ant wrote:Your worldview simply cannot ground emotions like love in anything that is not reducible to "blind" gene survival.

I'd argue about it being reducible. But your point is more or less right. That doesn't make most types of love a spandrel.

ant wrote:Your love for your family and friends is your subjective experience and THAT'S it, but it has no objective meaning to blind and purposeless Nature.

Do you propose there's something more? Does Nature care about who you love?

It seems that whenever you find an explanation insufficient, it's because you expect something that isn't real.

ant wrote:This means things like love, and the conclusions a person draws from atheism is nothing but an illusory froth on top of a system designed to cope with sensory overload.

This is certainly not a conclusion I would ever agree with.

geo wrote:

ant wrote:This means things like love, and the conclusions a person draws from atheism is nothing but an illusory froth on top of a system designed to cope with sensory overload.

This is certainly not a conclusion I would ever agree with.

That's because you're a spiritual atheist agnostic!

Do you propose there's something more? Does Nature care about who you love?

The conclusions of my worldview are not being discussed here, yours are.

You've assumed without evidence there is no purpose (as homo sapiens understand purpose to be) to Nature.
Yours is the best explanation you can come up with for all this purposeless undesigned splendor.

Consciousness is only a sophisticated response to stimuli.
You agree with that, right?

you guys quit arguing with ant and be his straw man. He needs you to allow him to reduce you to something he can beat in an argument and you're not playing along. That's unsportsmanlike.

You've assumed without evidence there is no purpose (as homo sapiens understand purpose to be) to Nature.
Yours is the best explanation you can come up with for all this purposeless undesigned splendor.

I have assumed without evidence. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. There is a place in everyone's worldview for assumptions. No worldview lacks them.

If we look at all the evidence, there's no need to appeal to an intelligence. Not to say there can't be a higher intelligence. But there's simply no need to accept that assumption. In fact, there's a reason we should be wary of that assumption.

People all too often believe there is agency behind things where the real cause is a non-agent. We're wired to see agency, because there's too much risk to not make that assumption. So, we have to be wary of the assumption. Are you?

Consciousness is only a sophisticated response to stimuli.
You agree with that, right?

I don't, that's too reductionist. An entire universe is contained in that word "sophisticated".

DB Roy wrote:The biggest problem of consciousness is consciousness. We say that consciousness is awareness but it is really experience. We are conscious because we experience the world around us. Everything we observe is an experience. The problem is that we can't explain why we should experience anything nor can we explain our experiences. What we take as hard, objective data is really a subjective experience that no one can explain. Where does consciousness come from? All these dry theories that try to explain it have to be understood through consciousness which is a subjective experience that no one can explain because we're trying to reduce consciousness to data which cannot be done. Consciousness is ultimately a quale. Subjective experience (qualia) is not data. Data can be understood through subjective experience but not the other way around. . . ..

Thanks for your thoughtful post, DB. I think I follow you here, but would perhaps say it a little differently.

Buddhists say that our sense of self is an illusion and this is probably more or less in line with what neurologists say too. For clarity's sake, I tend to think of self and consciousness as the same thing and use the terms interchangeably. Maybe incorrectly.

But though self may be an illusion, it still provides subjective meaning in our lives. Indeed, it's everything. So, even if we can accept that self is an illusion and that there is no divine agency in the universe, we are still guided by our emotions and, thus, we experience pleasure and pain. It's all subjective, yet meaningful.

Which is why Ant's Reductio ad absurdum is nonsense. Regardless of whether we believe there is divine agency, we all experience pain and pleasure. The love I feel for my wife and children is profoundly meaningful to me. My sense of loss when my mother suffered a stroke was profoundly painful to me. But you who are reading this cannot feel my sense of profound joy and profound loss except in empathy—in relation to your own loved ones.

Even Buddhists who meditate on the concept of no-self still experience pain and pleasure. A Buddhist meditative life only strives to reduce pain (and pleasure), not to eliminate it altogether.

So back to DB's point, though we may be able to scientifically explain consciousness (to some extent), we can never adequately explain our very subjective experiences in the same kind of way. This is the domain of poetry, is it not? But even the language of poetry will always fall far short. Feelings cannot be expressed in a mathematical formula. It's actually preposterous to think we could.

Charles Dickens satirizes the idea of reducing subjective feelings to formula in his book, Hard Times. The very essence of a horse is something we see, feel, smell, we experience on many levels. But Mr. Gradgrind here wants to eliminate all that subjective stuff . . .

“Bitzer,” said Thomas Gradgrind, “your definition of a horse.”
“Quadruped. Gramnivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve
incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod
with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.” Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
“Now girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “you know what a horse is.”

–Charles Dickens, Hard Times

We can compile all kinds of scientific information on the color blue--light frequencies and such--but it doesn't explain why we experience the color blue or if what I see as blue is what you see.

As a thought experiment, suppose you and I see black and white in opposite. Whenever I see something white, you see it as black and whenever I see something black, you see it as white. Now, let's say that I look at something white and call it "white." You see it as black but agree to call it white. Then when I look something black and call it "black" you see it as white but agree to call it black. Could we ever know that where I see white you see black and when I see black you see white? No. If I see a white sheet, you see it as black but call it white and so I would have no reason to suspect you see it as black. We think we see the same thing but we don't. Qualia are that way. I can never be sure others perceive what I perceive even when it appears obvious.

So there is a disconnect between experience and data. They seem linked but they are not. But the bigger question is why do either of us see black or white at all? How does this work?

This is one of my favorite articles in the SEP. It deals with the subject you're talking about. Read it all and let me know your thoughts.

If you don't have time, just read section 2. The Basic Idea. It deals with the Mary's Room thought experiment.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/

As a thought experiment, suppose you and I see black and white in opposite. Whenever I see something white, you see it as black and whenever I see something black, you see it as white. Now, let's say that I look at something white and call it "white." You see it as black but agree to call it white. Then when I look something black and call it "black" you see it as white but agree to call it black. Could we ever know that where I see white you see black and when I see black you see white? No.

Let's see if photography might resolve this. In normal vision if you see a black cat in a coal bin and want to take a picture, the camera attempts to make it appear as middle grey. So if you want to make the picture appear dark, you need to reduce exposure, over-riding the camera's auto-exposure tendency.

But in reverse bizarro world where you see the cat in a coal bin like a white dove in snow, you'll increase the exposure to make it appear lighter than middle grey. The photo will become whiter, which you will actually perceive as darker. You'll take another picture increasing the exposure more, which will make it even whiter, again appearing darker in bizarro world. You'll rarely get a photo exposure you like in reverse bizarro world.

Hmmmmmm...... Maybe.....