/lit/ - Literature

everything is one bro we're all coming from stardust so in the end... wer'e all stardust you know? -mind blown-

>>10842465
Why don't you think so?

>>10842465
>souls exist

>>10842465

It's actually quite easy to refute Descartes with the same amount of philosophical rigor that he himself puts forth. It is done like this:

>I have a clear and distinct idea that Descartes is a retarded faggot

How could the soul and body possibly be the same thing? That doesn’t even begin to make sense

>>10842465
Do corpses have souls? If not...

>>10842465
What philosopher should I read if I believe that soul and body cant actually be discussed because they only exist as a concept in language we can refer to without ever approaching the thing in itself if the thing in itself even exists as some fully defineable set of criteria it seems impossible that we could ever fdefine it with language.

>Consciousness exists, and is the only thing that one can know exists
Recognize that consciousness can't be explained by science - at best brain activity filters, not encompasses, consciousness - and you have established the existence of the mind/soul.
You could reasonably stop here and not posit the existence of a material world - in other words, you could say that the consciousness exists in and of itself and there's no reason to believe it is the product of anything. This is kind of like believing God, except you are God. But if you don't accept that that, then...
>Something exists - at least one object exists, which the consciousness is a product of, created by, or related to in some way
Thus you have a material world (object(s)). So now we have both the soul and the body, separate from one another, i.e. Cartesian dualism.

>>10842465
He should have stopped with the demon in the first meditation. Merleau-Ponty nailed him for that.

Bro ur wrong dan brown told me the soul is real man they measured it on this scale thing when some old fart died

>>10842578
Further as it seems completely opposite points can seemingly be ptoperly argued by using the kind of language that is appropriated for one point or its opposite, I question whether we can even define anything as an absolute. I cant help but shake the feeling that philosophy is an exercise in asymptotic approximations without resolution. By this it seems that truth cannot be established by philosophy, rather just points of view.

>>10842541
I would guess the point is that there is no soul, just the body, part of which is the supervenient phenomenon that is known as "soul."

>>10842579
>can't be explained by science

Has not does not imply it can not. Is there any argument for consciousness being unexplainable or incomprehensible?

>>10842697
the argument that everything is 'within' consciousness, everything we can possibly point to or be aware of is already 'inside' it, and it can't be inside itself, because it creates a sort of endless recursion

>>10842697
It's been explained by Tononi as an integrated system akin to a computer. It doesn't get to how the experiential side happnes, but it outlines what goes into it.

>>10842697
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/activities/modules/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf

>>10842697
>STEMsperg enters the thread

>>10842697
Yes. Look up the idea of "qualia" for one aspect of the argument.
Also recognize that scientism is an insidious philosophy of the 21st century that is widely unrecognized and that no major philosopher has ever believed science accounts for consciousness.

>>10842712
>Nagel
More MRI studies and tables, less words in paperback format.

>>10842721
I know you're joking but it's not funny. Tons of underage redditors would genuinely reply like that.

>>10842541
Read Spinoza.

>>10842721
*blocks ur path*

>>10842729
No, I mean that I would have been dragged out back behind the compactor and shot if I wrote a paper like that. I'm a material denying shaivist who drinks at the fountain of french phenomenology and laughs at sam harris for not reading enough philosophy and that argument is still 30 years behind current neuroscience. Half the fuckers now are what I described and even they can point to what is going on that leads to experience.

It's possible there's some simple explanation between experience and atoms, and thus free will and the self are fictions, illusions, and then that's that.

On the other hand, qualia and atoms may have reciprocal causality, and that the self and it's will have an actual existence that is free and chooses, in which case we are, and there is some phenomenal science yet to be discovered, so phenomenal that quantum mechanics would look fucking stupid.

We probably won't know within our time, so back to lit.

>>10842760
the point is that neuroscience can't touch that argument because it deals solely with objective descriptions
you either didn't read the essay or you don't understand it at all

>>10842717
t. uneducated /lit/fag who likes to bask in the intelligenc of others

>>10842465
They are separate. Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon from information integration occurring among microtubules in the skull of a particular body. The body is a vessel of survivability and content for said consciousness, a set of necessary conditions locally related and distinct from all sets necessary for consciousness itself.

>>10842465
>tfw ur historical portrait will never be this smug

>>10842465
>the spirit resides with god
Read some Simoneous Weilonius

>>10842493
>It doesn’t.

>>10842514
But saying that only proves God's existence, bro.

>>10842597
Nagel's View From Nowhere

>>10843227
>tfw you'll never have a historical portrait

>>10842578
Yunmen

>>10842465
This should be the last /lit/ thread ever. We’re done. This board is officially filled with retarded, Reddit-tier edgelord brainlets.

I hope you drown in front of your family.

>>10842465
Now I can say I've read something more retarded: your post.

>>10842578
Kant explains the indeterminable subject in the first Critique.

He says that it can be discussed to the extent that we can know certainly it (the subject, the soul) is not materially definable, but that's as far as it goes.

>>10843864
I agree completely, I think I'm finally done here. You hear this a lot: "A thread died for this." While accurate, this phrase generally carries no weight. But just this once, if you would do me a favor and hear me out, it would do all of us a lot of good.
A. Thread. Died. For this. You woke up this morning, poured yourself a bowl of Faggot Flakes, moistened them with your impotent Faggot prostate milk (which IS in fact impotent, because you're a fucking faggot) and, within seconds, decided that today of all days would be the time you decide to cut your synapse firing quota by just a little too much.
So you hopped online, carved out this uninspired chicken scratch, probably failed the captcha once for every strand of peach fuzz on your half-empty sack, and clicked Submit.
At that moment, a thread died. A thread that could have been bumped. A thread that could have been resurrected with content, or valuable discourse between its denizens. Hell, it could've even been bumped for absolutely no reason. And that would've been okay. Because, had it survived, a few more seconds could have been spent without having had your abortion of a post been born in this world.

