(The article is dedicated with the highest respect to an unofficial mentor, David J. Chalmers (pictured above with brain). Were it not for Chalmer’s disambiguation of the definition and nature of consciousness (and his conceptual analysis of various theories of consciousness), I would to this day remain in philosophical darkness.)
[size=150]The Nature Of Consciousness In The Absence Of Belief In Gods[/size]
Atheism is defined as absence of belief in gods. It means nothing more than that.
[size=120]WHAT IS ATHEISM? HOW IS ATHEISM DEFINED?[/size]
The more common understanding of atheism among atheists is “not believing in any gods.” No claims or denials are made — an atheist is a person who is not a theist. Atheism, broadly defined, is the absence of belief in the existence of any gods. Christians insist that atheism means the denial of the existence of any gods; the absence of belief in any gods is, for some strange reason, often ignored.
[size=120]WHO ARE ATHEISTS? WHAT DO ATHEISTS BELIEVE?[/size]
There are a lot of misunderstandings about who atheists are, what they believe, and what they don’t believe. People become atheists for many different reasons. Being an atheist isn’t a choice or act of will — like theism, it’s a consequence of what one knows and how one reasons. Atheists are not all angry, they aren’t in denial about gods, and they aren’t atheists to avoid taking responsibility for their acts. It’s not necessary to be afraid of hell and there are advantages to being an atheist.
(Cline, Austin: Atheism 101: Introduction To Atheism & Atheists; Answers to Questions And Mistakes, atheism.about.com/od/aboutatheis … ism101.htm)
However, absence of belief in the existence of gods does not exist in a vacuum. The atheist sustains beliefs about the world and how it works that relates to belief in the non-existence of gods (the relation is derived from logical implication). The atheist forms logical constructions of the world that are consequences of the absent presence and influence of gods.
[b]Of interest to this paper is the atheist’s logical construction of the nature, limitations, and eventual fate of consciousness. Whatever the atheist believes about consciousness, the nature of consciousness will relate to the absence of gods (i.e if no gods exist to determine the nature of perception, consciousness is what it is by determination of a godless mechanism).
Belief in the godless conditions responsible for the origin, maintenance, and termination of consciousness is prima facie justified (to a fault), but the belief is fallible (it may be false for all one can know). Ultimately, godless views of consciousness are derived from observation of the differences in behavior between living and non-living things.[/b]
Below are three common ‘truisms’ concerning the origin and nature of consciousness in a godless world (the ‘truisms’ logically imply the absence of teleology behind the world and promote psychophysicalism and Facsimile Realism).
“The individual’s essence consists in the possession of a conscious, yet not necessarily continuous, mental life; if all mental life ceases, the person ceases to exist; when the person ceases to exist, the person has died. Upper brain death destroys all capacity for a conscious mental life, and it is therefore the death of the person.”
(Gervais, Karen: Defining Death. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1986)
[size=150]TRUISM ONE:[/size] The physical brain is the only source of consciousness
It is widely accepted that conscious experience has a physical basis. That is, the properties of experience (phenomenal properties, or qualia) systematically depend on physical properties according to some lawful relation.
To put the issue differently, even once it is accepted that experience arises from physical systems, the question remains open: in virtue of what sort of physical properties does conscious experience arise? Some property that brains can possess will presumably be among them, but it is far from clear just what the relevant properties are. Some have suggested biochemical properties; some have suggested quantum-mechanical properties; many have professed uncertainty. A natural suggestion is that when experience arises from a physical system, it does so in virtue of the system’s functional organization.
(Chalmers, David J: Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia, consc.net/papers/qualia.html)
[size=150]CHALLENGE TO TRUISM ONE:[/size]
The first ‘truism’ is challenged by questioning the psychophysical relation itself. Why should the brain, with its bizarre appearance and interconnected neurons be the object that gives rise to conscious experience? It seems a step beyond logic to claim that a physical object, regardless of complexity of interconnectedness and function, possesses the ability to give rise to a wholly distinct non-physical existence.
The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field.
It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.
(Chalmers, David J: Facing Up To The Problem Of Consciousness, consc.net/papers/facing.html)
[size=150]The Difference Between Consciousness And The Physical[/size]
[b]If consciousness only exists if it arises from functioning brains, then given the late arrival of the brain in light of the vast history of the universe before the existence of the neuron, it follows that consciousness is something wholly distinct from the physical.
