Is consciousness more than the sum of its biological parts?

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Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:12:57 2014 No.5922432 [Reply] [Original]

Is consciousness more than the sum of its biological parts?

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:15:22 2014 No.5922443 File: 48 KB, 620x387, 76dd.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Did you say farts?

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:16:34 2014 No.5922448 do these biological parts include the electricity magic in our brain?

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:17:03 2014 No.5922450 >>5922443 le scrotumtightening fart man

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:20:41 2014 No.5922468 Yes. In biology consciousness is one of "emergent properties". The same with life in general. The point is that we can't explain some things merely mechanistically or analytically by reducing them to their elements or their ordering.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:20:44 2014 No.5922469

You're begging the question. What makes you think it has a biological basis? Appealing to your common sense idea that "Well, it just *has* to be "inside" your brain!!!!!" is a shipwreck of an approach.

In all seriousness though, it doesn't exist. It's a tendy, fictitious tale.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:24:03 2014 No.5922484

>>5922443
Joyce is a fucking meme. Dubliners and Portrait and extremely average and un-notable, Ulysses and Wake are meme books. He was the DFW of his time - a tryhard sperglord who cared more about writing "literature" than writing something with substance. Fuck Joyce.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:26:14 2014 No.5922494 >>5922469 If you dont think it has a biological basis, fuck off back to /fringe/. If it is fiction, how did i fuck your mom?

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:28:31 2014 No.5922499 >>5922469 >In all seriousness though, it doesn't exist. It's a tendy, fictitious tale. Agreed. Our biological bodies don't exist. Everything is mind. Matter is a meme.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:29:54 2014 No.5922506 >>5922494 >If you dont [wishfully] think it has a biological basis, [<muh feelings>, <muh defense mechanism>, etc.] Fixed.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:31:02 2014 No.5922511 No. And the question badly put. Speaking of "consciousness" as a singular thing is simply wrong. It's made up of multiple independent processes.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:36:18 2014 No.5922524

>>5922511
>all these spergs begging le questione
>It's made up of multiple independent processes
and what exactly are these "multiple independent processes"? where are they located? can you pinpoint to them, or are you just making a make-believe supposition like almost everyone else itt?

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:38:17 2014 No.5922532 >>5922484 Thank god someone created the concept of memes, giving us the invective we so desperately needed to ward off hacks like that.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:40:31 2014 No.5922538 File: 28 KB, 738x479, FUCKING_MIRACLES_by_fuckingmiraclesplz.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5922432 Of course, there's a little of God's fairy dust in there.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:42:25 2014 No.5922547 File: 42 KB, 288x467, 1307570754631.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5922499 Daily reminder that anti-realism is still a thing.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:44:36 2014 No.5922553 File: 204 KB, 448x336, dohoho.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5922499 >matter is >doesn't exist

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:46:35 2014 No.5922562 >>5922524 >where are they located? Inside your brain. >can you pinpoint to them Not exactly pinpoint, for the same reasons you can pinpoint the process of a opening a tab on your internet browser just looking at your hard disk drive.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:47:35 2014 No.5922567 >>5922562 >you can can't*

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:54:22 2014 No.5922583 >>5922469 I guess that's why you stop understanding and manage to speak English if you get hit a certain place in the brain then. Seems legit.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:58:04 2014 No.5922595 >>5922432 probably not. If anyone wants an Analytic Philosopher who disagrees, read David Chalmers.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:58:11 2014 No.5922596

>>5922562
>Inside your brain.
There is nothing "inside" your brain, other than brain itself --- the grey, soggy matter.

>Not exactly pinpoint, for the same reasons you can pinpoint the process of a opening a tab on your internet browser just looking at your hard disk drive.
No one said you have to "just look" at the brain. Do whatever it needs to be done to acquire these processes, however you imagine to acquire them. It's self-evident, assuming you have the understanding, that you can pinpoint to the process (machine code) "of opening a tab on your internet browser". Now do that to the brain. Show me these processes. And give me a solid explanation how one influences the other, and vice versa.

