The video started with the left foot: "We all know what consciousness is?" That's what the interviewer said. So, we already know what consciousness is, aaa? The interview ended right there n the beginning !
@SciTechExplained : The interview's value lies more in what Searle has to say that what the interviewer has to say. In any case the interviewer didn't mean we know as in know-and-can-explain; he just meant we know as in know-as-experience.
Sadly, he does not go into detail about why he thinks that conscious mental states are causal. I am much more inclined to think the opposite. Consciousness is epiphenomenal, it is being simulated and can itself not in return influence other conscious or unconscious mental states. It is not that you think, therefore you are, but rather that you think and afterwards you come into being.
@PerfectDecalibration Then why does consciousness appear to be hindered when the brain is damaged, and why does it appear to end when the brain stops functioning or is destroyed?
"Conscious states are caused by neuronal processes within the brain"?
So how come the seed, so to speak, of consciousness actually preceded the physical creation of the brain?
Consciousness existed in the cells that united to form the body in which the brain formed. So the blueprint had to first exist. Such an organ did not form itself to do its wondrous things unless it developed according to a plan, which is a product of thought which is consciousness, and ergo preceded the brain.
@powereddrive Um, he is not a materialist, he does not think consciousness is ontologically reducible to neuronal like most "serious scientists or philosophers" do. Did you not get that from the way he talked about consciousness having a first person ontology?
What serious philosopher is arguing for dualism? Searle says consciousness is a biological phenomenon, and I am saying: who says it is not? I am reminded of Dennett's notion of Cartesian materialism.
@powereddrive He is not arguing for dualist, it seems as if you are stuck with the cartestian categories. Searle does believe consciousness is CAUSALLY reducible to the activity of neurons, but not ONTOLOGICALLY reducible. Consciousness is a biological phenomena but it is not reducible down back to neuronal activity (one neuron =/= consciousness). At least not yet.
I KNOW HE IS NOT ARGUING FOR THE CASE OF DUALISM, what he is saying is that his mission is to argue against dualism and I am saying that no such argument exists for him to attack. And I know he is not saying one neuron is equal to consciousness because NO ONE IS SAYING THAT, so I ask why state your uncontroversial opinions as if they were somehow profound? That is what he is doing in this video.
@powereddrive I don't think you understand the positions of eliminative materialists and type physicalists very well, because they expound the views John Searle mentions in this video.
Yes he does, I can send you an email going into specifics if you want, but any philosopher who says Descartes should not be taken seriously because people still believed in unicorns in the sixteenth century is someone who does not take opposing arguments seriously.
@powereddrive Um, its a three minute segment and he used a simplistic attack on Descartes to make a point. Also, don't you think he doesn't take descartes seriously for different reasons? His teaching company lectures would make that apparent.
For John Searle to questionably falsify the materist view that consciousness is an illussion by suggesting that an individual has the means to "know" from personal experience that consciousness exists is deeply misleading.
From my best understanding, consciousness is merely a placeholder word to describe a phenomenon that we do not fully have any knowledge of.
Does electron have consciousness ? Molecular biology and molecular evolution Cosmology and cosmic evolution If Universe evolves can electron evolve too? Does evolution of life begin on electron’s level? Origin of life is a result of physical laws that govern Universe. Electron takes important part in this work Question Why does the simplest particle - electron have six formulas: E=h*f, e = +ah*c , e = -ah*c, +E=Mc^2, -E=Mc^2, E= ∞ ? Electron is not as simple as we think
@cunnidvd Agreed. To me it sounds like he's conflating sense perception and thought process with consciousness. You need to be conscious to think and feel, of course, but that is not the sum of what consciousness is. Obviously not.
@TheEpicureanAtheist I wish I'd been a philosopher rather than a neuroscientist. It's so tiresome for me to have to back up all of my ideas with reproducable evidence, not to mention that, more often than not, the evidence doesn't support my hypotheses at all! Arguing by metaphor is so much more satisfying.
@acr08807 You think the reasonings are metaphors because you are a dumb ass. Sorry, your statements are equivalent to a caveman who saw mathematics and symbolic logic for the first time and going "Derp, what to these random drawings prove? Nuffin", lol not all matters demand empirical proof.
@MartyrofCake Are you fucking stupid? Are you trying to be a smartass? Do you test the premises of your logical deductions empirically? Do you test the inferential rules you use to achieve your logical deductions empirically? If not, how do you know that your premises are correct or your inferential rules useful?
@acr08807 A priori deductions do not demand empirical proof and not all empirical methods are grounded in empiricism. Fields in mathematics and logic provide good example of this, why don't you research yourself? It is obvious that you don't know what you are even talking about.
@MartyrofCake What's obvious is that you're an obscurantist. Why do we have the postulates that we have for number theory or geometry or algebra, instead of some set of postulates that would, after logical deduction, reach different conclusions?
@MartyrofCake For that matter, why do you think the inferential rules for math are set in stone? Before the 20th Century, rigorous math was based on constructive proofs. Hilbert changed that. There are some mathematicians who do not accept non-constructive proofs as valid. Still, the vast majority of mathematicians use them because they produce useful results.
@misha0gdc I read Critique of Pure Reason. My reaction in the context of this discussion is that I agree biology gives us certain preconceptions, but those preconceptions do not always lead to discovery of the objective truth, which is all the more reason to be careful what we take as a postulate.
Now this is what I call a proper philosopher. Patricia Churchland could do well to listen to this. Consciousness is real and irreducible. Cogito ergo sum.
Performing conscious processes means being conscious. There's nothing else to consciousness but performing these activities/processes. Some of these are perception, cognition, operation with signs, feeling, experiencing, etc. Just because I am doing these things does not mean I have a mind. It just means that physical stuff can perform conscious processes.
Yes, and all these things you've listed, including perception, cognition, interpretation and recognition of signs, are perfectly conceivable without subjective consciousness.
In searle's book, intro to philosophy of mind, searle says that conciousness is causally reducible to the the brain, but not ontologically reducible to the brain like how music is caused by instruments but music is not an instrument. Hope that helps some of y'all. Read his book
@twooffour: according to our experience, sound is the result of air molecules colliding against our ear drum which turns into electro-chemical impulses which the brain interprets as sound. How can electricity and chemicals be a sound of which can easily have produced a sight. and what makes something music is more than just sound. do you see the issue? it may prove ostensive for you
@twooffour well you obviously wrote to me that "musix" (learn to spell) is reducible to soundwaves. and i was merely pointing out that it does not. Moreover, it is not clear for some people to see the issue at hand. Some philosophical problems are such that you will have to just realize that it is a problem and that no words will be sufficient to point the problem to you. It's akin to how words are useless to describe what redness looks like to a blind person. You just have to know
Well, you brought up an invalid example about how music isn't reducible to the MUSICAL INSTRUMENT (like, you know, consciousness to the brain), ignoring the obvious issue that music consists of SOUNDWAVES, not music instruments.
At any rate, yea, it's obviously also the interaction with our brains and our recognition of structure in it, plus the distinction between various acoustic impressions and the induced cognitive associations + emotional responses etc.
@twooffour in my initial statement, i said that according to searle, consciousness may be causally reducible to synaptic firings but is not ontologically reducible to synaptic firings. another analogous example would be society. Society is causally reducible to human-to-human interaction but society itself is not a human. The key is discerning the difference between causal reductions and ontological ones. Science is too used to causal reductions and tends to overlook ontological ones.
@twooffour so as for the step by step process as to how we "hear" sounds. Air molecules collide against our ear drum. The ear drum then vibrates and causes electro-chemical impulses to be sent to the brain. These electro chemical impulses are then interpreted as sound in our "heads" Now, I think we can agree that there arent air molecules colliding about in our cranial cavity. so already there's an ontological difference between air molecules colliding and electrical impulses. Yes theres a
@twooffour yes there's a causal link, but there are ontological distinctions that must be made. so in the case of consciousness, it may be caused by the brain, but it is not itself the brain.
Um, I'm no expert in what "ontology" means, but reducing the entirety of music (incl. its creation and perception) to nothing but sound waves, wouldn't be an "ontological" mistake, it would be a FACTUAL one.
