How Consciousness is a Window into Ultimate Reality (w/ Dr. Josh Rasmussen) 

Ladies and gentlemen: Alex Rosenberg and Daniel Dennett.

I think this is like reaching insanity because you're too smart

😂

@@HarryNicNicholas if we were to look at free will from an entirely materialistic sense then it may sound a bit ludicrous to have free will. If our thoughts were the result of neurons randomly or even coherently to an extent firing in our brains then it would be harder to argue free will, although not impossible and still plausible as argued by Robert Kane in the 'Oxford handbook on free will', however I don't think we are purely just matter. For example we have the ability to consciously visualise and experience unified perception. We know from a multitude studies where the brain has been completely mapped that there is no place that is responsible for unifying perceptions. Information on colours, shapes, make up of objects etc are stored and located in different compartments of the brain, yet at no stage does this information reach a central point in the brain where all are joined in one unifying perception. We are more than just material as we are mind also. With that being said then libertarian free will is very compatible especially if we then go a step further in knowing that it has been endowed by God. Having free will though doesn't mean we abondon the use of our rational faculties. I used to be an atheist, I then chose to be a Christian. To chose now to be an atheist, even if only for 10 minutes, would cause me to abandon what I know to be rationally true. In addition due to believing I have free will and I exist as more than just matter, I have good reason to trust my rational faculties and therefor it would be illogical to abandon them.

I agree and the whole of consciousness. I marvel & enjoy the simplistic nature of consciousness in dogs.

Hey Chris it looks like Harry deleted his remark. Given your response i can infer his remark. I enjoyed your well thought out response.

​@@chrismullan2125Very well put

Congrats… you just be a high level thinker. He humbled me. Love this guy.

@@mkl2237 yeah he is super awesome!

I think it's cause he's so high level that he's able to translate these complicated ideas into something we can understand

@@HarryNicNicholas that really is a very silly thing to say

@@HarryNicNicholas Yes, all theists on planet earth are dense. Which means that you are more intelligent than a good portion of humanity. Add to that the polytheists. But anyone who can create and sustain a universe is immeasurably more intelligent than all of humanity put together. And our Creator is also a theist. :) But all rocks and trees in the universe have a non belief in God. So they are atheists. No intelligence required. :)

I second this.

Annnnnd, i third this!

Read about Penrose's theories on consciousness

I find this topic interesting as well...and admittedly don't know much about it. But whatever explanation for consciousness there is has to....at least I think it has to...take into account other animals besides human consciousness. I believe animals have consciousness. I see my cats do things that I just have to believe reflect communication, reaction, planning, intent and an awareness of self. They have a brain, humans have a brain. It seems like the only things we can see and find evidence for having consciousness have brains. Even Dr Rasmussen seems to concur that 'other things' don't have minds and seems to agree that at least for natural life, brains are essential. Also...it seems consciousness develops gradually in things that are conscious. It doesn't seem like babies' consciousness just 'pops' into existence at birth or at some point during early development. Regarding the anecdotal evidence of brain dead people coming back...I would have to know if they are now rethinking what it really means to be braindead...are their tests/measurements sensitive enough to really tell if someone's brain is beyond coming back naturally vs just being in stasis for a few moments after it appear the person is dead. I would see that uncertainty as the reason people seem to 'come back from the dead.'

"physical matter" is a representation of the underlying reality. Brain activity is a correlation, not a causation, for consciousness. We exist as ideas in God's mind.

​@@rizdekd3912Regarding to the other beings to seemingly have consciousness.. it seems to be so, to some degree, but look, this still doesn't negate the question about consciousness itself. Let's consider the concept of the philosophical zombie within the framework of strict physicalism. Physicalism suggests that all aspects of our existence, including our thoughts and behaviors, are governed by physical processes. Our brains, when we're born, are like blank slates - shaped by genetics and prenatal conditions but without experiences. As we go through life, our experiences mold and shape our brains. Now, imagine if we knew enough about a brain's initial state and its environment, we could, in theory, predict the entire trajectory of a person's thoughts and behaviors. This is because, at the scale of human existence, quantum processes are generally not significant, so deterministic physical laws would dominate. This view leads us to think of the brain as an input-output machine. It's self-shaping and capable of generating responses, but conceptually, it's not much different from an AI or computer algorithm, which we don't consider conscious. These systems modify themselves and respond to inputs, but they lack consciousness - they're just complex machines. From this materialistic perspective, consciousness seems unnecessary. If everything about the brain and its responses can be explained through physical processes, then consciousness - the subjective experience - appears to be an extra, unneeded layer. It's like asking why a simple computer program that prints 'Hello World' is fundamentally different from our brain's processes. Both could be seen as algorithms with a certain degree of complexity; our thoughts and feelings are just part of this internal, mechanical process. So, the big question is, do we actually need consciousness for these processes to occur? Could these brain functions happen without conscious experience? That's the debate at the heart of this issue. Also from the perspectives of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity, these theories suggest that at a fundamental level, the universe operates on the transfer of information. Intriguingly, these processes are closely tied to the observer. The effects observed often stem from this connection, implying that there may be a fundamental element of subjectivity in the nature of existence.