The distinction is obvious if consciousness ceases to exist upon cessation of the electrical activity in the neocortex.[/b]
It is widely believed that physics provides a complete catalogue of the universe’s fundamental features and laws. As physicist Steven Weinberg puts it in his 1992 book Dreams of a Final Theory, the goal of physics is a “theory of everything” from which all there is to know about the universe can be derived. But Weinberg concedes that there is a problem with consciousness.
Despite the power of physical theory, the existence of consciousness does not seem to be derivable from physical laws. He defends physics by arguing that it might eventually explain what he calls the objective correlates of consciousness (that is, the neural correlates), but of course to do this is not to explain consciousness itself. If the existence of consciousness cannot be derived from physical laws, a theory of physics is not a true theory of everything. So a final theory must contain an additional fundamental component.
(Chalmers, David J: The Puzzle Of Conscious Experience, consc.net/papers/puzzle.html)
[size=150]The Brain Is Unremarkable In Composition[/size]
The physical brain is strikingly unremarkable in composition compared to everything else in the universe. A functioning brain is composed of the same elements of the Periodic Table that also make up bricks, automobiles, planets, and galaxies.
[b]At the level of atoms , the only difference between a brain and any other object is:
-
The number of atoms making up the brain compared to the number of atoms making up any other object
-
The Lego-block-like arrangement of atoms forming a brain as opposed to the Lego-block-like atomic arrangement of everything else.[/b]
[size=150]The Brain And Neural Correlates Of Consciousness[/size]
In psychophysicalism, conscious experience depends upon a neural correlate of consciousness (NCC). It is believed that conscious experience cannot exist without neural representation—a neural system forming an electronic “pattern” in the form of intermittent electric “pulses” between neural components. A conscious experience “turns on” or comes into existence when its relevant NCC functions.
What does it mean to be a neural correlate of consciousness? At first glance, the answer might seem to be so obvious that the question is hardly worth asking. An NCC is just a neural state that directly correlates with a conscious state, or which directly generates consciousness, or something like that. One has a simple image: when your NCC is active, perhaps, your consciousness turns on, and in a corresponding way. But a moment’s reflection suggests that the idea is not completely straightforward, and that the concept needs some clarification.
As a first pass, we can use the definition of a neural correlate of consciousness given in the program of the ASSC conference. This says a neural correlate of consciousness is a “specific system in the brain whose activity correlates directly with states of conscious experience”. This yields something like the following:
“A neural system N is an NCC if the state of N correlates directly with states of consciousness.”
(Chalmers, David J: What Is A Neural Correlate Of Consciousness? consc.net/papers/ncc2.html)
Chalmers decomposes consciousness into three progressive states (from simple to complex). The neural correlates of each successive state are themselves successively complex by growing number of neural state (frequency of electronic pulse between the neurons of the relevant NCC):
[size=120]States of consciousness[/size]
(i) Being conscious
The first option is that the states in question are just those of being conscious and of not being conscious. The corresponding notion of an NCC will be that of a neural system whose state directly correlates with whether a subject is conscious or not. If the NCC is in a particular state, the subject will be conscious. If the NCC is not in that state, the subject will not be conscious.
[size=120]b Background state of consciousness[/b][/size]
A related idea is that of the neural correlate of what we might call the background state of consciousness. A background state is an overall state of consciousness such as being awake, being asleep, dreaming, being under hypnosis, and so on. Exactly what counts as a background state is not entirely clear, as one can divide things up in a number of ways, and with coarser or finer grains, but presumably the class will include a range of normal and of “altered” states.
A neural correlate of the background state of consciousness, then, will be a neural system N such that the state of N directly correlates with whether a subject is awake, dreaming, under hypnosis, and so on. If N is in state 1, the subject is awake; if N is in state 2, the subject is dreaming; if N is in state 3, the subject is under hypnosis; and so on.
[size=120]b Contents of consciousness[/b][/size]
There is much more to consciousness than the mere state of being conscious, or the background state of consciousness. Arguably the most interesting states of consciousness are specific states of consciousness: the fine-grained states of subjective experience that one is in at any given time.
Such states might include the experience of a particular visual image, of a particular sound pattern, of a detailed stream of conscious thought, and so on. A detailed visual experience, for example, might include the experience of certain shapes and colors in one’s environment, of specific arrangements of objects, of various relative distances and depths, and so on.
(Chalmers, David J: What Is A Neural Correlate Of Consciousness? consc.net/papers/ncc2.html)
[size=150]TRUISM TWO:[/size] [b]The brain creates consciousness from a previous nonexistence of consciousness.
