/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13893747]

Philosophy nerds, what is your take on the hard problem of consciousness? Why do physical properties give rise to such a thing? I'm losing my mind over it.

[Anonymous No.13893769]

[Anonymous No.13893772]

>>13893747
Reductionism is correct until proven otherwise

[Anonymous No.13893789]

>>13893772
>My preferred position is epistemologically privileged over yours. Why? Um, like, yikes, sweetie! You must hate Science™!

[Anonymous No.13893792]

The only good answer is Berkeleyan idealism.

[Anonymous No.13893797]

>>13893789
>I will believe ANYTHING without proof as long as it gives me the fuzzies
Brb Today I get my money from nigeria

[Anonymous No.13893802]

>>13893747
It doesn't exist
t.analytic philosopher

[Anonymous No.13893808]

honestly I completely ignore this problem because I think it will be solved by neuroscientists. its not a problem worth diving into very hard for me, i'd much rather delve into the nature of consciousness itself rather than ask why it arises

[Anonymous No.13893815]

>>13893747
I like Samuel Berlinski's take that anything is a hard problem if you look into it deep enough. We only focus on consciousness because that's the one thing nearly always ready at hand, which allows for talking effortlessly (if emptily) about it.

[Anonymous No.13893816]

>>13893808
>honestly I completely ignore this problem because I think it will be solved by neuroscientists
?

[Anonymous No.13893837]

>>13893808
>i'd much rather delve into the nature of consciousness itself rather than ask why it arises
...??? How could its origin not be part of its nature?
>>13893802
pic related
>>13893797
>I believe all propositions have the same epistemological validity. There is no "privileged position"; just as our astrophysicists say there is no center of the universe. All propositions must actually be supported by argument. "The burden of proof is on you, not me" is prime intellectual laziness. Properly critical philosophy must always examine its own assumptions.

[Anonymous No.13894106]

>>13893747
Consciousness is not whats hard. Matter is the hard part. Idealism just makes more sense imo.

[Anonymous No.13894152]

>>13893747
read 5oclock wojack's schizoposts on the archives

[Anonymous No.13894299]

>>13893808
>because I think it will be solved by neuroscientists
Lmaooo

[Anonymous No.13894343]

consciousness was a mistake

[Anonymous No.13894535]

>>13893837
>How could its origin not be part of its nature?
I can construct several devices through many different means, and still have them serve the same purpose. Furthermore, I can understand how something is built without understanding what it does. Just how much of our culture do you think an ayylmao could deduce simply from finding a naked human carcass floating through space? It probably wouldn't even provide enough information to deduce the terrain of our planet too well.

>For consiousness to be an illusion, there would yet be...
Yeah, says consciousness. Furthermore, something can "appear" a certain way to a camera, inanimate object, etc, so the kind of observer being posited here doesn't kick the can back to consciousness anyways. And to go even further, an illusion isn't inherently contrary to reality. If I'm hallucinating that there's an oasis in the desert, when there isn't, but then some without my knowlage goes and digs one out before me, have they cured my hallucination by making the reality fit? Of course not; you're still "hallucinating" in the conventional sense, as dictated by the lack of justification in the vision, not in its correctness. It's no different from how having a true conclusion does not make an argument valid.

[Anonymous No.13894550]

>>13893837
>How could its origin not be part of its nature?
I can construct several devices through many different means, and still have them serve the same purpose. Furthermore, I can understand how something is built without understanding what it does. Just how much of our culture do you think an ayylmao could deduce simply from finding a naked human carcass floating through space? It probably wouldn't even provide enough information to deduce the terrain of our planet too well.

>For consiousness to be an illusion, there would yet be...
Yeah, says consciousness. Furthermore, something can "appear" a certain way to a camera, inanimate object, etc, so the kind of observer being posited here doesn't kick the can back to consciousness anyways. And to go even further, an illusion isn't inherently contrary to reality. If I'm hallucinating that there's an oasis in the desert, when there isn't, but then someone without my knowlage goes and digs one out before me, have they cured my hallucination by making the reality fit? Of course not; you're still "hallucinating" in the conventional sense, as dictated by the lack of justification in the vision, not in its correctness. It's no different from how having a true conclusion does not make an argument valid.

[Anonymous No.13894604]

>>13893747
>https://youtu.be/NXLGcVCtT88
Matter doesn't give rise to consciousness, that is the immaterial soul. Your spiritual 'being' is wholly immaterial. If you perform brain surgery you will not pull thoughts or memories out of a person's brain.

