Can science explain consciousness reddit. ” Hello, I am a non-expert and will do the purely philosophical speculation before telling you that nobody knows anything about the science. Consciousness is physical, like in Position 1, but it’s not reducible to atoms. or primitive at this point. We can explain conservation laws and the bending of spacetime. We can explain friction. I found his follow-up book, Shadows of the mind even more elaborated and interesting. From the article: He explores the current scientific theories that attempt to explain NDEs, such as the dying brain hypothesis and the spiritual hypothesis, and examines the evidence for and against each theory. ” Consciousness is the presence of subjective experience. or at If science answers "the question," there will only be another question behind it. . It’s a more like a book that says, “This is what we’ve discovered so far. ), then science can't explain it. Those are questions science can't answer. A new theory of consciousness has been developed by a researcher at Bost The Origin of Consciousness The Breakdown of The Bicameral Mind Read it if you must, but it's not a book of science. The latter point is contentious with many respected philosophers on both sides of the issue. We can explain centripetal forces. I should explicitly Reductive physicalism. Searle's answer didn't make much sense to me - he didn't explain how a scientific explanation can bridge the explanatory gap. Electrons, for example, are too small to be seen but can be inferred. How to you know different colors, different sounds, different tastes. How does science explain the knowing aspect of consciousness. I can't be sure if anyone else is conscious. Physical existence is only one vehicle for consciousness, we can't disprove that there are other potential vehicles for it beyond that. We encourage you all to discuss things you find interesting here -- whether that is consciousness, related topics in science or philosophy, or unrelated topics like religion, sports, movies, books, games, politics, or anything else that you find interesting (that doesn't violate either Reddit's rules or the subreddits rules). , in a coma) but still are “conscious” because they still have subjective experiences. The same wiring in our brain lets us enjoy eating an apple and also lets us imagine eating one when no actual apple is around. You will point to science and suggest it deals with the objective realm, no consciousness required. When you go outside at night, and 'see' a star, you are not seeing a star. Science cannot explain consciousness. You can't look inside someone's head and see their feelings and experiences. A quick and dirty of the hard problem is that scientific study can explain the how's and why's of the mind and consciousness, but it can't answer why all these processes together make something conscious. Nov 1, 2019 · In the long-running "Alien" movie franchise, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation can’t seem to let go of a terrible idea: It keeps trying to make a profit from xenomorphs -- creatures with acid for Feb 21, 2024 · Mind How entropy and equilibrium can help explain consciousness. I can't even be sure of who or what I really am. Science can’t explain precisely Science works by proposing an idea about how something works and trying to disprove it. Advertisement Coins. This awareness is unique to you and subjective. Brain absolutely can explain mind. It's indeed interesting that half the people never seem to be able to make this distinction no matter how hard I explain it. But science is, if you will, an overlay on consciousness-- it is a framework within which we shape our conscious experiences of observation, measurement, calculation, etc. On the maths parts of the demonstration, the argument stays somewhat dangling on the notion of "unassailable truths", the concept that there exists fundamental truths which preexist our experience, and to which we have to adopt a Platonicist view of the world to adhere to. As to the 'substance' of consciousness - the only absolute thing I can say is that a brain is necessary for consciousness, and thus consciousness has its roots in neurology. Although this seems to be less flexible than with computers. Property dualism. The OP statement is a prime example of creating a strawman of what is required to explain consciousness in order to argue it can't be explained. It tries to explain consciousness as some phenomena occuring from the brain, completely independent of "the world around it". It isn’t a book of knowledge that says this is the way all things are. The problem of consciousness, however, is radically different from any other scientific problem. If stuff exists beyond the empirical world (God, transcendent ethics, a priori knowledge, etc. In fact, Newton wrote a book titled Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy . while science has done a ton of experiments and can find relations to neurons and shit. Assuming they could find scientific proof of some universal consciousness, when they can't even define what it is Yes, I can't see how I can deny consciousness exists because I'm conscious of myself. So how can we scientifically explain consciouness? Science and technology haven’t provided people with the subjective on-look of reality which is close to our hearts and thus its illusive abstraction, in my opinion, will come to an end when the postmodern condition reaches its peak and both culture and science will have to synthesize a common, philosophical ground which recognizes the positive aspect of Being, a place where science can’t Because the vast majority of the time, science takes a materialist viewpoint. The brain is an 6:17 Chalmers nails it. Non-reductive physicalism. In the rare cases any group manages to clear both of those near-impossible hurdles, several further problems remain: "our tests come up inconclusive," "our tests don't distinguish clearly non-conscious things from conscious things," and (for guaranteed 100% The appropriate question is what are things science can’t explain yet. g. No, no explain me proof or science and certainly nothing rational about some delusional universal consciousness. Consciousness is prior to science. I think you have a very narrow view of science. Share via email. When you disprove an idea you can refine it based on what you have learned and start the process again. How does lifeless materials which come together to make the body and then know how to differentiate itself from the same lifeless elements. People, humans, can't even manage what little consciousness they have, or balance the checkbook for all that matters. Before science was a thing, we had natural philosophy, which