Where does consciousness fit in physics?

[Yazata]

Where does consciousness fit in physics?
Or does it?

I'm inclined to think that consciousness fits into physical reality in much the same way that information fits into information processing systems.

So to answer the second part of your question, I've never believed that consciousness is incompatible with physics.  

Or do you feel that it fits outside of physics, and can best be categorized under psychology?

I'd be inclined to categorize psychology as the analogue of software engineering in computer science.

At least it seems that way from the third-person perspective, psychology as applied to other people.

It's usually the first-person phenomenal perspective that philosophers of mind of the anti-physicalist persuasion like to point to as being incompatible with physical science. I don't agree.

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Hey Leigha, don't let somebody else's abruptness drive you off.

I like you, I like your thread and I value your participation here.

Please stay.

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Like the n-body problem in physics illustrates, the more complex a physical system the more analysis must be approximated.

The same argument could be applied to neural network computing, to systems that can learn to produce desired outputs when confronted with similar inputs. It's already being used in applications like pattern recognition and I don't think that any of us would want to argue that they violate physics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_neural_network

At complexities nowhere near that of consciousness, the approximation must be so imprecise that physics has no tools to even approach the issue. Hence psychology and other less rigorous fields.

I agree. It's like biology rides atop chemistry which rides atop physics. Each science can be reduced to the one below it, but trying to understand biological phenomena purely in terms of chemistry or physics, would make things so complicated as to render understanding effectively impossible. It isn't unlike the choice of approaching your computer with a GUI like Windows, or through machine language programming.

And if consciousness wholly originates from the brain, we have a conundrum explaining neural plasticity, where our conscious choices can alter how the brain develops and migrate where tasks are handled. The brain supposedly giving rise to the consciousness making such choices.

I don't really see a problem there. Practicing cognitive tasks is like working out in the gym for your brain. The brain tends to build up its muscles so to speak and it gets better at the tasks over time. That correlates with observable changes in brain structure.

[Syne]

Like the n-body problem in physics illustrates, the more complex a physical system the more analysis must be approximated.

The same argument could be applied to neural network computing, to systems that can learn to produce desired outputs when confronted with similar inputs. It's already being used in applications like pattern recognition and I don't think that any of us would want to argue that they violate physics.

I did not imply any violation of physics, only its inability to address consciousness. OFC, artificial neural networks differ in that they cannot supply their own desire with which to choose outputs. And that's the crux of human consciousness.

And if consciousness wholly originates from the brain, we have a conundrum explaining neural plasticity, where our conscious choices can alter how the brain develops and migrate where tasks are handled. The brain supposedly giving rise to the consciousness making such choices.

I don't really see a problem there. Practicing cognitive tasks is like working out in the gym for your brain. The brain tends to build up its muscles so to speak and it gets better at the tasks over time. that correlates with observable changes in brain structure.

Aside from mirror neurons, which only fire when we act or observe an action, there are no stimuli to account for "practicing cognitive tasks." Even in the analogy to working out, it is the conscious choice to do so that motivates the action (often at great force of will over natural tendencies). In no other species but human is there any working out of brain or brawn beside what is called for by external stimuli. But in humans we find the ability to reorganized the brain to fit tasks with no external pressure or need. We simply do not have any evidence of where that impetus originates.

To avoid the obvious, we would have to postulate that our brains have a (genetic?) plan of their own that goes beyond what evolution by external stressors could account for. So even if we do discount the human consciousness as being purely a function of the brain, we'd still need to believe in some sort of intelligent design. IMO, the simplest of those options is that there is something going on in the mind unaccounted for by the physiology alone.

And no matter what we may believe, science has no compelling answers on the matter. People who accept science for what it is, rather than what they wishfully think it can become (science of the gaps), acknowledge that somethings are likely to remain beyond the bounds of science, because science has known limitations.

[Leigha]

Where does consciousness fit in physics?
Or does it?

I'm inclined to think that consciousness fits into physical reality in much the same way that information fits into information processing systems.

So to answer the second part of your question, I've never believed that consciousness is incompatible with physics.  

Or do you feel that it fits outside of physics, and can best be categorized under psychology?

I'd be inclined to categorize psychology as the analogue of software engineering in computer science.

At least it seems that way from the third-person perspective, psychology as applied to other people.

It's usually the first-person phenomenal perspective that philosophers of mind of the anti-physicalist persuasion like to point to as being incompatible with physical science. I don't agree.

