Is there any proof of this? The while article seems to hinge on this assumption and then go on from there. We can't see or measure consciousness (brain activity yes, consciousness no). We only experience it. The article makes far to many naive assumptions without any proof.
More points in favor of physicalism: scientists' ability to alter rat neurons to be photosensitive and attach them to fiber optic cables, the ability to implant memories in rats by altering a neuron, the mapping of place neurons in rats -- or perhaps the fact that brains are produced entirely from matter consumed by the mother during gestation and by the creature afterward, so where does the dualistic mind get a chance to insert itself?
I'll note that I used to be a staunch dualist for religious reasons, but became convinced of physicalism over a period of years of semi-active reading.
I am obviously just speculating because I don't see an obvious connection between matter and consciousness even if they are linked in some way. The article doesn't give any clarity about this problem stated by Leibniz et al.
Dualism has worse problems, though. If there is no connection between consciousness and matter, how do psychoactive substances alter consciousness? How do conscious decisions cause material movements?
If you're going to take both subjective awareness and physics seriously there's a huge and crucial mystery here!
Q.E.D. (Or running in circles, as you like.)
One could argue that consciousness is a field phenomena and that our (gross) material brain is a device that interacts with this field. Modify the device and you modify the local effect.
What we have are various phenomenon that we attempt to classify. Some would like there to be one meta category we can lump everything into. That's typically called material or physical. But it could also be labelled ideal or mental, from a different categorization scheme.
The problem we've had so far is that some phenomena are not easily placed into the one all-encompassing meta category. It would be easier for us conceptually if we could make it all fit, but we haven't quite succeeded so far.
Whatever label you put to the category, they are all in the same one.
Otherwise, our category should just be called "everything".
This of course doesn't mean there could never be another explanation. But the time to take it seriously is when serious evidence is presented.
Just because we can imagine a certain reality in which events, actions and things might occur in a different way, doesn't mean it is this reality.
[1]The argument is disingenuous, not you of course.
So far we haven't come up with a decent explanation of consciousness which is why I am prepared to be a bit more open minded. The fact you can't observe it, only experience it adds to that. It may well be physical, but it may not.
> So far we haven't come up with a decent explanation of consciousness which is why I am prepared to be a bit more open minded.
Then we should say we don't know. It's disingenuous to say that because we don't have an answer, or as in this case, a full and complete answer, then it means that it might be this entirely different thing for which nobody has any evidence, no one has any explanation and no one can even describe or define.
I suggest the problem is with the concept "true".
The assumption that all phenomenon have a physical basis is exceedingly practical and produces fantastic predictive success. "True-ness" as it is intuitively defined is not interesting in this case, indeed it may be nonsense.
Stated another way, if we're going to describe "true" as some aspect of reality that we can never directly perceive but only get at through fallible senses and perceptions then we are not only flirting with something that is likely a-priori unprovable but also likely very uninteresting.
you can take the wrong turn Penrose took and posit that it's due to quantum effects, as a sort of middle ground.
My way of looking at it is that we use "consciousness" as a default bucket for things we don't have instrumentation to measure, or otherwise have a functioning predictive model for.
The reason it's bad, using a Dennet frame of mind, is that it's a sort of left-handed "skyhook" - throwing "quantum" in the resolve the longstanding divide between Mechanists and those who believe in a Prime Mover or deity. It's an Ex Deux Machina of sorts.
I can sympathize with Penrose; his entire career was about measuring the information transforms of things like black holes, so why not apply the same basic recipe to consciousness? It's still an interesting idea, but it's not, SFAIK, testable.
If consciousness is something fundamentally nonphysical than causality is out the window, because my actions in the world are not actually caused by anything in the world.
Epiphenomenalism is [roughly] a conception of the mind as a non-physical entity that 'creates' conciousness, but interacts with the physical world in a read-only manner.
100% knowledge of all physical causes does not rule it out, and it does not rule out 100% physical causality.
The idea of proof, in the empirical sense in which term is used in dealing with any statements about phenomena, presumes this about all phenomena. It is itself unprovable (for any phenomenon), as it is the axiomatic underpinning on which all "proof" of anything about phenomena rests.
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/23/the-laws...