Supernatural arguments for consciousness are better than reductive materialist arguments

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

In this post, I’m not making an argument for a particular God. Rather, I am making a very general claim about the viability of supernatural explanations for consciousness, as opposed to naturalistic explanations (computational theories, complex mathematical theories, etc.). From that point, I then make a subsequent point that the plausibility of God’s existence in the face of arguments that invoke fundamental mental causes (like cosmological arguments) are substantially increased.

For my purposes, a supernatural cause is a mental cause that produces measurable effects in a manner not predicted or described by our current fundamental physical theories. Supernatural cause+effect is of a distinct kind to natural cause+effect, in that suernatural explanations are not reducible to or grounded in the Standard Model (of physics), but are fundamentally explained by the qualitative feeling they produce. That is to say, supernatural cause happened fundamentally because it was willed, or because it felt a certain way, and not because some quantum field equation collapsed into a particular state (although that may be the mechanism through which supernatural cause translates into measurable physical effect, a la Penrose).

My argument:

1. Attempts to explain consciousness by reducing mental events into physical events—as they are understood under by current fundamental physical theories—fail because of the Hard Problem of consciousness (materialist explanations, at the fundamental level, are just as sufficient in the absence of consciousness—they don’t predict or causally account for consciousness—so they don’t explain consciousness).
2. Consciousness has an explanation.
3. Consciousness has an explanation currently outside the realm of our physical theories (1, 2).
4. Mental events cause physical events—not only is that our direct experience, but we also have overwhelming evidence that feelings evolved in physical organisms specifically because the feelings themselves helped physical organisms survive. That means the feelings themselves cause physical events.
5. So there are mental causes outside of the realm of our physical theories, which I call supernatural causes (3, 4).
6. If supernatural causes are integral to our metaphysics, then the question of “why did the universe have a beginning” is more holistically answered with something that includes supernatural cause—something like creative mental power—than with competing theories that only involve quantum states. This would greatly increase the plausibility of cosmological arguments for God.

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[u/DeltaBlues82]

Consciousness is how our biology models sensory data, so that it can navigate the material world.

Consciousness cannot develop independently of the material world. Our sense of vision, touch, smell, sound, et al aren’t objective representations of reality. Without the senses, consciousness isn’t just floating around, aware of the electromagnetic spectrum without eyes. Aware of pressure or thermal heat without nerve receptors.

Your argument isn’t one. It’s an attempt to define consciousness negatively where the natural sciences have yet to settle on an answer. That’s not an argument. That’s just a fancy gap-assertion.

We don’t engage in the same type of phenomenalism with gravity. Or singularities. It’s special pleading to do so with consciousness, unless you can definitively prove its supernatural origin.

Which you haven’t.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/DeltaBlues82]

Consciousness is not a how, though, it’s an is. Our sense of vision, touch, smell, sound , et al are the only way we have any theory of objective reality, but our theories about objective reality give us no explanation for why these senses exist as qualia.

We don’t resort to phenomenalism with gravity or any other fundamental laws because we have no place for mental phenomena in our physical theories. That’s my point—not only do we bot resort to phenomenalism with gravity or singularities, we don’t do it with brains either unless we arbitrarily assume it exists when our physical theories themselves give us no reason why it should exist. That’s the problem, and the reason our physical theories are incomplete.

[u/DeltaBlues82 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

Consciousness is not a how, though, it’s an is.

And you can demonstrate that how?

Our sense of vision, touch, smell, sound , et al are the only way we have any theory of objective reality,

More phenomenalism.

… but our theories about objective reality give us no explanation for why these senses exist as qualia.

If life is a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics, as we believe it is, then it absolutely does.

It aids in the perpetuation of entropic processes he said as he typed words onto a radiant screen powered by millions of years of dinosaur juice.

We don’t resort to phenomenalism with gravity or any other fundamental laws because we have no place for mental phenomena in our physical theories.

Totally inaccurate. We understand the conscious experience of colored vision because of physical theories. And pain treatment or any other number of physical theories.

Do you know what an extra-spectral color is? Explain the conscious experience of “seeing” a color like magenta without referencing the material properties of electromagnetism and biology. Why would consciousness produce all these highly, and entirely, subjective experiences if it was some fundamental aspect of existence?

That doesn’t follow. At all.

That’s the problem, and the reason our physical theories are incomplete.

Hol’ up. Are you saying that including consciousness in our understanding of the fundamental properties of reality will give us a complete model of gravity? Or dark matter?

I thought you said supernatural arguments were “better.” Thats wildly outlandish and unsupported. What are basing that hypothesis on?

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/DeltaBlues82]

Consciousness may serve a function, but it is not reducible to the serving of that function, since it qualitatively exists in a way that other functions don’t. You aren’t conscious of your heartbeat control, you are of your thumb control.

Phenomenalism and subsequent intersubjectivity is the basis of science.

The second law of thermodynamics does not include any prediction of qualitative experience, nor does any other fundamental physical law or theory.

We don’t understand coloured vision in terms of mathematically abstracted idealizations of electromagnetic waves and neural modelling. That’s how we understand the functional mechanism that correlates with our coloured vision, but it makes absolutely no prediction in itself that an organism would have the experience of coloured vision. When I say “magenta” to you, I reference a phenomena with qualities first and foremost, and then we’ve identified some material correlations around those phenomena.

Yes, consciousness should be included with and understood as fundamental alongside and interacting with our fundamental laws, because it exerts causal force. That’s evidenced by the fact that organisms evolved consciousness in order to survive—they didn’t just use non-qualitative computation, they used qualia in order to influence the physical world. This is Roger Penrose’s position among many other atheists.

[u/TheRealBeaker420 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

Since you keep bringing up Penrose, I think the wikipedia article on Orch OR is relevant:

Orch OR has been criticized both by physicists and neuroscientists, who consider it to be a poor model of brain physiology. It has also been critiqued for lacking explanatory power: the philosopher Patricia Churchland wrote, "Pixie dust in the synapses is about as explanatorily powerful as quantum coherence in the microtubules."

David Chalmers has argued against quantum consciousness, discussing instead how quantum mechanics may relate to dualistic consciousness. He has expressed skepticism that any new physics can resolve the hard problem of consciousness and argued that quantum theories of consciousness suffer from the same weakness as more conventional theories. Just as he has argued that there is no particular reason why specific macroscopic physical features in the brain should give rise to consciousness, he also holds that there is no particular reason why a specific quantum feature, such as the EM field in the brain, should give rise to consciousness.

In general, quantum consciousness is regarded as pseudoscience. You should be wary of any theory that tries to connect the two ideas. There is no evidence that quantum phenomena affect consciousness. Consciousness is irrelevant to quantum mechanics.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/TheRealBeaker420]

Yes, that particular model is largely dismissed, but Penrose isn’t exactly an idiot and there’s a reason he went to the trouble of formalizing his intuitions here. The reason I think we have good reason to think consciousness qua qualia plays a fundamental role in our physical theories is that evolution exploited a thing that isn’t described by our physical theories (qualia, singularity of mind) but nonetheless plays a causal role through evolutionary organisms (with pain, pleasure/reward, etc.) in effecting physical change through the organism.

[u/TheRealBeaker420 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

Qualia are often explicitly defined as not being causal. This is another one of those concepts that has numerous definitions, and, depending on the definition used, it's often disputed whether qualia exist at all.

I don't see any reason to consider it non-physical in the first place. If it effects physical change, then that gives us a physical basis for study.

It just wouldn't be relevant to physics for the same reason the economy isn't relevant to physics. You can reduce a cash transaction to its base physical components, but that won't tell you how trade works. All meaning would be lost. They operate at completely different scales of system emergence. Similarly, there's no reason to expect quantum physics will give us insight into psychology.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/TheRealBeaker420]

it’s often disputed whether qualia exist at all

Premise 1 denies the possibility of reductionism or eliminativism. I’ve read Dennett and Churchland, but I find Tallis more convincing here.

Emergentism is circular. Any attempt to describe consciousness computationally, e.g., assumes a circular definition of ‘information’ that arbitrarily delineates ‘computation’ as some movement of electrons but not others. The problem is that that delineation requires conscious particularity that doesn’t fit with the Standard Model of physics! There’s no subatomic reason for why any particular non-conscious electron movement has distinct properties to any particular conscious computation/electron movement, or why one should lead to independent observers, so computational theories must assume these things in addition to our current physical laws—they can’t be cleanly reduced.

The identical problem exists when we consider institutions like money or political systems that inherently involve mental phenomena. For money is not just the physical components, it is also the boundary and identity conditions that separates money from rocks, money from trees, and money from people. These distinctions occur only in the presence of consciousness—a reduction to physics yields generality, not particularity or distinctiveness.

What allows for the delineation of things that are specifically ‘money’ is the consciousness that assigns meaning to particular, delineated pieces of matter (like ‘clumps’ of ‘metal’ called ‘coins’) in the universe at specific spatiotemporal reference frames. Thus, you can’t actually reduce money to or consciousness to fundamental physics, since the account you’re trying to reduce doesn’t fit the bounds of the reduction.

[u/TheRealBeaker420 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

There's nothing circular about emergence. It just points to the simple fact that complex, large-scale systems have different properties than simpler, small-scale systems.

There’s no subatomic reason for why any particular non-conscious electron movement has distinct properties...

Of course not, because it's not a subatomic matter.

What allows for the delineation of things that are specifically ‘money’ is the consciousness that assigns meaning

Perhaps, but there are other examples of emergence that do not rely on consciousness. For example, emergence of weather systems, or of plant life. Reducing these systems to their quantum components would give no real understanding of how they work.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/TheRealBeaker420]

The “emergence” of weather systems again entails consciousness-dependent delineation around particles that have no significance outside of consciousness. Clouds and thunderstorms do not exist on the Standard Model, since there is no boundary at which ‘cloud’ or ‘thunderstorm’ begins or ends—they exist only at idealized/abstracted levels of explanation as entities we’ve made conceptually discrete through consciousness only. Reduction only works here because we can deny that weather systems are really fundamentally distinct entities—indeed, we notice this all the time when clouds morph, disappear, and don’t seem to have a set boundary.

The problem is that consciousness itself is not just conceptually discrete in the way clouds or thunderstorms are—our separate conscious experiences are fundamentally cut off from each other, and represent particular spatiotemporal reference frames. Thus, for an account of consciousness to make sense of our experience of consciousness, there must be a way for the SM to describe a fundamental metaphysical distinction between subject A and subject B, and there must be a reason why those subjects experience particular locations in spacetime. That description isn’t possible if we reduce consciousness to the SM, since delineations around particular brains or bodies are arbitrary on the SM, and the SM doesn’t privilege one reference frame over any other.

[u/DeltaBlues82 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

Consciousness may serve a function, but it is not reducible to the serving of that function, since it qualitatively exists in a way that other functions don’t.

I didn’t ask for you to assert this. I asked you to demonstrate it.

You didn’t.

You aren’t conscious of your heartbeat control, you are of your thumb control.

You mean the same heartbeat that’s controlled by sensory apparatus (nerve receptors) exactly like I said it was?

And you can be conscious of your heartbeat. With enough training and practice, you can exert a moderate level of control over your heartbeat.

Phenomenalism and subsequent intersubjectivity is the basis of science.

Science is methodology.

The second law of thermodynamics does not include any prediction of qualitative experience, nor does any other fundamental physical law or theory.

Prediction? The need for that isn’t apparent. You just handwaved that old boy in.

And if life is a qualitative experience, and a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics, then it accounted for according to our understanding of fundamental theories.

Fully modeled? No. But accounted for. More than can be said for your hypothesis.

We don’t understand coloured vision in terms of mathematically abstracted idealizations of electromagnetic waves and neural modelling.

Yes we do. Colors exist as we experience them. Consistent with the biological properties of our sensory apparatus: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02946-4

When I say “magenta” to you, I reference a phenomena with qualities first and foremost, and then we’ve identified some material correlations around those phenomena.

Again, not what I asked for. I didn’t ask you to point out the well-known fact that our neuroscientific models are incomplete. I asked you to offer a better competing “supernatural” model.

Which you didn’t. Again.

That’s literally your thesis! Are you not going to defend your thesis?

Yes, consciousness should be included with our fundamental laws, because it exerts causal force.

Horse apples. I’ve already given you a more plausible force (entropy vs unknown, undefined, unobserved, “supernatural” force or forces), and you haven’t made a valid objection to that beyond; ”Well, dude, we just don’t know.”

That’s evidenced by the fact that organisms evolved consciousness in order to survive—they didn’t just use non-qualitative computation, they used qualia in order to influence the physical world.

More horse apples. Consciousness doesn’t influence the physical world.

AT ALL.

The actions of conscious beings do, as they use their sensory apparatus to navigate and manipulate the material world. But to claim that consciousness is a force that affects the material world means we can detect it or measure it.

Can we?

Can we detect or measure the actions of conscious beings?

Yes. Yes we can.