The sound, and the neural activity, are two different PROCESSES.
Yes, society isn't a "human" - it's a whole bunch of humans. What kind of an example is that?
@twooffour Ontology is the study of existence/being or the nature of reality itself. Kant distinguished btwn the phenomenon (P) & the noumena (N) where P is our conscious experience of things and N was the thing itself independent of experience. if u experience seeing a red apple, photons hit your retina, and the "brain" interprets a color from the photons. but is the apple really red? or are the photons red? This is ontology, asking what the isness of a thing.
Ah, so that's what ontology is. Interesting - I know that as the hard problem of consciousness, but whatever. In that case, you're doing a bad job describing it, because whether the apple or the photons are red is NOT the issue - the apple objectively reflects red light, that's your objective reality.
@twooffour first of all, how can i describe something you've never seen before? If you were blind, how would you suggest that i describe the appearence of redness to you? I wouldn't be able to. In knowing this, i saw that you have never "seen" the problem of consciousness. All i can do is clumsily use words until you "fell" into the understanding of the issue. And you have only barely scratched the surface of the issue. for instance, you said that "the apple objectively reflects red light,
@twooffour ...that's your objective reality" What you dont currently notice is that the notion of the apple reflecting red light objectively only occurs in your first person subjective ontology, namely your consciousness. any notion of ontological objectivity (a wolrd independent of an observer), is made from a subjective (ontologically subjective, not to be confused with being biased) conscious perspective. The only objective reality is that which the subjective conscious reality sees.
@twooffour this is what is referred to as the ego centric predicament. Basically, there's no getting outside of consciousness. you are trapped within it, you are it. You are the subjective ontology. Notions of an observer independent reality are just that, notions. for you cannot get ouside yourself. True we have experiences of a brain, a tree, a star etc, but part of being conscious is to have experiences. and those experiences arent independent of us. ok good nite 4 now
@twooffour as for what makes music nothing but sound waves factually wrong is on the very point of ontology. The perception of sound is not itself air molecules colliding, though it may be caused by the colliding of air molecules. & this distinction is an ontological one. you are supposedly comprised of cells but are you a cell? no, you are more than your parts, just as society and consciousness and this is the point searle, i think, correctly makes.
Well, in that case I don't know what "ontology" is good for in this case, because it's just plain factually, technically wrong in any respect - any description of the process of listening to music without considering its interaction with the brain is awfully incomplete.
As for the second part, what??!
Society isn't a human - it's a BUNCH of interacting humans.
I am not A cell - I'm a BUNCH of interacting cells and a number of chemicals thrown in.
@twooffour i didn't see this reply until i was about to log off. I guess you just don't get it. Pick up searle's book, Introduction to Philosophy of mind, there he spells out the whole issue in a couple of hundred pages which is beyond the scope of this youtube comment setting. Get back to me if you ever decide to read it.
I honestly don't even know what you're trying to get at. What's your POINT?
You're jumping from emergence, to problem of consciousness, to solipsism. What is it now?
Yea, for all I know, only I exist, everyone else might be a zombie, or not exist - in that light, however, there are no soundwaves and no synpapses, since I don't experience them directly, right?
Then you're asking how I'd describe redness to a blind person... well, you forgot to mention that the blind dude..
@twooffour my orignal point was that in reading some of the comments, i realized som ppl didnt grasp the ontological distinctions that searle was making. I was gonna leave it at that, but you remarked on my comment, and so now we have this little dialectic between us. Now with you i was merely trying to explain to you the problem at hand in this field. I had a hunch that you didn't realize the issue either becuz of what you were saying and as it turned out, you had no idea of ontology
@twooffour You just started to grasp the concept of the philosophical branch of ontology. as you learn more and more about this subject matter, the problem of consciousness will be better understood. You see, alot of ppl come to issue with their preconceived notions of which blind them from the real problem at hand. There's a saying, truth is everywhere around us except for where we cast the shadow. your assumptions of materialism & science cast a dark shadow making it hard for you to c
@twooffour now i'm no different from you. I once had this issue in this area myself. and who knows what other shadows im casting. So the point was to use words to help you see the problem. As for the blind man and solipsism, well if that's where the line of reasoning leads to then I'll have to accept that now wont I? Tell me, all you know of anything only comes from you being conscious. so how do you get outside of urslef to verify anything? to be clear, i dont think solipsism is the end..
@twooffour ....I don't think solipsism is the end point for various reasons. But the fact that you tried to invoke a reductio ad absurdem via solipsism just goes to show that you really havent chewed on these issues long enough if at all. Now this is not an attack on you, it's an observation. its like i lived in japan all my life, and youre trying to tell me about japan while never having been there, and i can just tell that you havent been there by what youre saying. read searle's book
So not only won't he be able to imagine red, he also won't accept that lights and "seeing" exists in the first place - because, hey, to his consicousness, there is no light, and everyone else just keeps talking text.
How you're gonna reason with THAT??
See, that's where being all over the place gets you.
@twooffour well you intially responded to me with "Wel, musix is reducible to sound waves, so..." from this i inferred that you saw music as nothing more than a soundwave and from this, if my inference is correct, that consciousness is nothing more da brain I've made plenty of sense. there's no need to try and attack me if you think i'm incorrect. all you need do is reply with intelligible counter points. in this way we can be civil and hopefully arrive at the truth. gotta go to work now c ya
@twooffour da problem scientists make is that they do causal reductions and in so doing it often times turns out that by doing these reductions we they find dat X is caused by Y and dat X's are nothin but Y's. this happens rightfully so on many occasions. But because of this habitual occurence scientist at times overlook the fact that though A's may be caused by B's, it some times is the case that A's are not B's though they may causally be reduced to B's. its a causal vs ontological point.
At the end of the day, music WILL be reducible to all of that, explaining everything from our recognition of patterns or phrases to our emotional responses to certain aural stimuli and basically our entire musical experience.
The only seemingly "irreducible" element will be, again, the qualia. I.e., why does a sound with a low amount of trebles sound "mellow".
Well, actually, our association and characterization of it as "mellow" is also explainable, but the...
i think consciousness is causal dead end of neuronal processes in the brain.just think about bullet hiting to a wall it leaves impression on wall keeping this example in mind i think consciousness is act like wall of something that we dont know yet that something receives impresion from brain processes.that could explain qualia.
He says that consciousness is irreducible yet also says that it's a biological process localized to bodies/brains. Isn't that reductive? Simple analogy: A and B are playing a game, viz. throwing a ball back and forth. Are there 3 things here or 4? There's A, B, and the ball. But is there an additional thing that "emerges" from this, viz. the game itself? Is this game a thing or just an activity done by things? If a "mind" is a thing, if "mental stuff" exists, then there's 4. I think there's 3.
@rapatski Yes. The game is just a concept rather than a real thing that emerges out of the two people throwing the ball. I'm NOT claiming that the game is reducible, but that it's not a real thing (just a concept). We have a concept of consciousness, but it doesn't follow that consciousness exists as anything more than bodily (e.g. neural) activity.
A reductive explanation of consciousness in terms of bodily activity would actually vindicate consciousness, but such a reduction isn't possible.
@twooffour Yes, the game is a process. You say "but" as if to disagree, but that's exactly my point. There is a whole lot more going on here... consciousness is something that goes on, i.e. an activity. There is no "mind," just a physical thing performing various processes, e.g. operating with physical signs, processing physical sensory inputs, etc. This is a simple ontological confusion that Searle get into when he says, "we all have this inner qualitative subjective stuff." What stuff, Searle?
@twooffour Do I have the/one conscious experience? I'm not sure what that means. Of course I have so-called experiences. Of course I am a conscious thing, an experiencer. This does not mean there is some "mind" involved in what I am able to do.
@twooffour No, it's not saying the same thing. Just because my body is performing conscious processes does not mean that my body (viz. brain) "gives rise" to a mind. An action is not the same as a thing. This is a simple ontological oversight. Experience is not stuff. Because "experience" is a noun does not mean that it is a thing. Consciousness does not emerge from the brain; consciousNESS is just the abstract property of being conscious, which purely physical stuff can be.
