[sciborg2]

Mysteries of Consciousness:

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-mystery-of-consciousness

Most scientists are confident that consciousness emerges from unconscious complexity. We have compelling reasons for believing this, because the only signs of consciousness we see in the universe are found in evolved organisms like ourselves. Nevertheless, this notion of emergence strikes me as nothing more than a restatement of a miracle. To say that consciousness emerged at some point in the evolution of life doesn’t give us an inkling of how it could emerge from unconscious processes, even in principle.

I believe that this notion of emergence is incomprehensible—rather like a naive conception of the big bang. The idea that everything (matter, space-time, their antecedent causes, and the very laws that govern their emergence) simply sprang into being out of nothing seems worse than a paradox.

To say “Everything came out of nothing” is to assert a brute fact that defies our most basic intuitions of cause and effect—a miracle, in other words.

Likewise, the idea that consciousness is identical to (or emerged from) unconscious physical events is, I would argue, impossible to properly conceive—which is to say that we can think we are thinking it, but we are mistaken. We can say the right words, of course—“consciousness emerges from unconscious information processing.” We can also say “Some squares are as round as circles” and “2 plus 2 equals 7.” But are we really thinking these things all the way through? I don’t think so.

Consciousness—the sheer fact that this universe is illuminated by sentience—is precisely what unconsciousness is not. And I believe that no description of unconscious complexity will fully account for it. It seems to me that just as “something” and “nothing,” however juxtaposed, can do no explanatory work, an analysis of purely physical processes will never yield a picture of consciousness. However, this is not to say that some other thesis about consciousness must be true. Consciousness may very well be the lawful product of unconscious information processing. But I don’t know what that sentence means—and I don’t think anyone else does either.

[Kellais]

Some nice...things...he has to say. I think he states was many of us also think. Or let me put it another way...he puts into words the bafflement most of us feel when they read those explanations. Right?!
And not only concerning consciousness...but oh so many other things at the outer limits of our sciences

Although i do think that it is entirely possible that some things just were/are...like there is no beginning or end to it. Not that this somehow solves anything Indeed it goes into the same "drawer" as Sam's problem with the mentioned sentences....what does that even mean 

[sciborg2]

I'd agree. Most "immaterialist" explanations - Idealism/Neutral Monism/Panpsychism -  have problems as well, but the materialist position of emergence feels just as inadequate.

I think when the same guy who wants to get the magic out of consciousness discussions is telling us puppets possess consciousness, it's clear you have a group of people who want to reduce the characteristics of consciousness to fit into a tidy materialist box.

Strawson mentions this opportunistic reductionism in Realistic Monism
Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism:

Dennett conceals this move by looking-glassing the word ‘consciousness’ (his term for experience) and then insisting that he does believe that consciousness exists (to looking- glass a term is to use a term in such a way that whatever one means by it, it excludes what the term means — see Strawson, 2005). As far as I can understand them, Dretske, Tye, Lycan and Reyare among those who do the same.It seems that they still dream of giving a reductive analysis of the experiential in non-experiential terms.This, however, amounts to denying the existence of experience, because the nature of (real)experience can no more be specified in wholly non-experiential terms than the nature of the (real)non-experiential can be specified in wholly experiential terms.

[sciborg2]

Chalmers' Thoughts on Emergence:

http://consc.net/notes/emergence.html

Here are some thoughts on "emergence". Nothing definitive, but an attempt to get at the psychological core (or cores) of the notion. Thanks are due to others for providing a stimulating discussion.

Emergence is a tricky concept. It's easy to slide it down a slippery slope, and turn it into something implausible and easily dismissable. But it's not easy to delineate the interesting middle ground in between. Two unsatisfactory definitions of emergence, at either end of the spectrum:

(1) Emergence as "inexplicable" and "magical". This would cover high-level properties of a system that are simply not deducible from its low-level properties, no matter how sophisticated the deduction. This view leads easily into mysticism, and there is not the slightest evidence for it (except, perhaps, in the difficult case of consciousness, but let's leave that aside for now). All material properties seem to follow from low-level physical properties. Very few sophisticated people since the 19th century have actually believed in this kind of "emergence", and it's rarely what is referred to by those who invoke the term favourably. But if you mention "emergence", someone inevitably interprets you as meaning this, causing no end of confusion.

(2) Emergence as the existence of properties of a system that are not possessed by any of its parts. This, of course, is so ubiquitous a phenomenon that it's not deeply interesting. Under this definition, file cabinets and decks of cards (not to mention XOR gates) have plenty of emergent properties - so this is surely not what we mean.

