For my part, it’s curiosity for its own sake. I like to chew on hard questions. Imo, consciousness as an emergent phenomenon of strictly how matter is configured seems a little hard to square. I can’t defend it, it’s only an opinion.
There are some philosophical problems that strike me as too caught up in language to the point that they become detached from reality. Maybe it’s my physics background, but I always want to keep things grounded in some relation to material reality, like, “What would the universe look like if this answer was correct vs that answer?” With questions about consciousness, as well as questions about determinism vs free will, everyone is seeing the same stuff in terms of observations and evidence, so to me the questions seem limited to what semantic description we use to describe it. If you believe in determinism, you have not removed free will from the universe, the universe is unchanged, you’ve just chosen a certain way to describe the same observations.
To me, if everything looks the same no matter what answer we go with, I don’t see how the question can be said to have meaning.
That’s a good way of putting it, though I suspect that outlook could be thought terminating if you suffer from a lack of imagination.
Let us suppose that our perception of consciousness is wrong; suppose that animism is the more correct view and that there is consciousness in everything. You might say “so what? Plants and stones and oceans have no means of displaying consciousness, so what would it change?”. To which, I would say that it changes a lot for us. If it became commonly accepted and deeply held that all things have consciousness and are therefore much closer to us in terms of existential experience, it could become a huge barrier to exploitation of plants, animals, resources, and even other people. Society might develop around different fundamental assumptions, which would affect the cultural attitudes towards how that society interacted with its members and environment. Animism isn’t perfect, of course; followers of animism still engage in violence with each other, still have many of the typical failings of people, that’s not necessarily what I’m trying to say. I’m suggesting that some borderline unfalsifiable fundamental assumptions- such as about consciousness- can still have an impact in shaping the culture and material manifestations of a society.
Take the US. It’s fairly common for people in the US to believe in the idea of an permanent, undying soul that exists apart from your body. I take some issues with that belief because it means that all manner of suffering can be dismissed as merely temporary earthly woes, both by the oppressors and the oppressed. It also means that state actors who organize murder could console themselves with the belief that some indestructible part of the people they harm will go on.
Well, that’s where the analysis of material interests comes into play. The idea that if you’re a good person (don’t disrupt the status quo) then you’ll get into heaven is a narrative that furthers the material interests of those in charge. That isn’t enough to disprove it, but it is enough to treat it with suspicion, and the lack of evidence paints a pretty clear picture.
You do have a point with the examples of animism. Since everyone makes some assumptions on that point, it’s worth questioning those assumptions and considering alternatives, but I guess to me, those assumptions aren’t very load bearing. There are few cases where someone’s opinion on a topic is based on their assumptions about consciousness. We could imagine, for example, someone arguing against veganism on the basis that animals don’t have souls or consciousness, but if you ask that person whether they’re opposed to animal cruelty regarding cats and dogs, they’ll probably say yes. The consciousness line, in that case, is just a rationalization.
It’s also something where if someone says, “Well, I think it’s this way,” there’s not like, compelling evidence you can show them to prove them wrong. If a debate hinges on theories of consciousness, it’s likely to result in “agreeing to disagree.” Generally, if it comes up, I’d just try to make the best argument I can within the other person’s framework of consciousness rather than getting caught up in such an abstract disagreement.
Im not taking a side in this argument but the same thing you just said could have been applied to something like atoms centuries ago. Who cares what stuff is made of it looks the same no matter if its the ether, or atoms, or tiny fairies, or whatever so the question is meaningless right?
That was until we figured out how to make microscopes, and realized how blind we had been all that time.
IMO this is a very narrow way to look at things. I agree that we should base things on material reality, but it is VERY important to remember that we don’t know everything, and there are likely entire fields of science humanity has yet to discover.
Our species is very young still, and the pursuit of the secrets of the cosmos is how we have gotten to where we are now. It is important that we both stay grounded in reality as you want to do, but also keep an open mind. Thinking about things that seem meaningless have led to great discoveries in the past. To stop doing that, or to look down on others for doing that would be a dire mistake.
Our understanding of the universe is nowhere near complete. That is the whole point of doing science. We are always growing our knowledge, and expanding into new fields.
For all we know consciousness could derive from a natural mechanism we have yet to discover. And cant yet detect. Just because we don’t yet have the capacity to understand it doesnt mean it is “magic”. There is that saying after all.
“Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
One thing every scientist should realize is that for every single scientific discovery about the universe at some point centuries or decades earlier some philosopher was probably arguing about it with his buddies. Wondering about stuff is step 0. Its the foundation all our knowledge is built on.
Wondering is fine, if that’s all we’re doing, we should keep that in mind. Before we had the tools to study atoms empirically, it would be silly to choose one model and dig heels in and base other beliefs on it. If someone in the Middle Ages tells you they’ve just come up with a new way of building bridges that’s based on a certain model of the atom, you should probably pass that guy up. Even if he happened to stumble upon approximately the right idea, his understanding would be crude and unrefined.
Maybe there is some whole field of science yet to be discovered around consciousness, but even if so, such ideas do not provide a solid foundation to build other ideas on top of. Picturing things as a structure, those ideas belong at the top where they are not load bearing and can be safely tinkered with.
