Seems to me that conciousness proves God (in the sense of something supernatural). Anyone disagree? Why?
Why?
Why would it ? And “God” and “supernatural” are hardly the same thing; there’s no reason you can’t believe in everything from pyramid power and spiritualism to the Tooth Fairy and still be an atheist.
Because who or what is ultimately ‘observing’ the conciousness is obviously not a fundamental particle or something created from them. At least so far as current physics goes. I don’t rule out that it couldnt’ be discovered sometime.
As a digression, seems to me that a good test for free will would be to design some sort of device that, at very fine revolution, could tell if the brain was acting according to the probabilities that it ought to be.
I disagree on two points: it’s not supernatural, and it doesn’t prove the existence of god. I know of no evidence that consciousness is nothing more than a side effect (if you will) of a complicated, but not supernatural, electrochemical system. It is no more evidence of God than any other part of us is.
Also, on another note, since when would the existence of something supernatural prove the existence of God? Would the existence of unicorns prove the existence of lepruchauns?
First of all, there exists no such thing as the supernatural. There are only phenomena that we don’t understand or haven’t detected. Everything, known and unknown, (including any ‘god’ you could conjecture) is natural.
Second, when it comes to the idea of ‘god’ the devil is in the details. Which is to say that all depends on the definition of god that one cares to use at any given time.
One could define ‘god’ as one’s own consciousness (and not facetiously-- it is as good of an all encompassing and mysterious definition as any). By that definition, you would be correct.
You should check out some books by Douglas Hofstader some time.
What makes you think consciousness just isn’t the interaction of various parts of the brain; the brain “observing” itself, as it were ?
Do you consider a computer process (basically a running program) a “fundamental particle or something created from them?” There are many processes that consist of the interaction of matter, but which are not matter themselves.
Are you familiar with the research indicating that people send signals to move their arm, say, before they make the conscious decision to do so? It’s possible that the conscious mind is observing what most of the brain is already doing. That in no way means there is no free will, since the free will part of our brain can be in the subconscious. I’m not saying there is free will either.
Brains are organs that predict the future. They do so by running crude simulations of the real world and using the data from those simulations to anticipate real world events before they occur. The brains of simple creatures simulate simple things – extrapolating the flight path of a fly, for example, so that it may be caught and eaten.
When animals live together there is evolutionary value in being able to predict the behavior of other animals in your group. That means that the brains of social animals have to be capable of running crude simulations of other brains.
But if you really want to predict group dynamics accurately, you need to be able to factor the behavior of your OWN brain into the model. Since the machinery for simulating other brains already is in place, it’s a relatively small leap.
That’s consciousness: a crude simulation of your brain that’s being run by your brain for the purposes of accurately modelling social dynamics.
You know, while I’m as much of a materialist as anyone else, I’d be wary of stating definitively what consciousness is or isn’t. Right now it’s still poorly understood.
If it was that easy, everyone would believe in a type of god/God.
I agree with Larry.
It’s also worth pointing out, however, that claiming that something is supernatural is generally a sign of bullshit. I have yet to hear a single supernatural explanation of ANY phenomenon that actually explains or edifies anything. It is in every instance I have encountered, simply pure obfuscation coupled with a bunch of names given to things we don’t understand as if merely naming ignorance cured it.
We don’t really have a good handle on how to conceptualize consciousness, especially as an internal experience. If resorting to the supernatural helped to clear up that mystery that would be great. Unfortunately, all it seems to do is heighten our ignorance of the phenomenon.
Nothing is “supernatural.” Everything is natural. If there is a God or ghosts or heightened intuitive sense or OBE, then it is still natural. Just because we don’t understand something or have an explanation for it doesn’t make an event “supernatural.”
Cryptoderk, have you ever been able to stop being aware of your consciousness?
On this note, I’d definitely recommend the essays Digibabble, Fairy Dust and the Human Anthill and Sorry, Your Soul Just Died by Tom Wolfe from the collection Hooking Up. They deal with this very issue, particularly the first. Fascinating stuff.
I was thinking more Oliver Sacks .
Or there was a pretty good British series with many similar examples of how brain damage affects consciousness. Possibly C4’s Mindshock?
I like your post, it is accurate except for the devil, no such animal.
It would then be physical, however, nothing evenly remotely similar to thoughts, memory, or emotions, have ever been found to physically exist in the brain.
And no one has ever found an actual “game” lodged inside a computer hard drive, just a bunch of scratches on a disk. Are you claiming that computer programs are supernatural?
To put what Czarcasm said in other words, we can detect the electrical pattern and biochemistry involved in those things; we can’t just read them yet, unlike the hard disk he mentioned. We’ve known for decades how to do things like stimulate a spot on the brain to recall a memory. We have chemicals that affect the emotions. Damage to the brain can alter or destroy thoughts, memories and emotions. All the evidence is that we ARE our brains and bodies; no need to postulate something nonphysical.