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I always failed to understand what the "consciousness isn't local" can predict. I mean, come on. You either take the egocentric view that you're the only consci

I always failed to understand what the "consciousness isn't local" can predict. I mean, come on. You either take the egocentric view that you're the only conscious being in the universe, or you realize other humans are similar enough to you that the only conclusion is that they are all similarly conscious. From there you don't need to look far to realize that the brain is really all there is. Just look at all the brain malfunctions. You've got people forgetting from dementia, so clearly the brain has most of your memories. You've got people with all sorts of weird phenomena from strokes. Even if you take the most egocentric worldview, you can still drink alcohol and watch and realize how your internal logic and consistency and personality is changed by an external chemical. I can't see any possible conclusion from that other than the fact that this brain really is all you are. Suggesting there's anything non-materialistic in consciousness means there's an aspect of human consciousness that remains immutable under all internal brain malfunctions, under drugs, under different education, under different environment, under different circumstances. I've yet to find a single counterexample.

skissane 7y ago
> From there you don't need to look far to realize that the brain is really all there is. Just look at all the brain malfunctions. You've got people forgetting from dementia, so clearly the brain has most of your memories. You've got people with all sorts of weird phenomena from strokes. We observe many correlations between the neurological and the mental, and it seems likely that in the years and decades to come we will learn many more. Materialists argue that this is evidence that the mental is a product of the neurological. But what about the idealist alternative, that the neurological is a product of the mental? An observed correlation between two phenomena cannot, by itself, tell us which of the two is more fundamental.
- etrautmann 7y ago
  What? Each of the provided examples from the parent comment are causal perturbations to the system that establish necessity (although perhaps not sufficiency) beyond a pure correlation. If you lesion a part of the brain, you lose associated "mental" faculties. If you perturb the system via disease or chemicals, you observe a corresponding change in the mental state. This is evidence of a one way interaction beyond correlation.
  - skissane 7y ago
    > This is evidence of a one way interaction beyond correlation. You appear to be saying that non-mental event A temporally precedes mental event B, therefore the non-mental must be the cause of the mental, rather than the mental being the cause of the non-mental. However, "you perturb the system via disease or chemicals" is not non-mental. There is a mental act of will to do perform such a perturbation, and a mental awareness of such perturbation being performed.
threatofrain 7y ago
What you’re basically denying is the soul; when phrased that way, are you still surprised by the people who don’t agree with you?
mimixco 7y ago
How can anything "immutable" exist in a living being? Just because everything dies doesn't mean there isn't a reality beyond what we experience with the brain. The possibility that we are living in a multidimensional universe is becoming more likely all the time with the current discoveries in quantum physics.
klyrs 7y ago
> From there you don't need to look far to realize that the brain is really all there is. By and large, we agree. But to be a little pedantic... the brain isn't the whole story. "Muscle memory" is what happens when your peripheral nervous system learns -- without practice, most people can't throw a ball with equal skill in both hands. The nervous system in our gut is vast, complex, and poorly understood. It seems like this shouldn't be significant in cognition and memory... but the enteric nervous system may play a critical role in mental health.
Spivak 7y ago
You can resolve the apparent conflict between remote contagiousness and the brains susceptibility to chemical changes, damage, and internal failure by taking the view that the brain is the conduit by which our consciousness is realized. So if we want to use computers as a metaphor your consciousness is the software, and your brain and body is the hardware. If your HDD is corrupted you lose your memories, if your CPU is damaged your logic is faulty, etc.. Where the metaphor breaks might break down is that your OS, that intangible something that makes you -- you is remote, somewhere else. Or maybe you just have a copy. Maybe there's a conflict in the idea that a consciousness requires a vessel of some form to exist in our universe but I don't see it. I do admit that this presents a very very weak form of consciousness since it's immutable, static, and almost all of much of what informs your identity is local but that seems to mirror the human experience, right? > there's an aspect of human consciousness that remains immutable under all internal brain malfunctions ... Since we only get to access consciousness through these malfunctioning peripherals, how would you know if there was?
slooonz 7y ago
> I always failed to understand what the "consciousness isn't local" can predict It predicts that a human equipped with a non-local, non-materialistic mind (let’s call it "soul" for short) will behave differently from the same human without such a mind. He will, for example, write "I think therefore I am" where a soul-less (but otherwise materially equivalent human body) wouldn’t. Now if you trace back the chain of events of this deviation, you will trace the movements of the hand (that wrote that sentence) to muscle movements. Muscle movements can be traced back to neural impulses, which can be traced back to the brain. So, ultimately, non-materialism states that the brain of a soul-ful humain behaves differently from a soul-less human one. In practice, it means that sometimes, neurons that should have fired (according to the laws of physics) don’t, and neurons that should have stayed at rest (according to the laws of physics) will fire. Those mismatches are first measurable manifestations of the immaterial mind ("soul") in the physical universe. tl;dr: non-materialism predicts that there will be significant (greater in magnitude that thermal noise, at the very least) violations of the laws of physics (such as thermodynamics, chemistry and electromagnetism) in the brain.

