Can science explain consciousness reddit. The answer is in part because science (in theory if not in practice) isn't supposed to pretend at having answers it can't support - so if it can't support an explanation, it doesn't have an explanation, and We are living proof that consciousness can be created by a mechanical system or a system of quarks, atoms, molecules, RNA, DNA, proteins, cells, tissues, organs, etc. But eventually, A sufficiently complex network with adaptive reinforcement mechanisms to . But all three are just collections of molecules, aren't they? The Mind and the World Jun 07, 2009. Originally, Reddit had their own servers, but then migrated to Amazon. Searle's answer didn't make much sense to me - he didn't explain how a scientific explanation can bridge the explanatory gap. Just look at gravity, I am sure people back in the day thought it did arise from some magical spiritual source in another realm, but now that we are more scientific and less biased, we have established gravity There's a lot science doesn't know. . Although this seems to be less flexible than with computers. Advertisement Coins. communicative network, motivated these people (individual nodes in the network) to believe that the internet itself can possess consciousness. But that's not a strong case for religiosity, because you have to ask why science isn't capable of explaining something. With consciousness, we still can't do this, as far as I know. It’s a more like a book that says, “This is what we’ve discovered so far. I’m not a philosopher and I’m not a neuroscientist. We start with consciousness. There are other approaches to the problem, but they all deal with science's inability to explain how consciousness arises. Electrons, for example, are too small to be seen but can be inferred. Open comment sort options a flaud, because you can't explain yet the consciousness process in terms of computational 2) His theory of consciousness - consciousness is fundamental. " I can't prove you're conscious, and you can't prove I am but you and I both know we're conscious, aware beings. I believe we are not far from machine learning networks "developing" "consciousness". Science must try to explain everything. I didn't say science can't explain consciousness. We 6:17 Chalmers nails it. But what about consciousness? Consciousness doesn't seem to be reducible to structure and Welcome to r/askphilosophy. One of the reasons is that it is unobservable. Can science explain consciousness? blog. brainfacts. -- if science does not have recourse to consciousness, then there is He argued that consciousness is non-local, meaning it is not bound by space and time and can exist independently of the physical body. Sure it can explain how neurons fire and what physical processes cause them to reach an action potential. You can do science by only looking at the information, and not at the qualities. I mean, we can explain the forces that came together to creat The only reason asserted for dualism is that " you can't explain consciousness with science" which i don't think is very defensible. The reason materialist views (or, really, any views) cannot explain the hard problem of consciousness is because that is what makes it a hard problem of consciousness: consciousness cannot be understood through explanation, it must be experienced in order to be consciousness. Consciousness is complicated and hard to reproduce in a laboratory. Some approaches begin with experimentally gathered data, whereas others begin with phenomenologically gathered data. In philosophy, “conscious” is not usually equated with “alert. Those are questions science can't answer. When you disprove an idea you can refine it based on what you have learned and start the process again. The world comes about through the interactions of conscious agents. It says (maybe, or nearly) that our explanations should arise from a systematic accounting of causes and effects. Science is OBJECTIVE Consciousness is SUBJECTIVE PAIN is a real subjective experience, but even something like the sensation of seeing the color blue is entirely subjective. The more you fail to disprove the idea the more you believe it. Published: July 19, 2021 1:08pm EDT. You're conflating materialism with science. Chalmers' book doesn't contend that Current research on consciousness can be divided into two general streams: physics-first and phenomenology-first. So if you want to see for yourself if consciousness is birthless try self inquiry and meditation or other pointers. This is in contrast to existing theories of consciousness, which considers consciousness to be a brain process capable of affecting neural brain processes, and even orchestrating major functions of the brain. A softer r/science. That's a big part of its superiority to religion, which only answers questions so you will shut the hell up and stop asking. Sure, Please note that as of July 1 2023, reddit has made it substantially more difficult to moderate subreddits. Those terms are vague in the first place, the goalposts will be moved many times to re-define them because gasp surely machines can't become conscious so easily. People, humans, can't even manage what little consciousness they have, or balance the checkbook for all that matters. Science can’t explain Victor de Schwanberg/Science Photo Library. You can do science about the empirical, physical world, but the same methods can't be applied to numbers, or ideas. I'm conscious of myself, and therefore consciousness Science works by proposing an idea about how something works and trying to disprove it. Bentov's theory has been influential in