Hard Problem of Consciousness?

>Mfw when I realized there never was a problem.

Other urls found in this thread:

evolvingai.org/fooling
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Good, but posting those words is like saying "beetlejuice" three times for pseudointellectuals. Hurry and delete this thread.

Whatever the answer is, we can all agree that dualism is bullshit, correct?

Correct. It's incredibly egotistical how these "hard problem" people are convinced their own compelled belief in sensory input as some "experience" thing in itself is a literal indication of some aspect of reality that physics is missing. Instead of the obvious alternative explanation that we're just prone to having a useful belief in something that isn't literally true. Like somehow they've convinced themselves it's impossible for the brain to ever work in terms of convenient fictions.

Hate to break it to you, mr. folk psychologist, Qualia doesn't exist

He's agreeing with you and saying it's going to attract the people you two don't agree with by triggering them with the truth. He's saying delete the thread so you don't have to deal with these incoming brainlets, not because you're wrong.

Hmm I'm dumb as shit

brainlet here, please explain in more detail

No you brainlet,close but not right.

It's an illusion in part, in fact, consciousness is the only thing that can see an illusion as real. Only consciousness can look at pic related and model an object which is impossible.

So consciousness is based in illusion, but that does not mean it isn't real. Ultimately, color is real, sound is real, etc. We haven't figured out how to model it correctly yet, but that does not mean it doesn't have real existence, material physical existence. It exists as expressed by the interaction of information in the brain, the same way the universe exists as expressed by the interaction of information making up the fundamental particles.
Consciousness is some kind of real byproduct of the interaction of information. The more complex and correlated the system (for example having eyes with high "framerate" vision tied in with short to long term memory and intelligence to generalize and analyze and form a complex model of the surrounding environment as well as internal environment) the more likelyhood there is strong consciousness.
I'd say that for computers especially neural nets, and especially those mixing visual and verbal dialogue, are approaching higher and higher levels of consciousness. I believe this will be proved shortly after a strong theory of consciousness has been established. I'm not suggesting they have minds, but that they are getting closer and closer as the components of a mind are becoming easy to compute.

>in fact, consciousness is the only thing that can see an illusion as real
Nope.
evolvingai.org/fooling
Also none of what you're talking about needs to involve "qualia" being literally present. All that's required is the behavior of responding to those illusions as though they weren't illusions. It's enough to behave and report as though you're "experiencing qualia" like your examples of color or sound. No literal phantasms of "experience" need ever actually appear and no deeper new science of "qualia" is required unless you insist on overrating the literal reality of your compelled belief and behavior in these situations. It's way less of a leap to just accept that you only believe you're "really experiencing" something rather than overhauling physics because of how real you're compelled to believe / report the alleged phenomena are. Intensity of belief doesn't constitute much evidence that belief is true instead of just a useful fictional reference point for behavior.

I suspect such objects are modelled piecewise by the brain, rather than the whole impossible object being modelled at once.

This is a hell of way to rationalize that you're not experiencing what you're experiencing.

It's a way more reasonable explanation then the notion we *are* literally "experiencing" things just because we have the behavior of treating sensory input as though they were real world objects in themselves.
If you were going to build a robot that made use of information from a mounted camera to navigate around its environment, you would do it in exactly that way, by having it behave in response to information rather than by coming up with some way to make magic image objects literally appear to it.
There is never any example of "qualia" you can point to that is beyond a mundane physics compatible explanation in terms of behavior. There's nothing mysterious or magical about making use of behavior based around fictional reference points.

It's not.

It's pratting around.

You are experiencing the world. Whether or not you're experiencing that world freely (You're not, that's all compelled behaviour) is irrelevant. You have an interior life.

It's so amusing that you can be so divorced from observation that you can rationalize you're not observing anything at all. I mean maybe you don't have an interior life, maybe you're effectively clockwork, but I certainly do.