The previous non-existence of consciousness is inferred from the death-before-life of the nonexistence of consciousness before birth and the cessation of consciousness at death (Gervais, 1986).
The most common belief about consciousness is that consciousness is not as eternal as the physical (the first law of thermodynamics implies the eternity of the physical). The vulnerability of consciousness to cessation of existence, compared to the indestructibility of the physical, is a common principle in secular philosophy and fiction:[/b]
–King, Stephen: Danse Macabre, Berkeley Books and Everest House Publishing, 1979, 1982
[size=150]CHALLENGE TO TRUISM TWO[/size]
[size=150]Is The Brain Capable Of The Magic Of Creation Ex Nihilo?[/size]
If consciousness depends upon the brain in order to exist, and if consciousness is not eternal, then the brain must create consciousness ex nihilo. If this is true, then consciousness is the only entity in the universe not derived from transformative causation.
Causes of the sort that are acknowledged in everyday experience and in scientific explanations either do not involve conscious agency, or, if they do, they also involve the transformation of some pre-existing material.
Either our commonsense intuitions about ordinary intra-mundane cases of causation can reasonably be applied to the beginning of the universe, or they cannot be. If they can be, then creation out of some uncreated stuff may actually be a lot more likely than creation ex nihilo! In our experience of the world, after all, the making of enduring things always involves the transformation of some pre-existent material.
(Morriston, Wes: Creation Ex Nihilo And The Big Bang, philoonline.org/library/morriston_5_1.htm)
If consciousness does not exist via transformative causation, then consciousness is created through the process of:
[b]Neural incantationism is the view that the physical brain creates a previously nonexistent entity (conscious experience) through the “incantation” (hence the term: neural incantationism) of electrical activity in the cerebral cortex).
Neural incantation is very strange if one stops long enough to think about what it entails. Not only is the brain believed to cause something that previously was as real as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny to exist simply by flowing electrons through strange objects called neurons, there is a problem in the very idea that a particular area of the brain can reproduce the same experience from nonexistence over and over upon experimental demand (according to the strongest prediction of functionalism).
First, how are neurons able to use existence-creating magic to ensure that only appropriate experience arises in concert with electric activity in specialized areas of the brain? What prevents occipital lobes from producing conscious thoughts? What guarantees that occipital lobes will only produce visual experiences?
Neural incantationism, on further thought, is analogous to God’s power of creation ex nihilo in the Creation tale of Genesis. The analogy is important, given Adolf Grunbaums’ unfair criticism of God’s “verbal magic”:[/b]
As we know from two thousand years of theology, the hypothesis of divine creation does not even envision, let alone specify, an appropriate intermediate causal process that would link the presence of the supposed divine (causal) agency to the effects which are attributed to it.
The Book of Genesis tells us about the divine word-magic of creating photons by saying “Let there be light.” But we aren’t even told whether God said it in Hebrew or Aramaic. I, for one, draw a complete explanatory blank when I am told that God created photons. This purported explanation contrasts sharply with, say, the story of the formation of two photons by conversion of the rest-mass of a colliding electron-positron pair. Thus, so far as divine causation goes, we are being told, to all intents and purposes, that an intrinsically elusive, mysterious agency X inscrutably produces the effect.
(Grunbaum, Adolf: Creation As A Pseudo-Explanation In Current Physical Cosmology, infidels.org/library/modern/ … ation.html)
Grunbaum thus creates a double-standard and fails to follow the logic against God’s power of ex nihilo creation to its globally analogous conclusion: if neural incantationism is true, the brain performs the same nonexistence-to-existence magic! The only difference between God and the brain is their distinctive method of “incantation”(verbal speech v.s electric flow through neurons).
[b]Thus any criticism of God’s power of creation ex nihilo applies equally to the brain.
In all honesty, the logic of Neural Incantationism is equal to the logic that one is capable of summoning Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny into existence simply by wagging one’s finger back and forth.[/b]
[b]That is, beyond complexity of element and operation, there is no difference (in principle of existence-creating) between the wagging of a finger and the flow of electricity through a neural membrane. The logic of neural incantation hinges on the notion that if a physical object (or a number of objects) moves in a prescribed manner, something that previous was as unreal as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny suddenly becomes a reality.
