I was cross-checking with my list of big questions to find how many of the questions from my list are being covered. I think few other issues which need attention are as follows:

1. Why laws of nature/physics are always mathematical ? Why nature cares so much for mathematics ? Are laws of nature actually there or these are the constructs of our mind to make the navigation easier ?

2. Living and non-living things all are made of the same stuff then why they are so different ? Is the difference between non-living and living things is qualitative or it is quantitative.

3. Can we identify those abilities of human brain/mind which a computer will never be able to achieve ?

4. How to know that science as we know and practice is the only way to know and understand the nature ?

Tony,

Okay, there is a God, I have had the pleasure to meet, now that I have answered that question

I met the Easter bunny the other day, he was hanging out with a Leprechaun named Paddy and a pink unicorn. Thor was there as well he told me to say hi.

Science will never be able to determine the existence of a Creator God, it simply doesn’t have the capability and never, never will. Try and put Wisdom under a microscope, or Love it cannot be done, because God is an entirely different being from anything that you can imagine. Try to imagine Love as a Being or Wisdom, that is, unconditional Love not the self serving kind found in nature, often better known as pride, or self preservation.

Sean, the list of participants is impressive, but I think you are missing a mathematician in there. Or someone knowledgeable in formal logic. This is relevant to the most of the topics you mentioned, IMO. To give you an idea of what I mean, here is my take on some of them:

“Free will. If people are collections of atoms obeying the laws of physics, is it sensible to say that they make choices?”

Yes, a human brain is a complex system, probably exhibiting chaotic time-evolution (like weather, fire, etc.). So the Goedel’s first incompleteness theorem might come into play, saying that you need additional laws (additional to all laws of physics) to describe its behavior. Such a law may or may not exist. If it doesn’t exist, the behavior of the human brain is unpredictable beyond any power of laws of physics. That would be a reasonable point for the origin of free will. // Btw, one can use the same argument for the existence of God, there is no way to exclude that option. //

“Morality. What is the origin of right and wrong? Are there objective standards?”

Experience tells us that Nature does not distinguish good and evil. Just look at the animal kingdom, where animal behavior is completely void of any concept of morality. So in a sense morality is a human construct. However, bar some geographic and historic fluctuations, roughly all humans share a same (or at least similar) set of moral laws. This kind of collective behavior suggests that there is either some external input of what is moral (religion, God, revelations…), or that moral behavior is emergent as evolutionary preffered behavior. Either way, it appears to be observationally objective, with some error bars.

“Meaning. Why live? Is there a rational justification for finding meaning in human existence?”

I think that religion is the only discipline which can give a satisfactory answer to this question. I am looking forward to hear what will a group of naturalists be able to come up with, regarding this topic.

“Purpose. Do teleological concepts play a useful role in our description of natural phenomena?”

I don’t quite understand this question, so no comment.

“Epistemology. Is science unique as a method for discovering true knowledge?”

It isn’t. Again, the Goedel’s incompleteness theorem is the main reference — there is a difference between truth and provability. Science can discover things that are reproducible by experiment, and describable by a finite set of axioms. Everything else (and according to Goedel, the “else” must always exist) is beyond science. Adding new axioms to science (i.e. formulating new laws of nature) cannot fundamentally help, since the number of axioms we have will always be finite, and therefore incomplete. In other words, a “theory of everything” cannot exist. What can (and does) exist is the “theory of everything so far”, but that is (and always will be) incomplete. There will always be knowledge not encompassed by science.

“Emergence. Does reductionism provide the best path to understanding complex systems, or do different levels of description have autonomous existence?”

This is related to determinism (below). As you also noted, the combination of chaos theory and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle suggests that complex systems cannot be understood by studying the basic constituents. Consequently, the complex systems behave according to their own laws of nature, or in the absence of those, they have a form of “free will”.

“Consciousness. How do the phenomena of consciousness arise from the collective behavior of inanimate matter?”

Again, chaotic systems, coupled to Goedel’s unprovable-but-true statements, open the door for the concept of consciousness to be a qualitatively new phenomenon, not describable by laws of physics, regardless of the fact that every elementary particle in the human brain obeys those laws. Similar to the free will question, the God question, the consciousness question, etc.