>>10842697
Science is not equipped to deal with consciousness

>>10843890
>You woke up this morning, poured yourself a bowl of Faggot Flakes, moistened them with your impotent Faggot prostate milk (which IS in fact impotent, because you're a fucking faggot)

>>10842760
You drink the fountain of French phenomenology yet don't understand a simple paper?

>>10843130
>in the skull
You ought not limit consciousness to particular life. Plants and all other organisms have consciousness too. I agree with the rest of what you said though.

>>10843130
Oh god, don't even start with that microtubules bullshit.

>>10843978
> plants and other organisms are consciousness
kek, no consciousness without a soul bucko.

>>10843978
>You ought not limit consciousness to particular life
It's actually really useful to only consider actual animals so you don't immediately jump to aimless speculation of unobserved phenomena.

>>10844061
It makes no difference which exact piece of flesh is producing phenomenal experience, IIT is correct and establishes the individuated subject as a product of the brain's predictive processing.

>>10843878

That's something expanded on (albeit to the opposite side) very heavily by speculative realists and their predecessors (mainly /ourguy/ Land really). From what I can gather these people insist on shoving metaphysics into the realm of the material and assume that yes, soul is definitely materially definable because it is merely secondary to matter (as emergence or whatever you want to call it). They posit some kind of primordial structure where production comes before everything else, and in producing, matter is able to represent itself. In creating its own representation, the representation can then reflect upon itself and from your point of view it seems like the representation was what came first. Or at least this is what I read from some of that mumbo jumbo, I don't know quite how I feel about it yet

> Increasing belief universe could be a simulation
> The soul can be possibly explained through quantum mechanics

"Grant science one free miracle and it can explain everything" ~T.Mckenna

/lit/ is just the worst

>>10844132
any living thing with even the barest of senses has a nascent form of consciousness

Op is gonna be BTFO when we upload a human conscience to a hard drive

>>10844136
Focusing just on humans already includes a lot of aimless speculating and its probably more useful to start by understanding simple consciousness like those of plants before something as complex as a human.

>>10844132
>soul

>>10844136
>Predictive processing producing consciousness
>Flesh producing phenomenal experience
Neither the scientific community nor the philosophic community likes your theory. Why cling to it? It's no better than Descartes's pineal gland.

>>10844230
OP is retarded, but neither will we ever be able to "upload" human consciousness to a hard drive. At least not at all in the way people conceive of it when they say stupid shit like that.

>>10842465
Why is it retarded? Because you don't believe it?

>>10842578
Stirner Or Lacan

>>10842465
>when body is destroyed soul no longer exist bro lol
>souls exist
What the fuck do you cunts smoke?

>>10844638
A lot of his arguments were a good start for the time, but as the ideas have progressed through history they have been shown to be unequivocally false

>>10844612
*tips*

>>10844784
epic meme friend see you at www.reddit.com for more dank memes

>>10842748
>read a jew
No thanks.

>>10844729

The soul is the self experiencing itself as an abstraction, rather than as a condition of a material world.

>>10842712
It seems like he's using a sense of the word "know" that means to experience, e.g. "I know your pain", and conflating it with the usual sense of "know" meaning to be aware of a fact. But knowledge about an experience and the experience itself are two completely different things. You can conceivably be aware of any fact you want about an experience without sharing it (e.g. you can know that a bat is using echolocation to find its way and any detail of that experience like where it's focusing its attention, what the limits of its current perception are, etc., all without yourself being able to echolocate) and you can experience something without being aware of any facts about your experience, even including the fact of its existence (bats themselves may not be very self-aware). They're different things in the same way that knowledge about a rock is not the same thing as a rock.

I think it's easy to confuse the two for a few reasons
1. Having an experience typically makes it much easier to learn about it, since we can now do so through introspection.
2. When we think of examples of things we experience, we necessarily pick experiences we are aware of having and therefore probably know a lot about.
3. We think about our own experiences mostly through memory and we may feel that remembering an experience is like reliving or having a weaker version of that same experience. But long term memory is mostly belief about our past experiences rather than a perceptual recreation of them. Unless you have a photographic memory, you remember very little of what you see in terms of images that can be recalled in detail and remember almost all of it in terms of facts about what was seen. (In fact, the general unreliability of eye-witness testimony suggests that when you seem to relive an experience through memory, you are to some extent making an imaginary reconstruction of it influenced by beliefs about what the experience was, beliefs that can themselves be influenced by things other than the experience itself.)

A scientific, reductive understanding of consciousness would mean knowing the principles that lead from "X has such and such brain state" to "X is afraid", which is admittedly nowhere close to being done, but it need not "tell" us what it is like to feel X's fear insofar as that is a subjective experience rather than a piece of information. Of course, all of this implies that science is aiming at knowledge in the first place, which is a whole other can of worms.

>>10842465
How do you explain transgender people then? To say otherwise would delegitimize them.

>>10843890
It's cyber Darwinism fella, if the thread was good, it would have lived.

>>10844735
desu his observation that the mind and senses are better at determining what's good/harmful for a person than at determining truth was ahead of its time given what we now know, namely that we are what we are because we're evolved to be good survivors rather than created to be good understanders.

>>10843890
>moistened them with your impotent Faggot prostate milk (which IS in fact impotent, because you're a fucking faggot)
Anon, being gay doesn't make you impotent.