Only un-endowed strict materialist onanists could deny the most intuitive truth possible: what you experience by its very ontology must exists in that subjective sense as it appears to you. By denying this obvious part of reality, they are either falling prey to some form of 'scientistic' mind-virus, possess a far too low IQ to comprehend epistemological arguments, are perhaps manifestations of a Demiurge, or lack some critical gene responsible for creating subjective experiences; hence being essentially automata. All of these scenarios are best dealt with through emergency testosterone therapy, precautionary neutering, and micro-dosing of LSD. As these 'people' believe they are simply pure information, throwing rocks in their general direction has no moral implications.

got any scientific proof to back that up? :^)
and no, what you think is not what is fact, so don't give me that "hurr, well its just an illusion, its not real because i said so" >:^(

>You have an interior life
You behave as though you have an interior life. You don't know that there actually is some extra special class of real world objects that make that interior life up just because you're an organism under the impression that these things are really there. It would be a lot less of a stretch to not make that additional assumption that your behavior is an indication of some extra variety of real world objects in need of a new science to explain.
>I mean maybe you don't have an interior, maybe you're effectively clockwork, but I certainly do.
You have no way of ever knowing whether you have an actual "interior" or just believe that you have one. The latter explanation has the benefit of making sense within the bounds of how all other physical phenomena work. There's no reason to believe we're exceptions to physical reality just because you have the behavior of treating sensory inputs as though they were real.

he already addressed your disbelief here

You don't need proof to refrain from making a needless additional assumption about magic being real. When you stop making that assumption there's some magical super-physical thing in need of explaining, what you're left with is ordinary physical bodies behaving in ordinary physics compliant ways. You don't need proof to not disagree with physics.

lol

This is just pratting around with semantics.

Under your understanding of my "Belief" I don't in fact have an interior life and am merely reporting to you (Who also lacks the interior life to observe this but merely functions as though you do) that I do.

However, I do in fact have an interior life, I am observing my own behaviour. I can't prove that to you, but I do.

he does have and observes his interior life, however he isnt such as a brainlet and realizes that the interior life is simply an amalgam of sensory inputs.

>I can't prove that to you
You can't prove it to yourself either.
>semantics
No. It's not at all a semantics difference when the alternative to what I'm talking about is people believing there's some extra-physical phenomenon of "qualia" that is going to one day be explained through updates to physics and chemistry. That's as far from a semantics difference as anything else you could ever come up with. This is the difference between accepting the world as it is vs. insisting we need a radically different new science to solve this "problem"

>mfw I've made a career out of avoiding criticism by using slippery semantics

>You have no way of ever knowing whether you have an actual "interior" or just believe that you have one

Wrong, I do know whether or not I have an interior life, because I am observing the world rather than a dead machine reporting information to you, I am aware of my own actions, thoughts, imaginations.

This awareness is what consists an interior life.

I can never be aware if anyone else has a similar experience, because I am limited exclusively to my own. But I can be sure of my own awareness.

solipsists are the lowest of low.

Hurr durr we can't believe in qualia, because that assumes a new science. I'm just going to herp my derp and ignore that all science was at some point new mwuaaa and that we have no evidence that qualia are merely beliefs. *rhythmical rocking motions* In fact everything is accounted for by behaviourism because assuming more complex brain processing would require more assumptions. Language is just a Pavlovian conditioned reflex *drools*

He's not saying that whatsoever.

He's saying that no interior life existing and that we simply believe we do.

But in order to hold a belief and observe that belief and be aware of that belief we'd have to have the capacity to observe the world, somethine he's denying in favour of believing we're simply automatons.

automatons can think that they aren't automatons. nonmaterialists have deluded themselves thinking that they're above the matter.

qualia does not exist in empiricism at all.

> people believing there's some extra-physical phenomenon of "qualia"

There's no reason not to suppose that when the alternative is literally rejecting

>I think therefore I am

What you are literally suggesting is that you shouldn't have an interior life whatsoever, all of the colour you observe, all of the thoughts you have you shouldn't be aware of, you should simply move in the same way that clockwork does, unaware of your own motion.

