Sculptor wrote: ↑Thu Jul 04, 2019 1:14 pm
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Wed Jul 03, 2019 9:14 pm
Sculptor wrote: ↑Wed Jul 03, 2019 8:16 pm
You can invent many fantastic things, those that might exist and many that could never exist. But to demonstrate those things you need the physical. And, it has to be said, you could not invent them without the physical - a brain.
Or without a physical body, either, since you could not have a brain without a physical body.
But you can have a brain without consciousness, a living brain, like those in a permanent coma.
I think you might be mistaken here. It is not really possible to tell if some consciousness continues. Certainly awareness of the outside world can end completely.
For people, like yourself that deny the brain as the sole source of consciousness, the fact the people can make complete recoveries from a coma is a challenge to your view, since you would have to account for where the consciousness goes, and how it manages to come back.
For those accepting that the brain is the source of consciousness, the coma, reinforces the view that consciousness is brain activity.
The consciousness of the higher animals and human beings is conscious by means of the neurological system, which includes the brain, just as brains exist by means of the physical body, but...
brains do not invent anything.
Non sequitur
It is the conscious mind that is capable of choice, intellectual knowledge, and reason by which all creation and invention are achieved.
Since there is no mind without a healthy brain; no choice without a healthy brain; not knowledge intellectual or otherwise; no reason then you are just talking nonsense.
I have no problem with extreme physicalists. If you think the physical brain accounts for consciousness and minds, then you do.
I don't think the physical brain produces consciousness because I cannot accept the premise that something happens that is totally inexplicable. How is the brain, "conscious?" The brain is a complex physical organ and all that can be known about it is its physical attributes and behavior (physical, chemical, electrical, etc.). There is nothing about it that can be called consciousness.
The following is adapted from one of my old articles, ",":
No description of any physical aspect or physical process related to perception explains or describes any perceptual quality or aspect of consciousness.
No matter what physical (mechanical-electrical-chemical) actions are described, that is all they can describe. When the biologist and physiologist have described all that the nervous system and brain have done, they still have not described consciousness as it is experienced—they have only described a complex of physical events, which no matter how complex will never be a description of consciousness or any aspect of it.
Please read the article. It is not very long and describes why I came to the conclusion that the physical just cannot account for consciousness (or life, or mind either). I would love for there to be a physical explanation of life, consciousness, and mind. It would certainly make philosophy simpler, but I had to ultimately reject physicalism as incapable of explaining the nature of life, consciousness, and mind. You might find it interesting to know, one reason I rejected physicalism is because I reject any form of mysticism or the supernatural.
) are necessary for some perceived outcome. In this sense we discover mistakes rather than reveal what is ... yet keep on keeping on with a seeming fascination for greater ‘efficiency’.