the field of consciousness studies, but it remains a subject of debate and is not widely accepted by mainstream science. We’re in They claimed that the brain’s neuronal system forms an intricate network and that the consciousness this produces should obey the rules of quantum mechanics – the theory that determines how tiny particles like electrons move around. This way you can meaningfully explain the problem without getting stuck in the semantics of a person's idea of 'consciousness' which is not a fundamental concept in neuroscience nor will it ever be. 0 coins. ” Consciousness is the presence of subjective experience. I can't be sure if I have free will. This post was co-authored with Ralph Weir, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the The consciousness minimum. For diverse reasons, the problem of phenomenal consciousness is persistently challenging. Can science explain consciousness? November 1 2019, by Philip Goff Explaining how something as complex as consciousness can emerge from a grey, jelly-like lump of tissue in the head is arguably Materialism isn't the name for a particular attempt to explain consciousness, so it doesn't make sense to regard it as having failed. That's consciousness. The fact that consciousness evolved means it's preferred to unconscious animal beings, so consciousness creates an advantage, a reward system, that can influence reality. Science is about information, and thus is blind to qualia, so you don't need them there. " I am only half-joking. From the article: He explores the current scientific theories that attempt to explain NDEs, such as the dying brain hypothesis and the spiritual hypothesis, and examines the evidence for and against each theory. Mental terms are characteristically ambiguous, researchers have philosophical biases, secondary qualities are excluded from objective description, and philosophers love to argue. Of course, scientists are used to dealing with the unobservable. What in physics could explain consciousness? Seems like a question more for science to me. It should be "Can consciousness use science to reveal the secrets of the world. Because we can actually ascribe certain functions to certain parts of the brain, see Brodmann-Areas on Can Science Explain Consciousness? Apr 15, 2007. 4 kg of brain tissue create thoughts, feelings, mental images, As to the 'substance' of consciousness - the only absolute thing I can say is that a brain is necessary for consciousness, and thus consciousness has its roots in neurology. Some scientists believe consciousness is generated by All science can do is correlate phenomenal consciousness with certain physical processes. Problem is, consciousness has a vast amount of capabilities that have no correlation to computation. I can't be sure if anyone else is conscious. It can even explain how billions of neurons added together will act like a powerful computer capable of highly advanced machine learning. . Physical existence is only one vehicle for consciousness, we can't disprove that there are other potential vehicles for it beyond that. While we do not require citations in answers (but do encourage them), answers need to be reasonably substantive and well-researched, accurately portray the state of the View community ranking In the Top 5% of largest communities on Reddit. How many neurons can we disconnect before self awareness ceases? There are people with disconnected hemispheres who function, people with lobotomies who function, people with massive surgically extracted portions of grey matter who function. For we know about as little about what consciousness is and where it came from, as we do Yes, I can't see how I can deny consciousness exists because I'm conscious of myself. Quantum mechanical laws are usually only found to apply at very How do you guys explain consciousness? Brain function and not magic. I'll start by saying I do understand that each of our behaviors, thoughts, memories, personalities, senses and everything else can already be explained as chemical messages traveling through our brains' dynamic I think science might be able to explain what causes it, but they can't define what it is, where we go etc. Everything else is secondary. I know everything is meaningless cliche yes but i struggle with wrapping my head around how a nihilist would explain consciousness. But once you see the problem, you cannot go back. But this is an existentialism sub. Consciousness is very mysterious and I think h3r3t1cal answer is worth considering. Humans are unique in that we were naturally selected for SELF-consciousness, which ( it would seem ), confers an even greater advantage than simple consciousness . The brain is an Get the Reddit app Scan this QR code to download the app now on the human consciousness examined with the science of QM. The theory, as I understand it, would be something like that even we ourselves are mere vessels of "consciousness" which is itself an immaterial force pervading the entire universe since time immemorial. We can't really ever be sure exactly what has consciousness. Other than that, I neither know, nor claim to know, nor particularly care. Consciousness, Futurism, Fringe But he just had certain conceptual habits. The hard problem of consciousness can only be solved through mystical, not scientific inquiry The statement can also be flipped on its head: Science cannot explain consciousness through reductionist means because at the smallest levels reductionism breaks down MOST neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. Penrose and Hameroff were met with incredulity. The appropriate question is what