How Does The Brain Create Consciousness???

So the inquiry ends? :slight_smile: Well even with nothing tangible to go by in terms of what consciousness ‘is’, we know it must be utilising and communicating with what we do know!

Neither J nor gib and others possibly wont agree, but lets assume a few things [the beginning of logic, no]…

  1. There is a physical world, when we observe it, we don’t observe a physical phenomenon or ‘stuff’ of consciousness’ ~ not directly that is.

  2. We can assume that experience is not some manner of wave or particle and other vibrations.

  3. We can assume that having at least two parties [for now let us say the material and immaterial], information is contained and shared in both and thus is something which is transcendental to and transmigrates those parties.
    So now we have three parties communicating + an experience of that = four parties.
    Note; communicating informations are either/or experienced/not experienced, making the experience itself the said forth party.

  4. None of these parties self create or are otherwise self manifesting. We can only assume that when any one of them ‘exists’ its existence promotes or necessitates the manifestation of one or more of the other parties. 4b. OR, more likely that all parties are continually ‘present’ in some manner!?

If 4b, then we may assume a fifth party, that of the initial, the potential and the original state or statelessness of all parties. We may further assume it’s a unified essentiality as if like a pool to be drawn from.

I think we have some ways to go before the inquiry ends, no?

:wink: :smiley:

gib:

Interesting website. IMO, however, your view may come down to a type of ‘psychophysical’ phenomenalism as opposed to true Idealism. That is, you hold that the brain remains the arbiter of consciousness (or subjective experience) but eschew the notion that the brain is an altogether different existence from experience but is composed of a noumenal substance that is related to it (and as such can support the “water in the maze”—and perhaps transform from the walls of the maze into the water itself and vice versa!).

While I agree that the mind or subjective experience itself is the true nature of being my Idealism, which I believe is the type endorsed by Berkeley himself, is that there is nothing but subjective experience: that there is no ‘other’ that is not the actual experience of an actual person that is antecedent to persons and actual experiences that somehow represent and symbolize persons and experiences and must exist in order from persons (and experiences) to “come forth” or to express.

The notion that the brain (whatever that brain is composed of) and its purported relation to consciousness, outside of the brain being just the creator or “bring forth”-er of subjective experience is at the end of the day a Representationalism: the brain (or rather the cerebral cortex) and its neural number, synaptic connection (and the mobility or transitoriness of those connections), and electronic motion and variability is purported to “symbolize” (and through this symbolization, to bring forth) the mental or experiential manifestion of these neural symbols. It is the same as to say that when one writes the word: “apple” or speaks it, an actual apple suddenly pops into existence from thin air (or in the pertinent case, an apple is magically formed from letters written or the spoken word).

My view is that the brain has merely an ersatz role in the formation of experience, in the sense that it is a “false” creator that is merely an allegorical manifestion of God’s intelligence in the form of a symbolic “double entendre”: it allegorically expresses God’s intelligence by the nature of its function (its appearance is an absurd abstraction), and it is a God-instilled reductio ad absurdum that, in counter to the belief that it brings forth consciousness or experience (as opposed to experience existing independent of anything having to exist beforehand to ensure it appears), is a “trap” set for reason bent toward the relation which will reveal the incoherence of such a relation (as the brain is an aspect of the perceiver empirically, and an existence independent of the perceiver speculatively, and personal experience as it is actually experienced must either eternally exist before there were such things as brains, must be magically conjured ex nihilo from a previous and total nonexistence, or come forth as a form of transformation from something that is not personal experience but is related substantially to personal experience [hence a form of phenomenalism]).

Ultimately, it seems that the person is the fundamental nature of reality or being, as opposed to a non-person (as the brain is a non-person believed to give rise to or produce persons) that has the power to conjure, transform into, or maintain the existence of a person. Of course, the ultimate generator that persons are not the fundamental reality is the existence of perceived non-person objects, and it is these phenomenal objects that tempt speculation (or make-believe) that these objects have an existence independent of the person. My own view, in the end, is that objects have no independent existence, such that they are extended aspects of the person in the form of some type of “outward perception” that is a part of the person with no relation or origin from something beyond the individual, save another individual that either deliberately or unconsciously “grants” or “shares” one’s perception with a sub-dimensional other (if this makes sense).

Like Berkeley, I hold that the external world is actually a Person rather than a space, and that the experiential substance making up this person itself forms internal persons with mental and sensory properties modeled from the properties of the Outer Person, and that the brain, its complexity, and its function is a reductio ad absurdum or at best a false symbol or multiplied internal fable symbolizing the true source of human consciousness, the experiential material of Homo Infinitus (“Infinite Man”).


[size=70]-Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, John Totleben: Swamp Thing #21: The Anatomy Lesson; DC Comics, February 1984[/size]

At the end of the day, however, I agree that anything beyond ourselves and what we are doing right now (particularly in light of Kant’s scandal that if someone preached skepticism about the independent existence of objects in the external world their view cannot be defeated, only counter-believed), is, even my view of the external world, a matter of speculation and faith. I think what I have done, and continue to do, is create the simplest view in which the person is the basis of reality from the infinitesimal to the infinite, without need for a non-person device or machine–regardless of what comprises the machine—to create or transform parts of itself into a person or its experience.

J.

Not me. The brain doesn’t create consciousness. The idea of a brain existing prior to its creation of consciousness is absurd. The evolution of brain is simultaneously the evolution of mind. It is one and the same evolution. And if it’s one and the same evolution, on what basis do we promote the ontological superiority of the brain to the lowly mind?

Apologies to p_g - the OP is just too much for me to plunge into.

Amorphos:

Season’s Greetings, first off. :sunglasses:

Second…

It is. It was my muse whilst constructing the article.

God, yes. This is what I’ve been saying all along. But in my view, the brain has no importance save as either an allegorical manifestation of intelligence in the form of experiential manifestation of complexity and cause and effect, or a symbolic reductio ad absurdum that reveals, by the incoherence of the notion that brains can yield or produce experiences, that experience, particularly the person, is the fundamental nature and basis of reality.

