What are your opinions on the relationship between brain activity and awareness? Like, is there some missing link between the electrical/chemical processes in the brain and the resulting subjective experience, or is that just considered an "emergent property" that doesn't require further explanation?
Not sure if this is a Veeky Forums question since I don't post here, but it seemed a bit too science-y for Veeky Forums.
I made this reply before and I'll do it again.
The hard problem of consciousness is that we don't have a physical explanation for the subjective phenomena of consciousness. Consciousness is a streaming event 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 is insufficient to properly explain the substantialy unity 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 continuous manner.
There is also the phenomena of the electromagnetic field which hypothetically could connect all of these events. However, we run into a similar problem because the electromagnetic field is quantized as discrete entities, electromagnetic waves. How is one part(current of electromagnetic force) informed of all other parts? It isn't. We run into a conundrum where our current understanding of science can not produce a physical system which adequately explains the phenomena of consciousness.
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. Much like how computers know certain programs or are informed of them, your consciousness is a process that is informed of its own informational processing. This informational processing is integrated harmoniously. Looking at it from a reductionist stand point, a single act of knowing is informed by a congolmeration of knowing, and simultaneously informs a congolomeration of knowing of itself.
This process is also physically unified through a substratum.
Investigating this substratum produces a knowable physical system that explains consciousness. Trying to use current known phenomena, we can try to invent a new phenomena 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 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. Finally, we can use another new phenomena, which we will call 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.
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 and in my 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.
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.
>That is why I believe in the soul.
I sure am glad i read that line before disregarding all that block of text.
you are wrong.
nice counter-argument.
I suppose you think the brain produces consciousness via chemical reactions.
Why are these chemical reactions special?
What imbues them with consciousness?
What aren't fires self-aware?
I've produced a physical model for consciousness IE solved the hard problem of consciousness and all you do is scoff.
Einstein never had it this hard.
>Why are these chemical reactions special?
They're not special.
>What imbues them with consciousness?
The reactions themselves imbue us humans with consciousness.
>Why aren't fires self-ware?
They lack the wetware we humans have which produces consciousness.
Your solution is: "Consciousness is magic"
Which is not a real solution in the current science climate and is scoffed at by many a philosopher who demand real answers.
>I suppose you think the brain produces consciousness via chemical reactions.
Yes... well the patterns of neural activity.
Why are these chemical reactions special? They aren't.
>What imbues them with consciousness?
Consciousness is an emergent product of these interactions/patterns of activity. Consciousness is simply awareness. It is a product of the brain processing perceptual information hierarchically and in increasingly abstract ways.
>What aren't fires self-aware?
Fires lack information processing structures that can process sensory input from the environment and its self.
what?