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

[Tamminen]

Dachshund:

I read the article by U. T. Place, and there is a point in it. As I wrote in my previous post, I think consciousness and the corresponding brain processes are identical in the sense that they are two conceptually incompatible perspectives to the same chain of events. There are physical objects and living organisms in our universe, and at least some of the living organisms are subjects: they have a subjective point of view to the world. The world sort of splits into two levels: the phenomenal level and the physical level. But there is only one reality, one "substance", as Spinoza puts it, and two "attributes", or levels of description: mind and body. What makes my standpoint anti-materialistic is that the subjective perspective is essential and is the reason for the being of the universe and all there is, making some sense of it.

[Dachshund]

Tamminen,

OK, I see what mean by, "conceptually incompatible perspectives ". Yes, I agree, of course, that the idea or notion -i.e. the CONCEPTion - that neurophysiological/neurochemical process in the living human organ we call the brain : that mass of darkish purple/grey, convoluted, throbbing , soft- gooey-ish matter that is sitting inside our skulls, could be the same ( i.e. identical ) with waking, for example, phenomenal consciousness (including its something - there -is -like to be -me quality) is intuitively nonsensical.

I am open-minded with regard to your own theory of mind.

Your argument is very similar at a fundamental level to the late David Bohm's ( the famous physical theorist/philosopher of mind) thesis of the Implicit Order. Bohm proposes that the primal ground of being is what he terms the "Holoflux"; the Holoflux is like the ocean of pure consciousness ( which exists in a state of pure dynamic "flux", and ,to to crudely summarise 400 pages of Bohm's theory, we ( living, conscious, human beings) are like waves that rise up from the body of the ocean, temporarily exist, and then fall back down into the watery depths. For Bohm, matter is a second order phenomenon, consciousness is always the primary order.

Regards,

Dachshund

[Dachshund]

Tamminen,

I am glad you read Place's paper. His argument is interesting and very tempting isn't it; tempting, in the sense that he and other Identity Theorist like J.J. Smart offer a very elegant, neat solution to the "hard problem"(!)

[Dachshund]

Tamminen,

When one considers the EXTRAORDINARY physical complexity of the living human brain, it is POSSIBLE that U.T. PLace is correct isn't it ? That is the point I wanted to make, just that it is POSSIBLE the PROPERTIES of our living brains are identical with diurnal consciousness when we are awake; i.e. that it IS possible waking phenomenal consciousness is NOTHING OVER AND ABOVE the collective physical properties of the living, functioning human brain. Materialist Identity Theory (IT) naturally has its critics; at the end of the day, it is merely a THEORY, it does not provides a comprehensive solution to the "hard problem", I fully appreciate this.

[Tamminen]

I am glad you read Place's paper. His argument is interesting and very tempting isn't it; tempting, in the sense that he and other Identity Theorist like J.J. Smart offer a very elegant, neat solution to the "hard problem"(!)

I have understood that the "hard problem" is how we can conceptually fill the gap between a certain wave-lenth of a photon and the phenomenal redness, for instance. So that we could in principle explain phenomenal qualities by the standard model of physics. I do not think anyone has solved this problem even in principle, and I think it is a pseudo problem. If there is no problem, there cannot be a solution.

[Dachshund]

Yes, that's right. I agree with you that what we call physical theory at present and its methods cannot solve the "hard problem" because the empirical scientist incapable of "getting behind" the lived moment-to-moment phenomenal experience of the subject that s/he is attempting to study. In short, the empirical scientist cannot directly experience the subject's (you, for example) phenomenal domain/ state of living consciousness simply because I am not - and cannot be - you. Thus, the "hard problem" is a nonsensical riddle.

I think (to use the imperfect analogy) of an ocean again, that you and I are both waves in the ocean, we are different, yet the same in the sense that we are both totally comprised of ocean water, etc. As "separate" waves we exist as are different "subjective" features that manifest themselves out off the one primary "subject" , that is the ocean itself.

Regards

Dachshund

[Consul]

I believe that the argument the 20th century materialist(Type) Identity Theorists (Place, Smart and David Armstrong to add a third major proponent of IT) present have the intellectual muscle to - at the very least convince you - it is , indeed, POSSIBLE that you are mistaken (?)

How could I forget to mention a fourth major proponent of the identity theory in the 20th century: Herbert Feigl

Note that there are subtle differences between the Australian IT—Place, Smart, Armstrong—and Feigl's.