For me, the projector is Homo Infinitus (“Infinite Man”), in a simplistic hierarchy and homogeniety in which the specific is a reverberation of the universal. I hold, again, that reality consists of nothing but persons existing within an infinite Person–and that there is no non-person machine or device (re: the brain) that produces or “pumps out” persons and experiences. Personhood, then, is the fundamental nature of reality with the perceived being an absurd (existing for no other reason than it happens to exist the way that it does) extension of the perceiver. The only alternative to this (which I believe you and most everyone else seems to/may/might hold to) is that objects (in a holistic space) precede and grant existence to persons (and their perceptions, which are held to mimic antecedent objects in personal ways). I think the argument for and against specific notions of the nature of existence boils down to these.

-response to first thoughts,

J.

Seasons greetings to you too sir. :slight_smile:

Interesting. Are you suggesting that brains [even throughout evolution] are the effect, as I’d concur. As per my last post [I hope you get to answer], the major assumptions we make are firstly in the material and using that as base. The lesser assumptions are in the observer, experience and thought [info + experience [where observation and perception etc are kinds of experience].

Any communicating back and forth between parties [again see last post] must be cyclic to some degree, such that even if there is some magnificent intellect behind it all [or if not], it responds perhaps ‘automatically’ [there would be a method and process] to the requirements of life.

I don’t think objects precede and grant existence to persons or at least to consciousness, rather I believe something of the mind precedes form and info ~ the projection.

‘Infinite man’, not so unlike ‘the divine infinite’ perhaps, then again nor is the Tao or Buddha being and nirvana ~ the experience of that. That is, I can see aspects of them all in the divine infinite, but I’d be amiss if I didn’t ask if we can see them all in the personhood and infinite ‘man‘?
On the other hand there is certainly intellect in communications, at least where they are being experienced. Where they are not then naturally that’s more computation than intellect.

For me, life and death occur at the point of intellect communicating not such a thing occurring. People historically have feared what kind of death they may get, but as I see it, it doesn’t matter if we die in our sleep or are blown to pieces.

I don’t see why we don’t have both consciousness [‘persons’ as you see it] and form, where as per my last post there necessitates differing parties in the equation, and a duality between the material and immaterial ~ even if transcended. This is probably the only point we disagree on beyond the semantics.

_

Amorphos:

I do suggest that brains are part of the effect, and have no independent existence from the percept, such that the machine believed to give rise to consciousness or experience is actually a part of that consciousness rather than something standing apart from it and creating it. It’s another object within the “Matrix” erroneously believed to be responsible for the “Matrix” itself.

And it is true that the major assumptions are primarily material, using it as base. But observing experience it is odd that we should believe that experience, which is nothing in the end but experiencing, should “come from” or arise or be create from something that isn’t experience or experiencing at all. It seems more transparently rational that experience simply comes from just more of itself: this does away with the baggage of deriving experience from non-experience, which is basically my beef with the world.

There is the person and its ‘deprivation chamber’ dimension or inner world of personal sensory/internal experience. In our knowledge concerning the nature of existence, we at least have that. If you stop there, you have solipsism. Placing one toe over the line of solipsism, as we all (save for solipsists) tend to do, you must consider an external world. And absent a disconnect between the external world and whatever’s there and the nature of the person and whatever it experiences, I suppose I must agree with you and say there is definitely a communication going on between them, and that this communication is cyclic. Indeed, in my theology I state the same (although tangentially).

And yes, there is an ‘automation’ even in God, with absurdism (as God, like us, is existentially absurd—existing as he does for no other reason than that is how he happens to exist) being at the base of everything and this automation in terms of substance and causality between different elements in the substance as a secondary manifestation or aspect of this ground-level absurdity. So, I suppose there is a mechanism governing God and the nature of his mind, even if this mind is infinite.

I think that if there is only a Person and persons, that the divine infinite, however it is named, is ultimately exhausted to, defined by, and necessitates personhood for existence and manifestation (with that which is perceived by the person an aspect of the person, as they are inseparable save through Berkeleyian attempt at conceptual division). Perhaps the divine infinite can be imagined as something that is not a person but that manifests in persons, but any disagreement here is nothing more than a difference of opinion in the underlying nature of reality beyond the person. It’s infinite regress.

If Person is the fundamental reality, then form exists within Person, not outside of it. But this does not necessarily encapsule each person in such a way that communication is impossible. The Infinite Man, however, can be thought of as ‘form’ and ‘material’, if the perceived is an inextricable part of the perceiver and cannot (absurdly) exist independent of the perceiver as a non-person background infinity. IMO I think there is an existential disconnect between God and man that may tempt belief in a ‘non-person outside infinity’: our experience as ourselves is centered in visual and tactile (proprioceptive) experience of a body, with a visual, etc. environment surrounding that body. I think that God may have the opposite of that, with no sensation of body, such that there is no sensation of surroundings, thus marking the perspective of an infinite mind. I think that the only ‘material’ is the stuff of this Person’s mind, which is not available for separation and analysis save only conceptually (Berkeley).

J.

You must have read up to the Basic Theory (which is impressive in itself). If you read ahead to the Advanced Theory, you’ll see how I address this issue you bring up. In the end, I do reduce the “noumenal” brain down to the mind itself, and the material brain down to sensation (like you said). I have a saying: There is not a divide between phenomena and noumena, but one between phenomena and more phenomena.

While that’s a very convoluted statement, I think get the gist. You should read this critique of Berkeleian idealism I post once here at ILP:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176310

In it, I try to argue that the problem with Berkeley’s idealism is Cartesianism. I argue that Rene Descartes’ theory of mind was a very corrupting idea that plagued the philosophy of mind–through Locke, through Berkeley, through Kant–up until Nietzsche who was the first to see through the Cartesian chimera. Notwithstanding Descartes, I really have no problem with the aforementioned philosophers, but I do think (except for Nietzsche) they were under the Cartesian spell and that corrupted their philosophies of mind. The corruption, which I argue in the post I linked to above, is the idea that mind is somehow separate from reality–that there is (as I try to argue in my website) a realm of real things that aren’t necessarily felt, and a realm of things felt that aren’t necessarily real. The problem is that this divide should never have been drawn to begin with. There is one realm of things that are necessarily felt and necessarily real.

I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I’d day it work the other way around: it’s not the brain that brings forth the mind, but the mind that brings forth the brain. The word “apple” doesn’t bring forth actual apples, but actual apple do (or can) bring forth the word “apple” (is in, an apple exists there, I see it, I utter “apple”).

