Mod+ 250. DR. JEFFREY SCHWARTZ, SCIENCE’S INABILITY TO EXPLAIN PERSONHOOD

I take it as a datum of everyday experience that I, me, my consciousness, and the "Witness" that manifests in meditative states, is itself alone and has no relation to brain-body except analogically. The brain is a three-pound skull organ. I am not. It's one thing to speculate that brain machinery somehow gives rise to "I", but quite another to equate brain with "I" - that is a category error of gross proportions. I sometimes wonder 1) how anyone can be so sure about matter, and its so-called reality and solidity, in the face of a new physics that reveals matter's underpinnings to correlate more to nonmateriality than anything else; and 2) how anyone cannot question matter's "reality", when it is, again, a datum of everyday experience that we "know" matter only as an interpretation and even s symbol, within the sphere of our subjective psyche. Matter is primarily a psychic attribute, so one would expect that in this sense psyche is prior to matter. Of course, the psyche also "knows and interprets itself", so the question then becomes, "Who is this knower and interpreter?" I think the answer can only come from internal introspection, not from external means like brain scans.
 
If we define the mis-match as the fact "the experience of living" doesn't seem to match that of a biological robot, I would say this.

For starters- how do you know what it would or wouldn't feel like to be a "biological robot" (I've gotten to hate that term)?

If you were a machine you would not feel anything. Machines are not conscious.

https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/skeptical_fallacies#skeptical_fallacies_machine
According to materialism, humans are biological machines and everything about us can be explained by the physical descriptions of the atoms that make up our body and brain. If that were true, we would not be conscious because all the functions of a machine are determined by its physical structure. A machine is not conscious.

A materialist might say consciousness is an epiphenomenon or an illusion or an emergent property of the brain. However these beliefs are also fallacies which are explained in the two following sections.

If materialism were true, you would not be conscious. Since you are aware of reading these words, you know you are conscious and therefore materialism is not correct. Humans are more than just biological machines.

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-materialist-explanation-of.html
 
If you were a machine you would not feel anything.

??

I'm amazed that you can you make such an absolute statement about something so hard to grasp.The fact that you found it on a web site makes it no more valid than if you wrote the words yourself.

Can you even say absolutely what is a machine? And even so, that it has absolutely no consciousness?

Can you say with the same conviction that a tree has no "feeling". If you so no, I can point you to studies which indicate otherwise.

What is the difference between a "machine" and a tree?

Your absolute conviction tastes like dogma (an unexamined opinion) to me. And as such leaves me quite unconvinced of your position.
 
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I tend to consider, at least some of the time that "I" am located in that region just behind the eyes, and between the ears. The fact that we have, traditionally five senses, and four of those are exclusively confined to the head, naturally places a focus on that area. But at other times, say in a room full of people, where we may collide or trip over one another, I feel my location is distributed throughout my body. But I do wonder whether what might be considered an engineering feature in the location of the sensors for sight, taste, smell and hearing has given rise to the idea, without stopping to ponder, that our consciousness too must be located in that region.

Let's imagine that we constructed a device equipped with various sensors as well as local processing capacity, and dispatched it to another planet, say Mars. Would we conclude that the consciousness of such a device was located either just behind its cameras, or in the region of its computing circuits? Don't misunderstand my intentions here. I'm not trying to discuss whether the Curiosity Rover is alive or conscious, merely contemplating how it is that we envisage our own location.
 
??

I'm amazed that you can you make such an absolute statement about something so hard to grasp.The fact that you found it on a web site makes it no more valid than if you wrote the words yourself.

Can you even say absolutely what is a machine? And even so, that it has absolutely no consciousness?
The point about a machine, is that some group of people put it together to work in a particular way. Unless they actually understand how to make something feel something (as opposed to record it in a memory location or something), why would you expect a machine to feel something? The designers of a machine that feels something are up against David Chalmers' Hard Problem.
Can you say with the same conviction that a tree has no "feeling". If you so no, I can point you to studies which indicate otherwise.

