this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Why it's weird is because it's assuming the universe is choosing what level is conscious. As you say, we're pretty sure they're conscious. How do we know that? Brain scans and watching their behavior. What happens to something without a brain but still with sensors? Is that somehow conscious? What about a brain but much less complex? Why is the universe deciding how to behave based on this? It'd be really outlandish to expect this behavior from the universe, which isn't a creature and just following a set of rules.

It's a much simpler explanation that interactions that require information force that information to collapse. We don't need any strange justifications or anything deciding what level becomes conscious, which is just a word we made up several hundred years ago and is meaningless to the universe. Consciousness is just a series of impulses in a system, a system which can go wrong in many ways and is not a fundamental thing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Consciousness is just a series of impulses in a system, a system which can go wrong in many ways and is not a fundamental thing.

You can claim that all you want but you can't really back that up. Nobody has anywhere near a coherent account of how a purely physical system produces (or equates to) subjective conscious experience. If your answer now is "well science will figure it out one day for sure" then you have a belief system and you aren't actually thinking scientifically.

Why should science be forever married to a reductive physicalist account of the universe?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

You aren't conscious when you're in a coma, correct? That's a measurable way the system can mess up and we can detect. You also aren't conscious when you're dead, right? Yet another measurable thing. We can detect brain activity and see certain regions are used for certain things. We can also detect anomalous behavior in the brain. We can tell when the system isn't working as expected.

Nobody has anywhere near a coherent account of how a purely physical system produces (or equates to) subjective conscious experience.

We can easily explain how a physical system produces consciousness. We may not be able to point to exactly what it is, but we can describe it and describe how that can happen. It's not mystical. It's just complex. We can't reproduce it yet, but that doesn't mean we don't understand how the brain functions.

Why should science be forever married to a reductive physicalist account of the universe?

Because that's literally a basic requirment of science. It relies on falsafiability. You can believe whatever you want, but science relies on stuff being measurable. It doesn't mean it's right, but that's how it functions.

Also, you call it reductive. I don't think it's reductive. I think it's more reductive to just say "consciousness exists" than to say "consciousness is a complex system that can develop in nature". Just because it's physical doesn't mean it's reductive. Saying "it just is because it is" seems much more reductive.

Edit: Also, despite people believing mystical things for most of history, they were never right. Why should this be any different?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

We can easily explain how a physical system produces consciousness.

We literally can't do that at all though, not even close.

Because that's literally a basic requirment of science.

How? Science is based on making models from empirical observations about the world and yourself, one of these empirical observations is the observation that your phenomenal consciousness actually exists, seemingly in opposition to the physical world, maybe we should perhaps include that fact in our models?

Also, you call it reductive. I don't think it's reductive.

It's literally how that category of metaphysical thought is called, it's an actual philosophical term.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

How? Science is based on making models from empirical observations about the world and yourself

Science requires falsafiability. It's fine to belive other things, but science it a method, not a belief system.

one of these empirical observations is the observation that your phenomenal consciousness actually exists, seemingly in opposition to the physical world, maybe we should perhaps include that fact in our models?

Nothing I've seen seems to imply it's outside of our models. You haven't explained why that's the case. We know how the humans brain and nervous system functions. It isn't magic anymore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Nothing I've seen seems to imply it's outside of our models.

It literally is tho. There is no mention of consciousness anywhere in either quantum mechanics or general relativity.