reply to post by OnceReturned
Before I reply to your last post, let me respond in more detail to the previous one.
It seems to me that you are arguing from a dualist position: claiming that consciousness is a nonphysical entity, that one must possess it before one
is able to talk about it, and therefore it is in some sense the cause of this conversation, which is in some sense physical. Is this correct? If not,
would you please clarify your position?
As it happens, I am not a strict epiphenomenalist; I believe that consciousness is an evolved property associated with, or having, a specific
function; that of processing data that are too complex, surprising or otherwise awkward to be dealt with by the automatic (unconscious) subroutines of
which most brain function consists. Consciousness seems to be intimately bound up with thinking; it could be the precursor, the mechanism or the
byproduct of thought. Certainly,
it is always absent when thought or attention are absent. As to which of these three it is, I cannot say; you
may call me epiphenomenally agnostic.
I do believe consciousness originates in the brain and is very much a physical phenomenon. I am emphatically not a dualist.
I don't agree that the arguments you have advanced actually trounce epiphenomenalism. As I imply above, the experience of thought may well be
backwash from the actual data-processing, or mentation if you prefer, that is going on. If consciousness is a physical phenomenon--even if it is an
epiphenomenon--why should it not be as equally subject to contemplation and mentation as are other physical phenomena? There is a difference between
an epiphenomenal, ie physically impotent, state of mind and the physical act of mental processing. It seems to me that you are confusing the two. If
consciousness is the epiphenomenal backwash of processing, then what we are discussing is the perceived effect of the processing. I don't see that
such a connexion is necessarily banned; perhaps you can explain how it must be.
Meanwhile, on to your second post.
In all cases - dinner, consciousness, unicorns, ect. - it is not the thing itself which has a causal influence on our brain, it is the concept
of the thing.
In saying this, you assume what you set out to establish. It is not a given--indeed, it is far from true--that concepts influence brains. Concepts are
produced by brains. It is sensory and other physiological inputs that influence brains, which sometimes (by no means always) give rise to
concepts as a result of them.
Unicorns don't exist but the concept of unicorns exists, and this concept corresponds to some brain state.
True, but that doesn't mean that the concept 'unicorn' gives rise to the brain state 'unicorn'. This would imply some Platonic ideal unicorn that
existed in an immaterial world of forms, which is somewhat far-fetched to say the least. Your average punter gains the concept 'unicorn' from
sensory inputs: words on paper, a picture in a book, an image on a screen. Once upon a time someone's brain came up with the concept 'unicorn' from
scratch, but I'm sure I don't have to insult your intelligence and that of others on this thread by explaining in physicalist terms how that
probably happened.
Consciousness is different from dinner and unicorns. Consciousness has the peculiar quality that it can only have meaning to you if you have
it.
No, they are all the same. Unicorns don't have meaning unless you have a mental reference for them. The same goes for dinner. Thinking, crudely put,
is brain activity represented in consciousness by the shuffling of mental images--not the manipulation of material objects in the external world.
That's action, not thought.
It is impossible to capture consciousness in any informational language, and to use that informational representation meaningfully to any
non-conscious information processing entity. We can say, "what is it like to see the blue sky?"
Interesting you should use this analogy. How about asking 'what is blue like'? Can you capture the experience of blue in any language? How do you
know that the colour I see when I see blue isn't the colour you see when you see red?
You could talk about the electrochemical consequences of impingent light of a certain range of frequencies on the human retina, or some such, but it
would be no more meaningful than a similarly mechanistic description of consciousness. Consciousness is not unique in this; indeed, consciousness is
the sum of all such experiential inputs. We can't think about
anything unless we relate it to personal, conscious experience.
Dinner is not like this. I can express in a language all of the properties of dinner. You can therefore have the concept of dinner meaningfully
conveyed to you, even if you have never had dinner.
Do you really think so? Could you do that even if I had never in my life seen or heard about dinner? Could you meaningfully convey the concept
'ocean' to men who had never seen one? Henry Hudson tried it with gauchos; he didn't get very far.
What is special about consciousness is that it's existance and influence is proven by the fact that we are talking about it.
No again. The same is true of everything. Remember, there is no way to prove that the entire world is not a self-created illusion. In this respect, as
in the others discussed above, there is nothing special about consciousness.
Only conscious things can have a meaningful concept of consciousness.
How do you know this?
As far as we know, only conscious things can have a meaningful concept of anything. But we may be wrong; we have no way of telling.
The fact that we are able to refer to this concept in a meaningful way means that we are conscious. The fact that our concept of consciousness
is manifest somewhere in our brains, means that consciousness somehow interacted with our neurobiological representational system.
The fact that we are able to refer to
any concept in a meaningful way means that we are conscious. This is not disputed. The fact that our
concept of consciousness is manifest somewhere in our brains means only that it is a product of the brain--whether epiphenomenal or not, I neither
know nor, frankly, care. The point, as far as I am concerned, is that consciousness has a physical origin, and its existence does not imply free will.