On naturalism and consciousness

[Angrboda]

I don't believe consciousness can be explained by way of a naturalistic account. Why? Because I don't think particles have it in them to act in such a way as to recreate what we mean by consciousness i.e. our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes etc.

Let's use an example; my belief that spoons are curved. So to make things easier, let's call this belief p. Now, how can we possibly arrange particles in such a way that they would express p? How could some physical arrangement *ever* describe p? I don't think it's possible to physically arrange particles in such a way that would then inherently possess the belief that other sets of particles - aka spoons - have the property of being curved.

The first thing to note is that what you have is an argument from ignorance. "I can't imagine X, therefore not X." This is a minor point, so let's move on.

I note that in many discussions, the meat of the argument rests on a specific theory of meaning. You may not think of it as such, but at bottom, this is a theory about how meaning works. In your theory, if I'm not misreading you, thoughts can "inherently" be about other things, but matter can never have this property of being "inherently" about something else. This reminds me a lot of William Lane Craig's argument about objective morality. His point is that the atheist cannot demonstrate objective morality without God. The question that matters though, is can he demonstrate objective morality with God? Likewise with you, I'd ask what you mean when you say thoughts are "inherently" about other things and how that business works, because I think you've assumed it uncritically. Presuming that you're not a Chinese speaker, suppose I teach you the phonemes "qū xiàn." When you think about it, they're not "inherently" about anything. But they translate as curved. What makes these phonemes not inherently "about" curved objects before I teach you its meaning? Once you've been taught their meaning, do they then magically have a new property that the thought of them in your mind is now "inherently about" curved things? In what way are thoughts "inherently about" things. Your theory of meaning doesn't only have to account for how matter is not inherently about things, it must also explain how thought is inherently about things. Until you can do that, you're left with the rather unsatisfying "it just is." If that's all the explanation you have, then I'd suggest that all you've done is push the question one step back. Like dualists who assert that souls "just do" have free will, what you've done is little more than beg the question. You've given a respectable sheen to your argument from ignorance; you've distracted your interlocutor from the fact that you lack as much in the theory of meaning department as she does.

I'll defer on laying out my theory of meaning just yet, other than to say that I think meaning is a property of systems, not isolated parts. So "qū xiàn" isn't inherently about curved objects, its meaning is a consequence of it being embedded in a system; the word itself has no meaning apart from the system. In short, nothing is "inherently" meaningful or inherently "about" something else. That's an illusion.

Consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. Thoughts, beliefs and attitudes stem from the connections the neurons in your brain make after having an experience and consist of the flow of electrical charges in the brain. The brain is then capable of recalling past information by activating the same areas that were activated during the experience, thus creating memories.

Sure, but all we've ever been able to do is point to the parts of the brain responsible for certain aspects of our consciousness, such as the ones you've mentioned. But can you point to the area of the brain where you yourself exist, where your 'soul' resides?

I just want to point out that this is another argument from ignorance.