I'm pretty certain he didn't mean the word "stuff" in the literal sense of a "thing", or matter.
At any rate, what, in your mind, does "performing conscious processes" mean? To me, it sounds like an automaton with a desktop on the "surface" - without actual conscious experience.
@boys0fsummer1 First, dispense with the notion that consciousness is a word which has some intrinsic meaning, or one single definition.
Consciousness is a word that people use to summarize a bunch of different experiences or some particular experience or phenomena which they recall or which they are partaking in. Whatever you're 'conscious' of at any given time can be further broken down (i.e. reduced) just by describing it in more detail. Level of detail is of course contingent on knowledge.
@boys0fsummer1 Yes, I fully concede that its all physical processes in the brain. Thats about as much as we know.
Professor Searle, however, claims that it is "biological" and that it is in the brain, and that we know very little about it compared to other body parts (which is true)...yet he still (contradicts himself and) says that it is "irreducible." How exactly does that make any sense? Its flat out absurd.
He is saying that perhaps you can map which neural circuits activate when a certain conscious state is felt, but why should the motion of particles result in subjective experience? For example, when a basketball falls to the ground, or current flows in a wire, why is there no subjective experience felt by something? Have you ever heard of the Chinese room experiment?
@boys0fsummer1 Chinese room experiment WAS indeed a very persuasive argument right up until around 1859 when Darwin came along...Thanks to Darwin (and many others), you now have access to beautifully-written articles by people like Tecumseh Fitch on Nano-Intentionality/Sub-cellular intelligence.
Once you begin to imagine and think about the vast time scales of biological evolution, its easy to see how neurons, given their tremendous history, would eventually instantiate meaning or experience.
I'm sorry, but that argument from huge numbers doesn't work. Don't worry, given enough time, anything is possible so there is no need to explain the actual mechanisms. When Darwin proposed his theory, cells were thought to be simple blobs of protoplasm. But, the more we learn about biology, the more complicated and intricate it is revealed to be. For example, why haven't we been able to reverse engineer life yet? We even the blueprint. Yet 50 years after Miller-Uray, no.
@boys0fsummer1 "...that argument from huge numbers doesn't work..."
Response: Are you saying evolution didn't happen?
"...so there is no need to explain the actual mechanisms...the more we learn about biology, the more complicated and intricate..."
Response: This is precisely what evolution does...it builds fairly "complicated and intricate" organisms. Of course current science doesn't tell us how most of the 'actual mechanisms' work, but that doesn't therefore translate to "irreducible."
The brain is a conduit for consciousness not its origin. I think time will ultimatly reveal that he was only representing part of the puzzle but not the ultimate truth.
I believe this video may lead to a misunderstanding of Searle's work as a whole. If you read his books or papers what you will see is that this theory is part of a much larger frame work which seeks to explain the issues of consciousness which have arisen from simple category mistakes. I would strongly recommend reading his introductory book 'Mind', its easy to read and the concepts are significant even at post-graduate level.
this hardly answers anything... not to mention the hard problem of consciousness: why do we have it as a subjective experience rather than objective? his base of argument is not strong enough. just because it only seems to be there when the brain is active doesn't mean that it comes from the brain. you can't say that unless you really know which part of the brain that gives you consciousness. amirite? pardon for my bad english.
@michael616joaquin Well there are attempts to do so. One such attempt is called the Global Workspace Theory, which states that consciousness arises from a network in the brain that projects unconscious stimuli right throughout the cortex, in a synchronized fashion. There are of course many other theories, with their respective explanatory merits. I wouldn't state outright that we can never 'locate' consciousness. Its a conceptual minefield!
didn't he just argue materialism?? right after saying materialism wasn't true?
he said materialism is wrong, then said that consciousness is the product of biological activity.. Excuse me but when did biology stop being a material field?
yes, in essence you're right: he rejects dualism and accepts that conciousness grounded by biological events. He only appears to reject materialism because alot of materialists deny Consciousness. He claims that Consciousness is system-level phenomena that arises out of biological events.
We can understand objective consciousness, but how can we possibly understand the subjective experience or "feeling" of consciousness. You cannot even demonstrate that anyone other than yourself "feels" anything subjectively.
arfalarf took the words right out of my mouth; i don't think materialism totally denies consciousness exists; materialism says consciousness is created by nuerological firings of the brain.
13.7 billion yrs ago the universe appeared. Matter cooled and condensed, stars ignited to forge heavy elements, supernovae seeded the galaxy. 9.2 billion yrs after the bang, the Earth formed. Starshine made organic molecules reproduce, compete and evolve. 2.5 million yrs ago an apelike creature started to use tools. Humans walked on the moon and now approach immortality. A small part of the cosmos, the human mind, reflects on itself and the universe becomes self-aware. Explain that!
You appear to be making an epistemic argument based on your reading of Hume. While not invalid, I do not find the argument particularly troubling. Propose another mechanism that has the explanatory power of causation. In the absence of such an explanation, I ASSUME that head trauma and death are not related through mere correlation or coincidence. One causes the other. If you do not believe so, go let someone hit you in the head with a pipe wrench and then see how you feel about Hume.
What about near death experiences? it appears to show that consciousness doesn't out of existence when brain function is tramatically comprised. The brain appears to be more of a restrainer, filter of consciousness then the producer of it or the source of it.
@500bigguy100 You raise an interesting point here. The truth is, we don't know for sure whether out of body experiences are real or just hallucinations. Some research is being done on that topic, but there is still a preponderance of evidence suggesting a causal role for the brain in consciousness (I say this as someone who studies neuropsychology). Furthermore, I have yet to see a plausible model for mind/brain relationship that denies the causal role of the brain.
Wrong Searle, wrong. It is not in any way a "fact", irreducible or otherwise, that Consciousness is a product of brain processes, nor is it spatially local. Searle has such a poor grasp of what consciousness is, especially after discussing its irreducibility in principle, that I just am blown away by his incoherence. No wonder I never read these blabbermouth's books. There is far more substantive thought in the ancients or in my own head!!
In this interview, the stuff Searle is saying sounds very much like eliminative materialism.
Although he hasn't made conscious states synonymous with brain states as such, there's still a great deal of reduction from the dualistic view. Isn't biology materialist?
@HappyJumpings I can pretty much assure you by having now listened to a considerable amount of his lectures that he's not a 'eliminativist', his worldview is clearly not entirely material. I can refer you, or anyone who's interested for that matter, to some of those on the Berkeley's online courses page, being Searle the instructor of the Philosophy of Mind one. You'd have to google it though.
There are single cell organisms that do not contain neurons that: reproduce, react to the environment, and carry out thousands of cellular functions at the same time. It is this intelligence, or even the growth of flowers or other "living" things that are guided by an intelligence outside of any neuron. What is directing the thousands of functions within a nerve cell? This is the intelligence we are refering to.
We ain´t getting out of the mess until we leave behind the dualist/materialist old dilemma and se we start approaching at it in a scientific way, as long as possible.
And after, we when have collected evidence, who cares if it´s more dualist-like or materialist-like?
After watching Dennetts explanation at watch?v=qYYFQiN052c Searle just made me a liitle bit more stupider (luckily Dennett made me allot smarter). He rejects materialism and then says that conciousness and the brain is completely biological...
Because Dennett´s "homunculi" tries to explain consciousness giving for granted that it is the "sum of its parts", for which we don´t have empiric evidence yet.
The difference is that materialists want to show that consciousness is "nothing more than" something else, such as dispositions to behavior (radical behaviorism), computer program states (functionalism), states of the brain (identity theories), etc. In other words, they want to reduce mental states down to some physical phenomenon and then say that the phenomenon in question is "all there is" to consciousness.
Searle, on the other hand, says we first must acknowledge that conscious states are irreducible in the sense that no matter how we explain them, there's still a "something it's like" to be us, that is to have experiences. So, when you think about it, materialists are obviously wrong to use terms like "nothing more than..." when our conscious states clearly constitute their own set of distinct phenomena.
But Searle accepts a perfectly materialistic position,so he is incoherent, at least in this video.
