Is consciousness physical or nonphysical?

[Gambit]

didn't realize there was already a thread on this. I just started another one

There is.

 

[Gambit]

Our own physical bodies when requiring sleep gives us an indicator when it's time for the lights to go out. We gauge just when that point is by how the body reacts.

I experience subjective awareness during sleep.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Not all functions of the brain are shut down during sleep. And those which hibernate also are at call.

 

[Gambit]

Science is a system we've devised for describing our analyses of the world. Physical is a category of descriptors that refers to anything measureable (like distances, weights, or forces, being the measurable interactions between bits), but we could just as rightly make a mathematical anlaysis, or look to reduce the world in non-scientific terms, such as those used in metaphysics (ontological/epistemological, object/subject, knowledge/truth).

So, the physical is anything we can measure or quantify?

Yes and no. Reality is a narrative we compose using science and other tools of consciousness. Within the context of the narrative, reality supercedes consciousness, but apart from that consciousness supercedes reality. In other words, we cannot be conscious of a world unless there is a world to be conscious of (this is within the context of the narrative), but it's all for naught unless we are conscious (all the science in the world is no use if you're dead).

Is it possible to ever be conscious of reality?

 

[Willamena]

So, the physical is anything we can measure or quantify?

Isn't it?

Is it possible to ever be conscious of reality?

Isn't it?

 

[Aupmanyav]

Is it possible to ever be conscious of reality?

That I think requires some critical thinking on our part (to remove chaff from the grain).

 

[Gambit]

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."

It can make sense to speak of information as immaterial. (Information processing is what computers do.)

 

[Gambit]

Of course non-physical, similar to the wave-particle duality.

You got it!

The much-vaunted wave–particle duality of quantum mechanics conceals a subtlety concerning the meaning of the terms. Particle talk refers to hardware: physical stuff such as electrons. By contrast, the wave function that attaches to an electron encodes what we know about the system. The wave is not a wave of ‘stuff,’ it is an information wave. Since information and ‘stuff’ refer to two different conceptual levels, quantum mechanics seems to imply a duality of levels akin to mind-brain duality. - Paul Davies

(pp. 44-45, "The Re-Emergence of Emergence" edited by Philip Clayton and Paul Davies)

 

[Gambit]

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

Do you have any kind of source to substantiate this claim?

 

[Gambit]

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

Based on the poll, your view is in the minority.

 

[FearGod]

You got it!

I thought i'm the first.
Paul Davies have it so long before i did.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Of course non-physical, similar to the wave-particle duality.

Which is both physical, extremely misleading, and not a duality at all. In classical physics, waves were not only defined in opposition to particles, but they did not possess the same ontological status. Waves were the effects on matter and existed only as descriptions of the way matter "behaved" given suitable conditions. That's why a major problem at the turn of the 20th century was trying to find the medium (the "real" stuff) through which light waves propagated. It turned out that there was no such medium, but more importantly that there are no particles. In quantum mechanics, everything is wave-like. Physical systems behave approximately particle-like, of course, but as far as quantum systems are concerned everything is always a wave that is simply less localized or more localized. In particle physics, quantum mechanics is replaced with quantum field theories, and the wave-function with fields. Fields are also non-local, non-particle entities. One of the greatest travesties in the history of physics was that when classical physics was collapsing and modern physics emerging, physicists kept as much of the language and terminology from classical physics as was possible. The problem, though, was that in most cases nothing existed for these terms to apply to in a way that was analogous to classical physics. Thus both in popular and technical physics literature one finds references to the "state of the system" in QM, but unless you have actually studied quantum physics this makes it seems like the physicists are referring to some quantum system that they will perform an experiment on. This is false. In QM, the system is a purely mathematical entity, and the instead of values for observable properties like the momentum or position values that are so intuitive in classical physics, in quantum physics these aren't values at all. Not only that, but where as in classical physics one sets up an experiment to perform one or more measurments, in quantum physics one disrupts multiple systems over and over again and, once this satisfies certain theoretical rules and the researchers have "prepared" a system that doesn't exist, they write a bunch of math down and call it the system. Then, once they interfere with whatever they prepared and this time call it "measurement", they can't actually measure observables (what physical properties does a bunch of math notation have?) they call mathematical functions observables and use these to inform them something about the measurement outcome given the way the way they prepare (disturbed) the "system" such that after they measure and apply the mathematical function they call an observable, they then assert that the system was in a particular state that they never measured and that it isn't as soon as they measured.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Of course - why would science think to attempt to give a physical explanation for a non-physical concept?

Science doesn't think.

As for why, it's because in many cases that's all they can do.

 

[Bunyip]

Science doesn't think.