>>10844654
That's more like if you believe life is only about pursuing whatever tickles your emotions and the lives of others are meaningless flesh bags to increase the activation of your glands and synapses, aka autistic, self-centered, nihilistic morons who think bring self aware about how shitty they are is smart.

>>10844634
>>Predictive processing producing consciousness
Information integration theory is the best explanation of consciousness atm

>>Flesh producing phenomenal experience
This is evidently the case according to the cogito and some notion of realism or materialism.

>Why cling to it? It's no better than Descartes's pineal gland.
Not true, this is where top flight neuroscience is pointing.

>>10844588
>Focusing just on humans already includes a lot of aimless speculating
No, observing consciousness in human is observation, not speculation.

>its probably more useful to start by understanding simple consciousness like those of plants before something as complex as a human.
lol no, plants are not conscious, I don't think you're very informed on this topic.

>>10842465
Do you think the voice you hear from the radio is a miniature man sitting inside of it speaking?

>>10845240
Are you saying it isn't?

>>10842465
Doesn't Descartes go on to say that they are intermingled?

>>10842465
B-but Anon haven't you read Leibniz's Mill argument a-and don't you disagree with Spinoza that it would be impossible for immaterial substance to interact with material substance without becoming material? And La Mettrie, he solved the mind-body problem immediately after Desctards, but w-what an idiot ha?

>>10842465
It was at one time not retarded at all to think that. But yes, if you still do, you are definitely retarded.

>>10845228
One of the key problems with Descartes's theorization of the Mind-Body relation was the interaction problem, which he never did surpass. You're just avoiding the question with "neuroscience." Besides, your "top neuroscience" isn't exactly well received by the scientific community. Your theory still can't explain the interaction problem, and cannot address or describe the phenomenal nature of consciousness. Even if it were to have something to do with microtubules, it wouldn't really tell us anything.

>>10845664
It can't be surpassed because material and immaterial logically cannot interact. It's the only objection you need to disprove a soul. Never been solved because it can't be

>>10845681
The interaction problem doesn't disprove a soul. You can just as easily use it to disprove the material world. In fact, that's easier, since we only have direct access to our minds.

>>10842465
Read Avicenna

>>10843864
I’m not even OP but please just shut the fuck up. No one is interested in your embarrassing little declarations - just leave if you want.
>>10843890
You too. This wasn’t an amusingly long-winded insult it was just tryhard garbage.

>>10843864
Just take this into consideration - you're defending Descartes' fucking dualism. Get your head checked. You're not only "defending" Descartes, you're throwing an absolute fit.

>>10845664
Yeah it can, bitch nigga.

>the interaction problem
Body is the physical part of the system, i.e. neuroanatomy of the brain, circulatory system, etc. Mind is an emergent phenomenon of neural processing. They interact in the same way that briskly moving your legs while standing produces running, particular physical interactions giving rise to outcomes greater than themselves.

>>10845681
>material and immaterial logically cannot interact
You're introducing immaterialism to a situation which involves only material objects and non-material phenomena. Immaterialist notions of the soul were always known to be bullshit, a fucking princess btfo'd Descartes retarded theory because it's so stupid.

We now know that unpredictable, non-linear systems of matter produce emergent phenomena (patterns) through attractors and feedback loops. Browsing 4chan, sitting down, jerking off, these states are not merely their material substrate, but the accumulation of interactions among all necessary substrata. The emergent phenomenon is in itself not physical, but a particular pattern within a physical system and experienced/observed as something in itself. Thus it can be said that the mind and body are distinct if we take the body to be the material basis through which consciousness arises which every fucking neuroscientist will tell you is the case.

>>10843501
>he doesnt understand greentext
leave newfag

>>10845228
>plants are not conscious
But they are.

>>10847308
Still never understood what it was about bioelectric interactions that could give rise to qualia, subjective experience, anything more than a p-zombie. "Emergent phenomena" exist, but don't give rise to anything not possible from their basic materials- computer from electric signals, but not qualia from bioelectricity.

>>10842465
What's the difference between an alive and a dead body?

>>10845179
Slow /lit/ was the best thing that ever happened to this site.

Look at brain injuries.

When certain sections of the material is injured, the self is affected.

No better proof that the mind = the brain.

>>10848219
That does imply they're linked, but leaves the qualia problem as in >>10847737 and the symbolic/representational problem (eg chinese room) problems rather problematic for materialist metaphysics.

>>10847740
One of them has my cum on it.

>>10847308
I can't tell if this pic is just too smart for me or if it's nonsense made by a schizo.

>>10842572
corpses to some groups of people, are just vessels. They no longer hold the soul in the body.

>>10844638
It's belief in nonsense now that science has completely ruled out its possibility.

>>10848552
Science really hasn't ruled anything out. You should ponder the allegory of the cave.

>>10848552
Read a little bit. A methodology that uses physical experiments or results to vindicate its theories is not applicable to ideas which have no physical proof.

In other words, you cannot apply materialistic, deductive reasoning, to something that is inherently of the nature of spirituality or the soul.

>>10848573
You have failed to understand any of the implications of modern science if you think ideas have no "physical proof." YOU "read a little bit"; read someone who understood them excellently and was the first to fully realize them, Nietzsche.

