(October 22, 2013 at 8:42 pm)FallentoReason Wrote: How can atoms be *about* something? More to the point; how can brain states - a thing reducible to physical processes - be *about* something?
Consciousness is a prerequisite for meaning to "appear" out of physical things. Isn't it our conscience that assings meaning to those atoms? To a brain scan indicating the person is feeling joy?
Yet if consciousness is reduced to a physical process, naturalism survives in tact. We can't know that for a fact at this point with our scientific knowledge, but that's far from a reason to abandon naturalism and posit some unseen force as a solution.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell