thought as we experience is not a property of the processes of the brain, but rather a consequence or a side product of neurobiological processes
So, in effect, you are saying that it is a property, only that it’s one you assume is irrelevant. Thinking is what our brains do. There isn’t some other “real” underlying function of our brains for thoughts to be some irrelevant side effect. I’ve already written about the contradictions in our perception of these processes in my previous comments.
Consciousness is neither explained by mechanical interactions nor dialectics, we can only guess at it.
You’ve gone into idealism here, painting consciousness as a Kantian unknowable thing-in-itself. Dialectical materialism is a consistently materialist worldview, and it can explain consciousness through proper study of it. I’ve given you a rough outline of a dialectical materialist explanation of consciousness in my previous replies.
it has to map onto some state of the brain (…) So there is a discreet neurological state that corresponds to a thought within our conscious experience. But conscious experience has to be a consequence of that state.
This is a false assumption and one that’s a result of your mechanist thinking. There is no need for there to be discreet states. Our thinking is a process, neuronal circuits are constantly firing, no steady state can encompass it. A similar example are protein conformations which are constantly moving around and changing. This is where dialectics would help you with accepting the fact that change is the “default” state and what we perceive as stable states are in fact also changing, just on different timescales.
It comes back to atoms just chugging along.
But it doesn’t. Yes, at the bottom, it’s atoms “chugging along”, but we’re not at a fundamental level, we’re talking about consciousness, behavior, and society. You cannot accurately study any phenomena of higher organization of matter only by studying fundamental particles. You keep clinging onto this model of abstract reductionism, but it will not give you an accurate understanding of most phenomena. You seemingly admit that we are active parts of the universe, and then you swerve into calling us “just atoms”, which on an atomic level, we are, but there are other levels to us, all still material. We have properties which arise from the specific organization and motion of those atoms as I’ve demonstrated in my previous reply. A similar error would be calling any molecules “just bunches of atoms” as a way to paint their specific properties or interactions as irrelevant.
However the counterpart thought we experience within consciousness is simply a consequent phenomenon, some kind of representation of this activation pattern. The conscious (experience of) thought has no power and is predetermined, simply representing a state of brain activation. And thus no actual control is to be found. Theres is simply a set of circumstances, a neurobiological calculation and a set output.
You call our thoughts “some kind of representation of this activation pattern” which is wrong. The movement of the matter of our neurons and supporting cells that contribute to our cognitive processes are our thoughts. Our thoughts are properties of that matter that arise from those specific interactions. In your model, again, there is a dualism present, where “we” aren’t material and are just somehow observing this from the outside.
You are also making assumptions you shouldn’t make and you’re abstracting these things in a mechanist way again. These phenomena don’t function as simple calculations with a set output, a computer analogy of biological organisms is woefully inaccurate in general and especially in this particular example. There are higher order interactions happening at every step and the only way to make sense of them is through dialectics. Again, you’re painting only our consciousness as “powerless” while you’re retaining the “power” of other things. Here, you’ve come to the position that our subconscious thoughts do have “power”, but our conscious ones don’t. Our consciousness and subconsciousness are not some separate, non-interacting entities, they are both parts of our material mind. They’re both “us”, it’s entirely irrelevant here whether we’re talking about conscious or subconscious thought, they function together, and they function rationally. Not to mention that you’re contradicting yourself again when you said before (correctly) that “consciousness isn’t explained by mechanical interactions”, and now you’re using exactly mechanical interactions to “explain” consciousness.
We only have control in the sense that we create change in the universe, but then we are simply microscopic a part of an ever-changing universe, it is simply that the universe is changing. This is predicted simply by thermodynamics, there is no need to involve more complex theories to explain this at a fundamental level.
