Jul 16, 2016 02:30 AM
http://www.npr.org/2016/07/15/485711630/...-come-from
(excerpt) [...] SEARLE: Why consciousness? Well, it is the most important aspect of our lives for a very simple logical reason. Namely, it's a necessary condition on anything being important in our lives that we're conscious. I've - haven't yet given you a definition. You can't do this if you don't give a definition. People always say consciousness is very hard to define. I think it's rather easy to define, if you're not trying to give a scientific definition. We're not ready for a scientific definition. But here's a common sense definition.
Consciousness consists of all those states of feeling or sentience or awareness. It begins in the morning when you wake up from a dream of asleep. And it goes on all day until you fall asleep or die or otherwise become unconscious. Dreams are a form of consciousness on this definition. Now, that's the common sense definition. That's our target. If you're not talking about that, you're not talking about consciousness. OK. Now, why, then, is this curious reluctance and curious hostility to consciousness? Well, I think it's a combination of two features of our intellectual culture. But in fact, they share a common set of assumptions.
One feature is the tradition of religious dualism. Consciousness is not a part of the physical world. It's a part of the spiritual world. It belongs to the soul. And the soul is not a part of the physical world. That's the tradition of God, the soul and immortality. There's another tradition that thinks it's opposed to this but accepts the worst assumption. That tradition thinks that we are heavy-duty, scientific materialists. Consciousness is not a part of the physical world. Either it doesn't exist at all, or it's something else - a computer program or some damfool thing.
But in any case, it's not part of science. And I used to get into an argument that really gave me a stomachache. Here's how it went. Science is objective. Consciousness is subjective. Therefore, there cannot be a science of consciousness. OK. So that's - these twin traditions are paralyzing us. It's very hard to get out of these twin traditions. And I have only one real message in this lecture. And that is all of our conscious states, without exception, are caused by lower-level neural biological processes in the brain. And they are realized, in the brain, as higher-level or system features.
RAZ: So how does consciousness originate in our biology?
SEARLE: Well, we don't know the details of how the brain produces consciousness, but we know it does. And that's the stunning thing about our life. Each of us is conscious. And we have that peculiar form of consciousness, which is human consciousness. And the way that it's possible is because of the neuronal configuration of the brain.
However, for me to say it that way is really just a blank check. We don't know the details of how it works. And I think it's kind of one of those scandals of intellectual life is we do not know how brain processes cause and sustain consciousness. But we know they do. And that's the important fact for this discussion right now is we are conscious beasts. Consciousness is produced in the brain, and it's maintained in the brain....
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/...=485711630
(excerpt) [...] SEARLE: Why consciousness? Well, it is the most important aspect of our lives for a very simple logical reason. Namely, it's a necessary condition on anything being important in our lives that we're conscious. I've - haven't yet given you a definition. You can't do this if you don't give a definition. People always say consciousness is very hard to define. I think it's rather easy to define, if you're not trying to give a scientific definition. We're not ready for a scientific definition. But here's a common sense definition.
Consciousness consists of all those states of feeling or sentience or awareness. It begins in the morning when you wake up from a dream of asleep. And it goes on all day until you fall asleep or die or otherwise become unconscious. Dreams are a form of consciousness on this definition. Now, that's the common sense definition. That's our target. If you're not talking about that, you're not talking about consciousness. OK. Now, why, then, is this curious reluctance and curious hostility to consciousness? Well, I think it's a combination of two features of our intellectual culture. But in fact, they share a common set of assumptions.
One feature is the tradition of religious dualism. Consciousness is not a part of the physical world. It's a part of the spiritual world. It belongs to the soul. And the soul is not a part of the physical world. That's the tradition of God, the soul and immortality. There's another tradition that thinks it's opposed to this but accepts the worst assumption. That tradition thinks that we are heavy-duty, scientific materialists. Consciousness is not a part of the physical world. Either it doesn't exist at all, or it's something else - a computer program or some damfool thing.
But in any case, it's not part of science. And I used to get into an argument that really gave me a stomachache. Here's how it went. Science is objective. Consciousness is subjective. Therefore, there cannot be a science of consciousness. OK. So that's - these twin traditions are paralyzing us. It's very hard to get out of these twin traditions. And I have only one real message in this lecture. And that is all of our conscious states, without exception, are caused by lower-level neural biological processes in the brain. And they are realized, in the brain, as higher-level or system features.
RAZ: So how does consciousness originate in our biology?
SEARLE: Well, we don't know the details of how the brain produces consciousness, but we know it does. And that's the stunning thing about our life. Each of us is conscious. And we have that peculiar form of consciousness, which is human consciousness. And the way that it's possible is because of the neuronal configuration of the brain.
However, for me to say it that way is really just a blank check. We don't know the details of how it works. And I think it's kind of one of those scandals of intellectual life is we do not know how brain processes cause and sustain consciousness. But we know they do. And that's the important fact for this discussion right now is we are conscious beasts. Consciousness is produced in the brain, and it's maintained in the brain....
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/...=485711630