Sethbag wrote:
And Tarski has been quite explicit as well, but you just aren't really reading what he's saying, or else you're refusing to understand it. The experience of consciousness in a human being is "what it feels like" to have an exceedingly complex, evolved brain, which has access to memories, knowledge, intuition and the ability to predict things based on perceived circumstances, access to complex sensory organs and the ability to interpret the stimuli coming from these senses, and an OS and software that are running 24/7. Right now I'm "conscious of being conscious", and what that means to me is that my brain is thinking about the fact that I'm here, alive, looking at things, thinking about things, etc. My "software" is running constantly, and what I sense as consciousness is "what it feels like" to be doing this.
You are assuming that awareness of being, for example, is dependent upon "an exceedingly complex, evolved brain." This may seem true to you, but it is not true to me. Science has not proven it to be true and there are millions of individuals who have had experiences that to them demonstrates that it is not true (e.g. NDEs).
It might actually be possible to ask a human-built, extremely complex computer someday what it "feels like" to be executing whatever software it's running, and it might actually have something to say about it.
It might be possible to construct such a machine, but would it actually be feeling what it says it is feeling? How would you know one way or the other without actually being the machine?
What does it feel like when you hit your thumb with a hammer? Would you deny that this "what it feels like" is the result, in your brain, of its processing the inputs from various nerves in your thumb? You know what heat "feels like", would you deny that this experience is the result of your brain processing the inputs from various nerves in your body which are sensitive to temperature?
What I "felt" would depend upon my state of consciousness. If I had hypnotized myself I might feel nothing. Athletes have been known to endure what should have been painful injuries without being aware that the injury had taken place. The point is that there can be a dissociation between conscious awareness and brain activity. You say that brain activity affects consciousness. In a previous post I gave a link which demonstrates that conscious thought can affect brain activity. Herbert Benson has presented convincing evidence that Tibetan Monks can consciously control body temperature:
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002 ... tummo.htmlOur brains clearly think. The brain scans too clearly demonstrate electrical and chemical activity in various centers of the mind corresponding to certain types of thoughts or mental tasks, for this to be in dispute. The experience of consciousness is the result of processing in your brain of various mental clues having to do with the evaluation of your current mental activity and the various stimuli you are receiving, and results in the "feeling" that you are actively in control of and directing your thoughts. Just as intense pain is "what it feels like" when your brain processes the electrical and chemical stimuli channeled to your brain by the nerve cells in your thumb after you hit it with the hammer, consciousness is "what it feels like" when your brain is processing thoughts about its own mental and processing state.
By hooking your brain up to a scanner and looking at what centers in your brain are active when you are contemplating your own consciousness, and by evaluating the relative level of these activities.
Researchers have already done many brain scans where specific brain tissues are measured to be more electrically and chemically active during the performance of various mental tasks, on purpose, by the person being measure, as a response to requests to perform those tasks by those doing the measuring. If this isn't measurement of "consciousness" in your estimation, than I submit you're just hand-waving and being deliberately obtuse.
We've commented on these things, and yet you still come back and keep claiming we haven't answered any of your questions. I submit that, if this is indeed true (which I doubt), it is the result of your questions being only vaguely defined, and only in your own mind, and that you haven't actually articulated your questions clearly.
It may be clear to you but it is not clear to me that our brains "think." Nor is it clear to me that the experience of consciousness is the result of processing in my brain. Simply because a correlation between brain activity and some mental tasks has been demonstrated does not necessarily mean that there is a cause/effect relationship between brain activity and consciousness as you seem to state.
It may seem obtuse to you, but to me the question still has not been answered as to how the brain produces conscious awareness and conscious thought, as well as other aspects of what I call consciousness.
Bullsh*t. We can measure, directly, the brain activity associated with thoughts. Sensors are being developed which allow a human being to control things on a computer, merely by thinking about things. They have actually succeeded, literally, in detecting, with sensors worn on the head, thoughts by the wearer specifically to have the computer respond in a certain way, and that is picked up by the sensors, and fed into the computer, and it responds that way.
Scientists have already produced rudimentary thought-controlled computer interfaces, which really worked. How can you continue trying to deny that thoughts are a physical activity, cannot be measured, etc.? If thoughts aren't the result of measurable physical activity in physical brain matter, how then have scientists measured these thoughts and used them as inputs into a computer? Have the scientists actually managed to make a "spirit detector" or something? Is that what you think is really going on here?
Scientists have measured the outcome, not the thoughts. Admittedly this is an interesting area of research. Also interesting is remote viewing in which a person can be looking at something at a randomly selected location and another individual, isolated in a Faraday cage, is able to describe or draw a picture of what that person is viewing. Also there are the statistically significant results from thousands of trials in which the thoughts of individuals have influenced physical objects, all of this without any kind of physical connection between the two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princeton_ ... search_Lab
How can these results be explained in terms of brain function? It is not good science to accept the one and ignore the other.