[Anonymous No.13894611]

>>13893747
>Why do physical properties give rise to such a thing?
you're starting from a baseless assumption. How do you know that matter does give rise to consciousness?
In the middle ages they thought that the heart was the seat of the mind. We switched organs, but we're still thinking like them.
Sure, there are strong correlations between brain activity and conscious experience, but that is true to some extent for the whole body. When I'm having the conscious experience of my arm moving, my physical arm is also moving.
And most importantly, correlation is not causation! Where is the mechanism? where is the process that leads to consciousness? And what is the evolutionary justification for such a thing?
Swallow the dualism pill, bud.

[Anonymous No.13894621]

>>13894604
Except we know exactly which sections of the brain can be removed to eliminate memories

[Anonymous No.13894633]

>>13894611
>people historically thought organs were the cause, so it can't be organs!
people historically, have ben god fearing dualists, so...

[Anonymous No.13894638]

>>13894550
>Yeah, says consciousness. Furthermore, something can "appear" a certain way to a camera, inanimate object, etc, so the kind of observer being posited here doesn't kick the can back to consciousness anyways.
Nonsentient objects don't "observe" because it doesn't have a consciousness to kick the can back to.
>And to go even further, an illusion isn't inherently contrary to reality.
>Something that is definitionally a perception contrary to reality can actually be something concurrent with reality!
This is your brain on positivism.

[Anonymous No.13894645]

>>13894633
It's not like I'm basing my whole argument on this historical observation. It's a little provocation.
In this case materialists are still stuck in the middle ages because ultimately to affirm a materialist position without proving that matter does cause consciousness is medieval thinking.

[Anonymous No.13894659]

>>13894638
>that is definitionally a perception contrary
Nope, an illusion does not inherently contradict reality. Thata just something you assumed. The fact that my argument contradicts toue assumption, means your assumption is wrong, not my argumemt which you've failed to address beyond repeating your own unfounded belief.

>Nonsentient objects don't "observe"
Why put the word "observe" in quotes? Who are you quoting? You used the qord "appear." Things appear to cameras. They can appear different ways, even. Or do you deny this?

[Anonymous No.13894662]

>>13894638
based
>>13894550
spooked

[Anonymous No.13894663]

>>13894645
You don't seem to be doing any legwork yourself though, which is rather medieval

[Anonymous No.13894670]

>>13894662
>being dualistic is unspooked
I don't think you know what these words mean

[Anonymous No.13894678]

>>13894659
>toue
you're

[Anonymous No.13894685]

>>13894663
I'm not making any positive statement! I have no burden of proof. Dualism is the true agnostic position. We don't seem to have the means to study consciousness because we are as if "stuck inside of it", that is, we cannot see it from any perspective which would allow us to understand its true nature.

Materialism, on the other hand, has a whole lot of proving to do, and if you keep up with modern neurological search for consciousness you know you're gonna be waiting a looong time... Unless you believe in some kind of quantum explanation, in which case.. yiques

[Anonymous No.13894687]

>>13894659
So where's the 'camera' that observes our consciousness?
>>13894670
thing i like: based
thing i don't like: spooked
it's that easy my friend and if you say otherwise you're spooked

[Anonymous No.13894690]

>>13894685
>Dualism is the true agnostic position.
that's a positive statement

[Anonymous No.13894701]

>>13894690
in the absence of any evidence for materialism, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

[Anonymous No.13894704]

>>13894659
>Nope, an illusion does not inherently contradict reality. Thata just something you assumed.
What the fuck is an illusion if not a false perception? Such a thing is definitionally a false perception and to be otherwise is to cease to be that thing.
>Why put the word "observe" in quotes? Who are you quoting? You used the qord "appear." Things appear to cameras. They can appear different ways, even. Or do you deny this?
I do deny this because "appearance" is a perceptive judgement. Do things "appear" to rocks? Does the sky "appear" to be blue to a blade of grass? Of course not. Why? Because they're not sentient, retard.

[Anonymous No.13894713]

>>13894687
>thing i like: based
>thing i don't like: spooked
>it's that easy my friend and if you say otherwise you're spooked
It's actually not, and you clearly haven't read stirmer. One of his most famous lines is that "you have wheels in your head," gears that spin too fast to recognize themselves as such, as they will fail to do so long as they spin at all.