Also,
>still thinking hardware/software is a legitimate analogy
Think again.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:58:54 2014 No.5922599 >>5922583 In his fantasy world, he probably believes everything except himself is an illusion, so this shit only happens to other (illusory) people.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 08:59:15 2014 No.5922602

>>5922562
>Inside your brain.
OK, so let's say my brain produces my perception of the world. In my perception I can perceive my surroundings and my brain. And I can perceive the processes happening in my brain, those same processes that produced my perception. Now, what you're saying is that my brain produced it's own image PLUS images of its surroundings. How can my brain, a finite thing, contain more content than it contains?

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:00:33 2014 No.5922604

>>5922599
>In his fantasy world, he probably believes everything except himself is an illusion, so this shit only happens to other (illusory) people.

Solipsists should be locked up in a jail cell alone for the rest of their life, seeing as that's the way they think the world operates anyway.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:02:13 2014 No.5922612 >>5922511 >It's made up of multiple independent processes. Yes, OP referred to it as >the sum of its biological parts?

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:03:08 2014 No.5922614 >>5922583 >that primitivistic arguing >topkekidykek What is "that's"? Did you not confuse yourself with that line of sophomoric thinking? Brain damage has literally nothing to do with a non-existent property of the brain. Maybe vacuously so, it has.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:04:57 2014 No.5922619

>>5922596
Consciousness is just an accident, some kind of meta-process that administrates the relation between stimulus and reaction, inferences about motion and the conception of the space surrounding your body, your instincts, complex inferences about your identity and its relation with society.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:06:05 2014 No.5922622 >>5922602 >How can my brain, a finite thing, contain more content than it contains? It contains REPRESENTATIONS, information, not actual things, idiot.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:07:06 2014 No.5922626 >>5922604 I would be ok with it if the government taxed me to do this.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:07:43 2014 No.5922627 >>5922599 >>5922604 So sorry to burst your bubble guys. You'll live. You don't have to necessarily engage in another round pf make-believe begging-the-question and wishful thinking line of thought.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:07:46 2014 No.5922628 >>5922602 >How can my brain, a finite thing, contain more content than it contains? How can my USB contain so much content?

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:10:26 2014 No.5922639 >>5922627 Thanks to bring me the light. I'll stop trying to understand the world right now and just have faith in the omnipotent mind that gives the illusion of everything happening just to fuck with us. Magic is fun :D

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:12:33 2014 No.5922646

>>5922619
>some kind of
Are you still guessing? I mean, babbling? You're not the only windbag in this town; and you're also not the only windbag that hasn't successfully provided a single empirical fact about consciousness.

In the meantime, there is no fact of the matter. Keep dreaming.

>>5922622
>representations, pictures, etc.
>not actual things
>>>/x/. There are no pictures or representations in your brain. That's a misleading picture (sorry for the pun) of how things work.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:13:25 2014 No.5922649 >>5922614 >non-existent property of the brain I thought sophistry was dead. What does this even mean? I guess someone let the pseudo-intellectuals out of their cages.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:15:17 2014 No.5922657 >>5922622 But can ''actual'' things be extrapolated from their representation?

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:16:23 2014 No.5922661

>>5922639
>the omnipotent mind that gives the illusion of everything happening just to fuck with us.
And where exactly did I claim such things? That's right: you made them up, like you made up the make-believe assertions about consciousness (its existence, its properties, and its mechanism).

