Could consciousness be an illusion?

[Kilgore Trout]

I believe we think it exists, and we may think it is some mysterious thing separate from the rest of what is a physical reality, but it is not. It is all physical, not non-physical.

I think most evidence and rational analysis supports this assertion.

 

[nazz]

Yeah but the naturalists have evidence and the other side just says "nuh uh its not" with no evidence. Guess which side I think is more likely.

You have no evidence so stop pretending like you do. If there were any evidence consciousness was physical I would be the first to acknowledge it. So would any other rational person.

 

[nazz]

I consider shamanism another form of what people call "energy healing". Basically, all the things that I visualize when I am doing a shamanic healing are actually physical in nature. This is because I am picking up physical signals from that other person and my mind interprets those as being animals, colors, etc... The image my mind sees may be partly an illusion, but it is just the way my mind interprets those energy patterns. In turn, I utilize my own mind and my energy "field" to send back physical signals to that other person's mind or body which I am doing the healing on. These signals or energy patterns unknowingly affect the body or mind of that other person and promote a physical change (chemical interaction) in the person which results in healing. This is why after a shaman does conduct a ritual healing, it is necessary for them to in a way "purge" themselves of any residual (potentially harmful) energy which they may have picked up from that other person. If a shaman does not do this "purging", then this residual energy may in turn cause the shaman himself to pick up a corresponding illness or sickness. I have noticed that after conducting a healing, I do tend to get sick more easily and sometimes my own energy feels down. I guess I need to learn to "purge" this residual energy better.


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Care to share the scientific evidence that thoughts--remember purely physical processes in the brain according to you--can travel from one brain to another? Or "energy" or whatever? It's highly ludicrous that you pander this pseudo-scientific nonsense and then claim legitimate claims for consciousness being non-physical is bunk. It's pure hypocrisy in my book.

 

[Ablaze]

Things are not as they appear. Nor are they otherwise.

 

[Runewolf1973]

You have no evidence so stop pretending like you do. If there were any evidence consciousness was physical I would be the first to acknowledge it. So would any other rational person.

All the evidence points to the fact that everything else in existence is physical. Therefore, If we were to follow that evidence, we would see that it points to the only logical assumption that consciousness must be physically derived as well.

 

[Runewolf1973]

Care to share the scientific evidence that thoughts--remember purely physical processes in the brain according to you--can travel from one brain to another? Or "energy" or whatever? It's highly ludicrous that you pander this pseudo-scientific nonsense and then claim legitimate claims for consciousness being non-physical is bunk. It's pure hypocrisy in my book.

No one has yet proven how consciousness works. I simply gave my own personal understanding and shared my logic on the subject based on a purely physical perspective. Stop trying to make other people out to be idiots just because you don't agree with their perspective. If you are as strong or confident in your own personal belief as you seem to indicate, then it should not matter what I say or what my logic demonstrates.

 

[idav]

Care to share the scientific evidence that thoughts--remember purely physical processes in the brain according to you--can travel from one brain to another? Or "energy" or whatever? It's highly ludicrous that you pander this pseudo-scientific nonsense and then claim legitimate claims for consciousness being non-physical is bunk. It's pure hypocrisy in my book.

Qm experiments have shown entanglement to be a real thing. They show sci fi to be more than imagination.

 

[idav]

You have no evidence so stop pretending like you do. If there were any evidence consciousness was physical I would be the first to acknowledge it. So would any other rational person.

You cant even accept the concept of sound being physical just cause I used "matter" instead of "air" like you used, and you admitted to knowing air is matter.

 

[nazz]

No one has yet proven how consciousness works. I simply gave my own personal understanding and shared my logic on the subject based on a purely physical perspective. Stop trying to make other people out to be idiots just because you don't agree with their perspective. If you are as strong or confident in your own personal belief as you seem to indicate, then it should not matter what I say or what my logic demonstrates.

I've not called anyone an idiot or even hinted that they were. Such terms of derision seemed to be used by only those who agree with your view against those who agree with me.

I AM saying that it is the height of hypocrisy to say one is a physicalist and a believer in science and put down belief in the so-called "supernatural" and then in the next breath start spouting a bunch of new age notions which have no scientific support whatsoever and can't even be true from a physicalist point of view.

Science does explore the brain and its workings and there are certainly plenty of scientists who believe consciousness to be nothing more than that. Because consciousness is after all A REAL THING. But why don't you see if you can a serious scientist to investigate something like "shamanic healing".