No, you don't get it.

Automatons don't think at all, they don't observe the world, they just move.

They do not require "Thought" as you understand it in the same way a clock doesn't.

Thinking as you and I understand it can be more accurately understood as "Being aware of my own thoughts" but an automaton can simply move, no awareness required because intelligence is seperate from awareness. There would be nothing to convince yourself of because to an unaware machine the concept of self-awareness is a nonsense.

"Intelligence" can be reduced to a number of operations and movements by objects in the world, it doesn't require awareness in the same way a clock doesn't, it simply moves.

>I *believe* I know whether or not I have an interior life
>I *believe* I am observing the world rather than a dead machine reporting information to you
Fixed that for you.
>I am aware of my own actions, thoughts, imaginations.
This depends on your definition of "awareness." You certainly are able to reference and report on both your own real world physical behavior and on the non-real convenient fictional reference points your brain works in terms of e.g. thoughts / imaginations. This doesn't require "qualia" as a literal thing that's appearing to you, it only requires that you have behavior in response to information.
Also calling that "dead" just shows you're having emotionally charged reactions to this topic. That's the real "problem" that comes up with this topic, people like you are so attached to the idea everything you think you "experience" must be an indication of reality as it is that nothing will ever change your mind no matter how much time and research has been poured into discerning how the brain works in the future. People like you will never accept any explanation other than "it's magic."
Let me help you out, you seem confused.
1) A valid example of when new science is called:
>Hmm, Maxwell's work with electromagnetism seems to make sense but contradicts the Newtonian assumption of absolute space and time.
2) An invalid example of when new science is called for:
>QUALIA ARE LITERALLY REAL PHYSICS TRANSCENDING PHENOMENA BECAUSE I BELIEVE REALLY HARD THAT THEY'RE REAL, LOLOLOL JUST OPEN YOUR EYES AND YOU CAN SEE THINGS, YOU CAN'T EXPLAIN THAT

And if you don't get it, our intelligence is the automaton part of us, even in forming these observations I am simply being moved to act to analyse a fact by chemical reactions causing electrical behaviour in the brain.

My awareness of all of this is supplementary. My awareness in this case is simply a fact a computer (My body) is analysing because it is compelled to.

Not him, but you can't truly observe your own behavior, that is if you are talking about it in the way of being able to change your behavior. You can document it in a journal but you will always lead a very deterministic life. This is proved by twin studies which show that you do most of the time end up in the same position in your life regardless of how much you choose to change yourself. You can really only observe your behavior after the fact, which is like viewing data, it isn't happening in real time. You aren't your interior you, you are only your senses, which isn't your interior life

>They do not require "Thought" as you understand it in the same way a clock doesn't.

>This doesn't require "qualia" as a literal thing that's appearing to you

See the above. You don't get it.

All of what you are describing is the automatic process of analysis. Intelligence is seperate to qualia altogether.

>Also calling that "dead" just shows you're having emotionally charged reactions to this topic.

Speak for yourself, I'm trying to juxtapose it to "alive" or "Aware" things with convenient vocabulary.

The point I'm trying to make to you is that machines don't "Believe" and that this a nonsense, machines don't have interior lives (though a machine/intelligence can react to, and analyse an interior life it is presented with) machines are just moving things goverened by natural laws.

no, you don't get it.
the senses feed us info and we process it then we react to it as automatons. the processing is electric signals in your brain. we "can feel" the electric and call it the self.

you really should look into mirror neurons and salience.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

i know that it's disappointing but it really is as it appears to be.

I'm not denying determinism.

The point I'm trying to make is that the idea of a moving thing "Believing" anything is a nonsense.

Machines simply move without being aware of their own movement at all.

>the senses feed us info and we process it then we react to it as automatons. the processing is electric signals in your brain. we "can feel" the electric and call it the self.

It's impossible with you.