“Evolution. Can the ideas of natural selection be usefully extended to areas outside of biology, or can evolution be subsumed within a more general theory of complex systems?”

I don’t quite understand this question either.

“Determinism. To what extent is the future determined given quantum uncertainty and chaos theory, and does it matter?”

Determinism is dead, it is experimentally falsifiable and falsified. Both in the small-scale realm (quantum mechanics) and in the everyday-scale realm (chaos theory). It is just a matter of time, and a matter of people sticking to old habits, before this is universally accepted. Just like some people still have trouble accepting the lack of local realism, despite the experimental violation of Bell’s inequalities. Similarly, the lifetime of the concept of determinism is governed only by inertia of people’s prejudices from early youth&education.

Also, the lack of determinism in Nature does matter, a lot. It opens the door to all the stuff from above — free will, consciousness, existence of God, non-scientific knowledge, etc.

But the bottom line is that you are lacking a participant who can teach the others about the conceptual consequences of Goedel’s incompleteness theorems (both of them), and the limits they place on the scientific method of obtaining knowledge.

@ jayanti (8):

“1. Why laws of nature/physics are always mathematical ? Why nature cares so much for mathematics ? Are laws of nature actually there or these are the constructs of our mind to make the navigation easier ?”

Mathematics is the construct of our minds, to make navigation easier, as you say. This is rather obvious, given that one needs to invent a whole new language of mathematics at every step when passing from Newtonian mechanics to general relativity to quantum mechanics to quantum field theory to (ultimately) quantum gravity. We always invent new math, in order to describe a new theory and experimental data. This is by design, there is nothing mysterious about the successfulness of math applied to laws of nature.

“3. Can we identify those abilities of human brain/mind which a computer will never be able to achieve ?”

Sure, some of them have been already identified: Goedel’s theorems are an example — an algorithmic process can never formulate such statements (but can prove them, if someone else formulates them). For an extensive discussion of this, read the book “Emperor’s New Mind” by Roger Penrose. The bottomline is that human brain is not an algorithmic machine, so the AI can never have the equivalent level of insight into knowledge. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the human brain cannot be simulated by a machine — the hardware that makes up the human brain is not the only possible hardware that can implement its functioning processes. The brain simulator would work as well (and also as bad) as a human brain. But it’s behavior would not be algorithmic.

4. How to know that science as we know and practice is the only way to know and understand the nature?

Actually, we know that science is not the only way to know and understand the nature. Read up on Goedel’s first and second incompleteness theorems for more info on this. Science can only describe effects that are experimentally reproducible, and those are not the only ones in nature.

Well I’m a pagan so odds are my thoughts on this talk wont matter. I have something to properly convince you in some way or another that time just causes problems.

Time Lord worthy stuff, backed up by science for sure…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXcl38zbqmw

I support naturalists like I tolerate republicans: Cant live with ‘em, cant live without ‘em.

Sean: Have you been to The End of Time? *giggles*

Space rules. Time drools. <3

@ vmarko: thanks I read your post and it was very clear and straightful ! Your answers to my questions are also very insightfull ! Thanks for that.

Really interesting list of topics, and I mean that sincerely.

Trouble is, none of them currently have definite answers, and some of them can’t, even in principle.

This is why philosophy drives me batty. It’s the ultimate tease.

I’m a naturalist through and through.

I don’t understand the ‘daunting list of challenges’. Call me a scientistic technocrat, but I think that once we’ve got the united-federation of planets up and running and people are free to contribute to art, science, and technology without having to worry about day-to-day survival or finances all those so-called ‘challenges’ are just mental masturbation.

The meaning of it all is clear to me: have fun celebrating life and exploring for the pure curiosity and wonder of it all. Why does there have to be more? When it comes to the big ethical decisions we just have to accept that we get to decide, so let’s pick something nice.

Mr. Anthony has it nailed — have fun celebrating life and exploring for the pure curiosity and wonder of it all.

Maybe Buddha had it figured out 2500 years ago. Stuff comes at us. Reactions happen. Intelligent minds study reactions. Compare to personal intentions for contentment and kindness. Factor in skillful behaviors (perhaps morality, or whatever). Adjust behaviors to meet intentions for contentment through mindfulness of what is happening just now. Maybe find a deeper power in universal connections.