Now if you were not claiming to be a physicalist and said that shamanic healing was something spiritual not physical you get a totally different reaction from me.

 

[nazz]

Qm experiments have shown entanglement to be a real thing. They show sci fi to be more than imagination.

Please present the peer-reviewed scientific papers linking quantum entanglement with shamanic healing. I'll wait.

 

[nazz]

You cant even accept the concept of sound being physical just cause I used "matter" instead of "air" like you used, and you admitted to knowing air is matter.

Based on that it is obvious you had no idea what I was even talking about. But I guess when I think of sounds or dream about them those are not really sounds because hearing sound depends on waveforms in a medium Funny thing as they sound just like those other sounds. But if they don't fit into your belief system they must not really exist

 

[idav]

Please present the peer-reviewed scientific papers linking quantum entanglement with shamanic healing. I'll wait.

I answered the question which has nothing to do with shamanic healing.

 

[idav]

Based on that it is obvious you had no idea what I was even talking about. But I guess when I think of sounds or dream about them those are not really sounds because hearing sound depends on waveforms in a medium Funny thing as they sound just like those other sounds. But if they don't fit into your belief system they must not really exist

When did I talk about sounds in dreams? You either dont undertsand my position or you choose to purposely misrepresent it.:areyoucra

 

[Runewolf1973]

I've not called anyone an idiot or even hinted that they were. Such terms of derision seemed to be used by only those who agree with your view against those who agree with me.

I AM saying that it is the height of hypocrisy to say one is a physicalist and a believer in science and put down belief in the so-called "supernatural" and then in the next breath start spouting a bunch of new age notions which have no scientific support whatsoever and can't even be true from a physicalist point of view.

Science does explore the brain and its workings and there are certainly plenty of scientists who believe consciousness to be nothing more than that. Because consciousness is after all A REAL THING. But why don't you see if you can a serious scientist to investigate something like "shamanic healing".

Now if you were not claiming to be a physicalist and said that shamanic healing was something spiritual not physical you get a totally different reaction from me.

I told you specifically my logic as to why I believe some of those things we consider "spiritual" might have an actual basis in physical reality. Even our most primitive, animistic ancestors believed that "spirits" inhabited the trees, the rocks, the rivers, the Sun, the Moon, and every other physical thing in existence. These spirits animated everything and directed everything. Science has actually proven this to be true, but what our primitive ancestors didn't know was that those "spirits" were actually the fundamental forces of nature at work.

 

[Runewolf1973]

Please present the peer-reviewed scientific papers linking quantum entanglement with shamanic healing. I'll wait.

Ever heard of Nick Herbert? He is a quantum physicist and he advocates something he calls Quantum Animism.

 

[nazz]

Ever heard of Nick Herbert? He is a quantum physicist and he advocates something he calls Quantum Animism.

Has he published peer-reviewed scientific papers on the subject? Has he convinced the majority of scientists to believe in shamanic healing?

 

[MD]

Hypothetically speaking, if some other "fundamental layer" has existed since the beginning of time, would it not be because it has just always naturally existed along with all the other fundamental layers or forces? If this other hidden aspect or fundamental layer does in fact exist, why would it have to be considered "supernatural"?

Or put it this way... If science were to discover or prove that this other fundamental layer or property actually does exist, would it still have to be considered something "supernatural"? What if science discovered that God actually existed...would God still be something supernatural to us? Or would we think he must have just always existed...naturally?

It seems to me that just right up to the point when we discover that something previously unknown to us actually does exist, it no longer becomes supernatural to us, it becomes natural. At one time diseases or sicknesses used to be considered of supernatural origin. We generally end up realizing that all these things we previously thought were supernatural actually have a basis in physical reality.

I don't believe in "supernatural" things. I believe the are naturally existing unknowns to science, and there are those things we dream up or imagine which simply do not exist.


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The central debate here isn't whether it's supernatural or natural, it's whether consciousness is physical or non physical.

 

[MD]

I think most evidence and rational analysis supports this assertion.

You should publish your ideas and get a nobel prize in neuroscience because you have stumped all the other neuroscientists out there!

 

[Runewolf1973]

The central debate here isn't whether it's supernatural or natural, it's whether consciousness is physical or non physical.

What's the difference?

 

[Penumbra]

I disagree with the argument that consciousness is physical simply based on the fact that the physical substrates which give rise to the conscious experience are correlated but not causal. They're called the neural correlates of consciousness for that very reason. Yes one can argue that dopamine causes pleasure, but pleasure is not a physical thing, it's a subjective inner experience. We have no idea how dopamine causes pleasure, all we know is that increasing amount of it gives us more pleasure.

