“It is widely believed that physics provides a complete catalogue of the universe's fundamental features and laws. As physicist Steven Weinberg puts it in his 1992 book Dreams of a Final Theory, the goal of physics is a "theory of everything" from which all there is to know about the universe can be derived. But Weinberg concedes there is a problem with consciousness.
Despite the power of physical theory, the existence of consciousness does not seem derivable from physical laws. He defends physics by arguing that it might eventually explain what he calls the objective correlates of consciousness (that is, the neural correlates), but of course to do this is not to explain consciousness itself. If the existence of consciousness cannot be derived from physical laws, a theory of physics is not a true theory of everything. So a final theory must contain an additional fundamental component.”
-Chalmers, David J: The Puzzle Of Conscious Experience http://consc.net/papers/puzzle.html
“It is widely accepted that conscious experience has a physical basis. That is, the properties of experience (phenomenal properties, or qualia) systematically depend on physical properties according to some lawful relation. There are two key questions about this relation. The first concerns the strength of the laws: are they logically or metaphysically necessary, so that consciousness is nothing "over and above" the underlying physical process, or are they merely contingent laws like the law of gravity?
This question about the strength of the psychophysical link is the basis for debates over physicalism and property dualism. The second question concerns the shape of the laws: precisely how do phenomenal properties depend on physical properties? What sort of physical properties enter into the laws' antecedents, for instance; consequently, what sort of physical systems can give rise to conscious experience?”
-Chalmers, David J: Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia,
http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html
Are We Psychophysical?
Psychophysicalism, underlying the mind/body relation, holds that consciousness requires brains to exist. If consciousness cannot exist unless it is generated by a brain, it follows that no instance of consciousness can exist without a neural circuit corresponding to and giving rise to that experience. What do you think? Do you believe that if there are no brains (or no functioning brains) there is (or there is no longer) consciousness or conscious experience?
If Psychophysicalism is true, consciousness does not exist where there are no functioning brains. Thus it is within neurons, out of every other object in the universe, that consciousness arises. If consciousness arises “outside” neurons rather than within them—why state the brain has anything to do with consciousness?.
The purpose of this paper is to compare the brain substantially and compositionally with every other object in the universe (in accord with secular mythology concerning the substantial and compositional nature of the brain and every other object in the universe) to discern whether or not the brain possesses a quality or property missing from the remainder of the universe, as the absence of this quality or property—which should exist even if consciousness does not (in cases of permanent vegetative state or coma)—makes the purported ability of the brain to create or generate subjective experience absurd.
The Secular Origin Of The World
In Psychophysicalism, consciousness cannot exist unless and until there are brains, and brains seem to exist upon a particular planet. The brain is composed of specialized cells, and bio-evolutionary theory holds that multicellular organisms descend from a single self-replicating cell. Life’s pathway from single cell to the human brain (as the most significant example of brain and consciousness) is entailed to occur upon a particular planet, itself formed from the fallout of physical events occurring 10-15 billion years ago:
Without the laws of physics as we know them, life on earth as we know it would not have evolved in the short span of six billion years. The nuclear force was needed to bind protons and neutrons in the nuclei of atoms; electromagnetism was needed to keep atoms and molecules together; and gravity was needed to keep the resulting ingredients for life stuck to the surface of the earth.
These forces must have been in operation within seconds of the start of the big bang, 10-15 billion years ago, to allow for the formation of protons and neutrons out of quarks and their storage in stable hydrogen and deuterium atoms.
Free neutrons disintegrate in minutes. To be able to hang around for billions of years so that they could later join with protons in making chemical elements in stars, neutrons had to be bound in deuterons and other light nuclei where energetics prevented their decay.
Gravity was needed to gather atoms together into stars and to compress stellar cores, raising the core temperatures to tens of millions of degrees. These high temperatures made nuclear reactions possible, and over billions of years the elements of the chemical periodic table were synthesized as the by-product.
When the nuclear fuel in the more massive, faster-burning stars was spent, the laws of physics called for them to explode as supernovae, sending into space the elements manufactured in their cores.
In space, gravity could gather these elements into planets circling the smaller, longer-lived stars. Finally, after about ten billion years, the carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and other elements on a small planet attached to a small, stable star could begin the process of evolution toward the complex structures we call life.
The secular myth also holds that everything in daily experience, extrapolated to the formation of the planet itself, are composed only of up quarks, down quarks, and electrons.
