Proof that consciousness evolved from physical matter?

I disagree

" Material " is also apart of us , all the constuients that make up the brain , proteins , minerals , water , air etc . is ESSENTIAL to being allowed to understand any realtionship with anything



I think though " sticking with abstraction " doesn't allow you to understand and see the simplicity of consciousness . with all things there is the simplicity and complexity innate in all things

you tend to focus on the complexity , I tend to focus on the simplicity

since many animals have a form of consciousness and beyond , really

the thing is , is that ALL are Material based

You seem to go to great lengths to argue that there is a materialist domain in which "existence of things" is treated as "observer independent" and that there is a metaphysical domain in which they are not. The question remains as to which domain, if either, "consciousness" can be accounted for. It is only in the materialist domain in which "proof" operates, so if we exclude "consciousness" from that domain, the OP question is irrelevant (as I believe I stated before you joined in). If on the other hand we dismiss the OP and we assign consciousness to the second, it is certainly the case that we can visualise it as "bodily" (a la Merleau-Ponty) but we then have no "handle" on it since body and non-body are inseparable with respect to "existence".

But further, and most importantly, the metaphysical domain of M-P is a priori to the physical domain insofar that it encompasses it as merely another form of engaged "coping". Indeed in his discussion of facticity, Dreyfus points out that there never is an ultimate veridical position with respect the M-P account of "maximum grip" (gestalt). This for me is brought home by Kuhn's paradigmatic account of scientific revolutions, and also by the contemporary requirement to include observer factors in frontier physics, which itself is now having problems with "materiality".

And as for a third domain, that of a "disembodied consciousness", the temptation is to dismiss this as mystical or religious. But a question remains involving the "location" of the vantage point from which Heidegger and M-P were able to view their version of "existence".

Ok, to what extent can consciousness be "accounted for" in either of the domains you speak of. I will try to skip all of the problems of separating these domains and the definition of terms like "accounted for" in which the real issues unfortunately lie.

Taking the materialist domain first: Our consciousness is associated with the material structure of our brains. Material causality works on our brains. Destroy your brain and you will cease to exist. You will die. What does that mean really? First the natural world is characterized by a parameter, or set of parameters called time. So we are talking about an end within that definition. You can perhaps see it most clearly by undergoing anesthesiology. When a material of a specific kind enters your brain and is then removed (you can rely on the reports of others to assure you that it was) then you suddenly wake up. If you look at your watch you will see that time has passed. You will probably have been moved into another room. How to explain this natural occurrence? One way is to watch someone else undergo the process. You see them cease all expression or interaction with you they lay as if asleep and time itself goes on then you can watch them moved to another room and they awake. Now the clearest interpretation of that situation is that you loose consciousness due to the anesthesia. Here is the statement: "Administration of anesthesia to my body will cause me to loose consciousness". That is an example of the type of statements which in their aggregate constitute a material account of conscious. Now note that if you mean a purely material account of consciousness in which it is not mentioned but just shows up as an arrangement of atoms then it cannot be done. But without consciousness all empirical natural science cannot be done. What is being done here is a little different but not much. Remember that Galileo built two sides to his telescope not one.

Now this is illustrative of a type of analysis of the nature of what we experience. After all none of it is necessary logically. It is all contingent. But that contingent nature has regularity to it that allows you to posit the existence of objects and to determine material causality. So it it real. I claim that this is a "real" "account" of consciousness.

As much as we do know there is a lot that we do not know. For example we do not know the exact physical arrangement required or even if there is a single one or even if it is as you say "necessary". Further everyone assumes that a memory is constructed in the brain and with sufficient knowledge the brain could be read. I do not think we know that necessarily. It is very possible but the neurology has not proceeded to that point. Further in order to set up many experiments we need to have them done on ourselves because of the first person ontology of consciousness. We also require our memory to be intact to some extent. Else we have to rely on expression. But the problem there can be illustrated by imagining total paralysis with consciousness. My understanding is that this has in fact been reported.