​​@@rizdekd3912About the NDEs and the so called "terminal lucidity"... These stories are really interesting and I'd like to see more insight into them... Sometimes by the scientific community, naturally, they are approached with an eye of skepticism or simply regarding it as irrelevant.. What's more interesting about NDEs is the apparent similarity between experiences throughout history and cultures. From a Jewish background perspective, it is really interesting to me for example how these experiences correlate to the general Jewish notion of what supposedly happens whenever somebody dies and his soul raises to heaven. Although these are interpretations, I just point out the culture-wide similarity of these basic notions... Anyways, it's not really clear when the NDE is even happening and look, knowing a little bit of psychology, it's perfectly conceivable that under the stress of these kind of Near Death situations our brains could generate experiences in order to cope with the Trauma. Many of the NDE related effects like the Over Body Experience and such are things that you can see in many other states such as drug usage and so on. Even through meditation. Near Death situations aren't something you can morally cause for experimental issues, so the nature of is events are usually spontaneous and it is not cristal clear what causes them but there should be definitely more serious investigation about the issue. For now, none of the scientific community seems to give any regard to it and it's usually addressed by pseudoscientific disciplines like Parapsychology. I'm not confident it leads no anywhere anyhow, more than a curious thing about our brain and psychology.

Do you mean logically possible or actually possible? I think most would agree that it's logically possible, but I don't think it's rational to say It's actually or metaphysically possible. I think we have to say "I don't know" unless we have some better information.

@@paulmarko That's a good point, and it raises the question of *how* we can know that something is possible. It seems to me that conception is a guide to possibility. Just as our perception tells us what's actual, our conception tells us what's possible. We seem to use our conception in this way when we make plans. We conceive of what will happen and what the likely results will be. If conceptions did not imply possibility, then how would we know that the conceived series of events was even possible? It seems, then, that if we deny that our conception is a reliable (albeit fallible) guide to what's possible then we may have to deny too much of our experience of the world to be tenable. It seems reasonable, then, to take something as possible if it is conceivable unless and until we have a defeater of that possibility. Since we can conceive an immaterial soul embodied in and operating through a physical body, we can take it to be possible unless and until we have a defeater.

@@mattbilyeu I think we can apply that methodology to things we have some understanding of, constraints, etc. The problem is that since we don't know what the mind is we can conceive of it doing nerely anything or being anywhere. We can imagine a pair of scissors having a mind, a tree or an ant colany, a dead body or a sentient planet. I don't think you'd be prepared to say it's rational to believe all of these things are actually possible without a defeter. Or look at things we have a defeter for. Like electricity. I can imagine a tree generating and blasting out a lightning bolt for instance, but know that due to the laws of physics that's not possible. But I'm only able to provide that defeter because I have a reasonably detailed understanding what electricity is. Without that understanding, I wouldn't have a defeter so in that circumstance would I be justified in believing its possible for a tree to generate and shoot lightning? I don't think so. So in short, I think we need a clearer definition of what a mind is to even be able to say our intuition is a useful guide of what's metaphysically possible here.

In which case we should not be irrational to believe there should be physical evidence, a way to detect the mind (that is a different substance) and that can influence the physical.

@CJ Baierl Hey CJ 👋 How deeelightlful! Hope you're CJing well in your part of the CJ-sphere!

it is due to be published in july-august 2022

I had a similar thought regarding Calvinism and determinism. We all live as if we have free will, even the most hardcore Calvinist determinist.

