/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14088087]

Consciousness is overrated.

It's nothing more than highly complex processing of sensory input data. That's all that sets human beings apart from other animals, that's our spiders web, our venom. Everything else that goes on in your mind, everything you perceive as profound or beautiful is purely a result of this process. Music stirs emotions because it activates the same sectors of the brain speech does. Sad music makes you sad because it lights up the area of the brain that would be lit up if you were told your mother died, for example. Emotions are a guiding mechanism, if your needs aren't being met they encourage you to take certain actions. You feel your girlfriend is being cold towards you, sadness activates and causes you to reflect, then maybe anger takes over and you confront your girlfriend. You get the point. There's nothing out of this world at work, it's all easily explained biological processes.

Even your ability to reflect on your own existence, while unique to humans, is still a run of the mill mental function. Your needs aren't being met, you feel depressed, maybe suicidal, maybe just apathetic. So you reflect and look for a way forward. Of course the answer to existential crisis is "go back to your natural habitat". Simply put, human beings have not evolved to survive in our modern times. It's unlikely we ever will. Sure, people can perform their functions and go about their days until they die, but no one ever feels truly as at one with their environment as animals always appear. We evolved to sleep outside, to hunt, to forage, to live in tight knit communities. In the modern world, this is impossible.

Human beings are a strange experiment: what happens if a species outpaces natures ability to maintain balance? If too many trees inhabit an area, a forest fire clears the way. I don't believe this is our natural state, anxious, uncertain, desperate for meaning. "But why would our own minds work against our better interests?". No one man built the world. One man makes bricks, one man makes glass, one man makes road layouts. But then you combine all their efforts together and create what you see around you and it's like trying to cram the contents of 1,000,000 men's brains into your own and everyone in the world is having this happen to them at the same time. No wonder people do what they do.

[Anonymous No.14088089]

>>14088087
Cringe. Read Cioran to see pessimism done right...

[Anonymous No.14088092]

>>14088087
>It's nothing more than highly complex processing of sensory input data.
>That's all that sets human beings apart from other animals

Now compare man to other animals.
Unfortunately consciousness could not save you from being retarded.

[Anonymous No.14088096]

>>14088087
Whats ur point

[Anonymous No.14088117]

>>14088089
>>14088096
Phoneposters are niggers

[Anonymous No.14088120]

>>14088092
What?

[Anonymous No.14088152]

>>14088087
>pic of tom cruise
ok scientologist

[Anonymous No.14088156]

Holy shit I love big pseudo intellectual speeches that have no real weight or argument to them but confirm what I already think!

[Anonymous No.14088168]

You can’t prove that quales are linked only to sensory input data, you dumb physicalist. Until you can explain how mental states and physical states can exist contemporaneously to a satisfactory level, you’ll always just be conjecturing.

[Anonymous No.14088169]

>>14088087
Want to know how I can tell you’re an undergraduate?

[Anonymous No.14088209]

>>14088169
not him but i'd like to anyway senpai

[Anonymous No.14088231]

>>14088156
Here’s an upvote!

[Anonymous No.14088234]

>>14088168
Nor can you prove qualia exist at all, you dumb idealist. At least his explanation has some supporting indications and an apparent investigatory pathway.

[Anonymous No.14088267]

>>14088087

U.G posting without context is like a fucking bomb

[Anonymous No.14088274]

>>14088234
>qualia doesn’t exist at all
Oh, this’ll be good. I’d love to see your argument here.

What the fuck are his supporting indications? Consciousness evolved and therefore mental states are physical? What’s the investigatory pathway? He’s just spraying his ‘biological’ drivel around like he’s said anything that isn’t completely fucking stupid. Even if we were going at in OP’s terms, why is consciousness and the ability to self-reflect (which no other animal possesses) in any way overrated?

[Anonymous No.14088275]

Not even mediocre cognitive neuroscientists are as stupid as you OP.

What you are describing is simply attention backing it up with old, functional localization neuro theory.

Within consciousness there's an element of agency that allows you to act according to what your attention brings to consciousness.

Consciousness reorganize neural connections from experience known as plasticity. This effect enhances as neuroscience more and more these days are working towards algorithmic understandings of brain networks.

[Anonymous No.14088281]

>>14088274
>why is consciousness and the ability to self-reflect (which no other animal possesses) in any way overrated?
Because what have we actually gained from it?

Nothing.

[Anonymous No.14088296]

>>14088281
Global domination over the planet, heightened emotional faculties that allow for the production of transcendental art, the very ability to self-direct our own course through life. The ability to feel deep and complex emotions, conflicts of the heart and mind. I know you can only be about 15, so you’ll probably grow up eventually and realise how stupid you sound.

[Anonymous No.14088309]

>>14088296
>Global domination over the planet, heightened emotional faculties that allow for the production of transcendental art, the very ability to self-direct our own course through life
Like I said, nothing.

