Is consciousness an emergent property of the brain?

[STT]

How do you know that these “laws” are absolute and definitive and do not allow for uncertainties?

It could be like that but it seems not. This is a claim supported by enough evidences so it is a fact.

 

[STT]

Physical refers to a collection of matter.

That is correct. The question is what is underlying structure of matter. We still don’t know this. Standard model is our best model we created to explain reality yet it is not anomaly free, which means we have to do more research.

 

[Lucretius]

@STT

People use to think that that is the soul which animate body. Now people questioning this: what is the use of brain if that is soul which bring life into the body?

Our intellectual circumstances prevent most people from understanding what the ancients meant by psyche, pneuma, animus, “soul,” etc. Thus, they ask odd questions like “what is the use of brain if that is soul which bring life into the body?”

Where a new phenomena could possibly come from if matter is only an assembly of particles?

Emergent properties, apparently. Do you deny that there is a qualitative difference between the conscious and the unconscious?

The intentionality could not be more than a manifestation of how matter move and how is its shape. The particle are directed toward an end which this manifest itself as intentionality at macroscopic level.

Are you saying that all intentionality is reducible to the kind we see in, say, electrical charges?

To me will can be defined as internally motivated action. We know through introspection that we have will

How is will different from emotion, and how is will different from an electron’s attraction to protrons, since the inclination of the electron to the positive charge is internal as well?

It seems to me that we cannot be free if set of identities so called laws of nature is finite. So the only solution which comes to my mind is to consider the set to be very large, infinite.

But that’s the problem: we haven’t really discussed what we actually mean by “free.” Many internal inclinations are not “free,” like how homosexuals claim to be unable to simply will what sex they are attracted to. But at the same time, homosexuals are free to will whether they will have sex with someone of the same sex or not.

Christi pax.

 

[Lucretius]

@AlNg

What is matter?

Christi pax.

 

[AlNg]

What is matter?

It is the opposite of anti-matter. Matter is composed of particles and anti-matter is composed of anti-particles.

 

[Shakuhachi]

We can only say that matter is something we experience as both wave and particle. What it truly is in itself only God knows. It so reminds me:

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it is any more than he.

Song of Myself, 6 [A child said, What is the grass?]

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full

poets.org

 

[STT]

Our intellectual circumstances prevent most people from understanding what the ancients meant by psyche, pneuma, animus, “soul,” etc. Thus, they ask odd questions like “what is the use of brain if that is soul which bring life into the body?”

What do you mean with soul?

Emergent properties, apparently. Do you deny that there is a qualitative difference between the conscious and the unconscious?

What I am arguing is that any any phenomena can be explicable in term of behavior of particles which construct the system. Could we agree on that?

Are you saying that all intentionality is reducible to the kind we see in, say, electrical charges?

Yes. Where else could it come from? That is a conscious mode.

How is will different from emotion, and how is will different from an electron’s attraction to protrons, since the inclination of the electron to the positive charge is internal as well?

We have control on will but not emotion. Emotion comes and goes. We of course could resist against emotion.

But that’s the problem: we haven’t really discussed what we actually mean by “free.” Many internal inclinations are not “free,” like how homosexuals claim to be unable to simply will what sex they are attracted to. But at the same time, homosexuals are free to will whether they will have sex with someone of the same sex or not.

By free I mean that given a situation one cannot anticipate a decision although the person is made of particles each behave deterministically. It is up to person to decide irrespective of condition imposed on the him.

 

[Robert_Sock]

To believe that our mind is simply a product of the brain is to make a mockery of God and our religion. If our mind was simply a product of our brain, how could the Holy Spirit or Satan possibly affect us? To believe that the mind is simply a product of the brain like most scientists believe, we unwittingly become atheists!!! To be Christians, we must believe there’s much more to the mind than brainwaves and neural activity. Think about it! How can we possibly be saved if things were otherwise! If our mind ceases to exist when we die, all salvation is hopeless, and just a big lie!

Not that the brain is unnecessary for us to experience the mind while in these bodies!

 

[STT]

To believe that our mind is simply a product of the brain is to make a mockery of God and our religion. If our mind was simply a product of our brain, how could the Holy Spirit or Satan possibly affect us? To believe that the mind is simply a product of the brain like most scientists believe, we unwittingly become atheists!!! To be Christians, we must believe there’s much more to the mind than brainwaves and neural activity. Think about it! How can we possibly be saved if things were otherwise! If our mind ceases to exist when we die, all salvation is hopeless, and just a big lie!

Not that the brain is unnecessary for us to experience the mind while in these bodies!

They have access to our mind otherwise they could not manipulate us. How could they possibly manipulate us if what we experience is not by product of matter activity? We cannot even distinguish whether we are under temptation or just have strong desire for certain things. How could there be any soul when we are not sure about our internal lives?

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Why do we care if consciousness is based in the brain or not?

Well there are some implications that involve God and survival after bodily death. Other explanations do not leave the door open for those concepts.

Arisotle and Plato and almost all ancient thinkers thought awareness was physical, and what Descartes, Locke, and Leibinz mean by the term is more complex and basically different from mere “awareness.”

I question why they thought it was physical. I acknowledge that the mind/consciousness has a physical origin, but that doesn’t necessarily mean consciousness is physical. Materialists tend to assert this but they simply conflate cause and effect. Effects can be different than causes, and I believe a physical cause led to a nonphysical effect.