>:D
Irrational twelve year old drones on my /lit/. Go read your Dawkings.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:17:03 2014 No.5922664

>>5922622
>>5922628
But what is the brain then? It can't be anything that I perceive, since what I perceive is supposedly produced by my brain's processes. When I perceive my brain I don't perceive my own my perception in it. So if I say that "my perception is produced by my brain", I have to reduce my brain to something totally mysterious that I can never know and in the end I explain nothing.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:18:20 2014 No.5922668 >>5922649 Are you this mentally handicapped to not get what it means from the given context? Retards abound ITT.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:21:07 2014 No.5922674 >>5922668 The mind is a property of the brain, you mongoloid. Please try destroying your brain and see if you can speak to your friends afterwards.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:23:19 2014 No.5922678 >>5922674 >dat sudden, laughable shift from consciousness to the mind Just stop. Stop arguing and go read a book or two.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:23:53 2014 No.5922681

>>5922602
> In my perception I can perceive my surroundings and my brain.
Yes.
>And I can perceive the processes happening in my brain, those same processes that produced my perception.
No.
What you are conscious of is a world that happened at least 100ms ago. The brain processes you perceive are also processes that happened before.
Your brain uses perceptions at time X to produce processes at time X+t1 and at time X+t2 you become conscious of them.

Your brain just keeps updating its mental state from past informations and one part of the update is your self, consciousness.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:24:45 2014 No.5922684 >>5922678 Consciousness and mind are used interchangeably retard.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:24:45 2014 No.5922685

>>5922674
>Please try destroying your brain and see if you can speak to your friends afterwards.
This only means that the brain is a necessary condition for the mind.
>The mind is a property of the brain
While this claims that the brain is a sufficient condition for the mind.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:24:51 2014 No.5922688 >>5922664 >But what is the brain then? The centre of your nervous system. Just read Wikipedia, I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of neuroscience, I'm on holiday.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:26:32 2014 No.5922690 >>5922685 Yes? And your point is? The fact is, that everything about you ends when your brain is destroyed. It's not like a ghost or an ectoplasm lifts off and you can still speak to your brother as if nothing happened.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:27:08 2014 No.5922693
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>>5922684
>Consciousness and mind are used interchangeably
>Consciousness and mind are used interchangeably
>Consciousness and mind are used interchangeably
>Consciousness and mind are used interchangeably

AAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHA
HAAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAA

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:30:56 2014 No.5922700 >>5922693 le epik trole reply :^)

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:32:12 2014 No.5922705

>>5922681
The problem with the hypothesis is that I supposedly can perceive my brain's processes (how else could I claim that it is those processes that produce my perception?).
a) the translation of those processes to my perception remains wholly mysterious
b) those processes are themselves a part of my perception, so they are only a part of some "real" processes in my "real" brain, which also remain wholly mysterious

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:36:29 2014 No.5922713

>>5922690
My point is that the mind is not necessarily contained just in the brain. In other words you haven't provided a reason for the brain being a *sufficient* and not merely (one of) *necessary* conditions of the mind.
E.g. my knee is a necessary condition for my walking yet it is not sufficient because I also need other body parts.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:38:51 2014 No.5922720

>>5922713
>In other words you haven't provided a reason for the brain being a *sufficient* and not merely (one of) *necessary* conditions of the mind.

Alzheimer's disease pretty much gives clear reasons for why the mind is contained in the brain, as it doesn't damage anything in the body other than the brain's neurology, and it completely destroys your personality bit by bit until you die.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:39:12 2014 No.5922721

>>5922705
>a) the translation of those processes to my perception remains wholly mysterious
I think we already have some hint of the structures responsible for this translation.
As in if you shut down that structure you lose the consciousness of the perception, not the perception itself.
It's difficult to investigate because you can't directly ask animals if they are conscious of something.

>b) those processes are themselves a part of my perception, so they are only a part of some "real" processes
Well obviously you have a temporal difference between what the perception, the processing of the perception and the consciousness of the perception.
That's something that can be studied, but again it's difficult with non-human models.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:40:36 2014 No.5922724 >>5922720 You're still speaking of merely necessary conditions and not sufficient ones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_and_sufficiency

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:41:33 2014 No.5922727 >MUH ORCH-OR!!