---

Hey Leigha, don't let somebody else's abruptness drive you off.

I like you, I like your thread and I value your participation here.

Please stay.

Hey Yazata, thanks for this.  I've always liked your contributions, and appreciate your thoughts here to this.

Here's a link that I thought was interesting on the topic:

http://www.livescience.com/47096-theorie...sness.html

It's a strange thing, consciousness. Some consider it a ''phenomenon,'' which I don't know if I care for that term for it. Some in the article I've linked Yazata, would agree with you, that consciousness is not incompatible with physical science. 

[Secular Sanity]

I don’t think that consciousness wholly originates from the brain.  I think you need a body in order to process information.

I’m a big fan of embodied cognition.

"Body am I entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body. The body is a great reason, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd. An instrument of your body is also your little reason, my brother, which you call "spirit"--a little instrument and toy of your great reason. . . . Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage--whose name is self. In your body he dwells; he is your body. There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom."—Nietzsche 

We’re Growing Brains Outside of the Body

The tiny brains cannot "think" because they do not have a body with which to help process information.

Nobody understands how the activity of our brains gives rise to thoughts – and it’s surprisingly difficult to define what a thought actually is – but it might go something like this. Usually, when we’re exposed to stimulation from the outside world – smells, sounds, ideas – our brains store the information by strengthening the connections between our neurons or forming new ones. The average adult will have as many as 1,000 trillion, which together give our brains an equivalent processing power to a one trillion-bit-per-second computer.

And here’s the rub. Even with all the same components as regular brains, without a body to provide information about the world around them, the brains simply can’t develop normally. “The neurons are working but they aren’t really organized relative to one another,” she says.

Lancaster gives the example of people who are born blind. “Since they aren’t exposed to light, the part of the brain that [these signals] would normally connect up is actually not going to form,” she says.

“This is kind of a good thing, I think. I’d have some issues if I thought there was proper network formation there,” she says.

The man-made brains are already transforming our understanding of the brain, its disorders and what makes humans special. Though they were only invented in 2013, a quick Google search of “cerebral organoids” turns up 2,820 scientific papers already.

[Syne]

I don’t think that consciousness wholly originates from the brain.  I think you need a body in order to process information.

I’m a big fan of embodied cognition.

That still doesn't account for the degree of neural plasticity in humans.

Nobody understands how the activity of our brains gives rise to thoughts – and it’s surprisingly difficult to define what a thought actually is – but it might go something like this.

Sounds like wild speculation to me.

[Secular Sanity]

That still doesn't account for the degree of neural plasticity in humans.

Your body responds to injury and changes in the environment, and so does your brain. BFD!

[Syne]

That still doesn't account for the degree of neural plasticity in humans.

Your body responds to injury and changes in the environment, and so does your brain. BFD!

Apparently you didn't read my earlier post, where I explained the lack of external origin for human neural plasticity. But...quell away.

[C C]

I don’t think that consciousness wholly originates from the brain.  I think you need a body in order to process information. I’m a big fan of embodied cognition.

There are several, arguably distinct enterprises transpiring under the umbrella of "embodied cognition". I'm only focusing on what Lakoff is affiliated with below.

Due to "the human conceptual system being metaphorical in nature", George Lakoff's particular version has the odd offshoot of limiting us in ways reminiscent of Kant's categories (of the Faculty of Understanding). This is ironic from the standpoint that he spends much time railing against the abstract, language, or functional schemes of mind in the disembodied cognitive tradition. But then his team's work concludes with the human body itself becoming yet another epistemological filter. This sets aside who is wrong or right, and whether such limitations even matter. I'm merely noting the unexpected return to one familiar road-stop or destination along the way, despite the radical shift in approaches.

John Brockman, George Lakoff: "We are neural beings," states Berkeley cognitive scientist George Lakoff. "Our brains take their input from the rest of our bodies. What our bodies are like and how they function in the world thus structures the very concepts we can use to think. We cannot think just anything - only what our embodied brains permit."

His new book Philosophy In The Flesh, coauthored by Mark Johnson, makes the following points: "The mind is inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical."

Lakoff believes that new empirical evidence concerning these finding of cognitive science have taken us over the epistemological divide: we are in a new place and our philosophical assumptions are all up for grabs.

He and Johnson write: "When taken together and considered in detail, these three findings from the science of the mind are inconsistent with central parts of Western philosophy, and require a thorough rethinking of the most popular current approaches, namely, Anglo-American analytic philosophy and postmodernist philosophy."

