Is consciousness physical or nonphysical?

[Laika]

Who controls the brain ?

no-one. The brain is self-regulating. (as I assume neurons connect and grow by themselves.)

 

[FearGod]

no-one. The brain is self-regulating. (as I assume neurons connect and grow by themselves.)

The brain can't be self-regulating.

Can a brain work if there is no heart pumping blood ?
Did the brain manage blood circulating or the heart keeps pumping independently ?

 

[Bunyip]

The brain can't be self-regulating.

Can a brain work if there is no heart pumping blood ?
Did the brain manage blood circulating or the heart keeps pumping independently ?

The brain and the heart are parts of a whole, a person.

 

[NulliuSINverba]

But that doesn't address the question as to whether consciousness is physical or nonphysical. IOW, you're evading the question.

Not at all.

Given that it cannot demonstrably exist (or even be experienced) without a physical framework, the conclusion that consciousness is physical seems rather inescapable.

Be sure to get back to me when you can demonstrate that consciousness can be experienced without a brain, OK?

 

[FearGod]

The brain and the heart are parts of a whole, a person.

Yes the brain is just a part of the whole body.

 

[viole]

Consider a calculation running on a computer. Does it make sense to speak of the calculation as a substance, or as physical or non-physical? This is a category error. "Not even wrong.".

What is "non-physical" supposed to mean, anyway?

Hold your horses.

Information, and information processing, is physical. You can actually measure bits of information in calories/celsius, if you want.

When a computer computes, what we call emergent property (the calculation) is nothing more that a process that locally reduces entropy. The process itself is identified as the rate of entropy reduction in a unit of time. Which must be counter-balanced by a more than offsetting rate of production of entropy (heat). That is why your computer needs fans.

To say that consciousness has a different category than physics, is like saying that planet orbits are a different category than (gravitational) physics, which is odd.

If there is a form preserving one to one connection between physics and its effects (aka a diffeomorphism), I do not see much sense in identifying them as different things.

Ciao

- viole

 

[MD]

Consider a calculation running on a computer. Does it make sense to speak of the calculation as a substance, or as physical or non-physical? This is a category error. "Not even wrong.".

What is "non-physical" supposed to mean, anyway?

This is not a category error, this is about the ontological gap. Calculations are fully reducible, consciousness is not.

There are no physical descriptions for the experience of color, sound, emotions and meaning. As such physics cannot fully encapsulate consciousness and isn't the be all to end all of knowledge.

 

[Looncall]

Hold your horses.

Information, and information processing, is physical. You can actually measure bits of information in calories/celsius, if you want.

When a computer computes, what we call emergent property (the calculation) is nothing more that a process that locally reduces entropy. The process itself is identified as the rate of entropy reduction in a unit of time. Which must be counter-balanced by a more than offsetting rate of production of entropy (heat). That is why your computer needs fans.

To say that consciousness has a different category than physics, is like saying that planet orbits are a different category than (gravitational) physics, which is odd.

If there is a form preserving one to one connection between physics and its effects (aka a diffeomorphism), I do not see much sense in identifying them as different things.

Ciao

- viole

Actually, I entirely agree with you and I see consciousness as just the same (we do need to eat etc). What I am getting at is that I see nothing extra once the physics is accounted for. There is just matter and energy doing their thing.

Elan vitale is so nineteenth century!

 

[Looncall]

This is not a category error, this is about the ontological gap. Calculations are fully reducible, consciousness is not.

There are no physical descriptions for the experience of color, sound, emotions and meaning. As such physics cannot fully encapsulate consciousness and isn't the be all to end all of knowledge.

I think you left out an important word: "yet". How do you know that consciousness isn't reducible?

 

[nazz]

Electromagnetic signals through neurons in the Brain? that's both measurable and observable, but the science behind this is still in it's infancy.

There are plenty of electromagnetic signals in the brain that have nothing to do with consciousness. What unique physical properties do the ones have that do relate to conscious awareness?

 

[George-ananda]

It speaks to the fact that consciousness has physical components: if not for certain physical things, consciousness does not occur.

