Reddit reviews Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity

> All the evidence currently points to consciousness as a manifestation of our physical brains.

There's definitely evidence of a correlation; that doesn't mean that the two things are identical.

> There's no evidence to support consciousness as anything else.

Well, there is. For Buddhists, of course, the evidence is the testimony of the Buddha-- but that's not going to matter to non-Buddhists. For non-Buddhists, the evidence is the fact of the "hard problem of consciousness." We don't have the slightest idea of how physical states could give rise to qualia, and no way to explain why, if they could, other matter isn't conscious. A good (non-Buddhist) book on this subject is Raymond Tallis's Aping Mankind, which shows some of the problems of physical reductionism.

> If you want to convince me that something is true, you need to show me evidence for it. Simply saying "you can't prove it isn't" won't work. I can say "you're a thief" and you can't prove you aren't. That game isn't worth playing.

I agree. But what I am saying is that we don't know what happens to consciousness when the brain dies, and the notion that it disappears is not necessarily more parsimonious than the notion that it continues on.

Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity

> My argument was that minds are turing machines because as far as we know, minds are matter

That's false, my friend. We know nothing of the kind. It is one hypothesis among several, and with less evidence than the other available ones.

> and as far as we know minds are matter because that's what science tells us

False again. 'Science' (as if there was one dogmatic source/authority that spoke to you with a single voice) in fact has no idea what the relationship is of mind to matter. There are thousands of scientists, who issue books which are contradictory to one another. For example Raymond Tallis, a prominent neuro-scientist, argues that mind =/= matter:

https://www.amazon.com/Aping-Mankind-Neuromania-Darwinitis-Misrepresentation/dp/1844652734

So the question of the relationship of the mind to the body is one of the currently unsolved problems, and a central question in philosophy. There are many things which are not matter, such as secondary qualities, and things like numbers.

> In absolutely no way is this circular

The reason it is circular is because in OP, the author omitted one of Kurt Godel's explanations for the Incompleteness Theorem -- the one that said that mind =/= matter -- and I corrected him on that. 4-5 replies later you jump in, and presuppose that mind = matter, oblivious to the fact that this was already discussed and challenged before you ever were in the picture.

>It's easy. Consciousness is a complicated behavior of complicated brains. It really happens, and its a physical effect. All squared. Consciousness is no more of an illusion than a rock is. Its also no more mystical, magical, or platonic than a rock is.

Unfortunately it's not that easy. That might be what Dennett tries to push in his pop-phil books, but there are strong criticism to his view. If there weren't there would be no hard problem of consciousness.

Again Dennett solves it by claiming consciousness simply does not exist and it's some sort of illusion, but that begs the question of what exactly is undergoing the illusion.

Also there are good arguments for the immateriality of thought as well.

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>They can point a magnetic imager at you head and with some AI interpretation reliably tell what you are thinking about. It's rudimentary, of course, but it works. What is going on in your brain is intelligible and functionally analyzable, in principle. In practice, its slow going but it is happening. You are now going to try to tell me that this is not really consciousness, but some precursor or afteraffect of the real consciouness, because real consciousness is some dualistic nonsense that explains nothing.

What we see with MRIs is not consciousness. It's patterns in the brain and there is a LOT open to interpretation even in light of recent discoveries. In fact recently the famous Libett argument against free will was debunked.

In fact a disappointing truth we are realising now (in spite of regular sensationalized claims) is that we cannot precisely correlate what happens in our brain with what we consciously experience. Given the same perceptual input one’s mental states will vary dramatically depending upon mood and circumstance.
Now this does not necessarily entail any dualism, but it does not bode well for naturalism (and in particular the Dennett's type) either.

A good book on the topic is Raymond Tallis' "Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity". He's a neuroscientist and philosopher (and he's not religious at all, so he's not arguing for a religeous soul) Apparently Dennett was quite miffed by the book too.

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>You are now going to try to tell me that this is not really consciousness, but some precursor or afteraffect of the real consciouness, because real consciousness is some dualistic nonsense that explains nothing.

That some loaded wording.

First define exactly "dualism". There are many forms of dualism and many of those reject the idea that mind and body are actually separate (substance dualism). One example hylomorphic dualism does not claim the mind is a separate entity of the brain/body even if it has immaterial characteristics (at least rational minds).

Moreover IF dualism explains consciousness better than materialism (which it might), then by definition it's a better model of reality, whether you like it or not. In fact there are advantages in rejecting the purely eliminative naturalist view.

So claiming "dualism explains nothing" is false... as naturalism ultimately also explains nothing as it needs to resort to "brute facts". I would also argue that naturalism is an idea that started failing when actual modern physics came along since it's still rooted in the now superseded rigid mechanistic and deterministic Newtonian picture.

I guess maybe you picked that up from Dennett that all dualism must be useless, but Dennett is a hypocrite whiner when it comes to critics of his view. Frankly Dennett (and some other naturalists) seem to fall in the same sort of "narrow dogmatic view" that they accuse others of doing.

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>Imagine you draw a line with a equation. It has no dots, it goes on in each direction infinitely. Here is a relation with no relata. The equation and the line both. Now lets intersect several lines, such that they enclose an area. Without referring to any dots, the area emerges as a complex relationship between all the line. Relationships between relationships. Now you could go around and drop in a dot at all the corners, but that gains you nothing. The area is already completely defined. You can cry foul here and say that I have cheated. You can say that I still have relata, but the lines are now the relata. A line establishes a form of location, an anchor, and so the area and the intersect points are the relationships. But then you have proven my point - the term relata and relationship are interchangeable, and choose to define any situation with relata over here and relationship there is completely arbitrary, and thus meaningless.

The equation example does not solve your problem. First lines and points are still abstractions themselves. Second, equations by definitions describe relationships, but these are meaningless if there are no relata that exhibit them. That's how you discriminate between a good model and a bad model in science, in fact.

So either one accepts that there is hard platonism (i.e. relations exist as universals) or one accepts that there must be relata (which then opens several other possibilities).

>Who says that science should be reliable and useful? Utilitarianism is just as arbitrary as any other value system.

But I am not talking ab out utilitatianism. Science does not have to be useful, but it needs certain normative judgments to fuction. if we deny those then we deny science itself.

In fact the idea that "only relations exist" is a forced 'reductio ad absurdum' that one tries to force into the discourse once they realize naturalism basically breaks down.

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>Well wouldn't that be lovely? A pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. An absolute knowledge of all truth. A unicorn. Nice to have, but is not to be had at any price.

Well maybe it's time we pay that price and ditch naturalism :P