"For Feigl the body is the problematical pole of the mind-body problem. Our misconception of the physical stands in the way of an identification of mind and body. A clarified conception of the physical rids it of its identification resistant properties. The raw feels of immediate acquaintance can then be seen to identical with certain features of the central nervous system.
…
On this view the identity of the mental and the physical—or, more precisely, the identity of the raw feels of experience with certain neurophysiological states—comes to this: the qualia that present themselves directly to us in experience are the reality that is denoted both by phenomenal terms and by neurophysiological terms. As far as living, experiencing brains are concerned, raw feels are the basic reality. And it is this one, basic reality that is the subject matter of introspective psychology and of neurophysiology."
(p. 130)

"Qualia as the basic reality

What then of the claim that qualia are the basic reality? There can be no doubt that Feigl makes the claim that living, experiencing brains (or certain features thereof) are qualia. Feigl's preferred way of making this point is in the following formal mode of speech:
—
The "mental" states or events (in the sense of raw feels) are the referents (denotata) of both the phenomenal terms of the language of introspection, as well as of certain terms of the neurophysiological language. [Feigl, 1958, p. 447]
—
But he does not hesitate to come right out and say that the qualia are the ultimate reality where living, experiencing brains are concerned:
—
According to the identity thesis the directly experienced qualia...are the realities-in-themselves that are denoted by the neurophysiological descriptions. [Feigl, 1958, p. 457]

Speaking "ontologically" for the moment, the identity theory regards sentience (qualities experienced, and in human beings knowable by acquaintance) ... [as] the basic reality. [Feigl, 1958, p. 474]" (p. 132)

"So much for a brief sketch of Feigl's version of the identity theory. This sketch leaves many questions open. Some of these questions I shall address after I have outlined the Australian version of the identity theory. But whatever the shortcomings of the Austrian version of the identity theory mayor may not be—I want to underline one outstanding virtue of this account This version of the identity theoty preserves experience unscathed. On Feigl's version of the theory the raw feels (or qualia) of experience are a basic reality. Fodor has written:
'if aboutness is real, it must really be something else.' [Fodor, 1987, p. 97] And many philosophers—among them the Australian identity theorists—seem to accept an analogous slogan for qualia: If raw feels are real, they must really be something else. Feigl's version of the identity theory does not buy into this reductivist criterion of reality. Qualia are real on their own terms. And, if Feigl is right, the acknowledgment of their ultimate reality poses no threat whatsoever to a physicalists view of the world. To my mind, Feigl's insistence on the reality of 'untampered-with' qualia counts strongly in favor of his theory. For this way the phenomenological adequacy of Feigl's identity theory is beyond reasonable doubt In other words: the thought experiment of trying on the theory definitely yields the result that it is like something to function according to the Austrian version of the identity theory. I believe that phenomenological adequacy is the primary responsibility of a philosophical theory of consciousness. On this count, Feigl's theory succeeds brilliantly." (p. 134)

(Stubenberg, Leopold. "Austria vs. Australia: Two Versions of the Identity Theory." In Austrian Philosophy Past and Present: Essays in Honor of Rudolf Haller, edited by Keith Lehrer and Johann Christian Marek, 125-146. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997.)

[Tamminen]

If brain processes and the corresponding mental contents denote the same thing, be it physical, mental or neutral, we have solved the mind/body problem, but where is the "hard problem" in this case? How to fill the conceptual gap? Impossible. There is no hard problem.

[Consul]

If brain processes and the corresponding mental contents denote the same thing, be it physical, mental or neutral, we have solved the mind/body problem, but where is the "hard problem" in this case? How to fill the conceptual gap? Impossible. There is no hard problem.

Some say psychophysical identities are brute, i.e. inexplicable, facts, in the sense that it's pointless to ask why mental process M = physical process P. However, if mental attributes (as attributive contents of mental processes) are (neuro)physical attributes, they are complex/composite/compound (neuro)physical attributes; and it's not pointless to ask how (neuro)physical attributes can compose or constitute a mental attribute. So there's still a "hard problem" of composition/constitution even if the materialist identity theory is true.

(I accept the thesis that composition (constitution) is identity, which is not accepted by all philosophers. If you reject this thesis, then from your point of view to say that mental attributes and processes are composed of/constituted by physical attributes and processes is not to say that the former are identical to the latter.)

[Tamminen]

(I accept the thesis that composition (constitution) is identity, which is not accepted by all philosophers. If you reject this thesis, then from your point of view to say that mental attributes and processes are composed of/constituted by physical attributes and processes is not to say that the former are identical to the latter.)

In my version of mind/brain identity it is in fact not correct to say that the concepts of mental contents and brain processes denote the same thing. They only refer to or are about the same thing, the subject's relationship to the material world. But the denotation of 'red', for instance, is totally different from the denotation of the word for the corresponding brain process. The levels of description are conceptually incompatible, although what they describe is the same chain of events. And a composition of physical attributes is physical, not mental. There is no bridge over that river.

[Dachshund]

n my version of mind/brain identity it is in fact not correct to say that the concepts of mental contents and brain processes denote the same thing. They only refer to or are about the same thing, the subject's relationship to the material world.

