Reply #18: Consciousness and materiality [View All]

[Stunster]

From the fact that there is no known material explanation of consciousness it does not follow that there ought to be some explanation of consciousness. Consciousness might be ontologically basic. So asking me what non-material explanation there is of consciousness rests for its sense on an assumption which I need not accept---that consciousness is not itself ontologically basic. And in fact, I don't accept it.

The idea that we have no idea what the non-material is ought not to go unchallenged. I submit that if consciousness is ontologically basic and irreducible to the material, then we are more familiar with the non-material than with anything material. We are familiar with our own consciousness more than with anything else. I further submit that the reason we find it difficult to explain consciousness is because it is basic. There is nothing other than consciousness in terms of which it can be explained.

What I was referring to with respect to not being in spacetime was freestanding abstract entities. I was saying that we never encounter such things. We only encounter abstract entities as the contents of our minds. However, I think it is controversial to say that minds occupy space. They are not in any obvious or self-evident or uncontrovertible sense space-occuping physical objects.

On medical treatments for feelings--don't confuse being the product of something physical and being something physical. You already admitted that there is no known material explanation of consciousness. If being the product of something physical just was the same thing as being physical then this lack of explanation wouldn't even be apparent.

As for feelings causing physical effects, I think examples of this are legion. Every doctor will tell you that mood has physical effects. A feeling of pain will cause physical movements. But the the feeling of pain is not itself uncontroversially a physical thing, nor is one's mood.

We judge lots of things to be independent of subjective human judgements, in the sense that they are not constituted by such judgements. For example, the number of stars in the Milky Way.