Have fun, and find joy in all of it. It goes away soon enough.

I am very curious to know the results.

It’s interesting because all of those topics are both yes and no. Freewill for instance. It depends on the level of superposition you’re considering. You’re hungry and you need food or you’ll die. You’re going to eat. What you choose to eat after years of hormonal conditioning is your choice. The less intelligent(could be read “experienced”) a person is (either by age or ignorance), the more likely they are to eat whatever is closest and easiest. A smarter person will wait and weigh their choices, looking for a healthy option or something that will at least taste really good if it’s not healthy; something that will satisfy the alert signals either way. So within all equations, the end result is the same. The only choice is how you get to that end result and what/if there is a remainder at the end of that PDE.

The same thing goes for morality. We don’t allow killing and rape in our societies(most of them) because we don’t want the possibility of something like that happening to us to exist. Our morals exist because we possess the ability to conceptualize what it would feel like to be stabbed or shot, even if we’ve never been stabbed or shot before. The thought process would go something like “I’ve had a paper cut before and that hurt like hell, so I can only imagine how badge a 5 inch deep paper cut would be with something made out of metal”. The way we experience nature as a civilization is based on the way we experience it personally. It just so happens that we are all pretty similar within a certain set of limits.

“We don’t allow killing and rape in our societies(most of them) because we don’t want the possibility of something like that happening to us to exist. Our morals exist because we possess the ability to conceptualize what it would feel like to be stabbed or shot, even if we’ve never been stabbed or shot before. The thought process would go something like “I’ve had a paper cut before and that hurt like hell, so I can only imagine how badge a 5 inch deep paper cut would be with something made out of metal”. “

Cue debate on (male and female) circumcision.

”Moving Supernaturalism Backward” will give you a broader public.

Sean, this is great. It will help get worldview naturalism out there as a successor to atheism among secularists, something that can really compete with supernaturalisms for those in the market for a positive worldview (not everyone is). Except for emergence and evolution, I think most of the questions on the agenda are touched on in “Systematizing Naturalism: Answering Life’s Vital Questions” at http://www.naturalism.org/systematizing_naturalism.htm and the various articles linked there.

What isn’t on the agenda are the possible political and policy ramifications of a naturalistic orientation. It’s no coincidence that those who take science seriously end up more progressive than not, given the naturalistic challenge to libertarian free will, http://www.naturalism.org/progressivepolitics.htm and to traditional, non-empirical justifications for discrimination, http://www.naturalism.org/enlightenment1.htm#empiricism

Are free will and consciousness not connected? The inanimate particle will obey the laws of physics in a box of gas, the most likely scenario is that the a cloud of gas will be equally distributed throughout the box as the particles bounce about every which way. But a particle is unlikely to be headed in a given direction and suddenly “change its mind” and alter course.

However, what if you put 10 people in a room? Let’s say 5 know each other and 5 are strangers to everyone else. And just for fun, let’s say they are in microgravity so they really could be evenly distributed (as opposed to being stuck to the ground due to gravity). The 5 who know each other might try to hang close to each other. Maybe one had a bad day and wants to be alone. Will the strangers find unity because they are all in the same situation and form a secondary clump? Will one who is more outgoing go to the familiar group and introduce him/herself? What guides their “choices”? Where does one’s extroverted/introverted personality come from and what guides it?

Lots of Relativism in those issues of discussion for how to move Naturalism forward (“are there objective standards for right and wrong?”).

Here’s a sobering reminder of pitfalls in the service of the “greater good”- the medical profession in Nazi Germany was widely involved in a host of what we would consider horrific abuses- however-
“The German physicians believed they were behaving morally and following the dictates of the Hippocratic Oath by transforming the doctor-patient relationship into a new relationship in which the state became the doctor and the German people became the ‘patient,’ or the volk,” said Sheldon Rubenfeld, MD, clinical professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and president of the Center for Medicine After the Holocaust, in Houston, in an e-mail. Thus, by this reasoning, German physicians rationalized eugenic sterilization, euthanasia, and, ultimately, elimination of Jewish, black, homosexual, Roma, and other “genetically inferior” individuals as treatment of their “patient,” the volk, said Rubenfeld. Another rationale for their actions resonated among the public. “The economic advantages of eliminating expensive utilizers of health care resources were also widely touted and readily accepted by a receptive citizenry during a worldwide depression,” he said.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1346175

Also what is concience, not just self awareness, but the voice inside us that tells us what is right or wrong, where did it come from?