[Anonymous No.14088319]

>>14088309
What do you actually see as being valuable, then? It’s certainly the case that your consciousness doesn’t seem to be achieving much, but maybe you can at least come up with some criteria for what a good use of it actually is.

[Anonymous No.14088325]

>>14088319
>What do you actually see as being valuable, then?
Nature

[Anonymous No.14088330]

>>14088325
And we’ve already established that consciousness is part of nature, so surely it is valuable in-itself, not just for what it can do?

[Anonymous No.14088337]

>>14088275
>Within consciousness there's an element of agency that allows you to act according to what your attention brings to consciousness.
That's not "consciousness", that's free will. My smartphone is 'conscious', in that it complains if internal diagnostics fail.

Free will is a singularity of information complexity, i.e., something with infinite information entropy. Since human brains are the most informationally complex things in the known universe, this concept of 'free will' makes scientific sense.

[Anonymous No.14088356]

>>14088337
Free will is predicated on consciousness. That ‘singularity of information complextiy’ is conciousness.

[Anonymous No.14088369]

since nobody in this thread has bothered to give a reasonable criticism, i guess it is up to me

U.G (the OP post) is just merely describing consciousness as process, which we can agree to be process, whether or not we're so called idealists or reductive materialists. where the actual issues between the two is the result of dualism between the "mind" and the "body", but monism ultimately defeats dualism. you can think in terms of everything being made of densified spirit (idealists) is a form of monism, and everything being made out of particles (materialism) is also monism. so you both agree that everything is essentially one substance. and since U.G. is merely describing the process, it is up to us to actually make an effort to explain the process. and this is simple when you actually take the time to delineate "consciousness" from "self awareness", from "pure awareness". since consciousness is just a process, it becomes irrelevant whether or not consciousness is generated by the brain and body or not, because consciousness is not the end point of investigation. so what is above consciousness? the "self consciousness" that humans have is what separates us from the animals and plants, since in a rudimentary way they are conscious as well. the "pure awareness" that we have to delineate consciousness from, which exists within and outside of you whether or not you take a drug, or sleep, or if you're an animal or a rock, or think of yourself as you are in this present moment, or whoever you were 20 years ago. continuity is there to protect the body between individual moments, and to HAVE SEX, but the real you doesn't really care. so to imagine it visually, the pure awareness would be a constant beam of white light, your individual consciousness is little more than a colored filter that the light passes through.

so now you might be asking, "why did we develop self consciousness"?, but it should be clear by now that the question is actually "who is the self?"

[Anonymous No.14088374]

>>14088337
Mate you're doing nothing but an unscientific reduction of consciousness to being an automatic process of attention.

Take clinical examples. Examine the relationship between executive functions, "free will" and consciousness in the clinical case of apathy? Then then clinical case of neglect?

If anything free will is the most dubious phenomenon of them all.

[Anonymous No.14088383]

>>14088356
> Free will is predicated on consciousness.
In humans, yes. But 'consciousness' itself is not important and common in many things.
> That ‘singularity of information complextiy’ is conciousness.
No. The mathematical definition of a 'information complexity singularity' implies something that is infinitely unpredictable. That's 'free will', in a nutshell. Being conscious is actually not a prerequisite for infinite unpredictability.

[Anonymous No.14088391]

>>14088374
>Mate you're doing nothing but an unscientific reduction of consciousness to being an automatic process of attention.
Indeed I am, though calling it 'unscientific' is bullshit on your part.

>Take clinical examples.
Medicine and psychology are not sciences.

>If anything free will is the most dubious phenomenon of them all.
It's not 'dubious', it's merely little-studied because the mathematical apparatus to study it is in its infancy. (Imagine trying to do cryptography without number theory.)

[Anonymous No.14088392]

>>14088369
In what way was any of that a reasonable criticism? It’s like you half-digested a single page of Stanford Encyclopedia. You have not explained in any detail the relation between conciousness and self-awareness, and until you do your criticism is as shoddy as anybody else’s.

[Anonymous No.14088402]

>>14088383
Conciousness at the human level is not common in many things. You seem to have the unpredictability of the Universe confused with free will. Free will would be the ability to navigate through something infinitely unpredictable, and it is only through self-reflection and knowledge of the self through conciousness of our own conciousness that we can correctly exercise freedom of our own will.

[Anonymous No.14088404]

I rarely come here anymore because of the kind existential negativism this and so many other posts represent. Your associations and your mental models may interpret the world as a serie of biological processes. In reality there is no biology and no consciousness. You're caught in an intellectual void. The end products of your thinking and actions are always feelings. Life is a miracle

[Anonymous No.14088422]

>>14088402
>Conciousness at the human level is not common in many things.
You need to separate 'consciousness' - having a mental model of yourself - and the ability to act on that mental model. Two different concepts.