At the end of the day, Neural Incantationism presents a host of problems. Chief among them is the psychophysical predictability that implies a psychophysical law of nature: if by stimulating a particular area of the brain one discovers that (through the verbal report of a test subject) the same experience arises over and over without fail, what natural law ensures that the same experience consistently arises from non-existence? What prevents an area of the brain, after repetitively producing a particular experience, from mistakingly creating a different experience?[/b]
[size=150]Circumventing Neural Incantationism: Chalmer’s Panprotopsychism[/size]
Panprotopsychism
[b]David J. Chalmer’s panprotopsychism escapes the need to “explain consciousness out of existence”. It circumvents the problems in neural incantionism in the proposition that consciousness is a conserved quantity alongside the physical, with consciousness following a phenomenal variant of the first law of thermodynamics mediated by mental particles or [/i]protophenomena[/i] (forming the intrinsic property or the “insides” of physical particles).
If panprotopsychism is true, there is no need for creation ex nihilo of consciousness, as consciousness pre-exists at a level so minimal that it is qualitatively little more than a total absence of consciousness. The micro-consciousnesses locked within physical particles must collectively combine (within a functioning brain) to form conscious experience.[/b]
Type-F monism is the view that consciousness is constituted by the intrinsic properties of fundamental physical entities: that is, by the categorical bases of fundamental physical dispositions. On this view, phenomenal or protophenomenal properties are located at the fundamental level of physical reality, and in a certain sense, underlie physical reality itself.
This view holds the promise of integrating phenomenal and physical properties very tightly in the natural world. Here, nature consists of entities with intrinsic (proto) phenomenal qualities standing in causal relations within a spacetime manifold. Physics as we know it emerges from the relations between these entities, whereas consciousness as we know it emerges from their intrinsic nature.
As a bonus, this view is perfectly compatible with the causal closure of the microphysical, and indeed with existing physical laws. The view can retain the structure of physical theory as it already exists; it simply supplements this structure with an intrinsic nature. One could give the view in its most general form the name panprotopsychism, with either protophenomenal or phenomenal properties underlying all of physical reality.
(Chalmers, David J: Consciousness And It’s Place In Nature, consc.net/consc-papers.html)
[size=150]TRUISM THREE:[/size] Visual perception is a representation or facsimile of the external world.
[size=150]CHALLENGE TO TRUISM THREE[/size]
[size=150]How Is Subjective Facsimile Of The External World Created Simply By The Exchange Of PHYSICAL FORCES Between External World Brains And External World Environments???[/size]
[b]Most philosophers speak of consciousness and the concept of virtual or simulated reality as if they are two distinct things—but consciousness is a virtual or simulated reality, one believed to simulate or represent the external world beyond perception. If consciousness itself were to suddenly and inexplicably cease to exist, the external world (whatever it is) would remain.
A conscious being, then, is actually a first-person “Player Character” in a “video or role-playing game” whose appearance and behavior more or less accurately mimics the external world “character”----a character whose body—but not its consciousness---- exists outside the video/role-playing game of the subjective world.
A conscious being thus perceives only ‘virtual’ rather than ‘real’ trees, ‘virtual’ brains rather than external world brains, ‘virtual’ gravitation, and so on.[/b]
[size=150]Arguments Against Facsimile Realism[/size]
An anti-Facsimile Realist (a philosopher claiming that the nature of the external world is probably distinct from the contents of human and animal perception) can argue that there is a problem with the notion that the external world, simply by imposing electromechanical forces upon external world brains, somehow causes the brain to produce virtual realities that happen to resemble the appearance and behavior of the external world.
(The external world, if Facsimile Realism is true, is represented only in visual perception. There exists no external world counterpart to non-visual perception.)
[size=150]How Can Forces Create Subjectivity? How Can They Ensure Subjective Facsimile Of The ‘Great Beyond’?[/size]
[b]Facsimile Realism requires an implausible relationship between the physical and consciousness. Forces (whatever they are in the external world) imposed by external world-environments upon external world-brains (and vice versa) are believed to somehow come up with something wholly distinct from their intrinsic essence (subjective experience).
Forces within the virtual reality of consciousness are experienced as tactile perceptions felt within a spectrum of different degrees of pressure. Tactile experiences are typically accompanied by other experiences such as pain, irritation, pleasure, or abrupt cessation of consciousness, and tactile experiences are inferred to be felt by other beings and to exist between colliding or touching objects. The existence of a force is inferred from observation of the sudden displacement of objects and persons in space.[/b]
[b]It’s very odd to believe that physical forces have anything to do with the existence of subjective experience. Electrical flow in matter (at the macroscopic level) involves the passage or shuffling of electrons between the outer shells of the atoms within a material. Why should the conveyance of electrons through the atomic matrix of neural membranes be (necessarily!) accompanied by a feeling of happiness or the visual perception of the color blue?