Here let me help you:

> Free will. If people are collections of atoms obeying the laws of physics, is it sensible to say that they make choices?
there is no free will, it is however sensible to say people make choices even if those choices are not free in any sense just as it is sensible to say that a computer program produced a particular output

> Morality. What is the origin of right and wrong? Are there objective standards?
utility, improving the fitness of a population

> Meaning. Why live? Is there a rational justification for finding meaning in human existence?
life has no meaning or purpose

> Purpose. Do teleological concepts play a useful role in our description of natural phenomena?
no

> Epistemology. Is science unique as a method for discovering true knowledge?
more or less yes, depending on how we define true knowledge it might also be deduced from existing knowledge

> Emergence. Does reductionism provide the best path to understanding complex systems, or do different levels of description have autonomous existence?
reductionism provides the only practical path

> Consciousness. How do the phenomena of consciousness arise from the collective behavior of inanimate matter?
illusion produced by the brain

Evolution. Can the ideas of natural selection be usefully extended to areas outside of biology, or can evolution be subsumed within a more general theory of complex systems?
yes, can be whether that would be useful is another matter

Determinism. To what extent is the future determined given quantum uncertainty and chaos theory, and does it matter?
certainly at least somewhat determined, my bet would be completely determined

The best thing is to be able to watch the conversations online. It is just not possible to miss this. Eagerly looking forward to it. Poor graduate students cannot afford to attend these on a short notice !!

Free will: We are not exactly free given the fact that we are bounded by the laws of nature. Although we have the seemingly power to make choices, good or bad, but they are not exactly free either. The choices we make have to fit our legal system and most of the time we have to conform to the society in whatever we choose to do. I do not believe any living things have complete free will. Mother Nature is in control of everything and we all have to conform to it. That does not require a God either. Just the natural laws of science having the complete free will.
Morality: Right vs wrong are prescriptive. What were right long ago are now wrong, and what were wrong are now right. These laws are constantly being revised and they are not consistent as natural laws of science which is descriptive. To distinguish between right and wrong is based on instinct. There are some fundamental moral standards that humans came to realize without needing a God to set the rules. It was purely basic instinct at the very beginning and now they got so convoluted with all of the prescriptions written.
Meaning: Why live? Is there a rational justification for finding meaning in human existence?
In a day to day living in this society, we can answer this question quite easily. We would say the purpose is to contribute to the society and make the world a better place to live for the next generation. If you are a decent parent, you will certainly agree with me on this. But if we look at it from the multiverse point of view, our universe spun out among billions of other universes, and all the right conditions suitable for life is inevitable. It bounds to happen. Life in the universe is not as uncommon as we think. Given that the life span of human is very short compare to the age of the universe, we are very insignificant within this universe, let alone among many other billions and billions of universes out there. I do not find true meaning in human existence except to survive the best we can given the short life span that we have. We continue to find ways and do whatever it takes to fulfill our urges. That’s life as I see it from the natural point of view.
Epistemology: Is science unique as a method for discovering true knowledge?
Science has come a long way. Two thousand years ago we would revolve around with mostly supernatural explanations. Nowadays with the development of cutting edge science, we would dance much less with them, and focus more on rational explanations before jumping into conclusions about the supernatural. Another two thousand years from now, we would do only less with the supernatural and more with the scientific routes. As time progresses, science will be able to discover more about the unknown. I do agree that science will never be able to answer everything and there will always be some unknown, but it is the best tool we have for discovering true knowledge. Science is much more reliable compare to fortune telling, Tarot cards, palm reading, claims from clairvoyants, exorcisms performances, ghost hunting reports, etc.
Evolution: Can the ideas of natural selection be usefully extended to areas outside of biology, or can evolution be subsumed within a more general theory of complex systems?
It is no doubt in my mind that evolution had taken place given all the substantial evidence that we gathered over the last hundreds of years. While the theory is on solid ground, it doesn’t explain everything that we know of. But it is far better than resorting it to some Higher Intellect Design which there is absolutely no basis of whatsoever. Evolution might just be an inner mechanism within a much bigger and more general system which science will eventually come to understand it. In two thousand years when we have this conversation again, we will certainly have a much better understanding of how the evolution process really works, and we would definitely be even more distant from the “God Hypothesis”.
Determinism: To what extent is the future determined given the quantum uncertainty and chaos theory, and does it matter?
I believe things happen for apparently no reasons and are in random. This is not the same for causation, of course. If we practice enough on certain things that we do, we get better at it and the chance of it happening gets higher. An example of this fact is speeding. If we do this constantly, then eventually we will get caught, not because of some bad karma falling on us. There are no rational explanations for freak accidents, uncontrollable terminal illnesses, natural born defects, etc, except we would say its bad luck. We cannot determine with 100% certainty in everything that we do. That’s why we take risks, and hoping things will turn out ok at the end. I do not believe in fate. We do have the power to make choices including risk taking and try to make things work out for us. We have the power to change gears in our lives, and not knowing if we would succeed in the end given all the factors and variables facing us in this ever increasing complex world. Will science someday be able to offer 100% certainty on everything? I claim not. Uncertainty is one of the traits of Mother Nature. We will never be able to defeat that. However, with the continual development of science, we will be able to uncover some parts of the uncertainty. As to why we are here to live and why there is something rather than nothing, I don’t think science can ever answer those questions satisfactorily. It just happens and that’s the way it is. If we ever resort the answer to a “God”, then why is He around and where did He come from? If we can’t answer that question, then what good is it to have that as the answer to everything?