"materialists are obviously wrong to use terms like "nothing more than..." when our conscious states clearly constitute their own set of distinct phenomena."
Materialist perfectly acknowledges stuff like: "A System can be more than the sum of it's part" or Synergy. The scientific term for it is "emergence".
Also why can it be "nothing more than" you only have explain what is ACTUALLY there.
No, dualists maintain that consciousness is something "over and above" the physical world, not merely that conscious states are distinct phenomena (hence the term dualism, the contrast between the "physical" matter of the brain and the "immaterial" nature of the mind). Searle's not a dualist because he believes that mental states are causally reducible, but not ontologically reducible. You might want to read Searle's paper "Why I'm Not a Substance Dualist," that helped clarify things for me.
What you can do is reduce a liquid into its material parts and see that this liquid is water molecules interacting and sometimes this "emergence" is quite unexpected and significant but ultimately understandable through reduction into its parts. Now you are trying to tell me that Consciousness does not need parts, it is fundamental, like a fundamental particle that MAY be possible, but why need a brain then full of parts, if that parts is not needed to build it?
I think consciousness corresponds to the brain the way the liquidity of the water does in your example; it is emergent, but it does not have any further powers of its own above the powers of the sum total of its neurons and their causal interactions. What makes it stand out from phenomena like liquidity is that it has a subjective component since it is experienced. People get hung up on figuring out how that's possible; well, I think many phenomena in nature lack causal necessity.
Emergent properties can be completely unexpected, I don't see how you can exclude consciousness. Also how would the experience and awareness not be the result of a casual system.
Experience and awareness (that is, consciousness) IS the result of the causal powers of the system. States of matter are examples of other causally emergent properties of systems. It would appear that you and I are in agreement on that point, right? So, if you look at it that way, you can say that consciousness is a biological process like any other, it just happens to have the feature of subjectivity, which is astounding, and not 'logically necessary,' but that doesn't mean it's not physical.
So the brain is needed to unhide / channel this fundamental phenomena? Aha, I can also say that for liquidity too then, it is a fundamental phenomena that needs water molecules to unmask it! Fundamental forces does not need "help" they are readily observed alone. Consciousness is going to fall "victim" to this same reductive examination.
It is built out of many causal systems, these systems can be reduced until you reach atoms, atoms can of course be further reduced into the most fundamental particles / forces which is still unknown.
So yeah ontologically, but practically it is kind of meaningless in the real material world it can be pulled apart into the causal parts, and these in turn.
Ytube ate my first post of 4. Anyway under your and Searles definition of "distinct phenomena" and ontology (I don't deny the existence, and think consciousness is very real) something like liquidity is technically ontologically irreducible in ITSELF. You cannot chop liquidity as a phenomena in itself into sub-liquidity that is only half-liquid and half-exists. But it can be subject to different grades of viscosity. There can also be variation of consciousness from young kids to adults.
Searle is the superhomie
biringzm 5 days ago
How dull it must be to exist thinking you are a robot.
Ekusah 1 month ago
@Ekusah Why would that be boring? Or, why would it be duller than thinking you are a spirit?
Vincentaneous 1 month ago
@Vincentaneous the prospect of futility, accepting that you are a pre-thought and that nothing about yourself is significant.
That's what I think would be boring.
Ekusah 1 month ago
The video started with the left foot: "We all know what consciousness is?" That's what the interviewer said. So, we already know what consciousness is, aaa? The interview ended right there n the beginning !
SciTechExplained 3 months ago
@SciTechExplained : The interview's value lies more in what Searle has to say that what the interviewer has to say. In any case the interviewer didn't mean we know as in know-and-can-explain; he just meant we know as in know-as-experience.
DrDeist 18 hours ago
Sadly, he does not go into detail about why he thinks that conscious mental states are causal. I am much more inclined to think the opposite. Consciousness is epiphenomenal, it is being simulated and can itself not in return influence other conscious or unconscious mental states. It is not that you think, therefore you are, but rather that you think and afterwards you come into being.
AnAmiC 3 months ago
I disagree. I do not thing consciousness is produced explicitly by the brain...
PerfectDecalibration 3 months ago
@PerfectDecalibration Then why does consciousness appear to be hindered when the brain is damaged, and why does it appear to end when the brain stops functioning or is destroyed?
Vincentaneous 1 month ago
@Vincentaneous Because I believe that consciousness is intertwined in a complicated way with the brain. Possibly quantum mechanically.
I don't think we know enough about consciousness to say that it "ends" when the brain stops functioning or is destroyed.
We also haven't agreed upon a definition of consciousness, which is hard to define anyway, which makes this hard to talk about.
PerfectDecalibration 1 month ago 2
@Vincentaneous : Seems obvious that consciousness supervenes on neuronal activity but this doesn't demystify consciousness.
DrDeist 18 hours ago
I am consciousness in a human template
kroovyandcal 3 months ago
"Conscious states are caused by neuronal processes within the brain"?
So how come the seed, so to speak, of consciousness actually preceded the physical creation of the brain?
Consciousness existed in the cells that united to form the body in which the brain formed. So the blueprint had to first exist. Such an organ did not form itself to do its wondrous things unless it developed according to a plan, which is a product of thought which is consciousness, and ergo preceded the brain.
ProfessorSpyraKon 4 months ago
I don't get it, what serious scientist or philosopher is arguing that consciousness is NOT a biological phenomenon?
Does Searle think he is making some momentous claim?
powereddrive 4 months ago
@powereddrive Um, he is not a materialist, he does not think consciousness is ontologically reducible to neuronal like most "serious scientists or philosophers" do. Did you not get that from the way he talked about consciousness having a first person ontology?
darklord220 4 months ago
@darklord220
What serious philosopher is arguing for dualism? Searle says consciousness is a biological phenomenon, and I am saying: who says it is not? I am reminded of Dennett's notion of Cartesian materialism.
powereddrive 3 months ago
@powereddrive He is not arguing for dualist, it seems as if you are stuck with the cartestian categories. Searle does believe consciousness is CAUSALLY reducible to the activity of neurons, but not ONTOLOGICALLY reducible. Consciousness is a biological phenomena but it is not reducible down back to neuronal activity (one neuron =/= consciousness). At least not yet.
darklord220 3 months ago
@darklord220
I KNOW HE IS NOT ARGUING FOR THE CASE OF DUALISM, what he is saying is that his mission is to argue against dualism and I am saying that no such argument exists for him to attack. And I know he is not saying one neuron is equal to consciousness because NO ONE IS SAYING THAT, so I ask why state your uncontroversial opinions as if they were somehow profound? That is what he is doing in this video.
powereddrive 3 months ago
@powereddrive I don't think you understand the positions of eliminative materialists and type physicalists very well, because they expound the views John Searle mentions in this video.
darklord220 3 months ago
@darklord220
No they do not, I have taken Searle's class at Berkeley and I know for a fact that he invents straw men to knock down.
powereddrive 3 months ago
@powereddrive You don't know for a fact that he invents straw men because he doesn't.
darklord220 3 months ago
@darklord220
Yes he does, I can send you an email going into specifics if you want, but any philosopher who says Descartes should not be taken seriously because people still believed in unicorns in the sixteenth century is someone who does not take opposing arguments seriously.
powereddrive 3 months ago
@powereddrive Um, its a three minute segment and he used a simplistic attack on Descartes to make a point. Also, don't you think he doesn't take descartes seriously for different reasons? His teaching company lectures would make that apparent.
darklord220 3 months ago
@darklord220 dualism*
darklord220 3 months ago
For John Searle to questionably falsify the materist view that consciousness is an illussion by suggesting that an individual has the means to "know" from personal experience that consciousness exists is deeply misleading.
From my best understanding, consciousness is merely a placeholder word to describe a phenomenon that we do not fully have any knowledge of.
thedeeliciousplum 5 months ago
israelsocratus 5 months ago
I want John Searle as my grandfather.
BlakeAlbinson 5 months ago 9
@BlakeAlbinson that would be awesome!
darklord220 4 months ago
strange to see how searle has changed over the years...iam used to seeing him on brian magee.
dvarblo 6 months ago
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how is talking of consciousness purely as biological any different than talking about it in reductionist/physical terms?
