RE: If beauty doesn't require God, why should morality? (Bite me Dr. Craig.)
July 27, 2014 at 9:18 am
(This post was last modified: July 27, 2014 at 9:29 am by Whateverist.)
I agree that studying what disrupts consciousness isn't the same as explaining it. Also, a map showing which portions of the brain are involved in various subjective experiences doesn't satisfy my curiosity about consciousness either. There are basically two approaches to studying consciousness: the physiological approach which studies it from the outside and phenomenology which studies it from the inside. First hand phenomenon are only directly available for study on a personal basis, so there is no apparent way to satisfactorily generalize ones findings. Brain scans and the rest only ever get at a correlation between biological systems which are active during first hand experiences of consciousness. It is a conundrum for traditional scientific methods.
On the other hand, not being able to account for "the fact of its existence" isn't unique to the study of consciousness. How about life itself? We know lots about how various life processes are carried out but why are these materials organic? Biological organisms are not composed of a different set of elements from those which make up inorganic materials. Yet somehow, properly arranged, they become life.
Or look at evo-devo, specifically the way an organism assembles itself. Sure there is information in the DNA which seems determinative of what the organism becomes .. but how? Creating tissues and organs and systems are all pretty amazing. But it happens. I don't think we have any more to say about the fact of this phenomenon's existence than we do the fact of consciousness' existence, but we do have a much more detailed account for the sequence of steps necessary for a single cell to become a complex organism such as ourselves.
On the other hand, not being able to account for "the fact of its existence" isn't unique to the study of consciousness. How about life itself? We know lots about how various life processes are carried out but why are these materials organic? Biological organisms are not composed of a different set of elements from those which make up inorganic materials. Yet somehow, properly arranged, they become life.
Or look at evo-devo, specifically the way an organism assembles itself. Sure there is information in the DNA which seems determinative of what the organism becomes .. but how? Creating tissues and organs and systems are all pretty amazing. But it happens. I don't think we have any more to say about the fact of this phenomenon's existence than we do the fact of consciousness' existence, but we do have a much more detailed account for the sequence of steps necessary for a single cell to become a complex organism such as ourselves.
