Consciousness: Egnor on consciousness (General)

by David Turell , Monday, February 01, 2021, 21:05 (1389 days ago) @ David Turell

A different point of view:

https://mindmatters.ai/2021/01/your-soul-has-no-off-switch/

"I believe that “consciousness” is a mere narrative gloss on the mind — it denotes nothing beyond the mental powers of the soul.

"This is not just linguistic nitpicking. The concept of “consciousness” is much worse than useless. It leads us to misunderstand the mind in a profound way, as I will explain. The point may seem subtle but I believe that, if you think deeply enough about it, you will see that it is obviously true.

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"I think the reason “consciousness” became a new concept in early modern philosophy is the advent of mechanical philosophy, which replaced Platonism and Aristotelian hylomorphism as the default scientific metaphysics. Mechanical philosophy is the assertion that nature and man are machines of a sort.

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"I believe that “consciousness” became a concept in the early modern era because of this machine analogy. Machines, after all, can be turned on and off. If a body is a machine, life is the on position of the switch, and death is the off position. If the mind is a machine, conscious is the on position, and unconsciousness is the off position. If we are machines, “on” and “off” as states of consciousness seem inevitable.

"There are strong scientific reasons to reject this notion that the soul, including the powers of the mind, can be extinguished in the sense of being “switched off.” Here are some of them:

"Medical practice avoids use of the terms “conscious” or “unconscious” (if a medical student uses the term, I correct him). These terms for mental states are horribly imprecise, and it is not clear that they correspond meaningfully to any reproducibly measurable state of mind. Mental status is commonly assessed by the Glasgow Coma Scale which measures ability to follow commands, to open eyes, and to speak. “Consciousness,” as distinct from individual mental abilities, plays no role.
"When we sleep, although we would commonly be called “unconscious,” we remain aware to a significant extent of our surroundings. We wake up to noise or pain or cold. If we were not “conscious” of stimuli in some real sense, we could not respond to them.
During sleep, we are aware of dreams, which often have very complex imagery and content. Dreams are often metaphorical and represent profound introspection and insights about experiences.
“'Unconsciousness” is a poorly defined term in anesthesiology. The fundamental goal of surgical general anesthesia is analgesia, pharmacological paralysis of voluntary muscles, and amnesia, not unconsciousness, per se. Because anesthetic drugs are generally amnestic agents and drugs are given that cause muscular paralysis, it is impossible to know to what extent awareness (without pain or movement) exists during anesthesia.
Patients who are “unconscious” from concussion or other brain injury often show varying levels of awareness of their surroundings.
"Patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), which is the deepest level of coma, have been traditionally assumed to have no mental states at all. Yet careful studies over the past two decades show that many patients in PVS have high levels of awareness and thought and are simply unable to demonstrate their thoughts to others.
"Millions of people have had near death experiences (NDE’s), in which awareness (usually heightened awareness) persists after complete cessation of brain function. A significant portion of these experiences are veridical, which means that the reality of the perceptions can be confirmed (e.g. the person sees things that occurred when he was clinically dead).

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"The more we understand about the neuroscience of arousal, sleep, anesthesia, coma, and NDEs, the more it evident that “consciousness” is to neuroscience what phlogiston and the ether was to thermodynamics. It is an outdated concept that served as a scientific placeholder and obscured reality, until deeper insights are gained that render it superfluous.

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"Neuroscience shows that we are not machines with “on” and “off” switches. Our minds are never off; we just have states in which one or more powers of the mind — sensation or perception or memory etc. — are temporarily inactive. It makes no sense to speak of an “on switch” either.There is no scientific reason to speak of consciousness or unconsciousness, and that terminology has largely been abandoned in medical practice as meaningless and even dangerous, as it should be.

“'Consciousness” is a concept derived from a deeply mistaken view of man’s soul and mind — the view that man is a machine that can be switched on and off. This misunderstanding serves to conceal, not reveal, the true nature of man. We are not machines. We are never switched off — we are never unconscious — not in sleep, not under anesthesia, not in coma and not even after death.

"While our mental powers can change — our vision, alertness, or memory can fail — we have no “off switch.” Most egregiously, the concept of “consciousness” perpetuates the lie that we are extinguished at death. There is every reason — philosophical and scientific — to infer that man has an immortal soul."

Comment: NDE's, as reported, fit Egnor's comments. I do not find fault with this approach.