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19649305 No.19649305 [Reply] [Original]

Are experiences really reducible to chemicals? What is passion, what is excitement, what is fear, they all could be reducible to dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, and the likes?

>> No.19649310
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19649310

Yes.

>> No.19649323

>>19649305
>>19649310
take those chemicals alone via a pill, and tell me if you have the same experiences

>> No.19649332

>>19649305
That’s like saying the taste of a burger is reducible to the meat.
The meat has no taste outside of contact with a subject’s tongue, it’s not a property of the meat itself

>> No.19649356

>>19649305
What we call an 'experience' is a composite event that we can break into three phases:

>The Kicker Phase
This is the main event that triggers the beginning of the experience. It's what starts it all. For example: finding out your woman kissing another man.

>The Chemical Phase
This is where your brain generates chemicals which were triggered by the previous phase. Example: cortisol (stress hormone) decreases when we're angry.

>The Lingering Phase
This is the mental state you are in following the previous two phases. This lingers on and leaves a 'taste' so to speak. Example: You are left depressed and sad after finding out the truth about your woman.

So no, experiences cannot only be reduced to chemical reactions, since they depend on more than that to be experiences.

>> No.19649403
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19649403

>>19649305
Is this square reducible to the dots that compose it? No, as even if we have the exact same dots, if we move even one of them the square ceases to exist. The dots are the neurotransmitters, the square is experience. Identity =/= material composition. In the case of experience, it's defining properties are phenomenological, not physical.

>> No.19649447

>>19649403
To add, none of the properties of the square are contained within the dots. Likewise, none of the properties of love or hate or pain are contained within the individual chemicals. It is an emergent phenomenon.

>> No.19649481
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19649481

>>19649305

>> No.19649502

>>19649305
Cognitive scientist here.

Nobody knows why we have subjective experience. People pretend they do, but those people are either stupid, fooling themselves, or clinical psychopaths who actually don't feel emotion, and thus think it does not exist.

The answer to your question is that they are not reducible. The domain of subjective experience and the domain of physical reality are entirely separate. From a purely logical standpoint, It makes precisely as much sense to explain subjective experience in terms of physical matter as it does to explain physical matter in terms of subjective experience. Sure, we observe causal relationships, but they are just causal, which is precisely why every cognitive scientist worth their salt will say "neural correlates of consciousness", and not "neural basis for consciousness".

Also god damn, I wish we could move /lit/ off 4chan. This website is a cesspool, but this board is better than most places on the internet.

>> No.19649505

>>19649305
No, stop thinking categorically. We don't even have a foolproof account of causation, we don't know shit.

>> No.19649560

I'm a quasi eliminative materialist so I'd say a lot of those things don't exist. For example, fear is obviously not one thing as its different to each context but we act like it is.

>> No.19649586

>>19649305
something about missing the forest for the trees

>> No.19649624

>>19649305
Yes, you would be surprised by the kinds of experiences we can induce in the brain. You can stimulate a brain to have an out-of-body experience, mild/intense deja vu, or induce sudden grand mystic realization feelings

You may be interested in reading into it even just casually. Neuroscience can tie into psychology and our experiencing of things in a pretty large way

>> No.19649680

>>19649624
brainlet alert. thinks neural correlates of consciousness are the same thing as consciousness

>> No.19649788
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19649788

>>19649680
Ah, I wasn't claiming that. I was making the point that neuroscience & psychology will, hopefully, help us understand what consciousness actually is one day.

We don't have all of the answers yet but I believe it's the best framework to go off of

>> No.19649939

>>19649323
This. It's about the external experience, not chemicals.