>>10842465
>It's all like .. the higgs boson mane. If we can jus solve the string theory we'll find the big bang and then whoa....
Fuck materialists and your soulless, cowardly religion

>>10848615

I'm saying this as an unironic STEMfag about to enter a fully funded PhD program, you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Dualism and empirical, materialist science are 100% seperate ways of looking at reality. By all means, keep it up though. Seeing science from the outside has truly helped me get a leg up on conformists like yourself who follow the chain of established logic all the way up the tree to top heavy retardation like string theory instead of breaking off a branch at a suitable point.

testing

>>10848650
I don't give a fuck what you're studying. This is a philosophical question, and PHILOSOPHY has already answered it. Nietzsche answered it. He wouldn't have had there not been the advancements in science that there had been. Anyone who still thinks the mind-body dualistic perspective isn't ridiculous has clearly not read him.

>Idealism
Yep
>Dualism
Maybe
>Materialism
Reddit

>>10848615
Nietzsche wasn't an a materialist in the sense that you are and his elimination of consciousness wasn't the kind you're trying subtly argue for
>>10848652
MODS MODS MODS AN INTRUDER WHO HATH BEEN BANNED FROM OUR SALON IS TRYING TO BREAK FREE OF HIS IP BONDAGE SEIZE HIM QUICKLY BEFORE HE POSTS ANOTHER PETERSON THREAD OR DFW MEME

>>10848673
I'm not a "materialist" and I don't seek elimination of consciousness. Where the fuck do you get these ideas from?

>>10842465
/lit/ is a dualist board, faggot

>>10847737
>but don't give rise to anything not possible from their basic materials
Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, so no. You really just don't understand this subject.

>>10847564
Maybe you figured that out through aimless speculating, but according to observed facts mammals are conscious and it's possible that other animals are as well. What is your evidence of consciousness existing in plants?

>>10848475
lol are you serious?
>intrinsic existense
>composition
>information
>integration
>exclusion
Think, brainlet, think.

>>10848971
>Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon
Utterly unproven. Nothing else it can be under strict materialistic metaphysics, but pulling qualia and referential thought out of neuron signals via "emergent phenomenon" stretches the term about to the point of magic.

>>10849041
>pulling qualia and referential thought out of neuron signals via "emergent phenomenon" stretches the term about to the point of magic
You sound like a creationist desperately holding onto your magical beliefs. Sorry bro, but particular properties of the mind have established neural correlates and consciousness soon will too.

>>Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon
>Utterly unproven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRel1JKOEbI

>>10842514
It's embarrassingly obvious that your reading of Descartes begins and ends with his Wikipedia page. How do you know the concepts of retardation and faggotry aren't known from yourself? PS: They are!

Yeah, Descartes is the perfect example of what happens when we let a stemfag into philosophy. His proof for God was also retarded.

>>10842579
It can be explained it's just that there is no generally accepted model you dumb chicken

>>10844192
very apt desu

>>10848219
The mind may be immaterial, but it's subjective, egoic experience is still conditioned by the material seat it inhabits.

>>10849663
>It can be explained because I say it can!

wew

>>10849087
That video is good evidence that scientists should need philosophical training before doing philosophy.
>neuroscience doesn't help much with this hard problem
>rephrase easy problem of consciousness
>this the real problem now
>completely ignore hard problem
>give examples of easy problem solutions
>philosophers btfo
Seriously, that was embarassing. Must be why you feel the need to conflate me with creationists instead of arguing.
>We solved the easy problem so the hard one will be easy!
I'll stay skeptical of that, thanks.

>>10849041
>qualia
Such an outrageously goofy concept. Even if scientists have not yet mapped out the entire mechanistic scheme of the body yet, it is obvious that the body is like the hardware for the mind which is like the software, making the latter an emergent synergistic property of the former, since the mind can be tampered with by tampering with the body. Further, the concept of qualia seems to completely ignore the entire field of psychology, which studies the effects of physiological conditions on thought and behavioral patterns and their intersection with various other factors such as childhood upbringing, social conditioning, and family health history. At no point is there even a hint from these studies that any of this suggests something outside or beyond the body — the idea that there is something outside or beyond the body is entirely a result of earlier societies which possessed rudimentary ideas of things like "the body" because they had less knowledge about how they worked. Is that not also how the idea of nothingness most likely came to me? Earlier man saw "emptiness" and "nothingness" in front of him, even though we now know that there is gaseous matter where there was supposedly "empty" space or "nothing".

>>10849850

>>10845162
>How do you explain transgender people then?
With a psychiatry textbook.
>To say otherwise would delegitimize them.
Hol on while I bust out the smallest nanoviolin in the world and shed a picotear in honor of transgender feelz.

>>10842465
Show proof that a soul exists please.

>>10849860
>believe in mind-body dualism
>use image which suggests that the mind grows from the body and is thus a direct property of it

>>10849850
>making the latter an emergent synergistic property of the former
[citation needed]

>since the mind can be tampered with by tampering with the body
And the body can be tampered by tampering with the mind, yes

>At no point is there even a hint from these studies that any of this suggests something outside or beyond the body
That's literally only because it *assumes* there's nothing outside the body tampering with the processes of the mind, a result of the scientific revolution and the absolute intoxication it's given us over our supposed control of the physical plane.

>Earlier man saw "emptiness" and "nothingness" in front of him
Have you even heard of aether?

>>10849882
>And the body can be tampered by tampering with the mind, yes
...and you think this somehow warrants a severance between mind and body, why? Don't answer, I know you didn't think too hard when you said that, since the statement also does not in any way logically nullify my statement. You just wanted to divert attention away from the need to think critically.

>That's literally only because it *assumes* there's nothing outside the body tampering with the processes of the mind
That's not an assumption because the suspicion that it is anything OTHER THAN the body never even enters the mind of the modern man whose mind has not been plagued by outdated interpretations from earlier man. Nothing in the data suggests an "outside the body" premise and everything about it suggests only the body. For it to be an assumption of the latter, the possibility of the former needs to come into view at some point.