The challenge, then, is to delineate a concept of emergence that falls between the deeply implausible (1) and the overly general (2). After all, serious people do like do use the term, and they think they mean something interesting by it. It probably will help to focus on a few core examples of "emergence":

    (A) The game of Life: High-level patterns and structure emerge from simple low-level rules.
    (B) Connectionist networks: High-level "cognitive" behaviour emerges from simple interactions between dumb threshold logic units.
    (C) The operating system (Hofstadter's example): The fact that overloading occurs just around when there are 35 users on the system seems to be an emergent property of the system.
    (D) Evolution: Intelligence and many other interesting properties emerge over the course of evolution by genetic recombination, mutation and natural selection.

[sciborg2]

Andrew Clifton, IMHO, offers a well written argument against materialist explanations for consciousness in his essay “The Empirical Case Against Materialism”:

http://anti-matters.org/articles/126/public/126-192-1-PB.pdf

Empirical arguments for materialism are highly circumstantial —based, as they are, upon inductions from our knowledge of the physical and upon the fact that mental phenomena have physical correlates, causes and effects.

However, the qualitative characteristics of first-person conscious experience are empirically distinct from uncontroversially physical phenomena in being—at least on our present knowledge—thoroughly resistant to the kind of abstract, formal description to which the latter are always, to some degree, readily amenable.

The prima facie inference that phenomenal qualities are, most probably, non-physical may be resisted either by denying their existence altogether or by proposing that they are properties of some peculiar sort of mysterious physical complexity, located, for example, within the functioning of the brain.

It is argued here, however, that the first, eliminative hypothesis is empirically absurd—while the second is extravagant, vague, ad hoc and (for various additional reasons) profoundly implausible.

Taken together, these considerations provide a compelling empirical case against materialism—yet its converse, mentalism, is usually regarded as subject to serious difficulties of its own.

I conclude by suggesting empirical and theoretical desiderata, respectively, for the vindication of materialism and alternatively, for the development and defense of a potentially robust and viable mentalist theory of consciousness.

[sciborg2]

Bull Meets Shovel: Could Consciousness Be A Conjuring Trick?

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2013/02/bull-meets-shovel-could-consciousness-be-a-conjuring-trick.html

"Not only does Nature fool us into thinking that consciousness is mysterious, when it is not, she also makes it impossible for us to see that this is what she has done. But there may be a loophole: it may be possible to "explain how a brain process could be (designed to) give rise to the impression of having this quality," i.e., the quality of consciousness. By 'impression,' Humphrey means illusion as is clear from his arithmetical example. So what he is suggesting is that it may be possible to explain how brain processes could give rise to the illusion that there is consciousness, the illusion that brain processes have the quality of consciousness.

But this 'possibility' is a complete absurdity, a complete impossibility. For it is self-evident that illusions presuppose consciousness: an illusion cannot exist without consciousness. The 'cannot' expresses a very strong impossibility, broadly logical impossibility. The Germans have a nice proverb, Soviel Schein, so viel Sein. "So much seeming, so much being." The point being that you can't have Schein without Sein, seeming without being. It can't be seeming 'all the way down.'
"

[sciborg2]

A nice back and forth on this from a variety of different perspectives:

Is Consciousness Entirely Physical?

Here's the big question about consciousness, our inner experience of what things feel like. Is consciousness a product of the physical world alone? Because if consciousness is the output of the physical brain by itself, however complex, then consciousness as physicalism would defeat those who believe, or hope for, the existence of nonphysical realities.

[The Sharmat]

After seeing someone slowly die from a disease which causes dementia I'm fully convinced that things like "self" "consciousness" and "understanding" are simply sensations produced by various portions of the brain that current diagnostic tools lack the temporal and spatial resolution to determine.

Being asked to find out if any of the other people around were the very man that was doing the asking, because the man was no longer sure that he was himself, convinced me that "self" is a mutable sensation as much as "hot" or "cold".

[sciborg2]

Consciousness - as far as Harris seemed to be using it - is just subjective awareness of qualia. It could be immaterial yet attached to matter (I believe this is formally known as property dualism), which I think it what Harris was hinting at.

Or it could be running the right program (I doubt this), or some kind of Awareness into which all identity dissolves upon death of the body, etc. So there could be consciousness of an immaterial variety without necessarily changing the relationship between mind & brain.

[The Sharmat]

I'm not sure what "immaterial" means in this context, but I'm not that well versed in the philosophy of this sort of thing.

[sciborg2]

I think a lot of religious people want the options to be binary (materialism or God-is-real) and thus confuse the issue for the rest of us!

Even if consciousness is a substance as fundamental as matter and/or energy, or even more fundamental, I don't think that proves God or even a soul. My understanding of most philosophical arguments for God is that they don't give us more than a metaphysical lynchpin, something very different than Yaweh/Vishnu/Allah/etc.

[The Sharmat]

Matter and energy are both ultimately material though.