Consciousness: Philosophers & neuroscientists defend physicalism

[C C]

MIND IS MATTER
https://youtu.be/QYAdtfRFI3M

INTRO: In this video, leading philosophers and neuroscientists defend the view that the mind purely physical. Starring some of the very experts who anti physicist quote such as Bob Kirk (Zombie argument) and Frank Jackson (Marys room argument) who have now turned to physicalism, as well as the most cited neuroscientists in the world, Karl Friston and other leading scholars such as Ned Block, David Papineau, Richard Brown, Ken Williford, Anil Seth and Marc Solms, we examine the strongest case for physicalism-the view that everything about the mind can ultimately be explained in terms of the physical brain.

We take on some of the most famous anti-physicalist arguments, including: The Hard Problem of Consciousness, Knowledge arguments (e.g., Mary’s Room), Philosophical zombies Dualist intuitions about the self and panpsychism.

Do these arguments really show that consciousness is non-physical-or do they rely on misconceptions about how the brain works? This video breaks down complex ideas into clear, rigorous explanations while challenging some of the most popular objections to physicalism...

https://youtu.be/QYAdtfRFI3M

[Magical Realist]

Well, if mind as well as body is ultimately reducible to a phenomenon of matter, 70 % of which is pure electrified water, we are still left gawking at an astounding prospect. For if this can happen, what does this say about matter itself, that it harbors within its own deep and sparkling interstices such a transmutative and even transcendental promise! We had best abandon our dryasdust neurological schematics altogether and return to the mystical first-hand cookery of the alchemical opus:

"Here I am, a highly organized pattern of mass and energy, one of eight billion, insignificant in any objective accounting of the world. And in a short while I will cease to exist. What am I to the universe? Practically nothing. Yet the certainty of my death makes my life more significant. My joy in life, in my children, my love to dogs, running and climbing, books and music, the cobalt blue sky, are meaningful because I will come to an end. And that is as it should be. I do not know what will come afterward, if there is an afterward in the usual sense of the world, but whatever it is, I know in my bones that everything is for the best.”
― Christof Koch, Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist

“We must sleep with eyes open, we must dream with our hands,

we must dream the active dreams of a river seeking its course, the dreams of the sun dreaming its worlds,

we must dream out loud, we must sing until the song sends out roots, trunk, branches, birds, stars,

sing until the dream begets and the red wheat of the resurrection is created from the rib of the sleeper…”

Octavio Paz, “A Broken Waterjar”

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[Ostronomos]

In an effort to change the physicalist perspective I will say the following.

The physicalist argument fails to take into account how mind can expand beyond the physical brain and influence the objective world such as television, radio, people and extra-dimensional beings. It is simply false. The reality that is altered when one has brain damage is a deceptive argument. One may not grant the possibility of the after-life but it is no less a fact. This is because mind - being invisible - can expand beyond the brain using certain mind-altering substances. The consciousness that is God is what created the universe and gave rise to everything in it.

Observer-participancy is another argument that defeats physicalism. The consciousness of an individual human being is an interaction that collapses the wavefunction in the double-slit experiment. One cannot argue in favor of consciousness without taking into account quantum theory. The mundane world is notoriously deceptive. It creates the fuel that drives the physicalist argument. But this world falls to the wayside whenever one expands one's consciousness. It's interesting that the video features elderly physicists who buy into materialism/ physicalism. As it suggests that their age does not afford them wisdom, despite the fact that they have never gained access to the metaphysical reality that I do.

[Ostronomos]

There is nothing of value to be found in the physicalist theory of consciousness. I have been known to say that God is real because He is proven using logic. If you wish to align your thinking with reality embrace a non-physicalist version of consciousness. The mind is immaterial. You are not doing anyone any good by adopting a physicalist version.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/cPRKsKwEdUQ

[PonderPoints]

This thread presents a physicalist case for consciousness and contrasts it with non-physicalist objections.

New Argument from Consciousness

This video explores the meta problem of consciousness proposed by David Chalmers and argues that naturalistic processes couldn’t have given us knowledge of consciousness

This is my video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJVvZNi0Fi8

Disclosure: This reply was drafted with AI assistance.

[Magical Realist]

Isn't the intelligent design argument for human consciousness basically just another version of physicalism? That consciousness is generated by the physical "designedness" of a third person brain as opposed to Chalmer's argument that it cannot be since consciousness is essentially and uniquely a first person experience?

[Magical Realist]

It only hits home that consciousness is everything when we actually lose it. No more world..No more self. No past, present, or future. Not even unconsciousness. That's how lit up everything is by this little burning flame inside our brains.

[kieransimkin]

The psychedelic point is interesting, but I think it helps to separate three claims. First, altered states can reveal how a brain constructs a world and a self. Second, those states can make non-physicalist interpretations feel compelling. Third, mind can literally act beyond the brain, collapse a wavefunction, or contact extra-dimensional beings. Evidence for the first does not by itself establish the second or third.

Physicalism is not refuted merely because matter produces something astonishing, and panpsychism is not established merely because experience feels irreducible. The sharper question is what either view predicts about the structure and individuation of subjects. If experience is fundamental, why do many alleged micro-experiences form this bounded subject rather than another? If consciousness is produced by neural organisation, which changes should reliably alter or abolish which aspects of experience? Those are places where the positions can become more than competing intuitions.