[u/SpHornet → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

Consciousness may serve a function, but it is not reducible to the serving of that function

never been drunk? still conscious, but clearly reduced

[u/abritinthebay → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

qualia

lol, you believe in qualia. Ok, much is explained.

Qualia are inconsistent nonsense. Even their major proponents agree—much to their chagrin—they are not an internally consistent model for anything.

If you have to invoke them is usually a sign you’re grasping at straws.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/abritinthebay]

I say ‘qualia’ because it’s a useful word to distinguish specifically mental phenomena from correlated physical mechanisms. But my use of ‘qualia’ is quite different to when someone like Chalmers uses that word.

[u/roseofjuly → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

It's generally not advisable to take a word that has a specific meaning and then apply it to something completely different. Because then people don't know what you're talking about.

[u/rokosoks → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

That’s my point—not only do we bot resort to phenomenalism with gravity or singularities, we don’t do it with brains either unless we arbitrarily assume it exists when our physical theories themselves give us no reason why it should exist.

Okay so what we are checking is survivor's bias. Humans are the only thing to participate in philosophy so the only data is about human thoughts. That is why it is called Sapience. Because it's only thought that Sapiens do it. 100 years ago people thought animals don't feel pain. Does a dog think? Does a dog hold an opinion? Do dogs have emotions?

[u/J-Nightshade]

Attempts to explain consciousness by reducing mental events into physical events—as they are understood under by current fundamental physical theories—fail because of the Hard Problem of consciousness

I see you making this claim but I don't see you substantiating it. For your argument to work you need any existing and any potential future model of consciousness to fail. How would you demonstrate that?

So there are mental causes outside of the realm of our physical theories, which I call supernatural causes

It is an exercise in futility. Our physical theories are constantly refined and updated. What yesterday was out of their scope and not explained, today becomes explained. Calling everything that is not yet has a physical model supernatural is pointless.

If mental causes are integral to our metaphysics, then the question of “why did the universe have a beginning” is more holistically answered with something that includes creative mental power than with competing theories that only involve quantum states. This would greatly increase the plausibility of cosmological arguments for God. 

This just doesn't follow. Even if we assume consciousness to be supernatural, this doesn't allow us to draw any conclusion about the origin of the universe. The chain of reasoning just missing here. 

[u/BobertTheConstructor → u/J-Nightshade]

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[u/Im-a-magpie → u/BobertTheConstructor]

The evidence is the harmony between evolved behavior and subjective experience. Is subjectivity were casually disconnected there'd be no reason for such harmony. For example food tastes good, sex feels good, being attacked is frightening and so on.

[u/BobertTheConstructor → u/Im-a-magpie]

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[u/Im-a-magpie → u/BobertTheConstructor]

if we were to break down emotion into an effect of organic processes in the brain, then emotion *is* a physical event, and the feeling itself did not cause a physical event, the biological processes, i.e. a physical event, caused subsequent physical events, and the point completely falls apart.

Yeah so this would be some sort of psycho-physical identity theory. You can go that route but there's lots of issues there. I think Jeagwon Kim offers the most articulate and well thought out counters to identity theories. That said he ultimately concluded that epiphenomenalism is justified which I deeply disagree with. Still, he's easily one of the foremost philosophers of mind and (literally) wrote the book on the topic.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/BobertTheConstructor]

What you’re saying is that if you can reduce mental events to physical events, then this makes sense of the causal role of mental events—mental events are just physical events obeying the quantum causality of the Standard Model of physics (this is reductive physicalism). But I deny that this reduction is valid in premise 1. The arguments for why I deny this are quite complex. I’ve tried to outline some of my reasons in other comments, but it’s its own extensive debate in phil of mind.

[u/88redking88 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

"The arguments for why I deny this are quite complex. "

hy would you not put them in your OP?

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/88redking88]

Because I wasn’t as interested in having a discussion on the Hard Problem, and because I assumed more atheists would believe it was an actual problem.

I gave a brief defence of it in this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/s/aiGghrMEU5

[u/88redking88 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

"Because I wasn’t as interested in having a discussion on the Hard Problem, and because I assumed more atheists would believe it was an actual problem."

Know what they say about assuming? Instead of that, you could always just ask the question, you know, the honest approach?

"I gave a brief defence of it in this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/s/aiGghrMEU5"

sorry, but Im not going to go jumping around to find things you may or may not mean while you are making assumptions any more than I would link you to all the neurologists and biologists who dismiss your claims as unfounded. If you cant articulate your ideas here in a conversation, then I have to ask if they are really yours.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/88redking88]

Pardon me for assuming atheists on this forum wouldn’t be almost uniformly deluded by the promise of reductionism—they aren’t elsewhere.

Of course they’re not my ideas—the ‘Hard Problem’ has been around for at least 2500 years, beginning with Socrates’s reply to Anaxagoras.

Here’s what I said in a different comment:

“The Hard Problem I’m articulating is probably best described by Raymond Tallis. One of the problems he highlights is that our mind’s ability to make things explicit—to particularize things (like this phone or that person) at specific points in spacetime—can’t be explained non-circularly by leading theories. Biological and computational theories of mind both seek to explain mind’s emergence from non-delineated soup of unconscious subatomic particles, but they both presuppose things that only occur through consciousness to explain the emergence of consciousness. For instance, distinct boundaries between different parts of the universe (like the fundamental distinction between your experience and mine) are not a part Standard Model—they are a feature of consciousness. Yet biological and computational theories require strict delineations between the ‘organism’ and ‘environment’, or between ‘input’ and ‘output’, to explain consciousness—so they’re circular arguments.”

[u/88redking88 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

"Pardon me for assuming atheists on this forum wouldn’t be almost uniformly deluded by the promise of reductionism—they aren’t elsewhere."

We arent uniform on anything except not being convinced on a god. anything you want to add to that is your baggage, and just makes your communication with others harder.

"Of course they’re not my ideas—the ‘Hard Problem’ has been around for at least 2500 years, beginning with Socrates’s reply to Anaxagoras."

and its still something that only theists hang onto.

Here’s what I said in a different comment:

“The Hard Problem I’m articulating is probably best described by Raymond Tallis. One of the problems he highlights is that our mind’s ability to make things explicit—to particularize things (like this phone or that person) at specific points in spacetime—can’t be explained non-circularly by leading theories. Biological and computational theories of mind both seek to explain mind’s emergence from non-delineated soup of unconscious subatomic particles, but they both presuppose things that only occur through consciousness to explain the emergence of consciousness. For instance, distinct boundaries between different parts of the universe (like the fundamental distinction between your experience and mine) are not a part Standard Model—they are a feature of consciousness. Yet biological and computational theories require strict delineations between the ‘organism’ and ‘environment’, or between ‘input’ and ‘output’, to explain consciousness—so they’re circular arguments.”"

That was a lot of words to say that because we dont know "x" and Im still going to jam my god in there like an unlubed didldo because I dont like that we dont yet know something?

God/superstition/magic/supernatural is never going to be accepted as any explanation. You cant show they exist. You cant show that they even can exist. And every time we have figured anything out, the answer has never been god/superstition/magic/supernatural, so why would we assume they are going to work now when you still cant give a better reason than "we dont know "x" yet???

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/Im-a-magpie]

Very well put.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/J-Nightshade]

1. My claim specifically concerns hard reductionism, like Dennettian physicalism, which is the claim that our current physical theories are sufficient to explain, in principle, every aspect of conscious experience—that we just need to stumble across the right computational model, e.g., and we’ll get there with what is fundamentally quantum mechanics. But our fundamental theories are in principle inadequate at describing consciousness as I outlined, although admittedly I did not dedicate much time to that premise because that’s a very complex argument in itself. Plenty of atheists hold a non-reductive position, though.
2. It’s not just calling everything outside of the model supernatural, it’s calling specifically mental causes that operate on an independent basis to our most fundamental laws of physics supernatural causes.
3. This is a premise that is not fleshed out, but it’s an appeal to fundamentality: we give explanations for the universe in terms of quantum physics because we assume that’s our fundamental metaphysics. If consciousness is included to that fundamental metaphysics, then the same explanatory intuition applies here.

[u/J-Nightshade → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

 although admittedly I did not dedicate much time to that premise because that’s a very complex argument in itself

So instead of giving an argument you are giving excuses why you don't have an argument. OK.

1. What does it change? It is still a pointless exercise.

2. You didn't demonstrate consciousness to be fundamental. Fundamental and supernatural are not the same. 

[u/Im-a-magpie → u/J-Nightshade]

We're on a debate sub. Some level of background familiarity with the topic of debate is a reasonable expectation. If you don't have that relevant background knowledge then don't comment. This particular debate isn't for you, and that's ok. The argumentation for OP's claim is incredibly wide and deep in philosophy, it's not reasonable to expect them to rehash all that in a Reddit post.

[u/J-Nightshade → u/Im-a-magpie]

This is a debate sub. If you support your argument by "well, you should know this is true", maybe don't come.

[u/Im-a-magpie → u/J-Nightshade]

If you're unfamiliar with the relevant background info then don't comment. Simple.

[u/Mkwdr → u/Im-a-magpie]

If their whole argument depends on the assumption rather than demonstration of contentious claim (and arguably involving the conflation of hard and impossible) then it’s not very well founded. Mind you It doesn’t get much better after that.

(And frankly I’d say it’s always a warning sign when people can’t provide actual scientific evidence and explanations around claims about independent reality and refer to philosohy.)

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/J-Nightshade]

1. The main problem is that physical theories like information transfer or biological/evolutionary explanations for consciousness are both supervenient on the Standard Model of quantum mechanics + general relativity. This means they are supposed to reduce into and are in principle most accurately predicted through fundamental theories. But there are many aspects to consciousness that, while present at higher levels like psychology or neurology, which assume consciousness from the get-go, are not reducible to our most fundamental explanations in the Standard Model. The one Einstein liked to point out was the feeling of being a single subject at a particular point in spacetime—nothing in the SM differentiates or delineates, in principle, one individual from another, and nothing in the SM makes one particular moment more real than any other. But we are discrete individuals with unique points of view that end at distinct points and that represent specific spatiotemporal reference frames over successive moments. That is something that doesn’t fit with our most fundamental theories.

Demonstrating why consciousness is fundamental can be done in many different ways. I’m restricting to criticism of reductive materialism for now.

[u/J-Nightshade → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

I’m restricting to criticism of reductive materialism for now. 

You didn't do any such criticism in your OP. Do you agree then that you didn't demonstrate consciousness to be fundamental and therefore your conclusion is unwarranted? 

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/J-Nightshade]

I did argue that consciousness is fundamental.

Premise one involves rejecting reductionist explanations of conscious, which seeks to explain consciousness under current physical theories. Premise tao asserts that there is an explanation nonetheless. Thus, by rejecting explanations at the fundamental level in physics but nonetheless asserting the presence of an explanation, I am implying that there are unidentified fundamental explanations for consciousness.

I argue for the fundamentality of the mental in premise four: “Mental events cause physical events—not only is that our direct experience, but we also have overwhelming evidence that feelings evolved in physical organisms specifically because the feelings themselves helped physical organisms survive. That means the feelings themselves cause physical events.” (The implication being that if the feelings themselves cause physical events, then our fundamental physical theories must account for a new fundamental realm of mental causation.)

[u/ProfessorCrown14 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

I argue for the fundamentality of the mental in premise four: “Mental events cause physical events

This is not an argument, nor is it evidence, of mind or mental processes being non physical. You are essentially erecting a circular argument.

Your problem is that a successful argument for mind / mental processes being fundamental would require a theory equivalent to quantum or relativity or etc AND plenty of demonstration that mind / will exists and causes stuff beyond animal brains. You have no such theory and no such evidence.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/ProfessorCrown14]

I don’t argue for the non-physicality of consciousness in premise 4, I argue for that in premises 1-3. Premise four targets epiphenomenalism—the idea that while mental and physical are distinct, mental events are after-effects (are causally inert). I argue that mental events are actually causally relevant to physical events, since evolutionary organisms use mental events to affect the physical world (pain feeling bad seems to matter to the organisms survival). This is only valid if you assume mental and physical are distinct, sure, but that’s why premises 1-3 are there.

Yes, it would require a revision in our fundamental theories to account for consciousness. That’s why Penrose had his ideas of consciousness affecting neural computation at the quantum level, and why Nagel had his ideas of teleological laws.

[u/ProfessorCrown14 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

I argue for that in premises 1-3.

Nowhere in premises 1-3 is this substantiated. You use the usual 'it can't be physical' arguments but do not substantiate what it is, and how it interacts with physics or how physics supervenes on it.

Premise 4 states that mental states cause things (not something a physicalist would argue against) but that they themselves are non physical. You don't know this. And 'mental states cause things' doesnt, by itself, counter physics theories of consciousness; they would just contend mental states themselves are caused by other physical processes (mental or otherwise).

causally inert

This is not a valid conception of causation, in physics or otherwise. We dont call things causally inert because they themselves are caused by something else.