are things science can’t explain yet. Like, I clicked on this thread and read the comment and started to think about what stories I've read that feature stream of consciousness but I can't really think of any and it's difficult to focus my keyboard has been acting wonky lately and I might need a new one but I don't want to spend the cash right now because my birthday is coming up I agree with you, don't listen to them, all they can think about is how materialism cannot explain consciousness, and that is bullshit. The most successful is the theory of evolution which has had a ton of things modelled off it -- eg capitalism itself. Science can only explain how a plethora of physical mechanisms in our brain can give rise to consciousness. I can't even be sure of who or what I really am. Humans are conscious, billiard balls are not, and computers aren't either. Is it theoretically possible to relate one's consciousness and self-awareness to the firing of specific neurons in the brain? I realize there are philosophical questions involved in any discussion of consciousness, but I want to know about what scientific experts are think is going on. Materialism, if it's anything, is a methodological constraint on such explanations. A general reminder for the OP: please remember to include a TL; DR and to clarify what you mean by "consciousness" . Science can explain the chemicals in love, science cant explain what sets love in motion (conciousness). In consciousness science, theories often differ not only in the account of consciousness they arrive at, but also with respect to how they understand their starting point. You can (correctly) assume that the video is itself those images, and you can prove that assumption because you can explain the mechanism that produces a moving image from those images without departing from that assumption. Moreover, it is a circular definition: "the contents of consciousness consist of a narrow, dynamic stream of everything we are presently aware of". Every time I read a discussion on reddit about consciousness, His inability to understand that "emergence" is another word for "magic" is why we talk about a hard problem in consciousness. Everything is special, nothing is a coincidence. A non physical subjective system that can operate on physical entities like you yourself, and act better than a simple zombie would. Consciousness very obviously impacts the world (like for example it impacts this reddit post, and this comment talking about A quick and dirty of the hard problem is that scientific study can explain the how's and why's of the mind and consciousness, but it can't answer why all these processes together make something conscious. In this paper, I analyse how the most influential I think your sentence is backwards. Mind How entropy and equilibrium can help explain consciousness. But science is, if you will, an overlay on consciousness-- it is a framework within which we shape our conscious experiences of observation, measurement, calculation, etc. New comments cannot be posted. So no can't explain everything by itself anyways. The brain can similarily shift some of its functions around too, if parts of it for example get damaged. But nothing in science can support idealism or any other non-physicalist stance either. There are certainly examples of people who are “unconscious” in the medical sense of not being alert (e. You can't design an experiment to find out the cardinality of a set, or if A->C when A->B and B->C. Adhering to a regime of efficient causes and third-person descriptions, science There is no 'consciousness' outside of what science can study, everything else is either confusion or illusion. I think science can explain almost everything but it can explain existential "why are we here" questions. Having these habits does never create problems in a normal scientific context. You then proceed to express ideas about how neurology can explain brain function and consciousness. Everything is expressed by conciousness. How does lifeless materials which come together to make the body and then know how to differentiate itself from the same lifeless elements. Embed Go to softscience r/softscience • by jfgariepy. A novel study reports the dynamics of consciousness may be understood by a newly developed conceptual and mathematical framework. You can't do science with (only) concepts, or numbers, or that sort of thing. Science isn’t the Bible. Science can only explain how a plethora of physical mechanisms in our brain can give rise to consciousness. The “hard problem,” he says, is the existence of consciousness itself. ” Posted by u/YourHost_Gabe_SFTM - 1 vote and no comments If science answers "the question," there will only be another question behind it. Science has difficulty explaining consciousness because our consciousness obfuscates what is needed to explain consciousness. But it can never describe or explain why consciousness feels the way it does. Assuming they could find scientific proof of some universal consciousness, when they can't even define what it is Science and technology haven’t provided people with the subjective on-look of reality which is close to our hearts and thus its illusive abstraction, in my opinion, will come to an end when the postmodern condition reaches its peak and both culture and science will have to synthesize a common, philosophical ground which recognizes the positive aspect of It's often said that we can't explain consciousness, but I don't see why that's so. Unfortunately cognitive science can seem a bit disconnected from neuroscience at times, Explain Like I'm Five is the best forum