What is the difference between a "machine" and a tree?
The first difference is that no human designed the tree! I would not rule out the idea that a tree can experience something, because I think all life may have a non-material component.
Your absolute conviction tastes like dogma (an unexamined opinion) to me. And as such leaves me quite unconvinced of your position.

You are fairly new here, but if you had been around a bit longer, you would realise a lot of ideas are examined in great depth on this website. People can express their own ideas, but the site is moderated to avoid the conversation drifting into mere personal insult.

David
 
The point about a machine, is that some group of people put it together to work in a particular way. Unless they actually understand how to make something feel something (as opposed to record it in a memory location or something), why would you expect a machine to feel something? The designers of a machine that feels something are up against David Chalmers' Hard Problem.

The first difference is that no human designed the tree! I would not rule out the idea that a tree can experience something, because I think all life may have a non-material component.


You are fairly new here, but if you had been around a bit longer, you would realise a lot of ideas are examined in great depth on this website. People can express their own ideas, but the site is moderated to avoid the conversation drifting into mere personal insult.

David

Good point. No insult intended.
 
Jim-
I went to the web site and there's lots of good info there. Thanks.

One area that jumped out at me was the blythe statement that it has been proven that matter can't exist w/o a conscious observer. This is used to support the contention the QM is proof of the fundamental non-physical nature of existence.

Not trying to start a whole thread on QM here, but I keep seeing spiritualist proponants (full disclosure,,, I lean toward spiritualism) hijacking QM for their own purposes as if there were consensus on the matter.

So,, a quick question-
has there ever been a "scientific" definition of "conscious observer" that has survived close scrutiny? How about a non-scientific one? I am unaware of one.
 
Alex's question at the end of the podcast:

How can one deal with, and what to make of, the "mismatch" (between lived experience and the materialist "biological robot" viewpoint) of which Dr. Schwartz spoke?
Sadly, most people deal with it by becoming increasingly distrustful of science. You can't blame them. People tend to know when they are being lied to. Just like they know that Big Pharma is putting profit above healthcare, they know that many so-called scientists are putting their own interests ahead of the need for answers.

I think this mismatch is part of the backlash against science that's been going on in the US. Skeptical organizations are not promoting science when they suppress funding and research into topics that affect so many people on such a basic level.
 
??

I'm amazed that you can you make such an absolute statement about something so hard to grasp.The fact that you found it on a web site makes it no more valid than if you wrote the words yourself.

Can you even say absolutely what is a machine? And even so, that it has absolutely no consciousness?

Can you say with the same conviction that a tree has no "feeling". If you so no, I can point you to studies which indicate otherwise.

What is the difference between a "machine" and a tree?

Your absolute conviction tastes like dogma (an unexamined opinion) to me. And as such leaves me quite unconvinced of your position.


JKMac,

You may like checking out Roger Penrose. He's made some pretty good arguments (not definitively though, mind you) that we (specifically, consciousness, whether in us, or presumably your above mentioned tree) are somehow different than "machines". Most people regard "machines" as something that operates algorithmically, especially since when we are talking about the possibility of "conscious machines" we are usually thinking of a "computer". Penrose makes the argument that consciousness is non-algorithmic using Goedel's Theorem, as well as citing examples of problems in mathematics we know to be non-algorithmic, or non-computational - even in principle - yet we have somehow solved them, even though a (algorithmic) computer never could. Penrose does, however, leave open room that: (1) a sufficiently sophisticated algorithmic computer may still be able to simulate consciousness one day, even though it may feel nothing itself and (2) the possibility of some newly discovered non-computational algorithmic-like process that could obtain consciousness in some computer of the future, even though we have no idea how this would work.

Anyhow, this has been beaten to death in discussions on the old forum, so a lot of folks might be coming at it from this angle (either in support of Penrose, or not) without necessarily saying so.

