Nested hierarchies have been discussed adequately, one should think. So here is an alternative matter.
I would propose that consciousness must be electrical in nature, due to two crucial facts:
1. The information that becomes conscious is some of the information being carried by the action-potentials of the nerve cells. It is not any other kind of information, such as quantum states of molecules, it is simply the information that nerve cells are known to carry via action-potentials.
2. Electric fields are the only physical phenomenon in the brain that have both the ability to extend in space significantly beyond nerve conduction itself and to be able to change and interact exceedingly swiftly, just as we experience conscious changes occurring “instantly.”
There are many other issues involved, of course, however, the fact remains that the physical phenomena underlying consciousness must be able to account for how consciousness appears to have the kind of extension and interactivity that creates consciousness, as electric fields would seem to be able to do. And that physical phenomenon must be tied to the information being carried as nerve impulses, as the electric fields of the nervous system ineluctibly are.
There does not seem to be a realistic option of a different sort of phenomenon that can unify that information encoded in the nerves into a conscious whole, and to do so exceedingly swiftly and surely. Certainly quantum physics offers nothing beyond electric fields interacting that could magically account for consciousness, no matter how much hocus-pocus people try to coax out of quantum phenomena. In the end it can’t be strange loops or the “illusion of consciousness” either, as one has to explain the difference between the consciousness and the unconscious (I would propose that the amount of, and type of, interaction of electric fields is what is crucial).
A great many issues could be discussed, however it seems to me that beginning with the basics is appropriate. There really is only one good candidate for consciousness in the physics of the brain at all, which is the electric fields that are unquestionably a necessary part of nerve conduction in the first place. If consciousness simply is what it is to be like a highly structured and unified (always becoming unified) electric field from the inside, so to speak, then it is the one phenomenon that we know not just abstractly, but as reality itself.
Oh sure, I guess I tend to think of it as more of a science matter, but I certainly don’t deny the importance of philosophy in dealing with these issues. I think that any science that isn’t fairly settled in its basic epistemics should rely on philosophy to at least some degree.
We just don’t need to begin “at the beginning” (as Steiner and Descartes saw it, anyway) in this or any other subject, indeed we should begin with what is already empirically known.
Glen Davidson
This OP reminds me of a big budget movie with a story that goes “nowhere”…
Defining consciousness could possibly help….
I personally view consciousness as the awareness of the NOW SPACETIME… or the subjective experience of the events unfolding from the near past through present time (now spacetime) into the nearest future…
Once the awareness of the experience of one NOW moment of spacetime has moved to another, it becomes a memory ever so distant as the awareness of the next experiences replacing the previous ones unfolds… and so on…
Oh come on, its worse than that. Lets look at some of it:
Its information that is becoming conscious? Huh? And its SOME of the information that becomes conscious?
Change in space and interact?? In what way does he feel materialistic consciousness extends in space? Interact with what? Does he even know hat he is trying to say? Does anyone?
Electric fields CAN magically account for consciousness??
I think this entire posts stands out uniquely amongst all posts on TSZ as being so chock full of gibberish.
And yet as an explanation it towers above any alternative offered by the likes of you.
Fer’instance.
It is the epistemology of materialism that Steiner is examining here. What justification does the materialist have for claiming that everything, including the self, is material? A judgement has been made and so I hope you agree that the veracity of this judgement is open to scrutiny. We have the concept ‘self’ and the concept ‘material’. The relationship between the two is a matter of debate so the proponent of any philosophy must justify her or his position on the matter if they want to be taken seriously.
We think of the self as subject and the brain as an object of perception. I have read many people here stating, ‘I think this’ or ‘I think that’, I do not read anyone stating, ‘my brain thinks this’ or ‘my brain thinks that’. We can accept that the brain is a material object because when the skull is opened it can be seen. On what grounds do you say that the self is a material object? Do you still believe that saying ‘I think’ is the same as saying, ‘my brain thinks’?
Steiner was not talking about the physicalist position, he was writing about the materialist position. And I would say from the explanation given above that his interpretation was justified.
Materialists believe that matter thinks. Materialists believe that they themselves are material. Therefore matter believes that matter thinks. How does matter know this? Because matter thinks about it. And this circular reasoning is at the basis of the materialist philosophy.
Yes. Any other questions you’d like my brain to answer?
Materialism is a philosophical position and in order to study the justifications for this, as for any other, philosophy the place to start looking is at its foundational underpinnings. Are you saying that materialism should just be accepted without examining its underpinnings?
