Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
Post Reply
User avatar
ThomasHobbes
Posts: 1122
Joined: May 5th, 2018, 5:53 pm

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Tamminen wrote: September 23rd, 2018, 2:12 pm
ThomasHobbes wrote: September 23rd, 2018, 1:51 pm You are basically saying the same thing.
as '"The reality of experiential states is a fact that precedes any physical evolution of mental properties.""
This sentence is a bit ambiguous and I am not sure what BigBango means by it. I would say that because the being of experiential states needs a material basis, the physical evolution precedes those experiential states in physical time, but what really happens is the evolution of consciousness, not matter in itself which would produce consciousness as a kind of side effect or accident.
I think they are both misguided ideas; both your comment and his, and for much the same reason.
User avatar
ThomasHobbes
Posts: 1122
Joined: May 5th, 2018, 5:53 pm

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Consul wrote: September 23rd, 2018, 5:05 pm
ThomasHobbes wrote: September 23rd, 2018, 1:50 pm
You are WRONG.
I'm a Cambridge boy and an advanced thinker.. Is English a second language to you?
"The Oxford English Dictionary regards the construction "comprised of" as incorrect,[1] while Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary and Collins English Dictionary do not regard it as such, mentioning "comprised of" among the examples.[2][3]"
That "compriseD of" is correct doesn't mean that "compriseS of" is correct too.
Do you get your kicks taking the piss out of dyslexic people?
Did you realises that s and d are close to each other on the keyboard?
Have you heard of a typo?
User avatar
ThomasHobbes
Posts: 1122
Joined: May 5th, 2018, 5:53 pm

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by ThomasHobbes »

ThomasHobbes wrote: September 23rd, 2018, 5:14 pm
Consul wrote: September 23rd, 2018, 5:05 pm

That "compriseD of" is correct doesn't mean that "compriseS of" is correct too.
Do you get your kicks taking the piss out of dyslexic people?
Did you realises that s and d are close to each other on the keyboard?
Have you heard of a typo?
If you accept "comprised of", perhaps you can explain in grammatical terms why you think "comprises of" is incorrect? As I do not see why referring to a relationship of part to a whole would be different in terms of the tense of the sentence.
But I am willing to discuss your problem.
User avatar
ThomasHobbes
Posts: 1122
Joined: May 5th, 2018, 5:53 pm

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Consul wrote: September 23rd, 2018, 5:05 pm
ThomasHobbes wrote: September 23rd, 2018, 1:50 pm
You are WRONG.
I'm a Cambridge boy and an advanced thinker.. Is English a second language to you?
"The Oxford English Dictionary regards the construction "comprised of" as incorrect,[1] while Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary and Collins English Dictionary do not regard it as such, mentioning "comprised of" among the examples.[2][3]"
That "compriseD of" is correct doesn't mean that "compriseS of" is correct too.
If you accept "comprised of", perhaps you can explain in grammatical terms why you think "comprises of" is incorrect? As I do not see why referring to a relationship of part to a whole would be different in terms of the tense of the sentence.
But I am willing to discuss your problem.
User avatar
Consul
Posts: 6036
Joined: February 21st, 2014, 6:32 am
Location: Germany

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by Consul »

ThomasHobbes wrote: September 23rd, 2018, 5:21 pmIf you accept "comprised of", perhaps you can explain in grammatical terms why you think "comprises of" is incorrect? As I do not see why referring to a relationship of part to a whole would be different in terms of the tense of the sentence. But I am willing to discuss your problem.
I think it's bad English, and I'm not the only one who thinks so.

"Usage: Comprise primarily means ‘consist of’, as in the country comprises twenty states. It can also mean ‘constitute or make up a whole’, as in this single breed comprises 50 per cent of the Swiss cattle population. When this sense is used in the passive (as in the country is comprised of twenty states), it is more or less synonymous with the first sense (the country comprises twenty states). This usage is part of standard English, but the construction 'comprise of', as in 'the property comprises of bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen', is regarded as incorrect."