You really are one for convoluted statements, aren’t you? I not even going to pretend to understand this one.

It kind of makes sense. I don’t think there is a “person” at the center of our mental world–not per se–rather, I think it’s all just experience. “Personhood,” if we can call it that, is just one of these experiences. It harbers a sense of “in-here-ness” whereas the perception of external objects, which are just another experience, harber a sense of “out-there-ness”. These are nothing more than the qualities that these experience bear. Like perceptions of red, blue, and yellow bear the quality of color-ness, pain bears the quality of bad-ness, pleasure bears the quality of good-ness, perceptions of external objects bear the quality of “out-there-ness” (or “over-there-ness” or “in-space-ness”, etc.) and the self bears the quality of “in-here-ness”. In this contrast in the ways these experiences feel–the difference between out-there-ness and in-here-ness–which makes it difficult to attribute the perception of external objects to the self–they seem to be of totally different realms.

Again, not going to pretend to understand.

I’m inclined to agree. I’m a little uncomfortable calling this basis a “person”–a “substance” is more like it–but I don’t think that matters in the end. I think the only area we might have contentions is how to properly conceptualize this substance–this “mind stuff”. I like to keep the “real” in this substance–and I like to do this without having to qualify that this stuff is real but as mental experiences–one should have no problem, in other words, saying that it is real as the thing it is experienced to be. No one experiences the perception of an apple as a “perception”–they experience it as an apple–ergo, that’s what it is.

Yes, and the best methods of predicting future experiences involve the hypothesis of some form of external substrate. The experience of seeing the moon pass behind a tree is followed repeatedly and completely reliably by the experience of the moon emerge from the other side of the tree. It is a model, as I said, a way of accounting for the experiences that we undergo. It’s by far the most common model, and it’s the model used by people who create technologies that work, so it seems to be a useful one, whether accurate or not.

We could take an idealist model for comparison - that what others take to be an external reality is the thoughts of a Greater Thinker, that we’re either part of or being fed thoughts by. Insofar as as we know nothing more about the Thinker than that it Thinks, all our scientific models are identical and we just swap out “particle” for “thought particle” or some such. Nothing changes.

Your argument seems to be that if something that is perceived at some point (the hospital) also exists when it’s not being perceived, it can’t possibly be perceived. I must have misunderstood your point, as that doesn’t seem coherent at all.

Mine would be that it seems to work just fine, and requires no more faith than in that of a Thinker. There’s something seeing to regularity and causing us surprises in our experiences, no?

gib:

Indeed. But where we disagree, I think, is the shape of the phenomena occupying the external world (that phenomena not in the form of an organism-envatted brain [a brain situated [“envatted”] within and controlling the movements and bodily processes of an animal). I (and Berkeley, others) believe it is a Person, others (commonly) hold that it is a space filled with a phenomenal substance that can somehow combine or coalesce into a conscious person in the sensory form of an organism-envatted brain. In the end, it comes down to a belief in whether or not the formation of a person is more transparently achieved by a floating substance or the internal material of an infinite person.

I’m not going to pretend to know why Descartes, and other philosophers “poisoned” by his Cartesian idea, should consider experience an “illusion” and the noumenal idea “real”. It may have simply been a way to distinguish the two (despite the errors in existential realization resulting from such distinction) for the sake of explanation of their more startling differences. It’s unfortunate, but a good way to get past Cartesianism in this sense is simply to do what you and I have done: realize that the realm of things felt, thought, seen, etc. as opposed the a realm of things that aren’t felt, etc. is just as real, or the only thing that exists. Once one personally accepts this, Cartesianism is no longer a problem.

I will say that (IMO) I think Berkeley, in his conclusion that human mind is supplied by an infinite Spirit and his critique of “unperceived matter” reveals that he considers the realm of felt things to be real, and that any seeming acceptance or implication of Cartesianism in his writing may be tongue in cheek.

Copy that. However, I think that the brain is really not a player in the formation and existence of consciousness and experience, as it may be a part of the percept with no external analog, regardless of whether this analog is believed to be phenomenal or non-phenomenal.

To simplify: the brain is no more important to the existence of consciousness or subjective experience than a shoe. It only “seems” to be significant because it is, for no reason at all, a symbolic manifestation of God’s intelligence, with such intelligence symbolized by a complex machine within an animal performing endless examples of input/output relation and cause and effect. This is all. Philosophically, the presence of the phenomenal brain functions as a reductio ad absurdum when accompanied by the absurd belief that it creates or generates consciousness. When one applies deliberate reason to how it does this, one discovers the reductio ad absurdum. Once discovered, one has the choice to accept or willfully deny it [the reductio ad absurdum].

But it seems that experience cannot reasonably exist without an experiencer. If we are willing to go so far as to say that the external world is comprised of experience, it seems odd, if not inconceivable (given our nature in which experience and the experiencer are inseparable) that experience and the experiencer should come apart just because it is the external world. I hold that the “inseparate-ness” holds even in the external world, such that there is no experience without a subject of experience, and no perception without a perceiver. Thus personhood may be the fundamental nature of reality through and through. Only if one is willing to state that the external world is not experiential, not phenomenal, can substance alone reasonably reign as the inhabitant of this world.

As stated above, the nature of our existence holds a clue to the nature of the external world, if our nature is derived from that world. We are an experience that experiences, and the experiencer is never separate from that which is experienced (that is to say that we are always present with our experiences and they exist in the form of how they present themselves to the experiencer or perceiver). It is odd, in escape from the logical disconnect of tying experience with that which isn’t experience at all, to then try to separate experience from an experiencer, as this seems logically and metaphysically impossible.

Phenomenalists and some Idealists do well to invoke a homogeneity between man and the universe by dropping the non-phenomenal and embracing completely phenomenal world, but in order to avoid the hypothesis that personhood extends through every level of reality, they attempt to propose the existence of external experience without an experiencer. I think this cannot work, or at least is so inconceivable (as the attempt to conceive of it invariably leaves oneself as the experiencer trying to imagine experience without an experiencer!) that we have no good reason to believe it exists.

Interesting input and summation of philosophy, btw.

J.

