I don’t see the problem. It may be that a change in a conscious state may be due to some micro-physical alteration. Or maybe it’s not a micro alteration but a macro one. It’s still matter.
One cannot be in the possession of the totality at a single time. That’s true by definition and by logic. Nor would one be able to tell how a slight change in the configuration of matter leads to a change in a conscious state, because matter is mysterious to us.
Mental states too, but less so in comparison.
Correct, we understand through consciousness. We are acquainted with consciousness. Understanding consciousness might be a category error.
Then by what right can it be said the configuration of matter which we understand best is consciousness?
Maybe a tangled-up-in-words kinda thing: the statement says to me, the best way to understand consciousness is by thinking of it as a configuration of matter. But you can’t get to consciousness by way of matter; the one is not contained in the other.
The very best one can grant, is that it couldn’t be anything else, which tells us absolutely nothing about what it is, that being precisely what we’ve always wanted to know.
I probably misunderstood your original statement, for which I beg a thousand pardons. (Grin)
The statement was more along the line of trying to understand something subjective “objectively”.
You can point to eye science. That tells you a bunch about how the eye works, it doesn’t tell you how seeing blue is possible.
The argument is simple: Physical stuff (matter, body, whatever) is the only stuff there is. When physical stuff combines in very rare and very particular organizations you have what we call thinking.
But this might be trivialized if we say everything is natural stuff.
This is a stipulation, not an argument. We cannot comprehend how matter as we intuitively see it in the world could think. That is a problem of conceivability-for-us, not possibility.
What is it that you want to know? How matter could possibly think? Locke was disturbed by it too, but could not dismiss the idea.
Which is nothing more than the transcendent intruding onto the immanent, and……as we all should surely know…..is illusory and must be guarded against.
Actually, it is a conclusion of an argument, in which the subjective can never be treated objectively. The error of understanding, corrected, or at least correctable, only be reason.
Agreed, but that kicks the speculative can down the metaphysical road: why is it that such comprehension is impossible for us? Is it merely contingent, insofar as it is as yet incomprehensible, or, is it necessarily the case, insofar as we are simply not intellectually equipped ever to remediate such lack.
Either way…..risky business positing that matter does or does not think.
The claim is metaphysical. We can be made of material stuff or the stuff of nature. This does not subjectify matter tout court, only a specific configuration of it(such as is found in the brains of certain organisms).
Necessary, I believe. To quote Locke here:
“We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly we shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks; for it is impossible for us, by contemplating our own ideaswith no help from revelation… to discover whether God hasgiven to a suitably laid out system of matter a power to perceive and think, or rather has attached to such a system a thinking immaterial substance.”
“God creates an extended solid Substance, without the superadding any thing else to it, and so we may consider it at rest: To some parts of it he superadds, Motion, but it has still the Essence of Matter: Other parts of it he frames into Plants, with all the Excellencies of Vegetation, Life and Beauty…to other parts he adds Sense and Spontaneous Motion, and those other Properties that are to be found in an Elephant… But if one venture to go one step further and say, God may give to Matter, Thought, Reason and Volition, as well as Sense and Spontaneous Motion, there are Men ready presently to limit the Power of the Omnipotent Creator, and tell us, he cannot do it; because it destroys the Essence, or changes the essential Properties of Matter.”
Replace “God” for “Nature”, and that’s essentially my view.
Yeah, mine too, especially the first bolded part. Although, it remains a valid supposition, that given a relevant, sufficiently logical and internally consistent theory, no ground follows from it for affirming a form of thinking not in accord with the theory by which we justify our own.
I mean…..how would we know? I see no profit in granting thought to entities, the effect of which is impossible for us to even conceive. So it isn’t as much a question of limiting the power of Nature, as it is understanding the limits of our own.
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Categorical error: it does not follow, that thinking is the process performed by a machine, given merely the arrangement of its matter.
Now it may the case that a particular arrangement of matter is a necessary condition for thinking, but is it always sufficient?
I should say, it’s not that I think we understand how consciousness works - Hume and Kant were right about this. But I think it remains trivially true that out of everything there is, it’s the thing we are most aquainted with. So saying it’s super mysterious compared to other things just seems backwards to me.
And I agree, we don’t understand how matter (as we conceive it) could think, but here we are. I don’t understand free will, imagination or gravity either.
But I agree that this is a limit of our understanding. It is quite limited, despite our impressive achievement as a species.
Yeah, sorta my bad; I took your statement back there in the beginning to indicate an understanding of how consciousness works, pursuant to the configuration of its matter.