The universe is changing, and so are we and our consciousness. We and everything else around us are parts of the universe. You seem to think that by pointing out the whole, you can simply ignore all the constitutive parts. Saying “it’s simply a person that’s sick” isn’t a substitute for a description of pathophysiological processes happening in the body. The scale of our activity in relation to the universe doesn’t matter, we’re discussing the quality here, not the quantity. You’ve gone from the abstraction of parts (“it’s all just atoms”) to an abstraction of the whole (“it’s simply the whole universe that’s changing”). This, again, doesn’t explain anything. We are looking for explanations of how particular parts of the universe function which we can only gain from studying those parts of the universe, not by abstracting to either extreme.
Just because thermodynamics describes change in general in the universe, doesn’t mean that it alone explains all the particularities of all the different phenomena occurring at all levels of organization of matter. Yes, it’s always present, but more things are added on as complexity increases. You cannot accurately explain human behavior just by studying abstract fundamental particles. There is a reason we have many scientific disciplines and not just particle physics. Yes, they’re all inseparably connected, but particle physics or thermodynamics alone aren’t enough.
I’m not even sure how dialectical materialsm ties in here all that well, the articles mostly just make slight off-handed remarks about consciousness and overall the theory seems to mostly deal with social organisation. I have to say it reads to me like a bunch of truisms thrown together. Maybe my reading is too brief, but I fail to see where it offers much of meaning.
I’ve been explaining how dialectical materialism “ties in” all throughout this thread. Furthermore, dialectical materialism isn’t just a patch that you can “tie in” to bolster some other theory or understanding, it’s a consistent and all-encompassing worldview which recognizes the reality of dialectics in our material reality. The articles I linked aren’t supposed to give you an answer specifically about consciousness, they are supposed to explain dialectics and dialectical materialism in general and on some common examples. Once you have a good understanding, you can apply it yourself. The articles do mostly deal with social organization because that’s what Marxism is primarily about, however, the Marxist method is dialectical materialism which is universally applicable. Take a look at the chapter of ‘The Dialectical Biologist’ I mentioned if you want a greater focus on natural science.
If all you see are a “bunch of truisms” then I don’t really know what you read, because that’s certainly not the case in any of the articles or books I mentioned. You admit that you’re unfamiliar with dialectical materialism and yet, instead of trying to educate yourself, you just keep going along with your mechanist worldview (that’s rife with contradictions, as I’ve been pointing out) while complaining that you don’t understand dialectics without even really trying. You don’t respond to any points I make, and you just move on to “new” points which are mostly just your old points recycled, but slightly changed in an attempt to get around my critique which you never specifically address. You keep retreating into “it’s just some atoms chugging along” as if it’s some profound wisdom, but it’s just a cover for your model’s inability to accurately explain human thought, behavior, or society (and plenty of other natural phenomena). It seems like I’m just repeating myself at this point, so I won’t be continuing this discussion any further.
So, in effect, you are saying that it is a property, only that it’s one you assume is irrelevant. Thinking is what our brains do. There isn’t some other “real” underlying function of our brains for thoughts to be some irrelevant side effect. I’ve already written about the contradictions in our perception of these processes in my previous comments.
You’ve gone into idealism here, painting consciousness as a Kantian unknowable thing-in-itself. Dialectical materialism is a consistently materialist worldview, and it can explain consciousness through proper study of it. I’ve given you a rough outline of a dialectical materialist explanation of consciousness in my previous replies.
This is a false assumption and one that’s a result of your mechanist thinking. There is no need for there to be discreet states. Our thinking is a process, neuronal circuits are constantly firing, no steady state can encompass it. A similar example are protein conformations which are constantly moving around and changing. This is where dialectics would help you with accepting the fact that change is the “default” state and what we perceive as stable states are in fact also changing, just on different timescales.
But it doesn’t. Yes, at the bottom, it’s atoms “chugging along”, but we’re not at a fundamental level, we’re talking about consciousness, behavior, and society. You cannot accurately study any phenomena of higher organization of matter only by studying fundamental particles. You keep clinging onto this model of abstract reductionism, but it will not give you an accurate understanding of most phenomena. You seemingly admit that we are active parts of the universe, and then you swerve into calling us “just atoms”, which on an atomic level, we are, but there are other levels to us, all still material. We have properties which arise from the specific organization and motion of those atoms as I’ve demonstrated in my previous reply. A similar error would be calling any molecules “just bunches of atoms” as a way to paint their specific properties or interactions as irrelevant.