But a connection is believed to exist. The connection is inferred from correspondence between brain-states and the verbal reports of subjects claiming to have particular experiences in concert with electrical stimulation of certain areas of the subject’s brain.[/b]
It is an established fact that long-term memory is a function of many parts of the cerebral cortex, especially of the temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes. Findings made by Dr. Wilder Penfield, a noted Canadian neurosurgeon, first gave evidence of this in the 1920s.
He electrically stimulated the temporal lobes of epileptic patients undergoing brain surgery. They responded, much to his surprise, by recalling in the most minute detail songs and events from their past. Such long-term memories are believed to consist of some kind of structural traces—called engrams—in the cerebral cortex. Widely accepted today is the theory that an engram consists of some kind of change in the synapses in a specific circuit of neurons.
(Thibodeau, Gary A: Anatomy And Physiology, Times Mirror/Mosby College Publishing, St. Louis, Toronto, Santa Clara 1987)
[b]But brains observed in neuroscientific contexts are only virtual brains. Everything is virtual: the brain, the MRI mapping activity in the brain, the neuroscientist performing the experiment, the subject, and the verbal report of the subject under examination are all ‘virtual’ entities. The external world is believed to possess a mind-independent counterpart of the neuroscientific event (albeit without consciousness: whatever substance constitutes the external world, it is presumably not subjective in essence and as such is something altogether distinct from whatever constitutes our consciousness).
A bizarre metaphysical set-up indeed, but it is generally believed to be the way things are. More strain is placed on the steel of the belief in the unspoken “rule” that if consciousness requires functioning brains to exist, then consciousness is prevented from sustaining self-existence (Chalmer’s panprotopsychism and other ‘fundamental consciousness’ theories are exceptions). But what do pushes and pulls (forces) between external world electrons flowing through external world-neural membranes have to do with the arousal of subjective experience?[/b]
[size=150]Do The “Eyes” Have It?[/size]
[b]Visual representation of the external world (through the agency of physical force) fails plausible explanation even in the mechanics of visual perception. The formation of a latent image (of a visually perceived object) upon the ‘projector screen’ of the retina does nothing to aid explanation for the existence of visual perception: photons making up the latent image are useful only insofar as they forcibly initiate electrical signals from the retina to the optic nerve, which in turn is geared to relay optic nerve signals to the occipital lobe (believed to be the real culprit behind visual perception).
There’s so much dynamic luck taken for granted in the very idea that a literal fog of photons (coming from every direction in space before reaching the eye) is discriminated within the eye (by bouncing this way and that off the lens, cornea, and gel of the aqueous humor), to leave behind a few photons to form a latent image of the perceived object on the wall of the retina!
Remarkable! The internal mechanism of the eye is engineered in such a way that random photons are selected while others are rejected (by richocet and diffusion!) to form an upside-down photo image that then produces a ‘code’ of action potentials (within the retina) that activates the CNS (the optic nerve is part of the physiology of the eye, but it ‘moonlights’ as part of the CNS), which (in the occipital lobe) yields visual representation of the object’s external counterpart![/b]
It seems that even the remarkable phenomenon of vision dead-ends at an explanatory abyss separating physical pushes and pulls (even at the quantum level) from the creation of subjective consciousness.
[size=150]The Quasi-Religious Faith Required For Belief In Facsimile Realism[/size]
As stated before, Facsimile Realism is the view that the contents of visual perception is a more or less accurate facsimile of the appearance and behaviour of the external world. A Facsimile Realist believes that there is a ‘deal’ struck between the external world and cerebral cortices ensuring that cortices will yield experiences that reflect and reference the outer world.
At the end of the day, an appearance that instigates a form of reason is the lifeblood of Facsimile Realism. The conscious experiences that we have, in the form of the world that we see and the things that we feel, generates an extremely powerful suspicion that these experiences somehow reflect things that exist independent of but that somehow cause our perceptions.
“There is no logical impossibility in the supposition that the whole of life is a dream, in which we ourselves create all the objects that come before us. But although this is not logically impossible, there is no reason whatever to suppose that it is true; and it is, in fact, a less simple hypothesis, viewed as a means of accounting for the facts of our own life, than the common-sense hypothesis that there really are objects independent of us, whose action on us causes our sensations.”