The Particles
Since the dawn of science, people have been wondering what the universe is made up of; what the most fundamental objects are in the universe. Well, the answer to this has changed over the years, and what you see here may or may not be the final answer, but it's the best answer we have right now.
The most fundamental particles we know about can be divided into three categories: quarks, leptons, and gauge bosons. Within the spectrum of these particles, there are several patterns that emerge. Historically, when patterns emerge in a collection of particles, this is an indication of the substructure of the particles. That is, it's an indication of what the particles that make up the particles are like. For example, some years ago, Mendeleyev arranged all the known elements according to their chemical properties into an array which we call the periodic table. The patterns he discovered are indicative of the fact that these elements are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. As another example, earlier this century physicists noticed patterns within a group of particles called "hadrons." Two physicists, Gell-Mann and Zweig, discovered that these patterns could be explained if hadrons are composed of more fundamental particles, now called quarks.
And so the patterns observed in the spectrum of quarks, leptons, and gauge bosons may be indications that these are made up of other particles. However, so far there's no evidence that this is the case, and no indication of what these smaller particles might be like. So these particles, as far as we now know, are made up of nothing smaller.The Moral Of The Story:
There's nothing about neurons in terms of their atomic or subatomic structure, given that every other object (at least on Earth if not the universe—i.e. dark matter and energy) are composed of the same types of particles (with all particles identical in nature to every other particle in the universe of its type).
If the only stable particles in the universe (that we know of so far) are up quarks, down quarks, and electrons, there is no structural difference---in terms of particles going into the makeup of the objects of everyday experience ---between brains, trashcan lids, DVD movie covers, tampons, and everything else. The upshot of this is that there is nothing special about the brain in comparison to everything else in the universe in terms of it’s physical structure If neurons somehow create subjective experience, it is far from obvious how subjective experience arises (or why it must arise) by reason of u, d, quarks and electrons Lego-blocking into brains as opposed to their Lego-blocking anything else.
Appearances Are Not Deceiving: The Apparent Difference Between Neurons...And The Remainder Of The Universe
In the quest to demonstrate that, while it is believed that neurons give rise to or create subjective experience, neurons themselves (neurons qua neurons) are not subjective experiences. It is believed that neurons give rise to subjective experiences, but apparently (visually), neurons certainly cannot be mistaken for the experiences to which they give rise.
Example: An orange fruit appears like other orange fruits in the vicinity, but an orange cannot be mistaken for an apple (unless we shift semantics overnight to call apples 'oranges')
To put the issue differently, even once it is accepted that experience arises from physical systems, the question remains open: in virtue of what sort of physical properties does conscious experience arise? Some property that brains can possess will presumably be among them, but it is far from clear just what the relevant properties are. Some have suggested biochemical properties; some have suggested quantum-mechanical properties; many have professed uncertainty. A natural suggestion is that when experience arises from a physical system, it does so in virtue of the system's functional organization. On this view, the chemical and indeed the quantum substrates of the brain are not directly relevant to the existence of consciousness, although they may be indirectly relevant.
(Chalmers, David J: Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia,
http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html)
But aside from a heretofore unknown or magical feature of the brain found nowhere else in the universe, and given that, at least according to what we know of fundamental particles in terms of mass and stability (that only massless particles are stable i.e. they have not been observed to decay into smaller particles) brains are made up only of up and down quarks and electrons. Function, however, means movement or in the case of stable or robust machines, repetitive or contingent movement of components in circumscribed or predictable ways.
In electronics, this “repetitive or contingent movement” ultimately involves the staging of electrically conductive materials and objects relative to each other in abstract patterns in order to circumscribe and route (“control through a maze”) a particular or varying amount of electrical energy in such a way as to force it to perform a particular task or produce a particular effect (output).
The brain is no different. Action potentials circumscribe and route electrical energy (typically) from dendrites, through the soma or body of the nerve cell, to the axon in order to release neurotransmitters that activate the next neuron in line and so on (through the membrane surrounding the neuron). It is the passage of electrical energy through more than one neuron that counts as “brain function” or “nervous system function” (in non-brain neurons). As a general rule, two or more neurons establish a nervous system (at least insofar as humans and most other animals are concerned).
But if brains are nothing but Lego-creations of up quarks, down quarks, and electrons, and given that up quarks and down quarks form protons and neutrons and protons and neutrons do nothing else but form the nucleus of atoms (thus protons and neutrons are---in general---good only for holding an atom together as a discrete unit), the “function of the brain” is ultimately mediated by electrons.
