• Xhieron@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Thank you for this. That was a fantastic survey of some non-materialistic perspectives on consciousness. I have no idea what future research might reveal, but it’s refreshing to see that there are people who are both very interested in the questions and also committed to the scientific method.

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I read that and the summary is, “Here are current physical models that don’t explain everything. Therefore, because science doesn’t have an answer it could be magic.”

      We know consciousness is attached to the brain because physical changes in the brain cause changes in consciousness. Physical damage can cause complete personality changes. We also have a complete spectrum of observed consciousness from the flatworm with 300 neurons, to the chimpanzee with 28 billion. Chimps have emotions, self reflection and everything but full language. We can step backwards from chimps to simpler animals and it’s a continuous spectrum of consciousness. There isn’t a hard divide, it’s only less. Humans aren’t magical.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        And we know the flatworm and chimp don’t have non-local brains because?

        I’m just saying, it didn’t seem like anyone was arguing that humans were special, just that consciousness may be non-local. Many quantum processes are, and we still haven’t ruled out the possibility of Quantum phenomena happening in the brain.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Because flatworm neurons can be exactly modeled without adding anything extra.

          It’s like if you said, “And we know a falling ball isn’t caused by radiation because?” If you can model a ball dropping in a vacuum without adding any extra variables to your equations, why claim something extra? It doesn’t mean radiation couldn’t affect a falling ball. But adding radiation isn’t needed to explain a falling ball.

          The neurons in a flatworm can be modeled without adding quantum effects. So why bother adding in other effects?

          And a minor correction, “non local” means faster than light. Quantum effects do not allow faster than light information transfer. Consciousness by definition is information. So even if quantum processes affected neurons macroscopically, there still couldn’t be non local consciousness.

      • nnullzz@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I understand your point. But science has also shown us over time that things we thought were magic were actually things we can figure out. Consciousness is definitely up there in that category of us not fully understanding it. So what might seem like magic now, might be well-understood science later.

        Not able to provide links at the moment, but there are also examples on the other side of the argument that lead us to think that maybe consciousness isn’t fully tied to physical components. Sure, the brain might interface with senses, consciousness, and other parts to give us the whole experience as a human. But does all of that equate to consciousness? Is the UI of a system the same thing as the user?