>our supposed control of the physical plane.
So, are you denying the cold hard evidence all around you in cross-examination with records of the past which indicates that we as a species have not become increasingly more in control of nature as the sciences advance?

>>10843893
neither is religion.

>>10851428
Luckily we have philosophy

>>10842465
Do retards really believe in a soul

>>10849906
>.and you think this somehow warrants a severance between mind and body, why
that mental states can be self referential, and that their self referential nature can have an effect on neurological function, that the epiphenomenal interior space can loop back onto itself and cause a negative feedback which perpetuates new states in the brain is extremely interesting and is probably a fruitful area of study for AI research. It may or may not imply a causal connection between epiphenomenal self activity and the neurological substrate but there seems to be something there that is escaping genetics and the billiards ball physics of neuroscience.
>since the statement also does not in any way logically nullify my statement
if you use a presupposition that precludes rebuttal from your opponent you're not using logic in a good faith manner. It can be used in a good faith manner, which exposes its weakness as a way of determining truth, but you're not doing that
>You just wanted to divert attention away from the need to think critically
Critical thinking has nothing to do with what we're doing in this thread, using words you learned online and in classrooms in lieu of having an intuitive understanding of valid reasoning isn't a good sign for your ability to grasp higher phenomena. Critical thinking is about as meaningful as introspection, in that both are words used by materialists and idealists to refer to more complex manifolds of behavior than their highly limited language skills allow for. What you meant is, rationally (which is loaded) or materialistically.
>That's not an assumption because the suspicion that it is anything OTHER THAN the body never even enters the mind of the modern man
No it does near constantly, just socializing enough to be comfortably aware of other's minds its very clear many people believe in spooky action at a distance, immaterial influences, natures, essences, influences and spooks of all kinds even if they've lost their theological character
>Nothing in the data
right because a non-physical phenomena wouldn't be available to physical instruments and statistics generated form sense data
>outside the body" premise and everything about it suggests only the body.
then why can't you read someone's mind unless you instruct them to very specifically project an image into their brain from their mind? why can't you see someone's memories and abstract thoughts and read them? where is the mind happening and why does it go within and leave itself?
>For it to be an assumption of the latter, the possibility of the former needs to come into view at some point
it has millions of times today and will another million times tomorrow.
>So, are you denying the cold hard evidence
this means nothing, there is no cold hard evidence for super strings or higher dimensions and yet this is taught in physics and math, there is no evidence for atoms aside from electronic reproductions from computer systems, there is no evidence for dark matter

>>10842465
I don't think it's a generally accepted notion anymore

because there would have to be some undiscovered substance called "mind" that is distinct from matter

>>10848971
Anesthesia work on plants too.

>>10851612
its not a substance in the sense of matter which is hardly a substance, more a series of forces and fields of interaction, and it cannot be discovered by instruments of sensory perception at all. It can only be reasonably deduced and experienced by minds, it can experience itself, things without minds, or people who deny its existence cannot experience mind. This is automatically opposed to materialism and verificationism.

>>10851507
>that mental states can be self referential, and that their self referential nature can have an effect on neurological function
But if the physiological / neurological has an affect on the mind, then the mind changes, is part of time, is part of causality, and if it is part of causality, then any attempt to isolate it as a "thing-in-itself" is a falsehood. Within causality, things-in-themselves are fictions, all causes are effects and all effects causes and all things are merely effects off of one another. The water is hot to hands that are colder than it, the earth is round to eyes that can see it at a far enough distance... there is no "thing," not even the mind, that you can interpret, so much as even perceive, without you as interpreter, perceiver of it, and by this very notion, the concept of a "thing" without an interpreter / perceiver is nonsensical, cannot be imagined.

Nietzsche, Will to Power:

>The properties of a thing are effects on other "things": if one removes other "things," then a thing has no properties, i.e., there is no thing without other things, i.e., there is no "thing-in-itself."

>The apparent world, i.e., a world viewed according to values; ordered, selected according to values, i.e., in this case according to the viewpoint of utility in regard to the preservation and enhancement of the power of a certain species of animal. The perspective therefore decides the character of the "appearance"! As if a world would still remain over after one deducted the perspective! By doing that one would deduct relativity! Every center of force adopts a perspective toward the entire remainder, i.e., its own particular valuation, mode of action, and mode of resistance. The "apparent world," therefore, is reduced to a specific mode of action on the world, emanating from a center. Now there is no other mode of action whatever; and the "world" is only a word for the totality of these actions. Reality consists precisely in this particular action and reaction of every individual part toward the whole— No shadow of a right remains to speak here of appearance— The specific mode of reacting is the only mode of reacting; we do not know how many and what kinds of other modes there are. But there is no "other," no "true," no essential being—for this would be the expression of a world without action and reaction— The antithesis of the apparent world and the true world reduced to the antithesis "world" and "nothing."—

1/2

>>10852386
2/2

>a non-physical phenomena wouldn't be available to physical instruments and statistics generated form sense data
In other words, only the mind that perceives itself as in-itself, is in-itself; the assumption is a prerequisite for itself, it's a condition of itself. If you dare to speak about non-physical phenomena with any acknowledgement of what is doing the speaking, which is your body, which is a physical instrument, then there cannot be a mind-in-itself; but if you can imagine that your mind is separate from the body, then that is proof itself that it is. However, you are now removing your mind from the world, from time, from causality. Any identifiable transformation of the mind, any identifiable transmission between the mind and any other thing, is grounds for suspicion that it is not separate at all, because if there is any transmission, then both things become properties of one another, understandable only as properties. To be understood not as a property, but as a thing-in-itself, it must not be transmissible in any way. In this perspective, communication is impossible, conception of the world is now impossible, since in every conception of the world there is only properties of things identified, relativity is born from the acknowledgement of other things. There is no world anymore when all relativity is renounced. The mind is now not separate anymore, because there is no world; there is now nothing at all.