Electric currentElectric Current is the flow of electrons through a wire or solution. In a solid the electrons are passed from one positively charged metallic atom to next but in solution the electron is carried by the ions present in the solution. A solution capable of carrying charge is called an electrolyte. Electrolyte solutions are found in batteries as well as in all living things.
• Is measured according to how many electrons pass a given point each second.
• The symbol for current is I
• The unit of measurement is the amperes (A) or amp (1coloumb/second or 6.24 x 106 electrons)
• The net charge on the wire carrying the current is zero.
Conclusion
“There's something happenin' here
What it is ain't exactly clear..”
-Buffalo Springfield, For What It's Worth
In the end, let’s face it: neurons are neurons, and non-neurons are non-neurons. There are neurons, and there are volcanoes, there are neurons, and there is the subjective, inward feeling of happiness. Neurons to the bone are just cells that conduct electricity. As Chalmers states:
“…everything in physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness.”
If this is true, then it is coherently imaginable that cortical neurons can in principle conduct electricity with nothing occurring save motor responses in the body (if non-mental bodies and brains exist). To say this is impossible is to propose a necessary connection between consciousness and the physical that can be argued to be nothing more than a psychophysical connection of imaginary force; an imagined inextricableness of consciousness from neurons not mirrored by objective reality.
If consciousness has nothing at all to do with neurons, asks the psychophysicalist and non-mentalist, then why are there brains at all? Why are there reports of correspondence between neural manipulation and experience?
A paper published recently in the journal Nature (vol.391, page 650, 1998) called "Electric Current Stimulates Laughter" has provided a bit more information about how the brain is involved with laughter. The paper discussed the case of a 16 yr. old girl named "A.K." who was having surgery to control seizures due to epilepsy. During surgery, the doctors electrically stimulated A.K.'s cerebral cortex to map her brain. Mapping of the brain is done to determine the function of different brain areas and to make sure that brain tissue that will be removed does not have an important function.
The doctors found that A.K. always laughed when they stimulated a small 2 cm by 2 cm area on her left superior frontal gyrus (part of the frontal lobe of the brain). This brain area is part of the supplementary motor area. Unlike laughter that happens after brain damage, the laughter that was produced by electrical stimulation in A.K. also had a sense of "merriment or mirth". Also, A.K. did NOT have the type of epilepsy with gelastic seizures. Each time her brain was stimulated, A.K. laughed and said that something was funny. The thing that she said caused her to laugh was different each time. A.K. laughed first, then made up a story that was funny to her. Most people first know what is funny, then they laugh.
(Neuroscience for Kids: Laughter And The Brain, http://fc.units.it/ppb/neurobiol/Neuroscienze%20per%20tutti/laugh.html)
What’s happening here? The brain, manipulation of the brain, and any reports of experiences arising in response to neural manipulation are all subjectively perceived by something subjectively perceiving. The subjective perception of this perceiver is the only thing known with certainty to actually exist. Thus the central question of the nature of existence is whether or not the nonexistence of the subjective perceiver, and all subjective perceivers, leaves behind the objects perceived by the former perceiver in non-mental form.
Secular mythology of the nature of death sets the standard. If consciousness becomes as real as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny once electrical activity in the cerebral cortex ceases, the mythology must hold that there is a phenomenal (subjectively experienced) brain and subjectively experienced subject, and a non-mental counterpart to the brain and the subject that is a wholly distinct existence from their subjective twins, which are aspects of a particular perceiver.
We know the perceiver exists. Delusions aside, reality manifests at least as a “moving camera point-of-view” that is aware and perceives. We do not know if non-mental analogs of that which the “camera” observes exist, and it is beyond logic that non-mentality must exist in order for there to be mentality. As two distinct existences (with one easily capable of existing without the other), it is inconceivable why one should depend or need the other to exist.
In the end, there is no logic behind the emergence of subjective experience from neurons. One would have to postulate interdimensional portals or find refuge in creation ex nihilo. Even if one accepts or takes into account panpsychism or panprotopsychism, one must hold to a magical “non-touching” connection between the mental and non-mental. Despite secular complaint of the use of magical thinking in religious or spiritual explanation about the world and how it works, this magical thinking exists in the notion that neurons, cells through and through, somehow “vomit” subjective experience—something that is definitely not a biological cell. This magical thinking wears the sheep’s clothing of “reason over faith”, but upon close examination one finds it is imagination that borrows the actual content of visual perception to create a false "actuality" for itself, backed by willful ignorance and denial of the obvious duality and incompatibility between electrified bio-cell and subjective experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment