Vitalist nonsense versus Science.

[FZ+]

I just interpreted Canutes original point to be that there are some standards with which all scientists agree. The scientific method for one. Your statement implies that scientists can disagree on anything and everything.

Nope. They cannot disagree in terms of attitude, or what you call the scientific method. And shouldn't the idea of what is science be left to those who consider themselves to be scientists?

That's what it is. If a scientist doesn't think this, then he's not on the same page with what the objective of a TOE is to begin with. And he's just using the wrong word or phrase. Just like scientists are likely using the wrong word when they say "consciousness" to describe whatever it is they define it to be.

Who decides? Again, we have a problem is that there are no real ultimate authorities. No one can say that the TOE is x, and all who say differently is wrong. Each is right, in a different context. They are not using the wrong word.

So how exactly can you say "science has defined it?" when there are so many definitions

The heart of matter is that science does not exist as a single block-like institution. If you mean science as in saying the grand old lord of science has decreed x, then yes, science has not defined. Science has not defined anything at all. But in terms of scientists knowing what they talk about in terms of consciousness, and then dealing with these in a scientific fashion, which is all this could mean, then they have defined it. Several times over.

It is likely science is studying something that it labels "consciousness" but it doesn't represent what people mean when they speak of consciousness.

Some people genuinely mean this when they talk of consciousness. And scientists' usual conception of ToE does not mean what people usually think of ToE as.

However now that Behaviourism is discredited the problem is back.

I don't think behaviourism is discredited at all. I don't even think it possible to discredit behaviourism, and we can't put limits of physicalism either.

 

[Fliption]

Who decides? Again, we have a problem is that there are no real ultimate authorities. No one can say that the TOE is x, and all who say differently is wrong. Each is right, in a different context. They are not using the wrong word.

There is no argument against what you're saying. Just like there is no way I can even prove that you exists. But both these views are extreme. Canute's point shouldn't be taken so rigidly. He is assuming that we don't live in a world of semantic anarchy the way you have described it. And I think it's a safe assumption for the most part. Especially in science.

As for consciousness, I guess the only point is that no scientific definition addresses the philosophical problems that have been around for centuries. So these definitions, regardless of whether they are "right or wrong", are not relevant to a philosophical discussion of consciousness because they aren't talking about the same thing.

 

[Canute]

To clarify a bit. Science is predicated on the non-existence of anything that does not have physical attributes. If consciousness has no phsyical attributes then it lies beyond science. This is why science cannot explain what underlies matter ('essence') or what underlies the existence of the universe ('fundamental reality'). This is not a criticism of science, just an observation on its self-defined limits.

Whether consciousness actually does have no physical attributes is a moot question. However it's a common view. McGinn and Descartes and others argue that it has no extension. If so it is not science's job to explain it.

On ToE's we might note that even Stephen Hawking thinks that such a thing is possible, for epistemilogical reasons (incompleteness theorems etc). Max Planck and others would agree for different reasons, in that we cannot include ourselves (consciousness) in the theory. Also a Toe in the sense of a theory that reconciles the fundamental forces is not a ToE. It is a theory of how the fundamental forces can be reconciled. IOW it is a ToE in a restricted sense only, and leaves out more than it includes.

Behaviourism has been discredited and nobody I know of still claims that there is any sense in it. In fact it never really caught on in the first place among researchers, it just won the hearts of the editors of a lot of journals and thus dominated the literature. It never did have that many supporters in the trade.

 

[Dayle Record]

It is really best if we do not clinically define, the undefinable. Even if we peeled off every iota of the skin of the onion, there would still be the nothingness, there would still be the magic of how the onion remembered itself by making seed, from its association from other onions. There would still me the millenia that made that seed mesh with the ground, to resist gravity and go both upward and downward, seeking different things, in opposition to different forces.

I warn any of you with this current climate of cavalier examination of the conscious process; that one's view of salient facts, varies wildly from another's views of the same facts.

If we come up with some sanctioned definition, then why not just let Deep Blue run the world, since that computer surely knows all languages by now, and can be filled with mathematical formulae that would properly dole out the world's resources? If we say the process, or this process or that process is it, then so defined it can be legislated. Life can be made in machine shops, and then with this much more predictible mentality, controllable mentality, perhaps our mentality will be abolished; or at least relegated to obsurity.

There are people in very high places in government, high places in industry, who have no regard for life, law, or certainly natural process. As far as I know, I am deeply engaged and invested in the natural process of my life. Neither Dr. A, nor Dr B, get to define the magic of it, certainly not in any official capacity, that might have legislative imperitive.

I know that as soon as possible, brain cells will be used as part of bio computational processes, hopefully for long space travel. The creation of cyborgs, is certainly well underway, in some places where ethical questions of stem cell, or embryonic tissue, aren't even asked; except where it helps win elections. All this mapping of the chemistry and energy of the brain, is for industrial use, aside from courtroom drama, or crowd control. Slave minds are being created, and there are already test subjects that are being used willingly and unwillingly for electromagnetic analysis, and control interface technology. NASA's mind reading trick, made the front page of MSN recently.

Seriously if we don't declare us, and our process of consciousness magical/sacred/fundamentally sacrosanct, then all our heads will be strip malls of sorts. In the future; you will think that you want something, and somewhere else, the powers that be, will be checking your work credits, to see if you may have it. What if that turns out to be the air that you breathe? What happens to the trained floating heads in space, when the funding drops off for the project that sustains them? Will we legislate that those humans made of human DNA, but not born of a woman, aren't by definition, human, with full rights?

I know this is tangental thinking, but we are being seriously "parted out" as they say in the auto wrecking industry. We have to be very careful about electing to accept "definitions" of very basic states of existence, that we hold to be our lives.

 

[hypnagogue]

I presume you are speaking out against the materialist conception of consciousness. While I do not agree with this conception, I hold my position because of what I believe to be the truth, not out of fear of the consequences of accepting the alternative. If consciousness really can be exhaustively defined as such and such process in the brain, so be it. The primary concern should be understanding reality, not fabricating arbitrary conceptions of it in order to maintain a certain value system. You might as well have sided with the church against Galileo if that is really your mindset.

 

[Canute]

Hi Hypno

As usual you've said what I was I was going to say. Let's have the truth, whatever it is.

There is no chance of materialism being proved or disproved anyway, for logical reasons, so there is nothing to fear from research except the responsibilities that might come with knowing what's true.

 

[Dayle Record]

I am not sure the "truth" can be known. We all know so differently. So what I am saying is that this territory is highly subjective, and to define it, might just be a form of totalitarian belief; to justify outrageous deployment of sentient tissues, and electromatic wavelengths that intrude on the sanctity of our minds.