Ok so much for the material account. The next problem is much harder for me at least. I believe that the closest I have seen is "being-with" the mit-sein. Consciousness permeates the experience. It can be with someone. There is a kind of geometry problem because when I merge into the being then there is in s purely geometric sense no room for the others and yet the others and there with me. *We* are. There is also the Other. I frankly do not have the ideas required. I know is related to who I am instead of what and it ceases to be an intellectual question. In a way it is not consciousness but consciousnessing but that is not even right. I prefer experiencing or being. Still one can "be-with" in community and there is the whole thing of person and creativity. I know its not a very good "account" but "accounting" in this area itself may be the problem. And here we are better perhaps even to abandon philosophy and just enjoy the day to cope best. Certainly though if by consciousness you mean the experience of Being then it is already accounted for. Sorry- best I can do.

With respect to the second paragraph to the extent I understand what you mean I can only say that the very project we are engaged in is threatened by a kind of lack of utility. There are those who would say that philosophy itself is merely a kind of coping and then point out all of the ways it can become dysfunctional. I really agree with a lot of that. I certainly know it is at best necessary and certainly not sufficient. If you go back to Kierkegaard or Nietzsche you can see it there too. I say ok fine but we are not in a position culturally where there is too little philosophy. Most people are unenlightened and what passes for philosophy is usually a lack of understanding not someone who understands to the point where his continued attempt to improve is dysfunctional. It is necessary in my opinion to understand this culturally and broadly and the universities are in disarray. You can easily become a philosophy teacher without even having been enlightened. Many would even deny the meaning of the term. I think rather a lot of the dysfunction comes at least in those who execute the orders from a lack of philosophy. So I have decided that the project is worth it. In fact with biology doing what it is doing it is needed even more so and it is behind. So I do believe that trying to understand is a necessary component of coping. Improved philosophy is necessary. That is what I think.

On the last paragraph I do not think that a disembodied consciousness is mystical or religious. Indeed in a sense consciousness is disembodied in the sense that it cannot be completely identified with the brain. But I do think that it is a likely scientific outcome that there will be no discovery of disembodied consciousness and further that any instance of a particular arrangement of matter will be consciousness. This is the basis of material causality. Certainly it seems that this will happen. At least right now you only can create consciousness through biological reproduction. There are all kinds of logical possibilities but there is that razor.

With respect to the vantage point of Heidegger et al it was clearly from his head. You can see him speaking on the internet. Also, if you visit any contemplative monastery in any religious tradition you will see how important being embodied is to the maturation of the awareness of being. Many will even refuse philosophical debate seeing it as a waste of time. I disagree but you can see at least that the mystical is always embodied if you check out the mystics.

In a sense. I think that we can experience ourselves as not being in our bodies. But the question is whether the sense data changes to the new perspective or whether the same data is just reinterpreted. I believe it is the latter. However there are many reports from other people that that is incorrect and I myself cannot completely dismiss them. But I believe that they are false.

I do believe that if we were given avatars like in the movie that in a short time we would no longer perceive that we were in our body but would instead perceive that we were in the avatar. It would be interesting to see if that is right as I think the technology actually exists now to try it. We do know that we can be fooled easily into believing that a fake arm is a real one by combining visual and tactile clues.

Let me just go straight to the heart of the problem concerning the meaning of "material" or "physical"...given there is the simulation hypothesis, and all you have to enquire it is your perceptual natural instruments in conjunction with your brain you bottom line have no way to prove nor what nor where rests ultimate nature...and no matter what you just say to insist, so far there´s no way around this problem neither did you reply in a satisfactory manner to it...further, around the place I am one of the more sceptical to embark in new age pseudo conceptual descriptions on the world, but nevertheless concerning "Physicality" there´s not much to stand for...I actually was surprised that after you come up with the Avatar stuff you did n´t connect the proper dots into the problem...suffices to say that most enlightened Physicists today tend to avoid to answer to that question, if it is the case at all that we can call them enlightened regarding the general mess in which they and their Science are living with this days...(and I do love Physics)

Should read instead:

...if it is the case at all that we can call them enlightened regarding the general mess in which they and their Science are living in and with these days...(and I do love Physics)

We do not know if the sense data you call the first perspective is any more correct than any other perspective we may have...

Good exposition !

I realized (a la Dreyfus) that "account for" was a loaded phrase, but I adopted it in the spirit of the OP. When you get round to it, you might like to tell me what you think of Bohm's "implicate order".

That is odd...a "truth drifter" like you hardly can accept a self enclosed holistic approach to phenomenology...

actually Bhom´s holistic approach has a striking similarity with some of what is presented in many of my posts and the all notion of systems of functions and layer set of relations...what would you comment on Searle's concept of aboutness for instance ?

