We don’t have proof that consciousness is the result of a physical process. But there’s no reason to think it isn’t. You can make up anything and say it’s unknowable, and nobody can prove this false; but it’s pretty much useless. Sure you can stick with ‘I think therefore I am’ as the only knowable thing, but it won’t get you very far. The physical world as science has self-consistently explained has been shown to be very practical, specifically with prediction of observation. Consciousness seems different, but there’s no real reason to assume it is.
Comment on Our understanding of reality might be a result of the way cousciousness works
AnDoLiN@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
“Say, let’s admit consciousness is the result of a physical process.”
Let’s not. I don’t have any proof of that. Everything obviously exists inside consciousness. Why should I believe it arises from matter? Even a brain cell under a microscope exists inside consciousness. You’d need to have some kind of an objective view that exists outside consciousness that can show matter creating it. But then you wouldn’t be able to know about it because it’s outside consciousness. Everything you know must exist inside consciousness. Else you wouldn’t know about it.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 1 day ago
AnDoLiN@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
Thing is that science cannot prove matter is prior either, yet that is taken as the core assumption that all other assumptions must align to.
This is the scientific version of Christians saying “god is real, says so in the bible, and because bible was written by god, it must be true”.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Science can’t prove anything. It seeks to build comprehensive models that agree with observations by disproving those that don’t. It is specifically built in a way that uses predictions based on theory and then tests them. This process is used to avoid making useless and unknowable additions. That, and its inherent nature to question everything, is what makes it fundamentally different from religeon. However, it is based on an assumption that the universe makes sense as a physical construct. And that is because there is no other useful starting point. You can try to build a model of the universe based on any gibberish of feelings, but it isn’t useful in any way.
polotype@lemmy.ml 22 hours ago
Yeah, when i wrote
Say, let’s admit consciousness is the result of a physical process.
It was more of like in math with unprovable statements, you can say let’s assyme it’s true because it leads to all these interesting consequences. All the while being very much aware that it all requires for this perticular to be true
Perspectivist@feddit.uk 19 hours ago
We obviously don’t know but I’d say that it’s still a pretty good starting assumption to say that consciousness is an emergent feature of information processing which is a physical process happening in out brain.