Why is there no materialist explanation of consciousness?

[Anonymous No.11603696]

I imagine there must be some kind of split between the internal observer that is totally passive pure perception without though connected in a loop with the unconscious that is pure processing power and memory that makes all decisions.

The unconscious makes a decision based on information provided by the observer and tricks the observer into thinking that he made a decision creating a sense of ego.

[Anonymous No.11603702]

>Why is there no materialist explanation of consciousness?
define "consciousness"

[Anonymous No.11603708]

>>11603702
I'm talking about self awareness, qualia .

[Anonymous No.11603766]

>>11603696
i'm not philosophy of science guy but "explanation" i typically take to be a narrative or story to explain the connection between cause and effect in terms of beginning and ending(of the story).

in those terms we have plenty of explanations in which describe the connection between mental events and physical events.
for example: we have theories of nerves which read like a story about the connection between certain types of pain and certain types of nerve, and to connect duration and intensity of pain with topography and location of nerve. relying on such testimonies we can diagnose certain aliments based on how they feel.

what i suspect you want is a story to connect your own experienced reality with the physical processes in the brain that bring it about. again there are many such explanations, for instance i shoot you in the head and you die, or get some brain damage and lose eyesight. but this won't satisfy the question because you have an impossible desire to satisfy. what you want is a story which explains not the connection between physical and mental events, but the spatiotemporal complex in which physical events take place, and the one in which mental events take place. the physical "space" and "mental space". this is an impossible task to fulfill because explanations by nature connect events based on spatiotemporal relations, how can space itself be explained in this way? you will find similar problems to "fully" explain the beginning of the universe, running into the same dissatisfactions.

[Anonymous No.11603799]

>>11603696
I think the problem is you have presupposed consciousness to have certain attributes which it does not actually have. You see the you of your awareness as being somehow separate and distinct because you feel that way. You imagine yourself as separate from the universe (of which you acknowledge 'body' is a part of)

This is however simply an illusion. Perhaps it has to be this way because if it was another way you would simply suffer fatal nihilism, or perhaps its impossible for it to be any other way, the only way to have the self perception required to act needs this characteristic of viewing the self as a distinct entity even though the self is merely the conjunction of many casual chains.

So the simple answer of this mind body problem is that mind does not exist. All is body.

[Anonymous No.11603813]

>>11603799
Or to put it a different way;
We compare our consciousness to lack of consciousness. But how do we know lack of consciousness can even exist? If all is matter, then body is all there is, and there can not be an us that lacks consciousness unless it lacks some of the matter that makes it, and thus us.

So to try and separate consciousness from us, to try and make it be a separate quality that coexists within us, only works if you start from the assumption that it is not caused by something physical to begin with.

[Anonymous No.11603826]

[Anonymous No.11603835]

>>11603696
Logic cannot exist in a purely materialistic worldview, therefore a materialist can't even use logic to make an argument.

The rules of logic must be static, logic cannot change. The physical is constantly changing, therefore a completely materialist world is ever changing, therefore logic cannot exist in it.

This means logic has to be non-physical. Non-physical things cannot exist in a materialist's worldview, hence why they have no explanation of conciousness, which is also non-physical.

[Anonymous No.11603852]

>>11603835
you have reified logic into some weird existing thing that no materialists thinks exists and is logic, and then placed the burden of supporting this abomination on the materialist worldview, lo and behold it can't exist, materialists btfo

[Anonymous No.11603855]

>>11603852
What is logic?

[Anonymous No.11603861]

>>11603696
>Why is there no materialist explanation of consciousness?
There is! Consciousness is the ability to decipher and respond to your words, which requires a massive amount of computing on top of computing, with evolving algorithms, with the attendant ability to sense the connotations and subtle implications, and compute the consequences of those, that is the logical positive deinition of what it means to be conscious. There is no reason to suppose that the quality of consciousness is anything more than this computation, that's what it "feels like" to have such a massive computation.

[Anonymous No.11603874]

>>11603861
What is logic?

