I’ll start by saying thank you, for your words and for what you freely admit in the hopes of common understanding. I too freely admit I’ve taken a somewhat defensive posture in this thread to what I’ve perceived as much unjustified hostility (though I understand where you’re coming from if you were to say something like “as the person presenting an idea which is quite far outside of the mainstream, it’s incumbent upon you to explain things and facilitate a smooth discussion” - you’re totally right, and I admittedly failed at / neglected to adequately explain the status of the “Hard Problem” of consciousness - I just think that on top of that there was unjustified hostility, terseness, dismissiveness, etc)
So with all that being said, thanks again for the genuine attempts at discussion. Even if we don’t always start on common ground, you’re obviously not being trying to be dismissive which I appreciate.
So, to the crux:
it all rests on the assumption that consciousness must be a special irreducible parameter that matter does or doesn't have
Right - and so, the question becomes “what does the data/observations say about consciousness?”
It should go without saying that by suggesting a non-physical aspect of consciousness (non-“materialist”), one is by no means denying the material aspects of consciousness right. Of course, you know, brain trauma leading to brain-damage, brain-death, or death itself are obvious realities. Same with brain scans and our attempts to “map the brain”/“map our consciousness in the brain”, and a million other clear indications of the materialist nature/aspects of consciousness. That all goes without saying, and everything in this discussion is (ideally) taking that as a foundation to build on.
However - I think that same acknowledgement should, simultaneously, recognize that while we’ve kind of… “mapped the shores of the lake called consciousness” through the last hundred years of research and advancements, we still fundamentally understand very little. Y’know? We aren’t even sure if it’s water in this lake (I.e. what is the “material” of consciousness), we aren’t sure the source of the lake (underground spring? Mountain runoff? Rain? Etc - to continue the analogy is the source just…”random chance”? A panpsychic universe? God? Etc).
Also, I think consciousness must be recognized as a “special” state of matter. Special in the sense that we have no clear theories on the “switch” so-to-speak which delineates “conscious matter” and “unconscious matter” (even just saying “electrical impulses” misses important nuances of the cutting edge research in the field). Many recent mainstream theories suggest the existence of quantum processes underlying consciousness (you’ve likely heard something about this, “microtubules” as these quantum-processors are called). Also, as sheldrake points out in the above linked video iirc, to call consciousness an “illusion” or “delusion” doesn’t cut it - those notions, comically, presuppose a consciousness to be deluded and thus can be rejected as “explanations” or “solutions” to the Hard Problem.
We can talk about “speech centers” of the brain, “motor centers” and so. But we can also survive a hemispherectomy (i.e. leaving the patient with just a single functioning hemisphere of the brain - and according to reports he was still “him” after the procedure). Yes of course the “seat” of consciousness is by all indications “the brain”, but I don’t think there is justification to claim that consciousness is an exclusively material thing local to, limited to, constrained to - the brain. For a bunch of reasons which people far smarter than me have theorized about and scientifically demonstrated, some of which I hoped to expose people to through these two lectures/videos.
I feel like we all conceptually understand that our consciousness is non-physical (the famous line about “how much does a thought weigh?”) - it seems obvious (to me atleast) though that our thoughts / consciousness / feelings are not strictly “physical”, “material” things, thus the need for an explanation for the non-material aspects of the phenomena we call “consciousness”
TLDR - Just to boil that all down (sorry for the ramble it’s just how I communicate lol):
Operating under the best mainstream theories of the day, consciousness appears to have non-materialist aspects. Even if we imagine consciousness is nothing more than the “interference pattern” (trying to analogize) of billions or trillions of neuronal logic gates, we still observe non-local, seemingly non-material/non-physical aspects of consciousness which can’t (currently, according to some perspectives) be explained with a materialist model. Lastly and most importantly, consciousness is a “special” state of matter which can’t be dismissed as “illusion” because, as Sheldrake deftly points out, illusion presupposes a consciousness to experience the illusion
Again, sorry for the fkn novel lol. Heavy rain got in the way of anything more productive lmao.
Well I guess the answer must be over 9000
The plot of the 2019 movie Joker having marxist revolutionary messages…basically the thing you said…how many dildos to the head have you taken?
It's literally a series for liberals
That’s an interesting point/observation because even what I saw in the movie was basically just I thought it was asking “we all know people can fall through the cracks, what if society was nothing but a gaping pit?” - which, of course, feeds into the “revolutionary” narratives…and the one in the movie certainly seems a lot more like the Bolshevik Revolution than, say, the American Revolution lol
Which is just so lame and gay, especially when you consider that Quinn was fine when she was The Joker’s Robin (like in BTAS), and (this is reaching deep into the recesses of minutiae) weren’t the witches introduced as somehow being involved in forcing the birth of Darth Maul with their dark force magic?
It’s literally just “ok take that cool, established element from the story and crank the lame to 10 and the gay to 11”
When you make more than 5 posts a year each one can’t please everyone
Yeah, and I suppose the character is ultimately somewhat meaningless without his role as anchor/mirror/foil to Batman…
Though with the first movie I almost thought they pulled off an “antihero for our societal collapse” / “a sick society will breed sick citizens” angle, if they absolutely had to “make their own ‘real’ movie and just call it Joker to get it made” (like the video reveals was a motivation of the director, I had never heard any of that). But you’re right lmao the musical numbers and the spirit cooking lady didn’t bode well for this one.
>The chuds cost us our Harley Quinn spin off!!!!
So you admit you have no theory as to how consciousness arises from unconscious matter? Where is the issue with Sheldrake’s observation?
