Statement about consciousness I saw in another forum

[Dolorian]

Recently I saw this statement made in another forum:

Please tell me how you with science alone plan to address the question on how the subjectivity of consciousness can arise from a reality that is postulated to be material/phyusical, meaning it operates by external relations only. No matter how many neurons you postulate or how intricate their external connections to each other, you cannot magically produce a subjective reality out of purely objective relations. It ends up in nonsense every time. The understanding of mind and how it relates to the brain seems to require a re-conceptualization of nature, which in itself is not scientic enterprise, but a philosophical one.

The person who posted it is a Christian, arguing against a monist account of mind. This is an area I am honestly not too informed about and I was wondering if some of the folks here could shed some light about what this person is saying and what sort of answer could be formulated to it.

Thanks in advance.

[Sendraks]

The key line is this:

cannot magically produce a subjective reality out of purely objective relations. It ends up in nonsense every time

Which is flawed, as no one is claiming to "produce" a subject reality, on that our minds can create a subjective perception of reality. There is nothing nonsensical about that.

[Dolorian]

The key line is this:

cannot magically produce a subjective reality out of purely objective relations. It ends up in nonsense every time

Which is flawed, as no one is claiming to "produce" a subject reality, on that our minds can create a subjective perception of reality. There is nothing nonsensical about that.

Let's give the benefit of the doubt to the person who wrote that and say that he actually meant a subjective perception of reality as you put it. Why do you think it would be considered "nonsensical" by him (and I guess any dualist)?

I kind of suspect that he is talking about a purely material (reductive) type of monism, as opposed to an emergent or supervenient one. What do you think?

[Sendraks]

Let's give the benefit of the doubt to the person who wrote that and say that he actually meant a subjective perception of reality as you put it. Why do you think it would be considered "nonsensical" by him (and I guess any dualist)?

Because they're pushing an agenda and are willing to use any amount of word salad to construct, what appears to them, to be a logical refutation of reality.

I kind of suspect that he is talking about a purely material (reductive) type of monism, as opposed to an emergent or supervenient one. What do you think?

I think that sentences like this are not going to win any awards from the campaign for plain English.

[kennyc]

Recently I saw this statement made in another forum:

Please tell me how you with science alone plan to address the question on how the subjectivity of consciousness can arise from a reality that is postulated to be material/phyusical, meaning it operates by external relations only. No matter how many neurons you postulate or how intricate their external connections to each other, you cannot magically produce a subjective reality out of purely objective relations. It ends up in nonsense every time. The understanding of mind and how it relates to the brain seems to require a re-conceptualization of nature, which in itself is not scientic enterprise, but a philosophical one.

The person who posted it is a Christian, arguing against a monist account of mind. This is an area I am honestly not too informed about and I was wondering if some of the folks here could shed some light about what this person is saying and what sort of answer could be formulated to it.

Thanks in advance.

The claim is based on a flawed assumption. There is no reason to assume consciousness is anything more than the brain experiencing/sensing itself. Consciousness is a feedback mechanism that increases evolutionary survival odds.

[SpeedOfSound]

The key line is this:

cannot magically produce a subjective reality out of purely objective relations. It ends up in nonsense every time

Which is flawed, as no one is claiming to "produce" a subject reality, on that our minds can create a subjective perception of reality. There is nothing nonsensical about that.

Let's give the benefit of the doubt to the person who wrote that and say that he actually meant a subjective perception of reality as you put it. Why do you think it would be considered "nonsensical" by him (and I guess any dualist)?

I kind of suspect that he is talking about a purely material (reductive) type of monism, as opposed to an emergent or supervenient one. What do you think?

He has one way of thinking about material. It's an intuition and is probably wrong.
He has another way of thinking about mind. It's an intuition and is probably wrong.

His two wrong intuitions don't play well together.
He is wrong2

Xtians like to think of matter as mechanical and if it has any legs at all they want to give that to the devil himself. The Flesh and it's Evils. They are the truly naive materialists. On matters of mind they are being equally naive.

But trust me you will never get him to see his mistake. I can't even get atheist/physicalists to understand how bad our intuitions of the mind are. This guy has his Belief at stake. He will not budge. If you are in a country where it's legal I suggest just taking him out and shooting him in the head. Be merciful!

[Ven. Kwan Tam Woo]

Recently I saw this statement made in another forum:

Please tell me how you with science alone plan to address the question on how the subjectivity of consciousness can arise from a reality that is postulated to be material/phyusical, meaning it operates by external relations only. No matter how many neurons you postulate or how intricate their external connections to each other, you cannot magically produce a subjective reality out of purely objective relations. It ends up in nonsense every time. The understanding of mind and how it relates to the brain seems to require a re-conceptualization of nature, which in itself is not scientic enterprise, but a philosophical one.