Sorry, I know little of Searle at present. I may get back to you on that.

To me when you say something is "physical" or "material" you are saying something about what we experience. So in my mind whether it is simulated "physicality" or real "physicality" has nothing to do with whether it is "physical". I can imagine non-physical worlds or physical worlds and I can imagine this world becoming non-physical. Whether the world is physical we find out by observing it. To be physical what appears has to have certain characteristics. It has to be objective somewhat and then the objects need to have some kind of conservation. You must make one from the other at least in some sense. It is not a precise definition and in my mind what is can be somewhat material it doesn't have to either be material or not. So questions of "ultimate reality" have nothing to do with physicality to me. It is just a class of possible descriptions of nature that are true or false depending on how it appears.

yeah...but you are not speaking into a wall here this is a public forum...there are many around us that need you to clarify just that..."physical" is only about how reality is experienced by us...( I am not saying that there is n´t a reality "outside" us...although "outside" and "inside" are very much perspective like placers...) we all very much deal with crude linear words...

I'll drink to that

change any genetic structure of the brain , deliberately through any form of reconstruction of genes and you will change consciousness

I have taken a long time to answer. It is truly a difficult question. I still don't have an answer but I think that you might be interested in this. I believe that the objectives of the program in this link, if realized, could support an answer.

http://mally.stanford.edu/objectives.html

In the meantime I only have tendencies. I believe that the biggest negative reaction I have to Bohm's implicate order is that he brings it up in the physical context. Specifically, I think that if anyone wants to understand these issues they need to depart from the ultimate realization of physical science because physical science is purely natural. I do not think that any amount of understanding of nature can provide a program that will advance the insights of philosophical tradition. Bohm does not seem to take up the philosophical tradition but seems to approach philosophy from the physical tradition. I think that is a big mistake.

I believe that physics itself is the application of certain ideas to the study of nature. In other words it is the study of nature to the extent that it can be studied with a subset of ideas - its not just the study of nature. These ideas are basically objective in the mathematical sense. In other words I believe that physics necessarily uses mathematics or at least our current physics does. I include set theory even though its physical basis is being challenged and it will probably require modification. I do not think, though, that physics will dispense with the notion of the object.

The problem is that the study of nature is coming up against at least naive views of those set theoretical ideas. I believe that a rigorous philosophical account of the subset of ideas that physics uses is required. I also think that other areas like aesthetics, ethics, theology etc should also undergo such an analysis but that physics should be first.

The way to do this I am convinced is to start by looking very carefully at the basis of logic.

I have a intuition that only when the relationship of logic to philosophy is made clear will the context for answering questions about the "truth value" for lack of a better phrase, of a lot of Bohm's statements.

As a fallout we will understand better I think the relation between science and mystical insight. The major positive tendency I have toward Bohm's insights is that it looks as if Bohm was at some level aware of Being more directly. But I am very wary of any form of fundamentalism. I hate these identifications of quantum mechanics with mysticism and his implicate order seems to me to be close to the border. There is a germ of truth but then it gets blown up into something totally false. Even if there had been no modern physics and the world had been completely objective in the naive sense all of our philosophical "problems" would still be there. The questions cannot be decided scientifically.

I believe the way to understand the foundations of logic will also (in addition to a reflective program) be required to examine statements and their physiological basis as well as their meanings or rather to understand the physiological basis of meanings - to include the possibility that they don't have one (for me its a question of natural fact).

I know that that is a very unpopular view as it is neither reductive nor dismissive of the need for neurology to be involved so why do I hold it? I hold it because I think that this remarkable natural relationship exists between our neurology and our thoughts. I am not a materialist in any but one sense. I am a natural, not an ontological, materialist - and even then not a naive one. Nevertheless, I think we need to understand the physics of ontology - I think we need to study our brains. To understand what is happening in our brains when this happens not because of any kind of stupid reductionism. It is not neuro-philosophy we need but that does not mean that we don't need neurology.

Why? The shortcut answer is to cure original sin or if you prefer to cure Maya. The longer answer is that the experiences of mystical insight are not readily achievable. Given our size and speed, and the facts of nature's objectivity, it is not unreasonable to assume scientifically that our organisms evolved to a large extent to interpret and manipulate the world objectively. Still, the desire to live is also required. Evolution has given us a biology that (in a material causality sense) allows us to do that. (Ok, I know it is a folk statement but you know what it is I am referring to). So we can I think understand that physiology and we must develop the philosophical rules for its manipulation.