@@joshuas1834 You know, I had a conversation not too long ago about objective value with an atheist and whether or not objective value within people exists, and we were also talking about love, how at its bare bones is defined as just a chemical release in the body called oxytocin that gives us the sensation that we call "love", along with the fact that love is a state of mind that one has toward another, which means love boils down to a "thought" and a "chemical". However, we live as though it's more than this. If your wife (whoever "you" are) says: "I love you with all of my heart", she's not saying "I love you with all of my physical muscle that pumps blood", because physical muscles that pump blood do not feel the sensation of love, all it does is pumps blood. This means a person's wife is talking about something else when they are referring to "the heart". One's wife is saying "From the deepest part of my being, from the very depths of my being, I love you". It's just as we would say "the heart of the matter". she is saying that the love is coming from her very core, the very center. In other words, one's spouse is saying that *she has a soul.* When the husband, who happens to be an atheist, responds to reciprocate that love and say "I love you too", at that point, both people are acknowledging they have a soul. The statement "I love you with all my heart" is to say "I am supernaturally and spiritually connected to you, and have a deep supernatural bond of love for you". This is how love is really being treated, not how perhaps an atheist might define love as a chemical. The fact that we're treating it so meaningful and significant is causing us to take it out of the realm of a mere drug and are saying that there's something more to it than just this, and that means the way we're treating love expands it beyond the definition that we claim it ultimately is, and even atheists and agnostics behave this way. I asked an atheist "if you had a loved one that was at the brink of death and the only way to save them was to sacrifice yourself so that they would live, would you do it?" I also reminded The atheist how he defines "value", which is a subjective mental construct where one merely decides another person is valuable. This means that the person's value is imaginary by definition (it doesn't exist). However, if someone is willing to lay his life down for another, then he's showing genuine belief in something that doesn't exist as though it were an objective fact that a person is worth dying for. He's treating his imaginary thought of a person's value as an actual real fact which is causing the person to act on that thought resulting in his death to preserve the life of another. If a person is willing to lay his life down, then he genuinely believes that such a statement is true, that the person is truly valuable, and that contradicts the definition of value only being a mental idea but implies in the very action *that it's more than this.* In other words, one is expanding the definition of value beyond how they normally define value which implies that there is an objective level to it. That's why I would say that the debate between the atheist and the theist concerning objective morality or in value is an illusion. Can an atheist construct a very thorough and well thought out objection to defeat the theists argument? Sure he can. However, the whole debate is an illusion. If you strip the intellectual back and forth between the theist and the inner atheist and the philosophical reasoning, and the entire discussion, and you just leave the atheist to live life without having God on his mind, then he will live as though objective value exists and his very ways of living life will contradict his philosophical argumentation that he's bringing to the debate, and that means the debate is an illusion, because what the atheist lives out does not agree with his argument that he's presenting because the atheist is contradicting his own arguments, and that would mean that to engage with the atheist and debate would be to contribute to the illusion that would strengthen the atheist perception which is incorrect. Just because one is able to outwit someone in a debate does not make him right. A lazy man is able to be wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can give him a reason to work. Does that mean the lazy man is right? No, it is an illusion if he wins that debate. Therefore, the goal is not to have an intellectual debate with an atheist, *the goal is to break the illusion.* The fact is, what we live out is our true position because what we live out is what we actually believe. If an atheist is willing to lay his life down for another, then regardless of how he defines value or love, and regardless of his worldview that he has mentally crafted to make sense of reality, what he's actually living out contradicts those views, and therefore, what the atheist lives out is his true position, not what he is bringing to the debate. This is why the atheist should admit up front that objective value exists without someone having to bring to him a case as to why it does, and that means when an atheist says "I have not found evidence for God", that is because the debate itself is an illusion to reason away from God, and that means there's something within the atheist that is avoiding the conclusion that God exists. That's not meant to be derogatory and that's not meant to say that the atheist is consciously deceiving himself, it is to say that there's something in the subconscious that is driving the unbeliever into his unbelief. How else can we know (other than what it's already stated above) that such a drive exists apart from evidence that drives an atheist into unbelief? Because let's say you present a very unique topic that the atheist does not have premeditated responses to, perhaps such as someone presenting a case and quantum mechanics that is so sophisticated that it's hard for the atheist to follow. After the atheist hears this explanation, he tries to give an alternative explanation of this thing that he is not skillful in understanding. When an atheist does this, he's showing that he's trying to drive or steer the perception or interpretation of what is going on with a situation that he is not familiar with. In short, he's trying to guide the interpretation of something he doesn't himself even know about. We know that this happens. When this happens, what it shows is a preference toward unbelief that's driving the atheist to interpret things that he may not even understand in a direction before understanding it, so that this is implying that he actually wants to see it this way, and that would show a pre-commitment to one's unbelief apart from evidence, a preference toward atheism. This may give a partial explanation as to why an unbeliever has not found God, because there is something in the subconscious that desires or prefers atheism and therefore prefers to guide the perception toward atheism, and that is what I believe is behind the nature of arguments such as "the problem of evil" because it's a preferred way of looking at God or an atheist attempting to find a reason to justify his atheism rather than trying to find God, so you see the atheist presenting cases as to why God doesn't exist rather than trying to find reasons why God also CAN exist, and if the atheist wants to know what is ultimately true, then you will see him arguing for both God and not God, and not only exclusively in One direction away from God. If the atheist responds and says but the burden of proof is not on me to prove God exists, while this is true, the argument concerning the burden of proof is only brought up in a discussion when an atheist is attempting to justify himself, and there's a difference between attempting to justify one's atheism and trying to find God. These are two different goals with two different results, so of course the unbeliever won't find God because he's trying to justify his atheism, and therefore a conflict of interest exists. If the atheist is Trying to find out what his ultimately true, then it doesn't matter who's burden of proof it is, the atheist will try to pursue what is true and therefore will make decisions towards finding it out and so he will pursue both ideas, and thus he will have arguments for both, and not just exclusively away from God to promote atheism. So, is it true that a given atheist's position is only a "lack of belief", or does there exist a preference or desire towards one's atheism subconsciously that drives his actions which is preventing him from finding God? If there is, then this might very well be his answer as to why he hasn't found God yet, not because there is not legitimate reasons for believing, but because the unbeliever is avoiding the conclusion.

@@joshuas1834 I'm a determinist and from what I can tell I don't think you quite understand the nature of the debate between determinism and free will, and quite possibly the calvinist also suffered from this misunderstanding. These two ideologies are simply two different systems trying to understand the same phenomenon, so it's not that the determinist is contradicting himself for still acting as though they have free will, but rather that they fundamentally believe the same phenomenon you believe to be free to actually be a production of cause and effect. Same experience, different explanations