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:44:57 2014 No.5922738

>>5922724
Clearly a necessary condition for a functioning brain is also a pumping heart, and a vascular system. But this is not relevant to the relation between the brain and the mind, because it is testable.

If you have brain damage, something about you, as a person, changes. If you get shot in the knee, you will feel intense pain, and granted that pain might give you PTSD, the knee is not a necessary condition for having a mind.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:53:54 2014 No.5922751

>>5922681
>Your brain uses perceptions
>Your brain just keeps updating
That's a misleading picture. Your brain doesn't "use" or "update" anything, just as a car's engine isn't fast in and of itself. It's only when all the parts of the sum are assembled (and the apropos action has been demonstrated), a car can be said to be fast. Similarly, it's the psychophysical whole that is you, that perceives, thinks, imagines, sings, etc. not your brain.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:57:30 2014 No.5922760

>>5922751
No, your brain uses perceptions.
That is, sensory information from your sensory organs.
The brain processes these informations and the informations from these processing is then processed by the brain.
At a time X you have processes from perception from time X-t that get processed to form consciousness.

>Similarly, it's the psychophysical whole that is you, that perceives, thinks, imagines, sings, etc. not your brain.
Your sensory organs have no influence on the brain processing.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 09:59:38 2014 No.5922766

Why is /lit/ so opposed to science? It really baffles me. I mean, why must the liberal arts exist at right angles with hard science?

I mean, honestly, look at this thread. The question was answered for sure by scientists decades ago. If any of you had any knowledge whatsoever of neuroscience and brain chemistry, you'd know. And yet, we get folks using simplistic meta-model approaches to try to prove souls.

I think the only more /sci/-hostile board is /x/, and that's not a flattering thing to say, but it's true.

Here's a book recommendation for you all: "I Am A Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter. Along with "Godel Escher Bach", but I'm just gonna hope you've all read that already?

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 10:01:47 2014 No.5922770 >>5922432 No, but the sum of biological parts is vastly more complex than we can possibly imagine

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 10:03:41 2014 No.5922777

>>5922738
>Clearly a necessary condition for a functioning brain is also a pumping heart, and a vascular system. But this is not relevant to the relation between the brain and the mind, because it is testable.
I would claim one of the things that is also a relevant necessary condition for the mind, along the brain, is something outside the brain. If the mind is merely a representation of what is happening inside the brain ("mind=brain" hypothesis), then the hypothesis about external world becomes a completely arbitrary addition to this initial solipsism - considering that the external world as it is in my mind is then merely a representation of something in my brain according to "mind=brain" hypothesis.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 10:03:45 2014 No.5922778 >>5922766 >he doesn't believe in die Geist It's OK not to believe in God, but come on, the metaphysical exists. Your little marxist materialism isn't the real mover of biological substances, get over it.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 10:05:34 2014 No.5922783 >>5922766 >Why is /lit/ so opposed to science? it isn't. not at at all. you're just not getting the crux of the argument.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 10:08:24 2014 No.5922792

>>5922760
>No, your brain uses perceptions.
Unless you use "use" metaphorically, your brain, in and of itself, does not "use" anything. You are ascribing illegitimate properties to the brain that can only be ascribed to you, as a psychophysical whole. Get it through your head.

>That is, sensory information from your sensory organs.
Your sensory organs store no information whatsoever. That's misleading.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 10:13:30 2014 No.5922802

>>5922792
>your brain, in and of itself, does not "use" anything.
I don't know what your definition of "use" is, but the brain takes information from the periphery to transform it into different information.
Just like a machine takes matter to transform it in to a different matter.
It "uses" matter in that sense.

>You are ascribing illegitimate properties to the brain that can only be ascribed to you, as a psychophysical whole.
No because you can separate the psychophysical whole from your brain.
For example you can still process information despite being anesthetized and thus not experiencing consciousness.