(Russell, Bertrand: Our Knowledge of the External World, Open Court Publishing, La Salle, IL 1912. Reprinted Routledge, London and New York, 2000.)
The suspicion casts so powerful a spell, in fact, that it is considered as valid as empirical knowledge. The types of experiences that we have, the experiences that we infer others to have, and the types of things that exist in the world (blood, urine, saliva, feces, abortion, terminal cancer, crime, AIDS) generate suspicion that it is highly improbable that these things are solely ‘virtual’ entities.
Point taken. However, an anti-Facsimile Realist can argue that the super-strong suspicion (that Facsimile Realism is true) is ultimately a fallible perception that walks hand in hand with the type of world that we happen to experience. It is not a telescope into the true nature of the external world. The fact remains that at the end of the day, no matter how certain our ‘reason’ or ‘logic’, no matter how resolute our sense of ‘likelihood’ or ‘probability’ in favor of Facsimile Realism, the world may objectively falsify Facsimile Realism no matter how loudly our cognitions scream it’s truth.
[size=150]The Knowledge That Defeats Skepticism[/size]
At the end of the day, the external world cannot be experienced, thus one cannot know the nature of the external world with certainty (certainty is gained if one has directly experience that irrefutably falsifies the denials of a skeptic, regardless of whether or not the skeptic concedes defeat)
I think that the relevant sense of certainty involves something like knowledge beyond skepticism: intuitively, knowledge such that one’s epistemic situation enables one to rule out all skeptical counterpossibilities. There is an intuition that phenomenal belief at least sometimes involves this sort of knowledge beyond skepticism, as the standard construction of skeptical scenarios suggests.
Chalmers, David J: The Content And Epistemology Of Phenomenal Belief, consc.net/consc-papers.html)
[b]In the absence of certainty, powerful intuition that Facsimile Realism is more likely or probable than the Matrix Hypothesis or Last Thursday-ism (see), can be argued to be a fallible intuition engineered by the brain rather than a telescope into the great beyond.
Judgments of the greater or lesser probability or likelihood of imperceptible states of affairs are ultimately only judgments of psychological likelihood or probability, mental states distinct from empirical likelihood and probability, (which are the only types we have good reason to believe in). Why? Because empirical likelihood or probability can be refuted by experience.[/b]
Karl Popper, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, wrote:
But I shall admit a system as an empirical or scientific theory only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as the criterion of demarcation. In other words: I shall not require of a scientific system that it shall be capable of being singled out, once and for all, in a positive sense; but I shall require that its logical form shall be such that it can be singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a negative sense: it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience.
Are religious theories falsifiable by experience? Some are: for example, the theory of Biblical Inerrancy could be falsified by self-contradictions in the Bible - and it is! But almost all Young Earth Creationists swear by biblical inerrancy nonetheless. How is this possible? Most religious beliefs are matters of faith: a belief held in the absence of evidence or even despite contrary evidence. Such faith-based beliefs are not falsifiable by experience, and are thus not part of any scientific theory.
(Wright, Ned: Science Is Based On Experience, astro.ucla.edu/`wright/cosmo-religion.html)
Belief in Facsimile Realism requires a quasi-religious faith, as Facsimile Realism is commonly held to be true in the absence of evidence[b]. Strangely enough, Facsimile Realism is the ghost partner of scientific theory, putting up the funds to support the ‘truth’ of scientific theory and discovery. Scientific discovery loses its realism and moral gravity if in the end the perceived world is only ‘virtual’.
However, Chalmers argues against this loss of bite, holding that even if the world is virtual, it means only that the external world is different from what we had always thought. A different external world is better than no external world at all; one’s perceptions, thoughts, and feelings are no less real if the external world has no relation to the content of consciousness.[/b]
When the possibility of a matrix is raised, a question immediately follows. How do I know that I am not in a matrix? After all, there could be a brain in a vat structured exactly like my brain, hooked up to a matrix, with experiences indistinguishable from those I am having now. From the inside, there is no way to tell for sure that I am not in the situation of the brain in a vat. So it seems that there is no way to know for sure that I am not in a matrix.
Importantly, nothing about this Metaphysical Hypothesis is skeptical. The Metaphysical Hypothesis here tells us about the processes underlying our ordinary reality, but it does not entail that this reality does not exist. We still have bodies, and there are still chairs and tables: it’s just that their fundamental nature is a bit different from what we may have thought.
