Is consciousness explicable by "science".

Isn't this kind of thinking is like chasing your own tail? But don't get me wrong. I love running in circles.

There is a natural philosophy governing the consiousness. In this, perhaps more than in any other area, the answers will probably not come by active research, but more by examining the self in interaction with the world. We do not even know precicely where the border between the two is yet.

Maybe it can all be reduced to equations. Thinking about that only reminds me of AI. That's an area of research that migh shed some light on the workings of conciousness.

Fresco:

Don't you think Dennet is tryng to argue for this pragmatic view of consciousness because he wants to further the concept of AI?

Either way - I think that science does not purpose a way to understand anything it cannot percieve. It only allows the 5 senses to percieve data. I am not sure how you can percieve 'consiousness' with our current data gathering systems allowable in science.

TF

Book marking, Fresco, with this interesting link:

http://www.cs.uta.fi/~jh/homunculus.html

I first learned about the term homunculus in a critique of The Scarlet Letter by someone who explained that Hawthorne's development of little Pearl was obscured by his belief in such a thing.

consciousness is a viscious circle phenomenon; in order to consider its nature we must 'be' conscious, and conscious of being conscious; therefore demonstrating it, while not quite understanding it.

[consciousness is directly, and integrally connected to the phenomenon of 'life']

[http://hedweb.com/nihilism/nihilfil.htm]

thethinkfactory

Contrary to your comment, it seems to me that science relies on unobservables to explain observables, e.g. "electron shells" to explain "chemical bonding".

But yes, as Cyracuz points out, Dennett is certainly from the AI camp and he even cites Descartes view of "animals" as "machines".

Letty,

Nice bm !

Fresco:

Agreed - but they explain them in terms that they could observe if thier equipment were refined enough. The 'Virtual Particles' of sub atomic theory to explain various things are a perfect example. Scientists call things that they cannot see and see no emperical evidence for by terms that give off a feel that we could see these 'particles'.

However - I don't think science has ever allowed for the 'proof' of a thing to be measured merely by its effects.

All of this leads me back to my original question - if you are trying to scientifically explain consciousness and all you have are a feel that you have one - and the effects of one - how would you go about scientifically proving you had a consciousness?

TTF

Consciousness is the foundation for how we react to our environment with our limited number of senses. It's the biological and chemical elements that makes us "conscious" animals.

This might be interesting

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lecture1.shtml

(....subsequent lectures obtained by altering "lecture1" to "lecture2" etc....)

There's something called sight consciousness... I don't know much about it, but I've heard something like that before.

Fresco, I have often wondered about laughter, and even posted a thread about it once. That article was long, but I took the time to speed read it. (remember that?). As for the color of numbers, never even considered it. Good article, however. Just a little too much for one's brain(mind) to take in at one setting.

Letty,

Try listening instead of reading.
Lecture 2 is particularly interesting, and 3 deals with visual art.

Listening, Fresco. I do that well.

The trick is to passively recieve information instead of actively aquiring it. Your mind is a monkeywrench. A tool that can be adjusted to the proper nut.

Well Cyracuz, I'm a proper nut, all right.

Fresco, I have saved your article to favorites, and am going to listen instead of read.(if that's possible)

Fresco, thanks for the BBC link. I was surprised to learn how much our perception of reality can be altered by brain malfunctions, such as the case where the patient was unable to acknowledge the existence of anything in the left visual field.

Makes you wonder if there are aspects of the universe to which we are completely blind simply because our brains never developed the circuitry necessary to process the information.

I thought that science would eventually be able to explain consciousness, but now I'm not so sure.

Fresco, it has finally dawned on me what you were trying to say. My word, I thought that you were being abstract. See? I over thought that one. You meant, of course, cut on the speakers and listen. I just got through reading part III. (best not to wake up the household).

Suddenly the entire message got through. I will take one painting that I reevaluated, and that is Van Gogh's Starry Night. Suddenly I understood the exaggeration of the stars.

terry; you should listen to the opera by a British contemporary composer, Michael Nyman (and based on a true medical case discussed by Oliver Sacks), called "the man who thought his wife was a hat".
it is suprisingly compelling

Fresco:

You wrote this in your opening statement/question:

I'm reading Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" in which he argues that there is resistance to a reductionist analysis of consciousness by those who revel in "ultimate mysteries.

Since I haven't read the book would you please explain what the author described as the ....."reductionist analysis"?

It implies that "mental processes" (and other biological processes) including "purposeful behaviour" could never be reduced to physics and chemistry. The philosopher Nagel is one such proponent.

A related issue which Dennett may or may not address (still reading) is the meaning of the term "explanation" and its reliance on philosophically problematic concepts such as "causality" and "teleology". And even if Dennett escapes the problems of Cartesian dualism, his materialist monism may fail to account for observer selectivity of what constitutes a significant "event" in the brain processes which he claims can be objectively studied.