Only_Humean:

Indeed. The only alternative is Solipsism. Absent this, present and future experience involves some input from an external substrate. It is the substantial (“what type of substance is it?”) and essential (“what is it, in essence?”) nature of this substrate, as well as what form it takes, that is the bone of contention and that is anyone’s guess (as you point out).

But the model, despite the fact that it has a “practical” application that is repetitive and predictable, carries a logical contradiction on further reflection. I suppose there is no harm in allowing the error to continue if one wishes to hold onto it, as this is simply freedom of belief and opinion. But the fact is that that technologies that work and that are useful are empirically only experiential, existing only in the form of an experience and that which it experiences. When the experiencer and that which it experiences is entailed to be derived from or find their origin in something that isn’t experience at all (as experience is nothing but experiencing, and requires something that experiences to experience it), a logical disconnect (and probably a metaphysical and logical impossibility) arises.

If the hospital is composed of something that is not experience at all, then there it has nothing to do with the existence of a person’s experience or perception of a hospital. One cannot perceive that which is not composed of one’s perception of it, as the material making up that which is “perceived” is something that is not perceiving itself (if it supposedly exists when no perceiver in the universe is perceiving it, the instant induction is that it is not made up of someone’s perception of it, as this would require the presence of a perceiver having that type of perception). In the absence of a perceiver, there is no perception going on, thus anything that exists in this space has nothing, essentially and substantially, to do with a person and its perceptions. Thus it is truly imperceptible.

True, but there would be an incoherence if that thing was something essentially and substantially distinct from an experiencer and experience itself.

J.

gib

Read your “debunking” of Berkeley’s Idealism on the belief that it is tainted by Descartes’ notion that perception or experience is a 'hallucination" hiding some other type of reality beneath that which we perceive. My defense of Berkeley, however, is the same as Silhouette’s:

I would add to this that there needn’t necessarily exist a reality beyond any and all perception in order for perception to exist. It may be that perception, and one perceiving it, is the only thing that exists and that there is nothing behind it. Also, one can argue that there is no necessity that some non-perceiver perception (or even non-phenomenal material substance) necessarily exists, much less that it is “the end of the ontological line” and exists behind any and all perceivers. If Descartes proposes a dualism based on a true reality hiding behind a false perception, Berekeley turns this around by throwing out the so-called ‘true’ reality to supplant it with the “false”, replacing material substance with Person.

J.

Accidental repeat of above post erased here.

And these may turn out to be the same thing depending on what we mean by “person”? What are we talking about, PG? Is a “person” simply a consciousness? A system of subjectively felt, qualitative experiences? Or must a person actually recognize or experience itself as a “self”?

It disappears. But that depends. I’ve heard arguments to this effect–the material world is real…as experience–but why the need to qualify it with “as experience”. This, to me, hints at an implicit clinging to Cartesian concepts of mind, a conception that is not only built to be contrasted with matter, but is built for doubt. If it is perceived, the Cartesians say, it is not necessarily real. But even Descarte would agree, I think, that it is real as a perception. Berkeley would too. He called himself an “immaterialist,” and often argued for the unreality of matter in the metaphysical sense, which tells me he’s thinking of the mind/matter divide in a similar vein to Descartes.

I think of the brain as a sensory representation, not a cause, of the mind.

Like I said, the brain is a representation of the mind. I don’t know if it represents God’s intelligence, but if the saying is true–God created man in his own image–I guess it would have to be. God, in my view, is the universe. The matter we see it composed of is likewise a representation, but in this case, of God’s mind.

Experience requires an experiencer in the sense that experience is an experiencer. If the external world is also experience, then it must be part of the experiencer. We are one with our subjective worlds. But that does not account for the sense of personhood we all feel. I maintain that what most people call their “selves” is, first and foremost, a concept (the idea of self) and secondly, the person (the body) we see every time we look in the mirror insofar as it elicits for ourselves the impression of consciousness (i.e. we wouldn’t call a dead body a “person”). These are only particular experiences among the shmorgasboard of experiences inside our minds. This self is not the self that is one with the universe. In fact, it contrasts with the rest of the universe (which is what makes the rest of the universe the “other”). This is not to say that the self that is one with the universe is not a “person” but just that it does not experience itself as a “person”. Again, the definition of “person” needs to be addressed.

BTW, did you read my response to Silhouette?

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176310#p2241206

This is the problem, I’m saying. He can’t do this. If the only thing left after he razes the “true” reality is “false” perception, then nothing exists. There can’t be perception that is something different from its (false) content. If the content is false, and that’s all there is, then everything is false.

I find it odd that you would say “I would add to this that there needn’t necessarily exist a reality beyond any and all perception in order for perception to exist” while at the same time saying that the finite person is a representation of an infinite person. Wouldn’t the infinite person be (partially) “behind” the finite person?

Perhaps conciousness is produced by particles going beyond the speed of light in our brain producing tachyons that move back in time creating paradoxes that in themselves are what consciousness is… :mrgreen:

gib:

Taking oneself as ground-level example of the nature of existence (as in reality one only experiences the existence of oneself and one’s experiences), the “self” and a system of subjectively felt, qualitative experiences are inseparable. The simplest view is that this inseparate-ness is absolute in reality, if not in one’s imagination. As Berkeley states:

It is agreed on all hands that the qualities or modes of things do never really exist each of them apart by itself, and separated from all others, but are mixed, as it were, and blended together, several in the same object. But, we are told, the mind being able to consider each quality singly, or abstracted from those other qualities with which it is united, does by that means frame to itself abstract ideas. For example, there is perceived by sight an object extended, coloured, and moved: this mixed or compound idea the mind resolving into its simple, constituent parts, and viewing each by itself, exclusive of the rest, does frame the abstract ideas of extension, colour, and motion. Not that it is possible for colour or motion to exist without extension; but only that the mind can frame to itself by abstraction the idea of colour exclusive of extension, and of motion exclusive of both colour and extension.

-George Berkeley: A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Principle #7, 1710

Thus my view of a “person” or “Person” can be nothing but an inseparable combination of the experience of a “self” plus a system of felt, qualitative experience. My view is that while we can seemingly create an abstract idea separating self from experience (I use the term “purportedly” because in practice, one finds that one cannot separate experience from self even in imagination), in reality it is not and cannot be pulled apart.

Thus person in the sense I use it must be a “self” experiencing itself as a self alongside qualitative experience.