>Your sensory organs store no information whatsoever. That's misleading.
I didn't say they store information, I said the brain receives information from the sensory organs.
For example the retina sends information to the brain through the optic tract.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 10:17:37 2014 No.5922815 >>5922432 >Is consciousness more than the sum of its biological parts? implying that you read about emergence

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 10:40:02 2014 No.5922860
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>>5922802
>the brain takes information
Only if it is a metaphorical "taking". Otherwise, the brain "takes" nothing.

>transform it into different information
No such "transformation" has been empirically observed.

>No because you can separate the psychophysical whole from your brain.
Brain ⊂ you (body + mind); and not you ⊂ brain.

>you can still process information despite being anesthetized and thus not experiencing consciousness.
This has no bearing on, and is no counterexample to, what I said.

>I didn't say they store information
You did; implicitly. Taking information *from* something, suggests, that that something *contains* it.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 10:43:47 2014 No.5922865

>>5922860
>No such "transformation" has been empirically observed.
It has.
Input information into a neuron and see a different output.
That's a transformation of information.

>This has no bearing on, and is no counterexample to, what I said.
It just means that you can lack consciousness and still have perception.

>You did; implicitly. Taking information *from* something, suggests, that that something *contains* it.
The nerve tracts contain information indeed.
The retina cells contain information indeed.
Information is stored very briefly in the sensory systems.
It is also stored in the brain very briefly at every level.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 10:53:41 2014 No.5922883

>>5922865
>It has
>[...] see
Show me.

>lack consciousness and still have perception
Being unconscious and perceiving something is incompatible.

>The nerve tracts contain information indeed. The retina cells contain information indeed. Information is stored very briefly in the sensory systems. It is also stored in the brain very briefly at every level.
Nothing gets stored anywhere. It is one unitary movement.
If you keep on pressing that all of these things "contain" or "store" information, simply show us this information.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 11:07:01 2014 No.5922916
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>>5922883
>show me
In this picture you can see on the left (B) the input to a neuron and one the right (C) the output of the neuron.
You can clearly see that input=/=output.
The info that comes in the neuron is different from the one that comes out.
You can google "action potential" to learn more.

>Being unconscious and perceiving something is incompatible.
The sensory information is still transmitted to the brain and the brain still processes it, except that the brain isn't producing consciousness at this moment so you aren't conscious of this perception.
The perceptual information is still here.

>Nothing gets stored anywhere. It is one unitary movement.
Neurosciences disagree with you.
Now you get to learn about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_consolidation
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_potentiation
How lucky you are.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 11:21:13 2014 No.5922965

>>5922916
Not the guy you're replying too, but I'm going to grab your sleeve here anyway because you look like a dude who knows things about neuroscience. Can you recommend me some things to read on neuroscience and conciousness? Specifically the kind of things that weigh in on the problem of free will in the deterministic mechanism of the brain.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 11:29:18 2014 No.5922993

>>5922965
No, not really.
I haven't read much pop-sci, mostly papers.
I suppose you can read this review:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188
No idea if it's worth reading it, it seems rather theoretical.
Like this guy was saying >>5922727

Maybe reading this and this can help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Workspace_Theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_correlates_of_consciousness

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 11:33:44 2014 No.5923019 >>5922993 I didn't exactly mean pop-sci stuff, but thanks, I'll check it out.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 11:34:32 2014 No.5923021

>>5922993
>>5922965

Basically it's a problem of neuropsychology, or cognitive neurosciences.
You can find a lot of material on this and specific problems addressed by studies in humans and monkeys.
Tasks to determine which areas matter to detect a given visual stimulus, which nucleus is important to take the decision of starting a movement...
Stuff like that.
It's biology so you search for pieces of evidences that you stack up on one another to build a robust mechanism.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 11:39:42 2014 No.5923047

>>5922993
There's some crazy bullshit in these articles, though:

>The central postulate of the Orch OR theory is that the site of action of consciousness is located within the brain's microtubules (MTs) which operate at the interface between classical neurophysiology and quantum gravitational forces.
>This is orders of magnitude higher than the 1 nm and 1 ns scales of tubulin's size/time operational dimensions as studied by molecular biophysics, let alone the quantum gravity effects hypothesized by Orch OR to be occurring on the Planck scale of space–time geometry (10−35 m10−35 m; 10−44 s10−44 s).