>So where's the 'camera' that observes our consciousness
See above. We don't observe consciousness, we fail to observe unconsciousness.

[Anonymous No.13894714]

>>13893747
The I only ever appears on the occasion of a reflective act. In this case, the
complex structure of consciousness is as follows: there is an unreflected act
of reflection without I which is aimed at a reflected consciousness. This
reflected consciousness becomes the object of the reflecting consciousness,
without, however, ceasing to affirm its own object (a chair, a mathematical
truth, etc). At the same time a new object appears which is the occasion for
an affirmation of the reflective consciousness and is in consequence neither
on the same level as unreflected consciousness (because the latter is an
absolute that has no need of reflective consciousness in order to exist), nor
on the same level as the object of the unreflected consciousness (chair, etc.).
This transcendent object of the reflective act is the I.

[Anonymous No.13894722]

>>13894704
>What the fuck is an illusion if not a false perception?
I've already told you; it's an invalid one, not an untrue one. You're just being dishonest now. I'll paste it again:

>If I'm hallucinating that there's an oasis in the desert, when there isn't, but then someone without my knowlage goes and digs one out before me, have they cured my hallucination by making the reality fit?
>Of course not; you're still "hallucinating" in the conventional sense, as dictated by the lack of justification in the vision, not in its correctness. It's no different from how having a true conclusion does not make an argument valid.

[Anonymous No.13894760]

>>13893747
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBbFuudKAic

[Anonymous No.13894771]

>>13893797
>I will believe ANYTHING without proof as long as it gives me the fuzzies
He says this while believing in reductionism without proof

[Anonymous No.13894776]

>>13893747
Read De Anima. It's literally a non problem. The problem arises out of the faulty materialist worldview.

[Anonymous No.13894784]

>>13893747
You're a brainlet if you're not an interactionist dualist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXX-_G_9kww
http://cogprints.org/6613/1/Dualism0409.pdf

[Anonymous No.13894979]

>>13894106
unironically this

[Anonymous No.13895044]

>consiousness arising from the brain? that's absurd! it comes from the spiritual 5th dimension!

get off those mushrooms (which should, by the way, server as a materialist argument if anything)

[Anonymous No.13895108]

>>13893747
Consciousness is an organic response, it is a sort of meta driven by cellular desire.

I am composed of millions of cells which have formed a meta desire (the brain) which decides my motion (physical action) and my thoughts (meta)

[Anonymous No.13895236]

>>13894550
>omething can "appear" a certain way to a camera, inanimate object, etc,
you sure about that, bud?

[Anonymous No.13895265]

>>13895108
What is evolutionary benefit of consciousness

[Anonymous No.13895310]

Matter and Mind are the same thing without one being reduceable to the other.
Mind cannot be without physical reality, and matter cannot be recognized as a such without an observing consciousness.

[Anonymous No.13895366]

Consciousness is simply sensory input.

The evolutionary benefit is obvious, it increases the complexity of actions available to you and your ability to process them. Humans developed such great observation skills that we turned it inwards to ourselves, even though it's entirely pointless to do so. There's no magic to it, you're not important for having it, it's simply a survival tool that civilisation has enabled to run wild. When you're out in the forest hunting for food, sleeping under the stars and fucking you never sit down and wonder stupid questions like "what is consciousness".

[Anonymous No.13895382]

>>13895366
which is another way of saying "Consciousness doesn't exist"
So congratulations, you win the debate, you can go plug yourself in and shut yourself down for the day, unit six eight five three!

[Anonymous No.13895384]

>>13895382
It exists but it's just a compilation of all your sensory input data. There's nothing confusing about it at all. Looking for a more complicated answer when the simplest one explains it perfectly is vanity.

[Anonymous No.13895398]

>>13895236
>>13894659
the point was not that being like a camera is the same as being like a human; the point was that being humanlike wasn't essential to the prior point being made

[Anonymous No.13895404]

>>13895384
it doesn't explain anything, it's not an explanation, it is a negation of the problem itself.
You have an "I", a self which experiences the sensory input. This input isn't merely processed and turned into motor outputs, it is also witnessed subjectively by something which we call consciousness.
Me and other dualists have been asking over and over in this thread, if it's just the brain processing information, why is there subjective experience? it's such an elaborate, sophisticated thing! sensations are felt so intricately, with such nuance. Why? How can this be justified in the face of evolution?
It's perfectly reasonable to imagine a creature which processes all the information and algorithmically makes decisions based on it, which has no subjectivity, so why do we have it?

