There is a gigantic mystery which you are sweeping under the rug.
Sure, a purely materialistic conception of the universe is very neat and appealing. But you are at risk of missing something of fundamental importance to the overall nature of being if you simply shut down any possible additions to this conception.
The mystery is this: Why can't we observe consciousness? No, literally, we cannot observe it. The scientific process at least requires a starting observation, some phenomenon which requires explanation, something you can point to and say, "What's that?". The sun rising and setting. Brownian motion. Whatever.
Consciousness on the other hand is merely the fact that the universe exists from a perspective. You only ever have access to one perspective, your own, you can never observe any other instance of perspective "out there", "in the world". It is not a thing, an "object". It is a subject, "you".
I don't shut down any possible additions to the concept of consciousness, I just require that any additions be motivated by need. At this point in our understanding there simply is no need to presume some sort of metaphysical happenings. The brain being the sole generator of consciousness currently appears to be powerful enough to explain everything we know about consciousness. Add on to that all the evidence brain activity correlating with conscious experience, exciting the brain in specific locations generating conscious experience, and brain damage in various locations having clear and permanent affects on consciousness, and we have strong evidence that the brain is in fact all there is. We may not be able to "observe consciousness directly", but we have constrained its possible whereabouts to "within the brain". Sure, more work needs to be done, but we are far from completely ignorant here.
I really don't think these types of experiments tell us anything about the fundamental question of consciousness. The question being, why am I here experiencing it all? Why is it not just, well, "automated", without me here as an "observer"?
So you have a research subject and you stick a pin in his brain and that makes him, I don't know, forget the alphabet. You say that contributes to the theory that consciousness is generated by the brain.
Two objections.
1) I already knew you could stick a pin in his eye and he would probably fail to recall the alphabet for several minutes. What I am getting at is that the fact that human consciousness is "heavily invested" in the material universe is bleeding obvious from the get-go. What does recent knowledge about the brain add to this? There is a heluva lot of functionality there, sure. There is a serious nexus of sensation, communication, and computation there, sure. But the above-referenced, Fundamental Question of Consciousness (TM), remains untouched.
2) How do you know your subject (the one with the pin in his brain) is truly conscious? Yes, I am talking about the possibility of a p-zombie[0]. You might want to say, "All reasonable people can here assume that the subject is a truly conscious being." And indeed I agree we can generally, in life, make such assumptions. However, you are hoping for scientific understanding of the nature of true consciousness, so you bloody-well hope for a scientific method to verify a truly conscious being. Otherwise it's like hoping to have the periodic table before you can test whether a material is gold or lead. However, there can be no such hope for a future method of verification, because presently there is not even any observation of the very thing to be verified! This would be like expecting someone who, I don't know, perhaps grew up imprisoned in a cave to develop a model of the solar system.
>The question being, why am I here experiencing it all? Why is it not just, well, "automated", without me here as an "observer"?
It's simple really: you have to observe to decide. Imagine not having any vision-qualia. How would you read? Your vision-qualia is the substrate from which your conscious mind makes decisions. You cannot have conscious decision making without qualia. Conscious experience is simply high level representations of information interfacing with your decision-making apparatus. Nothing more, nothing less.
The concept of p-zombies are inherently contradictory. P-zombies are by definition indistinguishable from a conscious entity through any test. Yet when I ask a p-zombie a million questions designed to get at its conception of its conscious experience, it responds in the exact same way as the conscious entity. Furthermore, all observations of its behavior prove to be equivalent to the conscious entity. So the p-zombie must contain the exact same information regarding "conscious experience" as the assumed conscious entity. Therefore, the two systems are information-equivalent.
What is the difference between these two supposed systems? They are information-equivalent, and yet you claim the conscious entity experiences something the p-zombie doesn't. But of course, by definition of experience, that occurrence must be able to shape your future behavior. This contradicts information-equivalence.
You might say: well the representation of that information is different in the p-zombie vs the conscious entity. This doesn't work either. Just like the universe has no privileged reference-frame, it has no privileged information representation either.
Therefore, either qualia is a meaningless concept, or it is purely dependent on information representation.