>You seem to have the unpredictability of the Universe confused with free will.
'The Universe' is not unpredictable. In fact, it is quite simple and follows some primitive probability laws. Only humans can be considered to be truly unpredictable.

>Free will would be the ability to navigate through something infinitely unpredictable
WTF, that doesn't even make any sense.

>...and it is only through self-reflection and knowledge of the self through conciousness of our own conciousness that we can correctly exercise freedom of our own will.
True in human beings, but like I said - mathematically speaking, you don't need consciousness to have free will.

[Anonymous No.14088445]

>>14088422
I have distinguished between the two, you are just ignoring it. Self-reflection on one’s own consciousness vs. being conscious. The Universe is entirely unpredictable, because you assume that you are aware of what these primitive probability laws are. Do you not think that to a higher being, the human is entirely predictable also? It entirely makes sense. Free will is the ability to face an infinite probability and choose a path through it. The results are myriad and avenues spin off at every degree from a single decision, but free will gives us the power to choose which one to take. We might be disagreeing though, because you’ve not been able to explain what your conception of ‘free will’ actually is. You can’t just drop in ‘mathematically speaking’ like it’s some kind of self-explanatory thing.

[Anonymous No.14088454]

>>14088087
>this nigger's never heard of an architect
Everything about this is cringe and gay, "a category is a category" wow, absolutely revolutionary thought here. How would I have ever thought emotion is emotion. Like for example stating that "consciousness is noting more than highly complex processing of sensory input data" literal changes nothing in effect, it doesn't deal with what is processing, it doesn't explain the vast aesthetic and philosophical ideals of which man has the potential to experience apart from individual sensory data -- and you can call that the collective unconscious, collectively formulated methods/patterns, you can call that

Data is just another word for content ultimate or minuscule in human value, by your very use of this word it shows you came into this by a specific intention rather than pure and unbiased 'rationale'. And that's the next thing, you don't focus on what the human experience means to humans. We evolved (or at least somehow got to this point perfectly suited) to our current existence, do you think we would develop our own relation and perception of to reality by an unfounded purely unintentional series of nothing? There is a something, and we see that something in what art means to us, in our ever searching climb for truth, in our heroic virtues and will of character. Only a peasant cannot see this for what it is: It is not the climate which shaped us, but the sufferings and joys of which we experienced within it. A self propelling aesthetic which can only be, for us, to an ideal. And that encapsulates the fundamental experience of man of desire, of ideal, failure and victory. In the very essence of a 'being' being, apart from all preregistered and internalised patterns of existence (and we must remember existence is experience) there is a desire, and a will simply to something.

[Anonymous No.14088461]

>>14088209
>>14088209
Guys, guys, come on he's at least below year 10.

[Anonymous No.14088486]

>>14088281
>>14088309
>Nothing.
Bruh, imagine thinking emotions don't als exist for their own experience.

>>14088325
>he thinks humans aren't a part of nature.
Yea, you're a retard. Honestly what do you even think nature is? Do you actually have any definition beyond "dude natures... natural lmao"? I swear when I was 15 I was reading Plato and gathering a strong history of various fields such as neuroscience, philosophy, art and psychology. All the classics, not these modern pseudo-intellectuals. And I actually wrote well with good ideas, not this shite. Follow your intuition retard.

'Men are rational being because they are animals, not in spite of it"

- Heidegger

[Anonymous No.14088493]

>>14088369
I agree with you anon however your answer I think went in the wrong direction producing answers where there were no questions. The last sentence saves it though.

Refer to >>14088454

[Anonymous No.14088509]

>>14088087
Faggot.

[Anonymous No.14088526]

So why is there any definition of free will apart from Plato's belief of the good(or alternatively Hegel's truth), which is beings in accordance with themselves. Is the banked rock under the stream of a waterfall not free to be as it is? And humans all the more complex and beautiful they are, free to be as they are? Just as a man of his particular time is free to be as he is: for as Hegel says "no man can over-leap his time". The question of free will as some sort of necessary infinitude of possibility's is wrong in its premise.

For man, there are many choices; but an infallibility of choice between them.

[Anonymous No.14088543]

>>14088526
And that infallibility of choice, let me remind you, remains within the choice of nothing and the inability to choose also.

[Anonymous No.14088551]

>>14088274
What would it even mean for something to be 'non-physical'? We can investigate and manipulate what is apparently physical, resulting in applicable and predictive knowledge. Your fully abstract nonsense -- on the other hand -- does nothing to demonstrate its probability.

Personally, I don't think 'consciousness' is overrated. I think it's most likely the crown jewel of our universe in terms of complex emergent phenomena, and the sophisticated iteration that we possess is no doubt our defining characteristic. I do think, however, that 'consciousness' is heavily mysticized. I understand why we do this, from a psychological perspective, but it is still intellectually dishonest.

Just as our anthropocentric bias used to imagine the earth as the center of the universe in the geocentric model, many tend to uncritically suppose that 'consciousness' is the center of existence.