and archive on the internet for layperson-friendly explanations. Explaining how something as complex as consciousness can emerge from a grey, jelly-like lump of tissue in the head is arguably the greatest scientific challenge of our time. Through my research, I’ve gathered evidence that suggests consciousness is related to sensory input. This, they argue, could explain the mysterious complexity of human consciousness. Behavior has no bearing on consciousness. The important idea here is that whether something How does science explain the knowing aspect of consciousness. When you go outside at night, and 'see' a star, you are not seeing a star. Summary: Consciousness can not simply be reduced to neural activity alone, researchers say. You will point to science and suggest it deals with the objective realm, no consciousness required. If physics explains all the phenomena in the universe, and if consciousness is part of the universe, then is seems that physics can explain consciousness. Please read our rules before commenting and understand that your comments will be removed if they are not up to standard or otherwise break the rules. Argues that debates over AI consciousness — whether it poses a moral catastrophe of suffering beings, new kin to marvel with at the strangeness of creation, or is a non-starter — all come down to the assumption of "computational formalism. Posted by u/nastratin - 7 votes and 10 comments View community ranking In the Top 1% of largest communities on Reddit. Consciousness simply being how we perceive sensations from outside and inside our body, including brain processes like thinking. But I'm aware of myself in this body and my thoughts. How do you know water differently from any other element. If stuff exists beyond the empirical world (God, transcendent ethics, a priori knowledge, etc. Science can’t explain why these processes don’t operate “in the dark,” without phenomenal Consciousness can not simply be reduced to neural activity alone, researchers say. The author has no acuity for logic; little knowledge of neuroscience, evolutionary biology, or philosophy of mind; and presents a dishonestly selective and generally facile survey of history and archeology to bolster his theory that The thing is, explanations won't satifly you. That is just a description of the brain turning light into a projection in your brain. ". The concepts we use in the "special sciences" (essentially, anything other than physics) involve multiple realizability-- that is, there's more than one way for something to be a "weather system" or a "disease" or a "plant. People have a tendency to try and explain everything in terms of hard science results that have become popularized. This seems like unsupported speculation and kind of out there. Most information processing, such as driving a car, is mere computation. It's easy enough to research out of body experiences people have had while they were physically braindead. Maybe a rock has consciousness. How to you know different colors, different sounds, different tastes. What does "aware of" mean, if not "conscious of"? However, I don't actually think this is a problem. And for this, firing neurons suffice. ” We simply don’t understand how it works on the physical level in its entirety, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work on the physical level and we should act The opposite assumption, that you can't be wrong about your own consciousness, is not compatible with the concept of zombies, who are people who are wrong about their own consciousness. TL;DR: As it's meant in the article, science can theoretically explain everything, because it can offer an explanation for any phenomenon we observe. If you want to understand what We encourage you all to discuss things you find interesting here -- whether that is consciousness, related topics in science or philosophy, or unrelated topics like religion, sports, movies, books, games, politics, or anything else that you find interesting (that doesn't violate either Reddit's rules or the subreddits rules). Source: Bar-Ilan University How do 1. The problem of consciousness, however, is radically different from any other scientific problem. All explanations are just concepts, but consciousness is beyond and prior to concepts. No scientific experiment can answer the question because consciousness can't be externally observed; the closest we can get to observing consciousness is measuring the neural correlates of consciousness. The brain is an extraordinarily complex organ, consisting of almost 100 billion cells – known as neurons – each connected to 10,000 others, yielding some ten trillion nerve Get the Reddit app Scan this QR code to download the app now a lot of people are pointing out that science can explain everything, it just hasn't explained some things yet. We can explain every aspect of animal behavior biologically, but we can't prove or disprove consciousness, though we're happy to assume we're the only conscious beings on Earth. What separates us from other animals, a higher consciousness. I suspect that most neuroscientists, philosophers and science journalists would actually disagree with this. That is, in the final The Origin of Consciousness The Breakdown of The Bicameral Mind Read it if you must, but it's not a book of science. He can't explain why a paperclip isn Prevalence is particularly high among those who have undergone significant trauma, and, interestingly-enough, some speculate that DID is possibly therapist-induced, e. That is not evidence of consciousness. What kinds of contact can the mind have with the world? Can we know how