UndercoverElephant wrote:The word "consciousness" necessarily has no scientific meaning. It can't be given a scientific meaning without breaking the rules of scientific language games.

Cito di Pense wrote:You can correlate all the brain scans you want with all the anecdotes of subjective experience you want, and you will have a stack of correlations of brain scans with anecdotes.

When you can take the same insight and go in such opposite directions with it then it's time to go home.

I continue to dislike the non-materialist philosophies on this board for their dull insistence that anything hard to understand must be magic and their naive assumption that if a thing has a name it must be made of something. I like the recognition that our subjective experiences cannot be mapped onto anything else for its acknowledgement that ultimately we are all alone, something we know from experience all too well.

Let's stop pretending that reason will lead us to the truth about consciousness.

I'll settle for stop pretending that reason was behind the original questions.

logical bob wrote:
Let's stop pretending that reason will lead us to the truth about consciousness.

So what will lead us to the truth about consciousness? Is it okay if I post the smiley here?

Post the smiley of your choice my friend. Who said anything was going to lead us to the truth?

M319 wrote:

logical bob wrote:
Let's stop pretending that reason will lead us to the truth about consciousness.

So what will lead us to the truth about consciousness? Is it okay if I post the smiley here?

Grasshopper. You must stop listening for the one hand clapping.

logical bob wrote:Post the smiley of your choice my friend. Who said anything was going to lead us to the truth?

If it's true then we can get to it.

logical bob wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:The word "consciousness" necessarily has no scientific meaning. It can't be given a scientific meaning without breaking the rules of scientific language games.

Cito di Pense wrote:You can correlate all the brain scans you want with all the anecdotes of subjective experience you want, and you will have a stack of correlations of brain scans with anecdotes.

When you can take the same insight and go in such opposite directions with it then it's time to go home.

I continue to dislike the non-materialist philosophies on this board for their dull insistence that anything hard to understand must be magic and their naive assumption that if a thing has a name it must be made of something. I like the recognition that our subjective experiences cannot be mapped onto anything else for its acknowledgement that ultimately we are all alone, something we know from experience all too well.

Let's stop pretending that reason will lead us to the truth about consciousness.

Well said, Bob. Remember, also, that UE's conclusion is based on some kind of mystical experience. The implication: "Hey, go and have a similar mystical experience and you'll see I'm right." I'm still baffled as to how one could even distinguish between said mystical experience and a powerful hallucination or "trip"-like experience.

I don't think is it necessary to believe you have had mystical experiences to come to the conclusion UE has. Moreover, rather than going in different directions, I think the two statements come from different directions. If one is considered to come from the rationalist perspective and the other from an empiricist perspective then I don't think there is any inherent contradiction in what is being said by the two parties.

Jef wrote:I don't think is it necessary to believe you have had mystical experiences to come to the conclusion UE has. Moreover, rather than going in different directions, I think the two statements come from different directions. If one is considered to come from the rationalist perspective and the other from an empiricist perspective then I don't think there is any inherent contradiction in what is being said by the two parties.

Which conclusion? Science shouldn't? Science can't? Or Woo IS?

SpeedOfSound wrote:

Which conclusion?

The conclusion quoted in the OP.

Jef wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

Which conclusion?

The conclusion quoted in the OP.

But that language game stuff is bullshit. There is no scientific language game with rules that one may break.

SpeedOfSound wrote:

Jef wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

Which conclusion?

The conclusion quoted in the OP.

But that language game stuff is bullshit. There is no scientific language game with rules that one may break.

Nonetheless science has a particular set of axioms and a methodology through which it can be distinguished from other practices. But this is besides the point really because that is not the conclusion, it is one of the reasons given to support the conclusion, and is itself a conclusion of a sub-argument relating to the manner in which we must necessarily define the term consciousness. The 'language game' is descriptive of the relationships between certain concepts and the meaning of particular terms within a context.

