is tentative. It might turn out that we have overestimated the importance of the neuron and the synapse.

Anyone at the forums has just as much a chance as Searle does of answering questions of consciousness. There is no less emphasis of personal opinion here. The opinion is just from someone that is not yet a member of these forums.

Belinda,

I understand that, but he is not a published and respected neuroscientist.

heeltap,

Searle states explicitly "The most important scientific discovery of the present era will come when someone -- or some group -- discovers the answer to the following question: How exactly do neurobiological processes in the brain cause consciousness?" This is a science question, being answered by a philosopher, this in not an adhominim it's a fact, that his opinion is just as good as ours.

His opinion does matter, as do all of ours, but it doesn't trump the facts uncovered by neuroscience.

If you think Searle has something important to say just share it. Don't complain about how things work, it isn't going to help. Just dive in to what you want to say.

H2ouse wrote:There is a basic assumption in the quote from Searle that I don't think is settled one way or the other: that consciousness is caused by neurobiological processes, i.e. consciousness is an artifact of the "material world". It would be very premature, I think, to suggest that facts uncovered by neuroscience have proven this to be true. I hope our discussion of this issue will also include the very respectable alternative assumption that consciousness, whatever it is, may be able to affect, and in some cases even cause, neurobiological processes.

No they haven't proven it, the pursuit of neuroscience is to figure out how the brain works in every aspect. They do know a great deal more about "consciousness"(thoughts that happen in the waking brain) then Searle does. This assumption you have of neuroscience as a whole is wrong. There is nothing stating that consciousness isn't a two way street in regards to the material world. The base may be in the material world, that however does not mean the whole thing can't reside in many places(transference of ideas). Modern neuroscience is very new we have only had the imaging technology for a short time.

I think though what we will get into by continuing this discussion is the soul, not consciousness or mind.

H2ouse,

All our answers thus far, have been from the material world. The non-material world of ideas helps us to arrive at those answers.

We can't make factual (other)arguments from other realms. We are physical beings as far as we know with certainty, we may be other things, but we can only work with physical facts in the meantime.

There are other arguments, but they are for now, merely speculative.

H2ouse,

I agree that we can't be 100% sure that the material world is all there is. Everything we know though comes from the materialistic system. Other things can be reasonable and logical, but hove no grounds to stand on as they are only ideas that can't be supported with anything other than ideas.

I do also believe in the non-material world strongly, but it is a belief, not a fact.

the phenomena of consciousness and intentionality are NOT remote from us – we experience them every day. To me this is a strong prima facie argument that they represent an aspect of reality – and if cultures through history have sensed that they are non material, I can go along with that too.

Of course they are part of reality... They are part of our physical body, they may be things other than just physical, but we can only account for the physical part. Gravity itself is not physical, it is derived from physical mass however. That does not mean than gravity is physical just like the physical body from which it emanates. We can say the same of the brain and consciousness. Both the physical and nonphysical do exist. The non-material world may or may not be wholly dependent on the physical world we have yet to find out, likely that we never will.
Particles are a different class of physical. We understand things in science as physical that does not mean the thing in it self is physical.