tl;dr if the mind is in-itself, then it cannot interact with causal things, or else it becomes causally bound as well, and then it ceases to be separate from its properties; and if it cannot interact with causal things — the world — and it is true that the mind is in-itself, then it is only interacting with itself, which is to say no interaction, and if it is only interacting with itself, then it has nothing to be separated from. No interaction, nothing separate of itself, only itself, nothing at all.

>>10851612
>undiscovered
nigger it is literally you. you 'discover' it every time some inane thought passes through your gay mind

>>10848971
Plants also have microtubules like your animals. I don't know why you exclude them.

I may be a brainlet but people seem to make a bigger than deal of this than it needs to be. Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon resulting from a certain complex configuration of matter. The only reason we don't understand it is because we don't know enough the structure of the human brain.
It's an interesting puzzle I guess but there are vastly more relevant inquiries in philosophy to talk about.

>>10852571
There are just certain things that can't ever be proven but can be subjectively experienced.

The soul, God, a lot of other phenomenon go under this sort of idea.

>>10852571
Understanding consciousness is understanding the portal we perceive everything through. Even if we fully understand the cause behind this mind projection, there are many implications leftover from that conclusion that must be faced. I don't see what inquiries in philosophy would be more relevant than the thing that makes the inquiries appear in the first place.

>>10847288
Defending cartesian dualism and not understanding how the conclusions were arrived at in a historical (or geaneological) context are not the same thing.

If you don't understand how 'retards' believed that the soul and body are separate then you didnt start with the Greeks and follow the thread.

Of course it sounds ridiculous today. Lots of philosophy sounds ridiculous today.

>>10849822
>the hard problem
LMAO go back to the 90s bro. Oh my God this embarrassing for you. Here's Thomas Metzinger laughing in your face: https://youtu.be/lRs5wFcL1Os?t=29m

>a lot of people who talk about the hard problem can't state what it consists in
hahahahaha

>>10851617
>>10852506
You're saying things like they're true without any evidence or reason.

>Plants also have microtubules like your animals
The microtubules in mammal brains are necessary but not sufficient for consciousness. Other complex processes observed in animals which are suspected to be necessary for consciousness are not observed in any plant.

>>10852579
It's not like you could ever record subjective experience using artificial neurology and a modified connectome.

>The soul, God, a lot of other phenomenon go under this sort of idea.
Really, just because you say so? I think it all can be explained well enough given a prism through which understanding of relevant information is possible.

>>10852789
"The consciousness community has just moved on. ...No serious researchers think about this anymore."
Oh, the neuroscientist community completely ignores it. That's one of the single worst refutations I've ever seen.
>Go back to the 90s
My mistake, I forgot that arguments lose all force if someone else made it 20 years ago. Kinda sucks to lose evolution though, was an interesting concept.

>>10852789
>he microtubules in mammal brains are necessary but not sufficient for consciousness.
what is your evidence of this

>>10842579
>recognize this baseless assertion I'm fabricating to justify my viewpoint, and then it all makes sense

>>10852941
Dude, it's just not relevant to answering questions about the existence of consciousness. The concept of a p-zombie is a thought experiment as profound as considering what a dog would look like if it were running without legs. Sure, it strikes at some interesting ideas, but it has no relevance in explaining consciousness itself that's why no one doing this work talks about such a dead concept.

>I forgot that arguments lose all force if someone else made it 20 years ago
>Kinda sucks to lose evolution though, was an interesting concept.
People still care about evolution because it's relevant to important conversations, the hard problem is not.

>>10852945
>>he microtubules in mammal brains are necessary but not sufficient for consciousness.
i.e. it's necessary for the consciousness observed in mammal brains, not all conscious beings. As long as the microtubules are not vestigial then they are deducibly necessary given their existence.

>>10853105
What im asking is how do you know the microtubules are necessary, is there some experiment possible where you remove them and then the person isn't conscious

>>10842465
Do you seriously believe the soul and body are together? You seem to be the retard here

How is one sure that ones' thoughts are his own?
If one believes he is non-existent, Is one therefore not or is he?

>>10842465
The body is connected to outside forces through EM, you're essentially a wetware radio receiver/transceiver and there's no real telling as of yet how much of "you" resides outside your Cartesian/Newtonian skin

>>10853116
Yes, when anesthesia inhibits their functionality in the prefrontal cortex consciousness ceases.

>>10853154
>you're essentially a wetware radio receiver/transceiver
Only for the spectrum of visible light.

>there's no real telling as of yet how much of "you" resides outside your Cartesian/Newtonian skin
"You" is a pretty loose concept so it varies widely in its meaning, but the concept of self is internal to the mind and personality is "you" as an object of the perception of others.

>>10853161
I have never heard that theory about anesthesia before, I thought the most popular theory was that it somehow stopped memory creation.

Anyway do you have a source for that?

>>10853220
>visible light is the only EM we sense or are influenced by
just no. You are made of matter and your nervous system's purpose is to transmit EM in the form of electric potentials

>>10853152
Then you have Cotard's syndrome.

