Posted: Dec 07, 2016 1:02 pm
Little Idiot wrote:Pro tip - stick to asserting what you could, at least in principle, know about.
Well, I could say the same to you.
Or was I wrong? Do you have personal experience of awareness without any brain activity?
Little Idiot wrote:Exactly which evidence is it that shows 'conscious awareness is solely a product of the physical processes going on in a brain and that awareness doesn't continue after death'.
As far as I am aware, all of it.
Little Idiot wrote:After showing, say a hand full of the best bits of evidence you may be able to explain how ever could we know even in principle that, say my dead grandad's awareness wasnt watching me right now, tut-tutting?
Obviously I don't claim that is the case, but I think its impossible to have a single piece of evidence, let alone 'all the evidence' you are on about to show that.
I'm not even sure what exactly you are claiming IS the case, but if you are merely resting on 'I don't even know if I'm talking bollocks myself' then that's hardly impressive reasoning and would as I said allow elves, and veels, and anything that anyone cares to dream up.
The fact is that the evidence, all of it, suggests that consciousness requires a substrate of brain activity. To set against this, you appear to have the equivalent of 'I still think there is awareness without brain activity'. Why do you think anyone here should find this bald assertion, which would contradict all the existing evidence, to be worth taking seriously?
Little Idiot wrote:Regarding your question about brain scanning predicting conscious thought; why exactly should it be a problem to idealism that there is a difference between brain activity and conscious awareness? Isnt it the physicalists who have been saying 'brain activity is awareness' who have to do some back tracking in face of the evidence? By asserting they are the same thing the physicalists have had belief that they could overcome the explanatory gap between physical brain and conscious thought, now this evidence showing a difference will take some explaining away.
I wasn't making the point about whether there's a difference or not. I was asking you to try to explain how the experimenters could predict what the subject was going to be consciously aware of before the subject was.
Little Idiot wrote:As far as idealism, why cant we just say 'so what?' We never said brain activity was conscious activity so what exactly is the issue with a time difference. So far as there being a correlation, again, so what? we never denied a correlation.
Yes, but it's a 1 to 1 correlation. No awareness without brain activity, just as no speed without movement. Or do you have counter-examples?