I certainly do not believe that this physical "basis" is anything but natural and I do not think it invalidates meaning. Any reductionism in this area is for me settled as being false. It is not even interesting to me. For me its decided. Its impossible. I also do not think that meaning can be reduced to use. There is almost a reverse process where we "are affected" rather than we "use" that needs to be taken into account.

I know that is a very tall order but feel it is inherent in the situation. Neurology right now is not got much of a technology but that is not far off. We need to understand fully the basis of science, to be able to communicate about it, and to use all of its faculties to stave off what will be an attempt to fulfill Kant's or Wittgenstein's program biologically by "curing" our race of metaphysics.

To speak in religious terminology:"God forbid." That would be a disaster. But when I look at the level of awareness around I can easily see it happening. The way we are going it will not end well.

I have have a question if you happen to know the answer. It is about the definition of Ontology. Some say it is "The study of being as being" others say it is the study of "What beings or type of beings exist". To me these are radically different. I believe that the latter definition is recent. Do you know of any sources older than say a hundred years or so that uses the latter definition? Are we in an attempt to change the meaning of this word or has the word always had more than one meaning?

Sorry I can't do better on Bohm. I have not studied him enough and what I have read seems to indicate that he wrote of an area that I do not understand well.

Thankyou for your reply.

I cannot agree with you on the subject of "logic", since it is merely a set theoretic model regarding the relationship between static things.Bohm adopts the "wholism" common to the constructivist school of ontology, in which what we call "reality" is a function of the dynamic inter-relationship of "observer" and "observed", and the a priori existence of things is seen as vacuous. Indeed, the constructivist Piaget points out that "logic" is one end product of the manifestation of consciousness in adults, and this manifestation cannnot therefore be accounted for by logic itself.

As for your ontology question, I think this touches on the inextricable relationship between ontology and epistemology, in the sense that the first is concerned with "what exists" and the second with "how do we know what exists". But, the second presupposes we already "know" that "we" exist in the sense of Descartes cogito , and that idea is philosophically vulnerable.

I cited Bohm because he supplies one view on the importance of "consciousness" implied by the OP. Despite the fact that he was attacked for his "mystical leanings" it remains intriguing that a successful quantum physicist should take that stance. (Niels Bohr, with his Yin-Yang coat-of-arms, might be put in the same camp).

I think that the important understanding is to relise that through all physical matter and dimensions and spiritual dimensions thereof is this ;

that all energy states and dimensions NEEDS a place where all of them come together and build a physical structure

look , no matter how small we go in depth with physical structure , quantum and beyond , it takes the accumulation , the attractivness , and interactions neg. and pos. chemically , to produce a macro physical object , galaxies , suns , planets , moons , etc.

a quantum particle can't on its own produce a place where life can exist , it can't because this particle is simply not complete enough on its own to support life , because life its self is very complex structure of many particles , as we know , minerals , proteins , elements

not just one particular quantum particle . it takes the accumulation of billions of quantum particles , which form atoms and then form molecules

on the mystical side or I perfer the spirit side , it seems to me that any spirit is either trying to become physical or trying to manipulate the physical , which implies to me , that , no matter what dimension or energy state the spirit may reside , the physical is the most important , why?

because the physical , ourselves , the Universe , is the place , the only dimension , where everything comes together to be understood more completely , everything

But it may be that "the physical" is merely a perception of "the sentient".

I disagree and what I was trying to point out in my above post

that the Universe is a dimension where ALL aspects , from the micro( quantum and beyond ) to the macro( galaxies etc) come together

because the Universe is ONLY place that all aspects can come together and build something that is more than just their individual Nature

the physical is not only not the perception of the sentient , but the sentient couldn't be without the physical

Let me try that again.

Inside atoms there is mostly empty space. We know this; it is considered fact. And whatever is inside atoms, we know that it is not material. It is something else, energy vibrating in certain frequencies. When you finger stops at the table top instead of going through it, that is because the atoms of your finger and the atoms of the tabletop vibrate with the same frequency. That gives the appearance of solid, impenetrable matter.

So all our senses can detect this physical world, but our science tells us that it's not so physical at all. Just try it out in your mind for a second. Play with the notion that "physicality" is merely an attribute assigned to reality by those that have need of such an attribute. Perhaps you will see what I am talking about.