“Emergent properties” just sounds like a cheap and dirty way to reintroduce substantial form into intellectual discourse, at least according to what I understand Dr. Chambers as saying.

If you’re trying to say that emergence is some type of active force then I disagree. It’s more descriptive if anything.

“What’s a brain” then is the more interesting question: if intentionally is physical, what does it mean to be physical?

I can at least say that ‘thoughts’ are not physical. A thought of a woman in my mind has no location, no mass, it can not be physically observed. Materialists might say that thoughts are just neural activities, but that only speaks to causation and not the actual effect, i.e. the thought (e.g. mental image). There’s clearly an ‘explanatory gap’ in the materialists position.

 

[GEddie]

Why do we need to be certain about our internal life? Most of what goes on in our bodies cannot be perceived from inside. We do not feel our skin forming, our brain waves generating, or a lot of the time, even our breathing.

So why should we be surprised that our soul is even quieter in its operation?

ICXC NIKA

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Post 1 of 3

Interesting, so theoretically, could consciousness, that is qualia, survive death in your view?

I already answered this question in another post, but I found another book that explains some of the key details about “emergent dualism”. Hopefully this helps!

From book, The Emergent Self by philosopher William Hasker ,pg. 189
What a good theory of mind should involve?

But if our theory should be realist about the results of the sciences, it should also be realist about the phenomena of the mind itself. John Searle has noted that a great deal of recent philosophy of mind is extremely implausible because of its denial of apparently "obvious facts about the mental, such as that we all really do have subjective conscious mental states and that these are not eliminable in favor of anything else."2

From book, The Emergent Self, Pg. 189-190
What is emergent dualism in comparison with Cartesian or substance dualism?

So far, perhaps, so good. But stating that we are realists both about the physical and about the mental brings to the fore once again the vast differences between the two: the chasm opens beneath our feet. Cartesian dualism simply accepts the chasm, postulating the soul as an entity of a completely different nature than the physical, an entity with no essential or internal relationship to the body, which must be added to the body ab extra by a special divine act of creation. This scheme is not entirely without plausibility, at least from a theistic point of view, but I believe (and have argued above) that it carries with it serious difficulties.

In rejecting such dualisms, we implicitly affirm that the human mind is produced by the human brain and is not a separate element “added to” the brain from outside. This leads to the further conclusion that mental properties are “emergent” in the following sense: they are properties that manifest themselves when the appropriate material constituents are placed in special, highly complex relationships, but these properties are not observable in simpler configurations nor are they derivable from the laws which describe the properties of matter as it behaves in these simpler configurations. Which is to say: mental properties are emergent in the sense that they involve emergent causal powers that are not in evidence in the absence of consciousness.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Post 2 of 3
From book, The Emergent Self, pg. 192
Advantages of emergent dualism over Cartesian dualism?

The theory’s advantages over Cartesian dualism result from the close natural connection it postulates between mind and brain, as contrasted with the disparity between mind and matter postulated by Cartesianism.
…
There is evidence both from sub-human animals and from human beings (e.g., commissurotomy) that the field of consciousness is capable of being divided as a result of damage to the brain and nervous system.7 This fact is a major embarrassment to Cartesianism, but it is a natural consequence of emergent dualism. Beyond this, the theory makes intelligible, as Cartesian dualism does not, the intimate dependence of consciousness and mental processes on brain function. The detailed ways in which various mental processes depend on the brain must of course be discovered (and are in fact being discovered) by empirical research.
…
And, finally, this theory is completely free of embarrassment over the souls of animals. Animals have souls, just as we do: their souls are less complex and sophisticated than ours, because generated by less complex nervous systems.

From book, The Emergent Self, pg. 193
Advantages of emergent dualism over materialism?

The theory’s advantages over materialism will depend on which variety of materialism is in view. As compared with eliminativist and strongly reductive varieties of materialism, our theory has the advantage that it takes the phenomena of mental life at face value instead of denying them or mutilating them to fit into a Procrustean bed. In contrast with mind-body identity theories and supervenience theories that maintain the “causal closure of the physical,” the view here presented recognizes the necessity of recognizing both teleology and intentionality as basic-level phenomena; they are not the result of an “interpretation” (by what or by whom, one might ask?) of processes which in their intrinsic nature are neither purpose-driven nor intentional. The view proposed here has more affinity with “property dualism” and views which postulate a strong form of property emergence–but these already are views to which many will hesitate to accord the label “materialist.”

[To this I’ll add the apparent irreducibility of consciousness to physical properties]

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Post 3 of 3
From book, The Emergent Self, pgs. 194-195
The costs of emergent dualism to Christians?

I have described the advantages of emergent dualism, but what of the costs? So far as I can tell, there is only one major cost involved in the theory, but some will find that cost to be pretty steep. The theory requires us to maintain, along with the materialists, that the potentiality for conscious life and experience really does exist in the nature of matter itself.9 And at the same time we have to admit, as McGinn has pointed out, that we have no insight whatever into how this is the case.10 It is not necessary to endorse McGinn’s assertion that the brain-mind link is “cognitively closed” to us–that is, that human beings are inherently, constitutionally incapable of grasping the way in which matter produces consciousness–though that possibility deserves serious consideration. And yet, in purely physiological terms, what is required for consciousness–or at least, some kind of sentience–to exist, must not be all that complex, since the requirements are apparently satisfied in relatively simple forms of life

 

[STT]

If mind is irreducible in your system of belief then it could be correct to say that it could survive death.