Penrose's two books are:

The Emperor's New Mind
Shadows of the Mind
 
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Following EthanT's suggestion, Lucas made a similar argument here, where he addresses what he sees as invalid criticisms of the Godelian Argument.

Lucas further explains his thoughts in his free book Reason & Reality.
 
Following EthanT's suggestion, Lucas made a similar argument here, where he addresses what he sees as invalid criticisms of the Godelian Argument.

Lucas further explains his thoughts in his free book Reason & Reality.

Thanks for sharing this Sciborg. I never realized Goedel himself thought along similar lines! From your link above:

Gödel argues for a disjunction: an Either/Or, with the strong suggestion that the second disjunct is untenable, and hence by Modus Tollendo Ponens that the first disjunct must be true.

So the following disjunctive conclusion is inevitable: Either mathematics is incompletable in this sense, that its evident axioms can never be comprised in a finite rule, that is to say, the human mind (even within the realm of pure mathematics) infinitely surpasses the powers of any finite machine, or else there exist absolutely unsolvable diophantine problems of the type specified

It is clear that Gödel thought the second disjunct false, and that he was implicitly denying that any Turing machine could emulate the powers of the human mind [/qoute]
 
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Sadly, most people deal with it by becoming increasingly distrustful of science. You can't blame them. People tend to know when they are being lied to. Just like they know that Big Pharma is putting profit above healthcare, they know that many so-called scientists are putting their own interests ahead of the need for answers.

I think this mismatch is part of the backlash against science that's been going on in the US. Skeptical organizations are not promoting science when they suppress funding and research into topics that affect so many people on such a basic level.
I don't think it is just that they distrust science because they think of it as Machiavellian, I think a lot of people also distrust it because they can see that it doesn't seem to know how to correct its mistakes, or keep a sufficiently open mind.

David
 
For me- my evidence against being a BR have nothing to do with the rather undefined and subjective "experience" of living but rather more concrete (and testable) aspects of our existence that just don't fit with the BR model.

For me- sense of self is not very good proof that you are more than your body,,, it's more like wishful thinking.

Something to keep in mind is that when Chalmers originally proposed the Hard Problem and the inadequacy of materialism, he wasn't proposing that humans had souls. In fact, he seemed to be largely convinced that qualia were epiphenomena. So originally the issue was entirely philosophical, as a useless spectator consciousness isn't any better than a biological robot. What wish could be granted by such a conception of the mind?

It's only now, decades later, that he thinks it might be otherwise.

Let's also not forget the desperation of the "skeptical" movement, which sees immaterialism in opposition to secular humanism. There's just as much wishful thinking among materialists, something Searle & Chalmers both noted when discussing philosophy of mind:

"I believe one of the unstated assumptions behind the current batch of views is that they represent the only scientifically acceptable alternatives to the antiscientism that went with traditional dualism, the belief in the immortality of the soul, spiritualism, and so on. Acceptance of the current views is motivated not so much by an independent conviction of their truth as by a terror of what are apparently the only alternatives."
-John Searle, "What's wrong with the philosophy of mind?"

"A motivation to avoid dualism, for many, has arisen from various spiritualistic, religious, supernatural and other antiscientific overtones of the view. But those are quite inessential. A naturalistic dualism expands our view of the world, but it does not invoke the forces of darkness."
-David Chalmers, "The Conscious Mind"
 
The weird thing about a concept like the immortality of the soul/immortality of consciousness is that it doesn't disrupt physics or reality at all. It is perfectly compatible with it. In fact, some might speculate that dark matter and mysterious quantum fields have something to do with the soul. Compared to the MWI interpretation of QM, universes that pop out of nothingness, and time travel (apologies to those who like time travel), Spiritualism is actually easily accomidated and even required versus MWI, time travel, out of nothing unvierses with demand huge amounts of cosmic structure and wastefulness.
 
The weird thing about a concept like the immortality of the soul/immortality of consciousness is that it doesn't disrupt physics or reality at all.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Do you mean it can be explained by physics or that there can be more to the universe than known physics without contradicting known physics?
 
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