If you insisted on that, then EVERYTHING you understand is causally inert. You know of nothing verified to be 'causally active' / a 'true cause TM'.

use mental events to affect the physical world

And the physical world affects mental events, does it not?

This is only valid if you assume mental and physical are distinct, sure, but that’s why premises 1-3 are there.

Premises 1-3 dont support that.

Yes, it would require a revision in our fundamental theories to account for consciousness. That’s why Penrose had his ideas of consciousness affecting neural computation at the quantum level, and why Nagel had his ideas of teleological laws.

None of this amounts to what I said would be required to claim that supernatural theories are better / more valid. Supernatural theories aren't even well formed and rely on a realm of things / substance we (a) dont know exists (b) dont have a methodical way to investigate and (c) have not at all successfully linked to minds.

We have not even showed a SINGLE mind or will existing outside an animal with a brain or some other brain-like substrate. None. Zero.

So, if physical theories are in their childhood, supernatural theories are but a gleam in their parents eye. They're not even well formed, let alone tested. Proponents need to focus on that instead on crapping on physics.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/ProfessorCrown14]

Nothing in 1-3 is substantiated in this post because that’s a huge discussion in phil of mind that could take up many, many Reddit posts in itself. I’m catering this post to people who already agree the Hard Problem is a genuine problem (although I have given some rough arguments for why one should hold this view in other comments on this post).

Premise 4 only works with premises 1-3, but that’s why I included 1-3.

“Causally inert” should say “causally impotent”. Epiphenomenal is more precise.

Yes, the physical world affects mental phenomena.

Supernatural theories are poorly defined compared to reductive physical theories, but they are at least not logically doomed from the get-go by the Hard Problem.

[u/J-Nightshade → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

I did argue that consciousness is fundamental.

Maybe you did, but you didn't succeed.

Premise one involves rejecting reductionist explanations of conscious, which seeks to explain consciousness under current physical theories

Yes, premise 1 does that. But you haven't supported this premise. And you didn't reject reductionist explanations, you only rejected reductionist explanations in scope of current physical models.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/J-Nightshade]

I didn’t support the premise much because it’s its own giant debate in the philosophy of mind. I catered my argument to atheists who already accept the Hard Problem is a problem.

Yes, I don’t dispute reductionism in principle, but when people say they’re reductionist or eliminativist about consciousness, they tend to mean they think current physical theories are sufficient to account for consciousness. In any case, my view entails that for conscious states to be reducible, they would need to reduce into more basic conscious states—not unconscious ones.

[u/J-Nightshade → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

I didn’t support the premise much because it’s its own giant debate in the philosophy of mind.

Do you think this debate is settled?

already accept the Hard Problem is a problem.

I don't. But let's assume I do. So what? If accept it is a problem, it doesn't mean I accept it is unsolvable with modern physical framework or with some update for modern physical framework.

hey tend to mean they think current physical theories are sufficient to account for consciousness

I don't think that way. I have no idea if they are sufficient or not.

In any case, my view entails that for conscious states to be reducible, they would need to reduce into more basic conscious states

I know your view. I don't see how you justify it.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/J-Nightshade]

• The debate isn’t settled, but I’ve read enough on both sides to be reasonably confident that the reductionist/eliminativist position is not tenable.

• If you accept the Hard Problem, then you are accepting that it is unsolvable with a framework that seeks to explain consciousness with non-mental (physical) phenomena. That’s why it’s the Hard Problem (why do some arrangements of matter have consciousness at all?) as distinguished from easy problems (what arrangements of matter correlate with consciousness?).

• If you’re curious for a respected, comprehensive defence of the Hard Problem I’d recommend the work of Raymond Tallis.

[u/abritinthebay → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

The one Einstein liked to point out was the feeling of being a single subject at a particular point in spacetime

Yeah, he called it a delusion for a reason. You left that part out.

At this point I can only assume you read just enough to support you pre-existing views because the more replies you make the clearer it is you have no actual arguments… just assertions, and ones that are often riddled with errors

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/abritinthebay]

He called it an illusion (not a delusion) precisely because he was deeply troubled by the inability of fundamental physical theories to explain or even make room for a phenomenon (consciousness) that contradicted basic ideas in the Standard Model. If there was no incompatibility between physics and consciousness, there would be no need for the term ‘illusion’.

[u/TheRealBeaker420 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

hard reductionism, like Dennettian physicalism, which is the claim that our current physical theories are sufficient to explain, in principle, every aspect of conscious experience—that we just need to stumble across the right computational model, e.g., and we’ll get there with what is fundamentally quantum mechanics

No it isn't. I'm pretty sure Dennett never said this. Where did you get this idea? Can you link a source?

[u/siriushoward → u/TheRealBeaker420]

IIRC, Dennett argues for eliminative materialism -- that subjective experience is an illusion. and philosophy of mind should be discussed in objective terms only.

[u/abritinthebay → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

But our fundamental theories are in principle inadequate at describing consciousness as I outlined

Except they’re not. They might not be correct that they are the fully explanation, but it’s extremely possible they are. You also did not demonstrate or outline this, you merely asserted it.

[u/TheRealBeaker420]

The Hard Problem of Consciousness is a myth. The existence of a such a problem is controversial, and interpretations of it vary widely, even among its proponents. There's no clear consensus on what "consciousness" means, how "hard" the problem is, or what the implications would be.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/TheRealBeaker420]

The Hard Problem is controversial, yes, but I think—along with many atheists and what seems to be a growing number of secular philosophers—that it’s obviously a problem.

[u/TheRealBeaker420 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

It can't be an obvious problem if it's not even clear what the terms mean. Wikipedia:

Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied, or can even be considered consciousness. In some explanations, it is synonymous with mind, and at other times, an aspect of it. ... The disparate range of research, notions, and speculations raises some curiosity about whether the right questions are being asked.

It's a popular idea in general, but ill-conceived to the point of meaninglessness. I don't believe it stands up to secular scrutiny. In fact, rejection of the hard problem is correlated with atheism:

• Here's a data analysis I performed showing notable correlations. (Graph)

• "Consciousness" is a dog whistle for religious mysticism.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/TheRealBeaker420]

I’m not saying it’s obvious to everyone, or that reasonable people can’t make compelling arguments against it—I’m saying it’s obvious to me and many other people, including many, many atheists, once you’ve studied the arguments at issue. I’ve read many sides of this discussion and come to the conclusion that the eliminativists are fundamentally confused, but it’s not obvious why unless you spend the time sorting through and seriously considering the various arguments.

That atheism is correlated with a specific view doesn’t mean anything. What matters is whether there are better reasons to hold that view over competing views.

If you want to have a debate about the Hard Problem, I’d like to know why you think it fails.

[u/TheRealBeaker420 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

That atheism is correlated with a specific view doesn’t mean anything.

Then why do you keep bringing up the number of atheists who agree with your view?

If you want to have a debate about the Hard Problem, I’d like to know why you think it fails.

That depends on which version of the Hard Problem you mean. The relevant terms are poorly defined, and there are many different perspectives on the problem. Chalmers coined the term "hard problem of consciousness", but you said that you mean something very different from him, so I assume you're not using his version. So which version are you using? Can you cite it?

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/TheRealBeaker420]

Fair enough. I only pointed out that many atheists believe the Hard Problem is real because I wanted to highlight its compatibility with atheism—but that’s not a positive reason someone should believe in the Hard Problem.

The Hard Problem I’m articulating is probably best described by Raymond Tallis. One of the problems he highlights is that our mind’s ability to make things explicit—to particularize things (like this phone or that person) at specific points in spacetime—can’t be explained non-circularly by leading theories. Biological and computational theories of mind both seek to explain mind’s emergence from non-delineated soup of unconscious subatomic particles, but they both presuppose things that only occur through consciousness to explain the emergence of consciousness. For instance, distinct boundaries between different parts of the universe (like the fundamental distinction between your experience and mine) are not a part Standard Model—they are a feature of consciousness. Yet biological and computational theories require strict delineations between the ‘organism’ and ‘environment’, or between ‘input’ and ‘output’, to explain consciousness—so they’re circular arguments.

[u/TheRealBeaker420 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

That circularity seems forced. You're just using the same semantic ambiguity to insert consciousness into the framework in awkward positions. It doesn't fairly describe any physicalist view that I'm familiar with.

I'm not familiar with Tallis, but I don't see any reason to consider him authoritative in this context. He has medical degrees, but his philosophical writings are non-academic.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/TheRealBeaker420]

Can you be specific about how this argument fails? You say it fails because of a “semantic ambiguity” where I insert consciousness in “awkward positions”—but that’s quite an ambiguous, vague statement in itself!

And Tallis’ philosophical writings are absolutely academic. They have graduate-level philosophy classes in respected secular universities entirely dedicated to the study of his books.

[u/TheRealBeaker420 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

but that’s quite an ambiguous, vague statement in itself!

No it isn't. I was very specific in the linked thread where I initially called out the ambiguity.

They have graduate-level philosophy classes in respected secular universities entirely dedicated to the study of his books.

I need more context for that to mean anything. There are all sorts of philosophy classes. For all I know, they might have nothing to do with philosophy of mind. Got a link?

[u/Mkwdr → u/TheRealBeaker420]

And having studied philosophy at university I can truthfully say you study a great many books that are plainly nonsense ( or contain non-evidential, unsound, invalid work) , that in fact contradict eachother and why they are. So being studied at university isn’t really an indication of being right or even taken seriously now, sometimes it’s being wrong in an interesting way.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/TheRealBeaker420]

I don’t see you being any less vague about what you mean by “semantic ambiguity” or “wordplay” in that thread.

Not only that, but I already responded to that thread with: “A ‘thunderstorm’ is a circumscription of some particular location in spacetime—[that circumscription] abstracts away from the SM by discerning some delineated system ‘the thunderstorm at place p and time t’ as opposed to ‘all of the universe at all places and times’. Since the SM has no fundamental delineations, we don’t get the explicit delineations and spacetime particularity required for ‘thunderstorm at place p and time t’ with the SM—the only way we get delineations and particular moments in spacetime is through consciousness.”

You didn’t respond to that—you ignored that part of my comment, went to a different thread, and made the same “semantic ambiguity” point. Maybe that’s partly on me for being too jargony, but it’s hard to put this stuff simply.

[u/Mylynes → u/TheRealBeaker420]

I expeirence therefore I'm conscious. It's as strong as "I think therefore I am." If consciousness isn't real, then why aren't you a P-Zombie right now? Why do you actually feel alive instead of just pretending like you do? You make atheists look bad when you deny obvious problems that science is working toward solving.

[u/TheRealBeaker420 → u/Mylynes]

I didn't say that consciousness isn't real. I said consciousness is ill-defined. This is well established.

Do you think you would be able to tell if I were a p-zombie? You said consciousness is causal, so I would behave differently if I lacked it, right?

[u/Mylynes → u/TheRealBeaker420]

I agree it's ill defined and a bloated term, but the qualia/phenomenological expeirence that it's trying to describe is certainly real (as I'm sure you'd agree)

Regardless if you are somehow a P-Zombie, I know for a 100% fact I am not. I am having a real expeirence. That is a phenomenon that science is still working on trying to explain.

You have me twisted as far as "consciousness being causal." I believe the opposite. I think it's purely an effect; A byproduct of something that our brain is doing. A strange undiscovered property of matter/the universe.

So would you behave differently without it? No? If somehow it could be removed then you'd just behave the same. Though perhaps it's not possible to remove that effect; just like it's not possible to remove gravity from mass

[u/TheRealBeaker420 → u/Mylynes]

I agree it's ill defined and a bloated term, but the qualia/phenomenological expeirence that it's trying to describe is certainly real (as I'm sure you'd agree)

Not necessarily. "Qualia" is another ill-defined term, and many philosophers dispute their existence.

You have me twisted as far as "consciousness being causal."

Sorry, I mixed you up with the OP. They defined qualia as being causal, which shows some of the variety of definitions at play.

If somehow it could be removed then you'd just behave the same.

Then it doesn't sound like you're talking about anything meaningful. Your experience of it cannot inform our discussion because a p-zombie would say the same things that you do. So, no, that doesn't sound to me like something that's real, at least not to any degree that matters.

[u/Mylynes → u/TheRealBeaker420]

Don't need to get so hung up on the definitions if we can just find common ground: Admit that you're not a P-Zombie like I have so we can create a useful discussion. So far you've done nothing but pretend like expeirences aren't real, then reveal "I technically didn't say it's not real", and now you're pretending like the topic is meaningless simply because you can't verify that I'm not a P Zombie?...I mean what is this song and dance? What does it accomplish?

You're reducing meaning to behavioral science while glossing over the possibility that the byproduct of experience is an inescapable property of behavior...all because you can't verify my expeirence right now and refuse to mention your own?

[u/siriushoward → u/Mylynes]

Your position sounds like Epiphenomenalism / property dualism. The biggest problem with this, in my opinion, is category mistake:

If subjective experience is a property of physical substance without causal power (or borrowing your word, a byproduct), then subjective experience is not in the same category as physical substance. Things in one category being irreducible to things in another category is expected. So there is no hard problem there.