Why is there something other then nothing?
You got the wrong quote somehow…
Unless I was being sarcastic, I would have never said that…
Information we know about (quantum and so on) on its own, can’t become conscious… It’s needs a processing medium…
I’m saying that empiricism should be accepted due to its justifications. Why would I say that anything should be accepted without examining its underpinnings? That sounds to me more like Steiner and his leaps to conclusions about “materialism.”
Why are you asking such leading questions? I mean, other than your adherence to the proclamations of The Leader?
Glen Davidson
Sorry, My posts was accidentally clipped. That is what Glenn said. I doubt he knows why.
Omagain:
And yet as an explanation it towers above any alternative offered by the likes of you.
Omagain at his finest.
Here is how Steiner put it:
Steiner may take a starting point similar to Descartes but that is as far as the similarity goes. From there go in completely different directions and reach different conclusions.
Remind me again how decisions are made in phoodoo world?
I’d be happy to hear how phoodoo thinks consciousness works and compare his ideas to the OP. But we all know that’ll never happen. They are only capable of criticising, not creation.
So you don’t think that any of this discussion is the concern of philosophy?
What philosophy concerns itself with electricity?
Yes, German Idealism, dabbling in theosophy, those sorts of things. What’s more important is Kant, who more or less founded phenomenalism, which certainly doesn’t depend on the “truth” of “materialism” or “physicalism.”
But of course Kant was helping philosophy to catch up with science, the latter of which worked whether philosophy agreed with it or not. I’m not saying that the philosophy didn’t and doesn’t matter, it does, since thinking about science requires some kind of understanding about what’s happening. I am saying that it’s important to bend the philosophy to the science, however.
Glen Davidson
How could you possibly get “So you don’t think that any of this discussion is the concern of philosophy?” from “I really can’t see where you think that we have to go back to the starting point of philosophy when we’re out to do scientific thinking.” (emphasis added)?
One thing is not the same as the other, and you seem to just erect whatever strawman you wish at a given time.
Glen Davidson
Glen, we are discussing an op entitled, “Why consciousness must be electric”
And from there you state
But you don’t seem to want to begin with the basics. You want to start from a position which makes assumptions that can be challenged.
Any assumption can be challenged. The point is to what end? If you disagree with the OP and think that the fact that the brain seems to “run” on electricity is irrelevant, why not just say as much?
I think you’re confusing sense and reference, and therefore synonymy and co-extension. “Mind” and “brain” can have different senses, which is to say that they mean different things — and yet refer to the same thing. The standard materialist position in philosophy of mind is that “mind” and “brain” refer to the same thing, not that they mean the same thing.
To clarify slightly, consider Frege’s classical example of “the evening star” and “the morning star”. We know, thanks to astronomy, that both phrases refer to the same object — the planet Venus. But they don’t mean the same thing, because “evening” does not mean “morning”. They are alike in reference but different in sense.
The standard materialist position is that the same is true of “mind” and “brain”: they differ in sense; they are different concepts. (This is why “the mind is what the brain does” is not an analytic truth!) But it is true (it is claimed) because the mind and the brain refer to the same thing; they share an extension or are co-extensive.
Now, there are deep philosophical problems with this position that turn on the semantics of identity statements (thanks, Kripke!). And there are also serious problems that turn on cognitive science. So the standard materialist position can’t be true. But something very much like it probably is. More on this later!
So what in your opinion is it that is doing the thinking?
All that these discoveries can say is that there is a relationship between brain activity and the consciousness we experience, causal priorities are a matter of debate..
You sure ripped that out of context. Clearly by the “basics” I meant basic facts about information and brains, not cogito ergo sum.
A clue–“the basics” doesn’t always refer to the beginnings of philosophy. You really work to come up with these fallacies, don’t you?
Glen Davidson
No, it isn’t the epistemology of the materialist, otherwise the imbecile (Steniner), would not be talking about the self and the matter doing the thinking as separate things! Who cares about the justification? Focus! Steiner is making a huge mistake because instead of talking about the materialists’ epistemology, he’s talking about some dualism that has nothing to do with materialism, yet ascribing it to materialism!
Why is this so hard for you to focus on? We can talk about justifications later, but stop side-stepping. Steiner is making a huge mistake. The mistake is the main foundation for his bullshit against materialism. Try and notice it already! Focus!