(Chalmers, David J.: The Matrix As Metaphysics, consc.net/papers/matrix.html)
[size=150]Questioning The Psychophysical Relation: Why Should Certain Brain-States Yield Certain Conscious-States?[/size]
Why do we have the types of experiences that we have, and why is the cerebral cortex the object of choice in the production of those experiences? Why is there an NCC for even the most perverse and infantile experiences (if psychophysicalism is true)? Why is this world the type of world produced by the brain?
In short, why are the psychophysical partnerships what they are?
[b]An argument against the a priori necessity for our type of psychophysical experience criticizes the notion that the experiences that arise from the brain were the only experiences possible to the brain, with psychophysical laws and restrictions in place before the existence of the brain.
If one holds to neural incantationism, one is trapped between a rock and a hard place if one also accepts the a priori psychophysical law. Neural incantationism is difficult enough to express with a straight face, the task becomes nearly impossible if one asserts that there are psychophysical principles or laws that decree which conscious experience will come into existence with what neural process, and ensures that a given conscious experience will be repetitively conjured from nonexistence—without mistake—upon repetitive performance of the same neural function.[/b]
[size=150]The A Priori Principle And Chalmer’s Panprotopsychism[/size]
The a priori psychophysical law is not so hard to swallow in Chalmer’s panprotopsychism, but even here one can question the nature of panprotopsychic determination itself. Why must panprotopsychic psychophysical partnerships be what they are before the existence of brains? What guarantees that the “appropriate” protophenomena will be in the right place at the right time (within the “right” type and number of physical particles) to make up the intrinsic properties of human and animal brains? Further, why should protophenomena collectively combine to form facsimiles or representations of the external world?
[size=150]Pre-Conclusion [/size]
[b]In review, beliefs about the brain, the psychophysical relation, and the external world beyond consciousness seem to demonstrate an underlying “thrownness” (in existentialism, “thrownness” is the view that we are simply “thrown” into existence without having chosen it, and the properties of the world are “thrown” into existence just as they are) in the nature of the psychophysical partnerships or in the nature of consciousness independent of the physical. At the end of the day, the psychophysical partnerships (and/or the content of consciousness independent of the physical) are what they are by sheer coincidence.
If one denies psychophysicalism and Facsimile Realism, the denial is not without good reason, as there is a seemingly insurmountable explanatory gap in the nature of mind/body relationship and entailment of the brain’s representation of the external world. The explanatory gap is revealed by the following facts:
- There is nothing about the bizarre appearance and function of the brain that bears any obvious relation to the appearance and behavior of the world. [/b]
Our evidence reveals only regular connections between phenomenal states and actions (or functions of the brain), so that certain sorts of experiences are typically followed by certain sorts of actions (and a certain function of the brain). Being exposed to this sort of constant conjunction produces a strong belief in a causal connection (as Hume pointed out in another context); but it is nevertheless compatible with the absence of a causal connection.
(Chalmers, David J: Consciousness And It’s Place In Nature, consc.net/consc-papers.html)
2. There is no visual representation (in the form of an image of the perceived object) of the external world beyond the retina. Thus there is no visual representation of the external world within the neurons themselves. The only direct representation of the external world within a living organism (non-conscious representation) is the holographic latent image formed upon the retina due to refraction of light within the cornea, lens, and virtreous humor of the eye.
3. The only significance of the latent image to visual perception is the transformation of light into electrochemical energy within retinal rods and cones, initiating nerve impulse to the optic nerve and occipital lobe. Other than this electrical “jump-starting” of the optic nerve by photons making up the retinal image, the image does nothing to provide visual perception (visual perception is the job of the occipital lobe). Independent of retinal (rod and cone) stimulation the image is nothing more than a ‘movie’ playing upon the retinal ‘screen’.
[b]4. Beyond the optic nerve, any “representation” of the external world is in the form of electric code, with conscious experience “symbolized” by pre-/post-synaptic knob position (between neurons), neurotransmitter distribution and proportion, and action potential frequency and rate.
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If the physical brain creates consciousness ex nihilo, a problem arises in the reconciliation of reproducible brain/experience pairings with an unknown mechanism, external to the universe itself, that assures that conscious experiences created out of nothing will have the same quality with every stimulation of its psychophysical partner.