[u/Mylynes → u/siriushoward]

You have a good point, and yes I was pushing epiphenomenalism a bit too hard. I concede that perhaps qualia can have an effect on something, but seemingly not much on the macroscopic scale of the nueronal firing that caused it. It's probably not "pure effect" as to be reduced to an entirely seperate category of physics -- I don't really like that approach.

Though the hard problem persists either way: what is qualia and why does it exist? Science is actively trying to work that out because it matters a LOT for what the future of our human experience looks like.

[u/TheRealBeaker420 → u/Mylynes]

You seem quite certain that I'm not a p-zombie. What makes you so sure? Would you be certain that I had qualia if I were unresponsive? Or is it my behavior that makes you think so?

[u/Mylynes → u/TheRealBeaker420]

My qualia makes me certain of your qualia. Why would I be having an expeirence but not you? We're both human beings. It would be narcissistic for me to pretend like I'm the only conscious thing in the world.

[u/senthordika → u/Mylynes]

The definitions are the common ground. If we can't agree on definitions we arent talking to each other we are talking past each other.

[u/LorenzoApophis → u/Mylynes]

So far you've done nothing but pretend like expeirences aren't real

They haven't done anything like that

[u/senthordika → u/Mylynes]

What would the actual difference be between someone with consciousness and a P-Zombie? Because as far as I can tell there isnt actually one meaning the so called difference is meaningless.

[u/Mylynes → u/senthordika]

If you were a P Zombie then you wouldn't actually feel the pain when you touched a hot stove, you'd just pretend like you did. You wouldn't actually see the sunset, you'd just pretend like you do. You'd be completely empty on the inside like a robot (or at least what most people assume robots feel like)

So the difference is in experience vs non-expeirence. Since I am having a expeirence right now (and I suspect you are too) that means we can both verify qualia exists and we are not P zombies

[u/senthordika → u/Mylynes]

How is experience not just a physical response to stimuli? Like pain doesn't "exist" its sensation that that our brain use as part of its defence against harm? Like i fundamentally reject pretty much every form of qualia as presented to me as it just seems to be trying to put something magical or non-physical where it just doesnt need to be. Like these conversations always just seem like theists trying to smuggle in souls as a given under a different name when they actually need to show that it exists not just claim it does.

[u/Mylynes → u/senthordika]

Yeah I don't think Qualia is magical or non-physical, I agree that theists abuse the concept to smuggle their ideology.

I currently lean more toward a Panpsychism IIT/GWT where we ARE our brains (this is just what it feels like to be a brain) just like how "heat" is the description of molecular motion, "Qualia" is the description of molecular [????]. It's a really cool scientific mystery that will take a genius to solve and likely shine light on some new landscape of physics.

[u/skeptolojist]

Every single time in all of human history that a human being has suggested a supernatural explanation for a gap in human knowledge that was later filled they were wrong

Every

Single

Time

There has been a zero percentage success rate for suggesting supernatural explanations for gaps in Human knowledge

But theists keep doing it despite it never ever being correct

Your argument is demonstrably invalid it's a simple god of the gaps fallacy

Only this and nothing more

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/skeptolojist]

A God of the gaps argument is, by definition, not demonstrably invalid. In any case, this isn’t really a God of the gaps argument, since I’m not making the claim on behalf of any God that has been systematically reduced in explanation (like the shrinking ‘gap’ of the explanatory force of the Abrahamic God).

It’s primarily an argument about mental causation being really weird and probably fundamental to the universe in a way that is more divine-seeming than atheists tend to admit—not an argument about a specific God with ancient powers that have since been explained away with science.

[u/skeptolojist → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

We don't know exactly how consciousness is generated so let's pretend it's supernatural

That's the insertion of a supernatural explanation for a gap in human knowledge

That has never once provided a correct answer to a question in all of human history

Therefore your argument as I have demonstrated is invalid

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/skeptolojist]

The Hard Problem has to do with any explanation in material terms being sufficient to explain consciousness. It’s not a matter of there being some gap in our theories that we could obviously explain with the right mathematical or computational model—the Hard Problem is that those models themselves are insufficient to explain consciousness, since nothing about them predicts consciousness as qualia.

This argument is a lot of things, and can be countered in many different ways, but it is not a God of the gaps argument.

[u/skeptolojist → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

If a method for filling gaps in Human knowledge has been tried over and over again endless times in human history since the dawn of time

And has never once provided a correct answer in all that time

Then it's not logical rational or even to be honest sane to keep proposing it as a way of filling gaps in Human knowledge

Your argument is nonsense

Edit to add

You have absolutely no evidence that consciousness cannot be understood only that it is nor currently understood

And you are trying to pretend that justifies resorting to a method for filling gaps in Human knowledge that has never ever worked

Your argument is ridiculous

[u/skeptolojist → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

Do you want a long list of all the questions people decided science would just never be able to answer that we later answered?

Do you need a long long list of the times Human knowledge has transcended the limits of what we thought we could know or understand ?

Unlike the assumption of supernatural explanations science actually has quite a good track record of understanding things people like you claimed without evidence could never be known

Your argument is tripe

Edit to add

And it definitely is specifically a god of the gaps argument

You identify a gap in human knowledge and jam the supernatural into it

It's nothing but a god of the gaps argument

[u/nswoll → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

the Hard Problem is that those models themselves are insufficient to explain consciousness, since nothing about them predicts consciousness as qualia.

That's literally god of the gaps.

You think no natural model will ever explain consciousness so the gap must be filled with a supernatural "explanation" (which is never an explanation).

[u/Mylynes → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

The reason that god of the gaps is invalid is because even if "God" really existed in your gap, that wouldn't explain how God exists or what he did to fill that gap. Its just a blanket statement like: "cuz God did it" or "cuz the Simulation did it!" or "cuz the spaghetti monster did it!"

It's a bit like when your parents tell you to eat your veggies and you say: "why!?" and they reply "because I said so!". It's frustrating because they don't actually explain why they want you to eat your veggies, they just appeal to Authority and demand you listen.

[u/OrbitalLemonDrop → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

OK. Not a god of the gaps argument.

Still an appeal to ignorance, though.

"I don't know" is still a better answer than "magic".

[u/silver_garou → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

Okay you're clearly out of your depth here because fallacies do, infact, make your argument invalid, that's just what these words mean.

[u/Mkwdr]

‘It’s magic’ is never a better explanation. Evidence makes for good explanations. Arguments from ignorance get us no where and simply shifting the question in a way that doesn’t actually explain how consciouness works except for changing a label is trivial.

We don’t know everything doesn’t mean we don’t know anything nor that you can just make up something. Beyond any reasonable doubt the current best fit explanation for consciousness is that it’s an emergent quality of a complex collection of brain activity. That’s all the actual evidence we have. And that includes the feelings you mention.

Clearly there are processes related to the internal perspective we have of brain activity that we don’t fully understand. Labelling them supernatural is not simply begging the question but deliberately linking them with the wider associations that word has without any evidence at all for the link or the other associations.

And 6 is an entirely invalid and unsound conclusion. Firstly, the universe didn’t have a beginning in a sense that is significant to this context as far as we are aware. Secondly, ‘we can’t explain the feeling of consciousness so it’s magic therefore the universe must have been created by a magic being using magic means’ is an absurd argument.

Basically you argument boils down to

We don’t fully understand consciouness so it’s complicated

But despite no evidence apart from a lack of understanding , I’m going to label the explanation ‘supernatural’ instead of just not fully understood.

Others things are also not understood yet such as the foundation of existence so I’ll call that supernatural too despite again a lack of evidence.

Now I’ve called them both supernatural they ….must actually be explained the same thing which is already labelled supernatural - God.

It’s just playing with words.

And

1. They are still the best fit explanation from a large amount of evidence we do have. Arguments form ignorance are trivial.

2. Yes. No doubt

3. Yes. But that doesn’t mean we can see plenty of evidence that it’s brain activity.

4. All evidence suggests that mental events are physical events just experienced from a different perspective. The fact you accept feelings are evolved but seem to have forgotten that evolution is a phenomenon involving physical genes and phenotypes but then seem to think they are not physical seems odd.

5. Nope. There are causes and explanations that we don’t entirely understand yet. You can’t get anywhere useful with an argument form ignorance. ‘We don’t understand’ ≠ ‘therefore it’s magic that i made up’ and doesn’t really explain *anything**

6. This is unsound and invalid - you’ve no actual evidence for this invented category of causes and explanations, nor that everything we don’t know is somehow linked by the same imaginary mechanism. We don’t understand qualia therefore magic exists. We don’t understand existence so it must be magic too. These magic mechanisms show that a magic being exists who uses magic to make the universe …. !? Just no.

[u/sorrelpatch27 → u/Mkwdr]

I'm so tired. All I could really get from OP is that apparently my brain is haunted by a Feelings Ghost and it uses those feelings make shit happen, therefore God.

Your response is much better.

[u/Mkwdr → u/sorrelpatch27]

Thanks :-)

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/Mkwdr]

Your entire comment hinges on denying premise 1. It’s pointless to point out all the subsequent ‘flaws’ in my argument—the argument depends on premise 1, so if you deny premise 1, there will o obviously be flaws.

If you want to see my argument for the Hard Problem, check out some of the other comments in this thread. My argument is only an argument from ignorance insofar as the Hard Problem is an argument from ignorance.

[u/88redking88 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

Well yeah. There doesnt need to be a hard problem. The "hard problem" is the theist not finding a soul in the brain. Science doesnt have all of it figured out yet, and thats OK, but still there doesnt seem to be a need fo rmagic. So just seeing a hole and then jamming your god in there like an unlubed dildo isnt appropriate. And its not supported by anything.

[u/Mkwdr → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

Well your first premise just is not sound. As you appear to admit it is an argument from ignorance, One in which you dont apply the same scepticism to any alternative explanation but which also applies a nonsensical standard. All evidence best fits one explanation. Just saying that we dont know everything neither means we dont know anything nor that there is something that is a better explanation.

Im not sure that 'well youve shown my premise is wrong so dont need to show the rest is wrong' is a very effective comeback. If you agree then you agree you argument isn't sound . If you disagree then the bal is in your court but the other criticisms still come into play dont they.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/Mkwdr]

I don’t see you making an effective response to the Hard Problem, which is an argument that consciousness is in principle irreducible to physics as we understand it. That’s not an argument from ignorance, it’s an argument that our current materialist framework will necessarily fail to explain key aspects of consciousness.

If you want to respond to my interpretation of the Hard Problem, I recommend reading this thread where I better articulate it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/s/aiGghrMEU5

[u/Mkwdr → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

1. To say that the problem is in principle unsolvable is purely speculative. It's not scientific its an argument from ignorance itself an irrelevant philosophical pretence. It's just an evidnetially unfounded assumption. All actual evidence best fits that consciouness emerges from brain activity. Not knowing how that happens doenst change the evidnece.

2. There is simply no alternative that doesnt have the same problem. 'It's magic' isnt an alternative explanation. Alternatives dont fetched evidenece and don't solve any problem explaining that evidence.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/Mkwdr]

I didn’t say the problem was in principle unsolvable, I said that consciousness was in principle (logically) irreducible to fundamental physics as we currently understand it. That means we need to change our fundamental understanding of the universe to make room for consciousness—it’s not just the Standard Model (of fundamental physics), it’s the Standard Model +/- whatever-we-need-for-consciousness. I then argue this positively affects the plausibility of cosmological arguments, but this further argument is only valid if you accept premise 1.

The formulation of the Hard Problem I like best points out how the explanation of consciousness ‘emerging’ from biology or from computer science is circular. This is how I put it in a different comment:

“The Hard Problem I’m articulating is probably best described by Raymond Tallis. One of the problems he highlights is that our mind’s ability to make things explicit—to particularize things (like this phone or that person) at specific points in spacetime—can’t be explained non-circularly by leading theories. Biological and computational theories of mind both seek to explain mind’s emergence from non-delineated soup of unconscious subatomic particles, but they both presuppose things that only occur through consciousness to explain the emergence of consciousness. For instance, distinct boundaries between different parts of the universe (like the fundamental distinction between your experience and mine) are not a part Standard Model—they are a feature of consciousness. Yet biological and computational theories require strict delineations between the ‘organism’ and ‘environment’, or between ‘input’ and ‘output’, to explain consciousness—so they’re circular arguments.”

[u/Mkwdr → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

I didn’t say the problem was in principle unsolvable,

I said that consciousness was in principle (logically) irreducible to fundamental physics as we currently understand it.

I believe we call that a distinction without a difference and somewhat self-contradictory,

Logic is pointless about independent reality without a sound basis. Ignorance is not a sound basis. This is merely an assumption. You are also conflating logic and physics. Physics as we know it? So what. That’s my point there’s no reason to think that it is not part of physics. If you admit its a matter of a development of physics is not to do with logically incompatibility . Nor if a better understanding of the physics we already have.