Materialism evolved into physicalism. The problem persists, materialists didn’t think in dualistic terms. His interpretation was not justified at all. Neither the materialist, nor the physicalist, think of matter instead of themselves doing the thinking. For either there’s no distinction between the material phenomena conforming the self and the self.
He is not engaging in a Cartesian methodology, as in Descartes, he is making sure that he is starting from a position where he has made no unnecessary assumptions. Other than that his conclusions are not the same as Descartes.
But surely it is a legitimate question to ask how do we come to empirical knowledge of anything don’t you think?
Yes, can you ask your brain if it has done any electricity experiments on itself 🙂
I don’t know, ask Lawrence Krauss
Yes everything should be judged empirically and not on metaphysical speculations.
Are you channelling keiths? 🙂
Ampericism 🙂
The Cartesian methodology is to start off without any unnecessary assumptions. That’s the whole idea of Cartesian skepticism. The fact that Steiner then pursues a different line of thought for overcoming skepticism is a different problem.
In any event, my more general point here is that it’s not essential to philosophy that it begin from some starting-point devoid of all presuppositions. What makes philosophy (and science) rational activities is that claim can be called into question, not all of them at once.
hahaha
You too Brutus? 😁
It’s worth pointing out that it’s not entirely obvious how we should conceive of the relationship between physicalism in metaphysics and empiricism in epistemology. There is, after all, the looming threat of Berkeley, who argued that materialism had to be false because empiricism is true.
And while no physicalist has denied empiricism outright (to my knowledge), there is the worry posed by Eddginton’s example of the two tables: the world as known by the physicist is very different from the world as known by ordinary sense-perception.
And while I do consider myself a scientific realist (in metaphysics) and pragmatic ‘foundherentist’ (in epistemology) and a critical direct realist (in philosophy of perception), getting all these views to cohere is no easy matter.
I have found that the clearest way forward for me is to think about technology as a system of cognitive prosthetics that augment the embodied concepts with which we are “naturally” endowed. The chief advantage of this approach is that it suggests how experimentation & quantification can augment our ‘natural’ capacity to be directly aware of objects.
But I will be first to grant that a serious story about how we get from animal cognition of affordances to scientific knowledge of fields and forces has yet to be told in sufficient detail.
Kantian Naturalist,
What can we approach empirically if not the physical?
Kantian Naturalist,
On reading that, I can see why we often miscommunicate.
You are hung up on a lot of issues that don’t even seem important to me. And you probably pay only minor attention to what seems important to me.
I never thought “the two tables” was a problem. And, with my current way of looking at things, it is even less of a problem.
As for getting from animal cognition to science — I see science as very similar to perception, except that it done in public, is far more systematic, and it depends on a collaborative effort within the scientific community.
keiths:
CharlieM:
Neither am I.
No, he is talking about the beginning of thought, under his goofy version of physicalism:
He foolishly imagines that matter has to become dissatisfied and then, as a result of that dissatisfaction, decide to think. Having made the decision to think, matter then thinks.
And so his objection is: How does the physicalist explain this dissatisfaction, and the subsequent decision to think?
And the physicalist response, of course, is “What are you smoking, Rudolf? We don’t believe that matter gets dissatisfied and then decides to think. That’s the kind of confused crap you would come up with.”
And of course Steiner demonstrates the same sort of confusion in his discussion of the psychology of tomatoes, and what they do and don’t like:
He’s a nutjob who anthropomorphizes tomatoes, so it isn’t surprising to see him anthropomorphizing matter that has not yet begun to think. And because this instinct is so strong in him, he fails to see the logical problems it presents.
Your reaction, of course, is simple denial:
If I am making the error, then you should be able to explain it directly and clearly. Quote the specific statement(s) of mine that you disagree with, and explain exactly why you think they are wrong. Don’t change the subject, and don’t pretend that Steiner didn’t say what he said.
What is physical, except what we can approach empirically?
I mean, it seems kind of circular. It may not be entirely so, as I can imagine a kind of magic empiricism that we might not consider “physical” (even then it would depend upon definition), leprechauns or something that seems not as regular and predictable as, say, gravity (we’ll assume that they don’t have brains, or at least if they do that they’re made of ectoplasm or the like). Still, things that once were considered to be occult–like gravity–have become considered to be “physical,” presumably because they’re empiric, and at least rather regular and predictable.