[Anonymous No.14088566]

>>14088551
Not him and have no idea what you guys are talking about since I just saw this post, however to be immaterial is the very act of an idea. Its literal formulation within the brain is just getting caught on technicality's. We understand things through an immaterial plane. We exist in such a state through the psyche.

[Anonymous No.14088570]

>>14088551
You tell me. All I believe is that mental states are not entirely physical. They may supervene on physical states, or even be completely separate, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Something being non-physical doesn’t automatically make it abstract, you blockhead.

[Anonymous No.14088625]

>>14088566
>Ignore that abstractions are probably just quanta, that's just a silly technicality! Abstraction is immateriality, trust me bro!

>>14088570
It's not my claim... I can't tell you because I think it's a bunk negative claim to begin with. Also, allow me to clarify; I was not implying that you believe the non-physical to be abstract, I was saying that your explanation for it (what little there is) is very abstract and self-referential.

[Anonymous No.14088636]

>>14088625
>abstractions
>just are
>abstractions are
>ACTUALLY
>not-abstractions

semantics

[Anonymous No.14088651]

>>14088625
What actually is your claim?

[Anonymous No.14088662]

>>14088087
You do realize that it doesn't make sense to say that consciousness is an illusion while living in the illusion yourself right?

[Anonymous No.14088672]

>>14088625
Bruh, it doesn't matter if abstractions came from quanta - they are not that quanta. They have entered a different realm and are by all means in abstract and so immaterial.

[Anonymous No.14088676]

>>14088636
Not at all.

What defines an abstraction is the degree to which a description is detached, symbolic and/or unspecific about what exactly it is attempting to describe. There's no reason the thought itself can't be a concrete process, meaning that abstraction is a subset of the concrete.

[Anonymous No.14088678]

>>14088662
Why wouldn't it make sense?

[Anonymous No.14088683]

>>14088676
An abstraction is not a physical process or else it wouldn't be an abstraction. It'd be physical. End of story.

[Anonymous No.14088692]

>>14088672
What different realm? How have they 'entered' it? Can you be more specific, because that would be the most monumental discovery of all-time...

[Anonymous No.14088700]

>>14088683
No, it's not the end of story. You don't even have a specific definition of what an abstraction is, you're just going off of some uncritically vague notion you have.

[Anonymous No.14088701]

>>14088692
Do you know a table as a conscious phenomena and so idea and so by all understanding essentially immaterial, or do you understand it as encoded content? You're disjoining man from his own being.

[Anonymous No.14088712]

>>14088087
lmao get a better life, nerd.

[Anonymous No.14088713]

>>14088662
I think he's saying it's importance is illusory, not it's existence.

[Anonymous No.14088718]

>>14088678
Because you're just a wet robot, so you didn't actually reason the conclusion (consciousness is an illusion) out. Therefore there is no reason for me to believe your conclusion is true. This is self-refuting. It's akin to saying:
>I don't exist
Ok who says that?
>Truth doesn't exist.
Is that true?

[Anonymous No.14088722]

>>14088718
Reasoning is not dependent on consciousness.

[Anonymous No.14088727]

>>14088700
>dude it's actually concrete
>ummm it's prob quanta or something

Please.

[Anonymous No.14088737]

>>14088713
If anything wouldn't it be the opposite?

[Anonymous No.14088740]

>>14088718
OP never said consciousness is an illusion. Maybe your sense of reading comprehension is an illusion.

[Anonymous No.14088759]

>>14088737
I should have said overrated, not illusory, like OP did, as it has importance as a survival tool. Illusion wasn't mentioned in the original post.

[Anonymous No.14088769]

>>14088740
Not explicitly, but definitely implicitly, because you can't reach any other conclusion once you have a materialist view of the brain.
>>14088722
Without reasoning you'll only get as far as computers can. Computers can't reason, that's because they're not conscious.

[Anonymous No.14088774]

>>14088701
I'm not disjoining anything... To the contrary, I'm saying it's quanta all-around. If you are positing something antithetical to that, it would help if you could be more specific about what qualia actually is.

[Anonymous No.14088785]

>>14088759
All good anon, thanks for clarifying. You did a good job.

[Anonymous No.14088791]

>>14088774
I never said I'm posting something opposite to that, why couldn't you just critique what I was saying instead of a presumed belief that others have in this thread. I do have an opinion on this but am talking on this particular point.

[Anonymous No.14088824]

>>14088769
No, not implicitly either. A physicalist view of the brain does not posit that consciousness is illusory, but rather that it is a physical integration of the multifarious capacities of the brain. What is implied to be illusory is the notion of a 'self' as something discrete from those processes, but that's another can of worms.

[Anonymous No.14088856]

>>14088824
Maybe you're right about that in some way, anon. It depends on what you mean by consciousness. However, I don't think the physicalist view qualifies as consciousness.

