How do atoms build thoughts and emotions?

[Dale]

Until we can experimentally measure those concepts (intelligence, consciousness, thoughts, and emotions) then indeed science fundamentally cannot explain them

I think I overstated this. “Until” makes it sound like we cannot measure these concepts. We do have measurements for them, they are just really bad measurements, which limit the science substantially.

 

[Matterwave]

The hard problem of consciousness arises from physicalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism , the view that physics should, in principle, be able to explain everything.

I don't view physicalism as saying "physics explains everything" but more as "everything arises from the physical". The former statement brings in epistemology which I don't think physicalism necessarily needs to bring in. But this becomes a bit definitional as many purely philosophical questions tend towards in my experience.

 

[BillTre]

So far the best instruments we have for measuring thoughts are surveys. They are really bad instruments from a metrological perspective. So it isn’t that there is no science here, but rather that our measuring instruments are really poor compared to the measuring instruments we have in other scientific fields.

There are actually better ways than surveys to measure thought processes.
When I was an undergraduate I was a subject in a psychophysics lab which measures thresholds for various stimuli, not that impressive, but similar things are done in cognitive science. Several years ago Michael Posner, at the University of Oregon, was doing tests on people making decisions, based in their attention states (cognitive science stuff). They were trying to correlate these findings with brain activity scans. I don't remember the results. These are not simple studies but in special cases can be done.

This is an interesting thread overall, however as one who has had years of brain anatomy, behavior, and physiology study, I feel some things are being overlooked.

My conceptual approach to this would be to understand how the brains of animals evolved to understand their place in their behaviorally accessible world. Animals as "lowly" as amphibians (reptiles came from amphibians, mammals came from reptiles) have a map of their world in their midbrain centered on their location. This involves classical physiological studies. Understanding their location in that world would seem to be a first step toward "higher" consciousness (to me anyway).
Understanding one's internal brain states (with or without being aware of that awareness) involves recursive neural processes. Test can show animals can make decisions based on their internal states. The autonomic nervous system which both senses and controls bodily functions (which most people are unaware of doing to themselves) is another recursive process. Such autonomic processes are studied a lot medically.

Just as I have written a lot of stuff about basis of and origin of life being based on physical (meaning physics) concepts underlying hierarchically higher biological processes, I think of brain functioning similarly underlying consciousness. There is little question in my mind that straight-forward neurological processes underlie cognitive and conscious functions of the brain. Just in a very complex, difficult to study way.

 

[Dale]

There is also a lot of work using fMRI in this field, which I believe is promising. But associating a brain state measurement with a thought is not trivial. It is not necessarily better than a survey at this point.

 

[Demystifier]

I don't view physicalism as saying "physics explains everything" but more as "everything arises from the physical". The former statement brings in epistemology which I don't think physicalism necessarily needs to bring in. But this becomes a bit definitional as many purely philosophical questions tend towards in my experience.

So you see physicalism as an ontological (rather than epistemological) position, right?

 

[Matterwave]

So you see physicalism as an ontological (rather than epistemological) position, right?

Yes. A position around what there is, not necessarily around what can be known. It is just my understanding of it. :)

 

[gentzen]

I don't view physicalism as saying "physics explains everything" but more as "everything arises from the physical".

So you see physicalism as an ontological (rather than epistemological) position, right?

Yes. A position around what there is, not necessarily around what can be known. It is just my understanding of it. :)

Is this any different from „Descartes‘ dualism is wrong“:

The basic challenge is to explain why Descartes‘ dualism is wrong. Just like the nonlocality of Newton‘ theory of gravity is wrong, as Newton himself was fully aware.

That could explain why physicalism only became prominent after Descartes: The position that he is wrong became relevant because many people continued to believe in his dualism even after Descartes’ concrete predictions had been falsified.

 

[Matterwave]

Is this any different from „Descartes‘ dualism is wrong“:

I would say so, for Descartes' dualism is not the only alternative.

even after Descartes’ concrete predictions had been falsified.

Which concrete predictions were these?