[Anonymous No.11603898]

>>11603855
the term logic has numerous senses. i suspect that logic in the sense that you mean it is something like a metaphysical property of all things, some kind of a universal that hold true everywhere. i don't share this platonist view. i sometimes talk about logic in the context of analysing the connections which hold between various ideas in a belief system or between words in a sentence, i call them "logical1" connections, but i didn't use the term in this conversation(except when borrowing your usage for sake of replying to you on your terms), so naturally i have no need to define a term that i plays no important role in my own worldview or argument.

since you were looking to make an argument against materialists, you should be the one creating a philosophical problem for me that requires making use of the conceptual machinery of "logic" in order to solve. then you could use that as a springboard to ask me what i mean by logic and creature further problems for me. if you don't want to go around showing people how their belief system entails an inconsistency having to do with an unsustainable belief they are committed to because it's so much hard work to actually show the logical1 connections that hold between the various beliefs they hold, then don't go around writing posts claiming exactly that.

[Anonymous No.11603901]

>>11603696
>materialist
Woah, there, anon. Materialism has been falsified. Please take your pseudoscience to >>>/x/

[Anonymous No.11603908]

>>11603898
Are you using logic right now?

[Anonymous No.11603923]

>>11603908
i don't know if i am according to you, i'm not sure what you mean by logic. maybe if you're one of those people that considers any kind of calm and calculated discussion to be "logical2", then yeah, but i don't really think of discussions in those terms. i feel like i'm just talking basically.

[Anonymous No.11603932]

>>11603923
Does 1 + 1 always equal 2?

[Anonymous No.11603986]

>>11603932
i'm a retard dropout so i reserve the right to just say "i don't know, i have no strong feelings on the nature of mathematics and don't mind 1+1 not always being equal to 2." but the way i view what mathematics is supposed to be, i'm inclined to agree with the school of thought that views saying "1+1 is equal to 2" as being like saying "eating pork is sinful in islam". so math is then a convention which consists of a system of laws, using which people trained in math can answer these questions of what exactly is equal to what. then the truth of mathematical propositions is the same as the truths of religious doctrine or state law. so then if you ask, can there be right or wrong answers, i would say there can be right or wrong answers only in the same way that there's a right and wrong way for a lawyer to interpret a contract based on understanding the law and based on being able to correctly read the legalese, or for a religious scholar to make rullings on scripture.

[Anonymous No.11604046]

>>11603932
and since i'm obediently answering your questions, how about you produce the reason why you think "Logic cannot exist in a purely materialistic worldview, therefore a materialist can't even use logic to make an argument." is a true proposition and what it even means.
because if you have an argument showing a logical1 connection between "a purely materialistic worldview" and "Logic cannot exist" then it should work without me helping it by saying dumb things on mathematics, because then it would be showing a connection between the "dumb things" and the "Logic cannot exist" but it would be missing a connection to "a purely materialistic worldview"

[Anonymous No.11604150]

>>11603696

Because at the very bottom there's an "impossibility" and materialism doesnt deal with anything that isn't present it can't by definition answer that question because it's illogical to itself and everything it sees.

Saying "soul" seems wild but that's consciousness. Anything else isn't an answer.

[Anonymous No.11604178]

You were too dominated

[Anonymous No.11604192]

>>11603702
it's the ability to create order from chaos

[Anonymous No.11604289]

i thought there was? didn't they determine that consciousness is almost entirely in the amygdala?

[Anonymous No.11604298]

from wikipedia:

Scientific research has discovered that some areas of the brain, like the reticular activating system or the thalamus, appear to be necessary for consciousness, because damage to these structures or their lack of function causes a loss of consciousness.

[Anonymous No.11604306]

>>11603696
Because they are dumb.
>>11603702
Fuck off, stop shitting up this board with your dumbfuck shitposts.

[Anonymous No.11604348]

>>11603696
How about, the unconscious mind creates the illusion of an observer to better utilize information coming from the sensory organs by relating it to a virtual representation of itself so to better react to the surroundings? This virtual representation of itself is the consciousness of which you speak.