[Anonymous No.14088889]

>>14088856
Consciousness is not some mystical, non physical essence. It's the result of physical factors working in unison. Just because you can't cut open a brain and see consciousness doesn't mean it's not physically there. If you remove enough portions of the brain your consciousness deteriorates and is eventually gone. There's nothing BUT physicality to it.

[Anonymous No.14089046]

>>14088889
Just saying, if what you said was a mainstream belief, then the justice system would collapse, because in a small scale such arguments have been used. The "nothing but" claim requires evidence, otherwise it's just an assertion. As for removing parts of the brain, that view is completely coherent with a metaphysical worldview. If I shoot you in the heart you'll lose consciousness too. Doesn't prove anything desu.

[Anonymous No.14089051]

>>14088889
>It's the result of physical factors working in unison.
>There's nothing BUT physicality to it.


lmao you don't even know what the fuck you're saying, is it a process or is it a substance retard?

[Anonymous No.14089078]

>>14089046
>Just saying, if what you said was a mainstream belief, then the justice system would collapse
A lie making people behave better doesn't have any bearing on the truth.
>The "nothing but" claim requires evidence, otherwise it's just an assertion.
It could be rephrased as there is no evidence but physical. The evidence for the physical wins out over the non-evidence for the non-physical.

[Anonymous No.14089090]

>>14089051
Four men pull oars in a boat, the boat moves. You can't see anything but the boat, the oars, the men and the river but the boat moves. Consciousness is the movement of the boat, it's not some magic force or ethereal substance.

[Anonymous No.14089093]

>>14089078
Yeah that what happens when you only accept empirical evidence for something that has a non-empirical nature. Nothing surprising there, do you use glasses to listen to music?

[Anonymous No.14089097]

>>14088087
Cringe

[Anonymous No.14089102]

>>14089090
the movement of the boat is not a physical thing, and hence is immaterial, you fucking dipshit retard negroid

[Anonymous No.14089104]

>consciousness is overrated
>uses consciousness to write a bunch of undergrad secular drivel

[Anonymous No.14089143]

>>14089102
It is a physical thing, you just don't have the eyes to see it just like you don't have the eyes to see consciousness.

[Anonymous No.14089151]

>>14089104
>You criticise society yet you live in it?!
>I am very intelligent!

[Anonymous No.14089171]

>>14089143
>its a physical thing believe me. everything is physical because i know it.

[Anonymous No.14089193]

>>14089151
you criticize society when you want to make another society. you criticize consciousness because you believe your consciousness about consciousness is better.

basically you are unconscious about your love of consciousness.

[Anonymous No.14089195]

>>14089151
The actual analogy here would be if you were a sociologist who claimed society doesn’t exist

[Anonymous No.14089203]

>>14089195
Was just gonna say that. You can criticize what happens in society just like you can criticize thoughts.

[Anonymous No.14089206]

>>14089195
>The actual analogy here would be if you were a sociologist who claimed society doesn’t exist
or perhaps a sociologist who claimed society is overrated

[Anonymous No.14089234]

>>14089171
>everything is physical because i know it
Name one thing that isn't and why you believe it isn't.

[Anonymous No.14089235]

>>14089102
do moving boats go to moving boat heaven?

[Anonymous No.14089312]

>>14089234
life, because we dont know what it its. we only have consciousness to know it, and we dont know what is consciousness either.

[Anonymous No.14089404]

>>14089312
>life, because we dont know what it its
Yes, we do. We know exactly how to define life and how it works. What the fuck are you on about?

[Anonymous No.14089409]

>>14088087

[Anonymous No.14089453]

>>14089404
no, we do it from a frame of consciousness. from thoughts and a form of systematic knowledge. we dont know if that is life. we make the rules of the game and then we say everything is the game. the game is rigged from beginning. we know how we know the world via thinking but we dont know what it really is. if it is something.

[Anonymous No.14089480]

>>14089453
>no, we do it from a frame of consciousness
No, we open people up with a fucking knife and we use cause and effect to figure out how it works. There's no profound insight required to recognise cause and effect. Give chimps a couple dozen thousand years and they could do it, they're already starting to enter the stone age. Humans share the same anatomy as all mammals. Heart, lungs, bladder, brain etc.

You're overthinking things, so what if I can't see radiation or infrared, a table is a fucking table.

[Anonymous No.14089548]

>>14089480
>There's no profound insight required to recognise cause and effect.
ane yet is your tool to know everything. everything. its only a tool and like a tool, have his limits. you are saying we know what is life perfectly with it. you are a mindless believer in a tool like the supreme truth.

