The hard problem of consciousness is that we don't have a physical explanation for the subjective phenomena of consciousness. From a reductionist standpoint, the brain is separated into neurons, and when you examine a single neuron you find no trace of consciousness. There are those that claim that this is because it is an emergent property, you need more neurons to explain consciousness, but all that this argument has done is shown that consciousness and the brains events are correlated and it has made no further attempt to explain how the brain could produce awareness.
There is also what is known as the "binding problem". Consciousness is also a streaming event(a continuum) while the brain is an organization of discrete and disjointed events(neurochemical reactions). Consciousness is not only a unity but a substantial unity, because we retain our identity even through experiences of unconsciousness(we go to sleep at night and wake up as the same entity the next day). The information structure in the brain can not be used to explain the substantial unity and continuity of consciousness. The events in the brain are more akin to bouncing billiard balls against one another in a chain reaction as they are connected but only in a one-to-one relationship and lack a relationship with the whole in a unified manner.
However, there is also the phenomena of the electromagnetic field which hypothetically could connect all of these events with a unified force, therefore solving the "binding problem". However, we run into a similar problem because the electromagnetic field is quantized as discrete entities, electromagnetic waves.
Although, let us treat the electromagnetic field in classical terms and see what we can learn. The first problem is that why should electromagnetic forces produce consciousness? It seems that random perturbations in a field has no good reason for producing awaneness, so that the electromagnetic field theory runs into its own "hard problem." What would make a pattern of energy so special as to produce awareness? There is also experimental evidence that shows that changes in the EMF do not produce changes in awareness, which is the opposite of what we should expect if it where the case that the EMF is awareness. Finally, there is the problem of infromational processing. How is one part(current of electromagnetic force) informed of all other parts? How does information travel between parts of the field? They don't. It would have to be a non-local interaction that can explain the informational structure of awareness. We run into a conundrum where our current understanding of science can not produce a physical system which adequately explains the phenomena of consciousness.
Leo Allen
However, we can use the flaws of the brain(and EMF) argument to produce what we should expect from a physical system that explains consciousness. Consciousness is a self-refrential knowing, that is to say, you know that you know and this process is contained in a substantial unity. Much like how computers know certain programs or are informed of them, your consciousness is a process that is informed of its own informational processesing. This informational processing is integrated harmoniously. Looking at it from a reductionist stand point, a single act of knowing informs a congolomeration of knowing of itself and simultaneously is informed by a congolmeration of knowing. Each facet of knowing would interact with all other facets of knowing, and all facets of knowing would interact with each. This process is also physically unified through a substratum.
Investigating this substratum produces a knowable physical system that explains consciousness. First and foremost would be the soul. The soul would be a monad(simple physical unit) with an abstract nature of awareness much like how electrons have the abstract nature of a negative charge. We can also try to use the current known phenomena and invent a new phenomena which is made up of these, which possesses the qualities we are looking for. It could be a super-imposed wave of quantumwaves which are all "entangled non-locally" (as posited by Karl Pribram) or it could be a sublte-energy field which unifies all of the electromagnetic waves into a seamless whole, possessing the integrated informational processing we have come to expect.
Wyatt Fisher
When we come to a crossroad of hypothesises, we often turn to Occam's razor. Normally we try to use old phenomena to explain new phenomena but as the phenomena we are analyzing are all new physical phenomena, occam's razor doesn't help much yet. Then we try to use the most simple and elegant explanation. That, inmy opinion, that would be the soul. I think it is a simpler structure (but would require another mental monad to connect it to the brain), and it is certainly the most elegant which fits the greater design of the universe. Trying to use the other phenomena, complicates matters and does not have as much explanatory power.
What is the purpose of the brain then? The brain could be a manner of empowering the soul with energy.
That is why I believe in the soul.
Jayden Kelly
tl;dr >That is why I believe in the soul. not even going to bother
Adam Peterson
not everyone is self aware
are they soul less?
William Price
You do yourself a disservice.
Austin Thompson
No I think all conscious entities possess limited awareness and therefore a soul. All the way down to the flatworm(anything with a brain).
Jose Diaz
Interdasting
Chase Lee
These subjects are mostly up to what you choose to believe in. It's not impossible that a "soul" exists, but you can't prove it does either. I guess you'll know when you die.
Kevin Thomas
Yes, it is not deductive or even empirical proof but using abductive reasoning I have shown that the strongest argument is the one in support of the soul.