Besides philosophers and mystics, who defines consciousness as 'subjective experience' anyway? If we're going to make this about language games, then philosophy has appropriated the term 'consciousness' from ordinary language just as science has; if science is being accused of mangling the concept then so too should philosophy. Philosophy has created its own mess with consciousness. Chalmers hard problem boils down to an antinomy: how can the language game of internalism be reconciled with the language game of externalism? Crudely, 'Qualia vs brain cells'.

logical bob wrote:I continue to dislike the non-materialist philosophies on this board for their dull insistence that anything hard to understand must be magic

You make it sound as though there's a scientific explanation for experience. There isn't. There's just a list of correlative relations between observed phenomena/bodies (including the brain, of course) and thought/emotion/experience. There's two problems with this list, though:

1) Correlation is not synonymous with causality, anyway. Further, it may appear that brain-states affect/effect thoughts & emotion; but thoughts and emotion also affect/effect brain-states. The apparent causal-arrow is not one-way, then.

2) Any 'thing' which we observe/study (including the brain), is of course integral to the very experience which scientists are seeking to explain. In other words, all observed correlations are between different aspects of experience: observation; thought; emotion.

The bottom-line is that there is no known [or knowable] list of correlative relations between things-in-themselves and aspects of experience. Anyone claiming to be able to prove such a thing is deluded and not aware of the epistemological limitations of science.

In a nutshell, the scientific study of the brain cannot prove what causes experience, because:

a) Correlation proves nothing about causality, particularly when the apparent causal-arrow is not one-way.
b) An observed-brain cannot be the cause of observation.

You accuse non-materialist philosophers of being naive and making assumptions, but that condemnation should be reserved for the materialist philosophers [of consciousness].

jamest wrote:
You make it sound as though there's a scientific explanation for experience. There isn't.

Again,

Yes there is a scientific explanation. We just may not have found it yet.

M319 wrote:

jamest wrote:
You make it sound as though there's a scientific explanation for experience. There isn't.

Again,

Yes there is a scientific explanation. We just may not have found it yet.

There can never be a scientific explanation, for the reasons which I explained. Sticking your head in the sand isn't an argument, I'm afraid.

Jef wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

Jef wrote:

The conclusion quoted in the OP.

But that language game stuff is bullshit. There is no scientific language game with rules that one may break.

Nonetheless science has a particular set of axioms and a methodology through which it can be distinguished from other practices. But this is besides the point really because that is not the conclusion, it is one of the reasons given to support the conclusion, and is itself a conclusion of a sub-argument relating to the manner in which we must necessarily define the term consciousness. The 'language game' is descriptive of the relationships between certain concepts and the meaning of particular terms within a context.

First, science is not something created by science philosophers and has no particular anything that it adheres to. Unless you can give me the source document for the creed of science and the 800 number for the violation tip-line this kind of talk remains in the circle of philosophers and has nothing to do with humans who are doing what humans do. That being science.

Second, Wittgenstein's language game concepts are not about rigid little language islands or about precise definitions. He states clearly and makes quite a bit of overlap and imprecision. I think the above referenced discussion has made mockery of what he was really trying to do which I believe is to give us a remedy for this very thing.

I asked UE for support of his L.W. ideas and he refused to provide.

So that takes out one plank of the argument. The rest were taken out at least ten times each by myself or others. So where is his argument? Toilet.

Are you willing to take it up and defend it here?

UndercoverElephant wrote:The word "consciousness" necessarily has no scientific meaning. It can't be given a scientific meaning without breaking the rules of scientific language games.

ARRRGHHH!!!

a. Show me the existence and prescription of these 'scientific language games'.
b. Show precisely which rule is broken by uttering the word consciousness in a neuroscience setting.
c. Give me the precise meaning of the word in question that I may plug it into the dogma provided in a and b.
d. Tell me what all the top consciousness researchers are using for a word when they do their jobs.