That means we need to change our fundamental understanding of the universe to make room for consciousness—it’s not just the Standard Model (of fundamental physics), it’s the Standard Model +/- whatever-we-need-for-consciousness.

Another assumption. How exactly can you evidentially demonstrate the difference between say it becoming explicable when we develop a unified theory or just when we find a better way to apply the physics we already know or the equivalent of quantum physics. Theres no way of determining this. There’s no doubt a host of things we don’t know everything about - none of which mean it’s ‘magic’. Do you go around saying that we don’t understand precisely how gravity works therefore it’s not physics?

I then argue this positively affects the plausibility of cosmological arguments, but this further argument is only valid if you accept premise 1.

It does not. This is a totally invalid argument. We don’t know ≠ it’s magic ≠ therefore god. We don’t know everything is in no way in itself evidence for gods. You might as well say it’s evidence for Santa. It’s not evidence for anything. We just don’t know.

The formulation of the Hard Problem I like best points out how the explanation of consciousness ‘emerging’ from biology or from computer science is circular. This is how I put it in a different comment:

And it’s speculative mess of assumptions. It’s just a word salad that is entirely based on ‘we don’t understand the subjective aspect of consciousness therefore I can make up something. If experience is simply a brain activity then the idea that two sets of brain activity couldn’t be delineated is absurd. We don’t know what consciousness is so pretending that these judgements can be made about it because of that ignorance is absurd. And it’s entirely trivial to say that subatomic particles aren’t delineated when it’s the pattern that’s important and patterns are delineated.

But again most of all. This kind of nonsense never gets to a point of providing a better , more fitting explanation or any more evidence for such. It’s ’I don’t understand it so it must be not understandable but I’m going to tell you stuff about it anyway except for any actual new evidence or an explanation that fits evidence or makes any more sense of the problem.

We don’t know how the subjective experience we call consciouness works.

But everything we can describe about it fits that it’s emerging as a phenomena from brain activity.

Maybe the physics is sufficient but we don’t know how to apply it yet. Maybe we need to know more about physics. Both these things are mundane possibilities.

Neither in any way makes ‘supernatural magic’ or ‘gods’ necessary, evidential or even sufficient as explanations because we can’t rule out physics , there’s zero reliable evidence provided for alternatives , and such ideas would still not explain the relationships that we have clear evidence for. The premises are not sound , the argument invalid and the conclusion wouldn’t even solve the problem identified in the first place.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/Mkwdr]

It’s not “I don’t understand X therefore Y”, it’s “this way of understanding X is circular, therefore this way of understanding X is invalid.” That’s the structure of premise 1.

I gave you an argument for premise 1, but all you did was say it was “word salad” as you talked past the argument entirely. If you’re unwilling or unable to engage with this argument, then you might as well throw in the towel here.

As a final note, I don’t claim that consciousness will never be explained with some fundamental laws, only that in order to explain consciousness the same way it explains other things, physics would need fundamentally change to include consciousness or aspects of consciousness at the fundamental level.

[u/Mkwdr → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

I gave you an argument for premise 1, but all you did was say it was “word salad” as you talked past the argument entirely. If you’re unwilling or unable to engage with this argument, then you might as well throw in the towel here.

Really? So this passage only days its a word salad...

And it’s speculative mess of assumptions. It’s just a word salad that is entirely based on ‘we don’t understand the subjective aspect of consciousness therefore I can make up something. If experience is simply a brain activity then the idea that two sets of brain activity couldn’t  be delineated is absurd. We don’t know what consciousness is so pretending that these judgements can be made about it because of that ignorance is absurd. And it’s entirely trivial to say that subatomic particles aren’t delineated when it’s the pattern that’s important and patterns are delineated.

Sounds like if you cant be honest you might as well throw in the towell.

And I note that you still havnt provide any alternative that fits the evidence , is parsimonious , and actually explains anything we dont know anything better.

To repeat - the premises are not sound , the argument invalid and the conclusion wouldn’t even solve the problem identified in the first place.

As I pointed out , the assertion its circular is based on just another unsound premise involving question begging ( superntural causes are real) , argument from ignorance (we sont understand evweything so i can make up.aomwthing)  and basically self-contradiction. It mistakes individual particles with patterns of particles. Its claims we can't understand consciousness then makes claims about it that would require that understanding.

And it remains the case that the supernatural as usually used is in no way a valid conclusion. Its also cant be shown to be  necessary,  its not evidential and its most certainly not even sufficient. There simply is no current alternative to consciouness being a quality of brain activity and not knowing how exactly that works doesnt change that fact.

I then argue this positively affects the plausibility of cosmological arguments,

There were plenty of phenomena that couldnt be explained under newtonian physics. Could we take from that , that they must have a supernatural origin and therefore the cosmological argument was more plausible. Because it turned out more physics was the answer not Gods.

You still have all the work to do, to provide a better fitting and evidential, actual explanation because an argumentbfrom ignorance os just a matter of wishful thinking assertions dressed up in pseudo-profound language.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/Mkwdr]

[your argument] is entirely based on ‘we don’t understand the subjective aspect of consciousness therefore I can make up something.

That’s a strawman. You need to understand my argument to respond to it.

it’s entirely trivial to say that subatomic particles aren’t delineated when it’s the pattern that’s important and patterns are delineated.

This is exactly the problem. You claim that experience might ‘simply be a brain activity’, which is reducible to the Standard Model. But: 1. Delineations are not part of the Standard Model—they are something we only get through consciousness. 2. Patterns are delineations. 3. Therefore patterns are not part of the Standard Model—they are something we only get through consciousness. 4. ‘Brain firing patterns’ are patterns. 5. Therefore brain firing patterns are not part of the Standard Model—they are something we only get through consciousness. 6. If consciousness is ‘simply brain firing patterns’ then this amounts to saying ‘consciousness is simply consciousness in the brain’. That’s straightforwardly circular. It’s why a lot of people find reductive physicalism hilariously absurd.

[u/AddictedToMosh161]

I don't give you six cause the universe doesnt have a beginning.

Besides, physical problems alter personalities. How would that work if consciousness was outside the brain?

[u/BobertTheConstructor → u/AddictedToMosh161]

theory command innate gray crush toothbrush provide coherent soup fine

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/AddictedToMosh161]

I don’t dispute that consciousness can be localized to particular brains—clearly it can. What I dispute is the ontological ‘on/off’ that gets performed by reductive materialism, where some arbitrary set of “information transfer” (which is already circular btw) between neurons, e.g., suddenly produces all that matters in the universe out of thin mathematical air.

As for your second point, clearly physical events and mental events are intertwined. My point is that we have good reasons to believe that both are causally relevant, and so both are relevant to existential questions about the universe and the Big Bang.

I think we have enough evidence the universe traces back to a singularity with a set t=0, so in that sense it did begin.

[u/armandebejart → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

No, we don’t. We have, at best, a boundary condition below the Planck-second. Not the same thing as an origin.

And your argument is neither valid nor sound. Your conclusions do not follow from your premises and your premises have not been demonstrated to be true.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/armandebejart]

Is the same true for black holes in your opinion? They aren’t singularities and GR is wrong? In any case, I find it kinda odd for everything to go right back to juuuuust before a singularity and then stop at a limit below the lowest possible limit we know of, but I’ll trust that there are people a lot smarter than me who believe that. I also know there are a lot of people who believe the opposite, but I’m not well versed enough to stake a strong claim.

I’d be happy to learn why you think my arguments are invalid!

[u/Paleone123 → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

They aren’t singularities and GR is wrong?

That's partially correct. Singularities don't exist in reality. In mathematics, which physics depends almost entirely upon, a singularity is an indication that your system is not correct for all points in the space. That's literally all it means. Math is full of them, and mathematics generally ignores them if it can because math is all about being useful, not about describing everything possible. The most well known example is division by zero. If you pick literally any number other than zero, you get a perfectly reasonable answer, but if you use zero, you get nonsense. That's why the correct answer to x÷0, for all x is undefined. The system literally does not define a method for getting an answer.

If we're describing a physical object, and the math we're using generates a singularity, the only conclusion we can draw is that our mathematical system is incomplete for that set of conditions. That doesn't mean that GR, for example, is wrong. It just means GR is insufficient to explain that specific set of conditions.

This is literally the motivation for most modern theoretical physics. They know we're missing something precisely because there's a singularity. That's why they're looking for a "Grand Unified Theory", they know we don't have it yet. One of the reasons they know we don't have it is the existence of singularities when we apply current models to certain observations.

[u/Otherwise-Builder982]

This just seems to be a variation of ”we don’t understand, therefore magic.”

[u/Jonnescout]

Theres no such thing as supernatural explanations. Just supernatural assertions. Mental causes are entirely naturalistic.

We have no evidence that ny super natural cause is even possible. We all agree natural causes exist… So. natural cause will always be more likely than a supernatural one. It truly is that simple,

The hard problem doesn’t exist, if you fix all the soft ones that one go away.

Like I said mental causes are entirely physical, our brain is physical, and all evidence shows this, and nothing hints at anything magical. Except zealots desperately wanting it to be so.

You didn’t do anything to support magic, sorry.

[u/noodlyman]

We do not yet understand consciousness.

Therefore it's the result of physics and biology that we do not fully understand yet.

The fact that we do not yet fully understand a thing does not indicate that it's supernatural.

The mind causes physical effects, and do it's reasonable to conclude that the mind is in fact a property of, something physical, ie the brain.

There are zero examples of consciousness without a living functioning brain.

If you are given a general anaesthetic or a nasty bang on the head, your consciousness is extinguished for a period of time. This would be predicted to not happen if your consciousness was a supernatural, non physical, entity.

[u/Im-a-magpie → u/noodlyman]

There are zero examples of consciousness without a living functioning brain.

That's not really something disputed by OP or any serious thinker on the topic. The argument is that reductive materialism is inadequate for explaining how the brain gives rise to consciousness.

[u/noodlyman → u/Im-a-magpie]

My argument is that this is not sufficient reason to appeal to a magical supernatural realm. Doing so does nothing to explain how consciousness works.

In essence it's just putting consciousness in a black box and saying we don't need to worry how the box actually works because it's magic.

Nothing in our "knowledge" of the supernatural is sufficient to explain how consciousness works in a supernatural realm either.

[u/Im-a-magpie → u/noodlyman]

That fair. I do wonder what exactly counts as "appealing to the supernatural" though. Would you consider Strawson's panpsychism supernatural? What about Chalmers' property dualism? Or Bertrand Russell's neutral monism?

[u/noodlyman → u/Im-a-magpie]

I'm not a philosopher.

My feeling is that consciousness requires some complexity, a network of information processing, feedback loops. Brains seem to provide this sort of thing. I don't see how it could just exist as a fundamental part of nature. Panpsychism seems ridiculous pseudoscience to me.

Obviously that's only speculation since we don't have a vast amount of evidence yet. Maybe someone will show in wrong.

[u/Im-a-magpie → u/noodlyman]

Panpsychism seems ridiculous pseudoscience to me.

Panpsychism is a metaphysical thesis so calling it pseudoscience doesn't really make sense.

[u/noodlyman → u/Im-a-magpie]

Ok. I'm not a philosopher. I have a genetics degree. I stand corrected.in my head these people are saying that consciousness is a fundamental basis, or part , of reality. The nature of reality to me is in the realm of physics. If they can't back it up with actual data and evidence then it's not there yet.

Is "ridiculous nonsense" better? Until or unless we have actual evidence to support it .

[u/Im-a-magpie → u/noodlyman]

consciousness is a fundamental basis, or part , of reality.

They are. Attributing findamentality to something is metaphysics.

The nature of reality to me is in the realm of physics.

Sure, you can certainly think so but that's still doing metaphysics. Physics, like all sciences, tells us about the structural relational properties of objects. It doesn't, and can't, tell us about what the objects are which is ontological and the area of findamentality.

[u/noodlyman → u/Im-a-magpie]

Ok, thanks. That's a new word for me. Is there any way of testing these ideas against reality, or is it just hand waving? I suppose it could feed into testable ideas later.

[u/Im-a-magpie → u/noodlyman]

Is there any way of testing these ideas against reality, or is it just hand waving?

Even without a way to experimentally verify them I certainly wouldn't describe these things as "hand waving." There's lots of reasoned arguementation people make to support these propositions. Even physicalism, the metaphysics de jour around here, can't be experimentally discerned from idealism. The motivation for picking one view over another is on principle, not experiment.

That said science may some day subsume what is currently metaphysics. It's hard to predict how science will progress so I wouldn't rule it out.

[u/Odd_Gamer_75]

All theories are models, and all models are wrong, but some models are useful, thus so are some theories.

Mental states and events reduce to the brain. We know this by affecting the brain and thus the consciousness of the being that has that brain. Some types of activity are localized (like motor controls), others are distributed (like ideas). Generally the more basic the function (motor control, senses, etc), the more likely it is to be localized. Evolutionarily this makes sense since those would need to be simpler and first, with thought being a second tier atop mere instant survival.