[Anonymous No.14089600]

>>14088889
>Consciousness is not some mystical, non-physical essence
While I respect your opinion, many former materialists have come to different beliefs after taking psychedelics like DMT. If you're interested in possibly challenging your view, consider the approach they did. At the least, consider researching their reports and contemplating their contents. I believe that consciousness is very much connected to all of the mystical elements found within our species history, whether in religion or beyond, but also believe that it will form a central part of future scientific understandings. It's neither emergent nor overrated as a phenomena, but fundamental both to science (the general set of data) and philosophy (the interpretatation of the data).

[Anonymous No.14089689]

>>14088087
>leading science
>doesn't even know what consciousness is, let alone how it works

>random anon
>knows both what it is, and how it works

Don't forget me when you win your Nobel, anon.

[Anonymous No.14090292]

>>14089600
>At the least, consider researching their reports and contemplating their contents
I already have, the ramblings of "duuuude ayy lmao's in the 4th dimension" were not compelling.

[Anonymous No.14090308]

>>14088087
>It's nothing more than highly complex processing of sensory input data.

This only applies to retards.

[Anonymous No.14090352]

>>14090308
No, it applies to everyone. Your philosophical ruminations are a reaction to your emotions telling you your environment is killing you.

[Anonymous No.14090365]

>>14090352

How would you know that?

[Anonymous No.14090387]

Wrong

[Anonymous No.14090389]

>>14090365
How do you not?

You, like anyone, are to some degree unsatisfied with life. You're looking for solutions. But first you have to identify the exact problem. Ask yourself, when did humans start questioning life itself and if anything else happened around the same time. Some people say civilisation has given people the luxury of being able to create art and write books that try to solve the riddle of eternal dissatisfaction and all the misery that goes along with it. I say civilisation itself is the root cause, that the discovery of agriculture was the greatest tragedy of human history and that the only real answer to all those questions you ask yourself is to return to the environment you were bred for millions of years to thrive in and renounce the modern world.

You'd think you'd miss it all but you don't, you'd be surprised how content a man can be living off his own wits as one with the world around him.

[Anonymous No.14090399]

>>14090387
This book is just as pessimistic as what OP is saying.

[Anonymous No.14090492]

>>14090389

Which sensory input data makes you think so?

[Anonymous No.14090507]

>>14090492
All of it

[Anonymous No.14090526]

>>14088486
I am reading a good amount of 1700's lit right know, and I really enjoy their nuanced perception of nature, at least amongst most of the literate. They dont see "nature" as "Trees lmao" but, the wholistic quality of everything.

[Anonymous No.14090617]

>>14088168
>your explanation isn’t satisfactory to me
You’re ironically better off being a nihilist

[Anonymous No.14090702]

>Collateral
Based taste
https://youtu.be/zAHxAD6X-Ng

[Anonymous No.14090756]

>>14088087
You’re missing the forest for the trees, the mechanics by which physical processes correlate to psychological ones is a trivial thing to observe and is in no way mysterious. The emergent property of qualia however is completely unexplained and baffling. By what process does the chemical arrangement in my brain lead to me “see red” not possess the knowledge that something is red as a computer does, but to experience red. The experience of red is of course totally and utterly arbitrary and confers no evolutionary advantage whatsoever. If my brain were a deterministic cascade of conscious micro states that passed relevant information on to the next micro state without any experiential retention (I.e I were a p zombie) I would have all the advantages of a human with none of the qualia. In essence a computer with a black void where your subjective qualia present. Like a computer. If the arrangement of molecules leads to the emergence of qualia as some innate property of the universe, what are it’s limitations? If I have enough cubes and balls and each cube = one proton and each ball = one electron, could I arrange enough cubes and balls that the cubes and balls would collectively see red? After all if emergence is a property of the arrangement of matter why does it matter the scale of the matter? Why does it matter if it’s done using neutrons with electrical impulses if the neurons are just just made of tiny rocks. This is quite arguably the most important and difficult to answer question in the world and you’re dumb ass thinks you’ve solved it because of MRI scan lmao

[Anonymous No.14090812]

>>14090756
>By what process does the chemical arrangement in my brain lead to me “see red” not possess the knowledge that something is red as a computer does, but to experience red
Go read a basic science textbook on how light and the eyes work. It's very simple.

[Anonymous No.14090814]

>>14090756
>The experience of red is of course totally and utterly arbitrary and confers no evolutionary advantage whatsoever.
Wrong, colour is immensely helpful with survival chances and if it wasn't we wouldn't have evolved the ability to see it.

[Anonymous No.14091144]

>>14090756
brah how do you not know how colors work lmao

[Anonymous No.14091166]

>>14091144
bruh how do you not know how quaila work

STEMbrain literally can’t separate the apparent from the essential and they wanna overturn consciousness lmao

[Anonymous No.14091180]

>>14090756
Reddit the post

[Anonymous No.14091285]

>>14090756
>By what process does the chemical arrangement in my brain lead to me “see red” not possess the knowledge that something is red as a computer does, but to experience red. The experience of red is of course totally and utterly arbitrary and confers no evolutionary advantage whatsoever.
In what other form could the information of color covering an object be received? How do you know you experience color and not the information of color? Actually I don't know what you mean by "experiencing" color.

