And you know what, that might just very well be true if we’re talking about some supernatural force that is indifferent to its creations, not out of malice, but because it simply is truly neutral.
But as evidence for the religious capital ‘G’ God, the one who communicates and plans every little detail because he loves us so much? What is the point of these “subtle” proofs that took thousands of years to be studied and recorded when he has shown that he can just pop up anywhere or perform miracles and whatever the fuck.
It is no coincidence that the vast majority, possibly 99%, of devout religious people do not give a shit about using math to explain god because it’s all proven in their holy books. It is no coincidence that the “empirical” evidence is, in reality, just pointing at the existence of features and concepts of math and science rather than utilizing said features and concepts to prove the existence of god. And no, philosophical musings about morality using the language of mathematical proofs does not count as utilizing math and science (literally, all the axioms in these types of “proofs” are subjective shit like “bad” and “good” and not, say, the difference between 1 and 0).
And I didn’t even want to make a post dunking on religion, but I’m irritated because YouTube recommended some dumbass video by a channel called “Reformed Zoomer” and one of the arguments is “there is an infinite range of numbers between two numbers, and if we turn those numbers into letters, then every book possible has already been written. Checkmate atheoids”. https://youtu.be/z0hxb5UVaNE?si=RpjF6S0fHiF71iH-
Personally I’m gonna hold off on such statements until reductionist materialism puts forth an actual coherent account of how consciousness arises in a wholly material universe. It’s the only thing we know ineffably and the only thing we can use to know about all other things besides it so it’s clearly quite an important thing, and right now the best reductionist materialism can do is “trust me bro science is pretty dope we’ll figure it out in the meanwhile here’s some handwavy high level half baked hypothesis on how it might work”.
You say that as though the metaphysical explanations of consciousness aren’t just as hand wavy (looking at you Hegel) and even worse, completely untestable materially. I’m comfortable in my Kantian agnosticism, but pretending that science-bro atheists are somehow on weaker theoretical footing than deists when it comes to the origins of consciousness is a really funny claim.
They are. The reductionist claim that consciousness supervenes on the physical is quite a strong one and none of them have a clue how you would even conceptually model consciousness through descriptions of physical systems. The closest thing they’ve come up with is Integrated Information Theory, and that already has plenty of problems and doesn’t seem viable as it predicts some clearly unconscious physical systems being highly conscious. Also it only predicts the amount of consciousness in the abstract, it doesn’t predict the actual quality of experience of a given physical system.
The reason dualists and idealists are on a somewhat higher footing IMO is that they don’t do mental gymnastics over the metaphysical status of consciousness, they just so posit that it exists as an assumption. This makes sense to me since it’s immediately and ineffably clear to me that my own consciousness does exist.
Dualists and idealists have theories for where consciousness comes from. It’s not just ‘an assumption’, it has to come from somewhere, usually as a relationship to a deity. Hegel famously does tons of gymnastics for the separation of the conscious self from God, and then the past conscious self from the present and future conscious self with his metaphysical idea of ‘becoming’.
Even Descartes has to relate consciousness to God. I think therefore I am doesn’t function as an assumption if we don’t also assume that what creates our consciousness and perception of consciousness is real and wouldn’t deceive us, a pretty bold assumption. And even then we can never actually assume the consciousness of other beings.
For both of these the hand waving begins just as immediately. I agree that IIS theory has a crap ton of issues with it, and that the metaphysical question likely can’t be solved physically. That is why I am agnostic on the matter because our best tool for investigation, scientific analysis, is wholly unsuited for that metaphysical question.
I guess I disagree there. There’s nothing inherent in the scientific method that binds it to reductive physicalism. There’s nothing stopping you assuming consciousness is non physical when formulating your hypotheses. The data may or may not prove you wrong but there’s nothing stopping you from applying the scientific method.
I realize dualism and idealism are also unsatisfactory explanations but I see no reason why you wouldn’t attempt to do science based on those ideas. I think the dominance of reductive physicalism in science is a cultural artifact more than anything.
In fact it does. The primary problem within the Kantian formation is not one just strictly of logic, but one of category. If we start our basis of understanding in Hume (radical skepticism), then the most we can achieve is the categorical imperative, actual truth is within those things that cannot contradict themselves (now we know from Marx and Hegel tha reality is in fact full of these contradictions, but I think that has more to do with our actual proximity to truth rather than a refutation of Kantian logical presumptions).
In particular, Kant supposes that the categories of physical and meta-physical, are oppositional and distinct categories. The Is and the Ought. The physical deals with the finite and consequential, while the meta-physical deals with the infinite, unconsequential and immortal. We begin in immediate contradiction. While deriving an is from an is and an ought from an ought is trivial, deriving an is from an ought is perilous and deriving an ought from an is is also hazardous. While the scientific method has proven to be particularly good at deriving physical is’s it’s ability to ‘prove’ oughts is tenuous at best. The best we are able to achieve is comprehensive theories about ‘oughts’ based of tested and retested data of ‘is’s’, cold piss in comparison to an ought coming from pure logic. Especially, when it comes to ethics.