skissane 7y ago

> From there you don't need to look far to realize that the brain is really all there is. Just look at all the brain malfunctions. You've got people forgetting from dementia, so clearly the brain has most of your memories. You've got people with all sorts of weird phenomena from strokes. We observe many correlations between the neurological and the mental, and it seems likely that in the years and decades to come we will learn many more. Materialists argue that this is evidence that the mental is a product of the neurological. But what about the idealist alternative, that the neurological is a product of the mental? An observed correlation between two phenomena cannot, by itself, tell us which of the two is more fundamental.

etrautmann 7y ago
What? Each of the provided examples from the parent comment are causal perturbations to the system that establish necessity (although perhaps not sufficiency) beyond a pure correlation. If you lesion a part of the brain, you lose associated "mental" faculties. If you perturb the system via disease or chemicals, you observe a corresponding change in the mental state. This is evidence of a one way interaction beyond correlation.
- skissane 7y ago
  > This is evidence of a one way interaction beyond correlation. You appear to be saying that non-mental event A temporally precedes mental event B, therefore the non-mental must be the cause of the mental, rather than the mental being the cause of the non-mental. However, "you perturb the system via disease or chemicals" is not non-mental. There is a mental act of will to do perform such a perturbation, and a mental awareness of such perturbation being performed.

threatofrain 7y ago

What you’re basically denying is the soul; when phrased that way, are you still surprised by the people who don’t agree with you?

mimixco 7y ago

How can anything "immutable" exist in a living being? Just because everything dies doesn't mean there isn't a reality beyond what we experience with the brain. The possibility that we are living in a multidimensional universe is becoming more likely all the time with the current discoveries in quantum physics.

klyrs 7y ago

> From there you don't need to look far to realize that the brain is really all there is. By and large, we agree. But to be a little pedantic... the brain isn't the whole story. "Muscle memory" is what happens when your peripheral nervous system learns -- without practice, most people can't throw a ball with equal skill in both hands. The nervous system in our gut is vast, complex, and poorly understood. It seems like this shouldn't be significant in cognition and memory... but the enteric nervous system may play a critical role in mental health.

Spivak 7y ago

You can resolve the apparent conflict between remote contagiousness and the brains susceptibility to chemical changes, damage, and internal failure by taking the view that the brain is the conduit by which our consciousness is realized. So if we want to use computers as a metaphor your consciousness is the software, and your brain and body is the hardware. If your HDD is corrupted you lose your memories, if your CPU is damaged your logic is faulty, etc.. Where the metaphor breaks might break down is that your OS, that intangible something that makes you -- you is remote, somewhere else. Or maybe you just have a copy. Maybe there's a conflict in the idea that a consciousness requires a vessel of some form to exist in our universe but I don't see it. I do admit that this presents a very very weak form of consciousness since it's immutable, static, and almost all of much of what informs your identity is local but that seems to mirror the human experience, right? > there's an aspect of human consciousness that remains immutable under all internal brain malfunctions ... Since we only get to access consciousness through these malfunctioning peripherals, how would you know if there was?

slooonz 7y ago

> I always failed to understand what the "consciousness isn't local" can predict It predicts that a human equipped with a non-local, non-materialistic mind (let’s call it "soul" for short) will behave differently from the same human without such a mind. He will, for example, write "I think therefore I am" where a soul-less (but otherwise materially equivalent human body) wouldn’t. Now if you trace back the chain of events of this deviation, you will trace the movements of the hand (that wrote that sentence) to muscle movements. Muscle movements can be traced back to neural impulses, which can be traced back to the brain. So, ultimately, non-materialism states that the brain of a soul-ful humain behaves differently from a soul-less human one. In practice, it means that sometimes, neurons that should have fired (according to the laws of physics) don’t, and neurons that should have stayed at rest (according to the laws of physics) will fire. Those mismatches are first measurable manifestations of the immaterial mind ("soul") in the physical universe. tl;dr: non-materialism predicts that there will be significant (greater in magnitude that thermal noise, at the very least) violations of the laws of physics (such as thermodynamics, chemistry and electromagnetism) in the brain.