Dylan Anderson
>but all that this argument has done is shown that consciousness and the brains events are correlated and it has made no further attempt to explain how the brain could produce awareness. Explain how the soul could produce awareness.
Nolan Adams
I did >Consciousness is a self-refrential knowing, that is to say, you know that you know and this process is contained in a substantial unity. Much like how computers know certain programs or are informed of them, your consciousness is a process that is informed of its own informational processesing. This informational processing is integrated harmoniously. Looking at it from a reductionist stand point, a single act of knowing informs a congolomeration of knowing of itself and simultaneously is informed by a congolmeration of knowing. Each facet of knowing would interact with all other facets of knowing, and all facets of knowing would interact with each. This process is also physically unified through a substratum.
Investigating this substratum produces a knowable physical system that explains consciousness. First and foremost would be the soul. The soul would be a monad(simple physical unit) with an abstract nature of awareness much like how electrons have the abstract nature of a negative charge.
Brandon Thomas
The negative charge of an electron is a function of its quantum properties. What is the nature of the relationship between the soul and "awareness", and why is awareness a very low-level phenomenon like charge rather than a high-level phenomenon (like let's say the fuel efficiency of a car).
Dylan Sanchez
IMHO, it is not even a problem. Your brain is a giant self-learning mechanism (muh neural networks) and "unity of consciousness" is an illusion because all the hearing, seeing, thinking and overall perception happens in the same head.
Thinking is muted speaking. When you perform thinking the same regions of brain activate as when you speak, but the activity is weaker. The same applies to all mental processes.
Jeremiah Cook
This. It's all a machine, there is no reason to think otherwise and the more it goes, the more it seems like it is.
Individuality isn't really a thing, just like forests aren't really things in themselves.
Ethan Bennett
I was just using that as an analogy to help others understand.
Another way of looking at it is it's informational structure. We start with an empty monad. Then we implant information into it, a specific codex of information, awareness. You can imagine a sphere with infinite facets of knowing all intertwined with one another.
Now how does awareness turn off and on?
That's what the energy of the brain is for. It empowers the soul.
Hypothetically we could implant the quality of constant activity into the soul, like how matter can be considered implanted with the information of energy or motion, but that is not what we find. It would be constant awareness without sleep.
Hunter Rodriguez
You can claim consciousness is an illusion but that doesn't add up with our observations.
Jordan Allen
>We start with an empty monad. Then we implant information into it, a specific codex of information, awareness If you can just implant information and get awareness, then why do we need the soul? Why can't we just implant awareness into the brain?
>like how matter can be considered implanted with the information of energy or motion, You're going to need to define how you are using the word information here. And how the soul having more energy would change the way that the brain is structured, because otherwise it still needs sleep in order to consolidate memory etc.
Hunter Miller
you are a fucking idiot.
Brandon Jenkins
you fucking idiot,.
Alexander Perry
System dynamics Biosemiotics
Austin Garcia
we already disproved you on Veeky Forums bitch. stop harrassing the brainlets.
Leo Kelly
how can you prove something you cant define idiot.
Owen Nguyen
we disproved you. now leave.
Nolan Barnes
fucking idiot
Connor Hernandez
Not true, non linguistic perception and thinking is much more prevalent than self conscious symbolic thought. Fucking Cartesian dogmatics get off my board.
Blake Jackson
Claiming that the brain is the source of awareness is hardly disproving me.
You just claim that there is no hard problem of consciousness, which is stupid. You really don't know how it works, you just have a vague conception of correlated activities.
Parker Martin
fuck off hes right and you're a cunt.
Joshua White
no, you have no idea how it works. there is no hard problem.
Christopher Price
How exactly do dualists rationalize the effects of brain damage, or even mundane things like drug chemistry? I get the idea of saying the brain is only correlating with actual conciousness/thought as a devil's advocate thing, but if the brain just happened to be around while the soul was doing the heavy lifting specific brain injuries shouldn't produce such specific disruptions of functions, and drugs shouldn't work at all unless they too have some non-material component.
Dominic Sanders
Because that would be messy. The monad acts as the substantial unity that awareness needs.
Information is merely the structure or order of something. But in our world we have meant structure to mean physical structure, so I use the term abstract order. It physically contains an abstract order, or is informed.
Henry Sanders
why bother writing it down, when ive seen you post on Veeky Forums and get shut the fuck down.