[Anonymous No.14091365]

>>14090814
It's that there is a seer of color, that is the issue. You don't understand qualia.

[Anonymous No.14091385]

>>14091365
>You don't understand qualia.
Because it's fairy tail pseud shit you learned about in class 2 weeks ago

[Anonymous No.14091588]

>>14090756
The problem I have with this scientific presentation of the issue is that the object known as the brain is itself a "colored" object. Namely, pink. How could qualia be produced by the brain, if the brain itself already contains it? Everything which the eyes see contain color. How then could the eyes look the source which produces color, and it not already possess it? How can we view what produces our viewing, which is paradoxical by nature? Like a hand grasping itself.

Materialism similarly states that reality is simply in your brain - in your neurology. But were this true, we would not be able to concede the existence of the universe prior to the brain's existence, which is absurd. The sun, stars, sky and earth - all of which are objects of the brain's interpretation - would not be arguable as existing and appearing as they do before the brain itself happened to.

Anyone help me here? To summarize:
-How can the brain produce qualia (i.e color), when it itself contains qualia (i.e pink), and cannot be separated from it?
-How can we use the human eye to view and understand the source of vision? Isn't that like trying to see behind your own seeing?
-If materialism were true, wouldn't we have to deny the existence of the universe before the modern brain existed? And if we admit the universe existed before our brains did, doesn't that mean our present experience of the universe is not simply neural activity, and that there's something currently here which will continue after the brain does? I personally believe we have spirit bodies, which also have the ability to see and hear, and that reality is not produced by a brain, only interpreted through it while we're in a physical body.

[Anonymous No.14091680]

>>14088281
>Because what have we actually gained from it?
>Nothing.
can we all just take a moment to reflect on how retarded this guy is

[Anonymous No.14091701]

>>14091166
what a magnificent cope

[Anonymous No.14091725]

>>14091680
Lmaooo +10

[Anonymous No.14091728]

>>14088087
You haven't said a word about consciousness though.

[Anonymous No.14091738]

>>14091588
Why is paradoxical, exactly?

No, physicalism states that reality is a continuum of physical quanta -- including the stars, our brains, and appearances themselves. You need to brush up on your definitions.

-Qualia don't exist -- see trope theory.
-No, there is no paradox in reflexivity. Why would there be?
-No, you're desribing some kind of subjective model of reality -- not physicalism (which asserts objective reality).

[Anonymous No.14091755]

>>14088087
Such callow perspicacity, most engender this “nous” in the cradle of adolescence;
silly lil simp

[Anonymous No.14091760]

>>14088486
Men are rational being because they are animals, not in spite of it"
Wtf does that mean?

[Anonymous No.14091890]

>>14091738
But if everything we see of the universe - the sun, stars, earth and everything else - were contended to simply be the interpretation of the processes of the brain and the eye, how could any of it have then been argued to exist prior to the brain and the eye's existence i.e biological existence?

I understand what you're describing regarding physicalism as being "objective reality", but does the worldview not simultaneously state everything we encounter to be limited by our sensory perception and neurological interpretation of it, and ultimately made up of those two dimensions? Not in the Berkeleyan sense (i.e subjective idealism) but in the sense of our reality being a biological enclosure? How can the items in front of me exist there in front of me, while simultaneously only appearing there by my neural processing of their raw information? Would it not have to be either/or, with them either being outside of me (i.e external), or inside of me (i.e hallucination)?

Regarding the paradox: how can the human eye view the source of it's own operation, if all of it is ultimately still within and of vision? Is it not like trying to bite one's own teeth? The eye cannot escape it's own sight, and can only understand *within* the medium of vision. But isn't "viewing the cause of vision" a self-contradiction, since you're already within vision, and can't escape it to see it's source?

Hence my argument is that our present model of vision is incorrect somewhere, and that the brain - a visual object, seen by the eyes - is not the manufacturer of vision, merely a facilitator of it during our physical lifetime.

Forgive me if I've explained myself poorly. These are just personal confusions of mine regarding scientific worldviews I've heard of.

[Anonymous No.14092024]

>>14088087
Consciousness is underrated

>It's nothing more than highly complex >processing of sensory input data. That's >all that sets human beings apart from >other animals, that's our spiders web, our >venom. Everything else that goes on in >your mind, everything you perceive as >profound or beautiful is purely a result of >this process. Music stirs emotions >because it activates the same sectors of >the brain speech does. Sad music makes >you sad because it lights up the area of >the brain that would be lit up if you were >told your mother died, for example. >Emotions are a guiding mechanism, if your >needs aren't being met they encourage you >to take certain actions.

