I will summarize a materialist understanding of consciousness, then outline how this impacts on two kinds of imaginative fiction written by Poul Anderson.
Everything interacts:
particles, potential or actual;
material bodies;
organisms with their environments.
Organisms are temporary, local, negative entropy.
Energized complex molecules changed randomly until one became self-replicating.
Natural selection favored multi-cellularity.
Organisms are sensitive and responsive to environmental alterations.
Naturally selected organismic sensitivity to environmental alterations quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into conscious sensation.
Sensation was naturally selected because pleasure and pain have survival value.
Responses became actions.
Brains process immediate sensations into perceptions of discrete objects.
Objects are conceptualized.
One social species communicates linguistically and internalizes language as abstract thought.
Interpersonal interactions transform human organisms into self-conscious individuals.
Individuals can transcend self-consciousness through meditation.
However, all consciousness remains an unintended byproduct of originally unconscious interactions.
Human beings interacting with each other projected interpersonal interactions onto their natural and social environments.
Thus, they personified, e.g., thunder as Thor and war as Tyr.
However, human beings have also come to understand preconscious processes.
Thus, they have created both mythology and science.
Poul Anderson wrote:
mythological fantasies, assuming the literal existence of Norse deities;
hard sf, including speculations about the course of evolution on other planets.
Most sf presupposes materialist evolution. Thus, authors ask: "What kind of organisms might have evolved in the Martian environment?," not: "What kind of organisms might have been created on Mars?" CS Lewis' theological sf has Ransom encountering on Mars beings that are both extraterrestrial and supernatural but that is unusual.
See Minds And Brains.
22 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I don't agree with materialism, as you know. John Wright's arguments against materialism were very convincing. All that real science can do is HOW life can arise, technically speaking. It cannot tell us WHY it happened.
Sean
Sean,
I think that energized complex molecules changing randomly till one became self-replicating is a plausible account of the origin of organic life.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I more or less agree! Science can explain the HOW of life, but not the WHY or the MEANING of life.
Sean
My take on consciousness is that "we don't know".
We've got a much better understanding of neurological stuff than we used to, but we still have no idea how it translates into the subjective experience of, shall we say, "green" or "sad".
All the speculation I've seen is non-falsifiable, which means I regard it as more or less useless wheel-spinning.
We don't understand our minds; we may someday, or we may never because we're not smart enough.
Mr Stirling,
Or it may be that a mind can no more understand itself than a Flatlander can see himself from above. But I am not an obscurantist. If psychologists continue to study minds, if neurologists continue to study brains and if philosophers continue to analyze and clarify concepts, then maybe we will all meet somewhere.
Paul.
Well, the neurologists have made real progress; philosophy tends to chew the same tough rope-ends generation after generation (virtually every "new" school I've seen in my lifetime was anticipated by the First and Second Sophistics); and psychology... well, the less said the better (see "replicability crisis").
Dear Mr. Stirling and Paul,
I agree more with Mr. Stirling than I do with Paul. The sciences dealing with the material simply can't explain what makes a mind a MIND and what makes it conscious and self aware.
Sean
"A quantitative increase in sensitivity becoming a qualitative transformation into sensation" is my best attempt to describe the change from unconsciousness to consciousness. Hegel argued that quantity becoming quality was one of the basic principles.
I have googled "replicability crisis" and I see the problem.
An organism was hot and responded to heat, then felt hot. All our consciousness somehow comes from that.
A lot of science and technology works. The replicability crisis shows that there are still a lot of unknowns and grey areas, there is still a need for a lot of further research and verification and there is still a lot of human fallibility.
Kaor, Paul!
I'm sorry, but I still disagree. I argue that the sciences dealing with the material universe can't explain the WHY and the MEANING of life. I don't deny they can tell us much about HOW life can exist or become self aware.
Sean
Sean,
Why should there be a "Why?" Questions of value are, of course, outside the range of empirical science although I think natural selections explains the sense of moral obligation: we help others either because they bear the same genes or because they might help us in return so a motivation to help is selected. Also, we are a social species with common interests.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I fear we will have to continue to agree to disagree. The "selfish gene" theory simply will not satisfy those searching for ULTIMATE answers.
Sean
Well, they can't explain them -yet-. We may someday. Or maybe not. I'm reserving judgment.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
And you would probably characterize my views on such matters, informed or shaped as they were by Aristotelian/Scholastic philosophy and Catholic Christianity as "non-falsifiable." (Smiles)
Sean
I think that European philosophy has made considerable progress in clarifying issues between rationalism v. empiricism and idealism v. materialism.
Kaor, Paul!
Possibly, but NOT in the direction of materialism. I continue to find that unconvincing and John Wright's arguments against it more convincing.
Sean
Sean,
But, as I have argued, materialism need not be reductionist. Consciousness is an emergent quality of being and being is dynamic energy, not mechanical particles.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Granted, but I still consider "consciousness" to be non material.
Sean
Sean,
If by that is meant that consciousness is not explicable in terms of mechanical, inorganic states of matter, then I agree.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, not explicable by anything PHYSICAL. And I also believe non-corporal beings like the angels are also "conscious."
Sean
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