Obscuredbywinds 7 months ago
Comment removed
Obscuredbywinds 7 months ago
Explain "humans approach immortality" if you don't mind.
S2Cents 7 months ago
you said nothing hummm
1Ryon 7 months ago
very confident and very wrong!
cunnidvd 7 months ago
@cunnidvd Agreed. To me it sounds like he's conflating sense perception and thought process with consciousness. You need to be conscious to think and feel, of course, but that is not the sum of what consciousness is. Obviously not.
fishybishbash 7 months ago
@TheEpicureanAtheist I wish I'd been a philosopher rather than a neuroscientist. It's so tiresome for me to have to back up all of my ideas with reproducable evidence, not to mention that, more often than not, the evidence doesn't support my hypotheses at all! Arguing by metaphor is so much more satisfying.
acr08807 7 months ago
@acr08807 You think the reasonings are metaphors because you are a dumb ass. Sorry, your statements are equivalent to a caveman who saw mathematics and symbolic logic for the first time and going "Derp, what to these random drawings prove? Nuffin", lol not all matters demand empirical proof.
MartyrofCake 6 months ago
@MartyrofCake What is your empirical proof that not all matters demand empirical proof?
acr08807 6 months ago
@acr08807 Are you fucking stupid? Are you trying to be a smartass? Do you provide empirical proof for logical deductions?
MartyrofCake 6 months ago
@MartyrofCake Are you fucking stupid? Are you trying to be a smartass? Do you test the premises of your logical deductions empirically? Do you test the inferential rules you use to achieve your logical deductions empirically? If not, how do you know that your premises are correct or your inferential rules useful?
acr08807 6 months ago
@acr08807 A priori deductions do not demand empirical proof and not all empirical methods are grounded in empiricism. Fields in mathematics and logic provide good example of this, why don't you research yourself? It is obvious that you don't know what you are even talking about.
MartyrofCake 6 months ago
@MartyrofCake What's obvious is that you're an obscurantist. Why do we have the postulates that we have for number theory or geometry or algebra, instead of some set of postulates that would, after logical deduction, reach different conclusions?
acr08807 6 months ago
@MartyrofCake For that matter, why do you think the inferential rules for math are set in stone? Before the 20th Century, rigorous math was based on constructive proofs. Hilbert changed that. There are some mathematicians who do not accept non-constructive proofs as valid. Still, the vast majority of mathematicians use them because they produce useful results.
acr08807 6 months ago
@acr08807 Read Kant.
misha0gdc 5 months ago
@misha0gdc I read Critique of Pure Reason. My reaction in the context of this discussion is that I agree biology gives us certain preconceptions, but those preconceptions do not always lead to discovery of the objective truth, which is all the more reason to be careful what we take as a postulate.
acr08807 5 months ago
@acr08807 I don't need science to know that I exist. Somethings are self evident and do not need an external authority to be validated.
MyITRcom 3 months ago
@MyITRcom Have you ever thought something was self-evident but discovered later that it was not true?
acr08807 3 months ago
@alitza8844 Hey, dumbass, he has written books that answer YOUR superficial statements. Your objections are run of the mill, unoriginal, and stupid.
darklord220 9 months ago
Patricia Churchland FTW
jurviz 9 months ago
premise 2 and 3 seem pretty shaky. what are good videos that prove 2 and 3 are certainly true? email me at g mail prefix thinkingsincerely
seeker798270 9 months ago
Now this is what I call a proper philosopher. Patricia Churchland could do well to listen to this. Consciousness is real and irreducible. Cogito ergo sum.
MrNikodemus2 9 months ago
Performing conscious processes means being conscious. There's nothing else to consciousness but performing these activities/processes. Some of these are perception, cognition, operation with signs, feeling, experiencing, etc. Just because I am doing these things does not mean I have a mind. It just means that physical stuff can perform conscious processes.
TheRedHutt 10 months ago
@TheRedHutt
Yes, and all these things you've listed, including perception, cognition, interpretation and recognition of signs, are perfectly conceivable without subjective consciousness.
twooffour 10 months ago
@TheRedHutt read my newest responses to twooffour. its an interesting dialogue we have going now
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
In searle's book, intro to philosophy of mind, searle says that conciousness is causally reducible to the the brain, but not ontologically reducible to the brain like how music is caused by instruments but music is not an instrument. Hope that helps some of y'all. Read his book
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@tatsumakisempyukaku
Wel, musix is reducible to sound waves, so...
twooffour 10 months ago
@twooffour: according to our experience, sound is the result of air molecules colliding against our ear drum which turns into electro-chemical impulses which the brain interprets as sound. How can electricity and chemicals be a sound of which can easily have produced a sight. and what makes something music is more than just sound. do you see the issue? it may prove ostensive for you
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@tatsumakisempyukaku
"How can electricity and chemicals be a sound of which can easily have produced a sight."
I have no idea what you're talking about. Please learn English.
twooffour 10 months ago
@twooffour well you obviously wrote to me that "musix" (learn to spell) is reducible to soundwaves. and i was merely pointing out that it does not. Moreover, it is not clear for some people to see the issue at hand. Some philosophical problems are such that you will have to just realize that it is a problem and that no words will be sufficient to point the problem to you. It's akin to how words are useless to describe what redness looks like to a blind person. You just have to know
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@tatsumakisempyukaku
Well, you brought up an invalid example about how music isn't reducible to the MUSICAL INSTRUMENT (like, you know, consciousness to the brain), ignoring the obvious issue that music consists of SOUNDWAVES, not music instruments.
At any rate, yea, it's obviously also the interaction with our brains and our recognition of structure in it, plus the distinction between various acoustic impressions and the induced cognitive associations + emotional responses etc.
twooffour 10 months ago
@twooffour in my initial statement, i said that according to searle, consciousness may be causally reducible to synaptic firings but is not ontologically reducible to synaptic firings. another analogous example would be society. Society is causally reducible to human-to-human interaction but society itself is not a human. The key is discerning the difference between causal reductions and ontological ones. Science is too used to causal reductions and tends to overlook ontological ones.
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@twooffour so as for the step by step process as to how we "hear" sounds. Air molecules collide against our ear drum. The ear drum then vibrates and causes electro-chemical impulses to be sent to the brain. These electro chemical impulses are then interpreted as sound in our "heads" Now, I think we can agree that there arent air molecules colliding about in our cranial cavity. so already there's an ontological difference between air molecules colliding and electrical impulses. Yes theres a
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@twooffour yes there's a causal link, but there are ontological distinctions that must be made. so in the case of consciousness, it may be caused by the brain, but it is not itself the brain.
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@tatsumakisempyukaku
Um, I'm no expert in what "ontology" means, but reducing the entirety of music (incl. its creation and perception) to nothing but sound waves, wouldn't be an "ontological" mistake, it would be a FACTUAL one.
The sound, and the neural activity, are two different PROCESSES.
Yes, society isn't a "human" - it's a whole bunch of humans. What kind of an example is that?
twooffour 10 months ago
@twooffour Ontology is the study of existence/being or the nature of reality itself. Kant distinguished btwn the phenomenon (P) & the noumena (N) where P is our conscious experience of things and N was the thing itself independent of experience. if u experience seeing a red apple, photons hit your retina, and the "brain" interprets a color from the photons. but is the apple really red? or are the photons red? This is ontology, asking what the isness of a thing.
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@tatsumakisempyukaku
Ah, so that's what ontology is. Interesting - I know that as the hard problem of consciousness, but whatever. In that case, you're doing a bad job describing it, because whether the apple or the photons are red is NOT the issue - the apple objectively reflects red light, that's your objective reality.
Our red "qualia" is the consciousness part.
twooffour 10 months ago
@twooffour first of all, how can i describe something you've never seen before? If you were blind, how would you suggest that i describe the appearence of redness to you? I wouldn't be able to. In knowing this, i saw that you have never "seen" the problem of consciousness. All i can do is clumsily use words until you "fell" into the understanding of the issue. And you have only barely scratched the surface of the issue. for instance, you said that "the apple objectively reflects red light,
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@twooffour ...that's your objective reality" What you dont currently notice is that the notion of the apple reflecting red light objectively only occurs in your first person subjective ontology, namely your consciousness. any notion of ontological objectivity (a wolrd independent of an observer), is made from a subjective (ontologically subjective, not to be confused with being biased) conscious perspective. The only objective reality is that which the subjective conscious reality sees.