The person who posted it is a Christian, arguing against a monist account of mind. This is an area I am honestly not too informed about and I was wondering if some of the folks here could shed some light about what this person is saying and what sort of answer could be formulated to it.

Thanks in advance.

This Christian is basically rehashing The Hard (non-)Problem of consciousness by making an Argument from Incredulity with a bit of Straw Man thrown in for good measure. Your best response would be to point out that if he can use a mere two fallacies and 101 words to “magically” illustrate what a fucking idiot he is, then imagine what billions of interacting neurons can do over the course of a human lifetime!

While you’re at it, ask him what he means exactly by “subjective” reality. Because based on my own observations and thinking about the matter, I have come to regard “subjective” reality as a subset of “objective” reality, i.e. roughly along the lines of:

Subjective = Objective - sensory and cognitive constraints + cognitive activity acting upon previously known (and filtered) objective data

Further, I have noticed that whenever I have actually looked for this thing generally described as “consciousness” and “subjective experience”, all I have found is either sensory data or cognitive processing of sensory data.

[Dolorian]

Thanks Kwan Tam Woo, that's something to think about

SpeedOfSound: The guy is not a fundie but more of a moderate.

[SpeedOfSound]

...

Further, I have noticed that whenever I have actually looked for this thing generally described as “consciousness” and “subjective experience”, all I have found is either sensory data or cognitive processing of sensory data.

Thank you sir.

[SpeedOfSound]

Thanks Kwan Tam Woo, that's something to think about

SpeedOfSound: The guy is not a fundie but more of a moderate.

even atheists have these delusions about subjective realms.

[kennyc]

Thanks Kwan Tam Woo, that's something to think about

SpeedOfSound: The guy is not a fundie but more of a moderate.

even atheists have these delusions about subjective realms.

It's because the unconscious are among us.

[DavidMcC]

...

Further, I have noticed that whenever I have actually looked for this thing generally described as “consciousness” and “subjective experience”, all I have found is either sensory data or cognitive processing of sensory data.

Thank you sir.

You seem to have missed that Ven. Kwan Tam Woo chose his words carefully. He said "COGNITIVE processing", not "neural processing".

[Wimsey]

Don't you love how they always manage to shoe-horn in one of these

you cannot magically produce a subjective reality out of purely objective relations.

pejoratives? That's the word he expects to carry his argument, not the objective/subjective dichotomy, which doesn't exist.

[Ven. Kwan Tam Woo]

If you position two mirrors so that they face each other, they produce the impression of an infinite hallway of parallel universes. As if by magic!

[SpeedOfSound]

If you position two mirrors so that they face each other, they produce the impression of an infinite hallway of parallel universes. As if by magic!

Don't ever do that! You can actually fall in. For more insight see the latest version of SouthPark, the Grounded Vindaloop.

[UndercoverElephant]

Recently I saw this statement made in another forum:

Please tell me how you with science alone plan to address the question on how the subjectivity of consciousness can arise from a reality that is postulated to be material/phyusical, meaning it operates by external relations only. No matter how many neurons you postulate or how intricate their external connections to each other, you cannot magically produce a subjective reality out of purely objective relations. It ends up in nonsense every time. The understanding of mind and how it relates to the brain seems to require a re-conceptualization of nature, which in itself is not scientic enterprise, but a philosophical one.

The person who posted it is a Christian, arguing against a monist account of mind. This is an area I am honestly not too informed about and I was wondering if some of the folks here could shed some light about what this person is saying and what sort of answer could be formulated to it.

Thanks in advance.

Basically, he's correct. The problem he's talking about called, these days, the "Hard Problem of consciousness", and there is no materialistic solution to it. Strictly speaking, there are monistic solutions. It's a problem for materialism, but that's not the only form of monism available. It's not such a problem for idealism (the belief that reality is entirely mental and that the material world has only a secondary sort of existence - or doesn't really exist at all) or for neutral monism (the belief that there's only one sort of stuff in reality, but it is neither mental nor physical).

