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A neuroscientist and a philosopher just settled a 25 year old bet

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JustATourist

JustATourist

Rising Star
World-renowned neuroscientist Cristof Koch and the philosopher David Chalmers (famous for popularizing the “hard problem of conaciousness” AKA how can “inanimate matter” give rise to subjective experience) just settled a bet on consciousness they made 25 years ago.

25 years ago, Christof Koch speculated that science would be able to identify the “neural correlates of consciousness” (the parts of the brain sufficient for giving rise to consciousness), while philosopher David Chalmers claimed that science would not be able to crack the problem.
The bet is settled and David Chalmers won.

Not only is science not able to get around the “hard problem of consciousness”, it is also not able to identify exactly which parts of the brain give rise to consciousness.



As the video explains, two main theories exist today to account for this issue,
“Integrated information theory” and “Global neuronal workspace theory”, the latest published data shows that both theories fail, and there is no consensus.

Consciousness is a tough nut to crack, huh? :)
 
Let's face it. We are 55 years behind where we should be on these types of questions due to the hysterical and histrionic as well as racist drug policies which affected not only end users but very well intentioned researchers.

Now that we are beginning to get up and running with this kind of research, as well as having modern tools, I suspect some real answers may be coming to many of these questions in the upcoming decades.
 
My recent interest has been in Advaita Vedanta philosophy which states that consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality and objects are just projections created by this all-pervasive consciousness.

If this is to be the case, it's futile to search for brain functions that give rise to consciousness. Of course you can study how anesthetics operate in the brain and see that at one point awareness of your body and senses is cut off. However, if consciousness comes first, the question about the links between body-mind-consciousness cannot be solved in the paradigm of reductionist materialism, which can't but assume the consciousness to be an emergent property of matter.

We come to the limits of the scientific method as it stands here. Natural science as it stands is the study of "objective", but consciousness is at the core very subjective. We can only get information about it through self enquiry.

Of course, consciousness is related to the mind and mind is related to our neural functioning and studying these links through conventional scientific means do serve a purpose, but there comes a limit the naturalistic paradigm can't cross. The most profound question that goes beyond this is "what is consciousness anyway?"

And there are answers to this question in philosophy. What is left when you cancel all the ever changing objects of consciousness? What was there five minutes, five years, five billion years ago? It's the unchanging "I am".

Maybe our scientific research needs to take seriously the ancient science of consciousness if it wants to get further in it's pursuits.
 
There is a growing body of research indicating that the brain has the characteristics of a resonance chamber, facilitated by resonance between the microtubule system. Hameroff and Penrose have some very interesting theories in this area. IMO you aren't going to solve the consciousness mystery without taking into account quantum physics and subcellular levels. The computer analogy (each neuron is just a node in a computer) can only carry us so far.
 
Tomtegubbe said:
My recent interest has been in Advaita Vedanta philosophy which states that consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality and objects are just projections created by this all-pervasive consciousness.

If this is to be the case, it's futile to search for brain functions that give rise to consciousness. Of course you can study how anesthetics operate in the brain and see that at one point awareness of your body and senses is cut off. However, if consciousness comes first, the question about the links between body-mind-consciousness cannot be solved in the paradigm of reductionist materialism, which can't but assume the consciousness to be an emergent property of matter.

We come to the limits of the scientific method as it stands here. Natural science as it stands is the study of "objective", but consciousness is at the core very subjective. We can only get information about it through self enquiry.

Of course, consciousness is related to the mind and mind is related to our neural functioning and studying these links through conventional scientific means do serve a purpose, but there comes a limit the naturalistic paradigm can't cross. The most profound question that goes beyond this is "what is consciousness anyway?"

And there are answers to this question in philosophy. What is left when you cancel all the ever changing objects of consciousness? What was there five minutes, five years, five billion years ago? It's the unchanging "I am".

Maybe our scientific research needs to take seriously the ancient science of consciousness if it wants to get further in it's pursuits.
Click to expand...