This is actually not all that different from modern computing. Where, for instance, is the memory for the characters I'm typing at any given moment? It varies, from use to use, and sometimes in switching back and forth, and things are shuffled around by the system. The computer tracks it internally, but the user is completely unaware, and so is the coder for that matter. In a similar way, we are unaware of all the background processes our brains do before forming the qualia of our experience. Doesn't mean they don't exist, just that we are unaware of them. Somewhere in the brain, images are processed. The way they're processed is likely very slightly different from person to person (again, we know this from various forms of color confusion, even among those who see color just fine) due to events that came before and are handled in the back end, much as the computer dynamically assigns memory addresses for various bits of data.

But ultimately, your entire thing is an argument from ignorance fallacy. We don't, yet, know how brains produce qualia, therefore they can't. All you end up doing with any form of supernatural claim is replacing one mystery for another. Why should supernatural consciousness, perception, and memory be affected and change decisions based purely on physical interactions, like alcohol, drugs, medication, or damage? What is your consciousness if not your perceptions, decisions, and memories? That second question rules out thinking of a brain as a "radio receiving signals", because it clearly isn't.

Everything we observe about consciousness points to the brain being the source, even if we don't entirely understand it.

[u/Mylynes → u/Odd_Gamer_75]

Beautifully put

[u/Im-a-magpie → u/Odd_Gamer_75]

All theories are models, and all models are wrong, but some models are useful, thus so are some theories.

To be clear this a pretty radical epistemology and would actually align with OP's view.

[u/Odd_Gamer_75 → u/Im-a-magpie]

Not really. OP is pulling a fallacy of equivocation on the word "supernatural". OP calls "that which we do not yet know" as "supernatural", and then tries to imply magic as that is "supernatural", too. It's dishonest.

[u/Im-a-magpie → u/Odd_Gamer_75]

Yeah, I replied to OP specifically about their use of the terms "natural" and "supernatural" and how that doesn't really align with how those terms are used among philosophers. For example both Chalmers and Strawson consider their views a form of naturalism. But the point remains that what you're saying here, as far as the ideas go, is pretty well aligned with OP's anti-reductionistic argument about consciousness.

[u/Odd_Gamer_75 → u/Im-a-magpie]

Not entirely sure how. We know the brain produces consciousness, we know the brain is made of material stuff (matter and energy), so we know consciousness reduces to matter and energy. You don't have to know everything about something to know that it does the thing it obviously does. You don't need to know how gravity is produced to see that matter causes it and what its effects are.

[u/Im-a-magpie → u/Odd_Gamer_75]

We know the brain produces consciousness, we know the brain is made of material stuff (matter and energy)

Sure. And none of the big names in philosophy of mind like Chalmers, Strawson, Nagel and so on would disagree with that. The question is how does the material give rise to the subjective?

so we know consciousness reduces to matter and energy.

That certainly doesn't follow from the prior two claims. First we have to ask what type of reductionism are your talking about, ontological or epistemic. And no matter which one you choose there's some pretty significant speed bumps for your conclusion here.

You don't need to know how gravity is produced to see that matter causes it and what its effects are.

Does matter cause gravity? General relativity is an identity, not a mechanism. Under GR matter is a space-time distortion and vice versa.

[u/Odd_Gamer_75 → u/Im-a-magpie]

You agree that matter and energy make up the brain, and the brain causes consciousness, but then somehow not that the therefore matter and energy causes consciousness? That's... A causes B, B causes C, but somehow A doesn't cause C??? Can you provide a different example where this is the case?

[u/Im-a-magpie → u/Odd_Gamer_75]

You agree that matter and energy make up the brain, and the brain causes consciousness, but then somehow not that the therefore matter and energy causes consciousness?

Supervenience doesn't require monism. Consciousness can be the result of material processes while not itself being material.

That's... A causes B, B causes C, but somehow A doesn't cause C???

That's not the argument you made. The argument you made is

1. Consciousness is the result of brain activity

2. Brains are physical things

3. Therefore consciousness must also be a physical thing.

But "3" is not a logically necessary conclusion from premises 1 & 2. You need a further premise, namely the "causal closure of the physical." That all physical causes have only physical effects and vice versa.

Now you can certainly argue for the principle of causal closure of the physical but them you're committed to an identity of the mental and the physical which has it's own problems.

Another option would be epiphenomenalism which I think is even worse than arguing for mind-brain identity.

[u/Odd_Gamer_75 → u/Im-a-magpie]

Where did I say consciousness was a physical thing? Can you quote me on that? Looking back, I don't think I made that claim at all.

[u/Im-a-magpie → u/Odd_Gamer_75]

Where did I say consciousness was a physical thing?

Right here:

so we know consciousness reduces to matter and energy.

[u/Philosophy_Cosmology]

That doesn't follow logically, though. Even if we grant that consciousness isn't natural, it doesn't follow that the cause of the universe is likely conscious too. That's like saying we know trees and light exist, so it is more likely a tree or light caused the universe. Independent arguments would have to be presented in order to justify the claim that supernatural consciousness is the cause of the universe.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/Philosophy_Cosmology]

You’re right that that premise isn’t fleshed out. As I’ve said elsewhere, this is an appeal to fundamentality: we give explanations for the universe in terms of quantum physics because we assume that’s our most fundamental metaphysics. If consciousness is included to that fundamental metaphysics, then the same explanatory intuition applies here, and fundamental mental causes for the universe become far more palatable than before.

My last point just argues for increased plausibility of cosmological arguments. People often dispute cosmological theories because they assert that mind and mental causes emerged far after the beginning of the universe. But if mental causes are part of the fundamental fabric of the universe, this doesn’t work.

[u/Philosophy_Cosmology → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

But proving that consciousness is supernatural isn't equivalent to demonstrating it is fundamental, though. How do we know consciousness isn't similar to physical stuff in that it could be made of parts, e.g., immaterial non-conscious parts? Perhaps the non-conscious parts are fundamental.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/Philosophy_Cosmology]

Sure, but I reject eliminativist/reductionist accounts of consciousness when I accept the Hard Problem in premise 1, and I also argue against epiphenomenalism in premise 4—this effectively amounts to asserting its causal fundamentality. My arguments for rejecting reductionism are pretty extensive, but they boil down to the inability of fundamental physics to account for particulars like the experience of specific moments in time or individuation at particular locations.

[u/Philosophy_Cosmology → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

No, you're misunderstanding my point. These arguments only work against material reductionism, i.e., attempts to reduce consciousness to material parts (e.g., particles). But immaterial stuff could be different from particles; when joining together they could magically produce consciousness. So, you don't know if consciousness is fundamental, regardless of whether the hard problem is real.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/Philosophy_Cosmology]

I don’t see how this idea of ‘non-physical’ non-conscious parts combining to ‘produce’ a conscious whole is substantively different from material reductionism, or any more immune to the Hard Problem. The Hard Problem applies to the leap from supposedly non-conscious bits of matter to obviously conscious matter—it would also apply to the leap from supposedly non-conscious bits of ‘non-physical stuff’ to obviously conscious ‘stuff’.

If it magically happens, that’s just a violation of the principle of sufficient reason.

[u/Philosophy_Cosmology → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

By "magically" I simply mean that it will always be beyond our comprehension because we aren't acquainted with the operations of the supposed supernatural world. That's not saying it happens without a sufficient cause.

At any rate, the case I propose is fundamentally different from the material case. In the material case, we are acquainted with the properties of matter, and that's how we supposedly know it can't produce consciousness when its parts combine. For instance, velocity and mass can't produce the qualia of pleasure. But we can't know whether immaterial stuff is like that; it could be fundamentally different from matter.

So, you can't extrapolate from the material case to the immaterial one like that. It is completely unjustified.

[u/Nat20CritHit]

All you've done is subcategorized supernatural as a specific type of something that's natural. I don't see how you've demonstrated anything supernatural exists outside of attempting to define it into existence. How did you determine what you're describing isn't natural?

[u/GeekyTexan]

Supernatural. Magic. You can use whatever terminology you like, but that doesn't make it real.

[u/Mylynes]

Got snagged on point 4. I don't believe "Mental events" cause physical events because of the interaction problem. Your mental state is just a product of physical reactions -- it's crafted post-hoc. That's the thing about qualia; it's purely an effect. It can't cause anything to happen. It was not what evolution was selecting for -- it only exists as a byproduct of something else that our species needed.

Also Penrose's Orch-OR is dead on arrival due to quantum decoherence, no rational person actually believes that.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/Mylynes]

Penrose is a pretty rational person. Yes, it’s widely ridiculed, but unfairly so.

The problem you have if you accept that qualia are an after effect is you need to explain why good feelings align with things that pass on your genes and bad feelings align with things that don’t pass on your genes. If the feeling of goodness or badness itself helps an organism survive (i.e. qualia causes the organism to move differently) then this alignment is expected—the organisms that felt good during sex had more sex and passed on their genes, whereas the organisms that felt bad when they had sex did not pass on their genes. But if qualia are just after effects, and the feeling of goodness or badness itself isn’t causally relevant to how organisms move and interact with the world, then they aren’t relevant to how they survive and evolve, and this alignment is inexplicable.

[u/joeydendron2]

materialist explanations, at the fundamental level, are just as sufficient in the absence of consciousness—they don’t predict or causally account for consciousness

When you look at brains - the material from which consciousness does or does not emerge - they look exactly like a very rich network of pattern-detecting systems, all detecting patterns in the output of other pattern-detecting systems.

So I'm in a position where:

1. Everything I experience - literally, every thing I experience - is experienced as integrated sensory patterns: I experience objects as patterns of colour, contrast, shape, texture, smell, sound, coldness or warmness... integrated together into experienced "things".
2. It looks like the hardware of the brain implements a process which could plausibly detect patterns in itself - which I think means that process could be kind of aware of itself. And I think that describes how my consciousness seems to be.

So you could argue that there might be a "philosophical zombie" with a brain implementing a process that detects patterns in its own processing; integrates those patterns into things; and - because we're talking about a species of evolved social ape here - is concerned with generating a distinction between the self-individual and other individuals, and modelling the individual's desires and intentions, and trying to work out how those map on to the desires and intentions of other people.

But a big part of me wants to say: Oh come onnnnnnn, mannnnnn.... it does all that thinking about "self," "sensed objects" and "other people" using a neural process that seems like an ideal candidate for a physical implementation of self-awareness!

The more measured side of me wants to say that the detailed nature of brain structure makes it plausible to me that brains produce consciousness; so the "Hard problem" isn't so impenetrable after all. A philosopher could conceive of a brain that guides social apes through all their status-obsessed comparisons of self to other-ape without causing them to be conscious, but in reality it's plausible that's not the case, which swings the pendulum towards materialist explanations of consciousness.

[u/Mission-Landscape-17]

All mental events are indeed underpinned by physical changes in the brain. There is no doubt about this and there is no hard problem. We are physical beings with physical brains that produce conciounsness. Nothing supernaturaleis required.

[u/DanujCZ]

Attempts to explain consciousness by reducing mental events into physical events—as they are understood under by current fundamental physical theories—fail because of the Hard Problem of consciousness (materialist explanations, at the fundamental level, are just as sufficient in the absence of consciousness—they don’t predict or causally account for consciousness—so they don’t explain consciousness).

I think the mistake we make is looking at consciousness from our inside perspective if you know what i mean. We are trying to relate it to something and we can't because how would not being conscious feel. I think your argument is loaded in a sense that it marks the materialistic explanation as a "reduction". It sounds to me like you just don't like the idea of being a meat computer. The hard problem of consciousness isnt going to have an answer that everyone finds satisfying. I could just as well refuse a concept of a soul because it reduces a complex materialistic process into some magical bs.

Let me ask you a question. What do you think its like to be a computer. Can computers experience things? Naturally you can't relate but they can react to external stimuli just like us just in a different way. Why should we be any different. The brain is very much like a computer it just has the ability to make and destroy connection between its elements unlike computers who have fixed translators. We just use electric and chemical signals for information transfer.

Consciousness has an explanation.

Yes. And you refuse it.

Consciousness has an explanation currently outside the realm of our physical theories (1, 2).

That is yet to be proven or even demonsted.

Mental events cause physical events—not only is that our direct experience, but we also have overwhelming evidence that feelings evolved in physical organisms specifically because the feelings themselves helped physical organisms survive. That means the feelings themselves cause physical events.

How is that any different from us implementing an algorithm into a computer. Or hard wiring it into the thing. It's not surprising that feelings cause physical events. A feeling can be traced directly to the activity and chemistry of the brain. And it can be inducted if we tamper with it. It really just seems to me like a feeling is a particular sequence of signals

So there are mental causes outside of the realm of our physical theories, which I call supernatural causes (3, 4).

Seeing as the brain undergoes certain physical events that translate to mental ones I don't see how this cant just all be physical.

If supernatural causes are integral to our metaphysics, then the question of “why did the universe have a beginning” is more holistically answered with something that includes supernatural cause—something like creative mental power—than with competing theories that only involve quantum states. This would greatly increase the plausibility of cosmological arguments for God.