According to Lakoff, metaphor appears to be a neural mechanism that allows us to adapt the neural systems used in sensory-motor activity to create forms of abstract reason. "If this is correct, as it seems to be," he says, "our sensory-motor systems thus limit the abstract reasoning that we can perform. Anything we can think or understand is shaped by, made possible by, and limited by our bodies, brains, and our embodied interactions in the world. This is what we have to theorize with."

He then raises the interesting question: "Is it adequate to understand the world scientifically?"

[...] The moral is that you cannot take conceptual systems for granted. They are neither transparent nor simple nor fully literal. From the perspective of the science of mind, science itself looks very different from what we are commonly taught it is. Scientific understanding, like all human understanding, must make use of a conceptual system shaped by our brains and bodies.
--PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH - A Talk with George Lakoff; EDGE 51— March 9, 1999

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Lakoff on functionalism, from the same EDGE interview above: Early cognitive science, what we call "first-generation" cognitive science (or "disembodied cognitive science"), was designed to fit a formalist version of Anglo-American philosophy. That is, it had philosophical assumptions that the determined important parts of the content of the scientific "results." Back in the late 1950's, Hilary Putnam (a noted and very gifted philosopher) formulated a philosophical position called "functionalism." (Incidentally, he has since renounced that position.) It was an apriori philosophical position, not based on any evidence whatever. The proposal was this:

The mind can be studied in terms of its cognitive functions - that is, in terms of the operations it performs - independently of the brain and body.

The operations performed by the mind can be adequately modeled by the manipulation of meaningless formal symbols, as in a computer program.

This philosophical program fit paradigms that existed at the time in a number of disciplines.

In formal philosophy:

The idea that reason could be adequately characterized using symbolic logic, which utilizes the manipulation of meaningless formal symbols.

In generative linguistics:

The idea that the grammar of a language can be adequately characterized in terms of rules that manipulate meaningless formal symbols.

In artificial intelligence:

The idea that intelligence in general consists in computer programs that manipulate meaningless formal symbols.

In information processing psychology:

The idea that the mind is an information-processing device, where information-processing is taken as the manipulation of meaningless formal symbols, as in a computer program.

All of these fields had developed out of formal philosophy. These four fields converged in the 1970's to form first-generation cognitive science. It had a view of mind as the disembodied manipulation of meaningless formal symbols.

[...] This view was not empirically based, having arisen from an apriori philosophy. Nonetheless it got the field started. What was good about it was that it was precise. What was disastrous about it was that it had a hidden philosophical worldview that mascaraded as a scientific result.

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Synopsis of George Lakoff views, by Piero Scaruffi:

Language is grounded in our bodily experience

Language is embodied, which means that its structure reflects our bodily experience

Our bodily experience creates concepts that are then abstracted into syntactic categories.

Syntax is a direct consequence of our bodily experience, not an innate property

Grammar is shared (to some degree) by all humans for the simple reason that we all share roughly the same bodily experience

All metaphors are ultimately based on our bodily experience

Metaphor = the process of experiencing something in terms of something else

The human conceptual system is metaphorical in nature, as most concepts are understood in terms of other concepts

Language comprehension always consists in comprehending something in terms of another

All our concepts are of metaphorical nature and are based on our physical experience

We understand the world through metaphors, and we do so without any effort, automatically and unconsciously

Language was created to deal with physical objects, and later extended to non-physical objects by means of metaphors

Conceptual metaphors transport properties from structures of the physical world to non-physical structures

Metaphor is central to our understanding of the world and the self

Metaphor is pervasive is that it is biological: our brains are built for metaphorical thought

Metaphorical language is but one aspect of our metaphorical brain

[Leigha]

As if there wasn't enough to talk about...  

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blo....urkxfwutn

[Leigha]

Since consciousness originates in the brain stem, maybe a better way to view this is that physics can't solve for the experience of consciousness. But it seems that it could play a role in explaining consciousness. If we examine people who are in persistent vegetative states, what caused them to become in such a state, was a lack or complete cessation of oxygen rich blood flow to their brains. (for whatever the reason)  In a vegetative state, awareness is greatly impaired, and in most cases, completely gone - the person is not conscious of what is going on around them, because of his/her brain damage. So, in such a scenario, it would seem that physics could at least explain levels of consciousness.