Determinismcontingency.

@Mitchell Porter:

Consciousness is an illusion produced by the brain in the same sense that color is an illusion produced by the brain, there is no such thing as an objective color red it is just an internal representation of a certain portion of EM spectrum, what I see as red you could see as what I call blue and we would never know. But it’s not true that color doesn’t exist, it is an abstract internal representation of a certain property of the underlying reality (and it is extracted from it by real biophysical process).

In the similar sense consciousness is just an internal abstract representation produced by the brain of the underlying decision process of the brain (a complex biophysical process that is real). This representation is needed for self reference – future decisions need to be informed by prior ones so there is a need to represent and memorize them somehow. An “internal voice” turned out to be a good way to do so perhaps because it can take advantage of the same facilities used for remembering other voices.

So to drive this point home, if you wrote a computer program that constantly evaluated it’s inputs and produced decisions based on them and among it’s inputs were abstract representations of it’s past decisions this program would be conscious in the same sense that humans are conscious. Of course this simple consciousness wouldn’t have the form of an “internal voice” but it would still be there and have some form, talking about what form that would be is pointless in the same way as trying to describe how one experiences red color. They are internal representations which only make sense internally and there is no language that would allow us to express them in an objective way that would make sense externally.

Of course it doesn’t solve all the problems, the main puzzle that remains is how does the brain transform the underlying biophysical processes into the rich internal world, how does it translate one wavelength into “blue” and another into “red,” could we make us experience another completely new color just by rewiring neurons? And so on.

Christian Takacs thank you so much for your fine example of Argumentum ad Hitlerum.

Are you serious, or have I been Poed?

Sean, ignore the above comments. “Moving Naturalism Forward” is going to be a great workshop. It is far better than any organized religion which are cults.

I have a feeling that this conference would have profited from people who have less of an axe to grind. No doubt they are a smart group, and they will find stuff to disagree about, but I have a feeling this might turn into a retreat of the preachers and choir – with inevitable results. If I put my worry more concretely, it would be this: You’ve picked a group of naturalists who agree too much about what counts as “moving forward”! If you were looking for genuine alternatives, you might have considered inviting atheists like Alain de Botton.

@David Lau,
Nothing wrong with showing your support, but you might consider reading up on the definition of organized religion and cults. They can intersect, but they aren’t the same thing. Also be aware that Sean belongs to an organized belief system too, and he most likely would not appreciate it being called a cult.

@AI #52

Nice try

It’s a good attempt at “explaining” consciousness since we certainly don’t appear to be conscious as embryos or very young babies. It seems like a significant amount of mental representation of the world must be constructed in our neural machinery before we begin to experience consciousness.

