On naturalism and consciousness

[bennyboy]

Consciousness?

Its an illusion of millions and millions processes of perception and sensory experiences. Brain chemistry. That's all "we" are. Objectively speaking, there is no real "you" or "I", not within the chemical, physical or biological worlds.

But can you point to the area of the brain where you yourself exist, where your 'soul' resides?

Define soul.

I think he just did: "you yourself"

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To me, reason is just an instrument we have to make sense of an otherwise arational universe. It's us who give meaning to the world and find patterns in its chaos.

Are you mixing monist and dualist worldviews here? In a physical monism, where does this subjective "we" come from who impose meaning on an otherwise meaningless universe?

I really don't see why there should be a reason above and beyond the physical realm. All we know is that the (material) universe exists and it can be explained through reason.

I don't think we know this at all. What I know is that I have experiences, and that some of them seem to be consistent with the experiences of other people, and to be based on a reality of time and space. But if I press to discover what I really "know," it wouldn't go much further than cogito ergo sum. The rest is all interpretation of experience.

Reason is surely inside our heads; we can't be sure it exists outside of them though.

If it doesn't, then what is the benefit of it existing inside our heads? Presumably, all our thinking has been refined through evolution to allow us to deal with the universe. If there are consistencies in the universe to which we can apply reason, wouldn't those external consistencies also deserve the name "reason"? In other words, we can make sense of things because they are sensible.