@@Bi0Dr01d I am an atheist (just for context), but I do not necessarily think that atheism is all that different from theism beyond the presuppositional constructs we use to explain the realities we experience. Allow me to explain. Along the path to truth, the atheist draws a line about his beliefs at a point at which he is epistemically comfortable. The theist typically has reasons to presuppose validity of the truth about claims that go beyond the line of the atheist. The atheist still has their own presuppositional experiences beyond the line, which is what I think you're misunderstanding, but the difference is that they don't consider those claims in the same way the theist does. I think love is a bad example that the atheist fundamentally misunderstood. Love is a production of multiple thoughts and emotions and is not merely tied to the experience of oxytocin, because oxytocin can be released in large quantities as a response to all sorts of external stimuli, not just the person you love. If you've ever loved someone, you also know that your experience of love isn't contingent upon oxytocin alone. Let's be honest, there are times that maintaining love is a struggle against emotions, not a natural conclusion from them. The emotions are merely one experience amongst an entire network of different ideas, rationale, and emotions all interacting with each other to further develop a bond in a relationship that has a deeper effect on the human psyche than any one of those ideas or emotions could ever have on its own. Now, myself being an atheist (a determinist, but not necessarily a materialist for context), understand that you understand this. You just comprehend it through different intellectual constructs originating in the realm of the mysterious/supernatural as you put it, while I conceptualize it as a result of cause and effect. Through this regard of cause and effect, I think atheists and theists can bridge the gaps of misunderstanding because they tend to get entangled in a nasty web of debating between subjectivity and objectivity. I however, believe we are all trying to explain the same aspects of reality through our own systems which we presuppose out of values that develop from our own personal experiences. This experience, to the atheist is explained in subjectivity, to the theist in objectivity, but what is the actual nature of relativism and is it so different than the functioning of either the atheist or the theist? Because to me, it is an objective fact that we all have our own subjective experiences. Where I believe other atheists to go too far is that our subjective experiences arise from an objective reality that exists beyond our potential to comprehend. If we are all subjectively experiencing the same things, then it is inevitable that patterns arise. The theist I believe goes too far when they infer that the objective reality (or god) is what determines the experiences of love for everyone. Even if you believe in God, being that you are a subjective experience in of itself, I think it is reasonable to conclude that you interact with god differently than other theists that makes yours unique to yourself. I don't see where the objectivity in this lies. I think the theist looks around at other people participating in the same framework for understanding and they see patterns arising in the experiences of the group, but if expand your scope to other groups and other religions and other ideologies, these experiential patterns are quite obviously contingent upon the framework. I think this could be why the atheists are typically so deep into the extremes of subjectivity because they don't necessarily share any frameworks, let alone a system of comprehending them. So to them, the patterns that arise from their experience are drastically more irregular/erratic. An analogy to make sense of this: we are all blind, climbing a mountain that we cannot see. The theist follows a path carved up the mountain to reach the top which has been used and revised for millennia while the atheist makes his own way. It is my opinion that everyone has their own unique path up the mountain, no matter how many similarities and patterns arise with them, but no matter what, whenever anyone of us manages to reach the top, we all come to the understanding that it was never about which path we took. Attaining enlightenment, feeling the holy spirit move through you, nirvana, miracles, transcendence, inner peace, etc, is all about reconciling your own experience so that you can help others to do the same. We can argue all day about whose path gets you there quicker or whose path gets there better equipped or with more understanding, but the truth is that intentional disagreement helps no one on their journey to the top, and that is the virtue of humility. That is not to discount the potential for refinement that intentionally constructive conversations have, but rather to ensure that our differences do not disrupt the trajectory of our paths.

@@He.knows.nothing I understand it.

Only if you're impressed by sophistry does that sound sane. Secularist philosophers excel at this type of sophistry

@@HarryNicNicholas Sort of thing to be expected from this century's version of atheists. Nothing but sophomoric rhetoric.

@@CedanyTheAlaskan It was short and not too detailed and maybe even sophomoric, but what it means is the theist is manufacturing features of God and then acting as if they've discovered something real. God MAY be real and MAY be the source of consciousness and morality and value, but your invoking God as the source of these things is all based on ad hoc assertion. First you are asserting that a god can even exist and then whether he/it actually has the properties/characteristics/attributes assigned to him/it and then that it actually cares about humans enough to grant them this special consciousness. I mean, I assume you see human consciousness as different than other animal consciousness? I may be wrong about that. The one thing that I find the most interesting is that the theist who is convinced consciousness isn't due to the natural world and who see God as the omnipotent creator can't imagine God created a natural world that could produce consciousness without his direct involvement. I mean most theists are perfectly happy to see that most natural processes all carry on naturally...due to the way the natural world functions and without continuous or timely input from God....isn't that right? At least I don't think so. Theists, I assume, believe the ways in which matter/energy interact that allowed us to come up with the laws of inertia, for example, are part of a natural process and these things move, change direction or stop based on how those forces act on things. I don't know, but theists don't imagine that God has an infinite number of tiny angels who see to all particles/fields/bits and pieces of the natural world and keep them all going artificially, do they? So why does God have to insert himself into the development of humans just so they can have consciousness?

aristoteles and thomas is hopelessly outdated.

Yes agree

It's like saying; what a fool are you promoting an alternative theory just because my mindless materialism approach isn't working! On the contrary if a given theory fails to explain - that alone is valid cause to seek another. If One theory has explanation at least, while the other does not - which One is better?

@@HarryNicNicholas that's dumb.

@@HarryNicNicholas i guess you missed the vid & the entirety of the nature of consciousness. Moreover, there's over 40 years of NDE research. So, who are you going to promote & walk with to get the Nobel Prize???

@@williamrice3052 Well...you should consider how ad hoc the one is that you think 'has' the explanation. As long as one you recognize that you are NOT allowing ad hoc properties to be applied to the explanation you are rejecting and ARE permitting ad hoc properties to be applied to your preferred explanation, then it's fine to pick the one you think makes the most sense. And you are doing this without, as far as I know, one iota of knowledge or study of this alternative explanation...at least not the same kind of study that allowed you to 'reject' the other explanation. IOW, you or others measured the bits and pieces of the natural world as best you could and said...I can't see the solution here. But then without the ability to measure the 'bits and pieces' of the supernatural world, you are accepting it without question. It's ok...and it may well be true, but you're no closer to an actual solution than I am simply assuming on faith that in some way shape or form, the natural world solves this and other dilemmas.

@@HarryNicNicholas You are assuming that the brain is necessary for consciousness to exist. Plenty of work on near death experiences and drug use have definitively shown that as brain activity decreases, awareness and consciousness increases. The data is consistent with the position that the brain expresses consciousness physically and provides physical access to consciousness. However once the brain stops functioning then consciousness is not being expressed physically nor can it be accessed physically. The brain cannot even in principle be the source of consciousness since physical realities do not have the properties of conscious experience. Ergo, we need to do more research to carefully understand reality instead of attempting to cajole everything into a physicalism that is clearly not even remotely up to the task of explaining what we observe.