As for why, it's because in many cases that's all they can do.

Yes, all science does is science.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Yes, all science does is science.

Apparently not. According to what you've said, basically every physicist working in quantum physics, particle physics, cosmology, theoretical physics, condensed matter physics, etc., (not to mention a large number of chemists and those in nanotechnology, to name a few other fields for which this matters) are not practicing science because they work with non-physical entities. using an irreducibly statistical theory or an even more problematic field theory. In fact, the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics remains a procedural one for using a particular (and unique) probabilistic structure to allow physicists to transcribe things they do to interfere with systems into an abstract mathematical "system" that they then "measure" with mathematical functions.

 

[Bunyip]

Apparently not. According to what you've said, basically every physicist working in quantum physics, particle physics, cosmology, theoretical physics, condensed matter physics, etc., (not to mention a large number of chemists and those in nanotechnology, to name a few other fields for which this matters) are not practicing science because they work with non-physical entities. using an irreducibly statistical theory or an even more problematic field theory. In fact, the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics remains a procedural one for using a particular (and unique) probabilistic structure to allow physicists to transcribe things they do to interfere with systems into an abstract mathematical "system" that they then "measure" with mathematical functions.

No, not at all - that is just your erm....'unique' interpretation of what I have said. Not actually my position, claim or arguemnt.

 

[NulliuSINverba]

Based on the poll, your view is in the minority.

"When you set aside mere names & come down to realities, you find that we are ruled by a King just as other absolute monarchies are. His name is The Majority. He is mighty in bulk & strength ... He rules by the right of possessing less money & less brains & more ignorance than the other competitor for the throne, The Minority. Ours is an Absolute Monarchy." ~ Mark Twain (from an unsent letter to Bayard Taylor, June 10, 1878. Published in Mark Twain at Large by Arthur L. Scott)

...

And then consider this: If there was a poll that pitted the McDonald's Big Mac against whatever your favorite home-cooked, made-by-good-old-mom dish happens to be ... which do you suppose would triumph?

Appeals to popularity do not impact the truth.

...

And in the meantime, you haven't demonstrated that consciousness can be experienced without a brain. What's stopping you?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

No, not at all - that is just your erm....'unique' interpretation of what I have said. Not actually my position, claim or arguemnt.

Well after claiming I didn't understand, I did try to provide you with those whom you said you trusted in order to address the...disconnect?...or whatever was that seemed to make our replies to one another get no where, but as soon as I provided sources I stopped getting responses, nor did I get responses to questions such as what your basis was for your claims. Perhaps you haven't gotten around to that yet. At any rate, this alone is enough for me to use your actual claims to show that you my characterization of your possess is demonstrably false:

Of course - why would science think to attempt to give a physical explanation for a non-physical concept?

Again, though, as you've ignored both my descriptions on the nature of physics and my attempts to provide you with physicists' descriptions as you don't trust me, it's sort of hard to defend myself against the claim that I'm misrepresenting you when you don't ever address the nature of what physics consists of in the fields I referred to.

 

[Bunyip]

Well after claiming I didn't understand, I did try to provide you with those whom you said you trusted in order to address the...disconnect?...or whatever was that seemed to make our replies to one another get no where, but as soon as I provided sources I stopped getting responses, nor did I get responses to questions such as what your basis was for your claims. Perhaps you haven't gotten around to that yet. At any rate, this alone is enough for me to use your actual claims to show that you my characterization of your possess is demonstrably false:


Again, though, as you've ignored both my descriptions on the nature of physics and my attempts to provide you with physicists' descriptions as you don't trust me, it's sort of hard to defend myself against the claim that I'm misrepresenting you when you don't ever address the nature of what physics consists of in the fields I referred to.

Well that is because I find your responses generally verbose, tangential and pointless - the best way to defend yourself against the accusation that you are misrepresenting me is simply to quote me directly rather than invent your 'interpretations'.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Well that is because I find your responses generally verbose, tangential and pointless

Which is why I relied entirely on the words of expert physicists you said you trust. Are you saying that these physicists are wrong, that I misrepresented them, or something else? That is, you stated I don't understand science but physicists do, I provide you with physicists saying what I've said, and you stop responding. If verbosity was still the problem, then you can't possibly have read any physics literature (or non-physics literature that involved quantum physics), as I didn't even provide anything other than plain descriptions. If they were pointless, then why do they directly conflict with what you've repeated multiple times?

the best way to defend yourself against the accusation that you are misrepresenting me is simply to quote me directly rather than invent your 'interpretations'.

I have, and did. I can't quote certain things I've quoted elsewhere, though, because you won't let me. And it is there that you don't respond.