Comment by tomhoward | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomhoward | Hacker News Reader

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Note that the goal of the study was not to determine IF brain structure produces attract thought, but HOW.

The point I think the commenter was making is that the statement "The goal was to understand how abstract thought arises from brain structure" suggests there may be some begging the question in the study design.

If you start with the assumption that that brain structure produces abstract thought, your evidence will support it, because you already believed it in the first place.

The main challenge to any hypothesis about the nature of thought or consciousness is that our fundamental tool for contemplating the topic is our consciousness - which is precisely what we're trying to understand.

On that basis, the argument goes, it's impossible to objectively determine what consciousness really is, because we have no way of separating the consciousness we're studying from the consciousness we're using to study it.

Alternative theories to the one that says the brain produces consciousness are that the brain is a carrier or receiver of consciousness, which somehow originates elsewhere.

Various forms of such theories have been proposed by reputable scientists including Roger Penrose[1], John Eccles[2] and - somewhat ironically - Karl Popper[3].

I personally don't have any strong opinions about the validity of these theories; it's enough for me to know that they exist and to keep an open mind until someone can develop a truly testable and falsifiable hypothesis.

Until then, it's all pretty much philosophy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Physics_and_cons...

[2] http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/science/prat-bra.htm

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem#Popp...

Well, explanations of mechanism can serve as verification that a hypothesis makes sense. Like, "this hypothesis fits with this demonstrable mechanism, isn't that interesting?" If there are other hypotheses which one can study and find evidence for, that's of course also interesting.

Regarding the discussion of whether the brain produces or receives consciousness, I have to say the distinction seems misguided. Nobody thinks that an individual brain is the pure origin of all perception and thought. That would be a kind of solipsism.

We are embedded in a world, and the brain learns to interact with this world as it grows up. The brain is also "pre-populated" with stuff that evolution has selected; you emerge from your mother with a neural structure, and that structure isn't the source of itself.

Popper's "three worlds" [1] don't require the brain to work in any mysterious way unknown to science. I don't think Popper made claims about the physical nature of reality. He was basically just refuting ontological theories that insist that there is only one world (the physical) or two worlds (the physical and the mental), by explaining a pluralist ontology where the creations of thought (e.g. poems) are also considered really existing.

It reminds me of the recent philosophers of "object-oriented ontology," who also proclaim a pluralist ontology. And yeah, it is pretty much just philosophy: clarifying how to accurately think about the world.

So you can have a philosophical discussion about whether a poem is to be considered an actual thing (e.g. a Platonic form) or a mere structure imposed on matter (or whatever). But that's tangential to the scientific investigation of how the brain works.

I don't think scientists who study brain structures like those of the article really claim that the brain is the sole source of thought. That wouldn't make sense, because of course thought is influenced by extra-neural factors like language and interactions. And as I said in another comment, it seems obvious that the brain is a kind of radio, in that its major function is to perceive and react to the world around it.

Anyway, this is a pretty subtle discussion and it's hard to flesh out sufficiently in forum comments!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper%27s_three_worlds and http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/p/popper80....

Is it also impossible to research matter, because we can't seperate the matter we study ... ? Am I missing the analogy?

Do you think things are possible just because you want them to be?

E_CONTEXT: Please elaborate, I don't understand where the question is coming from.

Maybe you can elaborate?

>Is it also impossible to research matter, because we can't seperate the matter we study ... ? Am I missing the analogy?

You seem to think that it should be possible to research matter, even though the prior argument seems to say it is impossible.

It's a complex topic that's really one of philosophy not science, and to try to discuss it in depth in an HN thread is to risk going down a very unedifying rabbit hole.

But in short, we can study matter to the extent that we can observe it from the outside using established scientific techniques. So we can form reasonably objective observations of the nature and behaviour of matter, because (at least for the sake of this argument), it is separate from our consciousness.

However, science is system of techniques and tools developed out of the consciousness of humans, so to study consciousness, you need to use science, which was created by consciousness, which we're trying to study using science... and so on.

So, short answer: we can use science to objectively study matter because it's separate from consciousness. It's harder to objectively study consciousness with science because that thing very we call science is a construct of consciousness.

>for the sake of the argument

That's begging the question. There's researchers writing a 18 page report about a 100 manyears of development and you stumble in here without really reading it, saying it's wrong on account of it not being right. Well, your circular logic leaves me unimpressed.

I think the uncertainty principle makes pretty clear, assuming for the sake of the argument that it is correct, that we can't observe matter without interfering. Ofc that's a matter of believe

The whole presumption of the article is that consciousness is related to matter. You are, if anything, changing the subject. You probably don't have a clue what consciousness is, no offense, I really don't. Sadly the quoted papers are not open access and I can't figure out sci-hub. Also, they are from a philosophical faculty, while I tend to the hard sciences.

Where would the inability to figure out conscioussness leave us, anyhow, do you just give up?

Hi there, I think you've read too much into what I was trying to say (which was my concern before I started answering you).

I'm not saying the research isn't useful, but rather that the way it was described in this article raised doubt about just how far the findings go in answering the deepest questions about consciousness (at least compared to what was implied in the headline).

I agree with you that I'm in no position to refute the countless hours of work by people far more more educated on the topic than me.

And I'm not saying we have no way of understanding consciousness, just that there's a limit to how deeply we can ultimately understand it, as at some point you'd have to step outside of your own consciousness. But if your position is that the same may be true for matter because fundamentally matter and consciousness may be inseparable, well I'm very open to that.

The comment of mine that you responded to was just answering someone else's question on the issue of whether the brain generates consciousness, or carries it in some other form.

I have no strong opinion on the matter; I take great interest in reading various hypotheses and philosophies and research studies, and the outcome is that just as you say, I don't have any idea what consciousness really is, because nobody else seems to either (though Roger Penrose's hypothesis about "quantum microtubules" is kinda cool, and seems to have some evidence to support it [1]).

Also, I'm with you on the uncertainty principle and the inability to observe matter with complete objectivity. But I resisted going there in the comment because, like I said, it's a rabbit hole.

But I really do look forward to more being discovered and debated about it.

[1] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.ht...

You keep speaking of "the outside", implying that there is any outside that's inaccessable to us. This's not scientific. It's not mumbojumbo either, but it's just not provable. It's glaringly obvious, too. It's tedious to still try to derive any insight from that. What you want maybe is an outlook, so to speak, to expand your horizont.

Consciousness is binary in my mind. To say that there is an understanding of consciousness sounds redundant to me, although understanding carries a notion of direction.

I don't disagree with you, and I think we're more on the same page than not.

In case you're interested, a writer (and scientist) whom I've found very insightful and thought-provoking on this topic is Bernardo Kastrup:

http://www.amazon.com/Bernardo-Kastrup/e/B004OFGCA4

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