Yes

If you want to fill in the 'stretch' with a god then yes, it's way too much of a one!

Magical? Really. You had a fair comment going right up until the end.. sad

@@CedanyTheAlaskan Call a spade a spade, let's not beat around the bush here.

Yes he/ she will still be maintain consciousness through the heart and gut

Agree

It's like the connection between music and an mp3 player. There's a connection but the music isn't actually created by the mp3 player. It's simply a medium. The brain is a medium for consciousness but not the source. Like the brain, if an mp3 player is damaged, then it won't play music properly and it might not even turn on at all anymore. Consciousness is the music and the brain is the medium in this world.

@@justaguy328 so my question is then what about the mp3 player prevents it from being the medium through which the interpretation of the sounds as meaning takes place?

Read “why materialism is baloney” by Dr Bernardo Kastrup, and watch his debates

Made entirely of a material substance, with properties uktaimetly being reducible or dependent on the physical.

@@calebp6114 You can't use the word "material" in order to define what material is. Also, if physical is a synonim for material, you can't use this word either in your definition.

My guess would be: to be composed of parts, all of which act in accordance with descriptive regularities.

@@logos8312 Interesting. Would you then affirm that a fundamental particle (if there is such a thing) would be non-material ?

@@calebp6114 everything is made of quantum fields, including photons and other massless particles. Are quantum fields a "material substance"? If so, wavefunctions are material. If not, nothing we touch is material.

You’re really on to a great point. Materialism can’t account for origins (of either the universe or of biologic life, or of consciousness)…. Check out Dr Dean Kenton’s story. He was the leading evolutionary biologist (Biochemical Molecular Determination or something like that)… and he abandoned his own theory when he realized it utterly failed to account for reality or the rise of biological life. You’re exactly right on point…

Inorganic materials combined with the breath of God, not inorganic materials by themselves.

when you're talking about life from non-life, no one is positing some qualitative difference like a vital force that animates it. Its just a different functional arrangement of matter, however difficult that is to achieve materially. With consciousness, there seems to be a gap between the quantitative and the qualitative. There's something about the redness of red, or the taste of coffee, that isn't perfectly or clearly captured by electrical signals passing between an arrangement of neurons.

@Gil Yair Yamin well Josh does not actually argue for any extra substances to my knowledge. But the gap seems to be there because we have a good understanding of conscious experience, and we also have a good working knowledge of what physical things in the world are like. Either way you're positing an extra thing in some sense though. For the materialist you're positing that some mere arrangement of matter somehow gets into a configuration that generates conscious experience and we have no empirical basis for that whatsoever.

@Gil Yair Yamin Changes in our conscious experience due to material substance does not tell us whether or not conscious experience is itself materia, let alone whether or not matter ultimately gives rise to consciousness. That is completely begging the question. All that tells us is that consciousness changes with the physical world. We already knew that though. Changes in what you look at, touch, smell, etc. will also cause changes in your conscious experience. That is the whole point of phenomenal consciousness in some capacity - to track the physical world. So no, it definitely doesn't give any evidence towards the thesis that matter gives rise to consciousness, and is completely compatible with a full-blown dualism. Again, the "extra thing" comment misses the fact that Josh is a monist. Idealists are also monists. And the extra thing you're positing, with no empirical basis in the history of the universe, still remains what I mentioned - that matter somehow, at some time, just started giving rise to consciousness.

Not only are some animals conscious but Scripture describes some as soulish… nephesh… as having souls. It’s biblical actually. So… yes… some animals have consciousness.

@@HarryNicNicholas I think the contention is that the soul is eternal extending into the future from the time it was created...ie when we were conceived, etc. The failure of this concept is clear when they contend that God creates each soul brand new for each person, yet some simultaneously contend we are 'born' with some sort of fallen nature. From whence comes this fallen 'nature' if we ARE our soul and he creates each of our 'souls' brand new as needed? Does God intentionally create fallen natures on purpose?

Are you familiar with Penrose and Hameroff’s Orchestrated OR Model of quantum consciousness? I’d recommend considering researching it.

@@calebp6114 I'm a little familiar, but I know it's an extremely controversial view. I'd have to do more research, but I think it would still suffer from the combination problem, correct? I think I'd be in agreement with Sean Carol that the subatomic world isn't a good place for consciousness to be found. I think emergentism can account for consciousness, even though we don't have the specific model that we know is true. The fact we know can get doom from legos and marbles using emergentism is pretty impressive right there.

@@calebp6114 cool suggestion. Hadn’t heard of it. Worth exploring. Sounds really speculative but I’m open to checking it out. Surely interesting. Thx

67% of philosophers think the man doesn't know Chinese in the Chinese room thought experiment

@@vaskaventi6840 Searle himself uses the Chinese room analogy to argue against real consciousness (as I understand it)… he’s another example along with Dawkins and Crick and others who admit they can’t live consistently with their own world view. Swarms admits it, as I understand him. He functions as if he’s conscious and has free will … but his worldview says it can’t be so (and he uses the Chinese room analogy to demonstrate it). Fascinating. I think it was Searle who also admitted it was his bias that forced him into a corner by saying it’s actually because he doesn’t want there to be a deity. Theists do not have this problem (though in practice we have many others)… but our worldview is fully consistent and best explains all the dilemmas that materialists simply cannot.

It's called... and get this... a conversation. That's what happens in conversations

It's a forthcoming book, I think.