Well said. I recommend having a look at Bernardo Kastrup. He comes to similar conclusions but from a pure analytical philosophical perspective.
His views and those of Advaita Vedanta overlap a lot, as he explains in his discussion with the head of the Vedanta society of New York Swami Sarvapriyananda, here:


[YOUTUBE]
 
This is unsurprising to me, but that may be because 1. I'm a skeptic (philosophically) and 2.I've entertained similar ideas for a long time.

Tomtegubbe said:
If this is to be the case, it's futile to search for brain functions that give rise to consciousness. Of course you can study how anesthetics operate in the brain and see that at one point awareness of your body and senses is cut off. However, if consciousness comes first, the question about the links between body-mind-consciousness cannot be solved in the paradigm of reductionist materialism, which can't but assume the consciousness to be an emergent property of matter.
Click to expand...

Well said. It's funny that science assumes that it can "objectively" declare anything about consciousness other than what we may call byproducts of consciousness. But that's the "issue;" what assumptions are we operating from, how much have they been scrutinized, and when is it time to scrap them. We have to start somewhere, so atomic propositions are always somewhat baseless or reflective of our intersubjective limits.

Tomtegubbe said:
We come to the limits of the scientific method as it stands here. Natural science as it stands is the study of "objective", but consciousness is at the core very subjective. We can only get information about it through self enquiry.
Click to expand...

Kind of why phenomenology became a thing, where philosophers began expressing more about experience than anything meant to be purely objective, that is, looking at reality and objectivity through the lens of subjectivity.

Tomtegubbe said:
And there are answers to this question in philosophy. What is left when you cancel all the ever changing objects of consciousness? What was there five minutes, five years, five billion years ago? It's the unchanging "I am".
Click to expand...

Well isn't this Cartesian :) Cogito Ergo Sum. The conclusion of Descarte as he throws the existence of everything, including his own "mind," into doubt.

universecannon said:
There is a growing body of research indicating that the brain has the characteristics of a resonance chamber, facilitated by resonance between the microtubule system. Hameroff and Penrose have some very interesting theories in this area. IMO you aren't going to solve the consciousness mystery without taking into account quantum physics and subcellular levels. The computer analogy (each neuron is just a node in a computer) can only carry us so far.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't it be funny if somehow it was discovered that there was some itty bitty, smaller-than-subatomic-particles "thing" that generates consciousness? :lol:

One love
 
Voidmatrix said:
Wouldn't it be funny if somehow it was discovered that there was some itty bitty, smaller-than-subatomic-particles "thing" that generates consciousness? :lol:
Click to expand...

I hereby christen dub them "noöons".

You may continue.
 
downwardsfromzero said:
Voidmatrix said:
Wouldn't it be funny if somehow it was discovered that there was some itty bitty, smaller-than-subatomic-particles "thing" that generates consciousness? :lol:
Click to expand...

I hereby christen dub them "noöons".

You may continue.
Click to expand...
It would be quite ironic if we would find out that counsciousness is being generated by no-ones.
 
DR said:
It would be quite ironic if we would find out that counsciousness is being generated by no-ones.
Click to expand...

Makes me think of how the word "utopia" is a misnomer for its usage, given that it's etymology derives from the Greek "ou" which means not, and "topos" which is place. Not place, or no place :lol:

One love
 
I'm also reminded of the anecdote from one or other of the psychedelic researchers in the early '60s or thereabouts. He was describing how he felt as though the layers of his mind were "peeling away like the layers of an onion", to which his wife - helpfully or not - replied, "When you've peeled away all ihe layers of an onion you'll see there's nothing there."

IIRC the trip may have got more challenging for him at that point (and I do wonder if he grasped the deeper meaning of it too - that perhaps he ought to help out in the kitchen more) but there we have it; we're digging to the deepest layer of consciousness and we might just find - noöons there.
 
I’m also in the consciousness only camp with Bernardo.

Perhaps the layer of the onion is being/knowing. However I try I can’t go any farther back. I am. And I know that I am. Everything else proceeds from this. IME, There is nothing except the knowing of experience and objects of experience are simply the activity of the knowingness that I am.

The hard problem of consciousness disappears along with the notion of matter (as a thing in itself).
 
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