The argument from consciousness for woo

[wearestardust]

I caught the end of the Health Report on Radio Rational this morning, on the subject of early-onset dementia. I was extremely interested to find out that people with fronto-temporal dementia understand the literal meanings of words, but don’t get irony, sarcasm or metaphor.

Which reminded me of something that puzzles me from time to time.

Now, some theists, and we see it from time to time here, are prone to make the equation “consciousness, therefore god exists”. The idea that they are putting forward seems to be that consciousness is something that self-evidently can’t possibly be a consequence of mere matter. The more sophisticated argument, which we haven’t seen here, seems to be that we can completely understand how a brain works and describe it at any level of detail, but that won’t tell us what the experience of consciousness is.

The thing that puzzles me is that it always has been self-evident to me, based on the merest knowledge of neurobiology (and in particular knowledge about result of brain injury – hence the RN program reminding me of this issue), that consciousness and personality emerge from physical brain function. This was so even when I was a believer; indeed I took it as being one of those mysteries that god would have to solve as to how I was going to enjoy eternal life, given that when my brain dies my consciousness and personality will as they were then (and are now) cease to be.

It also strikes me on extremely brief reflection that the ‘even if you understand every bit of the brain you won’t have consciousness’ argument is also wrong, and obviously so. If you were to print out the data on a CD, and read the complete technical specifications of a CD player, that wouldn’t be the same as hearing music either; but we don’t need to posit supernatural forces to explain recorded music. Understanding Bournoulli’s principle is not the same as experiencing flying in a plane. Etc etc etc etc.

Of course one can arrive at correct conclusions from incorrect premises. Have I been wrong to think it is so obvious? Or are theists grasping really really hard at straws?

[nari]

I think, therefore I am.
My version of that is 'I am, therefore I think'.

The jury is out on consciousness - folk like Christof Koch and a dozen others seem to think that consciousness is derived from the brain's physiological development because it can't do much with an non-conscious blob at its stem....;)
But others disagree and the disparity continues.

It's obvious to me that consciousness is a function of the evolutionary brain..but then I'd never consider any other quasi-scientific possibility.

nari

[atheist_angel]

understand the literal meanings of words, but don’t get irony, sarcasm or metaphor.I'm working on it, but it takes a heck of a long time.

It has a lot to do with training another part of your brain to compensate.
Like, I didn't have a sense of humor until recently.

It still takes me awhile to get the joke, sometimes.

Even though I can see the humor in things now, I can really only laugh at my own jokes... although, I must admit, there have been many Aspergian exceptions. (jokes)

Anyway, this doesn't only just apply to 'dementia'. It can apply to several disorders that are associated with damage\dysfunction to that area of the brain.

(just my two cents of expansion.) (sorry for going off topic.)

[direvus]

It also strikes me on extremely brief reflection that the ‘even if you understand every bit of the brain you won’t have consciousness’ argument is also wrong, and obviously so

...

Of course one can arrive at correct conclusions from incorrect premises. Have I been wrong to think it is so obvious? Or are theists grasping really really hard at straws?Human consciousness is one of the really prominent "gaps" remaining in our understanding of the universe, and it's a doozie. As has always been the case, theists focus on the gaps, because they provide fertile ground for resorting to mystical explanations.

Human consciousness is a particularly rich gap in this capacity, because it really is amazing and mysterious. Who'd have thought that a 1.5kg lump of grayish sludge could give rise to all the depth and passion of human experience? It's stupendously counter-intuitive, and a hard pill to swallow.

However, we are making good headway on closing this gap. The study of neurobiology is picking up a lot of momentum, and recent experiments using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) on the brain have yielded really interesting results.

For further reading on this topic I would heartily recommend the book The Quest for Consciousness by Christof Koch, which is all about the effort to explain the qualitative experience of consciousness in terms of physical, neuronal phenomena.

See also any of the wonderful talks given by V.S. Ramachandran at TED, or the Beyond Belief symposium series.

There was a really cool fMRI study about love by Helen Fisher recently, you can find a candid and entertaining writeup by one of the subjects at http://www.esquire.com/features/mri-of-love-0609.

So when somebody tells you "science can't explain consciousness", you can confidently reply with "actually, we're working on it".

If somebody tells you "science will never be able to explain consciousness", you might want to go with "why ever not?" or perhaps "what makes you so sure?".

I think that the reason people are still flogging this dead horse, is that the recent advances in neurobiology haven't really hit the public zeitgeist with full force yet. But they will, and I anticipate that a lot of people are going to have a difficult time with the implications.