What's that "feeling"? You don't seem to get that we don't need to be aware of that to calculate, to move, to function.

It's hard to explain but think of it like this, everything you do, including reacting to your own interior life is mechanical, but the existence of an interior life itself is "Observation" and that observation is qualia and it exists.

Look my boy, you don't ~know~ that qualia are merely beliefs, i.e. pure information in some wave-function. You simply have a framework of materialism that applies to purely physical phenomena and explains them very well, and your argument is that if a phenomena is not purely physical then it doesn't fit the framework so therefore it can't exist. Don't you see the fallacy there?

Whether or not something fits a framework is completely irrelevant to whether it is true. As a human, you are born into a world where you deal entirely with subjective experiences. These wild assortments of different correlated qualities (sounds, colors, emotions) seem to indicate the existence of something noumenal: a physical world. Yet, you have never directly experienced something physical. You ~believe~ that you are a human being with a brain that is embedded in a physical world, with your brain giving you a decently accurate representation of events, and that this physical world has a thing done by other humans called 'science' and that it explains things the best, and the science seems to handle things so well that you in fact believe that the very place you started from, your subjective experience, is in fact an illusion. Yet the physical world could just as well be the illusion.

Some machines are self aware idiot. Robots with proprioception are not high tech. Self awareness isn't the big question here, spatial and informational boundaries are.

Self awareness as you understand it is not self-awareness as I understand it.

self awareness don't actually exist. it is a mechanical thing. you need to prove that there's something emergent coming out of this mechanical processing.

la la la la
Lalalalala
lala laaaa

This completely

What we are experiencing exists in some way. Whether it directly maps to an external reality is irrelevant - the fact that this map, this felt presence of immediate experience, is experiencable, means it exists to some abstract degree

The argument that it does not exist is similar to the claim that a shadow does not exist because it does not perfectly represent the object casting it. Or that a black and white 240p video camera's inputted video feed does not exist because it's not a perfect representation of what it is filming

Malarchy, the felt presence of immediate reality exists as an aspect of the universe. All experiences exist just as much as an atom exists, even if they are mistaken experiences or sensory tricks. The experience exists, this is so axiomatically obvious

From this we can conclude that the psychedelic experience exists as well and this should broaden our horizons in the parameter space of experience. How large is the space? What are its parameters? What exists at the asymptotes?

Absolutely fascinating and completely relevant to science, yet it's labelled the same as nonsense like witchcraft and astrology

and you say "we don't need to be aware" as if the special processing to adapt to new information and react to them isn't useful in an universe with causality? there is a reason that basic robots cannot function outside of their controlled environment. they lack special processing for self awareness therefore unable to navigate in this university. as said.

go ahead and disconnect someone's nerves and see how rapidly the "subjective" reality changes for it. it's because the brain literally only can process reality as the inputs are fed into it.

Self-awareness as you understand it works something like this

Machines are merely moving objects governed by forces (Ultimately coming back to a prime mover but lets not waste our time) and the self-aware machine you're talking about is in fact a machine that moves, having been caused to move by itself in particular ways.

What I'm talking about is "observation"

You're misunderstanding the difference between "Reaction" and awareness.

You can be an extremely adaptive machine that moves effectively in response to a certain movement to solve a problem that movement poses by moving itself in various ways.

I know, it sounds stupid, but "awareness" isn't some beneficial thing either way, it's simply a fact.

It's very tempting to conflate "awareness" with intelligence or problem-solving of some stripe, but it's not. At best "awareness" is simply a fact processed by the intelligence.

What about a robot with a camera for eyes, sensors to detect the locations of its limbs, chemical detectors for a nose, microphones for ears, and a complex feedback loop based observation and learning system that allows it to keep track of current state while simultaneously reformatting the patterns and knowledge it has extracted from past state

Sound familiar? Yeah

Consciousness is an emergent property of sufficiently self-referential computational systems.

