
Materialism alone cannot explain the riddle of consciousness - devy
https://aeon.co/essays/materialism-alone-cannot-explain-the-riddle-of-consciousness
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pc2g4d
Wow, the negativity around here is shocking. Philosophy dares to poke at the
structures built up by science, and people are aghast.

The article basically says that, because there are wildly-different but
equally-plausible interpretations of the underlying physics, materialism is
not a fully defined platform to stand on---it's not free of unproven
assumptions, but rather trades one set of assumptions for another. He raises
genuine debates regarding quantum mechanics to illustrate this.

Ultimately it's unlikely that any philosophy will be wholly consistent and not
depend on contradictory assumptions. So what the author has pointed out isn't
a fatal flaw per se in materialism. But it's fair to point out its current
limits. And it's frustrating to see so many people close themselves off to
that sort of analysis.

~~~
xelxebar
Well, the article spends most of its time complaining about the ontology of
modern physics, calling it "unclear" among other names.

That kind of rhetoric stands more as a testament to the author's lack of
mathematical maturity than anything physically meaningful. Perhaps there's a
good point here about the current state of pedagogy in physics these days.

~~~
pc2g4d
"Adam Frank is professor of astronomy at the University of Rochester in New
York and the co-founder of NPR's blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture where he is also
a regular contributor. He is the author of several books, the latest being
About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang (2011)."

I'm assuming a professor of astronomy has a good command of the math, but
maybe I'm wrong?

------
ilaksh
Philosophy is the obsolete precursor to science.

I think scientists should be embarrassed to admit to any mind-body dualist
belief.

But if this guy is coming from the ancient Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti’s
dualism, that may overlap a little bit with the actual scientific property of
emergence. But emergence just means larger more complex systems get properties
that their constituent parts don't have.

We don't need fuzzy philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics to
explain consciousness any more than we need them to explaining flocking
behavior in birds.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism)
(see Buddhist philosophy section)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence)

~~~
Koshkin
> _Philosophy is the obsolete precursor to science._

To be fair rather than dismissive, philosophy (usually _of something concrete_
, such as mathematics, mind, etc.) may be seen as a science that does not have
a name yet. True, it may begin with an analysis of the subject that is very
preliminary and that can be not very accurate and may even contain mistakes,
but there is no limit to how complete and precise such philosophical analysis
may become later on.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Philosophy also covers topics that aren't scientific. (Eg, ethics.)

Similarly, gluing mathematics to science is a philosophical framework. Most
meta- fields are philosophical because they define the framework in which you
can apply science to the field.

Most of the criticisms are people who work in a narrow, high part of the
intellectual stack misunderstanding how the framework they use every day is
constructed (or ignoring that such a framework even exists). And then they
rant about early versions having bugs or some of the "failed" experiments or
quirky side-projects.

The people making snide comments here are no better than Javascript developers
wondering why anyone would use a pointer, completely ignorant of the
underlying technology (such as the fact processors need a way to address in to
memory).

------
ithkuil
Obligatory: "The talk"
[http://m.imgur.com/gallery/AMFVx](http://m.imgur.com/gallery/AMFVx)

------
oldmancoyote
The abusive tone of some of these comments poises the question: Is this abuse
the result of fear as is usually the cause for abuse? Materialists have a huge
personal investment in materialism. I imagine the very core of their world
seems threatened. It looks very much like the behavior of reactionaries.

------
qplex
To think that the observer should somehow not affect the measurement is the
dualist position.

From a materialist point of view the problem disappears because there is no
mysterious mind of the observer that exists outside of reality.

So then even the observation is just a physical event, that can have effects
on other physical things.

Mind you, a little twist to this is that (space)time also arises from the
interactions of the basic particles, so to think that these interactions are
somehow bound in time or space as we know it leads you off track quickly.

To illustrate: There are two balls: one is black and one is white. You are
given one of the balls in a a closed box.

When you open the box, and see the color of your ball, you will instantly know
the color of the other ball, even though nobody actually told you what the
color of the other ball is.

------
Koshkin
TL;DR, quoting:

 _We know that matter remains mysterious just as mind remains mysterious, and
we don’t know what the connections between those mysteries should be.
Classifying consciousness as a material problem is tantamount to saying that
consciousness, too, remains fundamentally unexplained._

~~~
qplex
Oh yes.

By this logic: you cant explain anything unless you explain why there is
anything instead of nothing.

~~~
woodandsteel
Absolutely. The basic problem is that, unless you are an absolute mystic and
assume reality is basically a spirit and the human mind can unite with it
completely, there is always a limit to human knowledge (as Merleau-Ponty said,
materialism is also a metaphysical idealism).

This is because any rational explanation ultimately rests on principles that
we cannot explain, only accept. That is, human intelligence, the product of
the human brain, is ultimately finite, limited. With quantum physics and
consciousness, we may well have run up against such a limitation.

------
woodandsteel
In defense of the article, I would like to point out that science, like all
other human endeavours, rests on philosophical assumptions. In addition,
modern science rests on assumptions that were developed by philosophers.

It is therefore entirely appropriate to point out that quantum physics
undermines one philosophical theory, namely materialism. And that in turn
implies that some other philosophical position is correct.

------
JeremyBanks
tl;dr: physics is incomplete and weird therefore let's assume something else
is responsible. Or the author has elsewhere defined materialism in such a way
that they're asserting almost nothing.

Uncommon to see this kind of inane nonsense coming from a physicist, but
unfortunately not unheard of.

~~~
M_Grey
Once Penrose started circling that drain, I had to accept that it's just a
trap humans can fall into; any human. You're older, fear is taking over, you
can't make headway with new discoveries, but you still want answers. Your
choice is to accept the lack of answers and be afraid and uncomfortable, or
invent them, and feel much better.

[http://i.imgur.com/Ag9ExDF.gif](http://i.imgur.com/Ag9ExDF.gif)

Unlike the comic though, you can skip off the long path anytime onto the short
path. It's _hard_ to stay on the long path, especially when you realize that
both paths end up falling off a cliff.