[Caio]

Yep, consciousness is rather complicated, scientists cant actually pinpoint what it is and where it happens. Its slippery, every time we seem to thing we've pinned it down, it moves again :D.
It seems like consciousness is actually an illusion, and the whole thing is really complicated. But that the religious people try to worm their god into consciousness is yet another failed attempt to give their god scientific credibility. It fails to answer any questions about which god it proves exists, or how for that matter as it is a 'gap'...i dont know, i think that they will try to find any means of finding a reason to justify their god, its a part of the cancer of religion.

[atheist_angel]

I picture consciousness as a school of fish swimming in unison.
..or a flock of individual birds flying in formation.
It is a bunch of tiny things with individual functions coexisting.

[nari]

The other rather exciting thing about consciousness is the possibility we have no free will; everything we do is pre-determined by the nonconscious brain.

Now that is a doozie.....think of the implications: the theists would be very happy if it was shown beyond reasonable doubt that we have no free will.
They would sing hallalujah for the proof that there is a god, who guides us most of the time. But they would ignore the times where things go very wrong...

..the recent advances in neurobiology haven't really hit the public zeitgeist with full force yet.
Couldn't agree more. Folk I know have heard about the work of Ramachandran et al, but believe they could never understand his thoughts, so forget about trying.

nari

[Ford]

It fails to answer any questions about which god it proves exists, or how for that matter as it is a 'gap'...i dont know, i think that they will try to find any means of finding a reason to justify their god, its a part of the cancer of religion.

We don't understand it = God musta done it! There's no logic to be found in that!

@ Weareasdust. Great post.

[atheist_angel]

@A|A: I picture consciousness.

If the above test fails, consciousness may not have booted correctly.
Now I found that funny! (..and quite 'literally' true.)

[common pirate]

The other rather exciting thing about consciousness is the possibility we have no free will; everything we do is pre-determined by the nonconscious brain.

Now that is a doozie.....think of the implications: the theists would be very happy if it was shown beyond reasonable doubt that we have no free will.
They would sing hallalujah for the proof that there is a god, who guides us most of the time. But they would ignore the times where things go very wrong...


Couldn't agree more. Folk I know have heard about the work of Ramachandran et al, but believe they could never understand his thoughts, so forget about trying.

nari

i think this is a very likely reality,

i see no evidence of any type of free will at all.
im always just doing what i calculated to be my best possible action. based on my knowledge and situation.

Freewill is the illusion that i could have done something else, but if i was in that same brainstate that i was in when i made that calculation, why would that calculation change?

i would 100% of the time choose the same action, with the same knowledge in the same situation.

[nari]

...what i calculated to be my best possible action.
Ah, but the argument is that you, your conscious self, did NOT calculate the best possible action. Your nonconsciousness did...a few seconds before you "thought" of it. Weird...?

nari

[common pirate]

Ah, but the argument is that you, your conscious self, did NOT calculate the best possible action. Your nonconsciousness did...a few seconds before you "thought" of it. Weird...?

nari

exactly what i meant.

i never specified my conscious was having any part in my decisions, i think, i would still make the same decision under the same conditions. (with or without my conscious knowledge.)

my argument is against consciousness having any ability to modify decision making at calculation time at all.

so i agree with you. :p

[Davoz]

i never specified my conscious was having any part in my decisions, i think, i would still make the same decision under the same conditions. (with or without my conscious knowledge.)

my argument is against consciousness having any ability to modify decision making at calculation time at all.



This deflationary view of human assumptions of conscious autonomy came to prominence through the pioneering research of Benjamin Libet. Daniel Wegner provides a very readable account in The Illusion of Conscious Will (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002): ‘Much of what we do seems to surface from unconscious sources, and such causation provides a major challenge to our ideal of conscious agency (p. 156).

[Peter A]

The thing that puzzles me is that it always has been self-evident to me, based on the merest knowledge of neurobiology (and in particular knowledge about result of brain injury – hence the RN program reminding me of this issue), that consciousness and personality emerge from physical brain function.

Self-evident to you perhaps, not me. There is nothing self-evident about it at all. One needs to also keep in mind that just because something may appear to be obvious and self-evident, that simple fact alone does not necessarily mean that you have found the correct solution to the problem that you were seeking an answer to. It is rather 'self-evident' that the Earth is flat and that the sun orbits it, until a little more careful thought and consideration is applied, and then it is discovered that what was thought to be obvious just isn't so.

Before anyone screams 'Occam's Razor' at this, I think that I should also point out that Occam's (or Ockham's) Razor is not a scientific principle, law of nature, or foolproof method of elimination of extraneous explanations. It is only a general guide, a rule that one follows because, more often than not, it usually provides an explanation that fits all, or most, of the available facts.

[DanielV]

wearstardust, interesting topic.

I think what you are describing is the essence of emergent phenomena vs a purely reductionist viewpoint.

Reductionism is sometimes criticised but its obviously (given its success at shaping our understanding of the Universe) very effective in many circumstances.