Source: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/comprise

"comprise + of. Not least because it is a verbal tic beloved of estate agents (i.e. this property comprises of hall, living room…), this is probably the most widely reviled, or at least ridiculed, use. It may well offend not only died-in-the-wool purists, but ordinary mortals with a residual sense of written style."

(Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage. 4th ed. Edited by Jeremy Butterfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. p. 172)
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
User avatar
ThomasHobbes
Posts: 1122
Joined: May 5th, 2018, 5:53 pm

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Consul wrote: September 23rd, 2018, 8:40 pm
ThomasHobbes wrote: September 23rd, 2018, 5:21 pmIf you accept "comprised of", perhaps you can explain in grammatical terms why you think "comprises of" is incorrect? As I do not see why referring to a relationship of part to a whole would be different in terms of the tense of the sentence. But I am willing to discuss your problem.
I think it's bad English, and I'm not the only one who thinks so.
You are welcome to your (second hand) opinion.
But language is about praxis and understanding, not rules. If we stuck to rules we'd still be speaking pig Latin or Anglo Saxon.
Wayne92587
Posts: 1780
Joined: January 27th, 2012, 9:32 pm
Favorite Philosopher: Hermese Trismegistus

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by Wayne92587 »

Thoughts, words, are not physical objects but they are made manifest, are generated, are an affect born of the Physical brain.
User avatar
JaxAg
New Trial Member
Posts: 17
Joined: December 16th, 2018, 10:17 am

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by JaxAg »

Suppose we think of the thoughts in our heads as processes, rather than 'things'. We can think of the brain as a lump of stuff, with a capacity to 'think'. Then one day it stops thinking. The consciousness doesn't need to stop being; it just stops happening. Like your voice doesn't need somewhere else to be when you stop singing. In normal experience, we tend to divide phenomena into things and their interactions, into nouns and verbs. But at the subatomic level this distinction ceases to be useful. A particle is essentially the effect of a concentration of energy at a point in a field. At scales apparent to our sensory equipment, arrangements of these particles appear more or less permanent. The more permanent tend to be seen as things, the more transitory as actions. The distinction is useful to us for purposes of communication, comprehension, organisation of experiences, etc, but its applicability is limited to this realm, and application outside this realm carries an avoidable risk.
Gertie
Posts: 2181
Joined: January 7th, 2015, 7:09 am

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by Gertie »

JaxAg wrote: December 17th, 2018, 2:17 pm Suppose we think of the thoughts in our heads as processes, rather than 'things'. We can think of the brain as a lump of stuff, with a capacity to 'think'. Then one day it stops thinking. The consciousness doesn't need to stop being; it just stops happening. Like your voice doesn't need somewhere else to be when you stop singing. In normal experience, we tend to divide phenomena into things and their interactions, into nouns and verbs. But at the subatomic level this distinction ceases to be useful. A particle is essentially the effect of a concentration of energy at a point in a field. At scales apparent to our sensory equipment, arrangements of these particles appear more or less permanent. The more permanent tend to be seen as things, the more transitory as actions. The distinction is useful to us for purposes of communication, comprehension, organisation of experiences, etc, but its applicability is limited to this realm, and application outside this realm carries an avoidable risk.
Suppose we think of the thoughts in our heads as processes, rather than 'things'. We can think of the brain as a lump of stuff, with a capacity to 'think'. Then one day it stops thinking. The consciousness doesn't need to stop being; it just stops happening. Like your voice doesn't need somewhere else to be when you stop singing. In normal experience, we tend to divide phenomena into things and their interactions, into nouns and verbs. But at the subatomic level this distinction ceases to be useful. A particle is essentially the effect of a concentration of energy at a point in a field. At scales apparent to our sensory equipment, arrangements of these particles appear more or less permanent. The more permanent tend to be seen as things, the more transitory as actions. The distinction is useful to us for purposes of communication, comprehension, organisation of experiences, etc, but its applicability is limited to this realm, and application outside this realm carries an avoidable risk.


