Challenge to debunkers: Can you prove hallucinations are generated inside brain :-)

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Maybe I'm an idealist who just doesn't believe in a metamind.

I don't know what this means

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Where does my consciousness go after I die?

~~ Paul

It's interesting that you think consciousness has a location. Imagine the following thought experiment. Suppose our brains were to be hooked up in such a manner that a robot at some remote location, sending the appropriate signals back, would make it seem to us that we were seeing out of that robot's eyes. Hence it would seem that we were actually there in the robot. And this could be extended to the other senses so that in every way it would seem we are actually where the robot is. If the robot were sufficiently complex we could experience pains when there is damage to the robot, and of course we would regard the prospect of the destruction of the robot as the destruction of the self.

My personal belief is that we're not located anywhere. We only think we are located in our bodies because that's the location of our visual perspective. But we are no more located in our bodies than we are located in the main character that we control in a computer game.

So after we die our consciousness doesn't go anywhere. But we will experience a different world until we get reincarnated.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

I don't know what this means.

So far, I've only argued with the concept of the metamind or whatever you'd like to call it. Could I not be an idealist who simply doesn't believe in such a thing? Perhaps not.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian

My personal belief is that we're not located anywhere. We only think we are located in our bodies because that's the location of our visual perspective. But we are no more located in our bodies than we are located in the main character that we control in a computer game.

So after we die our consciousness doesn't go anywhere. But we will experience a different world until we get reincarnated.

I'm fine with us not being located in our bodies. So where are we located? And why would you say "I don't believe anything broadcasts or transmits consciousness" when you just described precisely that with the robot analogy?

If I understand idealism correctly, everything is mindstuff. That means that what I think of as my "mind" is mindstuff, but so is what I think of as my body. What does it mean, then, to say my mind is nowhere but my experiences are located with my body?

~~ Paul

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

I'm fine with us not being located in our bodies. So where are we located? And why would you say "I don't believe anything broadcasts or transmits consciousness" when you just described precisely that with the robot analogy?

If I understand idealism correctly, everything is mindstuff. That means that what I think of as my "mind" is mindstuff, but so is what I think of as my body. What does it mean, then, to say my mind is nowhere but my experiences are located with my body?

~~ Paul

I think it is important not to fall into the trap of expecting people groping for a new theory to have all the ends tied up.

Conventional science has more or less run with a theory of consciousness that many people feel is fundamentally wrong - not least because of the paradoxes that you get when you transfer the action to a computer (at least in a gedanken experiment). Or look at it another way, from time to time someone comes up with a new theory - 40Hz oscillations, or transient networks of neurones - and then more or less asserts that these are the seat of consciousness. The problem is that there is no way to explain (or test) such a statement - just perhaps to demonstrate a neural correlate.

A new theory simply has to start out in a tentative form. We are not founding a new religion, where a whole new set of ideas comes neatly worked out and ready to be believed!

The mental part of our brains - if it is a distinct entity - is obviously almost totally unknown to science. Asking where we are located may not even make sense because our mental components might exist outside of space-time. Trying to make people commit to answers to questions like this can descend into a cheap way to devalue their arguments - analogous to someone in a bygone era asking, "But I still want to know which slit that particular electron went through!"

For myself, I am pretty definite that the orthodox explanation for consciousness is wrong - and I feel I have powerful arguments to back that up - but extremely vague as to what should replace it.

David

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

I think it is important not to fall into the trap of expecting people groping for a new theory to have all the ends tied up.

I'm not asking about a mere end. I'm asking what it means for my experiences to be located in my body, which is a product of mindstuff, but not my mind, which is also a product of mindstuff. Seems like a fundamental question to me.

Conventional science has more or less run with a theory of consciousness that many people feel is fundamentally wrong - not least because of the paradoxes that you get when you transfer the action to a computer (at least in a gedanken experiment).

I'm still not sure what these paradoxes are. Maybe you could start a separate thread about them?

The mental part of our brains - if it is a distinct entity - is obviously almost totally unknown to science. Asking where we are located may not even make sense because our mental components might exist outside of space-time. Trying to make people commit to answers to questions like this can descend into a cheap way to devalue their arguments - analogous to someone in a bygone era asking, "But I still want to know which slit that particular electron went through!"

But the idealist doesn't argue that our minds are distinct; they argue that everything is mind. It's the dualists arguing that our minds are distinct. Are there any dualists left around these days?

Anyhoo, I agree that pestering someone for details of their new theory can be annoying. How about a whiff of a scent of an idea how the theory works? And how about the folks with the new ideas not ragging on scientists because they don't have all the details of consciousness yet? If lack of details is not a reason to discard, it should apply across the board.

~~ Paul

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

I'm fine with us not being located in our bodies. So where are we located?

Again, I repeat, we are not located anywhere. I regard that the location of selves ultimately doesn't make any sense.

And why would you say "I don't believe anything broadcasts or transmits consciousness" when you just described precisely that with the robot analogy?

It was not an analogy. It was a thought experiment showing that our conviction that we are located within our bodies may not reflect reality.

If I understand idealism correctly, everything is mindstuff. That means that what I think of as my "mind" is mindstuff, but so is what I think of as my body. What does it mean, then, to say my mind is nowhere but my experiences are located with my body?

~~ Paul

Your experiences are not located within your body.

[David Bailey]

Paul,

A good idea about using a new thread to explore computer paradoxes. I may repeat a few of my past responses there in order to make the whole thing coherent.

Incomplete theories are fine if they are proposed tentatively, but so often the skeptics try to assert that their ideas are the only ones that make sense - and then they really need to have a coherent outline as to how their theory works (IMHO).

Yes you are right, there are idealists and dualists. I guess one model for a totally mental world would run on an analogy from condensed matter physics. You take a semiconductor crammed with electrons that are all strongly interacting, and yet to a good approximation you can think of independent electrons (but with modified properties) moving almost freely. I imagine a fully mental world might work something like that - our individual consciousnesses would actually only be individual to a certain approximation. The residual interaction might give us all the ψ phenomena that we are discussing. In such a conception, maybe the whole of space-time is an artificial construct!

David

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

I'm not asking about a mere end. I'm asking what it means for my experiences to be located in my body, which is a product of mindstuff, but not my mind, which is also a product of mindstuff. Seems like a fundamental question to me.

Your experiences are not located within your body.

But the idealist doesn't argue that our minds are distinct; they argue that everything is mind. It's the dualists arguing that our minds are distinct. Are there any dualists left around these days?

Almost everyone's a dualist. Uncommon amongst scientists and philosophers perhaps, but not the general population.

Anyhoo, I agree that pestering someone for details of their new theory can be annoying. How about a whiff of a scent of an idea how the theory works? And how about the folks with the new ideas not ragging on scientists because they don't have all the details of consciousness yet? If lack of details is not a reason to discard, it should apply across the board.

Consciousness cannot in principle be scientifically explained. Consciousness is a basic existent.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Interesting

Your experiences are not located within your body.

Let me reword the question:

If I understand idealism correctly, everything is mindstuff. That means that what I think of as my "mind" is mindstuff, but so is what I think of as my body. What does it mean, then, to say my mind is nowhere but my experiences feel as if they are located with my body? Why don't they feel as if they are located in my mind, or located nowhere?

~~ Paul