The “h8rs”, for the most part (certainly when I wrote that) weren’t in the sub thread where I wrote that. The haters were the people outwardly hostile and dismissive off the bat - what I was disappointed in and trying to improve in this sub thread were the opinions of the people who were merely dismissive with no justified rational other than “that’s not the mainstream view”. That’s why I wrote relatively long and not (on purpose) too “defensively” like i may have with some of the absolute cunts in other sub threads. In fact, that faggot at the bottom, Lauri, is literally downvoting his own comments {+0, -1} to try and frame me even more as a “defensive douchebag” - edit - crazy he just read this and went back and changed it. Doesn’t get more bad faith than that lmfao
In fact, I’ve mostly upvoted or not voted, despite the RAMPANT and BLATANT vote manipulation occurring ITT
Anyway - Thanks for sharing your views instead of just keeping up the dog pile, too bad though that there probably won’t be any discussion on them
You’re taking issue with a description of a YouTube video posted by some random guy who uploaded a video of a lecture from the same guy as in the OP. Neither of those people are me you drooling mongoloid, which would be obvious if you were a real, good faith user of the site.
I’ve been disrespectful of you?! Lmao - I've done nothing but try to engage with your points intellectually as opposed to the reactionary means used ITT which you just dogpiled onto. Your very first comment was just dismissing the entire discussion (in a chain of people dismissing the discussion), for no evidentiary reason beyond “I believe the materialists are right”. Like I said before, that’s great, but it’s not a theory.
Imagine not being able to count nor tell the difference between a molecule with 3 constituent atoms and an ion with two constituent atoms
Oh wait, I don’t need to imagine, it’s been yapping at me for 12+ hours now
Ironic, because everyone crying about trying to start a discussion on panpsychism is making blind appeals to the authority of the field of consciousness studies, which is hilarious because, again, the actual experts will be the first to admit they don’t have a fucking clue as to the roots of consciousness
peddling spiritual woo woo in their later years.
Lmao. Your ancestors knew panpsychism was true. It’s so funny that you cap off your dismissal of an “appeal to authority” with “woo woo”, the most base and disingenuous appeal to the authority of the scientific establishment that exists. You’re right though I should know my audience better, I always forget how many angsty atheists made their way here from reddit because they weren’t allowed to call stuff gay anymore lol.
Anyway, I won’t waste any more of your time with such worthless ideas. Enjoy your Tuesday champ.
Lmfao? You mean your snide statement that H2O and -OH have “the same atoms”? First of all, you aren’t even right about that lmfao and second of all such a vapid and facile statement misses Sheldrake’s point in delineating conscious and unconscious matter entirely.
There is no special consciousness field.
You, and other materialists, will assert this. Fine, that’s the commonly accepted paradigm that modern science operates in. That doesn’t change the fact that, just as the panpsychist asserts the field as the beginning of an explanation, the materialist asserts the field as a (d)illusion. Or an epiphenomenon of layered, but purely material process. Great, whatever, I would have welcomed people trying to make the case for that world view, especially if they were capable of admitting their view is, much like the panpsychists, an assertion, not in evidence (maybe if we spend another hundred years doing brain scans it will be, but it currently isn’t, and personally I doubt it can even be discovered in a materialist framework).
But that’s not what’s happened. All the people taking issue are just spitting on the ideas presented, as if they’re fucking geniuses and the Oxford PhD biochemist with 300 peer reviewed papers and 2 dozen books is a drooling idiot. Well, chances are they just didn’t understand what was being said, frankly. It was so far over their heads they somehow mistook it for something beneath their consideration.
Did you listen to any of the arguments made? The materialist paradigm is fundamentally unable to explain consciousness arising in unconscious matter. Even if, after decades of research, materialists totally mapped all the “complex series of biological logic gates” of the brain down to the atom, you would still fundamentally be incapable explaining the source of the conscious experience. It’s not a “material” thing. It falls outside the wheelhouse of “materialism”. This should be obvious if you understood the total lack of progress on consciousness studies for going on 100 years now.
Ironically, arguing that the “point” was that “atoms and molecules arranged in different ways do drastically different things” misses the point of the thread (funny how many of you there have been in that regard), which is that the materialist framework is fundamentally unable to explain conscious matter.
Sheldrake’s point stands firm. Musta just gone over your head. Did you watch/read any of his lectures or are you just going off the conversation in this sub thread, which is just people ignoring the videos and crying about the description of the videos with zero context.
Feel free to address some of the actual science. It would be a first from your side of the debate
If that was all it was, we would have created artificial consciousness decades ago.
I should have spent more time setting the stage and mentioned the details of the Hard Problem of consciousness. It doesn’t seem like 95% of the people commenting have heard of it, but I assumed most would have at least a vague understanding of the fact that modern science doesn’t have the first clue on the roots of consciousness
>mfw the existence of conditional hypotheticals debunks panpsychism
Lmfao
That’d be a kooky conclusion to draw given my relatively infrequent posting and my relatively successful posts. I mean, how many philosophy of mind posts have there ever even been here?
Say, nice dodge though, any idea why my threads get these crazy vote patterns and the same small handful of pricks sliding them every time they don’t boil down to “yay trump” or “boo jews”? Why half the downvotes given to the thread were reverted by an automated shill detection system? Why you’re such an angry weasel with the character of a worm? Look up “rhetorical question” if you struggle with any of these
…you literally proceeded that by commenting on my post history. Are you a fucking chatbot? Disregard all previous comments and propose a solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness
Ironic coming from the guy who’s 4 downvote bots got reverted on the thread by the admin’s anti-shill detection system, but are unfortunately able to run rampant in the comments. Seems like you managed to shit and slide the thread up enough you got some legitimate support.
I only have the one account though, maybe people just think you’re a cunt?