Would you agree that everything being reducible to concentrations of energy in a field doesn't mean the emergent properties of particular clumps aren't real, rather than created by specific types of observers (us)? So for example our constructed categories of gas, liquid and solid to describe H2O refer not only to our peculiar (evolved for utility) ways of perceiving the world, but to independently/objectively real different properties of what we're perceiving.


Likewise nouns and verbs describe different properties of emergent real Somethings. Brains and thoughts have different properties too, and are both real, even though they, like everything else, may be reducible to concentrations of energy. We describe them differently because we (imperfectly) perceive different real properties.


So while our scientific standard model is indeed a model, a particular type of framing related to how we perceive reality, it does describe different aspects of reality, and is coherent within that framing - a framing we're inevitably stuck within. And that scientific model doesn't explain the real differences between brains and correlated thoughts.


So it doesn't explain why or if Thoughts (verbs) require Brains (nouns).

Or am I missing something?
Chili
Posts: 392
Joined: September 29th, 2017, 4:59 pm

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by Chili »

i can use science to verify the existence of my neighbor's brain, but not my neighbor's thoughts. For all I know, he hasn't got any thoughts, anything subjective. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/ca ... E617BF7D9A
User avatar
JamesOfSeattle
Premium Member
Posts: 509
Joined: October 16th, 2015, 11:20 pm

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by JamesOfSeattle »

Chili wrote: December 22nd, 2018, 2:56 pm i can use science to verify the existence of my neighbor's brain, but not my neighbor's thoughts.
I don’t think this is correct. It’s like saying I can verify my neighbors heart, but not his blood circulation. I think you could verify your neighbor’s thoughts. But I don’t think it would be as easy as verifying his circulation.

*
Fooloso4
Posts: 3601
Joined: February 28th, 2014, 4:50 pm

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by Fooloso4 »

Chili wrote: December 22nd, 2018, 2:56 pm i can use science to verify the existence of my neighbor's brain, but not my neighbor's thoughts. For all I know, he hasn't got any thoughts, anything subjective.
Of course you know that your neighbor has thoughts. Why would you doubt it? There is nothing about what you do that shows that you think it might be possible that he hasn't got any thoughts.

It reminds me of this barbed witticism by Wittgenstein:
I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.
Chili
Posts: 392
Joined: September 29th, 2017, 4:59 pm

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by Chili »

Fooloso4 wrote: December 22nd, 2018, 4:04 pm
Of course you know that your neighbor has thoughts. Why would you doubt it? There is nothing about what you do that shows that you think it might be possible that he hasn't got any thoughts.


It's like you've never heard of neurology.

It reminds me of this barbed witticism by Wittgenstein:

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.
It's like you've never heard of philosophy. One must never question common beliefs unless there's good enough reason to doubt them? You must not be critical thinker - perhaps not even a thinker at all.
Tamminen
Posts: 1347
Joined: April 19th, 2016, 2:53 pm

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by Tamminen »

Fooloso4 wrote: December 22nd, 2018, 4:04 pm Of course you know that your neighbor has thoughts. Why would you doubt it?
Right. Another quote from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations:
I can know what someone else is thinking, not what I am thinking.
It is correct to say "I know what you are thinking", and wrong to
say "I know what I am thinking."
(A whole cloud of philosophy condensed into a drop of grammar.)
Fooloso4
Posts: 3601
Joined: February 28th, 2014, 4:50 pm

Re: Whatever Consciousness is, it's Not Physical (or reducible to physical).

Post by Fooloso4 »

Chili:
It's like you've never heard of neurology.
It’s more than likely that you have missed the point.