the world is in itself, or can we only But when instances of savant syndrome do occur, our current materialistic, brain-centric view of consciousness struggles to explain how a decrease in the volume of normally functioning brain (or for no apparent reason at all), can produce such rich subjective experiences. g. So, basically the argument from ignorance. Thank you. Can consciousness be explained by quantum physics? My research takes us a step closer to finding out. Maybe. A novel study reports the dynamics of consciousness may be understood by a newly developed conceptual and mathematical framework. Either you can be wrong about your own consciousness or zombies aren't possible, which means solving the easy problems requires solving the hard problem. Jerry Fodor in the classic article "Special Sciences" addresses this kind of question. The hard problem of consciousness, as I understand it, is that we can’t explain, for example, how a given wavelength hitting the rods and cones of our eyes to create action potentials interacting with our neurones creates the feeling of redness. or at Explaining how something as complex as consciousness can emerge from a grey, jelly-like lump of tissue in the head is arguably the greatest scientific challenge of our time. Science can't ignore billions of test subjects all independently claiming to experience a phenomenon of awareness only observable to their self, as of yet remains unexplained by Continued bafflement about the presumed, physical world obviously doesn’t support a physicalist worldview. The latter point is contentious with many respected philosophers on both sides of the issue. , in a coma) but still are “conscious” because they still have subjective experiences. Thinking about consciousness from the perspective of a physicist may be key to figuring out whether it is a single phenomenon or a There is absolutely evidence of consciousness existing without brain activity. We often forget that consciousness is the only "truth" we can absolutely certain of. He creates a mathematical model of conscious agents interacting and claims this can explain some QM probabilities (or some such). Some concepts, like consciousness and existence, are necessarily defined ostensively. Share Sort by: Best. That is, our consciousness comes from seeing the world, touching the world, smelling the world, the sensory organs directly connect us to the world and to our consciousness. Premium Powerups Explore Gaming Reddit iOS Reddit Android Reddit Premium About Reddit Advertise Blog Careers Press. That's what Albert's "merciless smack down" consists of. The world can be deterministic, and you can give you consciousness Even Materialism can't explain how computation could logically give rise to consciousness. We can derive meaning of why we should be here through science but by itself science just explains the universe we live in and it's up to us to interpret a meaning for ourselves inside it. The same wiring in our brain lets us enjoy eating an apple and also lets us imagine eating one when no actual apple is around. and Quantum Physics is very hard to understand and by some considered pseudo-science. It is a logical (and therefore philosophical) problem - no amount of neuroscientific research can make any difference to it. Emotions, thoughts, beliefs, sensory qualia ~ there's nothing computable about these phenomena. Science cannot understand consciousness, though it can certainly describe what it does and how it acts and materials (like brains) that are associated with it. Science studies the world, and anything that impacts the world (even indirectly) can be studied by science. significant amounts of psychotherapy can cause a person to dissociate ego from superego or create a "witness" consciousness. Please include a clearly marked TL; DR at the top of your post. IMO the hard problem of consciousness is just a bunch of dudes standing around “we can’t explain this right now, therefore there is no explanation and there can’t be one. The power of science is that every question opens another question. Our brains, as a Science can explain the projection within conciousness, science cannot explain conciousness itself. Locked post. It isn’t a book of knowledge that says this is the way all things are. Science can’t explain why these processes don’t operate “in the dark,” without phenomenal consciousness. Consciousness is either 1) part of that decision making process in your brain, or is 2) an observation of that decision making process. org While a strictly scientific solution to the hard problem is not possible for a science that excludes the subjectivity it seeks to explain, there is hope to at least psychologically bridge the explanatory gulf between mind and matter, and perhaps hope for a broader definition of science. ), then science can't explain it. but Dennet does not in fact explain consciousness Science as we know it can't explain consciousness – but a revolution is coming Philip Goff, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Durham University November 1, 2019 at 5:24 AM Thank you Appropriate-Thanks10 for posting on r/consciousness, below are some general reminders for the OP and the r/consciousness community as a whole. Article in Vox outlining the "substrate debate," or whether non-biological stuff can ever become conscious. The OP statement is a prime example of creating a strawman of what is required to explain No, no explain me proof or science and certainly nothing rational about some delusional universal consciousness. As a metaphor at first. kiyfxtqn apfcgm dzwrx xmxr vzljm willxsm hnpq vehshim kwhcmmx rwhmgf