Bruce Burleson wrote:
Consciousness is epiphenomenal to brain health and complexity. I'm not even sure how metaphysics enters into this discussion.
Hello Bruce.
We're discussing - as per the thread-title - the prospects for an immaterial observer. And here, you make a claim about what consciousness is and what causes it. So, surely you must see that the thread is really about metaphysics and that you are making a metaphysical claim? That's how metaphysics comes into it.
In his book The Brain That Changes Itself, Norman Doidge, M.D. gives a number of examples of stroke or brain injury victims learning to use different parts of their brains to compensate for the damaged parts. A stroke victim who has lost the use of his left arm would naturally use his right arm to do more tasks. Therapy techniques described by Doidge involve putting the good right arm in a sling or otherwise immobilizing it so that the patient is forced to use the arm affected by the stroke. By intense training and concentration, the patient is capable of changing the neuronal structure of his brain so that other parts take over the control of the affected arm. So the patient's consciousness is used as a tool to actually change the brain, which then affects consciousness - the patient has a different experience of movement in that arm than he previously had.
Note that an idealist doesn't [necessarily] reject that there is correlation between the brain and behaviour, or even between the brain and thinking/feeling. Certainly, I don't. But correlation doesn't imply causality, Bruce. That's just a logical fallacy. Let me give you a brief overview of my idealistic perspective to show what I mean:
My philosophy is that 'the world' is reducible to ordered sensations/quale. This means that any experienced object is reducible to something else that isn't actually that object (Indeed, all brain models reduce experienced objects to something that aren't
actually those objects, in that they reduce the experience of objects to NNs). This is a bit like saying that the entities depicted within a cartoon are reducible to the orderly application of inks upon paper, so that said entities are reducible to something else that isn't actually those entities. And yet, within any cartoon, there are behavioural correlations between apparent entities. For example, Jerry always runs when he sees Tom. But does this mean that Tom itself causes Jerry's behaviour? No, it doesn't, since what really causes Jerry's behaviour is 'the essence' behind the cartoon.
What we have here is a discussion about brains and the apparent correlations between those organs and human behaviour and thought/feeling. But unless those brains
are real and are
the 'essence' of behaviour/thought/feeling, then the situation becomes similar to Jerry running-away from Tom: that is, there is doubt about whether brains cause behaviour/thought/feeling, regardless of any apparent correlations.
This discussion has been focused upon finding a brain model that 'makes sense'. There are issues within the philosophy of mind about 'brain models' (and computer models), that any such model must address. As I've said, for instance, any model requiring that the brain should give external meaning to its own internal states when it cannot know that there is a reality external to those states, will fall short of 'making sense'. On the other hand, any model that might make sense of such metaphysical concerns, cannot avoid association with ontological/metaphysical claims. That's why such models have to be
primarily philosophical, in that the subsequent science seeks to fit around a particular metaphysic. This is why I shake my head every time I see so-called sceptics/empiricists/relativists still trying to explain behaviour/thought/emotion in terms of brain causality. It's just impossible to have a 'purely scientific' opinion on this matter, since all models must be grounded within a specific ontology.
You simply cannot avoid
metaphysics within this discussion, Bruce.