Ryan Lee
evidence bitch.
Noah Wilson
If there is no hard problem then why do neuroscientists study the hard problem? Most confusing, isn't it?
Josiah Cox
neuroscientists don't study it....
Daniel Martinez
cartesian analysis based on natural observations.
Alexander Phillips
no; give it to me in a way that i understand. you think 6 words will prove your thesis? fuck off.
All of these things have real-world causes. They weren't caused by demon possession or sin. The consciousness is very clearly physical and affected by physical phenomena, you don't need spooks to justify it. Look, buddy, we're all struggling with the fear of death, but there's no need to lie to ourselves.
>substantial unity that awareness needs. Why does awareness "need" substantial unity?
Jose Harris
Like I said, the brain is correlated with the soul, so we should expect to see a cause and effect relationship.
Im a libertarian so I believe in free will, I believe that the soul causes changes in the brain, and the brain causes changes in the soul.
Nothing to be scared of.
Michael Harris
"binding problem of consciousness"
Isaac Lopez
>tfw too intelligent to be an atheist, but also too intelligent to believe in any man-made religion
Brody Diaz
you sent me nothing interesting bitch. you just sent me encyclopedia descriptions; some of them my beliefs, with one criticism which is shit.
Kayden Garcia
They base the explantory power of their study on the hard problem of consciousness.
Alexander Cooper
you know shit. you dont even know about what binding problems are in psychology and neuroscience. They aren't unsolvable problems bitch.
Nathan Carter
What if we die every time we fall asleep and we just don't know it because the new version of us has the same memories?
Robert Reyes
Then I would be "dead" wrong.
Joseph James
no they don't. the ones i agreed on are embodied, enactivist and reducible ones; they dont need to have anything to do with hard problems. and infact embodied or enactivist ones; the ones that i think are most useful, were never even created in any context of hard problems of consciousness so fuck off fat pig.
Sebastian Hernandez
if you clone yourself, would the clone be you?
Jose Murphy
I'm not sure why that would require the unity of a monad and not the unity of a well connected system.
Connor Ortiz
There is physical space between neurons. It needs a unified structure to unite all of these separate entities. I cover why I don't believe it's the electromagnetic field in my earlier posts.
Gavin Butler
>no hard problem of consciousness >multiple theories of how consciousness is produced by the brain
Asher Martinez
>There is physical space between neurons. There is physical space between the nucleus of an atom and its electrons. There is physical space between the atoms within a molecule, within the molecules of a substance, etc. Are these not coherent unified systems? The space between neurons is crossed by neurotransmitters in any case.
>It needs a unified structure to unite all of these separate entities. The brain is a unified structure uniting separate entities that work in tandem.
Cameron Kelly
Why do people who know next to nothing about physics attempt to use physics to explain their magical woowoo? It just makes you look ridiculous as well as stupid and dishonest.
tl;dr- OP is a faggot.
Xavier Bell
No, they are not unified systems but the force fields are physically connected(plausible unity)
The brain is not unified unless we take into account a classical electromagnetic field.
There must be discernment from traditional sense of unity, which we use when describing things working together in concert, and a physical unity, like a quantum wave function.
Oliver Reed
Don't need a masters in physics to understand why our understanding of consciousness is erroneous.
Jacob Powell
No, but you DO need more than a highschool understanding of science to use it to explain... well anything, really, but especially something as nonsensical as "the soul".
Jaxon Bailey
>There must be discernment from traditional sense of unity, which we use when describing things working together in concert, and a physical unity, Why can awareness only be supported by the latter and not the former? Why does the communication of neurotransmitters between neurons not count?
Colton Diaz
/thread
'Hard problem' of consciousness is 'hard' precisely because the thing it's trying to solve for doesn't exist. No one will ever 'solve' it except by realizing there's nothing to solve.
Jace Anderson
Counsciousness, or self-awareness to be more precise, is the brain's own appraisal of it's own activity. Mind states are brain states or, if you want to be anal about it, mind states are the brains' intrepretations of it's own states.
Assuming mind=brain offers a theory with unrivaled power of prediction and it's an overall vision with less useless moving parts, less room for baseless assumptions.
>(we go to sleep at night and wake up as the same entity the next day) subjective, your self identifies itself with your past selves and lacks memory of all those times it wasn't activated (it can't remember not existing, so it assumes that it hasn't stopped existing), creating the impression that it is a stable property
Don't worry though. God gets you an heavenly body if you do good works, so you just get uploaded to a better brain when you die.