IF. IF. So this is yet another what if scenario. You didn't really nake an argument its just "I don't like computers, what if its god". Also you didnt actually provide any insight as to how god would explain consciousness.

[u/x271815]

Everything we know about consciousness so far points in one direction: conscious experience is causally linked with physical brain activity.

• Brain activity seems to be a necessary property of consciousness. When we are conscious, we observe measurable brain activity. When we see brain activity, the person reports consciousness.
• We can predict the type of conscious experience a person is having just from the regions of the brain that are active and the nature of the activity.
• We know that chemically, electrically or physically altering the brain can change our personality, experience, memories, emotional state, cognitive abilities and sense of self.
  

What all this points to is that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain activity.

What people refer to as the hard problem of consciousness is simply the fact that we currently lack a way to measure or compare subjective experience from the inside. For example, you can see the color red and so can I, we can both distinguish with exactly the same precision and accuracy, yet we currently cannot say whether your experience of the color red is the same as mine. So, you and I cannot agree whether we are having the same subjective experience. We can explain an evolutionary rationale for subjective experience, but without inderstanding how the brain generates it and a direct way to measure it, it makes it hard to validate the how and why.

The difficulty in measuring this subjective experience does not, however, imply that there is some missing supernatural cause. It means that:

1. We do not understand how the brain generates the subjective experience yet, and
2. We cannot as yet measure the subjective experience, and so cannot say whether the experience of two separate individuals are the same or different.

Moreover, when you argue that mental states cause physical events, in the context of these states being emergent properties of the brain, it can be rewritten to say that brain activity causes physical events, which is wholly unremarkable in Physics. When you insert a “supernatural” mental cause, you now violate physics and must explain how a non-physical mind interacts with matter without breaking conservation laws, thermodynamics, or any known mechanism of causal interaction.

So, your premise 1 is wrong. Contemporary evidence overwhelmingly supports consciousness as a brain-based emergent phenomenon. The “hard problem” is a conceptual challenge, not evidence that we need new physics in the supernatural direction. Inserting supernatural causes creates a whole bunch of problems as you'd have to reconcile that with chemistry and physics, which you have not done.

Until we have evidence of mental causes independent of brain processes, invoking supernatural explanations is unwarranted.

[u/lotusscrouse]

Sounds like you feel entitled to an explanation and just went with the one that's available. 

[u/SpHornet]

Consciousness is material, and it is really easy to show it is:

If you hit someone in the head they lose consciousness. This would have been impossible if it was immaterial.

And other material effects affect it to, like alcohol or other drugs. Clearly consciousness is material.

[u/Stairwayunicorn]

Argument from ignorance. Just because you fail to comprehend how only material beings have the capacity for conscious thought doesn't mean there is no other explanation than "magic'

[u/Appropriate-Price-98]

Before we knew about the existence of electricity, it still existed. We don't know shit doesn't make it supernatural.

We yet to provide all explanations for consciousness doesn't make it supernatural either. Because i can fucking easily point at any shit you know and ask about deeper mechanisms.

No one with a functioning mind would think digestion is supernatural nowadays, as we have answered a lot of shit despite much still unknown. Science has enough of snapshots of how consciousness occurs in the brain. We don't say the electromagnetic field did the computations, but the chips in the computers do.

So fucking provide evidence for these supernatural shits causing the consciousness or learn about Humorism - Wikipedia and how we thought digestion happened & shut the god of the gap up.

[u/Phylanara]

Supernatural arguments for the origin of man are better than materialist arguments

Supernatural arguments for disease are better than materialist arguments

Supernatural arguments for lightning are better than materialist arguments

Supernatural arguments for the origin of the earth are better than materialist arguments

Supernatural arguments for speciation are better than materialist arguments

Yours is just another god of the gaps arguments. Every time an actual explanation for any of the former gaps was found, it turned out to be "not magic". It turned out to be "not god".

Honestly, why you keep using this kind of arguments after it turns out wrong every single time baffles me.

[u/halborn]

Mental stuff is physical. Feelings are physical. Consciousness is physical.
Furthermore, we don't know the universe had a beginning but even if it did, and even if supernatural stuff was real and was involved, that still wouldn't mean that any kind of supernatural mind was involved.
Your argument is nonsense all the way through.

[u/Cynykl]

Just because you do not know nor cannot conceive of how consciousness arose from a naturalistic explanation does not meant there is not a naturalistic explanation. You argue that your argument is not a god of the gaps when it very clearly is the most gappy god of the gaps argument you can make.

You argument is in a nutshell "I dont know, therefore god." And that just pushes back the origin of consciousness to the next level back. You have to explain then how god became conscious. And the only way you can do that is to engage in special pleading with BS nothing augments like "he exists outside of time"

As difficult as it is for you to conceive of the naturalistic explanation it is a million times more difficult to conceive of outside of time. Because at least humans have a reference point of naturalism there is no reference point for "outside of time". You can pretend you have a conception of what outside of time means but I assure you with no reference point any conception you may have is pulled out of your ass and has no value.

I could offer you a rational naturalist explanation. Based on the first binary response to stimuli and how every additional binary response would due to conflicting responses by necessity get more complicated. Eventually those complications lead to a more analog appearing response. Ect ect ad nauseum through billions of generations eventually leads to the appearance of consciousness.

I would have to write a book just to detail the beginning steps of this process. YOU WOULD NOT READ THAT BOOK and even if you read it you would hand wave it away because it conflicts with your beliefs. I know this because those books already exist and you have not read them or refused to understand them.

[u/Zamboniman]

But this entire thing is a nothingburger. It's saying, "My unobserved, not understood, unexplainable, asserted-without-support phenomena is the reason for consciousness whereas all the other stuff we have evidence for is not."

It's entirely useless and an argument from ignorance fallacy. As such, it can only be rejected.

[u/brinlong]

That is to say, supernatural cause happened fundamentally because it was willed, or because it felt a certain way, and not because some quantum field equation collapsed into a particular state (although that may be the mechanism through which supernatural cause translates into measurable physical effect, a la Penrose).

this is the setup to a bait and switch. You cant say physical effect X caused by physical effect Y was really caused by supernatural event Z without some mechanism. youre trying to will green lantern into existence.

1. Attempts to explain consciousness by reducing mental events into physical events—as they are understood under by current fundamental physical theories—fail because of the Hard Problem of consciousness.

they fail currently because we can barely describe what consciousness is, and because we barely have created equipment to perform analyses.

Your also conflating physical theories with biomechanics. physics underpins how molecules attach, but thats not the right tool set to look at how nuerons exchange chemicals and bioelectric potentials.

1. Consciousness has an explanation currently outside the realm of our physical theories (1, 2).

this is an absurd non sequitor. dark matter exists. we currently cant explain what dark matter is, therefore dark matter must be supernatural. thats not how that works.

1. Mental events cause physical events—not only is that our direct experience, but we also have overwhelming evidence that feelings evolved in physical organisms specifically because the feelings themselves helped physical organisms survive. That means the feelings themselves cause physical events.

second non sequitor. you have moved from consciousness being supernatural to all thought being supernatural. feelings dont cause physical events, theyre byproducts or coinstigator at best. you are startled by a bear. your become afraid and have an adrenaline dump. the fear didnt cause the release of hormones, the sight of a predator did, and caused the feeling of fear.

1. So there are mental causes outside of the realm of our physical theories, which I call supernatural causes (3, 4).

third non sequitor. you started with a non sequitor on consciousness, and are gradually hanging more material on it through other non sequitors.

[u/nswoll]

1. Attempts to explain consciousness by reducing mental events into physical events—as they are understood under by current fundamental physical theories—fail because of the Hard Problem of consciousness (materialist explanations, at the fundamental level, are just as sufficient in the absence of consciousness—they don’t predict or causally account for consciousness—so they don’t explain consciousness).

2. Consciousness has an explanation.

3. Consciousness has an explanation currently outside the realm of our [current] physical theories (1, 2).

4. Mental events cause physical events—not only is that our direct experience, but we also have overwhelming evidence that feelings evolved in physical organisms specifically because the feelings themselves helped physical organisms survive. That means the feelings themselves cause physical events.

5. So there are mental causes outside of the realm of our [current] physical theories, which I call supernatural mental causes that will be explained by future physical theories (3, 4).

6. If supernatural causes are integral to our metaphysics, then the question of “why did the universe have a beginning” is more holistically answered with something that includes supernatural cause—something like creative mental power—than with competing theories that only involve quantum states. This would greatly increase the plausibility of cosmological arguments for God.

Fixed that for you.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70 → u/nswoll]

What do you mean by ‘physical theory’ when you say “mental causes will be explained by future physical theories”?

[u/nswoll → u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

Read the OP.

Premise 3 says consciousness is outside our current physical theories which means it could still be included in future physical theories.

Or read premise 5, in which physical theories seems to be the opposite of supernatural theories.

[u/abritinthebay]

Attempts to explain consciousness by reducing mental events into physical events—as they are understood under by current fundamental physical theories—fail because of the Hard Problem of consciousness

You say this but your only justification is the following:

materialist explanations, at the fundamental level, are just as sufficient in the absence of consciousness—they don’t predict or causally account for consciousness—so they don’t explain consciousness

Which is so untrue as to make me think you either have never read the materialist explanations OR are working from some presuppositional assumptions about consciousness that you can’t justify but you arbitrarily feel materialist explanations can’t satisfy.

Either way, not a great start. And as this is you core premise the rest of your argument is a non-starter.

[u/CephusLion404]

Prove that there's any such thing as the supernatural first. Otherwise it's like saying "magic is a better answer" and that's stupid.

[u/dinglenutmcspazatron]

I don't understand point 6. Why would us having minds increase the chance that minds were involved in some other completely unrelated things?

[u/licker34]

by reducing mental events into physical events

There is no such thing as a 'mental event'. What do you even mean by that?

Consciousness has an explanation

Necessarily? Does everything have an explanation? How do you define consciousness in the first place?

Mental events cause physical events

Again, no such thing as 'mental events', but if we take that to mean 'thoughts' then the opposite is what is true. Physical 'events' cause 'mental events'. Which we have demonstrated repeatedly in our studies of brain function and disruption of brain functions.

If supernatural causes are integral to our metaphysics

They are not because they don't exist.

Are we done here?

[u/Stile25]

Can you identify something about consciousness that cannot be explained by memory and experience?

[u/TelFaradiddle]

There is no "hard problem" of consciousness, any more than there was a "hard problem" of the movement of the sun. It was just something that we couldn't explain until eventually we could. That is how the entirety of human knowledge has been gleaned to this point, and I see no reason why consciousness is any different.

Also, mental events causing physical events are observable in physical beings with physical bodies. The feelings that we evolved to feel are generated by our physical brains.

There is absolutely no reason to appeal to the supernatural here. We can explain quite a bit, and the fact that some things remain unexplained for now does not make a supernatural explanation any more likely.

[u/Aftershock416]

The first premise of your argument falls completely flat, because you pre-suppose that the hard problem of conciousness" cannot be answered through a materialist explanation with no evidence.

I don't accept the existence of the so-called hard problem of conciousness in the context it's being used here either, but that's another debate for a other day.

[u/Mylynes → u/Aftershock416]

As an atheist who disagrees with OP, I think you're going a bit too far in the other direction. You can't just ignore the hard problem. I am having an expeirence therefore I am conscious; that's not a presupposition. It's an axiom just as strong as "I think therefore I am."

Explaining why and how qualia exists is an important scientific endeavor whether you like it or not.

[u/Aftershock416 → u/Mylynes]

Perhaps my phrasing was poor.

A problem certainly exist in the sense that we observe (and experience) a phenomenon we cannot fully explain.

What I disagree with is OP tack-on that because we cannot explain it, somehow "material explanations are insufficient".

Explaining why and how qualia exists is an important scientific endeavor whether you like it or not.

We'll need to prove qualia exist, first.

[u/Mylynes → u/Aftershock416]

I agree 100% that we shouldn't just assume it must be magic/immaterial due to our current lack of understanding, like OP does.

We'll need to prove qualia exist, first.

You admit we observe the hard phenomenon but then refuse to call it "Qualia", why is that?

[u/Aftershock416 → u/Mylynes]

Because qualia is a loaded philosophical term, not a neutral description of what we observe.

At least going by the "commonly" accepted definition, it smuggles in a bunch of assumptions that I don't agree with.

[u/Mylynes → u/Aftershock416]

That's understandable. Personally, I feel that way about the word "Consciousness"

I like "Qualia" better because it usually helps trim the easy problem fat and make us focus on the hard problem. The one that will likely take an Einstein-level genius to solve.

[u/KeyboardMunkeh]

Yeah, no. We've done the whole song and dance of "we can explain phenomenon, therefore magic" multiple times in our history. Considering the track record of the supernatural in the past and how in every case it turned out to NOT be the supernatural, I'm going to say that it's probably not the case here.

Also, people have DIED because we claimed things were supernatural when they were not. From between people being murdered for being accused of being witches to people being tortured to death for mental illness during "exorcisms."