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@twooffour this is what is referred to as the ego centric predicament. Basically, there's no getting outside of consciousness. you are trapped within it, you are it. You are the subjective ontology. Notions of an observer independent reality are just that, notions. for you cannot get ouside yourself. True we have experiences of a brain, a tree, a star etc, but part of being conscious is to have experiences. and those experiences arent independent of us. ok good nite 4 now
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@twooffour as for what makes music nothing but sound waves factually wrong is on the very point of ontology. The perception of sound is not itself air molecules colliding, though it may be caused by the colliding of air molecules. & this distinction is an ontological one. you are supposedly comprised of cells but are you a cell? no, you are more than your parts, just as society and consciousness and this is the point searle, i think, correctly makes.
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@tatsumakisempyukaku
Well, in that case I don't know what "ontology" is good for in this case, because it's just plain factually, technically wrong in any respect - any description of the process of listening to music without considering its interaction with the brain is awfully incomplete.
As for the second part, what??!
Society isn't a human - it's a BUNCH of interacting humans.
I am not A cell - I'm a BUNCH of interacting cells and a number of chemicals thrown in.
twooffour 10 months ago
@twooffour i didn't see this reply until i was about to log off. I guess you just don't get it. Pick up searle's book, Introduction to Philosophy of mind, there he spells out the whole issue in a couple of hundred pages which is beyond the scope of this youtube comment setting. Get back to me if you ever decide to read it.
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@tatsumakisempyukaku
I honestly don't even know what you're trying to get at. What's your POINT?
You're jumping from emergence, to problem of consciousness, to solipsism. What is it now?
Yea, for all I know, only I exist, everyone else might be a zombie, or not exist - in that light, however, there are no soundwaves and no synpapses, since I don't experience them directly, right?
Then you're asking how I'd describe redness to a blind person... well, you forgot to mention that the blind dude..
twooffour 10 months ago
@twooffour my orignal point was that in reading some of the comments, i realized som ppl didnt grasp the ontological distinctions that searle was making. I was gonna leave it at that, but you remarked on my comment, and so now we have this little dialectic between us. Now with you i was merely trying to explain to you the problem at hand in this field. I had a hunch that you didn't realize the issue either becuz of what you were saying and as it turned out, you had no idea of ontology
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@twooffour You just started to grasp the concept of the philosophical branch of ontology. as you learn more and more about this subject matter, the problem of consciousness will be better understood. You see, alot of ppl come to issue with their preconceived notions of which blind them from the real problem at hand. There's a saying, truth is everywhere around us except for where we cast the shadow. your assumptions of materialism & science cast a dark shadow making it hard for you to c
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@twooffour now i'm no different from you. I once had this issue in this area myself. and who knows what other shadows im casting. So the point was to use words to help you see the problem. As for the blind man and solipsism, well if that's where the line of reasoning leads to then I'll have to accept that now wont I? Tell me, all you know of anything only comes from you being conscious. so how do you get outside of urslef to verify anything? to be clear, i dont think solipsism is the end..
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@twooffour ....I don't think solipsism is the end point for various reasons. But the fact that you tried to invoke a reductio ad absurdem via solipsism just goes to show that you really havent chewed on these issues long enough if at all. Now this is not an attack on you, it's an observation. its like i lived in japan all my life, and youre trying to tell me about japan while never having been there, and i can just tell that you havent been there by what youre saying. read searle's book
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@tatsumakisempyukaku
... was also a hardcore solipsist, right?
So not only won't he be able to imagine red, he also won't accept that lights and "seeing" exists in the first place - because, hey, to his consicousness, there is no light, and everyone else just keeps talking text.
How you're gonna reason with THAT??
See, that's where being all over the place gets you.
twooffour 10 months ago
@tatsumakisempyukaku
No one ever said that consciousness was "a neuron". Seriously, make SOME sense, please.
twooffour 10 months ago
@twooffour well you intially responded to me with "Wel, musix is reducible to sound waves, so..." from this i inferred that you saw music as nothing more than a soundwave and from this, if my inference is correct, that consciousness is nothing more da brain I've made plenty of sense. there's no need to try and attack me if you think i'm incorrect. all you need do is reply with intelligible counter points. in this way we can be civil and hopefully arrive at the truth. gotta go to work now c ya
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@tatsumakisempyukaku
I've already given you the disclaimer on that "music is soundwaves RATHER THAN MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS" days ago.
twooffour 10 months ago
@twooffour da problem scientists make is that they do causal reductions and in so doing it often times turns out that by doing these reductions we they find dat X is caused by Y and dat X's are nothin but Y's. this happens rightfully so on many occasions. But because of this habitual occurence scientist at times overlook the fact that though A's may be caused by B's, it some times is the case that A's are not B's though they may causally be reduced to B's. its a causal vs ontological point.
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@twooffour oh and yes, i purposefully misspelled words to get everything to fit due to character limitations
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
@tatsumakisempyukaku
At the end of the day, music WILL be reducible to all of that, explaining everything from our recognition of patterns or phrases to our emotional responses to certain aural stimuli and basically our entire musical experience.
The only seemingly "irreducible" element will be, again, the qualia. I.e., why does a sound with a low amount of trebles sound "mellow".
Well, actually, our association and characterization of it as "mellow" is also explainable, but the...
twooffour 10 months ago
@tatsumakisempyukaku
... actual sensation of the mellowness isn't.
Why does lower frequency "sound" "lower" to us? How does a C, sound specifically like a C (esp. for those with absolute pitch)?
twooffour 10 months ago
Searle contradicts himself by first denying materialism and then claiming that consiousness is a byproduct of material processes.
vsaluki 10 months ago
Searle is a worthless idiot!
OmarThePug 11 months ago
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i think consciousness is causal dead end of neuronal processes in the brain.just think about bullet hiting to a wall it leaves impression on wall keeping this example in mind i think consciousness is act like wall of something that we dont know yet that something receives impresion from brain processes.that could explain qualia.
raviJadhav250 11 months ago
He says that consciousness is irreducible yet also says that it's a biological process localized to bodies/brains. Isn't that reductive? Simple analogy: A and B are playing a game, viz. throwing a ball back and forth. Are there 3 things here or 4? There's A, B, and the ball. But is there an additional thing that "emerges" from this, viz. the game itself? Is this game a thing or just an activity done by things? If a "mind" is a thing, if "mental stuff" exists, then there's 4. I think there's 3.
TheRedHutt 1 year ago
@TheRedHutt the game is a concept, and as such not reducable
rapatski 1 year ago
@rapatski Yes. The game is just a concept rather than a real thing that emerges out of the two people throwing the ball. I'm NOT claiming that the game is reducible, but that it's not a real thing (just a concept). We have a concept of consciousness, but it doesn't follow that consciousness exists as anything more than bodily (e.g. neural) activity.
A reductive explanation of consciousness in terms of bodily activity would actually vindicate consciousness, but such a reduction isn't possible.
TheRedHutt 1 year ago
@TheRedHutt
Um, the game is a process. There's two objects, but obviously a whole lot more going on in terms of what actually happens.
Is the game self-aware?
twooffour 10 months ago
@twooffour Yes, the game is a process. You say "but" as if to disagree, but that's exactly my point. There is a whole lot more going on here... consciousness is something that goes on, i.e. an activity. There is no "mind," just a physical thing performing various processes, e.g. operating with physical signs, processing physical sensory inputs, etc. This is a simple ontological confusion that Searle get into when he says, "we all have this inner qualitative subjective stuff." What stuff, Searle?
TheRedHutt 10 months ago
@TheRedHutt
The conscious experience? Do you have one?
twooffour 10 months ago
@twooffour Do I have the/one conscious experience? I'm not sure what that means. Of course I have so-called experiences. Of course I am a conscious thing, an experiencer. This does not mean there is some "mind" involved in what I am able to do.