In order for your though experiment to be useful you have to derive something unexpected or interesting from the ideas. If you're saying that the computer is completely symmetrical, than yes it could be divided in half. But that doesn't answer the interesting bit: IS the brain symmetrically divisible or are there connections that, when severed, change anything? Are there signals what WOULD'VE been passed from one half of the machine to the other, but can't now? The thought experiment doesn't get us closer to figuring out the interesting thing we actually want to know. You're basically asking "if I said the brain were perfectly divisible into two pieces, what would I mean by that?"

I'm pretty much agnostic on free will. I've never seen any argument or evidence for it though. Usually, when asked, people just say: well, don't you feel free? I'd say two main things determine your actions: your genetics and the stuff you've learnt. Not sure at what point free will enters or where it comes from, if it comes.

@@mattsmith1440 The biggest problem I see with the claim that somehow positing the supernatural or God, etc. actually helps the situation is it still doesn't explain how free will works or even if we have actual free will. If free will is impossible if we're just natural, how does something 'supernatural' help? The claim seems to be that we have natural brains and then somehow there is an implanted soul/spirit/mind which was manufactured by God. How does it work? What 'gives' it the freewill we think we have? The soul must come prepackaged with...something...with built in decision making apparatus and with hardwired ways to think since those things cannot be based on/founded on/come from the natural world...if I understand this discussion properly. We're no closer to explaining free will by simply positing it saying 'our soul/mind/spirit just comes' with free will OEM. What IS freewill and how does it work if everything that operates on it came from some place outside the person? At best it would still be God's 'freewill' that we are using and...then it's God's free will. One could even question whether God has free will...if we are expected to explain vivid detail the mechanics of how a natural based mind has freewill. It seems they should be equally demanding that the same thing be addressed with God. But they've pretty much put it OUT of the realm and possibility of investigation completely and have NO way of knowing anything about it and we still have at least the theoretical 'hard question' about freewill. The same thing applies to the 'hard' question of consciousness. It MAY be due do some 'other' kind of substance....but so what? The question still looms. I mean we could assert that it must be that, but like the watch on the beach analogy, even if we posit someone must've built it and left it there, we still have the question of who and how...but now, NOT ONLY about the watch itself, but now about the person we think built it and left it there. How does something supernatural suddenly make a natural brain 'conscious' when it simply could not have been conscious otherwise? Even if God exists...so what? We now have an even harder question of consciousness...how is God conscious and what 'gave' him his consciousness? I know they'll say it's a category error that God is his own explanation and just IS conscious...but those are just words with definitions. It still leaves the question unresolved in the way they seem to want the naturalist to answer the question. I could simply say that somehow, in a way we don't understand and may never understand, the natural world produces consciousness...just because. I could claim there's more to the natural world that we don't know about than we can even imagine and it's that part that gives us consciousness. Of course it's a blunt assertion and a faith based expression, but so is positing God or the supernatural. At the least, if we keep in in the realm of the natural we have a chance of discovering more about it whereas placing it outside what we can study makes it a quandry and unstudiable forever.

Is that information made up of matter?

@@suntzu7727 as I just said, information is more fundamental than matter. It does not make sense to talk about reality as being "made up of matter" anymore. What we perceive as matter is the information about wavefunctions relative to each other. The physics community does not think of matter as the building block of reality, and they have not for a while, since we've known about massless particles for a while. That is why I was disappointed that Dr. Rasmussen here seemed to frame his argument as "consciousness can't be made of matter so it must be something beyond the natural world".

@@dohpam1ne Did he say that it is not part of the natural world? I haven't watched the entire interview? Where did he say it? I would say it is not part of the material world and you seem to agree with it.

@@suntzu7727 "I would say it is not part of the material world and you seem to agree with it." For the third time, material is not a useful term to describe the universe on a fundamental level. I don't think anything is part of the material world because I don't think there is a material world. I think there is one world and it is currently best described by quantum fields. "natural world" was my phrasing. He says material; I say natural because it is a better word for reality. What Dr. Rasmussen repeatedly says is that consciousness is a *fundamentally different kind of thing* than the kind of thing that brains and legos and rocks are. That is what I am disagreeing with, because he seems to think that those things are described by matter rather than by information or fields.

“Computers can’t really be storing pictures” Computers aren’t really doing anything of their own volition if you think about it logically and neither the transistor nor the hard drive can even experience those pictures only a conscious agent can!! This is the “Hard problem of consciousness”. Equally, the computer is contingent on the conscious agent to build the circuitry and input information in the first place. Artificial intelligence, as mind boggling and impressive as it seems, it’s just a very advanced form of puppeteering and a useful conjuring trick. "Consciousness is part of our universe, so any physical theory which makes no proper place for it falls fundamentally short of providing a genuine description of the world. A scientific world-view which does not profoundly come to terms with the problem of conscious minds can have no serious pretensions of completeness." -- (Roger Penrose).

You don't think cats choose from a range of options? What do you base that conclusion on? I can't see much of a difference between how a cat or dog makes decisions and how I make decisions. They certainly seem free enough. What, other than blunt assertion would lead one to believe their decision process is categorically different than human's.

@@rizdekd3912it’s a bare assertion based on my musing and experience with cats and on my experience in being a human. My suspicion is that there is a categorical difference between humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom… the James Webb telescope is a good example of this monumental difference, quantum physics might be another one or even the device you are using to communicate your ideas with me on. As I consider non-human animals, they do not seem to me to be persons, they seem to lack the sorts of abilities that humanity has in the way of volition and in the way of rational faculties. I don’t know that we could actually get to personhood with AI… we surely could get something that could mimic it but I don’t think that we can get something that is categorically like it. I am operating from the perspective that exhaustive determinism is false. If humans are exhaustively determined then I would say that there is no categorical difference between humans and cats.

