David Bailey
Member
Well the trouble is that such observations are selective, so they aren't quite like physical observations. All the wild cards get filtered out - like the NDE's, or the fact that traditional tribes regularly report that they learn about medicinal plants from the spirits, or much else.That does not track, for instance:
- I can track and analyze how people (presumably conscious beings) react to various situations.
- I can analyze how people answer questions and look for patterns matching their answers to their observed behavior (psychometric testing)
- I can study how people who have brain anomalies differ in their cognition from 'normal' brains and infer how those areas work in 'normal' brains
There are whole areas of science that deal with these very questions: psychology, sociology and anthropology. How is this denying consciousness?
With physical observations, the extraordinary observations are (at least sometimes) taken more seriously.
Occam's razor is not a physical law, it is a practical aid to making reasonable deductions.Occam's razor.
Which is simpler, more plausible, and does not require the unnecessary multiplication of elements:
That would be hugely welcome - I am sick of hearing about rabbits, lunar cheese, Magical Giant Squirrels, etc. They trivialise discussions and most of us don't want to waste time in discussions at that level.Sorry, let me shift gears.
I can't, for the reason that was put most clearly by David Chalmers - his so called "Hard Problem". The really difficult thing is to see how complex dynamical systems actually have experiences. We don't attribute feelings to our computers, so why should we attribute them to complex dynamical systems? Indeed, strangely enough being a hard nosed materialist means laughing at anyone who attributes feelings to anything other than humans and animals (some would even deny animals have feelings), but insisting that (somewhat vaguely specified) complex dynamic systems must have them!Can you see consciousness as an emergent property of a complex dynamic system?
Because calculations don't mean experience. There is also some circular reasoning going on here. All the things that minds seem to do sometimes (like NDE's and ψ-phenomena) are ignored because it is 'known' that minds are just emergent phenomena of complex systems, and therefore you can discard the "ghost in your head" as being an unnecessary hypothesis.These systems cannot be understood, at our current level of technology, by working from the small bits to the big picture. We can understand the bits (neurons), but the whole is so complex (emergent) that developing the 'calculus of the mind' might be far in the future. But does that mean impossible or just, "In the future"?
Why is "ghost in my head" the best default position to take?
If consciousness isn't "in" the brain, why do hormones affect things like attachment (oxytocin) and mood (dopamine)? Energy level affected by glucose? Physical trauma sometimes lead to changes in personality/perception? Wouldn't an external consciousness be unaffected by changes like these?
Well the emerging (sorry for the pun) hypothesis here and elsewhere, is that the brain somehow communicates with a non-material mind and constrains or filters it in some way. Clearly those hormones and actual trauma affect the filtering action. There are some fascinating hints that this might be so. As well as NDE's (which are remarkably often reported) there is a rarer phenomenon in which people close to death - including those with severe dementia - recover the power of coherent speech for a short period before they die.
Ask yourself how a brain ravaged by dementia can do that!
I'd recommend that you listen to some of the podcasts to get a flavour for some of the evidence - perhaps starting with Alex's interviews with Rupert Sheldrake (a former director of studies in biology at Cambridge University).
BTW, in case you are wondering, I am not religious, and I can see the humour in the Flying Spaghetti Monster religion!
David
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