[Anonymous No.13895441]

>>13895404
>it is a negation of the problem itself.
Because there is no problem, you invented it.
>it is also witnessed subjectively by something which we call consciousness
Yes and? Part of sensory input is evaluation. That's all your "I" is, evaluating one thing against another a million times a second.
>if it's just the brain processing information, why is there subjective experience?
Because minor variances in composition leads to minor variances in experience, dogs have distinct personalities too, but you don't fret about a dogs consciousness do you? It's not important at all, it's just more vanity. Whatever life you've experienced, a million men before you have experienced the same thing, the order is irrelevant.
>it's such an elaborate, sophisticated thing!
No, it's not. More vanity. It's really very simple, your sense evaluate your surroundings, the input you receive is processed, you evaluate your actions, you act and the cycle repeats countless times per second. That's all, it's not mindbogglingly complex to understand.
>sensations are felt so intricately, with such nuance. Why? How can this be justified in the face of evolution?
Greater understanding of your environment and your place in it increase your survival chances and chances of spreading your genes.
>so why do we have it?
Because we killed every other creature that had consciousness anywhere near close to ours.

[Anonymous No.13895480]

>>13893769

I'm just desperately hoping this is still in the archive >>99944568

[Anonymous No.13895481]

>>13894760
That image is amazing. I feel happy now.

[Anonymous No.13895508]

>what is your take on the hard problem of consciousness
What's the problem? You're conscious, right -what more do you want?

[Anonymous No.13895520]

>>13893747
It's an emergent phenomenon.

[Anonymous No.13895528]

>>13895441
> you invented it.
"A problem, a virtual object made out of words, which only exist in the conscious minds of sentient creatures, was invented by a sentient creature"
bravo.
>That's all your "I" is, evaluating
1. You don't know that processing information is the same as consciousness. There is absolutely no way to prove this.
2. This would mean computers are conscious. Are you prepared to accept this consequence of your reductionism?
>variances in composition leads to minor variances in experience
How? In what way? This sentence would indicate you have some deep grasp of how neurological activity brings about consciousness, so please explain it. Or are you just saying things that *sound* logical and reasonable?
>you don't fret about a dogs consciousness do you?
yes, I do count animals among sentient creatures. Do you actually think it's ok to hurt animals? I certainly do not, and it is because I believe they can experience pain in much the same way that I do.
> your sense evaluate your surroundings, the input you receive is processed, you evaluate your actions, you act and the cycle repeats
this doesn't ring true to me at all. Does not represent how I experience consciousness in any way. Again, man, it really feels like I'm arguing with a robot here.
>Greater understanding of your environment and your place in it increase your survival
don't wanna repeat myself, but just to cover this, here you are conflating data processing with consciousness again.
>Because we killed every other creature
I didn't ask why do ONLY we have it. I asked why do we have it rather than not.

Are you familiar with the humunculus fallacy? Reductionism doesn't work because when tasked with explaining subjectivity, you fall into the trap of infinite recursion. If we were to actually start talking about the brain the question of how consciousness can be explained quickly becomes absurd. At some point the stimuli must cross some threshold at which point it is no longer mere atoms and electricity, but feelings inside of a mind. Where is that threshold? Is it when the light enters the eye? No. Is it when the retina converst the light into bio-electric impulses? No. Is it when the cerebellum processes the visual data and calculates depth-perception? No. And on and on, until we get to bare neurons, which we can fully understand as nothing more than atoms and electricity. So Where then?
You are convinced there is nothing to this problem, but you cannot explain even 1% of this phenomenon.

[Anonymous No.13895546]

>>13893792
Advaita Vedanta answers the problem satisfactorily as well

[Anonymous No.13895576]

>>13895265

Think of how consciousness arised, before it could be called that. One multicellular being capable of reacting to enviroment changes in a extremely primitive way. For example, a bug that follows light like it's programmed to, or a bug that runs away from sound. How can you not see the obvious benefit? Now think of the evolutionary benefit of memory. Memory allows animals to change behaviour based on past experiences, before memory behaviour could only be changed through natural selection, but with it instead of making the same mistake twice and dying, you learn, adapt and pass your genes ahead. Now if you're asking about self-consciousness, such level of abstraction made us able to populate most of earth's surface.

[Anonymous No.13895608]

Probaly higher emergent properties caused by some weird quantum memes.