@@gingrai00 " As I consider non-human animals, they do not seem to me to be persons, they seem to lack the sorts of abilities that humanity has in the way of volition and in the way of rational faculties." Below is a wall of text explaining why I think cats have volition and rational faculties. You may skip it and just agree we disagree. AS to what cat's are thinking, I'm not sure ether. But they do a lot of things that make it seem to me like they might think of themselves in the first person, ie they know themselves as 'I.' They seem to have distinct feelings about what is right and wrong...ie they both know when the other has done something they think is wrong. And they know how to get away with things they know we scold them for. They....know other things and do things that reflect confidence in this knowledge. Now....if they are distinctly different, do they really 'know' anything? And do they have a problem with knowing things that some people think a person who is a naturalist has? IOW, the thrust of this discussion was that if one likes science they should hate naturalism since with naturalism, supposedly there is no inherent explanation for why things are the way they are or why there is anything at all. But that doesn't seem to bother my cats. They know where the door is and how to get me to open it. The one knows when the other comes by that if she walks up to it, the other one will lick her. They know if they come up to us and meow just so, we'll pet them. They know that a noise in a tree means something is probably up there...and just like me, they all look up at the area where the noise came from. They know when they're hungry and when they have to, you know, go out. They remember where the food dish is and their favorite places to sleep. I realize one point might be that while cats don't consciously worry about the fact that the natural world may not be able to be its own explanation and that some other world can be...and is, their mental limitations make them blissfully ignorant. Perhaps that is what people would think of me{: So the upshot would be that really smart humans know better and know there has to be some other explanation for what goes on in the natural world. I get that...but I don't see how simply asserting some 'other' world solves anything beyond being a mere assumption with ad hoc assertions. It seems that assumption and those assertions are similar to mine which is that in some way we can't fathom or maybe even explore, the natural world is the foundation of all that we see around us.

@@rizdekd3912 I appreciate your insights❤️ My suspicion is that we, as humans, tend to overshoot what lies within the realm of genuine choosing and we attribute far too many things we do to choice when they are probably ultimately just baked into us by way of evolution. I do not choose to be frightened, I do not choose to be embarrassed, I do not choose to bring to mind all that comes to my mind and I think these things and many more like them are parts of our being that we share with a cat. Given also that our hardware is so much better for thinking than the cats hardware, I suspect that even apart from genuine personhood we would exhibit a much higher degree of sophistication and function. Here is a difference I think exists… we can be courageous and I don’t think courage is a choice a cat can make. They are fierce and will defend or attack but I don’t think they can muster the courage to intervene when their biology screams run… I don’t think they make those kind of choices. They do seem to be determined to act in accord with their biology. I don’t think we are so determined… determined in a myriad of ways but not exhaustively. I agree, cat’s cannot know things in the sense we are speaking of when we speak of human knowledge but they clearly are conscious and aware of their environment such that they map it out sufficiently accurately to survive and reproduce. I do think this could be considered a form of knowledge but it may be better understood as conscious situational awareness. I think it conceivable that a human could be built the same way and still function at a much higher level than the cats yet still fall short of personhood. I don’t think you have personhood apart from the faculties of rationality and volition and I suspect that both of these, if they exist at all, exist metaphysically…

@@gingrai00 Yes...good thoughtful answer. But perhaps if we extend our analysis beyond cats, we may find courage in other animals...dogs for example or some other animal protecting its young or females. Look at the courage demonstrated by the mockingbird chasing the crow or the hawk...they're far more aggressive for a song bird than other avian species. I know there is a basic assumption by many...most people that somehow humans are just more than even the complex thinking of lower animals. It may be true. And it may be that it is outside the natural. Or, even if there is a difference it might be because of some feature of the natural world that humans taped in to but other species haven't or at least not as well. I feel like the difference between human consciousness and animal consciousness is in degree so any explanation for consciousness I arrive at has to include other animals. One way would be to say...ok, it's gotta be supernatural, but then that same force is also part of/influences other animals. Nothing would preclude that because, as I've said all along, whatever explanation one has, whether it be something more MORE outside the natural or something MORE within the natural, it hinges on substantial ad hoc assumptions and one could just as easily decide whatever it is also influences animals other than humans. It's just very interesting to think and talk about. Thanks.

Do you know this?

Have you studied?

Dr Eben Alexander had a NDE while being clinically brain dead.

Consciousness isn’t special? “Second degree abstraction” “It’s actually quite egocentric” Is that “true” or was it just your “egocentric” “abstraction talking? I think that the bereaved parents of children who have had their consciousness snuffed out by child murderers would beg to differ that their child’s consciousness wasn’t special and was just a egocentric abstraction!! Sorry but what can be claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence!!