Quantum gravity affects aren't relevant even in particle accelerator conditions, why do they think they're important for brain functions?

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 11:42:18 2014 No.5923056

>>5922916
>In this picture you can...
Seriously? A picture?

>The sensory information is still transmitted to the brain and the brain still processes it, except that the brain isn't producing consciousness at this moment so you aren't conscious of this perception.
You cannot perceive unconsciously; that's not what the term means. You will have to think of some other, less ridiculous, ad-hoc explanation.
>The perceptual information is still here.
Where is "here"?

>Neurosciences disagree with you.
It's amusing how you keep anthropomorphizing things. Have you checked anyone about it? Nevertheless, we're on philosophical grounds, not neuroscientific: neuroscience "disagreeing" with me doesn't bother me one bit. Regurgitating its alleged findings or models doesn't add any weight whatsoever to the truth of your assertions.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_consolidation
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_potentiation
If you're one of neuroscience's brainwashed parrots then I'm confident that nothing beyond grievous conceptual confusions, confusions you have demonstrated throughout this convo of ours, can be found in those articles.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 11:42:19 2014 No.5923057 >>5923047 I didn't read this article and as I said it seems rather theoretical. The article on neural correlates is more interesting to get an introduction in the research I think.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 11:43:01 2014 No.5923060 >>5922468 >emergent properties ding ding ding

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 11:44:20 2014 No.5923065 >>5922602 I'd like to see you perceive all of the proteins and signal molecules and localized ion gradients and vesicles and organelles and other chemical processes and structures in even one neuron, let alone the 100 billion neurons in a human brain.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 11:46:24 2014 No.5923073

>>5923056
The brain can process information from perception organs under anesthesia.

>Where is "here"
In the brain.
In the visual cortex if you're studying the visual system.

>Nevertheless, we're on philosophical grounds, not neuroscientific: neuroscience "disagreeing" with me doesn't bother me one bit.
Philosophical grounds?
What's that?

>Regurgitating its alleged findings or models doesn't add any weight whatsoever to the truth of your assertions.
What would then?

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 11:47:49 2014 No.5923079 >>5922965 >you look like a dude who knows things about neuroscience >getting seduced and swayed by mindless neuroscientific babble. You will never think for yourself. >>5923021 >Basically it's a problem It's a pseudo-problem. There is no problem.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 11:50:48 2014 No.5923095 >>5923079 Of course if you're not interested in the knowledge of the processes underlying brain function it's not a problem for you.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 12:03:45 2014 No.5923139

>>5923073
>The brain can process
Not just the brain, though.

>In the brain.
As I said, there is nothing "inside" your brain, other than brain itself --- the grey, soggy matter.

>What's that?
Whatever you've been doing so far, basically. It's something that needs to be paid attention to, for it can reveal the flaws in the use of your concepts. And that's what all knowledge is: concepts relating to other, different concepts; some happen to entail other concepts, others do not. Your precious neuroscience is not immune from that. No matter how many fancy, neuroscience-y nomenclature you drop, it doesn't magically make your assertions true.

>What would then?
Be less dogmatic; comparing leading theories and seeing the points where they are incompatible, e.g., would be a good start.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 12:07:52 2014 No.5923161

>>5923139

>Not just the brain, though.
I don't see the relevance.

>As I said, there is nothing "inside" your brain, other than brain itself --- the grey, soggy matter.
The brain is made of cells.
Some of the cells specifically process information and the circuits they form have specific functions according to the circuits they're connected to and the intrinsic properties of each cell, which are genetically defined and depend on the environment of development.

