Ok Citta, I know you are studying hard to be a scientist, so I would like to ask a very simple question one scientist to another. How can we talk about consciousness in a scientific way when in fact OUR conscientiousness is directly coupled to our experiments and the interpretation of the RESULTS

I think most here would agree that good science demands that you isolate variables and good statistics demands little too no inter-correlation between variables. Think multi- linear regression or partial least squares (PLS) analysis here.

It would seem we first need to remove the dependent variables (or in the case of PLS recombine the to form new variables that are orthogonal).

So back to my original question. How can we seriously talk about consciousness from a grounded scientific perspective when quite clearly our subjective experiences is interfering with the experiment....and more importantly out interpretation of the results!

BTW I don't share gibran's view about distinctions in consciousness. To me it is ALL AWARENESS. Consciousness is just a more refined awareness. In my view it's likely that to some highly evolved alien race we we barely be considered conscious at all!

My starting hypothesis is that all matter is aware. I base this on the simple fact that two uncharged particles in a vacuum are still 'aware' of each other via van Der Walls interactions. Starting from this base level of awareness and working up it seems as though to me the universe is literally waking up to the fact that it is aware. Each progression in evolution from raw particles -> atoms -> molecules -> matter (rocks, trees, humans, etc) results in a slightly more refined system which apparently VIOLATES the laws of entropy? I mean you would be hard pressed to argue that humans are more disordered that the same collection of atoms once the body has decayed!


To be sure it is VERY clear that most of what we call us: Likes, dislikes, fears, loves, etc are ENTIRELY determined in the brain. When I talk about something that transcends this human body I can't seriously entertain that any part of ME actually survives. What I'm theorizing is more in line with Buddhist thinking. Some aspect of this base level awareness may makes it across the abode of death, BUT IT WILL NOT BE YOU or ME. I tend to currently share their view of a karmic bundle/thought stream/mind stream, but my views change and evolve over time as I have to also admit that what ever truth I have today is likely not THE TRUTH.


Let's try getting a little closer to what I'm talking about: When you take a monster hit of DMT or hit extreme hyperspace on any substance and achieve ego death....what exactly is that part of you that is still 'aware'? Could it just be another part of the brain watching itself? I suppose it could....

But isn't it possible that our base level awareness (that which even elementary particles have) does indeed transcend this? Is it possible that nirvana is the release of this awareness from our petty human consciousness?


Lastly, I hope you as a budding physicists will share this view. Any declaration of reality that doesn't include the psychedelic state is incomplete. It is simply WAT too fascinating and to deep to just say it's this chemical and that receptor...and I say that as someone who made his living for over a decade designing molecules to hit various receptors. The psychedelic state is just to vast of an expanse to be ignored IMHO.

Peace.

Just google "Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Carl Sagan UFO's" and you will find that there is at least *some* reason to believe Sagan was not being public about his real feelings in reguards to the UFO thing. Of course we cannot verify this 100% atm.

I have never really found Carl Sagan all that interesting but I have not read all his books either so..

Awareness, responsiveness to stimuli, human memory, self-awareness, etc. are all obviously (?) products of the material world.

It is possible that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter, but this is something that can’t be proven. We are “trapped” in consciousness – we can’t experience anything outside of it – so anything and everything outside of it is inferred. This fact makes a consciousness-related explanation of existence seem more plausible than a matter-related one.

My guess is that neither is correct. It seems likely that we don’t have the imagination, knowledge, or cognitive capacity to understand things as they actually are.

At least we can't know if we did. But yeah, it seems likely this is the case indeed. Reminds me of Kant's Ding an sich

There are two answers to every question, the rational and the irrational. Logic ultimately generates paradox; Spirit is born of an unknowable Mysterium Tremendum. The Alchemical Great Work is a unification of opposites, Science and Magic, squaring the circle, Heaven and Earth, Man and Woman, Spirit and Nature.

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wow gibran you make great points!

Yeah, gibran has a habit of doing that

After reading this thread and watching the debate between the physical and immaterial paradigms of existence, I thought about how ideas or concepts (which are abstractions of or in consciousness) seemingly "move" through what we call the physical world.

For instance, when we're talking about concepts like; "the primacy of matter", "the primacy of consciousness", mysticism or science - these concepts don't exist in the physical world. We can't look out and observe them, they seem to only exist in the mind. So how does something like an idea translate into the physical world?

It starts with an individal conceiving of an idea like the primacy of consciousness for example, then that individual passes on that idea through vocalization or text to another individal. Yet that idea itself isn't being passed on, it's only the physical audible patterns or visual symbols, and meaning is then interpreted by another individual who is consciously perceiving those patterns or symbols. Yet somehow, this very subjective abstract idea, transfers from one physical being to another. If consciousness were only an epiphenomena of physical activity, could this idea somehow be traced atom for atom from person to person?

Also what can we say about ideas bringing about physical change? If you get an idea like freedom (or anything else) spreading through a population, it could direct the course of real physical events.

Again, just some thoughts I had after reading this.

I think we need to be cautious of how we apply the term "epiphenomenon" when discussing consciousness.

To say consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter is equivalent to saying that consciousness is a emergent product of matter: i.e., Consciousness emerges from matter as an epiphenomenal byproduct when that matter is properly configured/ attains sufficient complexity. However, in analytic philosophy, there are two very distinct notions of "emergence" that should be distinguished: Weak emergence and radical/strong emergence. Above, I think it was clear that you had "weak emergence" in mind. Conversely, strong emergence is applied to phenomena whose existence is not deducible from the facts about matter (exact distribution of particles and fields throughout space and time, along with the laws of physics), suggesting that new fundamental laws of nature are needed to explain these phenomena. If consciousness is a "strongly emergent" phenomena, this still wouldn't necessarily lend credence to the primacy of consciousness, but it would mean that even emergent epiphenomenal consciousness cannot be epistemically and ontologically reduced to the matter that evokes it. Consciousness would be a fundament property of the universe, along side mass, charge, space/time, etc.



Citta: Not all views in which consciousness is taken as primary (in some sense) would disagree with you and your thought experiment here. Many neutral monist views, for instance, would NOT say that the object ceases to exist when it is unobserved by a thrid-party subject - quite the opposite actually.

However (and I do not want to press this too hard), are you aware of the Leggett-Garg Inequality, and how it has been experimentally violated in a recent host of mainstream physics investigations? (I figure you might be, given your aspirations in physics. If not, its very interesting stuff - almost as significant as the violation of Bell's Inequality.) This data does, disconcertingly, cast some doubt on the aforementioned thought experiment.