TheRedHutt 10 months ago
@TheRedHutt
Well, whether your conscious experience is made of lots of interchanging "I"s, is another thing.
You're saying you're a conscious thing, and an experienced. So basically, you have a conscious experience (it's saying the same thing).
This conscious experience IS that "subjective stuff" Searle's referring to, plain and simple.
Not sure what your last sentence is supposed to mean - "mind" is generally understood as the emergence from the brain.
twooffour 10 months ago
@twooffour No, it's not saying the same thing. Just because my body is performing conscious processes does not mean that my body (viz. brain) "gives rise" to a mind. An action is not the same as a thing. This is a simple ontological oversight. Experience is not stuff. Because "experience" is a noun does not mean that it is a thing. Consciousness does not emerge from the brain; consciousNESS is just the abstract property of being conscious, which purely physical stuff can be.
TheRedHutt 10 months ago
@TheRedHutt
I'm pretty certain he didn't mean the word "stuff" in the literal sense of a "thing", or matter.
At any rate, what, in your mind, does "performing conscious processes" mean? To me, it sounds like an automaton with a desktop on the "surface" - without actual conscious experience.
twooffour 10 months ago
So consciousness and digestion are real biological functions. Digestion is reducible obviously (search wikipedia) but consciousness isn't???
macintub 1 year ago
I'm so grateful I am taking a class with this professor (Searle) next semester!
theNimboo 1 year ago
Searle says...First: Consciousness is Real and Irreducible. FALSE!!
Consciousness IS both Real AND Reducible.
Scofield0085 1 year ago
@Scofield0085
Reduce then, and prove him wrong. Go ahead, let's see it.
boys0fsummer1 10 months ago
@boys0fsummer1 First, dispense with the notion that consciousness is a word which has some intrinsic meaning, or one single definition.
Consciousness is a word that people use to summarize a bunch of different experiences or some particular experience or phenomena which they recall or which they are partaking in. Whatever you're 'conscious' of at any given time can be further broken down (i.e. reduced) just by describing it in more detail. Level of detail is of course contingent on knowledge.
Scofield0085 10 months ago
@Scofield0085
I am not sure what you mean. Also, by reducible, I assume it is meant reducible to physical processes in the brain.
boys0fsummer1 10 months ago
@boys0fsummer1 Yes, I fully concede that its all physical processes in the brain. Thats about as much as we know.
Professor Searle, however, claims that it is "biological" and that it is in the brain, and that we know very little about it compared to other body parts (which is true)...yet he still (contradicts himself and) says that it is "irreducible." How exactly does that make any sense? Its flat out absurd.
Scofield0085 10 months ago
@Scofield0085
He is saying that perhaps you can map which neural circuits activate when a certain conscious state is felt, but why should the motion of particles result in subjective experience? For example, when a basketball falls to the ground, or current flows in a wire, why is there no subjective experience felt by something? Have you ever heard of the Chinese room experiment?
boys0fsummer1 10 months ago
@boys0fsummer1 Chinese room experiment WAS indeed a very persuasive argument right up until around 1859 when Darwin came along...Thanks to Darwin (and many others), you now have access to beautifully-written articles by people like Tecumseh Fitch on Nano-Intentionality/Sub-cellular intelligence.
Once you begin to imagine and think about the vast time scales of biological evolution, its easy to see how neurons, given their tremendous history, would eventually instantiate meaning or experience.
Scofield0085 10 months ago
@Scofield0085
I'm sorry, but that argument from huge numbers doesn't work. Don't worry, given enough time, anything is possible so there is no need to explain the actual mechanisms. When Darwin proposed his theory, cells were thought to be simple blobs of protoplasm. But, the more we learn about biology, the more complicated and intricate it is revealed to be. For example, why haven't we been able to reverse engineer life yet? We even the blueprint. Yet 50 years after Miller-Uray, no.
boys0fsummer1 10 months ago
@boys0fsummer1 "...that argument from huge numbers doesn't work..."
Response: Are you saying evolution didn't happen?
"...so there is no need to explain the actual mechanisms...the more we learn about biology, the more complicated and intricate..."
Response: This is precisely what evolution does...it builds fairly "complicated and intricate" organisms. Of course current science doesn't tell us how most of the 'actual mechanisms' work, but that doesn't therefore translate to "irreducible."
Scofield0085 10 months ago
The brain is a conduit for consciousness not its origin. I think time will ultimatly reveal that he was only representing part of the puzzle but not the ultimate truth.
PlayMoreLoud 1 year ago
I believe this video may lead to a misunderstanding of Searle's work as a whole. If you read his books or papers what you will see is that this theory is part of a much larger frame work which seeks to explain the issues of consciousness which have arisen from simple category mistakes. I would strongly recommend reading his introductory book 'Mind', its easy to read and the concepts are significant even at post-graduate level.
TheMilodron 1 year ago 11
@TheMilodron
Thanks for the tip,I will look forward to checking it out!
RandomVortex 1 year ago
@TheMilodron i know what you mean. you're absolutely correct
tatsumakisempyukaku 10 months ago
Comment removed
cunnidvd 7 months ago
this hardly answers anything... not to mention the hard problem of consciousness: why do we have it as a subjective experience rather than objective? his base of argument is not strong enough. just because it only seems to be there when the brain is active doesn't mean that it comes from the brain. you can't say that unless you really know which part of the brain that gives you consciousness. amirite? pardon for my bad english.
rahxun 1 year ago
@rahxun
No.
RandomVortex 1 year ago
Yo Lenny, who is the interviewer?
Namseidal96 1 year ago
@Namseidal96 Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn
LennyBound 1 year ago
i disagree with him, no-one can locate the ego/self/conciousness in the brain it is a tool a vehicle nothing more.
michael616joaquin 1 year ago
@michael616joaquin Well there are attempts to do so. One such attempt is called the Global Workspace Theory, which states that consciousness arises from a network in the brain that projects unconscious stimuli right throughout the cortex, in a synchronized fashion. There are of course many other theories, with their respective explanatory merits. I wouldn't state outright that we can never 'locate' consciousness. Its a conceptual minefield!
BlankVellum 1 year ago
didn't he just argue materialism?? right after saying materialism wasn't true?
he said materialism is wrong, then said that consciousness is the product of biological activity.. Excuse me but when did biology stop being a material field?
SHIBBYiPANDA 1 year ago
@SHIBBYiPANDA
yes, in essence you're right: he rejects dualism and accepts that conciousness grounded by biological events. He only appears to reject materialism because alot of materialists deny Consciousness. He claims that Consciousness is system-level phenomena that arises out of biological events.
fuzzyami 1 year ago
didn't he just argue materialism??
SHIBBYiPANDA 1 year ago
We can understand objective consciousness, but how can we possibly understand the subjective experience or "feeling" of consciousness. You cannot even demonstrate that anyone other than yourself "feels" anything subjectively.
CambridgeHeights 1 year ago
arfalarf took the words right out of my mouth; i don't think materialism totally denies consciousness exists; materialism says consciousness is created by nuerological firings of the brain.
iggypot 1 year ago
13.7 billion yrs ago the universe appeared. Matter cooled and condensed, stars ignited to forge heavy elements, supernovae seeded the galaxy. 9.2 billion yrs after the bang, the Earth formed. Starshine made organic molecules reproduce, compete and evolve. 2.5 million yrs ago an apelike creature started to use tools. Humans walked on the moon and now approach immortality. A small part of the cosmos, the human mind, reflects on itself and the universe becomes self-aware. Explain that!
mrfpercival 1 year ago 8
@mrfpercival
I think you just did.
GnomesAmok 1 year ago
You appear to be making an epistemic argument based on your reading of Hume. While not invalid, I do not find the argument particularly troubling. Propose another mechanism that has the explanatory power of causation. In the absence of such an explanation, I ASSUME that head trauma and death are not related through mere correlation or coincidence. One causes the other. If you do not believe so, go let someone hit you in the head with a pipe wrench and then see how you feel about Hume.