​@@georgedoyle7971 Oh how nice. rhetorical questions, and appeal to emotion but no arguments. How fun. Let's slow down and try to explain things to ourselves: "" Is that "true" or was it just my "egocentric abstraction" talking? "" . Let's unpack that question Is that true? Depends on your definition of truth. My favorite definition is getting quite trendy nowadays and it's the definition I learned in my university: A statement is true if and only if it follows as a logical deduction from previous true statements. As you in no doubt noticed this definition is recurrent: self referential. For your everyday evaluation of statements it's perfectly fine but when you go into deep philosophical debates it gets stuck on a problem of infinite regress. And me personally I like to draw the line at axioms. Statements that are true because we all agreed they just are true. For example that universe exists, logical axioms, certain mathematical axioms. We don't prove them. We sort of roll with them. It doesn't mean we don't question them. Nothing further from truth. Pretty much every axiom has seen some work on and models have been made on assumption of falsity of them. And the ones we hold are those that stood the test of time (for example the 5th Euclid axiom has been discarded as we discovered non-euclidean geometry). And maybe in future some more axiom will get reworked or discarded. But for now. Let's just roll with them. Ok. So is that "true"? If we stick to our modern axioms. Yes. I believe it is. If we question those axioms then "I don't know". Because I have no idea how to model the world without these so I have no idea what truth statement even means then. ""...OR is it just "egocentric abstraction" talking? "". Why not both? I see it as false dichotomy. You can have a quite pleasant chat with ALEXA, a pretty dumb robot, If you ask it what the weather is like today, and she tells you "its 21C". Would you ask her "Is it true or is it just abstraction of electronical circuitry talking"? In my opinion, the answer to both of these questions is: BOTH. Now. You seem to believe that I don't believe consciousness exists. And that's untrue. I believe consciousness does exists. But I also believe that what consciousness IS: is a purpose designed built and trained cellular neural network that as inputs takes model of the world (created in other part of brain absolutely unconsciously) and it's output are our thoughts. (although the very process of reducing world-models into thoughts is also unconscious as pretty much anyone who dabbled in mindfulness can atest). You also implied that I think consciousness is not special. And again. Not true. consciousness is extremely special. Possibly more special than anything in the universe. It is created by close to 100 billion individual neurons forming estimated quadrilion (10^15) synapses each with each own action potential and activation requirements. This means that any particular configuration in brain is pretty much guaranteed to be 100% distinct from any other until the heat death of the universe. Consciousness is definition of special. Any brain death, or even brain damage is incalculable loss, not only to mankind but to the history of the universe. It doesn't mean that it's output's: the "thoughts" are not just egocentric abstractions of underlying electro-chemical processes. Because they are. And we know they are. " what can be claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence!!" What an outstanding quite isn't it? I do love it too. And fair. I didn't provide evidence for my claim that consciousness is essentially just a brain process aimed at monitoring the work of itself. Granted I didn't think I would be engaged in good faith. But since we. So here are my sources: arxiv.org/abs/1906.01703

@@georgedoyle7971 For evidence that the mind is a phenomenon produced by the brain see: the entire field of neuroscience. As far as the child being 'special', tell that to god. After all, he designed and created the killers that he always knew would murder him or her, didn't he?! I guess a loving, all-powerful god couldn't have just not, you know, not created child killers in the first place, because something something free will.

The ability to make predictions about predictions simply isn't what's referred to as consciousness

@@georgedoyle7971 I think that' might be missing the connotation of the 'nothing special' comment. YES, the consciousness and life of a child is of ultimate importance to the parents...and in fact should be special to all of decent society. But to me, that just means that humans that arose naturally have become special both by their own perception and because of the hurdles we have overcome to get here. It is truly remarkable and so...in that regard...human consciousness is special as is any consciousness in any animals and even . But what I think the other person meant is that it isn't 'special' ie based on something that is outside of what I think is a very special natural world.

Good question. I'd love to know. "Legos" is all I've ever known. Probably some marketing weirdness at some point in our history.

It's a shortcut. Why bother saying Lego blocks or Lego bricks every time you speak of the toy when everyone knows what we mean when we say legos? It seems you had no problem understanding what was intended, right?. That's how new words come about....new words are often easier/quicker to say/write and if everyone understands them, why not?

Interview could have been 20 minutes otherwise

@Jon Oh so you‘re familiar with German Idealism and can tell what‘s wrong with it?

@Σά ββας Maybe, maybe not. We seem to be going that way.

when in doubt, slap a pejorative label on it....that'll help.

Humans love conspiracies and ghostly things.

Nothing is more "spooky" than reality itself... made of mysterious forces and order for no reason. That magically exits without purpose or explanation...

@@nemrodx2185 nothing spooky about that but I guess it can be viewed like that. Things are spooky until we learn or discover new things, and they no longer are spooky. For instance humans having seizures. Some People once thought they were being possessed by ghosts or demons, we no longer think that.

@@megazine if the word spooky has any meaning, and there is anything spooky, then reality manufactures such things which is spooky.

No, but it is a logical disjunction. Either clumps of matter think or materialism is false. "God of the gaps" is the most meaningless refutation ever. It refutes nothing, unless you literally do not understand the subject.

@@godfreydebouillon8807 It appears that 'clumps of a matter' _do_ think. See the entire field of neuroscience for details. 'God the gaps' isn't intended to refute anything, it's a critique of an approach, suggesting that a particular logical flaw is occurring. 'We don't fully understand X yet, therefore my specific god somehow accounts for it'. That's not what's going on here?! Pull the other one.

@@mattsmith1440 Well that's question begging because it does not appear to many people that such neuroscientists aren't yet another example of some scientists merely guessing and passing it off as "science". This is obvious because of the drastically different contradictory explanations they provide (as Dr Rasmussen explains). "God of the Gaps" is no more useful a criticism as "naturalism of the gaps", where whenever atheists can't understand something, they invent an infinite number of universes, or globs of matter that they claim they know "think", or they assert nothing thinks. If ur not convinced that is a legitimate criticism of almost every atheist, then neither is God of the gaps.

@@godfreydebouillon8807 What does Rasmussen know about neuroscience? What do you know about it? We are at least gobs of matter, and it appears we think. Is that all we are? I have no reason to think otherwise, probably because I'm not motivated to be confused in order to insert Jesus.

Someone doesn't understand the fallacy...