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The external world is not experienced with certainty. The only reality known with certainty is one’s first-person ‘virtual reality’ (consciousness) which is mistakenly believed to be the world itself (naive realism) or a reasonable facsimile of the ‘real’ or external world (Facsimile Realism).[/b]
[size=150]Conclusion[/size]
[b] Atheism is defined as absence of belief in the existence of gods. The absence of belief in gods is not unrelated to other beliefs held by the atheist. Rather, the belief in no gods (regardless of whether or not the atheist admits it) forms the basis of every other belief (i.e. if no gods exist, other beliefs about the world are what they are because there are no gods to manipulate or determine the circumstances behind them).
For example, an atheist’s belief about the nature of consciousness is related to her absence of belief in gods, because her beliefs about consciousness, whatever they may be, are what they are because there are no gods to determine the existence and nature of consciousness.
However, conceivable worlds containing consciousness not created by gods is not limited to the typical worldview of most atheists. It is not out of the question for a conceivable godless world to possess a godless afterlife, as an afterlife (on further rational reflection) is compatible with the non-existence of gods.
(Example: A human may be “reincarnated” or “resurrected” in the universe following the death of the current cosmos, with one’s consciousness accidentally re-created in a neo-universal solar system upon an Earth that naturally selects life. Or humans may be simulated or virtual ‘characters’ programmed by humans living in higher dimensions, who “upload” the minds of virtual beings that have ‘died’ into afterlife simulations.[/b]
Reality may thus contain many levels. Even if it is necessary for the hierarchy to bottom out at some stage – the metaphysical status of this claim is somewhat obscure – there may be room for a large number of levels of reality, and the number could be increasing over time.
Although all the elements of such a system can be naturalistic, even physical, it is possible to draw some loose analogies with religious conceptions of the world. In some ways, the posthumans running a simulation are like gods in relation to the people inhabiting the simulation: the posthumans created the world we see; they are of superior intelligence; they are “omnipotent” in the sense that they can interfere in the workings of our world even in ways that violate its physical laws; and they are “omniscient” in the sense that they can monitor everything that happens. However, all the demigods except those at the fundamental level of reality are subject to sanctions by the more powerful gods living at lower levels.
Further rumination on these themes could climax in a naturalistic theogony that would study the structure of this hierarchy, and the constraints imposed on its inhabitants by the possibility that their actions on their own level may affect the treatment they receive from dwellers of deeper levels. For example, if nobody can be sure that they are at the basement-level, then everybody would have to consider the possibility that their actions will be rewarded or punished, based perhaps on moral criteria, by their simulators. An afterlife would be a real possibility.
(Bostrom, Nick: Are You Living In A Computer Simulation?, simulation-argument.com.)
[b]As it turns out, atheism is the substratum of a worldview establishing a fixed origin, nature, and eventual fate to consciousness:
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Consciousness is not as eternal as the physical
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It exists only if it arises from the electrochemical function of physical brains, and:
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It yields visual perceptions that mimic (and necessarily mimics) the appearance and behavior of the external world.
An opponent of this tautology has every right to criticize its epistemology and its common sense, challenging the idea that subjective experience must arise from previous nonexistence if and when external world-environments push and pull upon external world-brains, the idea that the psychophysical partnerships (i.e. which conscious-states go with what brain-states) are what they are independent of coincidence, and the idea that even before the existence of brains, an apriori principle ensures that visual perception, if it exists in the future, will represent the external world.
An instinctual response to a mass ‘reason’ and intuition that Facsimile Realism is true is to give in and join the dance of the Pied Piper’s tune that the universe somehow “whispers in one’s ear” that Facsimile Realism is true. Easy concession to such an exceptionally strong ‘sense of certainty’ is typical of post-modern philosophy, where powerful intuition is legal tender in lieu of empirical knowledge.
At the end of the day, however, one goes a step beyond logic in the claim that humans are gifted with supra-conscious perception that grants direct knowledge of the goings-on in the external world. An honest philosopher will argue that such supra-conscious perception does not exist. Objective reality is what it is regardless of the power of intuition concerning its imperceptible aspect. In the end, one can go so far as to accuse these ‘assurances’ and ‘certainties’ of being nothing more than extremely convincing neural ‘phantoms’ that reveal no more about the external world than fiction.[/b]
[size=200]END[/size]
Believe me, if you’ve seen some of the posts in many of the threads here, any grammatical errors I’ve made is the stuff of Shakesphere in comparison.
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