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RE: What is the current best scientific evidence we have that shows that consciousness...
January 12, 2025 at 7:28 pm
(January 12, 2025 at 3:03 pm)arewethereyet Wrote: (January 12, 2025 at 2:40 pm)brewer Wrote: Welcome Woof.
Can I interest you in creating an introduction thread and tell us about yourself? We'd like to get to know you better.
Spidey senses indicate that we have already met.
Wearing the 'G' on my forehead AGAIN?
(sigh)
Being told you're delusional does not necessarily mean you're mental.
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RE: What is the current best scientific evidence we have that shows that consciousness...
January 12, 2025 at 9:53 pm
(January 12, 2025 at 1:32 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: The best current evidence that consciousness ends in death, as a positivist assertion, comes from the damage that consciousness appears to suffer in life, as a consequence of damage to the brain.
Bingo. Phineas Gage, TBIs, severing the corpus collosum surgically, prefrontal lobotomies, they all point to the ties between mental consciousness and the physical substrate of the brain.
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RE: What is the current best scientific evidence we have that shows that consciousness...
January 13, 2025 at 12:01 am
(This post was last modified: January 13, 2025 at 12:01 am by Fake Messiah.)
born_to_be_a_loser Wrote:What is the current best scientific evidence we have that shows that consciousness ends with death?
Is there evidence that anything doesn't exist (in this case life after death for consciousness)? There is rather lack of evidence that something exist.
I would rather recommend you a book called "Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife" by Mary Roach about scientists who researched the possibilities of consciousness surviving the death and how they all ended up without satisfying results. She tackles the notion that the soul weighs 21 grams, the doctor in India who claims that reincarnation is real, or the case in 1925 when a farmer in North Carolina claimed that his dead father's ghost appeared to him to reveal the location of the hidden will. The interesting thing about this is that the court ruled in favor of the ghost's will (or the children settled in favor of it), but then Mary went there herself in 2004 with a handwriting expert who concluded that the will was a forgery.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
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RE: What is the current best scientific evidence we have that shows that consciousness...
January 13, 2025 at 12:26 am
The thing with consciousness is that it is outside known physics. There is absolutely no known mechanism by which consciousness emerges from the processes of the brain or any other matter. Yet there is a ton of evidence which strongly suggests that it does. That isn't evidence for life after death but evidence that there is something fundamental about how the universe works that we don't begin to understand. Consciousness might be independent of the brain in some dualistic way but Occam's Razor suggests it is more likely a product of it in a way we don't currently understand.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
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RE: What is the current best scientific evidence we have that shows that consciousness...
January 13, 2025 at 12:32 am
(January 13, 2025 at 12:26 am)AFTT47 Wrote: Consciousness might be independent of the brain
If the consciousness is independent of the brain then why don't we ever find anything that has a consciousness but doesn't have a brain? Like why don't rocks or water have consciousness?
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
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RE: What is the current best scientific evidence we have that shows that consciousness...
January 13, 2025 at 1:15 am
(January 13, 2025 at 12:26 am)AFTT47 Wrote: Consciousness might be independent of the brain in some dualistic way but Occam's Razor suggests it is more likely a product of it in a way we don't currently understand.
Given the evidence we have in this world, Occam's Razor suggests that consciousness doesn't survive brain-death.
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RE: What is the current best scientific evidence we have that shows that consciousness...
January 13, 2025 at 1:58 am
(This post was last modified: January 13, 2025 at 2:03 am by AFTT47.
Edit Reason: Clarity
)
(January 13, 2025 at 12:32 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: (January 13, 2025 at 12:26 am)AFTT47 Wrote: Consciousness might be independent of the brain
If the consciousness is independent of the brain then why don't we ever find anything that has a consciousness but doesn't have a brain? Like why don't rocks or water have consciousness?
That's partly why I say Occam's Razor suggests consciousness is probably a product of brain processes. I am not comfortable saying that it definitely is because of the unknown aspect of how consciousness emerges from brain activity. I think this ignorance is lost on most people. Think about it. What if a flash of green light was manifested by snapping the fingers of your right hand while a flash of red light was manifested by snapping the fingers of your left hand. You couldn't deny that it happens because it could be easily demonstrated but you are absolutely at a loss as to why or how this occurs. There is no mechanism which aligns with known physics that could explain it. That's where we are with consciousness. We haven't the slightest clue of how the chemical and electrical processes (which are well understood) of the brain somehow emerge into the awareness of, "I think, therefor I am."
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
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RE: What is the current best scientific evidence we have that shows that consciousness...
January 13, 2025 at 2:35 am
(This post was last modified: January 13, 2025 at 2:39 am by The Grand Nudger.)
We still don't fully understand how photosynthesis works, but to say that it probably has something to do with plants seems to undersell what we do know. I don't fully understand how my car works either, but I'm fairly confident that it's a car despite my specific ignorance. We do have a scientific understanding of how systems and processes can arrive at such conclusions and what those constructs are useful for - btw, in control theory, but we'll probably discover that the process(es) which give rise to our consciousness are different or additional-to such things. Biology isn't an engineer building things before the fact for specific ranges of function and robust error checking, and all that jazz
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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RE: What is the current best scientific evidence we have that shows that consciousness...
January 13, 2025 at 3:03 am
(January 13, 2025 at 2:35 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: We still don't fully understand how photosynthesis works, but to say that it probably has something to do with plants seems to undersell what we do know. I don't fully understand how my car works either, but I'm fairly confident that it's a car despite my specific ignorance. We do have a scientific understanding of how systems and processes can arrive at such conclusions and what those constructs are useful for - btw, in control theory, but we'll probably discover that the process(es) which give rise to our consciousness are different or additional-to such things. Biology isn't an engineer building things before the fact for specific ranges of function and robust error checking, and all that jazz
Not a good analogy. We have no understanding of how consciousness works. Absolutely none.
While you may be ignorant of how your car works, there are engineers who understand exactly how it works because they designed it. Nobody currently has any clue at all as to how consciousness works. There is only speculation. I admit that there is a mountain of evidence suggesting it is an emergent property of brain processes. Nevertheless, I will not claim that it definitely is so because I lack the confidence to say that. I assume it is but that is as far as I will go. If you have the confidence to claim that it is definitely a process of brain processes, then go ahead and make the claim. I won't argue with you about it because I don't know.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
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RE: What is the current best scientific evidence we have that shows that consciousness...
January 13, 2025 at 3:35 am
(This post was last modified: January 13, 2025 at 3:51 am by The Grand Nudger.)
It's inaccurate to say that no one has any idea how consciousness works. We know a hell of alot about how consciousness works, specifically with regards to the neural correlates of consciousness - the "physics" of it. I think that we can have low confidence in machine theories of consciousness (in specific or in general) without twisting ourselves into knots about what presents itself as an apparent fact. The apparent fact is that consciousness is a consequence of brain function. Any theory of consciousness will not be an argument to that fact, but an explanation of that apparent fact.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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