>>10853225
>I thought the most popular theory was that it somehow stopped memory creation
lol, definitely not.
https://youtu.be/T3QiFAcJnMg?t=43m

>>10853105
Of course it doesn't explain consciousness, what did you expect? You're missing the point of it. It's a criticism of materialist attempts to explain consciousness and a clarification of the problem being faced. It's no less relevant for not being part of the solutions neuroscientists are looking for. Nothing you've posted here even touches on a possible solution to the hard problem.

And don't criticize people for being stuck in the 90s, there's no fucking point to that even if the ideas were as irrelevant as you say.

>>10852789
>It's not like you could ever record subjective experience using artificial neurology and a modified connectome.
you can't at all, its never been done and it never will be done

>>10853285
i dont mean this in a dickish way but do you have like a paper and not a 3 hour sam harris video for the source. I vaguely remember the memory thing from university so I didnt just read it somewhere online

>>10852789
>Other complex processes observed in animals which are suspected to be necessary for consciousness are not observed in any plant.
>You're saying things like they're true without any evidence or reason.

>>10853298
>it never will be done
lol

>>10853296
>It's a criticism of materialist attempts to explain consciousness
And it's weak af

>It's no less relevant for not being part of the solutions neuroscientists are looking for
No, it's irrelevant for this reason. The explanation of consciousness given by neuroscientists gives answers to important questions about consciousness, whereas this hypothetical question isn't even interesting after you realize that the more neuroscience reveals about consciousness the less the concept of a p-zombie makes sense.

>don't criticize people for being stuck in the 90s, there's no fucking point to that even if the ideas were as irrelevant as you say.
Pic related = you and the hard problem

>>10853339
Don't listen to Sam Harris, skip to 40 minutes where Seth gives an explanation of the relevant points.

http://neurosciencenews.com/anesthetics-consciousness-6907/
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/322/5903/876
https://philarchive.org/archive/GENAAC-2

>>10853448
Yeah, highly speculative of me to postulate that animals have brains and plants don't and that brains are necessary for consciousness.

>>10853490
>more pathetic 90's insults
>blind assertion about an argument you've failed to address at all
>nonexisting explanations of consciousness by neuroscientists invalidates the argument that neuroscience would have difficulty with hard problem
Arguments aren't invalid because they're old. Or because scientists ignore them. Stop distracting from your failure of an argument and make an intelligent point.

You've failed to even give an example of neuroscientists addressing anything but textbook examples of the easy problem. Your only counterpoints have been "90s" and "neuroscientists don't address that". However much neuroscience reveals about consciousness, it still hasn't touched anything but the easy problem. Neuroscientists have given interesting results, they haven't demonstrated that their description is an analysis of consciousness any more than a p-zombie brain. (Inb4 so 90s don't you know scientists not refuting a problem means it's obviously nonexistent)

>>10853490
>Yeah, highly speculative of me to postulate that animals have brains and plants don't and that brains are necessary for consciousness.
Correct. Nervous systems are so overrated. Stop being egocentric and restricting consciousness to what looks like you.

>>10853643
>Stop being egocentric and restricting consciousness to what looks like you.
The basis for associating consciousness with neurons is not anthropocentrism, but empirical evidence. Have you observed consciousness in plants?

>Nervous systems are so overrated
Evidence for this or are you going to jump straight to some panpsychist bullshit?

>>10853621
>invalidates the argument that neuroscience would have difficulty with hard problem
>Arguments aren't invalid because they're old
It's a valid argument, it just doesn't matter. Consciousness can be explained without addressing it and that's why it hasn't been relevant since the time of Seinfeld and Bill Clinton.

>>10853911
More 90s, argument not countered. Wasn't expecting to be that on point.
You do realize the problem is that, if valid, the hard problem of consciousness implies consciousness from pure material interactions doesn't work? There hasn't been and can't be a materialistic explanation of consciousness without countering it.

>>10853938
>the hard problem of consciousness implies consciousness from pure material interactions doesn't work
How's that?

>>10853938
>There hasn't been and can't be a materialistic explanation of consciousness without countering it.
lol, yeah? What about integrated information theory? It explains consciousness pretty well and doesn't address the hard problem.

>>10842465
soul isn't real op. where was your soul before you will alive ? do you really think someting like soul comes from two people fucking and then exist forever and ever infinitum. infinity goes both ways .

>>10849811
>I say
bazinga my fellow

>>10854024
Searle lays out pretty much the same objections I've been making at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/03/07/can-photodiode-be-conscious/
But in a nutshell, IIT doesn't demonstrate consciousness, just an algorithm that works out similarly to it in some ways. It has no subjectivity to it, a brain working under IIT principles in a materialistic universe would result in a p-zombie rather than a consciousness- same hard problem all over again. Without positing something like dualism, nonmaterial monism, or the panpsychism Searle sees being evidenced, you don't have consciousness from an IIT algorithm.
His argument on information (I was referring to it as referencing or something above) similarly counters a materialistic IIT- brain only has meaningful patterns as noticed by an observer.
If you have a meaningful counter to those, I'd be interested, though. The IIT stuff is interesting, just seems futile from materialist perspectives.

>>10853911
>Have you observed consciousness in plants?
Have you observed consciousness in anything? Consciousness is not something that can be perceived, it is the thing we assume is behind the observer itself. No empirical evidence supports consciousness as definitively existing, but if we assume us to be conscious (as we do), then we ought to extend that same assumption to other life like plants, as they display many of the same behaviors we do. Plants react to external stimuli, communicate with each other, avoid obstructing growth of sibling plants, and can store stimuli data as memory. Sounds familiar.
>>Nervous systems are so overrated
This is just my opinion. There is little evidence proving if anything is overrated or not, but from my experience many people overemphasize the significance of having a nervous system that works similar to ours. Extending moral obligations only to animals that have nervous systems that remind us of ourselves is one example I see often. Pretty egocentric.
>panpsychist bullshit
Rude.