You are quite right that we can elucidate the complete structure of the brain and yet not encompass conciousness - it seems things like conciousness arise as a result of the specific organisation of the complexity of the brain.

Author and Physicist Paul Davies has a lot to offer on these kinds of topics, I find.

[nari]

Author and Physicist Paul Davies has a lot to offer on these kinds of topics, I find.
He does, but I have a sneaky feeling he has a possible god agenda behind it all. Not sure why I think this, but put it down to female intuition. ;)

Christof Koch has also quite a bit to say about consciousness but there is nothing definite; it remains basically unknown, and controversial.

I'd like to know Dawkins' views on consciousness - does anyone know if he has voiced them?

nari

[Davoz]

Christof Koch has also quite a bit to say about consciousness but there is nothing definite; it remains basically unknown, and controversial.
I'd like to know Dawkins' views on consciousness - does anyone know if he has voiced them?


My understanding corresponds with Nari’s: nothing definite, but I think perhaps it's not quite as unknown as it was fifty or so years ago. As I don’t have a science background, I’ve read neuroscientists Koch, Damasio, Gazzaniga, Edelman, Dehaene, Changeux and others (but sorry, not Dawkins) as an antidote to philosophical/psychological theories of mind and consciousness, and have at least established to my own satisfaction so far that it’s with neuroscience and its offshoots that the rubber meets the road.

One can see a substantial shift away from the philosophical passion for definition towards functionalist perspectives: a greater interest in what consciousness does rather than what it is. This seems illogical, of course. If you don’t define something, how do you know what you’re looking for?

This is where a pragmatic realism comes into the picture. With a bit of retrovision about behaviourism and a willingness to take both commonsensical folk notions and medical practice into account, one can agree provisionally to think of consciousness as a property that is detectable, that one can be aware of in some way, when organisms engage in a range of different behaviours. It’s in this way that we see the idea of consciousness as an emergent property (rather than a ‘thing’) of some states of the organism.

Philosophers of consciousness have oft times described this property as ‘epiphenomenal’, but without really resolving its ambiguity. If ‘epiphenomenal’ simply conveys the idea of a bit of redundant evolutionary baggage , something that ‘happened’ when an organism was really engaged in doing something else, we don’t seem to be on the right track. I can’t imagine any neuroscientist or evolutionary biologist not seeing conscious behaviours as predominantly adaptive for the organisms which have evolved with them.

To go back to Koch, I have found his formulation, backed up by substantial evidence and observation, of ‘coalitions’ of neurons competing with others to reach a threshold of activation which could be seen to correlate with a ‘conscious’ visual perception, to have a marked Darwinian aspect.

But like Nari, I look forward to something more definitive (incidentally, Dverbern, although I’ve read some Paul Davies, I hadn’t thought of him as dealing with consciousness, and I’d be most grateful for a reference that might point me in the right direction).

[nari]

This site has a wealth of papers (some are fairly old) on consciousness.
http://consc.net/online

Haven't taken a decent look at the papers yet.

nari

[Sanity personified]

Anyway, this doesn't only just apply to 'dementia'. It can apply to several disorders that are associated with damage\dysfunction to that area of the brain.

Well you are so true, the difficulty or even inability to grasp such things as irony goes well byond dementia. I am autistic and there are many such things with which I experience a great deal of difficulty. Often I can only see the literal meaning of words, phrases and such. I am often unintentionally annoying people by doing what they ask of me as opposed to what they want of me. lol.:D

[nari]

Written jokes are OK; those which are spruiked in a social situation can be a total flop. The very small humour button just doesn't go 'ping'....
Originally Posted by wearestardust http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/forums/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/forums/showthread.php?p=49765#post49765)
The thing that puzzles me is that it always has been self-evident to me, based on the merest knowledge of neurobiology (and in particular knowledge about result of brain injury – hence the RN program reminding me of this issue), that consciousness and personality emerge from physical brain function.

I can't think of any other explanation either. Anything else sounds woo-ey.

nari

[Sanity personified]

Thanks Black.:) For the first time I can be myself and do not have to pretend to believe in the obviously absurd. Three cheers for Atheism. :D:D:D

[Seamus]

Originally Posted by wearestardust http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/forums/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/forums/showthread.php?p=49765#post49765)
The thing that puzzles me is that it always has been self-evident to me,

Sorry to be pedantic,(OK I'm not) but-----how is what you see as 'self evident' relevant?

It's a concept with which I have a problem.I'm immediately put in mind of the US Declaration on Independence and the fatuous statement. "we hold these truths to be self evident" I'm unconvinced there is any such animal as a self evident truth.

The argument seems suspiciously like ;'argument from ignorance. 'viz argument from personal incredulity.

Of course,I realise I may be mistaken and look forward to being corrected in any error of logic.