But the problem is that there is still no actual methodology to prove an is from an ought. The closest thing that has been shown logically is (ironically enough) Hegel’s dialectical idealism, and it’s partner, of course, dialectical materialism. Clearly there is something going on in processual dialectics for it to reveal so much truth in contradiction, but the science of it is far too young to say at this point.
If we can find a way to do that, then we can prove both is’s and ought’s from backwards-forwards logic and solidify their connection. However, at this point in time, proving the properties of the metaphysical from the properties of the physical is likely an errand for fools.
We can pretty conclusively prove consciousness is a brain phenomenon. We can watch fmri data and see our Brian put together thoughts. We can use magnets to change people’s thoughts. Some labs are able to read people’s thoughts in small ways. However, if a God of some kind made a universe they would make things work so that is what we would expect to see. We are right where we left off.
That’s not true at all. We can prove brain activity correlates to conscious activity, but there is no direct evidence brain activity by itself wholly causes consciousness, that’s still conjecture based on previously held assumptions. There’s still a whole lot we don’t know about how the brain works, I think it’s way too early to conclusively say we’re all just brain and nothing else.
Yeah. We have brain injury studies and fmri data. Consciousness maps 1:1 to brain activity. We can change the brain and have predictable changes in consciousness.
If the 🧠 was somehow working with a soul in some other level it would be detectable. There is currently no detection and no effect that requires such an explination. If it existed Haliburton would be killing people in the global south to bottle it.
However, any half way decent god would make the world like this. So this observation is of limited utility.
Which specific brain activity does it map to? Is it the the firing of neurons? Does it emerge from all of them? How many do you need to make a thought? Does anything else play a role, like the structures within cells? Or can we ignore those bits? How does memory work?
Neocortex mostly, although some supposing amount of it is related to the amygdala. Mostly, there is alot of stuff about neurotransmitters modulating that activity though. Depends on the kind of thought. They can pretty reasonably narrow down some kinds of memory to s few cm2 of brain. Everything plays a role. I could find your some neuroscience tiktoks if you like. You’d have to be a bit more specific about memory for me to give you an answer. From my understanding every concept is a patten of neural segments. Memory is your brain replaying the concepts for a specific thing or event. Which is why over time memories can get fuzzy or change. Each time it is an active process.
https://youtu.be/3Mvzp5xvEXA?si=s1Ketjj3muTZY7No
If you wanna actually get into it there is a MIT lecture series about neuroscience. I think this would cover most the stuff you are interested way better than my fuzzy explanations
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
consciousness definitely correlates to brain activity, but as we all know correlation does not imply or prove causation. at the very least, there is no specific explanation for how subjectivity is generated from physical brain processes. no one disputes that we can correlate any kind of internal experience to brain activity, but explaining exactly how that brain activity produces subjectivity instead of instinctual or non-subjective information processing is a different question.
that being said, just because we can’t explain consciousness (in the sense of internal subjective experience, with our current understandings of physics and information theory) doesn’t mean there is a god, or a soul, and even if it did mean those things it wouldn’t necessarily be the abrahamic god or an immortal soul.
edit:
if you are interested, look at my post history, i did a much more in depth series of comments on this subject and i feel like i would end up having the same conversations over again if i continue to contribute hereactually just check out these pages on wikipedia for the kinds of things i’m talking about, especially the line ‘Some philosophers of mind, like Daniel Dennett, argue that qualia do not exist. Other philosophers, as well as neuroscientists and neurologists, believe qualia exist and that the desire by some philosophers to disregard qualia is based on an erroneous interpretation of what constitutes science.[2]’ on the Qualia page.“there is no specific explanation for how subjectivity is generated from physical brain processes” I do not feel like the need for a special explanation to that sense is required. Why would it be diffrent than any other sense? Some types of schitzotypal conditions cause people to have thoughts with subjectivity. We can see su jetivity forming in people a few seconds before they solve riddles on fmri.
Also, no. I am not going to read what academic philosophers have to say about neuroscience. I am sure they are good at philosophy though.
Because consciousness is clearly different than all other things in its properties. It’s literally the one and only thing you know ineffably before all other things, not only that but it’s the only thing you can use to know all other things and so it deserves special epistemological considerations IMO.
Relegating it with such certainty to just another physical phenomenon seems like an unjustified (and probably wrong IMO) logical leap.
I am not sure that is true. Have you heard of Cotard’s syndrome? Ego death? It is essentially no doffrent that proprioception. Like I said with skitzotypals. We cna see people that that have problems with that self identification. This is all fits with other observed senses. Nothing you said is not also true of any other sense
I don’t really get what that has to do with my point. My point wasn’t just about the subjective sense of self but about all the qualia we have. They are the only thing we know exists without any justification simply because we are there to experience them. Information about the existence of everything else other than our own qualia is inferred through observation of said qualia, that includes the whole material reality. This to me deserves special consideration that should amount to more than “well we have MRI scans and it kinda seems like it’s all just the brain”.
To me it’s gonna take way more convincing than handwavy hypotheses, that’s why I’m agnostic about the whole thing (also about God).
This is Brian. Here you can see him putting together some thoughts.
I take my position as an axiom. It’s faith.