On 6/3/2018 4:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On 1 June 2018 at 22:37, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
On 6/1/2018 7:49 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Physical theories of the brain, based on extensive empirical research,
have
linked the mind and consciousness to physical brain activity in
irrefutable
ways.
The above statement is pseudoscience. Given that there is no
scientific instrument that can detect consciousness, no empirical
research on this question is possible at the moment. If you disagree,
please provide references to publications that describe such an
instrument.
The instrument used to detect consciousness is a body. You see if it acts
intelligently and reacts to the environment. You see if it responds to
stimuli. You may even look at fMRI or otherwise monitor brain activity. If
it was responsive earlier, you ask it if it remembers the period in which is
was unresponsive. You ask it if it feels as if time passed.
Of course you will object that none of these directly detects consciousness
vs unconsciousness. But science doesn't directly detect quarks either.
My objection is deeper than the question of direct detection. To make
your argument work you say that "science doesn't directly
detect[...]". The problem with this claim is that science does not
detect anything, science is a concept. Human being detect things, and
they do it through the lens of their conscious experience. This places
consciousness at a qualitatively different standing than quarks or any
other object of scientific inquiry.
That's your consciousness which you detect directly (although some
dispute even that). But the object of scientific inquiry is
consciousness as it can be described, explained, caused, designed in
ways that we can intersubjectively agree on.
What I claim is that there is no scientific instrument that can
distinguish consciousness from non-consciousnes, because we don't even
know what "non-cosnciousness" means. *All* scientific instruments
detect consciousness, because consciousness must be present for *any
sort of detection* to even occur. No scientific instrument detects
consciousness on anyone but its user, directly OR indirectly.
The "indirectly" is simply false. As any emergency medical technician
can attest.
For this
latter claim to be made, one must assume that consciousness and
behavior are linked.There is overwhelming evidence that brain activity
and memory formation are linked, and that brain activity and behavior
are linked. For medical purposes, the consciousness-behavior
assumption is very useful! I am very grateful for mother medicine, but
we should not pretend that its operative assumptions solve the
fundamental questions.
What fundamental question do you refer to? How to detect
consciousness? How to produce consciousness? How to prove (in the
empirical sense) that consciousness is linked to brain activity? That's
my concern, that one just throws up things that are syntactically
questions but with no thought as to what might constitute an answer.
My view is scientifically speaking we never know anything "fundamental"
and the search for it is like the hunting of the snark. We seek
theories with more scope and more accuracy, but being "more fundamental"
doesn't entail that something is most fundamental. Mystics like Bruno
postulate something and then build structures on it which, by some
(often small) agreement with experience, PROVE their postulates. But as
Feynman used to point out, this is Greek mathematics. Science is like
Persian mathematics in which the mathematician seeks to identify all the
possible axiom sets that entail the observations.
Brent
Telmo.
We
work with reasonable hypothesis that are not contradicted by the evidence
and have predictive power. So the anesthesiologist will be able to predict
that you will be inert and unresponsive during the operation and you will
not remember any of it and will not even feel that time has passed. He will
also be able to predict that this can also be achieved by a strong blow to
the head... but not to the foot.
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