How about: if not for certain physical things, consciousness can not occur through physical things. This does not rule out the possibility of non-physical consciousness not requiring physical things.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

How about: if not for certain physical things, consciousness can not occur through physical things. This does not rule out the possibility of non-physical consciousness not requiring physical things.

When I refer to consciousness, it's in the same sense that we use when we refer to someone with no physical signs of consciousness as "unconscious". Whatever you're referring to with "non-physical consciousness" is something else.

 

[George-ananda]

When I refer to consciousness, it's in the same sense that we use when we refer to someone with no physical signs of consciousness as "unconscious". Whatever you're referring to with "non-physical consciousness" is something else.

Ok, then I guess you weren't saying anything that isn't obvious then.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

If a process is neither physical nor nonphysical, then what exactly is it that is undergoing a process?

A system. Consciousness exists as a process that emerges out of neural activity. However, it is not reducible to that activity, because among other things it causes that activity.

It is easier to understand, I think, given a simpler system. In its weakest form, my go-to example is the sandpile:
"The athermal nature of granular media implies in turn that granular configurations cannot relax spontaneously in the absence of external perturbations. This leads typically to the generation of a large number of metastable configurations; it also results in hysteresis, since the sandpile carries forward a memory of its initial conditions."
Mehta, A. (2007). Granular Physics. Cambridge University Press.

Sandpiles do not have "memory". However, the final configuration state is determined by a process that allows the initial state configuration to be "encoded" within the system independently of any of its constituent parts (and external forces) but dependent upon their interactions. This process (hysteresis in granular media exhibiting self-organization and/or self-organized criticality) isn't non-physical, as it depends upon physical components, but neither is it physical, as it is not reducible either its constituent parts or to the dynamical evolution of these constituent parts, but rather is a function of these dynamics.

A stronger form (one that challenges determinism in classical physics) are the [M,R]-systems I referred to earlier. Metabolic-repair is a function of the dynamical interactions of the parts of the cell (and also its environment). However, not only do we find again that we cannot reduce it to the dynamics of the cell, but also that it is determining these. Here the process isn't merely a functional representation of the dynamical configuration space, but rather a process that functions causally to create and shape the configuration space by acting on the system as a whole.

 

[Bunyip]

This is not a category error, this is about the ontological gap. Calculations are fully reducible, consciousness is not.

There are no physical descriptions for the experience of color, sound, emotions and meaning. As such physics cannot fully encapsulate consciousness and isn't the be all to end all of knowledge.

So what? It's like saying, "Cake decorating does not fully encapsulate deisel engine repair"! So what? Why would physics need to 'fully encapsulate' abstract concepts? They are abstracts, what concern is that of physics?

Physics does not need to 'fully encapsulate' (whatever that means) subjective experiences - how on earth did you figure that it did?

 

[MD]

So what? It's like saying, "Cake decorating does not fully encapsulate deisel engine repair"! So what? Why would physics need to 'fully encapsulate' abstract concepts? They are abstracts, what concern is that of physics?

Physics does not need to 'fully encapsulate' (whatever that means) subjective experiences - how on earth did you figure that it did?

You really like throwing a tantrum and bringing attention to yourself, don't you? I wasn't even replying to you, but to looncall.

Get a life.

 

[Bunyip]

You really like throwing a tantrum and bringing attention to yourself, don't you? I wasn't even replying to you, but to looncall.

Get a life.

LOL. Tantrum?

I'll assume that you could not think of a less infantile response - why indeed would physics need to 'fully encapsulate' non-physical concepts?

 

[MD]

I think you left out an important word: "yet". How do you know that consciousness isn't reducible?

How are you so sure that it is?

 

[Gambit]

For something to be physical requires that we can perceive it. We can perceive it being affected, acted upon by other objects we perceive.

What we can't perceive we see as non-physical. Perception requires consciousness. Without consciousness, no perception, nothing to be defined as physical.

Without the physical, there is no thing to be conscious of. Both are an emergent property of dualism.

If the physical and the mental are both emergent properties, what exactly is the substrate from which they are both emerging?

 

[Gambit]

Both, the brain is intimately involved but the mechanism of action is unknown and in my opinion will always be unknown from a scientific perspective.

There will never be a purely physical description of consciousness, at least scientifically speaking.

It doesn't appear completely amenable to the scientific method.