Evidence for its existence would have to be logically derived, because it is by nature not physically provable. This is similar to how our mathematical models are the new tools of science because we no longer have the proper sense to make since of the world. In that same way, having physical evidence of something non-physical isn't giving dualism its proper shake. At a certain point in epistemology, you run out of ways to "show" things empirically. Investigation can only be in the realm of thought and logical deduction and as a result will provide the range of possibilities instead of the actual details, this is the proper setting for dualism...a logical possibility that would resist any internal investigation.

He swindles us a bit on the thinking computer bit, because it still doesn't address that main problem of thinking not being representing in pure physical interactions. Atoms bouncing around doesn't always cause thinking, so what is thinking if it can't be explained by sets of atoms bouncing around? How do disjointed sets of brain activations result in a single consciousness? This kind of spooky "thinking at a distance" effect is still one of the more baffling parts of the mind and where thinking arises. If this spooky thinking at a distance is happening, why is it limited to just the spooky motion of neurons within your own brain, why not the motion of atoms in the sun? If your brain can be thinking and disjointed, what is thinking...or more importantly...where is thinking happening!?

It also doesn't explain if thinking is a result of brains like we have them. Could a machine ever be made to think? What is thinking? Computers process information in a very similar respect to our own, but they aren't thinking when they are, are they? I don't think so! A study on how humans think isn't a study on thinking itself, just a kind of thinking...if other things than brains can think and there isn't a really good way to probe thinking itself because you are always going to be thinking like a human and not thinking like all the possible types of thinking that could exist. He makes this exact point with robotic technology advancing, we don't understand the limit of physical reality to know the limits of this end. To that end, you can't EVER know ALL the physical properties via empirical investigation so you can never know the ends of robotic technology, and perhaps the same could be said of thinking, you never will know if there isn't another way that thoughts could be formed with a physical understanding any more than you could with a duelist. Logical investigation can give you the range, just not the specificity he demands of dualism, and the same goes for materialism.

Enoch did not specify that he was a substance dualist. As QualiaSoup recognizes at the beginning of the video, there is more than one kind of dualism.

>> ^messenger:

I too like talking about this stuff, and I don't like all of his arguments either, but some of it is worth examining.
First, are you a) proposing a certain kind of substance outside of the physical that has specific properties; or b) do you deduce that some non-physical substance must exist because you don't believe that physical substances can give rise to consciousness? If a), what properties? What's your evidence? If b), why do you mean by "substance", and how did you come to the conclusion that physical substance could not give rise to consciousness?>> ^enoch:
yep.
i am a dualist and damn proud of it.
i really enjoy this guys videos but i wouldnt specify this particular video as one of his best.
maybe it is because he is making a very specific argument on a subject i absolutely love talking about "what IS consciousness"?
still...
he makes some great points against those who may push the "substance dualism" argument.

I too like talking about this stuff, and I don't like all of his arguments either, but some of it is worth examining.

First, are you a) proposing a certain kind of substance outside of the physical that has specific properties; or b) do you deduce that some non-physical substance must exist because you don't believe that physical substances can give rise to consciousness? If a), what properties? What's your evidence? If b), why do you mean by "substance", and how did you come to the conclusion that physical substance could not give rise to consciousness?>> ^enoch:

yep.
i am a dualist and damn proud of it.
i really enjoy this guys videos but i wouldnt specify this particular video as one of his best.
maybe it is because he is making a very specific argument on a subject i absolutely love talking about "what IS consciousness"?
still...
he makes some great points against those who may push the "substance dualism" argument.

yep.
i am a dualist and damn proud of it.
i really enjoy this guys videos but i wouldnt specify this particular video as one of his best.
maybe it is because he is making a very specific argument on a subject i absolutely love talking about "what IS consciousness"?

still...
he makes some great points against those who may push the "substance dualism" argument.

Williams James wrote about the value of religious experience. It tries to reconcile the disparity between reason and spirituality. This is the "code" that Penn is talking about. It does imply relativism over objectivism which does not gel with people of Penn's rationalistic ilk. His intuitions simply don't allow him to have these kind of contradictions whereas religious people do and also do not see them as contradictions hence their intuitions allow for a kind of dualism between the domain of the rational and the domain of religion. The people in the court are not admitting to the fallibility of their religious beliefs yet also denying the possibility of those same beliefs manifesting in such an obvious and concrete way. So they are at peace with being able to both affirm and deny the factual nature of their metaphysical beliefs without causing disharmony provided the transgression sufficiently big or small. Put it into the realm of the civic where personal gain or other self-serving and un-"virtuous" traits can be attributed and they can happily suspend their metaphysics in favour of the rational that Penn is able to apply to all situations.

It is a kind of metaphysical schizophrenia.