>What about a robot with a camera for eyes, sensors to detect the locations of its limbs, chemical detectors for a nose, microphones for ears, and a complex feedback loop based observation and learning system that allows it to keep track of current state while simultaneously reformatting the patterns and knowledge it has extracted from past state

Sound familiar? Yeah

None of that necessarily implies it's actually "aware" of any of this. Just because it has cameras for eyes doesn't mean it actually "sees" anything as though it has an interior life.

It might well be as "aware" as a clock.

You could even go as far as to create a machine with fully fledged emotions.

But that doesn't necessarily imply it's actually "aware" in the same way we are.

For instance, just because a clock is loud and aggressive-sounding, that doesn't make it angry.

forget it, dualists are hopeless. physicalists will trumiph again in about 10 years.

Then I can say the same thing about you. What is the different? Do organic molecules impart special consciousness properties that silicon chips and copper wires do not impart? Please justify this claim

Why would you be aware but it wouldn't be? Explain what it lacks that you have

And just because you're typing these words right now doesn't mean you're actually sentient, you could be a p-zombie. Are you? We both know you aren't. Actually I don't know for sure. But you know.

>Then I can say the same thing about you. What is the different? Do organic molecules impart special consciousness properties that silicon chips and copper wires do not impart? Please justify this claim

Other than that I am self-aware? I don't know.

But just because something else IS going on doesn't mean I can necessarily explain it right now, the field is naescent.

Who are you ITT you I can be clear who I'm debating.

>you could be a p-zombie

This is actually the point I'm making, it's perfectly possible for us to be p-zombies, but we aren't.

So I can be clear

More like Dennett is a fraud.

I'm convinced the physical world consists of deterministic p-zombies, and that the higher power of the universe enters into these p-zombies if their informational complexity is sufficient to experience life as a humble physical being.

How do you know it's perfectly possible for us to be p-zombies? As far as I can tell they're only philosophical conjectures which we only know to exist in our language-based descriptions of them

What if it's the case that it's simply impossible for a p-zombie to exist without internal hardware that would naturally cause consciousness to emerge? This is completely possible.

awareness modifies and shapes the reaction. therefore, it was advantageous for organisms with special configurations of neurons that enables it to be aware and reacts in novel ways.

>You don't need proof to refrain from making a needless additional assumption about magic being real.
wtf did i just say? Its just as foolhardy to assume that there is no "magic being" as it is to assume that there is. Unless you can produce evidence that there is none or that there is, then any claim you make is an assumption and therefore not scientific, more an opinion then a fact.

>You don't need proof to agree with physics.
>the bill nye appeal to authority argument
please stfu faggot, if you make a claim, you need to validate it first. And if i am unwilling to accept a materialistic assumption about consciousness (or an ephiphenomenal one) that does not make me anti-science. If anything it is me applying scientific rigor to this problem.

You can hold the materialistic view (or whatever view you have) all you like, just don't conflate it with the objective or scientific understanding of the problem; because unless there is reproducible evidence that you are right, then it is NOT scientific by any stretch of the imagination.

Nothing supernatural exists user, period, we know this for certain already

Want to know why? Because if it exists, IT IS NATURAL. It is real, it is a part of whatever existence consists of. We just don't have an explanation. There is nothing supernatural, everything that is something is natural. Supernatural properties only exist as a figment of our imagination by definition because if they ever ended up being real they would no longer be supernatural

Yet another Wittgensteinian trick of language misleading philosophers for millenia

>How do you know it's perfectly possible for us to be p-zombies

The point I'm making is that the automatons the rest of the people ITT are supposing are p-zombies.

I'm tired and lazy and abbreviated it to "perfectly possible"

But on the real? I don't think we'd live in the world we do if we were P-zombies, a lot of our philosophies are built around contemplating our ability to be aware of our functioning which simply wouldn't have emerged if there was no inner-functioning to contemplate.

P-zombies are impossible though.

Good point user.

Assuming Qualia is real, it may well indeed be an evolutionary advantage.