You call our thoughts “some kind of representation of this activation pattern” which is wrong. The movement of the matter of our neurons and supporting cells that contribute to our cognitive processes are our thoughts. Our thoughts are properties of that matter that arise from those specific interactions. In your model, again, there is a dualism present, where “we” aren’t material and are just somehow observing this from the outside.
You are also making assumptions you shouldn’t make and you’re abstracting these things in a mechanist way again. These phenomena don’t function as simple calculations with a set output, a computer analogy of biological organisms is woefully inaccurate in general and especially in this particular example. There are higher order interactions happening at every step and the only way to make sense of them is through dialectics. Again, you’re painting only our consciousness as “powerless” while you’re retaining the “power” of other things. Here, you’ve come to the position that our subconscious thoughts do have “power”, but our conscious ones don’t. Our consciousness and subconsciousness are not some separate, non-interacting entities, they are both parts of our material mind. They’re both “us”, it’s entirely irrelevant here whether we’re talking about conscious or subconscious thought, they function together, and they function rationally. Not to mention that you’re contradicting yourself again when you said before (correctly) that “consciousness isn’t explained by mechanical interactions”, and now you’re using exactly mechanical interactions to “explain” consciousness.
The universe is changing, and so are we and our consciousness. We and everything else around us are parts of the universe. You seem to think that by pointing out the whole, you can simply ignore all the constitutive parts. Saying “it’s simply a person that’s sick” isn’t a substitute for a description of pathophysiological processes happening in the body. The scale of our activity in relation to the universe doesn’t matter, we’re discussing the quality here, not the quantity. You’ve gone from the abstraction of parts (“it’s all just atoms”) to an abstraction of the whole (“it’s simply the whole universe that’s changing”). This, again, doesn’t explain anything. We are looking for explanations of how particular parts of the universe function which we can only gain from studying those parts of the universe, not by abstracting to either extreme.
Just because thermodynamics describes change in general in the universe, doesn’t mean that it alone explains all the particularities of all the different phenomena occurring at all levels of organization of matter. Yes, it’s always present, but more things are added on as complexity increases. You cannot accurately explain human behavior just by studying abstract fundamental particles. There is a reason we have many scientific disciplines and not just particle physics. Yes, they’re all inseparably connected, but particle physics or thermodynamics alone aren’t enough.
I’ve been explaining how dialectical materialism “ties in” all throughout this thread. Furthermore, dialectical materialism isn’t just a patch that you can “tie in” to bolster some other theory or understanding, it’s a consistent and all-encompassing worldview which recognizes the reality of dialectics in our material reality. The articles I linked aren’t supposed to give you an answer specifically about consciousness, they are supposed to explain dialectics and dialectical materialism in general and on some common examples. Once you have a good understanding, you can apply it yourself. The articles do mostly deal with social organization because that’s what Marxism is primarily about, however, the Marxist method is dialectical materialism which is universally applicable. Take a look at the chapter of ‘The Dialectical Biologist’ I mentioned if you want a greater focus on natural science.
If all you see are a “bunch of truisms” then I don’t really know what you read, because that’s certainly not the case in any of the articles or books I mentioned. You admit that you’re unfamiliar with dialectical materialism and yet, instead of trying to educate yourself, you just keep going along with your mechanist worldview (that’s rife with contradictions, as I’ve been pointing out) while complaining that you don’t understand dialectics without even really trying. You don’t respond to any points I make, and you just move on to “new” points which are mostly just your old points recycled, but slightly changed in an attempt to get around my critique which you never specifically address. You keep retreating into “it’s just some atoms chugging along” as if it’s some profound wisdom, but it’s just a cover for your model’s inability to accurately explain human thought, behavior, or society (and plenty of other natural phenomena). It seems like I’m just repeating myself at this point, so I won’t be continuing this discussion any further.