No, I don’t think so. Tbh, I don’t really think about consciousness much at all, I don’t see why such questions are important or relevant to my life.
For my part, it’s curiosity for its own sake. I like to chew on hard questions. Imo, consciousness as an emergent phenomenon of strictly how matter is configured seems a little hard to square. I can’t defend it, it’s only an opinion.
There are some philosophical problems that strike me as too caught up in language to the point that they become detached from reality. Maybe it’s my physics background, but I always want to keep things grounded in some relation to material reality, like, “What would the universe look like if this answer was correct vs that answer?” With questions about consciousness, as well as questions about determinism vs free will, everyone is seeing the same stuff in terms of observations and evidence, so to me the questions seem limited to what semantic description we use to describe it. If you believe in determinism, you have not removed free will from the universe, the universe is unchanged, you’ve just chosen a certain way to describe the same observations.
To me, if everything looks the same no matter what answer we go with, I don’t see how the question can be said to have meaning.
That’s a good way of putting it, though I suspect that outlook could be thought terminating if you suffer from a lack of imagination.
Let us suppose that our perception of consciousness is wrong; suppose that animism is the more correct view and that there is consciousness in everything. You might say “so what? Plants and stones and oceans have no means of displaying consciousness, so what would it change?”. To which, I would say that it changes a lot for us. If it became commonly accepted and deeply held that all things have consciousness and are therefore much closer to us in terms of existential experience, it could become a huge barrier to exploitation of plants, animals, resources, and even other people. Society might develop around different fundamental assumptions, which would affect the cultural attitudes towards how that society interacted with its members and environment. Animism isn’t perfect, of course; followers of animism still engage in violence with each other, still have many of the typical failings of people, that’s not necessarily what I’m trying to say. I’m suggesting that some borderline unfalsifiable fundamental assumptions- such as about consciousness- can still have an impact in shaping the culture and material manifestations of a society.
Take the US. It’s fairly common for people in the US to believe in the idea of an permanent, undying soul that exists apart from your body. I take some issues with that belief because it means that all manner of suffering can be dismissed as merely temporary earthly woes, both by the oppressors and the oppressed. It also means that state actors who organize murder could console themselves with the belief that some indestructible part of the people they harm will go on.
Well, that’s where the analysis of material interests comes into play. The idea that if you’re a good person (don’t disrupt the status quo) then you’ll get into heaven is a narrative that furthers the material interests of those in charge. That isn’t enough to disprove it, but it is enough to treat it with suspicion, and the lack of evidence paints a pretty clear picture.
You do have a point with the examples of animism. Since everyone makes some assumptions on that point, it’s worth questioning those assumptions and considering alternatives, but I guess to me, those assumptions aren’t very load bearing. There are few cases where someone’s opinion on a topic is based on their assumptions about consciousness. We could imagine, for example, someone arguing against veganism on the basis that animals don’t have souls or consciousness, but if you ask that person whether they’re opposed to animal cruelty regarding cats and dogs, they’ll probably say yes. The consciousness line, in that case, is just a rationalization.
It’s also something where if someone says, “Well, I think it’s this way,” there’s not like, compelling evidence you can show them to prove them wrong. If a debate hinges on theories of consciousness, it’s likely to result in “agreeing to disagree.” Generally, if it comes up, I’d just try to make the best argument I can within the other person’s framework of consciousness rather than getting caught up in such an abstract disagreement.
Im not taking a side in this argument but the same thing you just said could have been applied to something like atoms centuries ago. Who cares what stuff is made of it looks the same no matter if its the ether, or atoms, or tiny fairies, or whatever so the question is meaningless right?
That was until we figured out how to make microscopes, and realized how blind we had been all that time.
IMO this is a very narrow way to look at things. I agree that we should base things on material reality, but it is VERY important to remember that we don’t know everything, and there are likely entire fields of science humanity has yet to discover.
Our species is very young still, and the pursuit of the secrets of the cosmos is how we have gotten to where we are now. It is important that we both stay grounded in reality as you want to do, but also keep an open mind. Thinking about things that seem meaningless have led to great discoveries in the past. To stop doing that, or to look down on others for doing that would be a dire mistake.
Our understanding of the universe is nowhere near complete. That is the whole point of doing science. We are always growing our knowledge, and expanding into new fields.
For all we know consciousness could derive from a natural mechanism we have yet to discover. And cant yet detect. Just because we don’t yet have the capacity to understand it doesnt mean it is “magic”. There is that saying after all.
“Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
One thing every scientist should realize is that for every single scientific discovery about the universe at some point centuries or decades earlier some philosopher was probably arguing about it with his buddies. Wondering about stuff is step 0. Its the foundation all our knowledge is built on.
Wondering is fine, if that’s all we’re doing, we should keep that in mind. Before we had the tools to study atoms empirically, it would be silly to choose one model and dig heels in and base other beliefs on it. If someone in the Middle Ages tells you they’ve just come up with a new way of building bridges that’s based on a certain model of the atom, you should probably pass that guy up. Even if he happened to stumble upon approximately the right idea, his understanding would be crude and unrefined.
Maybe there is some whole field of science yet to be discovered around consciousness, but even if so, such ideas do not provide a solid foundation to build other ideas on top of. Picturing things as a structure, those ideas belong at the top where they are not load bearing and can be safely tinkered with.