BearsEatBeats914 1 year ago
@BearsEatBeats914
What about near death experiences? it appears to show that consciousness doesn't out of existence when brain function is tramatically comprised. The brain appears to be more of a restrainer, filter of consciousness then the producer of it or the source of it.
500bigguy100 1 year ago
@500bigguy100 You raise an interesting point here. The truth is, we don't know for sure whether out of body experiences are real or just hallucinations. Some research is being done on that topic, but there is still a preponderance of evidence suggesting a causal role for the brain in consciousness (I say this as someone who studies neuropsychology). Furthermore, I have yet to see a plausible model for mind/brain relationship that denies the causal role of the brain.
BearsEatBeats914 1 year ago
Wrong Searle, wrong. It is not in any way a "fact", irreducible or otherwise, that Consciousness is a product of brain processes, nor is it spatially local. Searle has such a poor grasp of what consciousness is, especially after discussing its irreducibility in principle, that I just am blown away by his incoherence. No wonder I never read these blabbermouth's books. There is far more substantive thought in the ancients or in my own head!!
wenaolong 1 year ago
@wenaolong are there any good books on the theory of consciousness?
kilija383 1 year ago
In this interview, the stuff Searle is saying sounds very much like eliminative materialism.
Although he hasn't made conscious states synonymous with brain states as such, there's still a great deal of reduction from the dualistic view. Isn't biology materialist?
HappyJumpings 1 year ago
@HappyJumpings I can pretty much assure you by having now listened to a considerable amount of his lectures that he's not a 'eliminativist', his worldview is clearly not entirely material. I can refer you, or anyone who's interested for that matter, to some of those on the Berkeley's online courses page, being Searle the instructor of the Philosophy of Mind one. You'd have to google it though.
Atemporal 1 year ago
@Atemporal Oh yes, I definitely agree that his views are not eliminitavist.
It just seems that this particular interview could be interpreted as such.
HappyJumpings 1 year ago
I say baloney ...
lourak 1 year ago
There are single cell organisms that do not contain neurons that: reproduce, react to the environment, and carry out thousands of cellular functions at the same time. It is this intelligence, or even the growth of flowers or other "living" things that are guided by an intelligence outside of any neuron. What is directing the thousands of functions within a nerve cell? This is the intelligence we are refering to.
EnlightenedJourney 1 year ago
find 'rediscovery of the mind' by john searle @ your local library
thisisbunk 1 year ago
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fhumayun 1 year ago
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fhumayun 1 year ago
We ain´t getting out of the mess until we leave behind the dualist/materialist old dilemma and se we start approaching at it in a scientific way, as long as possible.
And after, we when have collected evidence, who cares if it´s more dualist-like or materialist-like?
Burdell22000 1 year ago
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fhumayun 1 year ago
After watching Dennetts explanation at watch?v=qYYFQiN052c Searle just made me a liitle bit more stupider (luckily Dennett made me allot smarter). He rejects materialism and then says that conciousness and the brain is completely biological...
Completely incoherent.
dianep123 2 years ago
Because Dennett´s "homunculi" tries to explain consciousness giving for granted that it is the "sum of its parts", for which we don´t have empiric evidence yet.
Burdell22000 1 year ago
Doesn't everyone all ready know this?
PhrygianBlack 2 years ago
Listening to Searle and Chalmers really makes one realize how enlightened Dennett is.
rickenione 2 years ago
ugghhh....please...
kwalk30 2 years ago
I take it you don't agree with me? :)
rickenione 2 years ago
Can someone enlighten me as to how materialism differs from Searle's perception of consciousness?
Brand0ni0 2 years ago
@Brand0ni0 exactly what I was wondering.
iamthewalrusQ 2 years ago
The difference is that materialists want to show that consciousness is "nothing more than" something else, such as dispositions to behavior (radical behaviorism), computer program states (functionalism), states of the brain (identity theories), etc. In other words, they want to reduce mental states down to some physical phenomenon and then say that the phenomenon in question is "all there is" to consciousness.
BearsEatBeats914 2 years ago
Searle, on the other hand, says we first must acknowledge that conscious states are irreducible in the sense that no matter how we explain them, there's still a "something it's like" to be us, that is to have experiences. So, when you think about it, materialists are obviously wrong to use terms like "nothing more than..." when our conscious states clearly constitute their own set of distinct phenomena.
BearsEatBeats914 2 years ago
This has been flagged as spam show
But Searle accepts a perfectly materialistic position,so he is incoherent, at least in this video.
"materialists are obviously wrong to use terms like "nothing more than..." when our conscious states clearly constitute their own set of distinct phenomena."
Materialist perfectly acknowledges stuff like: "A System can be more than the sum of it's part" or Synergy. The scientific term for it is "emergence".
Also why can it be "nothing more than" you only have explain what is ACTUALLY there.
dianep123 2 years ago
Aso see: watch?v=qYYFQiN052c you don't have to explain which is NOT THERE!!
dianep123 2 years ago
"distinct phenomena."
But that is dualism, you claim distinctness... apartness from "mere" matter or mechanism. Classic dualism.
But Searle rejects dualism AND materialism and then babbles on that consciousness is after all perfectly biological. Completely incoherent.
dianep123 2 years ago
No, dualists maintain that consciousness is something "over and above" the physical world, not merely that conscious states are distinct phenomena (hence the term dualism, the contrast between the "physical" matter of the brain and the "immaterial" nature of the mind). Searle's not a dualist because he believes that mental states are causally reducible, but not ontologically reducible. You might want to read Searle's paper "Why I'm Not a Substance Dualist," that helped clarify things for me.
BearsEatBeats914 2 years ago
What you can do is reduce a liquid into its material parts and see that this liquid is water molecules interacting and sometimes this "emergence" is quite unexpected and significant but ultimately understandable through reduction into its parts. Now you are trying to tell me that Consciousness does not need parts, it is fundamental, like a fundamental particle that MAY be possible, but why need a brain then full of parts, if that parts is not needed to build it?
dianep123 2 years ago
Hi Diane,
I think consciousness corresponds to the brain the way the liquidity of the water does in your example; it is emergent, but it does not have any further powers of its own above the powers of the sum total of its neurons and their causal interactions. What makes it stand out from phenomena like liquidity is that it has a subjective component since it is experienced. People get hung up on figuring out how that's possible; well, I think many phenomena in nature lack causal necessity.
BearsEatBeats914 2 years ago
You wil have to give examples.
Emergent properties can be completely unexpected, I don't see how you can exclude consciousness. Also how would the experience and awareness not be the result of a casual system.
dianep123 2 years ago
Experience and awareness (that is, consciousness) IS the result of the causal powers of the system. States of matter are examples of other causally emergent properties of systems. It would appear that you and I are in agreement on that point, right? So, if you look at it that way, you can say that consciousness is a biological process like any other, it just happens to have the feature of subjectivity, which is astounding, and not 'logically necessary,' but that doesn't mean it's not physical.
BearsEatBeats914 2 years ago
So the brain is needed to unhide / channel this fundamental phenomena? Aha, I can also say that for liquidity too then, it is a fundamental phenomena that needs water molecules to unmask it! Fundamental forces does not need "help" they are readily observed alone. Consciousness is going to fall "victim" to this same reductive examination.
dianep123 2 years ago
@dianep123 hmmm..i agree... donno why these old arguments keep cropping up.. i thought logical empiricism was already refuted ^_^
bronzespirits 1 year ago
It is built out of many causal systems, these systems can be reduced until you reach atoms, atoms can of course be further reduced into the most fundamental particles / forces which is still unknown.
So yeah ontologically, but practically it is kind of meaningless in the real material world it can be pulled apart into the causal parts, and these in turn.
dianep123 2 years ago
Ytube ate my first post of 4. Anyway under your and Searles definition of "distinct phenomena" and ontology (I don't deny the existence, and think consciousness is very real) something like liquidity is technically ontologically irreducible in ITSELF. You cannot chop liquidity as a phenomena in itself into sub-liquidity that is only half-liquid and half-exists. But it can be subject to different grades of viscosity. There can also be variation of consciousness from young kids to adults.
Cont.up
dianep123 2 years ago