tried to explain what is now explained by science. Some scientists believe consciousness is generated by Sep 25, 2023 · The concept proposes that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality, like mass or electrical charge. Yes. Because we can actually ascribe certain functions to certain parts of the brain, see Brodmann-Areas on Plato's allegory is about perspective and still valid. The world can be deterministic, and you can give you consciousness I tell you. You can't design an experiment to find out the cardinality of a set, or if A->C when A->B and B->C. Share to Tumblr. But since science was established as a separate field of study, science is now labelled as "not philosophy". There are other approaches to the problem, but they all deal with science's inability to explain how consciousness arises. Can science explain consciousness? The question is will that just be another physical process that doesn’t explain anything; can we only really study and understand consciousness from within as our own consciousness is then only thing that we can experimentally use to study it even if not a physical experiment; such as meditation practices like transcendental meditation where The fundamental core issue that can never be overcome is that true direct observation of subjective experience is impossible for anyone other than the subject itself. There are certainly examples of people who are “unconscious” in the medical sense of not being alert (e. I'm conscious of myself, and therefore consciousness In philosophy, “conscious” is not usually equated with “alert. suggests that the brain is electric and chemical signals through neurons - as you say much like a computer. But what about consciousness? Consciousness doesn't seem to be reducible to structure and dynamics at all. IMO the hard problem of consciousness is just a bunch of dudes standing around “we can’t explain this right now, therefore there is no explanation and there can’t be one. ” We simply don’t understand how it works on the physical level in its entirety, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work on the physical level and we should act Sure it can explain how neurons fire and what physical processes cause them to reach an action potential. TL;DR: As it's meant in the article, science can theoretically explain everything, because it can offer an explanation for any phenomenon we observe. I know everything is meaningless cliche yes but i struggle with wrapping my head around how a nihilist would explain consciousness. In this case, what they mean is, in the first place, that no one has furnished an explanation of this kind -- at least none Continued bafflement about the presumed, physical world obviously doesn’t support a physicalist worldview. Consciousness is just brain/some part of the brain. There is absolutely evidence of consciousness existing without brain activity. If we were just going off what we can observe from a third-person perspective, we would have no grounds for postulating consciousness at all. Publication date 2017-03-22 Topics The reason materialist views (or, really, any views) cannot explain the hard problem of consciousness is because that is what makes it a hard problem of consciousness: consciousness cannot be understood through explanation, it must be experienced in order to be consciousness. This would not explain how consciousness is generated from matter, nor how consciousness generates qualia. You can't do science with (only) concepts, or numbers, or that sort of thing. But it can never describe or explain why consciousness feels the way it does. Mar 22, 2017 · Share to Reddit. We’re in the best possible quandary. I can't be sure if I have free will. And for this, firing neurons suffice. Epiphenomenalism. We can even begin to explain things like the apparent constancy of the speed of light. Nov 1, 2019 · Explaining how something as complex as consciousness can emerge from a grey, jelly-like lump of tissue in the head is arguably the greatest scientific challenge of our time. That is just a description of the brain turning light into a projection in your brain. Prevalence is particularly high among those who have undergone significant trauma, and, interestingly-enough, some speculate that DID is possibly therapist-induced, e. Thinking about consciousness from the perspective of a physicist may be key to figuring out whether it is a single phenomenon or a Even if you get a group of people who agree on it, they rarely (if ever) come up with any kind of test which can match that standard. That is not evidence of consciousness. It's often said that we can't explain consciousness, but I don't see why that's so. Humans are unique in that we were naturally selected for SELF-consciousness, which ( it would seem ), confers an even greater advantage than simple consciousness . It can even explain how billions of neurons added together will act like a powerful computer capable of highly advanced machine learning. That's why many believe in ridiculous things likes immortal souls, spirits and dualism. Sure, you The theory, as I understand it, would be something like that even we ourselves are mere vessels of "consciousness" which is itself an immaterial force pervading the entire universe since time immemorial. The brain can similarily shift some of its functions around too, if parts of it for example get damaged. The thing is, explanations won't satifly you. A softer r/science. So if you want to see for yourself if consciousness is birthless try self inquiry and meditation or other pointers. The consciousness minimum. CAN SCIENCE EXPLAIN CONSCIOUSNESS by Dan Bruiger. Nov 5, 2019 · One reason is that consciousness is unobservable. How do you know water differently from any other element. Modern understanding of physics/biology/etc. We can manipulate conscious experiences with drugs and sensory inputs. As you go about life, each unit of perceived time results in the adding of new, and the "lighting up" of each item already in the flowchart, but bei Jul 7, 2021 · Victor de Schwanberg/Science Photo Library. Memory is stored in your aura for example not in 4x5 inches of pink stuff Can anyone describe or explain your consciousness's link to the brain? I dont understand. It's easy enough to research out of body experiences people have had while they were physically braindead. We don't necessarily need a theory or hypothesis to study something. Simple data collection and observation are still part of science. That's a big part of its superiority to religion, which only answers questions so you will shut the hell up and stop asking. My area is maths more than physics. Perhaps what you have in mind is that people say that we cannot explain how