The need to add “as experience” to the notion that the material world is real arises only if one believes in the existence of a material world that is not made up of or is not the same thing as experience (the self itself is, fundamentally, an experience so the term “experience” does not necessarily contradict the above by being only experience without a self).

The Cartesian concept of mind, while not only built to be contrasted with matter (for those believing that matter as something distinct from mind exists), is built for doubt, I think this doubt arises from ones sense of what is real v.s. what is not real. I think it comes down, all this time, to a matter of an unfortunate confusion of “real” v.s. “false”. To me, as long as something exists (re: is experienced) it is absolutely real. As you say (and as you state Descartes would perhaps agree with), one can do away with the notion that something is “false” (re: different from what exists in the external world as opposed to being simply nonexistent) and simply say that something is real perception or something is real matter (if matter distinct from mind or experience exists).

Harry Potter: Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?

Professor Albus Dumbledore: Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

-Film: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2); Warner Bros. Pictures, 2011

Berkeley’s claim of the unreality of matter is a claim of matter’s nonexistence. I think this is all that he meant. He did not mean that it is an illusion in the sense that we “see” it, but it is not truly “there”. He is stating that it out-and-out does not exist. This reminds me of Amorphos’ sense of existence as a “thereness”. Whatever, then, is “there”–regardless of whether or not it only exists in the mind or has an analog in the external world, is therefore real. Thus everything exists, but either exists as something in the external world represented in the person (if we can even know that this is so empirically) or is something indigenous only to the individual, in the form of private imagination.

I do as well, to a terribly infinitesimal degree. The brain can be regarded as a representation of the mind if one wants it to be. I think this is where it ends. In my view, the brain is more a “physical” reductio ad absurdum implanted in man to trick him, so to speak, into discovering the actual truth of his nature.

To each his (or her) own, I suppose. Representation v.s. reductio ad absurdum, God as universe of infinite space composed of mind without sense of self v.s infinite person with its own sense of self.

But the notion of experience, itself, being an experiencer without a sense of personhood does not obtain in reality. It is an abstract idea, in the Berkeleyean sense of an experiencer being not a ‘someone’ but just a non-person experience that brutely experiences (I applaud you, however, in transcending Phenomenalism by this type of abstract reasoning: an accidental Super-Phenomenalism?). Furthermore, the sense of personhood, the “self”, is not so much a concept as an experience itself (as everything is an experience, even concepts). A person is an experience and not just a concept, in the sense that a person is the experience of being a particular person. Thus personhood cannot be pulled from experience (except in the abstract way stated above). At the basic level, an experiencer is distinct from what it experiences in terms of being the experience of something that experiences, despite the fact that the two are inseparable (two aspects of the same thing: experience).

At the end of the day, however, it comes down to one’s belief, and (dare I say it?) faith in what obtains. As Chalmers is fond of saying, if something can’t be disproven, it cannot be ruled out. We’re talking about what supposedly or purportedly exists in the external world, supported by a rational denial of non-experience, that which is the exact opposite of existence that is actually, truly experienced. I can concede that there could be experiencers without sense of personhood–while at the same time proposing that personhood or sense of self may be homogeneous throughout infinity and does not disappear in the external world, nor does it cease to be as the external world itself. At this level of argument, thoughts of likelihood or probability for or against ultimately, and honestly, narrows to the existence or level of disbelief.

He can do this, if one understands the difference in meaning between “true” and “false”. Descartes’ dualism may involve a misperception of “true” and “false” in the sense that something that obviously exists (because it is actually experienced by a particular person) is called “false” or an “illusion” simply because one has the idea it does not mimic, represent, or reflect something in the external world (as if we could possibly know this). One could mistake for or confusingly blend this “non-reflection” for nonexistence, without realizing that the only thing going on is an ontological distance (re: something existing in the mind of a person distant from being something in the external world, with both being real [if the thing in the external world exists]).

Given this, if “true” reality is “false” perception, then in light of Descartean misperception the revelation can be made that perception is the only reality, and that there is no such thing as non-perception (meant here as experience v.s non-experience by ad hoc analogy). Thus it is not that everything is false, but that everything truly exists, and that the only thing that does not exist is anything not a part of “all there is” (non-perception).

I don’t know what you exactly mean by “there can’t be perception that is something different from its (false) content”, but if you are stating that perception can’t be different from its analog in the external world, then this argument falls where it stands simply by the observation that we can’t know what actually exists in the external world, as we can only experience ourselves and the extended part of the self which is just the percept. We only have an idea (and our heartfelt belief) about what’s ‘out there’, but we cannot experience it. Thus we are not qualified to state, with absolutely assurance, what it contains.

What I meant by “a reality beyond any and all perception” is a non-perception ‘reality’ in the sense that this reality, being beyond any and all perception, would inductively not contain perception. An infinite person on the other hand would be a final Perception behind any and all “micro” perceptions (all finite persons).

J.

Phenomenal,

I’m going to focus on two points in order to cut down on the length of these posts. These two points are those of 1) personhood, and 2) how Berkeley understood “matter”.

  1. Personhood:

It seems I must disagree with you. I’m not sure how much you know about the brain sciences, but it has been demonstrated over and over again that each of our experiences that can be distinguished from each other can be correlated with activity in different parts of the brain (this can be the phenomenal brain if you like).

Would you agree that in order for one to have a sense of selfhood (not be a self but have a sense of self, one must at least be able to think it? If so, then this sense of selfhood requires at least thought, no? But thought, like any other experience, has a neuro-chemical correlate in the brain. Knock out this neural-chemical correlate, but leave every other one intacts, and you will have a mind full of experience but without the sense of selfhood (even if you don’t want to equate the sense of selfhood with thought, you must admit that, as a distinct experience that can be distinguished from other experiences in the mind, it must have a distinct neuro-chemical correlate somewhere in the brain–knock out that center and you knock out the sense of selfhood). But as such a mind, with its remaining experiences, would continue, you can have a system of experiences without a sense of selfhood.

All this might hinge on what you think the brain sciences are really telling us–I got the gist from something you said in your last post that the brain sciences are a kind of “sham”.

