--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > http://www.sbinstitute.com/matofgaps.pdf > > Virtually all cognitive scientists today assume that consciousness > and all subjectively experienced mental processes are functions of > the brain, and are therefore emergent properties or functions of > matter. This is the mainstream scientific view of consciousness, and > those who reject this hypothesis are commonly viewed by many > scientists as being in the grip of a metaphysical bias or religious > faith. > > To evaluate this scientific perspective, let's first review some > simple, uncontested facts: Scientists have (1) no consensual > definition of consciousness, (2) no means of measuring it or its > neural correlates, and (3) an incomplete knowledge of the necessary > and sufficient causes of consciousness. The fact that no state of > consciousness in fact, no subjectively experienced mental > phenomenon of any kind is detectable using the instruments of > science means that, strictly speaking, there is no scientific, > empirical evidence for the existence of consciousness or the mind. > The only experiential evidence we have for the existence of mental > phenomena consists of reports based on first-person, introspective > observations of one's own mental states. But such first-person > accounts are not objective, they are not subject to third-person > corroboration, and they are generally presented by people with no > formal training in observing or reporting on their own mental > processes. Yet without such anecdotal evidence for the existence of > mental phenomena, scientists would have no knowledge of the mental > correlates of the neural and behavioral processes that they study > with such precision and sophistication. In other words, the whole > edifice of scientific knowledge of mental processes that arise in > dependence upon brain functions is based on evidence that is > anecdotal and unscientific. >
Where to begin... Well, no. Just about all of the above assertions are at least misleading, and some are just plain wrong. We can watch movies of MRI of the visual centers of the brain and can, at least in extremely simple cases, tell what a person is looking at based on the pattern of the activation of the primary visual cortex. Turns out that the nerves that run from the retina through the thalamus to the visual center keep an extremely accurate one-to-one corresponance with the nerves in the primary vision center. In other words, if the rods and cones of the eye form a grid, then when an object activates a pattern on that grid, a corresponding pattern appears on the extremely wrinked projection screen at the back of the brain we call the primary vision center. It gets WAAAY more complicated, real fast, but the essential image remains intact as it gets sent from the eye to the back of the brain for further processing. There's still nyriad details that need to be worked out, even for visual processing, which is probably the best understood aspect of the brain, but to suggest that we can never know what someone is thinking is false. We can, in the most simple cases: they're looking at a simple shape. We can even identify which shape. And we can know, at least usually, when someone is asleep, awake, dreaming or even, these days, in Pure COnscioiusness during meditation, since they all have consistent patterns of activation of the brain.