>>10852386
>>10852443
Was this too dense for /lit/?

>>10855460
No, but the posts' denseness did them no favors. Decent argument against cartesian dualism, I'd have to think more about it to consider it conclusive or flawed. Spent most of this thread arguing materialism instead, and not a dualist anyways.

>>10855460
No, you make a major mistake early on that invalidates further reading. You cannot be conclusive about the nature of conception and experience by using the very thing you're trying to identify. How it appears, regardless of your rigour, is necessarily passed through itself, and therefore the data is not complete. But you can't separate yourself from your "self", regardless of what that "self" actually is, So any supposed observations, analyses, or deductions require inherent doubt.

The end of the question "why?" is "how?".

>>10855720
>You cannot be conclusive about the nature of conception and experience by using the very thing you're trying to identify. How it appears, regardless of your rigour, is necessarily passed through itself
Well, if you read further, you might see that this is not just taken into account, but a critical point the posts are trying to make.

>and therefore the data is not complete.
But this part is questionable. What is "complete data"? Another falsehood.

>>10842719
>none of my heroes believe it so I don’t either!!!!!!!!!!

>>10842578
What do you guys think about Hegel vs Kant as far as "thing in itself" goes?

>>10855737
"Complete" has a defined and established context here. If you want to challenge that type of conception we'll need another thread.

Observations cannot be made in a vacuum -- they require that something act upon that which you are measuring, meaning some of the "truth" of what you intend to measure is also lost. If we're assuming the consciousness exists inside a physical reality, then it is not immune to this discrepancy. A mirror does not produce a perfect reflection.

Otherwise, "it" is non-physical and this is a non-point, being as anchored in the physical as we are, and has no need for the rules we are limited to imagining.

>>10855817
>"Complete" has a defined and established context here.
Great — and it is up for challenging in the same manner as "reality" is in >>10852386 when Nietzsche talks about the "apparent world", and does not have to be dismissed for another thread, because this thread is about a philosophical problem, and Nietzsche is a philosopher.

>Observations cannot be made in a vacuum -- they require that something act upon that which you are measuring
You really ought to just read those posts. You're preaching to the choir, making points already made right back at me.

>meaning some of the "truth" of what you intend to measure is also lost
And you are also getting the full picture wrong due to not having read them. "Complete data", "truth", they are both the "apparent world" that Nietzsche is addressing and criticizing. He talks about it at far greater length in Will to Power.

Modern philosophy is about the summoning of demons.

>>10842465
But Descartes don't says that
"Soul is not on the body as pilot in his ship" means that the relationship is much more complex, it's two entities closely linked together

There is no soul, us humans function alot like automatic watches, we are just big motors made of meat and blood.

>>10855943
Thanks anon. We would've just kept talking in circles until we ran out of unique configurations of the English alphabet if you hadn't been here with this profundity.

>>10855962
I like to help people.

>>10855943
organisms are not like machines in so many ways that ahy who compare them are not thinking straight

>>10842578
Wittgenstein

>>10856042
But aren't all larger organisms made up of smaller ones, and aren't the smallest in life machine-like in behavior, making the larger organisms like us extremely complex machines?

>>10842514
Another:
>my body has a clear and distinct idea of itself because I'm not a crippled little frenchman

>>10842579
Delusional.
Science is dualistic you retard.

>>10856096
no because organs and cells are not like machines and are also not organisms themselves

>>10856111
But machines are made up of the same organic substance as anything else. It's not like they are removed from nature.

>>10856042
In a few hundred years humans will produce biological engines raised in a laboratory that will power the industries of the future.


If a motor made of meat (imagine something like a human biceps the size of an airplane that will only consume water and nutrients to move all day everyday and we transform that movement into electricity), we could power alot of houses with that.

>>10843864
I bet this faggot thinks thinking constitutes being.

You think because you think boyo

>>10856120
no they’re not at all, no machine is made of lipids and proteins, everything being made of matter and energy doesn’t make everything like machines or star dust or any stupid shit like that.

>>10856132
Why even bother with the efficiency loss from the transform? Make the items that would require electricity now use organic components themselves instead.

>>10856143
every single part of his idea is fucking retarded and makes no sense logistically.

>>10856111
>cells are not organisms themselves
But they are.

>>10856146
Prove me wrong Mr. meat motor

>>10856154

>>10856154
they are not at all
>>10856161
idiot

>>10856143
Im just saying its possible, imagine if we rewrite the dna of a horse to make it as big as a skyscraper, he could eat forests to sustain himself and provide us with electricity

>>10856171
We are all made of the same shit

>>10856141
>no machine is made of lipids and proteins
Humans are kind of like furnaces. We ingest fuel which is digested and converted into energy to heat and power our bodies' functions. We remove waste as anything that cannot be converted to energy. Humans are not just a machine, they are one minuscule mechanism in the machine that is this material universe. Your jaded epic skeptic mindset is flawed.

>>10856182
shitposting killed this website

>>10856182
What the fuck am I looking at?

>>10856171

>>10856197
>humans aren't a machine, I meant the whole universe is a machine :^)
this isn't even funny anymore, it's shitposting at it's worst.

>>10856223
I see your le epic skeptic mindset only brought you this far. Not impressive.

>>10856223
You are just unable to see outside the box, you are probably the convinced christian type