RE: On naturalism and consciousness
August 22, 2014 at 1:42 pm
(This post was last modified: August 22, 2014 at 1:52 pm by Whateverist.)
(August 17, 2014 at 5:03 am)bennyboy Wrote: Nobody (I think) doubts that there's a very strong relationship between the brain and the content of mind. This is very different than understanding why mind exists and what it is about any arrangement of particles that supposedly causes it to come into existence. Even a perfect correlation between brain function and qualia does not serve as an explanation for how a mind comes into being.
To understand "why a mind exists" I would look to evolutionary biology. The word "why" suggests intention. Does the universe/god have intentions which it carries out in order to achieve teleological goals? I don't think so.
(August 17, 2014 at 3:45 pm)Welsh cake Wrote: 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.
This seems caught up on the level of description. Similarly the dining room table does not cease to have the qualities we describe as "solid" merely because we know at the micro level there is much, much more space between particles than there are particles. So "you" and "I" exist in exactly the same sense we've always meant, regardless of how the stuff of our brains accomplishes the quality of our consciousness.