No ! I must point out that this is absolutely NOT what proponents of materialist Identity Theory in the philosophy of mind ( i.e. advocates like Place, Smart, Armstrong and Feigl, etc.) are arguing ,Tamminen. When U.T. Place, for instance, says that consciousness is identical to a brain process, he means "identical" in a very strict sense; as I have already mentioned above on this thread, Place means "identical" in the very strict sense that 4+4 is necessarily identical (equal to) 8. For Place and Smart (and Co) the properties of the subjective, lived, phenomenal consciousness experienced by "John Smith" over the past, say, 5 minutes, are identical to ( i.e. are, strictly speaking, NOTHING OVER AND ABOVE) the properties of the physical neurobiological ( e.g. neurophysiological/ neurochemical/ neuroelectrical, etc, etc) processes that took place in John Smith's living brain over this time. This is what they are proposing.

Regards

Dachshund

[Dachshund]

PS: Tamminen, this SOUNDS completely nonsensical, but it actually is not. What Place, Smart, Armstrong, and Feigl etc; are proposing is POSSIBLY correct; that is, one cannot dismiss their case "out of hand" as totally ridiculous and utterly non-plausible.

[Consul]

When U.T. Place, for instance, says that consciousness is identical to a brain process, he means "identical" in a very strict sense; as I have already mentioned above on this thread, Place means "identical" in the very strict sense that 4+4 is necessarily identical (equal to) 8.

"There did seem to be a tendency among philosophers to have thought that identity statements needed to be necessary and a priori truths. However identity theorists have treated ‘sensations are brain processes’ as contingent. We had to find out that the identity holds."
—J. J. C. Smart: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/

So the materialist identity theorists initially regarded psychophysical identities as contingent, i.e. as non-necessary. That is, they thought that reductive physicalism about the mind/consciousness is actually true, i.e. true in the actual world, but not necessarily true, i.e. true in all possible worlds. But this was criticized by Kripke with his discovery of necessary identities a posteriori such as water = H₂O. Chemists had to find out empirically that water is H₂O; but despite this fact, water is necessarily identical to H₂O, i.e. there is no possible world where water is different from H₂O.

Correspondingly, that scientists had to find out empirically that experiences are brain processes doesn't mean that their identity isn't necessary. Of course, to assert the necessity of psychophysical identities is to assert not only the actual truth but also the necessary truth of reductive physicalism. This implies that nonphysical souls (such as God) and their nonphysical minds/consciousnesses are necessarily nonexistent: There aren't any such entities and there couldn't have been any!

[TheConsciousNarrator]

if universal consciousness is everything while universal consciousness manifested physical reality that means that consciousness is physical no?? no?? souls exist because soul means SOUL-LAR while the solar system means SOUL-LAR system so its a system of souls while our souls originated in the stars which is why we have zodiac signs with each zodiac sign having a character trait no?? no?? each character trait has meaning because each character trait is descriptive so the metaphysical side of souls is actually sacred language so if you can think a thought and it has meaning to it that means that your self talk is your soul so how can souls not exist if we think thoughts??

[Tamminen]

n my version of mind/brain identity it is in fact not correct to say that the concepts of mental contents and brain processes denote the same thing. They only refer to or are about the same thing, the subject's relationship to the material world.

No ! I must point out that this is absolutely NOT what proponents of materialist Identity Theory in the philosophy of mind ( i.e. advocates like Place, Smart, Armstrong and Feigl, etc.) are arguing ,Tamminen. When U.T. Place, for instance, says that consciousness is identical to a brain process, he means "identical" in a very strict sense; as I have already mentioned above on this thread, Place means "identical" in the very strict sense that 4+4 is necessarily identical (equal to) 8. For Place and Smart (and Co) the properties of the subjective, lived, phenomenal consciousness experienced by "John Smith" over the past, say, 5 minutes, are identical to ( i.e. are, strictly speaking, NOTHING OVER AND ABOVE) the properties of the physical neurobiological ( e.g. neurophysiological/ neurochemical/ neuroelectrical, etc, etc) processes that took place in John Smith's living brain over this time. This is what they are proposing.

Regards

Dachshund

Here our views differ radically, but what I am suggesting is also a kind of identity, because it does not imply any kind of substance dualism.

Correspondingly, that scientists had to find out empirically that experiences are brain processes doesn't mean that their identity isn't necessary. Of course, to assert the necessity of psychophysical identities is to assert not only the actual truth but also the necessary truth of reductive physicalism. This implies that nonphysical souls (such as God) and their nonphysical minds/consciousnesses are necessarily nonexistent: There aren't any such entities and there couldn't have been any!

Also in my version of mind/body identity there cannot be any nonmaterial souls. And I claim that mind/body identity cannot be found empirically or a priori, and this can be seen a priori.