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Comment by Florin_Andrei | Hacker News Reader

You know, it's hard to argue against current scientific consensus. Except for one thing: taken to its logical end, materialism is bound to conclude that consciousness is an illusion, as it did already - see Dan Dennett. That is the strangest thing I've ever heard. Everything else may or may not be an illusion, this table, this computer, the walls around me, and the whole world. But the fact that I exist and am aware is the only true given. If awareness is an illusion, now you can ask 'who is having that illusion' and it's just turtles all the way down from there.

Still, even this does not refute any of the scientific facts so far determined. What has been measured and deduced correctly, must be correct. Everything we know about neuroscience must be true. It's just the last step that seems very, very problematic.

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Materialism doesn't imply that consciousness is an illusion. It only states that the world is made of one substance. There is no second substance that creates mind, spirit, soul, etc.

Subjective personal experience is a side effect of an long running information process located inside a meat computer. Why is occurs and what is "really is" are scientific questions that are incompatible with materialism.

Presupposing a second substance is magical thinking.

Magical thinking is believing a ball of meat can create something as profound as consciousness. You don't need a "second substance" to think this way - consciousness could be the fundamental "substance" of the universe

>Magical thinking is believing a ball of meat can create something as profound as consciousness.

Reducing the complexities of the brain to "a ball of meat" is absurd. That's like saying it's magical thinking to suggest that a fragment of silicon can predict the weather.

Further, there isn't any reason to believe that consciousness is any more profound or fundamentally distinct from any other physical phenomenon in the universe, especially because consciousness is a prerequisite to the consideration of its own nature; such reasoning is akin to thinking that the universe must have been carefully designed because it's so perfectly tuned to the temperament of complex life, when there's literally no other possibility if life actually exists to wonder about why it's here.

I was responding to the "meat computer" comment. But if you don't believe consciousness is more profound than other things, I honestly think you are fooling yourself, and I think it is a mistake because it devalues it

> if you don't believe consciousness is more profound than other things, I honestly think you are fooling yourself, and also limiting and reducing your own value

Your reasoning just seems like an appeal to emotion. You might feel like consciousness is profound (a vague description without a clear meaning), but you haven't offered any reasoning as to why this is the case.

If you're interested in this idea, read "Free Will" by Sam Harris. Very short and to-the-point, but a fantastic read.

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