If we look at the actual meaning of language games we could say that UE and other Nonnies here are making a move in a particular game when they bring the word to these forums. More broadly anyone that uses the word in it's many incarnations is making some other move. In these latter no precise definition is required because we all know precisely what is meant by it though none of us could precisely tell you out of the game context.

You should note that science does not use the word to prove god or some metaphysical reality is either true or false. Seems obvious though that the favor is not returned for the word/move is used like a dagger to try and get science to stay out of the business of detailing what minds actually do. The other related move is to get science to admit it's a dumb idea that has little to do with reality. Not Really Really Reality!

So that is two moves with the same word in the game of philosophistry.

now I need to say that guys like Koch are perhaps doing themselves a disservice in this incessant search for the NCC and in this specific way the words of UE may be of some service to a remedy.

When a scientists studies consciousness the word is being used in a loose way to mark that little window of life we all live in and studies of what that window consists of and what makes it happen, go wrong, or disappear are not just good scientific endeavors but absolutely essential modern medicine. Any of you who have lost a loved one to a disappearing consciousness, as I have lost two, will understand this quite viscerally though you may not have known it was named so.

In science we may say 'let's go study the stars' and have no trouble understanding what we mean to do next though we would be hard pressed to precisely define those things as well.

There is no denying what is to be explained in cognitive research on this little window of our lives. We all know what it feels like in general and in fact (ask zoon) depend on a common knowledge of it for our very survival.

So go tell the philosophers to fuck off on this issue. It's not the woo-proof (woof) they are looking for and it is the hottest issue in NS at the moment and rapidly gaining steam and capital.

logical bob wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:The word "consciousness" necessarily has no scientific meaning. It can't be given a scientific meaning without breaking the rules of scientific language games.

Cito di Pense wrote:You can correlate all the brain scans you want with all the anecdotes of subjective experience you want, and you will have a stack of correlations of brain scans with anecdotes.

When you can take the same insight and go in such opposite directions with it then it's time to go home.

I continue to dislike the non-materialist philosophies on this board for their dull insistence that anything hard to understand must be magic and their naive assumption that if a thing has a name it must be made of something. I like the recognition that our subjective experiences cannot be mapped onto anything else for its acknowledgement that ultimately we are all alone, something we know from experience all too well.

Let's stop pretending that reason will lead us to the truth about consciousness.

Use your imagination, man! Or don't.

You can use your imagination and picture a future society where science has elaborated on the nature of consciousness much as they have elaborated on the nature of light. Just as the obsession of "Let there by light" eventually became theories of optics by which we understood the solar system, and eventually gave way to theories of electromagnetism and straddled both the quantum theory and relativity, and became one of the most fecund technical ideas to date, it might be that our obsession with the "soul", "mind" and "consciousness" ultimately leads to one of the greatest and most technically awesome theories in science evar.

Or, you could imagine a future society that realised that all this obsession with "souls", "mind" and "consciousness" was just a waste of time, a mere attempt to dignify humanity with special sauce, and that we were better off abandoning the whole nonsense in favour of a much more mature theory of mind.

Or, you could imagine a future society where we are not doing science anymore because of the chaotic effects of various austerity measures and a general progressive downturn in the economy.

Point is, in each case, we're not doing any better than your average sci-fi author. At least the sci-fi authors know they're writing fiction. For scientists, it's called writing proposals, and even if you get funding, proposals often go tits-up, at least as far as their original motivation is concerned.

But on these forums, it's just a whole can of FFS! I mean, until someone's actually delivered something, this conversation isn't worth the bandwith it's transmitted on.

Metaphysics is just obfuscation. Consciousness is well understood at the level of awareness. Self awareness we have reasonable models for, but limited ability to interogate and make predictions about - nevertheless such models fit better with observed psychopathology and 'blind spots' than any philosophical models. Subjectivity is where the 'woo' comes in. I suspect that like angels, much of the navel gazing about the 'subjective experience' will become redundant as our knowledge increases.

For the moment however - it gives the woo mongers one last hurrah.