consciousness is entailed by the relevant physical states. significant amounts of psychotherapy can cause a person to dissociate ego from superego or create a "witness" consciousness. While we can't observe consciousness directly we can observe lots of secondary data. A novel study reports the dynamics of consciousness may be understood by a newly developed conceptual and mathematical framework. I don't really follow the argument: Semiotics exists as a way to understand meaning-making, therefore science can't explain consciousness, therefore the academic community discards evidence for a Creator? Wut? I think science might be able to explain what causes it, but they can't define what it is, where we go etc. -- if science does not have recourse to consciousness, then there is Consciousness is either 1) part of that decision making process in your brain, or is 2) an observation of that decision making process. When we let our imaginative perspectives dictate views of things like consciousness is where we lose the plot. Those same qualities also happens to be what we would want out of what we consider "knowledge". It is a logical (and therefore philosophical) problem - no amount of neuroscientific research can make any difference to it. We know that consciousness exists not through experiences, but through the immediate feeling of our feelings and experiences. Science isn’t the Bible. Science must try to explain everything. At its heart it is meant to produce results that are reliable, reproducible, and universal. It's a bit like saying "maybe maths is just about figuring out qunatities" when the topic being discussed is how it is possible to figure out universal rules about numbers in the first place. Science has difficulty explaining consciousness because our consciousness obfuscates what is needed to explain consciousness. I think science can explain almost everything but it can explain existential "why are we here" questions. Consciousness entirely depends on the brain, but it’s more like a process in it. Mar 1, 2018 · Most information processing, such as driving a car, is mere computation. Published: July 19, 2021 1:08pm EDT. What can currently explain consciousness better and in more detail? Basically, if science can't understand it, nothing can. That's consciousness. Consciousness is complicated and hard to reproduce in a laboratory. We can derive meaning of why we should be here through science but by itself science just explains the universe we live in and it's up to us to interpret a meaning for ourselves inside it. The power of science is that every question opens another question. One of the reasons is that it is unobservable. Science is something consciousness does. How many neurons can we disconnect before self awareness ceases? There are people with disconnected hemispheres who function, people with lobotomies who function, people with massive surgically extracted portions of grey matter who function. Jul 19, 2021 · Can consciousness be explained by quantum physics? My research takes us a step closer to finding out. That's what Albert's "merciless smack down" consists of. I can only be sure of my own experience of actual consciousness, and can explain only explain apparent conciousness using physics. Science is OBJECTIVE Consciousness is SUBJECTIVE PAIN is a real subjective experience, but even something like the sensation of seeing the color blue is entirely subjective. Science cannot understand consciousness, though it can certainly describe what it does and how it acts and materials (like brains) that are associated with it. With each unit of perceived time, any new objects, smells, textures, ect, will be added to any pre-existing "boxes" in one ever-growing "flowchart". But I'm aware of myself in this body and my thoughts. . The author has no acuity for logic; little knowledge of neuroscience, evolutionary biology, or philosophy of mind; and presents a dishonestly selective and generally facile survey of history and archeology to bolster his theory that consciousness was invented by the Greeks 3400 Originally, Reddit had their own servers, but then migrated to Amazon. The “hard problem,” he says, is the existence of consciousness itself. We can't really ever be sure exactly what has consciousness. but they are about 92% idiots. But nothing in science can support idealism or any other non-physicalist stance either. When it's much more likely that the brain DEPENDS on consciousness, as does every other "material object" ever. So no can't explain everything by itself anyways. Maybe. The idea goes back to antiquity—Plato took it seriously—and has had some prominent Aug 11, 2022 · Consciousness can not simply be reduced to neural activity alone, researchers say. Deconstruct your conventional ways of thinking and return yourself to the core of cognition, and then you'll start to have a taste of what consciousness is. All explanations are just concepts, but consciousness is beyond and prior to concepts. Reddit iOS Reddit Android Reddit Premium About Reddit Advertise Blog Careers Press. Of course, scientists are used to dealing with the unobservable. This is how memory works according tome. Science can only explain how a plethora of physical mechanisms in our brain can give rise to consciousness. In the unique case of consciousness, the thing to be explained cannot be observed. Consciousness is your awareness of yourself and your surroundings. He says that ultimately consciousness stems from a neuronal awareness to the body itself as a defense mechanism to force the organism to react and protect itself from damage or ingestion of foreign invaders and this kind of consciousness he calls it the proto-self as it is the basis of more complex forms of consciousness like the core self and Posted by u/nastratin - 7 votes and 10 comments Oct 22, 2022 · According to a new theory, choices are formed unconsciously and become conscious around half a second later. Maybe a rock has consciousness. The more you fail to disprove the idea the more you believe it. If physics explains all the phenomena in the universe, and if consciousness is part of the universe, then is seems that physics can explain consciousness. Share to Pinterest. You can do science about the empirical, physical world, but the same methods can't be applied to numbers, or ideas. No scientific experiment can answer the question because consciousness can't be externally observed; the closest we can get to observing consciousness is measuring the neural correlates of consciousness. This means we can never ever get direct evidence for any sort of consciousness, or how the experience actually portrays itself subjectively. buj xrnj rkxjuh tgyfn qyd uevynr vnzdma piny aipww iufpdx