Practically, we really seem to consider what is empirical (but possibly not everything that theoretically could be empirical) to be physical. Which is why it might be better just to call it “empirical,” rather than to assume that we “really know what is physical,” and especially prior to discovering what that is (would a theory of quantum mechanics be considered physical if it weren’t empirically demonstrated?). Importantly, even if theoretic leprechauns might not be “physical” as we understand it, though, I also wouldn’t want to rule out something magical a priori.
What matters most of all, I’d say, epistemologically, is the empirical, unless we simply define the physical as being empirical. Even though we seem to tend that way, I’m not sure that all logical possibilities would automatically be considered physical, so we think leprechauns don’t exist mainly for lack of evidence, and not because they might not fit some definitions of “physical.”
Glen Davidson
Let me see if I can motivate the philosophical quandary here. (I think the quandary is to be avoided, but it can be useful to think about these problems nevertheless.)
Imagine the naive empiricist who says, “I know what’s real! It’s things that I can see, and hear, and taste, and smell, and touch! Don’t come around here with your weird imaginary bullshit likes gods and leprechauns!”
But consider now: what should the naive empiricist say about electrons? Or gravitational fields? Shouldn’t her attitude towards distortions of space-time be just like her attitude towards gods and leprechauns?
In short, shouldn’t the naive empiricist be just as skeptical about the posits of theoretical physics as she is about those of religions and myths?
Now, one response to this might be that the empiricist should be a sophisticated empiricist and not a naive empiricist. But in what does the sophistication consist?
Yes, I agree that this is why we often miscommunicate.
Ah, let me rephrase — I didn’t think “the two tables” was a serious problem that needed to be solved. I meant only that one needs good reasons that justify evading it, rather than just declaring it to be a non-problem.
We might disagree on how much emphasis to place on language. Presently I’m reading up on a relatively new theory in the philosophy of cognitive science which suggests that language (more precisely: sociocultural practices that include learning and using a natural language) really does transform animal cognition in profound ways (see here and here).
On this kind of picture, language and related sociocultural practices make for a really quite different kind of cognition because it allows animals to make claims — they can talk about and also think about the difference between how things are and how they seem. It gives them an awareness that their claims can be contested by others and might be mistaken. That’s quite different from the dynamic coupling of organisms and environments in which animals are perceptually and practically ‘geared into’ their local affordances.
GlenDavidson,
Complete agree. My question was there to counterclaim that empiricism entails the falsity of physicalism. It doesn’t. So far, anything we approach empirically has been physical, and I cannot see how we could approach anything empirically if it’s not physical. That doesn’t mean that empiricism rejects the possibility a priori (as you said, it doesn’t), but it doesn’t make physicalism false either. I don’t see any conflict between empiricism and physicalism, unless we were emphatically physicalists, but physicalism is more of the default position, and the only one that seems to make sense. Evidence against physicalism would be evidence, against physicalism, but, in its absence, physicalism is not falsified by empiricism. Both seem neatly, and tightly, integrated, even if not by definition.
Kantian Naturalist,
I think that the problem is in the word “naïve.” To me that’s a philosophical mistake, not a feature.
On understanding the methods involved, of course. There’s an empirical way to get from one table to the other. There’s empirical ways to get to fields and spacetime deformations. That nobody has explained those in simpler terms doesn’t mean that, say, the physicist’s table is any less of a table than the naïve empiricist’s table, or that the tables are different.
Should the naïve empiricist be as skeptical about those as about magical beings? No. That would be a huge categorical error. Should the naïve empiricist accept the physics? No! The empiricist can, and perhaps should, hold judgement, but the level of “holding” is different to that required for magical beings. Magical beings come from storybooks. Physics from a process that involves plenty of empirical data.
We can be vicarious physicalists. Not everyone can afford (heh) their own cyclotron.
You say that Steiner, in claiming that the materialist ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to himself, he is inferring here that the self is not material. But it is clear from the context of the chapter that this quote is taken from that he is not inferring this. Is he justified in distinguishing the self from matter? Yes. He contrasts the self with the brain. The brain is composed of physical matter which we can perceive with our senses, the self is not. And so in this regard they can be distinguished from each other. A surgeon may perceived my brain in the operating theatre but he cannot perceive my ‘I’in like manner. What he believes the self to be at this point he does not say. He does not assume that it is material and neither does he assume that it is spiritual. We cannot say of the material brain, it is subject as opposed to the objective world, but we can say this of ourselves.
Maybe you should read the whole chapter
CharlieM,
CharlieM,
Does Steiner mention anything about near-death experiences?
I’m trying to get as much info on these as possible….
It seems that way to me, for sure.
Glen Davidson