Furthermore, if you accept that our brains are a large part of what makes up our minds, then somehow our physical brains "interface" with the substrate of consciousness. Neuroscientists should be able to find this interface. Physicists should be able to probe this "consciousness substrate" using the same physical properties of matter that our brains do. We have found nothing of the sort. The only thing in our brains are bundles of neurons and neurotransmitters. Those of you that suppose metaphysical explanations for consciousness are just as guilty of "god of the gaps" as those who would look up at the stars and posit a god holding them in place. Don't be that person.
> The brain being the sole generator of consciousness currently appears to be powerful enough to explain everything we know about consciousness.
Yes, that's reasonable, but it leaves out how it's done, what mechanism is responsible. Until that question is answered, until we have a proven mechanism, we can't assume that the brain is the sole repository of consciousness.
My point is this will become a respectable scientific theory when we can explain how consciousness arises in brain tissue, rather than simply showing that it's so by observation. Until then we're in the position of the the blind men and the elephant, each with a different impression of an unseen source.
>we can't assume that the brain is the sole repository of consciousness.
Assume is the wrong word here. If there is no need for metaphysics then defaulting to materialism is the rational choice. Science is always a process involving probabilities and materialism is currently the most probable scenario. It then makes sense to make further predictions based on our current materialist understanding.
>> we can't assume that the brain is the sole repository of consciousness.
> Assume is the wrong word here.
But until we have a solid theory about consciousness, with the possibility of proving a claim to be objectively true or false, all we have are assumptions.
> Science is always a process involving probabilities and materialism is currently the most probable scenario.
But consciousness is by definition a non-material phenomenon, so that's the wrong approach. I don't mean to trivialize any of the aspects of this issue, because it's very complex and there are many uncertainties, but consciousness can't be reduced to a question of materialism, for the simple reason that many of its manifestations lie outside the material realm.
Also, science isn't always a question of probabilities. Science requires falsifiability, and a theoretical falsification isn't based on probability, but certainty. If I see a black swan, I have falsified the all-white-swans theory, not to some probability, but absolutely. This is not to diminish the importance of probability in scientific work.
> It then makes sense to make further predictions based on our current materialist understanding.
Yes, that does make sense, but it's not the whole story. If consciousness were open to unambiguous measurement, in a way that forced different observers into agreement (experimental objectivity), then I would concur. But we aren't there yet.
>But until we have a solid theory about consciousness, with the possibility of proving a claim to be objectively true or false, all we have are assumptions.
Your wording implies that all the different possibilities are equally probable. This is not the case. We "assume" that the explanation for conscious experience lies in materialism because it is the most probable answer given what we know. This is the rational choice here. Your usage of "assumption" is too layman to be useful in this discussion. Probability currently tells us that materialism is our best answer, and so we use that in our current model of the world.
>But consciousness is by definition a non-material phenomenon, so that's the wrong approach.
This isn't very useful. Energy is non-material, yet it can be measured using material detectors. Consciousness can be studied through material processes. Measuring brain mechanics, or simply questioning a subject about their experience are all material ways to study consciousness. We can't measure the metaphysical properties of consciousness, by definition. But then again we don't know that they exist either.
> If I see a black swan, I have falsified the all-white-swans theory, not to some probability, but absolutely.
Inherent in your conclusion is the probability distribution of your black-swan detection tool. What is the probability that it measured incorrectly?
The problem with the metaphysical types is that you propose some exotic mechanism simply because you can't imagine how natural phenomena could give rise to consciousness. This is simply a failure of imagination on your part. Until metaphysical explanations are required it is folly to assume that they are necessary.
>> But until we have a solid theory about consciousness, with the possibility of proving a claim to be objectively true or false, all we have are assumptions.
> Your wording implies that all the different possibilities are equally probable.
No, my wording only suggests that there is more than one possibility.
> We "assume" that the explanation for conscious experience lies in materialism because it is the most probable answer given what we know.
Assigning probabilities to assumptions, in the absence of a formal theory, has obvious risks. A formal theory can be exploited to produce real probabilities, probabilities that can themselves be compared to experiment and possibly become the basis for a falsification.