Yet, this small difference is all it took for us to dominate our planet,manipulate nature to our whims,create works of art, build great cities, establish a global infrastructure for near instantaneous communication all culminating in your post on this basketweaving forum.

[Anonymous No.14092082]

>>14091890
That isn't the claim of physicalism at all. Physicalism is an objective and continous model or reality; our perceptions and experiences are objective phenomena just like the stars. According to physicalism, our experience is only possible because it emerged and evolved from an objective reality which preceded it (and which it is still continuous with). You've got things backwards.

If the cause of vision and vision itself are both phenomena in a continuous objective reality, I see no reason why the reflexivity of vision or thought upon its source would be paradoxical. Perhaps it appears that way to you because deep down you are assuming dualism and not being critical of that assumption. If you knock out some of your teeth, you can bite them, if you remove an eyeball, you can see it with the other... We can use tools to augment the perception we're born with and view more than we could otherwise... The only contingency is the extent to which we can manipulate objective reality.

[Anonymous No.14092130]

>>14092082
You've clarified things for me, but my only remaining question is how a visual model of vision could ever be used to explain the phenomena, if it simply utilizes the phenomena for its explanation. My basic point is that the apparatus which humans use to understand our world contain within themselves the limitations by which that world can be understood. Such that we can certainly understand many aspects of how vision works, including the relevant components of the brain and the eye, but we're always still using our own, pre-existing eyes in order to view said brain and eye, and the operations they perform. When it ultimately comes down to it, we can't actually understand what PRODUCES visual properties - namely, color and shape - since we ourselves are only bound to viewing items (the eye, the brain, etc) which already embody those properties. If there is something which does produce these properties, then I argue that it can't itself be visual. If you disagree, please tell me where I've gone off-track.

I appreciate your explanations otherwise. I'll try and look more into the scientific side of it all and see if I can clarify my questions.

[Anonymous No.14092215]

>>14088087
>Simply put, human beings have not evolved to survive in our modern times. It's unlikely we ever will.
Sure, but here we are nonetheless. how come unlike any other animal we have seemingly escaped our natural evolutionary bounds? Humans are on track to creating a simulated consciousness, how far above our natural evolutionary means is that?

[Anonymous No.14092237]

Counter physicalism
Brain states = physical states
If x and y have different properties than x cannot be equivalent to y
Brain states possess qualia and cannot be observed. Brain states have certain functions.
Physical states do not have any qualia and can be observed. Physical states have no functions.
Brain states are not equivalent to physical states.
They may be produced by physical states, but they are not the same.

[Anonymous No.14092263]

>>14092130
We don't just use our eyes though -- we build all kinds of impressive sensors to delve much deeper than our eyes can, and translate that into information suitable for our eyes. We don't see all of what produces the trope of a colour, but we can measure the wavelengths with instruments and so on.

I notice you're still thinking in terms of 'properties' (universal) as opposed to tropes of quanta (non-universal). A phenomenon like vision is emergent from many quanta acting in concert... Are those quanta themselves 'visual' ? No, and the question doesn't make sense. There isn't any obvious reason an emergent phenomenon of sensation couldn't sense its elemental constituents.

Now, if you want to argue that our perception is limited such that we may never be able to access the fundamental quanta producing everything -- then I would agree that is a very real possibility. That doesn't mean however, that what we can apprehend tells us nothing about their fundamentals.

[Anonymous No.14092285]

>>14092215
Technically, it's all natural. If the potential didn't exist in the first place, it wouldn't happen. Whether it's sustainable is another question... I think we have to find a way to renconcile that anon's very valid criticisms with the inevitable march of technology... Abandoning technology just leaves you at the mercy of those who don't.

[Anonymous No.14092365]

>>14092263
This clarifies the earlier confusions I had, when you mentioned the quanta which are themselves not visual. Thank you based sci-anon.

[Anonymous No.14092380]

I remember being 15

[Anonymous No.14092446]

>>14092237
Physical states is the superset, brain states are a subset. Subsets emerge from the variability inherent in the superset, producing novel physical arrangements. Subsets are not identical (equivalent) to eachother, but do all share the provenance of the physical superset.

'Qualia' have not been demonstrated to exist in any capacity, and the claim of qualia itself is so vague as to verge on being a negative one.

Your spiel on 'functions' is entirely nonsensical. If a 'function' is simply the role a given quanta plays in producing an emergent phenomenon, then there is no reason physical states wouldn't have functions. On the other hand, if a 'function' can only be defined relative to the intent of an agent, then any state can still potentially have a function if it serves an agent's goals.

[Anonymous No.14092455]

>>14092365
Very welcome, sir. Happy Halloween!

[Anonymous No.14092663]

>>14092446
Read Putnam's paper on functionalism for a coherent explanation. The idea is that the physical is the hardware and the mental is the software. It isn't dualism, but instead recognizes brain states (such as pain) as functional traits in a system. Pain functions to alert a system of damage. All other brain states serve a function.