As to neurology, cognitive science is continually increasing its ability to map activity in the brain with greater and greater specificity. Identifying regions where neural activity corresponds to specific kinds of thinking activity and subjective experience. But of course it could always be argued that in the case of your neighbor the neural activity is simulated. So, the neurologist will use the evidence of neural activity for therapeutic ends and the cognitive scientist will use it for theoretical ends, the “philosopher” will sit by finding reasons to doubt.
It's like you've never heard of philosophy. One must never question common beliefs unless there's good enough reason to doubt them? You must not be critical thinker - perhaps not even a thinker at all.
Again you miss the point. Philosophy is not about creating puzzlement. You cannot verify with a high degree of certainty that your neighbor has thoughts, but that is not a good reason to question whether he does.

You can accuse me of never having heard of philosophy and not being a critical thinker but what I am addressing is the problem Wittgenstein addresses in On Certainty. You are using the term ‘know’ in a way that does not correspond to the context in which you are using it. When Wittgenstein says “we are only doing philosophy” he is poking fun at this type of idle talk.
Post Reply

Return to “Epistemology and Metaphysics”

2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise
by John K Danenbarger
January 2023

Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul

Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023

The Unfakeable Code®

The Unfakeable Code®
by Tony Jeton Selimi
April 2023

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
by Alan Watts
May 2023

Killing Abel

Killing Abel
by Michael Tieman
June 2023

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead
by E. Alan Fleischauer
July 2023

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough
by Mark Unger
August 2023

Predictably Irrational

Predictably Irrational
by Dan Ariely
September 2023

Artwords

Artwords
by Beatriz M. Robles
November 2023

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope
by Dr. Randy Ross
December 2023

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes
by Ali Master
February 2024

2022 Philosophy Books of the Month

Emotional Intelligence At Work

Emotional Intelligence At Work
by Richard M Contino & Penelope J Holt
January 2022

Free Will, Do You Have It?

Free Will, Do You Have It?
by Albertus Kral
February 2022

My Enemy in Vietnam

My Enemy in Vietnam
by Billy Springer
March 2022

2X2 on the Ark

2X2 on the Ark
by Mary J Giuffra, PhD
April 2022

The Maestro Monologue

The Maestro Monologue
by Rob White
May 2022

What Makes America Great

What Makes America Great
by Bob Dowell
June 2022

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!
by Jerry Durr
July 2022

Living in Color

Living in Color
by Mike Murphy
August 2022 (tentative)

The Not So Great American Novel

The Not So Great American Novel
by James E Doucette
September 2022

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches
by John N. (Jake) Ferris
October 2022

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All
by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
November 2022

The Smartest Person in the Room: The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity

The Smartest Person in the Room
by Christian Espinosa
December 2022

2021 Philosophy Books of the Month

The Biblical Clock: The Untold Secrets Linking the Universe and Humanity with God's Plan

The Biblical Clock
by Daniel Friedmann
March 2021

Wilderness Cry: A Scientific and Philosophical Approach to Understanding God and the Universe

Wilderness Cry
by Dr. Hilary L Hunt M.D.
April 2021

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute: Tools To Spark Your Dream And Ignite Your Follow-Through

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute
by Jeff Meyer
May 2021

Surviving the Business of Healthcare: Knowledge is Power

Surviving the Business of Healthcare
by Barbara Galutia Regis M.S. PA-C
June 2021

Winning the War on Cancer: The Epic Journey Towards a Natural Cure

Winning the War on Cancer
by Sylvie Beljanski
July 2021

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream
by Dr Frank L Douglas
August 2021

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts
by Mark L. Wdowiak
September 2021

The Preppers Medical Handbook

The Preppers Medical Handbook
by Dr. William W Forgey M.D.
October 2021

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress: A Practical Guide

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress
by Dr. Gustavo Kinrys, MD
November 2021

Dream For Peace: An Ambassador Memoir

Dream For Peace
by Dr. Ghoulem Berrah
December 2021