>> But consciousness is by definition a non-material phenomenon, so that's the wrong approach.
> This isn't very useful.
It's a critical point. If what's being measured is ethereal, then a physical measurement is innately misleading. Consider our mathematical abilities, and consider the relation between consciousness and a propensity for mathematical thought. Solely to make a point I might suggest a consciousness gauge that relies on the ability to reason mathematically -- more math, more consciousness. Sort of like the famous mirror test, but at a higher level: a certain animal is conscious to the degree that it can reason mathematically. But mathematics, and consciousness, are both nonmaterial properties, therefore (a) this makes a math scale an appropriate measure of consciousness, and (b) it creates yet another difficult, nonmaterial measure of consciousness.
If we instead measure the speed at which an animal solves a certain easily measured problem, the basis for many IQ tests over the years, that test will eventually be solved more efficiently by a computer. If we measure consciousness by the ability to pass some kind of Turing test, same answer.
My point? Tests of consciousness tend to be material quantifications of something non-material. These tests are easily passed by present and future computers, simulacra -- unless, of course, we begin to assign consciousness to computers. That's an interesting approach, but it does lead to reasonable doubt about the basic premise that the human (or dolphin, or gray jay) brain is the seat of consciousness.
> The problem with the metaphysical types is that you propose some exotic mechanism simply because you can't imagine how natural phenomena could give rise to consciousness.
It's the other way around, exactly the other way around. The materialist position exists because it's accessible to conventional experimental methods. It may turn out to be perfectly correct, I emphasize that, but it exists only because we don't have the tools to correlate consciousness with other measures using some other approach, and even if we did, there might be no point to the exercise if it didn't lead to objective evidence, evidence on which different observers agree, evidence on which most modern science depends.
> This is simply a failure of imagination on your part.
I hope you recognize the humor in that position. It is the materialist outlook that represents a failure of imagination. It is an intentional limitation of inquiry to make the outcome fit into conventional categories, into publishable experimental science. It's why psychological research has the reputation it does.
Einstein's brain wasn't physically (materially) significantly different than the brains of many other men and women. Yet he produced results that (a) sprang from "consciousness", indeed to many it represents a measure or criterion of consciousness, (b) arose in the realm of mathematics, clearly a Platonic realm, and (c) have no materialist explanation.
Think of all the remarkable outcomes of conscious behavior that aren't correlated with a measurable material cause, that are orthogonal to material measures. Then think of all the ways we have of measuring consciousness that can be faked by a computer.
My point? It's the materialist outlook that represents a failure of imagination, and it only exists because it allows a kind of faux science to address consciousness, as though the latter could realistically be reduced to material quantification.
>But consciousness is by definition a non-material phenomenon, so that's the wrong approach.
Going back to this: I'm not even sure what this means. If you assume you can't understand consciousness through material means then you've simply defined yourself into a paradox. This is an uninteresting and unscientific take and it gets us exactly nowhere.
It's pretty obvious that consciousness does not exist in any singular unit in the brain (we probably would have found it by now otherwise). Consciousness is a property of some non-trivial subset of the units of the brain--at least this is what our current understanding leads us to believe (consciousness is within the brain and its not any singular unit). To characterize this as "non-material" again is a presumption that is not warranted.
Your only reason for treating the substance of consciousness as something non-material is because you simply can't imagine that a first-person experience could be derived from material processes. There is no reason to think this at all.
Sure, a purely materialistic conception of the universe is very neat and appealing. But you are at risk of missing something of fundamental importance to the overall nature of being if you simply shut down any possible additions to this conception.
The mystery is this: Why can't we observe consciousness? No, literally, we cannot observe it. The scientific process at least requires a starting observation, some phenomenon which requires explanation, something you can point to and say, "What's that?". The sun rising and setting. Brownian motion. Whatever.
Consciousness on the other hand is merely the fact that the universe exists from a perspective. You only ever have access to one perspective, your own, you can never observe any other instance of perspective "out there", "in the world". It is not a thing, an "object". It is a subject, "you".