Bentley Evans
>The brain is not unified unless we take into account a classical electromagnetic field.
Well, why wouldn't we take into account something we now exists?
>There must be discernment from traditional sense of unity, which we use when describing things working together in concert, and a physical unity, like a quantum wave function.
I have no clue what this means. Did you mean to use the word "discernment"? Is your claim really that we have to be able to distinguish between our conceptions of unity and physical manifestations of unity?
Tyler Baker
No, it would be like a twin. Because clones don't inherit memories. They don't even look identical due to environmental condition.
Caleb Peterson
He is completely ignoring the fact that perception is dependent on information transmitted by signs that exist outside of the mind. It's evolutionary impossible for a mind to be 'self learning' Language must be learned How can bee drones go back to the hive and tell other bees where the dank pollen is? How can plants track the sun if they cannot think? Perception and consciousness are qualities innate to all life as all life must be able to perceive and react accordingly to the perceived information in order to live in a changing environment/ regulate internal system dynamics in order to stay alive and in order to reproduce. Symbolic self conscious thought is just one variety of semiosis and couldn't come to exist on its own.
Joshua Allen
We are looking for a physical substratum to consciousness. Neurons firing are just neurons firing. In a grand orchestrated synchronous event or not, they are just neurons firing. How would discrete and separated events be capable of producing a unified experience of consciousness?
It needs a field-like entity to be plausible.
Christopher Cook
How is this a problem to begin with? What induces us to think that the things we know to produce consciousness "shouldn't"?
Brayden Lee
>We are looking for a physical substratum to consciousness.
The brain.
>Neurons firing are just neurons firing.
HURR
>How would discrete and separated events be capable of producing a unified experience of consciousness?
You literally just answered your own "question" you spastic. >grand orchestrated synchronous
Eli Ramirez
onsciousness, according to Dennett’s theory, is like a conjuring trick: the normal functioning of the brain just makes it look as if there is something non-physical going on. To look for a real, substantive thing called consciousness, Dennett argues, is as silly as insisting that characters in novels, such as Sherlock Holmes or Harry Potter, must be made up of a peculiar substance named “fictoplasm”; the idea is absurd and unnecessary, since the characters do not exist to begin with. This is the point at which the debate tends to collapse into incredulous laughter and head-shaking: neither camp can quite believe what the other is saying.
Chase Jones
You have a poor understanding of the physical implications of consciousness.
That is not a suitable embodiment of consciousness.
Justin Cox
Stop using reductionism It's the interactions between neurons working to produce something greater not the neurons themselves. Like how binary code works
Henry Gonzalez
>That is not a suitable embodiment of consciousness.
Says who? You? You're wrong. Now what?
James Smith
brute identity—of electricity and magnetism into one force, say—occur at the foundational level of physics. Neurological and phenomenal properties do not seem to be basic in this way. We are left with phenomenal properties inexplicable in physical terms, “brutally” identified with neurological properties in a way that nothing else seems to be. Why not take all this as an indication that phenomenal properties are not physical after all?
Jaxon Nguyen
>In a grand orchestrated synchronous event or not, they are just neurons firing Just about every chemical reaction can be reduced to the effects of electron movement. You could say that just about all of chemistry, and everything that entails, is "just" electrons migrating, but that doesn't actually tell you the whole story. In a sense, yes, conciousness is "just" neurons firing, but the magnitude of what that actually entails is huge.
Grayson Gomez
Consciousness is a unified experience. It requires a physical unity which is actually that. Physically connected.
Matter flying through space to produce a ghost of the machine. How deep is your understanding...
Xavier Sullivan
Reductionism is relevant when concerned with the physics of consciousness.
Charles Morgan
>Consciousness is a unified experience.
No, it isn't.
>It requires a physical unity which is actually that. Physically connected.
Like the brain?
Elijah Hernandez
But not the mechanism itself, knowing what the part is is completly necessary but parts can't tell you how the system works by themselves.
James Flores
>What induces us to think that the things we know to produce consciousness "shouldn't"?