If dopamine causes pleasure, then that's by definition a causal relationship. Dopamine causes pleasure, and so do some other neurochemicals. It would be simply correlative if it was only found that dopamine and pleasure tend to occur at the same time. It's shown to be causal if you can take dopamine, give it to someone, and they then experience pleasure right after. Because without the evidence of that type of study, it could have been the case that pleasure causes the release of dopamine.

There's a part of the brain, originally found in rats and eventually found in humans, where those pleasure chemicals play a role, that if you stimulate it directly, it causes profound pleasure. Rats will literally kill themselves with exhaustion if you give them a lever to stimulate that part of the brain.

Oxytocin has a casual relationship with trust. If you give someone oxytocin, they're more likely to agree with someone.

If you give someone general anesthesia, they go to sleep.

If you want to invoke the principle of strong emergence, then you are basically acknowledging that matter can give rise to completely novel properties in nature never seen before, aka magic (I mean Gandalf/Harry Potter magic, not the illusory kind). And one can argue that strong emergence is a form of property dualism. The conscious experience is completely different from the physical substrates which give rise to it.

There are no colors, no sounds, no feelings, no emotions and no meaning in physical reality. And these are all irreducible. Red doesn't break down into smaller red. Most people who support dualism (whether it be property or substance) don't deny that the brain is intricately involved in the creation of consciousness.

Logic gates such as AND, OR, and NOT gates are not a property of nature. But they're an emergent logical property when you put particles together a certain way. In fact, with just NAND gates in particular, you can build all of the logic that runs the processing and memory of a computer because with NAND gates you can build AND, OR, and NOT gates. So with just immense numbers of highly arranged NAND gates and then some I/O and power systems and all that, you can create the emergent property of software. Things like Windows 8, Starcraft II, or ReligiousForums.com. Is Starcraft II reducible? You could strip out features certainly, or play it on a lower graphics setting, but you can't, say, cut the CPU in half and then play half the game. Most of the hardware needs to be intact for any of the software to run at all, and there's nothing remotely like "Starcraft II" in nature. Software is a very novel idea in nature, with the possible major and relevant exception that brains are basically biological computers apparently running software as well.

What constitutes magic is generally defined by what we don't know. Electromagnetic radiation seems magical- you can use it to send information and/or energy at incredible speeds even through a pure vacuum of no particles, and it can be invisible, and it's weightless, and it comes from orthogonal electric and magnetic fields, which are also like magic. It sounds non-physical. The fact that masses curve spacetime around them seems magical. The fact that spacetime itself is apparently expanding, seems magical. The fact that trillions of neutrinos pass through your body every second without being detected is magical. Quantum mechanics is magical. This is all magical from, say, 16th century physics that wouldn't know how to handle most of this yet.

And are qualia irreducible? Can't you have degrees of an emotion, like anger or lust? Can't sound come at different volumes, and can't people lose the ability to hear individual frequencies? Some people are color blind. So they still have vision, but see no colors, so part of "sight" was reduced. And for color specifically, some people are partially color blind, so they might have trouble telling certain colors apart, because it's not as precise for them. Or, in anyone, you can have blindingly bright colors, or colors so dull you can barely see them.

Isn't consciousness itself reducible? Medically speaking, you can have different levels of consciousness. At a very high level there's like trippy drug consciousness where people report everything seeming far more intricate. Then there's regular wakeful consciousness. Then there's disoriented, then delirious, then stuporous, then comatose. Consciousness and response to stimuli become less and less as you go down the scale, with nuances. And that's for one species- there's also complexity of species to consider from single-cell organisms to sapient creatures, as far as consciousness is concerned.

I think it's premature to define something like consciousness as non-physical or not an emergent property, simply because nobody knows how it works. The brain has barely begun to be explored in any detail at all, except for much of the causal findings of the brain for personality, memories, mood, senses, and consciousness, plus the ability to fix certain tumors, which large regions tend to do which things, and stuff like that.

They're simply saying that the experience itself is not purely due to the brain, that there is another property at play here and that property is perhaps another fundamental layer of the universe we haven't come across as of yet.

If consciousness exists as something other than an emergent property of the brain, then in your opinion, why is it that if you put a person to sleep for surgery for 8 hours, they will wake up and usually if asked, will say that they had no conception of existence and it felt like they were put to sleep seconds ago. When their brain was partially offline, where was their consciousness in any meaningful form, if consciousness has some independent existence from the brain?