A lot of materialists have trouble accepting the problem is real precisely because it is so damned simple. Materialism is the claim that only physical/material thing exist. And if that is true, and you've got this thing called a brain - a lump of meat that is doing stuff - then that is all you can ever have. All you have is a brain and the processes going on in that brain. So what the hell is consciousness? How does a brain "generate consciousness"? As soon as you admit there's any such thing as "consciousness" or "subjective experiences" or, more technically, "qualia", then you're stuffed (if you are a materialist). LOGICALLY stuffed. You're stuffed because you then have to explain what the relationship is between brain activity and consciousness. And what are the options? Well you can say the relationship is "is", but then you have to explain how two things that appear to be completely different, with utterly different properties, can somehow "be the same thing", which is impossible. But if the relationship is not "is", then you've explicitly admitted that reality contains something else on top of the brain activity, which renders materialistic monism logically false.

There is no way out of this problem apart to deny consciousness exists. Materialists holding this position are called "eliminative materialists" because the believe all talk about "consciousness" should be eliminated.

[UndercoverElephant]

The key line is this:

cannot magically produce a subjective reality out of purely objective relations. It ends up in nonsense every time

Which is flawed, as no one is claiming to "produce" a subject reality, on that our minds can create a subjective perception of reality. There is nothing nonsensical about that.

Then what is this subjective reality, and how is it related to the material world. What is the relationship between brain activity and consciousness?

[UndercoverElephant]

The key line is this:

cannot magically produce a subjective reality out of purely objective relations. It ends up in nonsense every time

Which is flawed, as no one is claiming to "produce" a subject reality, on that our minds can create a subjective perception of reality. There is nothing nonsensical about that.

Let's give the benefit of the doubt to the person who wrote that and say that he actually meant a subjective perception of reality as you put it. Why do you think it would be considered "nonsensical" by him (and I guess any dualist)?

I kind of suspect that he is talking about a purely material (reductive) type of monism, as opposed to an emergent or supervenient one. What do you think?

"Supervenient realities" aren't monistic. "Supervenience" is a form of dualism. And "emergent" forms of materialism are logically incoherent. How can something "emerge" from the material world, and yet materialism still be true?

[UndercoverElephant]

Let's give the benefit of the doubt to the person who wrote that and say that he actually meant a subjective perception of reality as you put it. Why do you think it would be considered "nonsensical" by him (and I guess any dualist)?

Because they're pushing an agenda...

Not this time they aren't. This is an argument about logic, language and rationalism. He believes it's nonsensical because it's nonsensical. It literally does not make sense, for reasons explained in the posts above. There is no agenda here. There's no tail wagging the dog. This is the dog.

[UndercoverElephant]

Recently I saw this statement made in another forum:

Please tell me how you with science alone plan to address the question on how the subjectivity of consciousness can arise from a reality that is postulated to be material/phyusical, meaning it operates by external relations only. No matter how many neurons you postulate or how intricate their external connections to each other, you cannot magically produce a subjective reality out of purely objective relations. It ends up in nonsense every time. The understanding of mind and how it relates to the brain seems to require a re-conceptualization of nature, which in itself is not scientic enterprise, but a philosophical one.

The person who posted it is a Christian, arguing against a monist account of mind. This is an area I am honestly not too informed about and I was wondering if some of the folks here could shed some light about what this person is saying and what sort of answer could be formulated to it.

Thanks in advance.

This Christian is basically rehashing The Hard (non-)Problem of consciousness by making an Argument from Incredulity with a bit of Straw Man thrown in for good measure. Your best response would be to point out that if he can use a mere two fallacies and 101 words to “magically” illustrate what a fucking idiot he is, then imagine what billions of interacting neurons can do over the course of a human lifetime!

If that's the best response a materialist can muster, then materialism is in serious trouble.

While you’re at it, ask him what he means exactly by “subjective” reality. Because based on my own observations and thinking about the matter, I have come to regard “subjective” reality as a subset of “objective” reality, i.e. roughly along the lines of:

Subjective = Objective - sensory and cognitive constraints + cognitive activity acting upon previously known (and filtered) objective data

The above is a perfect example of "word salad". It is entirely incomprehensible, meaningless gibberish.

Further, I have noticed that whenever I have actually looked for this thing generally described as “consciousness” and “subjective experience”, all I have found is either sensory data or cognitive processing of sensory data.

Really?

A car alarm has "sensory data", yes? And it also "cognitively processes" that data, yes?

Do you think that means a car alarm is conscious? Can you really not tell the difference between conscious experiences - what it is like to be you - and the physical processes going on in your eyes, ears, nerves and brain?

Again, if that's the best answer the materialists can muster, then materialism is doomed. It's just an attempt to dismiss a very real problem as imaginary, and its on the level of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "la la la, I can't hear you."