People overrating the literal reality of what their brain signals to itself. Behaving as though you're seeing 'red' is a useful trick for getting you to speak and act in terms of an abstract fiction in a way that's a lot more simple and efficient than if we were all forced to deal with the literal reality of speaking and acting in terms of all the little stimuli input and reactions we have. It hides the messiness of our behavioral routines from ourselves by getting us to operate in terms of big, dumb, perfectly immediate and physically inexplicable 'qualia'. The problem comes in when people take these big, dumb, perfectly immediate, and physically inexplicable 'qualia' at face value and start trying to explain them as though they were physical phenomena in themselves, like they somehow need a new physics to account for them. In reality, they're so immediate seeming and eluding of explanation exactly because they aren't actual things at all. They're only as real as the concepts of numbers or monetary value are. We can get a lot of mileage out of behaving *as though* these things were real, but that presumptive behavior is the only real thing in the equation.
Samuel Ramirez
No, physically connected like an electromagnetic field. So that information would be conferred in it's entirety.
I know you desperately want to be right, but it would be nice if you could come to terms with understanding informational processing a little better.
Liam Lewis
What the fuck are you going on about?
Cameron Sanchez
>No, physically connected like an electromagnetic field. So that information would be conferred in it's entirety.
Why do you imagine this is required? Also, you DO realise that the brain does have an electromagnetic field?
Leo Morris
Maybe try asking about something specific you're failing to understand.
Jose Anderson
Why do you imagine that it isn't?
How do you think information in the universe travels?
Andrew Nelson
>How do you think information in the universe travels?
Mostly thru photons. Also, THE BRAIN HAS AN ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD. Your own objection is nonsense, as you;d know if you knew anything.
Isaiah Murphy
I don't quite see how this stuff about qualia relates to my question. Or perhaps I do; and in that case: why do the qualia need to be explained?
Juan Martin
I've already explained why I believe it is not the electromagnetic field.
Lincoln Williams
In the brain, information is communicated through the moment of ions through channels that are selectively activated and deactivated in a giant self-regulating system. Why is this not enough to communicate the information required for awareness?
Eli Nguyen
Because it would completely destroy your position? Tough shit retard, you don;t get to ignore facts when they're inconvenient.
Jeremiah Thomas
For those that claim there is no hard or binding problem to consciousness, then why are neuroscientists working on quantum brain models?
Dylan Miller
Why wouldn't they? Quantum physics is physics. Models and understanding should be updated in order to take advantage of current knowledge. It's just that the specific thing known as "the hard problem of conciousness" is not a coherent question.
Brandon Lee
>why do the qualia need to be explained?
It's less that they need to be explained and more that a lot of people mistakenly believe they need to be explained. Because they're literally mind tricks that get us to believe we're 'experiencing' sights or sounds as things in themselves. So people who get worked up about the 'hard problem' and trying to solve it by coming up with a new physics that accounts for 'consciousness' do so because they're taking the mind tricks at face value. They're believing that because they're compelled to behave as though these sights and sounds are actual things, that this means they really are actual things.
Thomas Lopez
>Consciousness is also a streaming event [citation needed] >Consciousness is not only a unity but a substantial unity no it isn't. >However, there is also the phenomena of the electromagnetic field which hypothetically could connect all of these events with a unified force, therefore solving the "binding problem". However, we run into a similar problem because the electromagnetic field is quantized as discrete entities, electromagnetic waves. this is just gibberish, like the people who hand-wave 'quantum particles' to account for free will except for when you're reading something new, or when you forget something >misuse of occam's razor ho boy
TL;DR: >guy without free will tries desperately to prove he has it
James Cruz
What do you define as an "actual thing"?
Asher Peterson
consciousness exists as much as god
am i smart yet lads :^)
Austin Brooks
this nice one, retard
Connor Martinez
>What do you define as an "actual thing"?
The physical world is real / actual. There is light and sound. What there isn't is the 'experience of red' or the 'experience of noise'. Those things are abstract fictions we behave in terms of, not actual phenomena in need of explanation in the same way the physical world is explained. They're more like numbers or monetary value. You will never solve the 'hard problem' of finding the number five in the fingers of your hand for example because the fiveness of your fingers isn't an actual thing in the real world, it's an abstract fiction that's useful to behave around.
Juan Sanchez
There is information traveling from the neurons, but they are not traveling in a coherent medium.
Also, neurons fire in separate parts of the brain which are mysteriously organized as a single perception.
Xavier Ramirez
>What there isn't is the 'experience of red' or the 'experience of noise' The experience of red/noise is in a specific pattern of neurons firing. It's just as physical as anything else.
Cooper Hernandez
So by "actual thing" you merely mean material object?
