Please allow an Earth Centrist to share his perspective.
“Why scientists haven’t cracked consciousness”
The science of consciousness still has no theory.Chalmers was both a philosopher and cognitive scientist who was skeptical that science would be able to build explanatory bridges between neural correlates in the brain and the subjective experience of consciousness.
Famously, he called consciousness “the hard problem,” which he believed was sufficiently challenging to keep any explanation of consciousness at bay for at least a quarter of a century.
“to build explanatory bridges,”
Galileo split consciousness away from science 400 years ago
While the Western science of consciousness only grew into a reputable field over the past few decades, part of the reason answers remain so elusive may be buried in the deep structure of scientific inquiry itself, reaching back to the 1600s.
Galileo bracketed out the fuzzier domain of conscious experiences.
That’s part and parcel of the self-absorbed Abrahamic utilitarian undercurrent I speak of.
… were designed to pit theories of consciousnesss against each other, including global workspace theory (GWT) and integrated information theory (IIT).
“The STV starts with the idea that you can map every state of consciousness onto a perfect mathematical representation,”
But there’s no guarantee that some critical mass of correlations between brain states and feelings can ever tell us how or why consciousness happens.
I don’t know how to explain it but, to me, that article defined a metaphorical straitjacket upon our understanding. Seeking philosophy inspired mathematical answers to biological questions, …
{Just back from a walk with Maddy, waters still flowing in the ditch, what a difference it makes to the mood of a place and a personal feeling of peace of mind: all is well with the world, at least here and now, soak it in while ya got it.}
To me article and in fact this whole line of investigation is philosophical driven, rather than physiological.
I guess the running water got me to thinking about the entire western, scientific, philosophical, religious, Abrahamic experience as a flowing river, with our questions of God and Soul, infusing our thoughts, questions, and expectations, even into these modern academic debates.
Then there’s another stream of thought that explicitly recognizes physical reality and the crazy past four and half thousand, million years here on Earth, cosmic good fortune, geology, biology, life, creatures, that begat self-awareness, which begat more competent between creatures, that continued adopting to their living changing environments, resulting in some creatures who could even more efficiently process self-awareness, and so on, until an amazing creature such as humans wound up on top, nor now at least.
To this mindset (supported by all the Earth Sciences you can consume) there’s a fact driven null-hypothesis that Consciousness is the Inside Reflection of our body communicating with itself and getting on with living and interacting, that is processing and action. No mystery demanding outside origins, either religious or mathematical. Complex biology in action, it really that simple.
Today we can actually record our consciousness in action with varied imaging & processing methods. Some scientist have learned to mind-read our thoughts, so what the hell is all the academia, Templeton Foundation, media driven handwringing about?
How can all that can get dumped into irrelevance because we haven’t figured out the tiniest of cogs between our body processing sensing inputs and our brain orchestrating mind?
I believe that’s a disservice to society.
That we don’t know every last aspect, what if it’s we who aren’t smart enough to figure it out?
Why don’t these headlining scholars on their media tours show amazement that electricity production isn’t really understood. How in creation can metal and magnets in motion create electricity that can be harnessed to do work. Experts continue scratching their heads and working on cracking this nuanced puzzle.
Where’s the concern over the “mystery” of that?
Why aren’t we allowed to start our educated discussion with the fundamental understanding that our consciousness is actually factually produced and driven by our body interacting with its environment. Complex systems need to communicate, there’s no other possibly. Human’s are phenomenally advanced, so our consciousness dwarfs all others, but we follow all the pre-set rules every other creature does. So let’s move on to more important concerns and understanding?
There’s no great revelation at the other end of all this contrived handwringing about the origin of consciousness, or the mystery of why humans possess it.
