Consciousness: Pigliucci says it is real (General)

by David Turell , Wednesday, December 18, 2019, 14:44 (1803 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "Nowadays, thanks to our advances in both physics and biology, nobody takes substance dualism seriously anymore. (dhw's bold) The alternative is something called property dualism, which acknowledges that everything – body and mind – is made of the same basic stuff (quarks and so forth), but that this stuff somehow (notice the vagueness here) changes when things get organised into brains and special properties appear that are nowhere else to be found in the material world (DAVID: my view is this alternative)

QUOTE: “I think of consciousness as a weakly emergent phenomenon."

DAVID: It is not an illusion, and it is an emergent phenomenon, but that offers no explanation as to how a material brain can produce immaterial thoughts. Property dualism.

dhw: Yes, this is a rejigging of the emergence theory (emergence was the “in” word not so long ago), and of course nobody knows how materials can produce immaterial thought. However, here the material basis of consciousness remains (“quarks and so forth”). This “property dualism” is a far cry from your form of dualism, which has immaterial thought stemming from an immaterial soul (the material brain functioning only as a “receiver”), which in turn stems from your immaterial God and – if memory serves me correctly – returns to your God in an afterlife. Property dualism excludes the possibility of an afterlife, because the mind dies with the body.

DAVID: I don't think so. The soul is controlling those 'quarks and so forth'. I still believe in soul and afterlife which use the brain to produce consciousness as my version of how it all works.

dhw: I was only pointing out that you were not a property dualist, although you said in the first paragraph that you identified with that view. You are in fact a substance dualist, and the first sentence of the quote (I have bolded it now) is highly contentious.

DAVID (under “quantum controls”): This study exactly fits my concept that quantum mechanics is at the basis of our reality and that the soul exists at a quantum level as it provides for and controls the presence of consciousness.

dhw: I see absolutely nothing here about an immaterial soul. The whole article is geared to the behaviour of quanta, which are material, and there is nothing in it to even remotely suggest anything other than property dualism, as opposed to the substance dualism which you embrace.

Yes, it is confusing. The 'special properties appearing' is vague and my explanation of how it happens is what I think.