But honestly I was trying to avoid talking about it because it's very complicated, better to try and resolve on whether or not it exists before we debate its advantages and disadvantages.

Notably, Socratic and Platonic philosophies emerged as a consequence of this line of thought.

It could be said, in a sense, the Western intellectual tradition relies on Qualia.

Pragmatically "Supernatural" just means "Existing outside of the predictions of the current model"

Human language is pragmatic, but since science relies on rigour it's probably not healthy to use such pragmatic language when dealing with science.

>that does not make me anti-science
Flatearthers are not anti-science either.

Maybe it works as a 'sand box' for neurons to communicate and synchronize. If you want all neurons experiencing 'red' to convey the same information up a hierarchy of layers even though they are spatially separated by some distance in a cortical layer, they should probably fire in the same kind of way and connect to the same parent neuron encoding the concept of 'redness'. So perhaps its some form of evolved means of synchronizing information between neurons which are spatially distant that either uses qualia directly, or creates qualia epiphenomenologically (e.g. maybe different neuronal firing rates produce some kind of physical phenomena we are not aware of yet).

Which user am I talking to? Reference a previous post please.

>Nothing supernatural exists user
>It is real, it is a part of whatever existence consists of
not denying this. However, there is still so little we know about the universe, for instance, until recently we though atoms were these definable quanta that exist as discrete particles with definable momentum, mass, and position. Now we know that shit's weird. electrons are waves and particles, nuclei are made of elementary quarks with no definable mass that jostle around to produce the imitation of mass (in fact mass itself is merely a reflection of motion causing disturbances in the higgs field), its bizarre. We also have theories about higher dimensions and such-forth.

My problem is your baseless assumptions. Don't make a claim and call it scientific if you don't have proof for it.
Until you can validate it with reproducible empirical evidence i don't want to her a peep out of you about how what you say it fact and anyone who disagrees with you is unscientific, FTFY.

...

i think that qualia is a processing artifact. not that it actually exists, but as a certain configuration of physical signals.

Supernatural means not obeying any order of operation.

I know that it exists.

I think it has implications for how we think in the same way that any fact we observe has implications for how we think, therefore our intellectual reaction to it will adjust our behaviour, therefore our behaviour isn't independent of qualia.

Agnosticism is just screeching, it's not relevant in scientific context.

that's a different beast. With flat-earth theory there is too much information in support of the round eath theory, and all the flat-earth explanations are weak. The most tangible evidence they have is "in my photographs it looks flat, so it must be flat".
My biggest contention with that theory was how they have to keep moving the goal-post in order to keep it running.

Here are some major problems:
- The coriolis effect oging in 2 diffferent direction on the same plane (that's not how the coriolis effect works)
- the norther and southern parts of the world having two different night-skies
- the south and north both having an equivalent travel time despite the fact that in the flat-disk model the southern half has a greater circumference than the norther half
- the "magic sky-dome" hypothesis having no proof besides 2 videos of a rocket exploding mid-air
- the fact that gravity has been simplified to a "downward force" rather than an attractive force between bodies of mass/matter (which was proved to be the case in Newtons experiment of the 2 lead weights in suspension)
- etc.

There is too much evidence against the flat-earth theory, and too much evidence for the globe-earth model.

Usually when this is pointed out they rely on conspiracy-theory level explanations as to why that evidence is not evidence: "the globe-earthers have been deceiving you, they want your money by buying their globe models". Its pretty retarded though, since it would require far more effort than it is worth to cover up something so easily observable.

>Agnosticism blah blah blah scientific context.
I never said agnosticism was the correct approach (though it is the academically honest one, since it is an admission of ones lack of knowing (though usually this should be followed up by seeking answers rather than just sitting there)).
What i said is one should not claim that their assumption is correct without proofs to back their claim up. You stated your assumption was a fact, now prove it. You can't? Then don't say that your opinion is a scientific fact!

