Is Consciousness Beyond Physical Explanation?

[Upisoft]

Are you telling me, in the fully-conscious state you are in right now, that, upon reflection it was a good idea to get up immediately after that operation and try to go home? Did you even have pants on?

Or would you say right now, that that was not the best thing for you to do then?

I don't know. I don't remember anything, so I can't justify my action as rational, because I cannot repeat the thought process (or whatever process made me do what I did).

Anyway it could be that my memory was not working properly and I made rational decision based on less amount of data I had access to. Or my memory was OK, but I was acting irrationally..

Since I have no memory at all, it will remain a mystery for me what really happened.

 

[DaveC426913]

I don't know. I don't remember anything, so I can't justify my action as rational, because I cannot repeat the thought process (or whatever process made me do what I did).

You don't need to remember the thought process. I'm not asking you what you were thinking; I'm asking you if, right now, you think a patient who has just come back from surgery is in any fit state to go home.

 

[Upisoft]

You don't need to remember the thought process. I'm not asking you what you were thinking; I'm asking you if, right now, you think a patient who has just come back from surgery is in any fit state to go home.

I already answered that I cannot justify it now as rational.

What is puzzling me is that if you hear someone to say: "I don't like it here, I want to go home" you will not automatically think they are irrational. You may start thinking there is something wrong after you get additional data like in my case, or say if you know that the person is already home.

So, it not appear as irrational thinking by itself and can be explained by loss of memory. Isn't it possible that I didn't remember I was in a hospital and had surgery? If it happened this way it should be quite awkward to find myself in a place like a hospital. And it is quite reasonable to want go home.

Edit: After all I already gave an example that I can "think" rationally while I sleep. (Well, it happened only once, but nevertheless it happened.)

 

[Pythagorean]

Dualism has been making many billions of predictions per hours so far. Through dualism people predict if a food will be tasty, an idea good, a picture beautiful, a theory wrong, etc.

Dualism doesn't make any predictions.

Denying the reality of everything is rather silly idea(it will require much more evidence).

I suspect this is yet another strawman, but please do explain who you are accusing of "denying the reality of everything" (whatever that means).

I have a keen interest in this topic and have read many essays, but i am not good at remembering names. Instead of pointing out what your argument is not, why not point out what your argument actually is on the realness of conscious experience?

Because I'm criticizing the many flawed bases of your argument, I've already put forth my assumption and many accompanying arguments.

So what does this mean to you? Are people really conscious or just under the idea that they are conscious but are in the final analysis not?

Who cares? I was debunking your silly argument about both conscious an unconscious people having activity on an EEG. Do you see how your argument was flawed?

OMG. Of course when one believes that consciousness is a physical deterministic process, then conscious choices ARE a BIG farse, an illusion(i.e. there is no one, no SELF to do the choosing). You shouldn't be ashamed of the conclusions your own theory is leading to.

What is this accusation of shame? Your arguments continually rely on these straw men... I don't think you should be allowed to keep posting like this, honestly.

Besides that, you're confusing two concepts here: freewill and consciousness. We can still be conscious of the choices our brian makes without having any say in them. Consciousness is about being able to perceive, willpower is about being able to choose. One can exist without the other. No neuroscientist I know claims that consciousness is an illusion. Real experiments ARE, however, supportive of the claim that willpower is an illusion. That's not something I'm wishing into existence, it's a real scientific result.

This isn't a matter of shame, it's a matter of the laymen tendency to clump all the different aspects of "mind" into one.

 

[DaveC426913]

Isn't it possible that I didn't remember I was in a hospital and had surgery?

That would definitely qualify as being in an altered state of consciousness, resulting in irrational behaviour, yup. Kinda my point.

 

[Upisoft]

That would definitely qualify as being in an altered state of consciousness, resulting in irrational behaviour, yup. Kinda my point.

I can't get your idea. I thought it is normal for people to forget and then remember.

 

[Math Is Hard]

It would take me weeks to clean up the tangential and unrelated replies in this thread. Locked.