However, a computer program is a determinisitic algorithm, and Bell theorems show that the universe isn’t (unless it is superdeterministic or nonlocal).

Also, in addition to this very strong counter evidence, you have to admit that it is a very depressing view of Nature. So combined with the good evidence that Nature is nondeterministic and the hope that existence isn’t meaningless, I believe consciousness requires more than deterministic self-reference.

Big list, but a fairly uninteresting one from my standpoint, in that most of the answers to these questions are obvious. The fact that they’re being debated at all tells me that this is going to be more about philosophy and people who don’t want to give up their personal beliefs than actually looking to the evidence the universe has given us.

TL/DR summary: five no, one yes, one maybe, and two unknown

Free Will: No

Morality: Evolution/No

Meaning: Evolution/No

Purpose: No

Epistemology: No, because ‘true knowledge’ is ill defined

Emergence: It depends, this question is poorly worded

Consciousness: Good question. We won’t know without more research

Evolution: Yes, and poorly worded question

Determinism: Good question. It probably matters

The long answers:

Free will – Us humans like to act as though we have free will, but in reality we don’t. It’s an illusion. But just because it’s an illusion doesn’t mean we should act as though we don’t have any.

Morality – The origin of right and wrong is that we happened to evolve in/with an environment where adherence to certain social norms called ‘morals’ improved reproduction rate for those individuals who did so. There are no objective morals. At all.

Meaning – I live because my atoms and molecules happen to be arranged in a way that makes me want to live. There is no overarching meaning to be found in human existence.

Purpose – No. Teleological concepts play no useful role in our description of natural phenomena. Nature was not designed.

Epistemology – Science isn’t unique as a method for discovering knowledge. Other mechanisms, such as logic, can produce information without any need for our physical universe, for example in the cases of abstract mathematical systems. For discovering knowledge about our universe, there are many methods. However, science is far and away the most effective one that we’ve found. Ever.

Emergence – Reductionism ultimately provides the best description of complex systems, but other levels of description may be more tractable, usable, and useful. Other levels do not have autonomous existence, as they are derivable from the lowest level description by using the appropriate approximations.

Consciousness – How consciousness arises from the collective behavior of inanimate matter is currently an open question. We do not know exactly how, but we do know that nothing more than the particles and forces present in our universe are required.

Evolution – This question is too ill-defined to be meaningful as stated. Natural selection is already used in a number of non-biological areas. Subsuming it into a more general theory of complex systems seems to me nothing more than word play, as natural selection as a general process is a simple and well understood operation. It’s like asking if addition could be subsumed into a more general theory of complex systems.

Determinism – This question is probably worth asking, as we do not know, and if we could get a solid answer, it would explain a lot about how the universe works. For short term human existence, no, it doesn’t matter.

“Hopefully this event will help spark a broader conversation (which is already ongoing, of course) about what it means to be a human being in a natural world.”

Most truly religious people (ie, not using religion to justify violence) accept the saying “God answers all prayers; sometimes the answer is No.” Even if you look at the extreme example of today’s radical Islam/fascism, it’s clear that this is a political choice, not a religious one- made by male youths in repressive societies without education, jobs or social contact with young women. The Chinese govt worries about maintaining job growth for this demographic, otherwise they riot- and it’s got nothing to do with religion.
You think humans will behave differently in a “natural” world, compared to the present than one with the occasional “supernatural” event? On what basis?

Would like to see more women represented. 5 to 12 doesn’t seem appropriate for the noble goals of this meeting. Also perhaps someone a little less white may also help. Some suggestions for women: Ophelia Benson, Jennifer Ouellette, Natalie Angiers, Carolyn Porco, Leslie Cannold, Naomi Oreskes, Amanda Pustilnik. Nonwhite: Michio Kaku, Neil deGrasse Tyson, VS Ramachandran, Jim Al-Khalili, Alom Shaha, Shirley Ann Jackson, Betty Harris, Nagendra Kumar Singh. I raise this as one extremely convinced of the necessity for this conference and excited by the prospect of downloading the footage when it becomes available.

AI #52 says

“Consciousness is an illusion produced by the brain in the same sense that color is an illusion produced by the brain, there is no such thing as an objective color red it is just an internal representation of a certain portion of EM spectrum, what I see as red you could see as what I call blue and we would never know. But it’s not true that color doesn’t exist, it is an abstract internal representation of a certain property of the underlying reality (and it is extracted from it by real biophysical process).”