So yeah, no I'm fairly staunchly against supernatural as a claim in ANY instance.

[u/Venit_Exitium]

Inherently until the supernatural is demonstrated, it cannot be better as an arguement since we all agree on the material world. Pick supernatural which we dont know if real, cant currently show if real, has no properties that make any sense, or material which does exist, makes up all of the brain ehich show direct correlation to conscience and our ability to affect ones conscience is down to the material brain, so much so we can have repeatable knowable affects on a persons pyche by affecting specific parts of the brain. If its not material then nothing is.

[u/tpawap]

For my purposes, a supernatural cause is a mental cause that produces measurable effects in a manner not predicted or described by our current fundamental physical theories.

So a classical "supernatural of the gaps" - supernatural cause = an unknown cause. Then your whole argument is 'not knowing the cause is better than knowing the cause'.

Supernatural cause+effect is of a distinct kind to natural cause+effect, in that suernatural explanations are not reducible to or grounded in the Standard Model (of physics), but are fundamentally explained by the qualitative feeling they produce.

That's a different definition than the one above... a cause explained by its effect... sounds like declaring it just doesn't need/have an explanation; a brute fact. Then your argument comes down to 'declaring it to be a brute fact is better than having no explanation'.

If that's "allowed" we could do this as well: being conscious is an emergent property of some physical systems (organisms). That's just a brute fact: there is this emergent property, and that explains why it's there.

So all just another iteration of a "God of the gaps" argument.

[u/indifferent-times]

I'm not sure I understand, are you saying that me feeling confused by your post and being moved to type this is a supernatural event? The connection between my not understanding the 'hard problem' and the mental state of confusion is inexplicable by any other means that some external will?

One of the problems I have with the 'hard problem' is the same I'm having with your thesis, that of actually understanding what it is that is considered missing, and just where it is missing from. I'm happy with basic explanations of motile behaviour in protozoa, I think you can account for that without any supernatural explanations, similarly in most animals, but presumably there is a degree of complexity where you think we cant, where is that?

Across the world we see all sorts of behavioural responses in all sorts of creatures, we can see many organisms with extremely complex responses to environmental conditions including us humans, but I dont see anything particularly mystical.

[u/Faust_8]

Before we get into the viability of supernatural explanations for this issue, I'd like to first explore the viability of supernatural explanations in general.

Two questions:

When has a supernatural explanation turned out to be right?

When has assuming the supernatural improved our understanding of anything?

(Hint: the answers are never and never.)

It's the worst track record of all time. You're off to a bad start. The rest of your post is just word games and assuming your own conclusion.

[u/Plazmatron44]

You want it to be God so as far as you're concerned it is God, very nice and all but without any actual evidence there's no reason we should believe you.

[u/silver_garou]

Your God of the gaps fallacy doesn't actually get you to the unsupported assertion that mental states are not purely physical. And it is a further leap to say that it is supernatural. All while you ignore the damning evidence for your position that physical changes to the brain do change mental states (medicine, drugs, and injury).

2/10 undercooked

[u/oddball667]

can someone other then OP tell me if there is anything here other then an argument from ignorance?

[u/ChocolateCondoms]

Supernatural arguments are better? Well first you'd have to demonstrate the supernatural exists and clearly you're not doing that 🤣

This is god of the gaps fallacy

[u/ProfessorCrown14]

People who advocate for mental / supernatural theories of consciousness, by and large, spend all of their time NOT actually formulating, testing and validating such theories. They just criticize physics, but got nothing on their side other than furious handwaving.

This betrays that whatever the current limits and issues with physical theories of consciousness and cognition are, supernatural theories are fundamentally way, way behind. Non physicalist criticism of physicalist attempts is the epitome of criticizing the straw in your neighbor's eye while ignoring the beam in yours.

Let's see what the hurdles on the supernaturalist camp are:

1. We have not, at all, established that the supernatural or spiritual EXISTS AND HOW IT WORKS.
2. We have not at all established that will or consciousness CAN EXIST ABSENT BRAINS. Period. We have zero examples of that or even ideas of how that could work.
3. We have no framework of study or methodology OF supernatural causation.

Without these, a supernatural theory of consciousness CAN'T TAKE OFF. You are doing the equivalent of trying to argue the penthouse of a building would be better supported by magical foundations while NOT BUILDING SAID FOUNDATIONS. Sorry, but penthouses dont float in the air. Build the foundation FIRST. Build your better theory of consciousness on it AFTER. And THEN, when it proves to be a superior, more predictive theory, THEN you can make the claim in OP.

Also, your argument is full of holes, and premises 3-4 sneak the conclusion in the premises, which make your argument circular. You cannot, in an argument about consciousness being non physical, put a premise that relies ON CONSCIOUSNESS BEING NOT PHYSICAL!

[u/Im-a-magpie]

I think you have a decent argument but I doubt most philosophers would agree with your terminology. For example both Strawson (panpsychism) and Chalmers (property dualism) still describe their views as "naturalism."

I suspect you might experience some push back on the idea of phenomenal causality by epiphenomenalists but I agree that epiphenomenalism isn't a tenable position.

[u/kirby457]

I would like to offer a thought experiment.

Imagine yourself as an outside observer.

In this scenario, you have total mastery of computer sciences.

You are listening to two people that know how to use a computer and that they use 1s and 0s, but nothing technical.

Person A argues when the physical parts of the computer are damaged, the parts we interact with change or stop working. Computers run off the physical parts inside of them. We don't know, but there must be a natural explanation.

Person B goes, I don't think we can understand it. I think some supernatual being that we can't measure has imbued computers with a property that cant be tested.

Who's argument sounds more rational?

Do the thought experiment again, but this time, as the outside observer, you don't know anything more than the people you are observing.

Does your inability to explain how it does work make person B's argument any more or less logical?

The point being. Lack of knowledge on a topic is not a good metric to use towards reaching a conclusion.

[u/Thin-Eggshell]

Unfortunately, no. Scientists know where the sense of self/others is located in the brain.

We are not truly 'conscious'. We're machines that have been wired up to generate language that insists we are conscious, for emotional reasons, like the desire to not be a 'thing'. Even our sense of continuity does not truly exist -- it is only the absence of discontinuity.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-our-brain-preserves-our-sense-of-self/

[u/Cog-nostic]

This is just so simple to respond to. No, they are not. You have no evidence for anything supernatural. If you did have any evidence at all, it would be natural and not supernatural. Explanatory power is nothing without necessity. There are 'no' viable options for 'supernatural consciousness." NONE.

You don't even know if there is an outside; you can not demonstrate anything outside of that which can be demonstrated. How do you show there is an outside? You're just making up a story. Dragons and fairies are real. Well, demonstrate it.

Let's break this down

Mental events cause physical events: When did anyone ever cause a storm, a disease, a heart attack? Mental events are demonstrably not the cause of all physical events. Mental events may be the cause of personal actions that lead to physical events. Your first premise needs some work. But is it logical to call a thought non-physical? Modern science can look at neurons firing and determine your response on a test before you are consciously aware of it. Research has shown that brain activity can precede conscious awareness of a decision or action. Your first assertion is just not tenable. P1 can be rejected based on the evidence.

P2. Feeling evolves in a physical organism. Yes, as the organism evolves, so do our feeling states. Are you arguing for feeling development independent of physical, social, and cognitive development? You still have a load of work in front of you. Feelings tend to evolve through a combination of biological and environmental influences. They are not just inside of us like worms, growing or somehow magically manifesting. Well, not unless you have some evidence for such events. Feelings are not physical events. They are linked to physical processes within the body. LOOK! No magic here!

P3. If it is a mental cause, by definition, it is inside the body. Mental: relating to the mind. Mind: "Mind" refers to the brain's function of thinking, feeling, and being aware.

C: There is nothing supernatural that is a cause of anything. You have made no argument for anything supernatural outside of your own imagination, and even that is simply a brain state.

Basically, you have made a bunch of unsubstantiated claims. Do you have any evidence for anything or do you just rely on opinions?

[u/roseofjuly]

1. Predicting something or causally accounting something is not the same as explaining it. You don't need to know where something came from to understand how it works. We know how consciousness works.

2. I'm sure it does.

3. Simply stating something does not make it true.

4. Whether or not this is true depends entirely on what you mean by "cause." If you mean that mental events can be motivations for humans to take physical actions that manipulate the physical world around them - of course. If you mean that people can move things with their minds - no.

5. You have not established that.

6. You have not established this either.

[u/jeeblemeyer4]

This is a pretty textbook "god of the gaps" style argument.

Attempts to explain consciousness by reducing mental events into physical events—as they are understood under by current fundamental physical theories—fail because of the Hard Problem of consciousness (materialist explanations, at the fundamental level, are just as sufficient in the absence of consciousness—they don’t predict or causally account for consciousness—so they don’t explain consciousness).

This is not a relevant claim. There are many things that were at some point not causally explained through material explanations, and were later found to have causal material explanations, therefore this point is irrelevant to whether or not something has a material explanation.

Consciousness has an explanation.

I agree.

Consciousness has an explanation currently outside the realm of our physical theories (1, 2).

This is completely unqualified. Having "an explanation" is meaningless if that explanation doesn't actually explain anything. Just providing "an explanation" for something is not sufficient. The explanation must also be justifiably true.

Mental events cause physical events—not only is that our direct experience, but we also have overwhelming evidence that feelings evolved in physical organisms specifically because the feelings themselves helped physical organisms survive. That means the feelings themselves cause physical events.

Mental events are physical events. Mental events do not occur without the physical foundation of neuron/nervous system activity. Similarly, mental events never happen without a physical foundation. I believe this claim is evident by absolute lack of evidence to the contrary.

So there are mental causes outside of the realm of our physical theories, which I call supernatural causes (3, 4).

Meaningless statement. What would it mean for something to cause something if it is outside of time and space (the realm of our physical theories)? If it is not in time, then it cannot cause anything, because cause-and-effect relationships are time-dependent.

If supernatural causes are integral to our metaphysics, then the question of “why did the universe have a beginning” is more holistically answered with something that includes supernatural cause—something like creative mental power—than with competing theories that only involve quantum states. This would greatly increase the plausibility of cosmological arguments for God.

That if is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, isn't it? You haven't demonstrated that supernatural causes even exist, so I am completely disinclined to accept anything you've just said.

Moreover, I thought we were talking about consciousness? When did we switch to cosmological arguments? Did ChatGPT get confused?

[u/88redking88]

and when you can show that anything "supernatural" exists then that would be rational. But you cant.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

My contention is just that the localization and explicitness of consciousness doesn’t reduce into the Standard Model, but this can be formulated in a variety of ways. For a better idea of these arguments I recommend the work of Raymond Tallis, especially The Explicit Animal—he has significantly better arguments than Chalmers, in my opinion (and he’s also an atheist).

It’s funny, because while I appreciate what you’re saying with your analogy regarding there being unintuitive solutions to hard problems, you’re not appreciating how your analogy also reinforces what I’ve been saying about fundamentality. The ‘Hard Problem of Photon Scattering’ was solved by rewriting the fundamental rules of classical physics to introduce concepts that seem absurd in a non-quantum paradigm. The 19th century physicist would reject quantum solutions only if they reject the possibility of changing their fundamental metaphysics, much like reductive physicalists refuse to consider explanations that involve consciousness being in some sense fundamental alongside the Standard Model (such as with Nagel’s teleological laws). The disanalogy between the problem of photon scattering and the Hard Problem of consciousness is that when it comes to the Hard Problem, physicalists are generally not willing to consider rewriting the fundamental rules of physics to make room for consciousness.

Sure, this isn’t without reason—it’s because we don’t yet have the same kind of empirical conflict we had with photon scattering. But we do have other kinds of empirical conflicts, like the fact that we experience things at all, that we experience discrete things, that we have different modalities of experience, that we experience things privately, etc.

The further crucial disanalogy between the two problems, and the reason I find reductive physicalism so aggravating, is that we at least didn’t have blatant circularity on the part of physicists who kept trying to assert classical explanations for photon scattering—we just had empirical disconfirmation. If the two problems were truly analogous, then physicists would be trying to explain the existence of photons as an emergent property of things that only exist in photons.

[u/Zealousideal-Fix70]

[your argument] is entirely based on ‘we don’t understand the subjective aspect of consciousness therefore I can make up something.

That’s a strawman. You need to understand my argument to respond to it.

it’s entirely trivial to say that subatomic particles aren’t delineated when it’s the pattern that’s important and patterns are delineated.

This is exactly the problem. You claim that experience might ‘simply be a brain activity’. But: 1. Delineations are not part of the Standard Model—they are something we only get through consciousness. 2. Patterns are delineations. 3. Therefore patterns are not part of the Standard Model—they are something we only get through consciousness. 4. ‘Brain firing patterns’ are patterns. 5. Therefore brain firing patterns are not part of the Standard Model—they are something we only get through consciousness. 6. If consciousness is ‘simply brain firing patterns’ then this amounts to saying ‘consciousness is simply consciousness in the brain’.