 

[gentzen]

Which concrete predictions were these?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineal_gland

The 17th-century philosopher René Descartes regarded the gland as the primary locus of mind-body interaction, describing it as the "principal seat of the soul".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Descartes#Physiology_and_psychology

In line with his dualist teachings on the separation between the soul and the body, he hypothesized that some part of the brain served as a connector between the soul and the body and singled out the pineal gland as connector. Descartes argued that signals passed from the ear and the eye to the pineal gland, through animal spirits. Thus, different motions in the gland cause various animal spirits. He argued that these motions in the pineal gland are based on God's will and that humans are supposed to want and like things that are useful to them. But he also argued that the animal spirits that moved around the body could distort the commands from the pineal gland, thus humans had to learn how to control their passions.

 

[Dr-Flay]

Can you cite one or more credible technical references that support the notion that consciousness "is made from a fundamental energy present in the Universe, and we act as attractors or harvesters"? Or is this rather a proposition from philosophy and/or religion?

https://www.sciencealert.com/what-i...oses-it-might-be-the-fabric-of-reality-itself

https://iai.tv/articles/is-your-brain-really-necessary-for-consciousness-auid-3280


https://theconversation.com/can-con...-takes-us-a-step-closer-to-finding-out-164582

Why Consciousness is Fundamental | Donald Hoffman


All theories have something in common. They are all describing something energetic, not something that is made of atoms. This is often compared to the difference between radio waves and antennas.
One is the hardware, the other is the information. Both are needed to create the iterative feedback loops and complexity.

 

[renormalize]

Sorry, but your two YouTube videos do not constitute "credible technical references".
And your first link:

https://www.sciencealert.com/what-i...oses-it-might-be-the-fabric-of-reality-itself

is to a popular-science article discussing research by neuroscientist Christof Koch which states:
"Koch acknowledges that analytic idealism is not an established scientific theory but a metaphysical framework whose future depends on whether its ideas can be translated into empirically testable hypotheses."
A mere "metaphysical framework" provides no scientific evidence whatsoever for "a fundamental energy present in the Universe" that gives rise to consciousness.
Similarly, your second link:

https://iai.tv/articles/is-your-brain-really-necessary-for-consciousness-auid-3280

is also pop-sci, hosted by the "Institute of Art and Ideas", which Wikipedia describes as "an ideas and philosophy platform which hosts the world's largest philosophy festival, HowTheLightGetsIn". Laudable perhaps, but hardly technical.
Finally, your third link:

https://theconversation.com/can-con...-takes-us-a-step-closer-to-finding-out-164582

is authored by physicist Cristiane de Morais Smith and covers her interesting research on "quantum fractals". Her penultimate paragraph is:
"This new knowledge of quantum fractals could provide the foundations for scientists to experimentally test the theory of quantum consciousness. If quantum measurements are one day taken from the human brain, they could be compared against our results to definitely decide whether consciousness is a classical or a quantum phenomenon."
So her work as yet provides no evidence to support a connection between "fundamental energy" and consciousness.

All theories have something in common. They are all describing something energetic, not something that is made of atoms.

But energy in physics is not a stand-alone entity that can exist separately from atoms or other matter, it is simply a property intrinsic to all matter, whether particles or fields.
Perhaps instead of physicists' energy you imagine a "mystical essence" that permeates space and couples to brains to provide consciousness? If so, that's hardly a suitable topic for Physics Forums.

 

[Paul Colby]

All theories have something in common.

In physics, all theories are quantitative and formulated in terms of mathematics.

 

[bhanum]

Hi! Recently I´ve been wondering a lot about this. If atoms build everything and everyone, how are they capable of building human thoughts and feelings? It´s probably just a quick google away, but I thought I´d check this website out and hear what you guys have to say. Thanks!

Complexity is best understood as phenomena that emerges from the interaction of simpler building blocks. Just as societies display complex social behavior based upon smaller social units in which people group themselves, the human body is capable of experiencing thoughts and feelings as an emergent phenomenon of smaller subsystems that are intricately connected with each other.

An atom by itself is a piece of particulate matter and there seem to be many different kinds of them. We can remember that while something by itself has certain properties, a collection of them produces things with a different set of properties. That is why we can cook food, live better using technology and ask questions on Physics Forums about how it is possible to think.

A similar thing happens in modern deep neural networks, where the individual layers or blocks of neurons are capable of responding and forming *some* representation of higher level concepts, but whether a neural network will ever have thoughts and feelings is unknowable at this point.