The colors we see may be internal to consciousness, but they are anything but “abstract”. Perhaps you touch on this in your conclusion:

“the main puzzle that remains is how does the brain transform the underlying biophysical processes into the rich internal world, how does it translate one wavelength into “blue” and another into “red,” could we make us experience another completely new color just by rewiring neurons?”

In other words, you are satisfied that at some level, the account you gave – it’s all about computational states of the brain, which track external properties (wavelengths) or internal properties (decision process) – is fundamentally correct; but it doesn’t actually explain any of the manifest features of experienced color or of consciousness in general. (I’m assuming that the “rich internal world” is a reference to experience itself, being contrasted with the “abstract internal representations” which play a causal role in your theory).

I suggest that it is the “rich internal world” itself (and the self which perceives it) which directly plays some of the causal roles you are ascribing to the “abstract representations”. This is a problem if you think like an ordinary physicist (and to some extent, if you think like an ordinary neuroscientist), because there are no “experienced colors”, “selves”, etc., in physics; they aren’t there, therefore they can’t play a causal role in a theory based on ordinary physics.

However, physics these days is quite rich in unusual mathematical structures, and we don’t really know the nature of the things which make up those structures, apart from their cause and effect. So what I’m suggesting is that the conscious mind is something which, if we were describing it using current physics, would be one of those unusual mathematical structures; but fundamentally it is what it seems – color, the flow of time, “meaning” and all those other aspects of consciousness which get reduced to math or to function, are the fundamental reality of consciousness, and it’s the math, and the usual physical description, which is the abstraction.

This approach is meant to get away from the dualism, whereby we have the “physical brain” and then the qualia, etc, as something extra. The structure of self-plus-qualia that makes up consciousness as we know it, *is* the true nature of the conscious part of the brain.

But this approach seems to be incompatible with the usual computational approach, which says that consciousness is a state machine whose implementation details don’t matter. That leads to dualism, because in that philosophy, you have the true, exact, detailed microphysical state of the brain, and then you have the coarse-grained “computational state”, and consciousness corresponds to the latter. Because of the coarse-graining, on this occasion you can’t avoid property dualism by identifying the physical entity with the psychological entity.

From all this I conclude that (1) nonclassical physics plays a role in conscious cognition (2) a generic simulation of a conscious mind isn’t necessarily conscious.

How about having Ebben Alexander participate?

42

If we are no more than intelligent animals, than why not experiment on those whose intelligence is weak, not much more than say an ape or monkey, or infants, maybe infants themselves? Was Josef Mengele guilty of a crime or should his experiments be accepted for the betterment of mankind, and we should be thankful for his forward thinking.

Tony,

See the second paragraph in comment #30. We don’t allow others to do such things because we value our own protection from being experimented on against our will. But, we DO experiment on those with a weak intelligence (to a certain limit) with various drugs for ADHD, ADD, Schizophrenia, Depression, Down Syndrome, Alzheimer’s, Dementia, etc. We don’t know the full effects of those drugs; that’s why you see all these commercials on tv for law suits against companies that make drugs to control neurological behavior. Those people have to choose to take those drugs; it is their choice to be experimented upon.

The attempt to goad people into a religious argument is covered in another post. There’s no mention of the big bang in the post above.

Yikes — no ecologists? OK, it’s certainly a superb group but I think your domain is missing one axis.

Another question about consciousness might be ….why did the phenomena of consciousness happen to me? A possibly eternally evolving situation continued until My exclusive combination of atoms happened……Yours too…….but why am I here and you there? Without what I think of as God, something might exist here, but why would it be me?

@83

To me it seems that it is the other way around.

This is what happened before the Big Bang: http://youtu.be/9bZkp7q19f0

Modern science explains the world based on empiricism. When it is used to explain to us the Empire imaginary reality, ie, the essence of reality given. Rene Descartes said that reality never look the way we see it. Therefore, based on the error in the knowledge of science is shaping our image of all phenomena in nature. It is, without a doubt, our ideas about the world in which we live malformed. These facts can be experimentally proven. Hence the need to outdated methods of empirical findings replaced with new modern methods.