>And if i am unwilling to accept a materialistic assumption about consciousness
Being unwilling because of butthurt is anti-science. Scientific understanding of the problem is a consequence of an attempt of scientific understanding of the problem, which is not the case with idealistic screeching which is too obviously backed by butthurt.

>mfw I see Dennett shills on Veeky Forums

Non-reductionist physicalism is as ridiculous as it sounds. Moreover, these people tend to be adherents to scientism; they ascribe to science what is not scientific.

>I never said agnosticism was the correct approach
So it was a sophism?
>though it is the academically honest one
It isn't, because agnosticism doubts itself as well. And how is it honest to adhere to an incorrect approach at all?

Dennett is a fraud.

Sure physicalism sucks, but it's still light years ahead of retarded idealistic screeching.

Same for supernatural: all the science and history is evidence against supernatural with the same goal-post movement. For supernatural soul it's going to move further when quantum mind fails. Idealists are invested in copenhagen faggotry, and it has pretty formal problems.

Yes, you just have to accept that colors are inexplicable and get on with science. Atheists are frauds.

determinism bro

>strict materialist onanists
kek

>It isn't, because agnosticism doubts itself
You're thinking of skepticism, which doubts the very nature of gathering knowledge itself. Brain-in-jar nonsense comes from this school of epistemology.
Consider reading through my comment?

>ASSUMPTION
dammit, you're dense.
>Scientific understanding of the problem is a consequence of an attempt of scientific understanding
Which is what i want, but no: you need to validate your biases by saying that your opinions are scientific fact, instead of proving it.
To put it analagously: you said water is a fish, i said prove it. You responded by saying that its very anti-science to question whether water is a fish or not.

>all the science and history is evidence against supernatural with the same goal-post movement
It's not goal-post moving if the ones with different explanations are different people from different generations. If one generations believes in the 4-charisma model for physical health, and the next generation believes in the systems model (the modern one), then doctors are not moving he goal-post by changing what they consider to be the case. It's only really moving-the-goalpost if you constantly change the requirements through an argument so that your opponent can't win.
Certainly in human history there have been the obnoxious and idiotic christian literalists, but even church fathers going back as Ignatius and St. Peter thought literalists were full of crap (indeed, many early Christians thought that the 7-days in genesis were non-literal, representing aeons of time or periods of creation as opposed to 7 actual earth days). Christian theology is based on the concept of spiritual-physical dualism, which is what allowed Christianity to pave the foundations of the scientific world.

Now currently there are quite a few Christians who, holding this dualistic approach, beleive that consciousness is independant of the body, and bound to it, somehow. cont-->

cont-->
Hope that helps :^)

>There's no reason not to suppose that when the alternative is literally rejecting
No. A completely baseless leap into the immaterial or material beyond the material is required to even entertain the notion. This is anti-scientific. Anti-reality and anti-truth, really.

>I think therefore I am
No, this still holds. You think, therefor you exist to some extent. The specifics are something else entirely. You thinking means there is material interacting, so you exist, unlike what you believe phenomena doesn't just appear from nothing. Let alone explicitly for the mental mechanics of a specific species.

>Supernatural properties only exist as a figment of our imagination by definition because if they ever ended up being real they would no longer be supernatural
Not even that. They exist in our brains, as encoded information.

different user here.
What if consciousness/soul begins as an epiphenomena of the brain, but then operates independent of it afterwards?

yes

>mfw the only thing keeping myself from killing myself is waiting for the day eliminative materialism becomes the mainstream view and btfos half of the intellectual establishment

Kek

How would you prove that? Closest you could get is prove that there is a one-to-one correspondence between subjective experiences and information encoded through physical means, and that all our behavior was directly attributable simply to this 100% physical process in the brain. However that would still not disprove qualia as epiphenomena. It would simply be outside the realm of scientific inquiry, at least until some radical breakthrough happened.

who said anything about 'proof'?

>realized there is no consciousness
>realized
>no consciousness
there is no point in this thread existing then