>And that's what all knowledge is: concepts relating to other, different concepts; some happen to entail other concepts, others do not.
Evidence is also nice I think.

> it doesn't magically make your assertions true.
Verifying your assertions by showing that the competing hypothesis do not stand up to the evidence is nice.

>Be less dogmatic; comparing leading theories and seeing the points where they are incompatible, e.g., would be a good start.
Why do you assume I'm not doing that?

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 12:14:27 2014 No.5923190

>>5923095
Mapping the brain (e.g. naming the fundamental unit of the brain a "neuron", etc.) is a boring and tedious procedure that tells us nothing about the powers (thinking, willing, judging, imagining, etc.) of our minds; let alone how it relates to consciousness, if such a thing even exists (it doesn't).

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 12:19:02 2014 No.5923212

>>5923190
You can relate neurobiological substrates to the function.
That's physiology for you.
>>5922993
Here read-up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_correlates_of_consciousness

Inactivate or stimulate certain areas of the brain and see what happens functionally.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 12:28:36 2014 No.5923256

>>5923065
All those notions you mention weren't created out of nothing, they were perceived - they were parts of a scientist's own perception of a brain, their origin is perceptional, they were originally images. And these perceptions and images were themselves produced by the scientist's own brain. But here the problems appear.
The brain that we're talking about when we say that "the brain produces perception", is then either a brain that is itself an image inside a perception or it something outside perception. If the first, then we have the problem of how an image inside perception-world can produce a whole another perception-world. If the second, then the brain is something that we never perceive, an unknown mysterious cause of which we can merely say that it is a cause and nothing more about how and why it works.

Now here's another problem that I hope will be easier to comprehend: it is claimed that the perception is the representation of "what is happening in the brain", and it is also claimed that the perception is the representation of "the world".

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 13:11:19 2014 No.5923402

>>5923256
Because the brain you perceive(and not just the brain, the entire world) is an abstraction of physical reality. Your perception of the brain will always be a rough representation of what there is, so the brain will not contain itself. The brain in your mind can't produce thoughts because it's vastly less detailed than a real brain. We can come to understand the brain by looking at little parts at a time and making observations about what happens there. We could even simulate an entire brain like they're starting to do, but we as human beings would never be able to fully grasp the functions of a brain, like you can look at a crowd of a thousand people and generally perceive it but you could never simultaneously grasp everything that every single person is wearing and doing. Sorry if I ramble.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 13:26:59 2014 No.5923462

>>5922484
I don't understand how "try hard" is an insult or a critique
Its literally means someone who tries hard
Just because you are a fatfuck loser with no ambition or skill you try to diminish the works of others by saying "he was trying to hard"
The only people who use "tryhard" as in insult are worthless nitwits or kids that are loosing at call of duty

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 13:33:17 2014 No.5923492 >Is consciousness more than the sum of its biological parts? No. >Do we have an adequate understanding of those parts? No. Ask me about emergent properties.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 13:35:05 2014 No.5923505 >>5922432 >implying consciousness even has parts it has attributes, not parts

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 13:38:22 2014 No.5923519 >>5923505 >attributes, not parts >he thinks this is a meaningful distinction

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 14:02:51 2014 No.5923599

>>5923402
That only pushes the problems to a further plane of reality and additional problems appear too. The real brain is then a link between the real world on the one hand and a perception of that real world on the other hand (since we're not equating the real world with perception at this point). Yet the real brain is also a part of the real world and the production of perception now seems equally or even more weird. The real brain is at once a mediator of the real world to perception and the thing to be mediated to perception. Even ignoring that, we now know even less how perception happens because we've created an abyss between the real world and perception. We're now swinging between epiphenomenalism and parallelism.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 14:03:53 2014 No.5923603 >>5923492 >emergent properties That's just a trendy buzzword thrown around in the contemporary philosophy of mind.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 14:03:57 2014 No.5923605 >>5923519 >fails to comprehend the distinction

