Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

   Post 112.  December 1, 2020

  Is Consciousness An Illusion?

   Is Science Theory-Blind?  

 Since Nagel is not a proponent of reductive materialistic Behaviorism, he offers this forward-looking alternative : “There is no reason to go through such mental contortions in the name of science. The spectacular progress of the physical sciences since the seventeenth century was made possible by the exclusion of the mental from their purview. To say that there is more to reality than physics can account for is not a piece of mysticism: it is an acknowledgment that we are nowhere near a theory of everything, and that science will have to expand to accommodate facts of a kind fundamentally different from those that physics is designed to explain”. Exactly what those “facts of a new kind” might be, he leaves to the future of Science. But for now, he advises a return to the old-fashioned kind of Science, that is not so theory-blinded14 : “Materialism remains a widespread view, but science does not progress by tailoring the data to fit a prevailing theory”. Nevertheless, he praises Dennett for his other contributions to philosophy that are “informative and wise”.

Personally, I think modern Science, and its associated Philosophies, is in a transition phase, from its no-nonsense origins in a rebellion against oppressive doctrinal religion, to a more open-minded search for knowledge, even in fringe areas that are tainted with Faith and Dogma. That’s due in part to the fact that the New Age philosophies are already exploring the inner depths of the Mind, and the source of Consciousness, without the skeptical safeguards of the scientific method. They mostly derive their beliefs from millennia of Wisdom Traditions, based on Intuition & Insight. Most ancient religions were wrong about the mechanics of the physical world. But, over the years, their hit-or-miss intuitive guesses evolved via competition of ideas, into a reasonable Science of the Mind, as exemplified in Buddhism, and a Science of Nature, as in Taoism. If we can combine those tried-and-mostly-true insights with a reasonable dose of Doubt (trust but verify), we may come closer to the kind of Science envisioned by Nagel. And we may even label it with the New Age notion of “Expanded Consciousness”. 

                                End of Post 112

See no
Mind

Feel no Consciousness

Hear no
Nonsense

What is it like to be a bat?
 ___Thomas Nagel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nagel

14. Theory Blinded :
   “Daniel Kahneman in his brilliant book defines “theory induced blindness” as the phenomena which occurs when we trust a theory so much that we search for reasoning to reinforce it even when a specific situation arises that our model doesn't suit well, when we can't think about other options, it becomes inconceivable that the model is incorrect or not suitable in a given context.”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/theory-induced-blindness-zdenek-kvapil

Is Consciousness
an Illusion?
Dennett’s paradoxical
position on
Consciousness

Thomas Nagel
Philosopher of Law, Politics
and Ethics

“Materialism remains a

widespread view, but science does not progress by tailoring the data to fit a prevailing theory.”

— CONSCIOUSNESS —

The Enformationism theory implies that the universe may be permeated by generic information that takes many forms, one of which is Consciousness. But while that sounds like Panpsychism, I don’t think atoms know what’s going on in any sense remotely like human consciousness. But there is another way to look at the universal mind.

   At its root, Awareness may be essentially a positive or negative mathematical Ratio between a stable state (rest), and a dynamic state (motion). All things tend toward the rest state, but are deflected away by the original impulse (momentum) of the Big Bang, or by collisions with other moving or static things.

   From that abstract perspective, Consciousness is merely a complex form of basic information (energy) exchange. It manifests on the human scale as Attraction or Aversion. The Ancient Greeks called it “Love” or “Desire”. And scientists call it “Force” or “Energy”. As an attractive force we call it Gravity or Magnetism.

   So, consciousness and awareness emerge from fundamental interactions of physics, which cause things to “perceive” other things, and to react : like a billiard ball at rest, that responds to the energy of a moving ball, by aversion. Or like a magnet, it responds to other magnets depending on the polarization, by moving away or pulling together.

   For humans awareness is intimately related to self-consciousness, and imagery. But on the sub-atomic scale, it may be nothing more than addition & subtraction.