Consciousness, the mind-body problem and physics?

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If you know of your own existence then you are conscious of it.

ruveyn

A very interesting quote along exactly the same thoughts I was having:

"We might be reminded at this point of the big bang. That notable occurrence can be regarded as presenting an inverse space problem. For, on received views, it was at the moment of the big bang that space itself came into existence, there being nothing spatial antecedently to that. But how does space come from non-space? What kind of 'explosion' could create space ab initio? And this problem offers an even closer structural parallel to the consciousness problem if we assume, as I would argue is plausible, that the big bang was not the beginning (temporally or explanatorily) of all existence. Some prior independent state of things must have led to that early cataclysm, and this sequence of events itself must have some intelligible explanation - just as there must be an explanation for the sequence that led from matter-in-space to consciousness.

The brain puts into reverse, as it were, what the big bang initiated: it erases spatial dimensions rather than creating them. It undoes the work of creating space, swallowing down matter and spitting out consciousness. So, taking the very long view, the universe has gone through phases of space generation and (local) space annihilation; or at least, with respect to the latter, there have been operations on space that have generated a non-spatial being. This suggests the following heady speculation: that the origin of consciousness somehow draws upon those properties of the universe that antedate and explain the occurrence of the big bang. If we need a pre-spatial level of reality in order to account for the big bang, then it may be this very level that is exploited in the generation of consciousness. That is, assuming that remnants of the pre-big bang universe have persisted, it may be that these features of the universe are somehow involved in engineering the non-spatial phenomenon of consciousness. If so, consciousness turns out to be older than matter in space, at least as to its raw materials."

"I am now in a position to state the main thesis of this paper: in order to solve the mind-body problem we need, at a minimum, a new conception of space. We need a conceptual breakthrough in the way we think about the medium in which material objects exist, and hence in our conception of material objects themselves. That is the region in which our ignorance is focused: not in the details of neurophysiological activity but, more fundamentally, in how space is structured or constituted. That which we refer to when we use the word 'space' has a nature that is quite different from how we standardly conceive it to be; so different, indeed, that it is capable of 'containing' the non-spatial (as we now conceive it) phenomenon of consciousness. Things in space can generate consciousness only because those things are not, at some level, just how we conceive them to be; they harbour some hidden aspect or principle."


http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/cour ... Space.html

The Mind-Body Problem is like the Stomach-Digestion Problem. In short it is a pseudo problem. There is no Mind as an independent substance or thing. Mind is what the brain does when it is working right, just as Digestion is what the Stomach does when it is working right.

ruveyn

You're arguing for functionalism. That view has many problems:

See section 5.5 and on:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/funct ... #FunProQua

I don't know if there is a value. I'm not saying consciousness isn't being exploited by evolution. It might even be a central component driving evolution in nearly all animals or even all life forms. I don't know what other forms or states of consciousness there might be; I kind of think animals with simple nervous systems might be conscious but with less options. However, I can't really see any reason why a completely mechanistic system (input output system), with no observer, like a computer program couldn't evolve into a human-like form and be just as successful as humans with consciousness. Who knows. Maybe consciousness is just a result of any logic system, including computers. Its a big mystery.

Qualia are a self induced delusion.

I recently had an MRI brain scan and I asked the doctor if he would kindly locate my mind. He looked at me rather oddly, but it was a fair question. The scanning device has a resolution of .001 millimeters and if my mind is in my head (where else would it be?) it should have been able to show it.

ruveyn

That's really over-simplifying the problem. When I set a wind up toy on its course of action, I don't expect there to be anything within the toy other than a set of gears being driven by mechanical energy. The same applies to people. If I look at it in terms of systemic logic, I wouldn't expect there to be any other thing at play besides a system of nerve impulses released by stored chemical energy driving muscles and organ functions. To say consciousness is just something the mind does is ignoring a large mystery. The way I see it is consciousness is its own dimension of reality, and its difficult to ascertain, logically, what it is, because were some sort of homeostasis between the dimensions of physical space/time(at least where changes in matter. how it relates to itself are involved) and consciousness (which contextualizes space and the physical relations between matter into perceived time by perceptual organisms like ourselves). We don't know the larger picture. It would be like a 2 dimensional being, if there was such a thing, trying to understand the full context of the two dimensions it was stuck in, let alone three dimensions outside of itself.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnURElCzGc0[/youtube]

The easiest and worst way to resolve a problem, is to say that it does not exist.

Demonstrate the existence of Mind as a substance. Then you might have a point.

ruveyn

Here's something for fun. Anyone have the molar mass of reality? Can you tell me what happens when you treat a mole of reality with 6 molar hydrocloric acid or give it a sodium bromide bath? Does anything unusual happen to litmus paper when it comes in direct contact with reality or an aquious or oil-based solution containing suspended/disolved reality? Does it react voilently to cesium or francium containing substances? How good of a conductor or insulator is it rated as?

Numbers have no substance either, nor do any other physical laws. Do you require that even non-causal laws must exist in substance in order to exist?

Define "substance".

Right, but at the same time, a good way to resolve a problem is to dissolve the problem. This is what many of the eliminative materialists attempt to do. For example Dan Dennett's "quining qualia" is aimed at undermining our confidence in our experience. His method is basically to try to "beat consciousness down to size" and then work from that, as we inflate how much we know.

Ah, but if numbers exist and have no substance, then there are an infinite number of objects in existence. This undermines any effort to use arguments against the existence of infinity.

That which exists in and of itself, not requiring the existence of anything else.

ruveyn

And without human (or other working intelligences) minds to make the abstractions of classes, numbers don't exist.