Closer To Truth
Is consciousness a scientific problem to be solved? Or a philosophical problem that will remain a mystery? What do scientists who study the brain think?
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"Consciousness sucks ass". Wow, that really does answer the question! Who knew the answer would be so simple… Of course it seems obvious now.
Below is why I'd rather converse with a creationist than a materialist. At least creationists have a mind.
U G krishnamuti : “self consciousness comes into being when there is a demand for survival “
No brain no pain
I think this gentleman's name is properly spelled Stephan L Chorover. Also, regrettably, he passed away Feb 20 2015.
There is no consciousness. Individuals are each an intelligent system.
An AI system reads a set of data, interpretes with an algorism and gives responses.
The reality of an individual natural intelligent system (such as a human) , simplified as NI, arises from the responses of the NI. Consciousness is merely an illusion.
The data set for NI is partly the current reality experienced by the individual. There is also data beyond reality. Obsreve the healing of phobia by hypnosis. An individual can be hypnotised to use data beyond reality. The NI responses of this particular set are revealed as 'emotions' in our reality.
As individual reality is part of the data, the study in this video shows that everything is relevant and the study does not what to do.
The imaging of the brain may reveal a part of the interpretation algorism. However, if the data set is partly beyond reality , the algorism is likely the same.
The most foundamental question is "why are we intelligent?". Consciousness is a fake. Stop wasting resourses on it.
It doesn't really exist
I do think that some form of Externalism (in fact something like Ricardo Manzotti's Process Externalism) is the way forward. Consciousness is not just an event in the brain, but is rather a causal phenomenon that's "spread" through the world, although of course it includes particular brain events as crucial factors.
e.g. perception of a tree includes the entire causal chain from the tree's causal processes to the brain's causal processes, it's not just what goes on in the brain alone. And that would also include, to some extent, what Chorover is talking about – the symbols that are shuffled about and upheld as ideals in society, and the way they're included in habit patterns of human action (symbol use, language use) and motivate people to action, are part of consciousness too.
As Wittgenstein said, a lot of meaning is use; but use is a pattern in the world that also involves the whole body (e.g. criteria for the applicability of a concept that involve some kind of physical testing), and bounces off other bodies in terms of being a shared habit, it's not just something imprisoned in the brain.