  1. How Berkeley understood “matter”:

It’s confusing the way you’ve been explaining Berkeley. Everything you said would seem to agree with what I believe, but then you said this:

Why would he say this is matter verily exists in our perceptions of it? At the heart of the Berkeleian doctrine, matter cannot be anything different from what we perceive it to be, and this is nothing different from what the average layperson perceives it to be, nor the materialist.

To me, it seems like Berkeley’s move was to consider the two Cartesian substances of “mind” and “matter” and, pivoting on the Cartesian skepticism over the existence of matter (because we can never know if our perceptions of matter are real or just a hallucination or a dream), question whether we have any right to believe in matter all at. Concluding that we don’t, we went on to posit that perception is the only thing that’s real, and therefore perceptions of matter are most definitely real. Adding to this that in identifying matter as that which we perceive as matter, we must have always been referring to our perceptions of it (and not to something outside our perceptions), this is what matter really is. Thus, matter is real.

But the problem, of course, is that Berkeley is still preserving one of the Cartesian concepts (i.e. mind). What I say is that idealism first needs to reject both Cartesian concepts and come up with something totally new, something that isn’t designed for doubt. This is why I said in an earlier post that what we need to hash out is our conceptions of substance–we need to come to grips with how we conceptualize this “mind-stuff”.

I mean that I don’t subscribe to the model of mind that says it can be divided into two components: the container (or frame) and the contained (or content). No part of mind exists that isn’t part of what’s being experienced (or felt). The idea that there can be a part of mind that isn’t being felt (not part of the content) is to defy the very Berkeleian motto of esse es percepi. If mind qua container exists apart from mind qua content, then the container is, by that very token, not perceived, and therefore according to esse es percepi, it cannot be.

How does the brain create consciousness?

Well … that question implies that you know something about consciousness or else the question would have never arisen. Is there any chance of getting out of this knowledge of consciousness to actual consciousness?

If you were to somehow be freed of this trap of knowledge, the question of consciousness is not there anymore. The question arises from this knowledge, which is still interested in finding out the reality of things, and to experience directly what that consciousness is all about. When this knowledge is not there, the question is also not there. Then there is no need for finding any answer. This question which you are posing to yourself, and also to us, is born out of the assumption that there is a consciousness, and that assumption is born out of this knowledge you have of and about consciousness. The knowledge is the answer you already have. That is why you are asking the question. The question automatically arises.

What the hell tells you that you are conscious? You see, you have no way of finding out what you’re left with apart from separating yourself from ‘consciousness’ and projecting what you know on to it. It’s absolutely impossible to have any ‘experience’ of unity or union with consciousness. A claim to any experience presupposes not only an awareness of the experience as an object, but also a recognition of it as an experience. And these conditions are enough to destroy any possibility of there being a unity, let alone an experience of unity, because any recognition implies a duality or division between the subject and the object. How can there be an experience of unity where there is a subject left out of the object of experience?

gib:

Good deal. I had to shoo the family away in order to finish the post above, as their teeth ground waiting for me to come with them to finish Christmas shopping (awful of me, I know). :sunglasses:

Sure. As stated by Sylvia Mader in: Inquiry Into Life:

The cerebrum, which is the only area of the brain responsible for consciousness, is the largest portion of the brain in humans. The outer layer of the cerbrum, called the cortex, is gray in color and contains cell bodies and short fibers. The cerebrum is divided into halves known as the right and left cerebral hemispheres. Each half contains four types of lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital.

The cerebrum can be mapped according to the particular functions of each of the lobes. The particular sensation produced is the prerogative of the area of the brain that is stimulated, since the nerve impulse itself always has the same nature.

-Mader, Slyvia S: Inquiry Into Life, (pg. 317); Fourth Edition.
Wm.C.Brown Publishers, Dubuque, Iowa 1976,1979,1982,1985

[Meaning, of course, that if the action potential is always of the same nature or electrical frequency, operating on the “all-or-none” principle, then distinctions in experience and type of experience must be a function of different structures in the brain producing different rates and numbers of action potentials.]

Yes. Sense of self or personality is an aspect of thought-experience.

A good, ingenious way to demonstrate split of sense of self from experience, and I have no stake in denying this type of split (for upcoming reasons)—but aside from behaviors that would seem to infer loss of sense of selfhood (including verbal report of the patient saying: “I don’t have a sense of self anymore”) how could we know which neural-chemical structure and function is associated with loss of sense of selfhood, and importantly, how can we observe the loss of sense of selfhood itself independent of inference of such loss from ‘physical’ behavior (or verbal report)? Sense of self, being made or composed of thought-experience, is invisible.

But taking such a split as both possible and true for the sake of argument, the brain as reductio ad absurdum remains. Correlation implies causality, with correlation of neuro-chemical structure and function with the arousal or appearance of a particular function of the brain (the cortex) implying that the experience is created by, or “comes from” the structure once the pertinent function exists. Taking things negatively, the failure of the relevant brain structure to function results in the absence or disappearance of its correlative experience. This concept, or observed fact (inferred from behavior or verbal report), would, and does, lend strong support for the existence of psychophysicalism. Non-experiential creation of this neuro-chemical split between sense of self and basic experience, nevertheless, remains incoherent.

Taking away the ability of even a phenomenal brain to cause experience (in which phenomenal neurons must somehow either: (1) conjure experience from nonexistence; (2) provide a conduit between phenomenal experience in the external world and the personal experience of the subject by shuttling external phenomenal stuff into the brain and then out of the skull in the form of the personal experience of the subject; (3) have every personal experience the subject will experience from birth to death in the form of phenomenal neurons, with such neurons transforming part of itself from neuron to experience in response to phenomenal electrons flowing through phenomenal, cortical biomaterial), and the correlation becomes merely symbolic. When the symbolism is working positively, in which the correlations work (sense of self is intact), it becomes a positive symbol of the situation in the external world, which is not supported by any brain and thus cannot be affected by cessation of brain function, with personhood here remaining indestructible and inseparable from other experiences of the infinite Person.

When the correlation works negatively, such as when neuro-chemical correlates of experience relative to sense of selfhood cease to function and sense of self ceases to exist (or dissipates), this does nothing but end a particular human allegory of the inseparate-ness of sense of self from experience in God-consciousness. The ability of sense of self to come apart from experience in organisms does not imply a inductive extrapolation to the necessity of an ascendant nonexistence or latency of personhood in the external world. That is it does not, on my view, indicate that universal consciousness or experience necessarily and primordially fails to possess a sense of self. This agrees with the notion, also, that man is mortal and able to “come apart”, as opposed to God, who is indestructible and inseparable.