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 14:14:20 2014 No.5923639 >>5922766 >>5922766 Why are you so opposed to beauty and non-vulgar worldviews? Apparently your god called Science barely existed before the 18th century, yet people did live before that.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 14:17:22 2014 No.5923647 You were asking to be beaten by STEM majors on this one, /lit/. Know your limitations.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 14:19:30 2014 No.5923663 >>5923647 Stemfags don't know shit about philosophy of mind

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 14:39:18 2014 No.5923739

>>5923603
>trendy buzzword

I swear you motherfuckers think everyone that doesn't suit your narrative is a commodity-minded pseudointellectual. No it's not a "trendy buzzword" even if it does eventually prove to betray misconception.

>>5923605

No, I understood your distinction quite well faggot. I was mocking you for thinking it was meaningful to make.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 14:41:17 2014 No.5923746 >>5922766 Description does not a how and why answer.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 14:41:36 2014 No.5923748

>>5923603
Emergent properties is a key notion in many sciences. In chemistry the behavior of water is an emergent property of hydrogen bonding. In biology the behavior of a cell is an emergent property of organelles. Reductionism is useful, but it only show what things are made of and not why those things suddenly behave in a way that can't be found in any of the elements.
But the funny thing is that biology (a study of life) still can't explain life. It merely takes some matter or processes that it in advance terms "living" and then analyzes them, usually in a bit mechanistic way where especially the processes aspect is reduced to parts of matter. The key problem here is also that time is crucial for explaining life, but when you reduce time to merely a series of states, you're ignoring what makes time time and life life - the movement between those states. Causality has a similar problem with inability to think time.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 15:03:00 2014 No.5923828

>>5923748

Emergent properties is scientifically accepted god-of-the-gaps. It means nothing. Either everything is emergent or nothing is. Where's your baseline? Great way to avoid being thorough in your descriptions. :^)

Into the trash goes the PoSR!

Ask me more about emergent properties faggots.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 18:21:32 2014 No.5924706 >>5922432 I wish I could give Nietzsche a hug

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 22:24:59 2014 No.5925808 Every whole is more than the sum of its parts

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 05:37:20 2014 No.5926925 >>5925808 Which is just a neat way of saying we know fuck all.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 05:38:26 2014 No.5926928 >>5926925 I mean what constitutes a part in the first place if we're adhering to this overencompassing definition of what a whole is? Really, where the fuck do we stand?

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 07:32:16 2014 No.5927130

>>5922766
Your post is exactly the kind of attitude which encourages the two to be at odds, ironically.

You've made the same mistake as many scientists by misunderstanding the nature of the problem, neglecting to do any actual study, and arrogantly claiming that science has solved this problem .

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 07:41:55 2014 No.5927147 >>5923462 >Its literally means someone who tries hard Fucking autist. The commonly understood meaning is someone that tries to be something he's not (in his case, talented) and fails miserably.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 16:16:39 2014 No.5928935 >>5922468 Can anything be reduced to the sum of its parts? What does that even mean, anyway?

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 16:34:24 2014 No.5928991 I don't think it is the sum rather... parts! (parts factorial) ;)

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 16:35:25 2014 No.5928997 You people keep misinterpreting the sum < whole argument. The set of the sum lacks the whole, but the whole has the sum and itself. Ergo, sum < whole.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 16:38:16 2014 No.5929010 >>5922532 >>Thank god James Joyce created the concept of memes, giving us the invective we so desperately needed to ward off hacks like that. Fixed it for you, babe.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 16:44:01 2014 No.5929025 >>5928997 nah brah. The whole can't have the sum and itself because then the whole, as a totality, can always be made bigger if you define it that way.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:12:03 2014 No.5931313 >>5923190 >sign up for a study, ANY study involving Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation >come back and apologize

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/lit/ - Literature