If Berkeley denied the existence of matter independent of our perception of it (which is what I meant by “matter’s nonexistence”), then he would not imply that our perception of matter (with “matter” being a term with a semantic [in terms of our perception of it] of our sensory experience of a sensory thing within our consciousness or as an extended aspect of the person rather than something that is part of another person or in the external world) implies or indicates the existence of matter independent of perception (something that exists or would exist if there were no such thing as persons or experience in the absence of persons).

Matter is not anything different from what we perceive it to be only in the sense that what we perceive and call “matter” is actually an aspect of ourselves, not something external to the self, as we cannot experience anything that is not oneself or an aspect of oneself. The materialist, meanwhile, makes the cognitive mistake of confusing something that is just an aspect of the percept (that is to say, an aspect of himself and his experience) for something that purportedly exists external to himself or that continues to exist when he’s not around.

Berkeley, then, only spoke of matter as something that is a part of the self. This is “perceived matter”. He denied the existence of matter that is not made out of experience and that is external to and thus not a part of aspect of any person.

Matter is real, indeed, only in terms of matter being purely experiential and part of oneself. You cannot perceive of anything outside yourself, as some aspect of that thing must stop being itself (independent of your perception) to transform into your perception of it (this is arguably the simplest negative induction one can make from the question of whether or not an object exists when you, or anyone, no longer perceive it).

It seems to me that Cartesian skepticism over the existence of matter in the relevant sense reduced to whether or not we could perceive of that matter purportedly existing independent of any and all perception, and based upon the knowledge that we can’t (one can only erroneously believe that one’s perception of “matter” somehow views something existing in the external world when all one actually views is an aspect of oneself), considers, confusingly, that our “perception of matter” is a “hallucination” or “dream” (something unreal).

As stated before, I think it comes down to a confusion (in Descartes, mainly) in use of the term “illusion” or “deception” (or “hallucination” or “dream”) when applied to the actual reality of perceiving (generally), and (specifically) perception of that which we call “matter”—actually a sensory aspect of oneself. One could say instead that perception of matter (that is, our purported ability to directly or indirectly perceive matter in the external world, or belief that one can even perceive something in the external world) is an erroneous belief rather than a “hallucination” or “dream”.

Therefore:

  1. If we identify matter as that which we perceive as matter, we indeed must have always referred (knowingly or not) to our perception of it.

  2. Our perception of matter is perception of an aspect of ourselves, not perception of something existing outside ourselves (it is only erroneously believed to be perception of something existing outside ourselves).

  3. Matter is real in the sense that matter is experiential, made up only of one’s experience, and as such is an aspect of ourselves, not something existing outside ourselves.

Regardless of whether or not Berkeley fell partially or wholly into the Cartesian confusion, what I stated above is what he truly meant, and was the meat of everything he preached, Cartesian confusion notwithstand (which, when understanding 1-3 above, Berkeley’s taint, if it existed, is unfortunately but irrelevant due to his realization of (3)).

Our conception of substance, in order to be honest, must start with what we actually experience exists, not what we believe exists (in absence of evidence). Thus conceptualization of “mind-stuff” must hold that mind, and everything else, is exclusively made up of experience (which exists as something always experienced and currently experiencing).

Ah. I am inclined to agree, on the surface. But such a belief poses a problem for the notion of Freudian unconscious mind, which ultimately depends upon an internal non-intersubjectivity with the conscious mind or the non-intersubjectivity of different conscious minds existing within a single person.

J.

P.S. You’ll excuse me, I hope, if I don’t respond the rest of the day. It’s Christmas, after all, and I want to think “normally”–heh–and concentrate on “family stuff” for the rest of the day. But to speak honestly, this type of discourse is good for the intellectual soul, regardless of what side of the fence you’re on in a philosophical view. It’s weight-lifting for the mind, and I enjoy, learn, and adapt from the things I discover from others while “working out” in ILP. It refines my own view or reveals where it needs pruning or improvement, given that beyond knowledge of the nature of existence of oneself, everything else is a matter of faith (even if supported by reason).

Will return the 26th!

Welcome back, PG, hope you enjoyed the holidays.

The correlat?ion between neuro-chemical activity and experience need not imply causation from the former towards the latter. Remember, I too believe the brain to be a representation of the mind. Given that I also take it to be a real material object, it follows that the mind it represents causes this very material brain to come into being.

Any experiment in the brain sciences which purports to prove the contrary can be responded to with the panpsychism that idealism usually is. Like I said earlier, while I take the brain to represent the mind, I take the rest of the universe to represent God’s mind. Therefore, any devices in the neuro-surgeon’s tool kit he might use to experiment on the brain, those devices are representations of aspects of God’s mind. If those devices happen to knock out any functional feature of the brain, this counts as God removing those features from the human mind. If one of those features happens to be the sense of selfhood, God, it would turn out, can remove that too.

But your point is taken that whatever features are removed from the human mind, there still remains the “person” who is God himself. I don’t know if I believe this myself–that God is a “person”–but at least it saves your theory from incoherency.

Would Berkeley attribute the same inherent reality to our thoughts about matter as he does our perceptions? I do. I say that you can’t do this for one aspect of the mind (sensory objects) without doing it for every other aspect. Thought, therefore, must be recognized as a power to create real things (in this case, truths or facts) just as sensation. What, then, should be said of the materialist’s beliefs? Do his beliefs that matter exists independent of perception turn out to be true, at least for him, because, as beliefs, they must be as real as his perceptions of matter?

I agree with this. I agree that Berkeley was trying to establish 3), but I think he fails if he neglects to reject Cartesian “mind” and replace it with a whole new concept of mind.

That’s a start. But I think what’s fully needed is a way of explain 1) how we can have perceptions of things which seem outside us without actually being outside us, and 2) how experiences and perceptions can exist independently of anything else. Note that the problem hinges on experience being something other than what it seems. If it seems material ojects exist outside us, independent of us, and yet they are not, we are saying experiences are something other than what they seem like. But what else is an experience than what it seems like? We must define “experience” in such a way that we can say that they are (sometimes) material objects outside us (for if that’s what they seem like, that must be what they are).

The matter of the unconscious is a matter of knowledge. It means that there are mental content that we don’t know about, not that we aren’t experiencing it.

gib:

With a few exceptions, our philosophy seems almost identical. Flesh out a few semantics, I think, and we may begin to see whether or not the divergences (save for the God as “person” part, which is definitely a irreconcilable difference in belief) are actually differences.

Here, it seems that for you the brain is a central symbol, in organic form, of mind and experience rather than an out-and-out allegorical manifestation of intelligence and reductio ad absurdum. But the question arises (in the interest of the statement that “The correlation between neuro-chemical activity and experience need not imply causation from the former towards the latter”) whether or not knocking out functional features of the brain and its correlative cessation of representative experience implies that causation somehow indeed flows from the former to the latter?

If experience is not caused by the brain, then it does not depend upon the brain to exist, as the brain in your ontology works like a speed dial on the dashboard of a car as opposed to the actual speed of the car itself. If the dysfunction or destruction of a neuro-chemical correlate does not cause the disappearance or failed appearance of the experience it represents, it would seem that the neural dysfunction and the failure of the experience to appear (or its sudden disappearance) is either a coincidence, or both are simultaneously caused by an external process outside the organism and subject of experience themselves (ah, I presume the universal mind beyond the subject and the brain).

I couldn’t have stated this better myself. A fine response to those seeking to establish brain-generated causality of consciousness or experience using the negative example of the disappearance or failure to appear of experience in concert with systemic or accidental dysfunction of neuro-chemical correlates of experience.

At the end of the day, the only things “preventing” this theory from truth is both the objective state of its non-truth or (if true) the disbelief of someone opposed to the idea.

Insofar as Berkeley spent most of his time railing against belief in the existence of “unperceived, senseless matter”, he may have succeeded in (3) in this further sense. He seems to regard both human perception and the Spirit existing in the external world (the source of experience) as equally real. This, I think, is altogether distinct from Descartes’ insistence that our minds are “there, yet not there” in regard to some form of external “there-ness” that is “there” through and through. I

As stated before in my previous writings, there must be a substance-equivalence (there must be a substantial or essential relation between the creator and created; ergo: they must be made of the same substance at a fundamental level) as well as a constructive-participation of the creator in the formation of the created (the creator must use something that already exists before the fact to create the created, even if that “something” must come from or within itself). Anything beyond this is magic.

Therefore, if one perceives a chair and there is an actual chair in the external world, given that one no longer perceives the chair when one walks out of the room (one’s perception of the world “morphs”, or changes shape while the external world remains whatever it is—continuing to have whatever is in it—regardless of the presence or absence of what a subject perceives) then there is no logic to the notion that things that our outside can have anything to do (by the very reason of being what they are outside us) with our seeming “perception” of them if they, themselves, are not: (1) composed of the same substance as that making up perception and experience itself (otherwise, whence cometh experiencing or perceiving?); (2) the objects themselves reach or extend into the subject to form the subject’s perception of it.

(2) seems fantastical on the surface, because it seems that a chair in the external world does not warp, stretch, or bend into the subject to personally form a subject’s perception of the chair: it seems that the chair and the perception of the chair rests or sits apart from each other, not touching or having any part in the existence and formation of the other. But this reveals the incoherence of the notion that perceptions of things necessarily exist because of the external existence of the things they supposedly “perceive” or represent. In order for there to be a true relation between things outside us and perceptions of things that—surprisingly—we only believe exists outside us or that the things we perceive absurdly create a floating (but objectively groundless) conviction that they represent something outside us, then those things must play a part—independent of the absurd middleman that is the brain—in the actual existence and substance of perceiving itself.

Empirically, however, given that our perceptions are what they are and that they “morph” and change shape with the subject of experience at the center (therefore starting as “this” but then shifting into “that”) while objects in the external world, if they exist as the very objects within our perception (when those perceptions have that particular form at the time). It is just this mobility of one’s experience—as opposed to the notion that things outside remain what they are in their relative places (external change notwithstanding) while we go on to see other things—reveals that perceived objects are not external objects but are creations, constructs, that are aspects of or parts of oneself; they are are only perceived by oneself, appear only in the form of how they are to one’s point of view, and cease to exist (in that perceived form) when we attend to other things (the portrayal shifts or changes shape into something completely different).

A bit long-winded, but the gist of it is that given the mobility or mutability of perception and the incoherence of belief that we must perceive the external analogs of perceptual objects for no other reason than that they mimic each other (with no constructive-participation of the external analog in the very formation of “perception” of itself by a perceiving being) clears the road for the supposition that it is not necessary that external objects exist, and that the only things that exist are persons, their perceptions (which are just extended aspects or parts of themselves), and a phenomenal substance in the external world that is not in the form of objects of perception (regardless if this external phenomenology is floating experiential “stuff” or the phenomenal innards of an actual Person).

Experiences and perceptions exist independently of anything else (at least in terms of external analogs to perception) by simply existing independent of anything else. There is no cosmic law of existence that prevents them from doing so, and existence could be so absurd that they simply do so.

Experience “seeming” to be something other that what it is is nothing more than experience in the form of a suspicion or belief that they are “something other than what it seems like”. It’s experience playing a trick upon itself. We only have the extended portion of ourselves in the form of perceptual objects surrounding perception of one’s body, but these objects are not separate or something independent of us but are just as much a part of oneself as one’s perception of the body at the center. This does not mean that experience is something other than what it seems: it is nothing more than experience qua experience: it’s “seeming” to be an indicator or actual perception of objects outside us is an additional mental fiction—created by the extension of these perceptual objects from the centralized perception of a central body.

To cut to the quick, absent substantial-relation and constructive-participation (and to cut to the quick again, we can’t establish—independent of faith–that this is so or must be so), there is no reason to believe that perception, in order to exist, depends upon the pre-existence of material objects. It seems to me the only bonding tie between the two is just an incredulity at the notion that perception can exist with nothing behind it.

I must say, I’m glad you said this. It is a “view from the outside” that supports my theology. But to be a devil about it (at risk to my hypothesis of Pantheopsychism), how can there be mental content that we experience, without knowing we experience it, particularly in light of your statement:

?

J.