It doesn't jive with how you experience reality? Well sorry, but, too bad -- that's precisely what it is. Your phenomenological experience feeling different to your epistemological experience is irrelevant. At some point you have to stop the infinite regress of intervening variables and just accept that brain=mind, and that ironically, your mind has not evolved to comprehend the vastness of a system like the brain. All the evidence we have suggests brain=mind. You can invoke dualism but it's akin to supernaturalism -- there's no need. Furthermore, the idea that the eye and smell system never "touch" is wrong. Finally, why focus on cross-modal sensory integration when there are more interesting questions that relate to the brain and mind? e.g., qualia, peak shift, synchrony.

Sorry don't mean that to sound rude, just my 2c.

Oh dualism, you so cute.

A short course in neurobiology teaches us all of what Deepak is saying is rubbish. We experience emotion due to various combinations of neurotransmitter release and physiological changes in the body.

What he seems to be trying to do is use the theory of quantum fluctuation and the wave/particle duality of electrons to justify his own theory that if it can't be measured or explained properly/precisely then it must lie outside the realm of our physical entity. Where is argument falls short is that what we perceive as physical matter IS made up of all this weirdness that physics is only just beginning to explain.

So I guess my point is that he's indicating that some weird stuff is going on, perhaps even outside what would currently be defined as our physical bodies. I don't disagree with this, but my point is that it is the definition of a physical body that needs to be altered, and this will improve as our understanding of physics improves. So we should be looking to physics for answers, not for mind/body dualism.

>> ^pedio:
Quantum physics = if the numbers don't add up invent your own reasoning
Or rather, if the numbers don't add up, develop a theory.

>> ^ReverendTed:
I want to upvote this, because it's a topic I'm very interested in and it's a well-presented argument, but I disagree with some of his conclusions.
He challenges dualists for incorrectly equating soul=consciousness=mind, saying that terminology is very important, but at ~7:30 he equates personality with consciousness, which I don't think is a given. This is possibly because he's challenging a particular subset of dualism.
Another terminology problem is that the term "awareness" is never mentioned, presumably equated with consciousness, another non-given.
One argument that he deconstructs is the "cells are replaced so we're not even the same body" argument. Surprisingly, he doesn't mention that brain cells have traditionally been held NOT to do so, though this may have been an abandoned argument in light of recent studies that suggest some regrowth\repair may be possible. (In case my wording was confusing, this is an argument that would support his position.)
The problem with his argument is that consciousness (or at least awareness) IS non-physical, at least given our existing model. Our model of the physical universe does not account for awareness.
It DOES account for behavior. The body (including the brain) is a machine, albeit an organic one, and machines behave physically. Awareness, though, is a hole in the model. That doesn't prove dualism, but it allows for it until we're able to plug that hole.
My personal philosophy is more of a stopgap - acknowledged to possibly be incomplete or incorrect, but consistent with what's "known".
I have no problem accepting the physical model of the universe - evolution, etc. And I have no problem accepting that my body would function just fine without "me", right down to a "personality". The sensory organs feed electrical impulses up through the thalamus into the sensory cortexes, out into the prefrontal cortex and back to the motor cortex. (Oversimplified - it's all intertwined.) All the while making the synapses necessary for associations to be imprinted. I can believe that these "behaviors" were selected through evolution, right down to the development of language and abstract "thought".
Structures that tend to reproduce themselves will tend to reproduce themselves. Structures that are more effective at reproducing themselves will do so more effectively.
But it's just a structure. An amalgamation of individual cells each doing exactly what it's expected to do as an individual cell. There's no point in the process at which awareness is accounted for.
What I believe does take some elements from the Christian religion of my upbringing, which should come as no surprise. Christians are told that we leave our bodies, the vessels, behind when we leave this earth and proceed "into Heaven" to be "one with God." I believe that means everything about this earth is left behind. Not only the physical body and the physical brain, but everything contained in it, which constitutes our accumulated earthly experience - memories, personality. Why? Specifically for those reasons stated above: personality is a functional concept, alterable by physical and chemical changes. The question remains - if memory and personality are lost, what remains? What, indeed.
That said, I do believe there is something separate from the physical existence of the body (and brain) that accounts for awareness. I believe it to be, I guess I'll say an "element" of awareness. It's been suggested that the areas of the brain responsible for "consciousness" are sensory organs as much as the eyes or ears - because of their unique structure able to detect this outside influence.
The problem there, obviously, is that implies a physical influence by what's already been defined as a non-physical object.
I've separated that comment out into its own paragraph because if you really want to discredit dualism, that's all you need to say.
The counter-arguments tend to deal with current physical unknowns, shenanigans in the realm of quantum physics. That "consciousness" or "awareness" exerts its influence on the electrical behavior of the cells in the prefrontal cortex through quantum "nudges". That argument utilizes another hole in the existing deterministic physical model of the universe.
It's also been suggested that consciousness is all post-hoc. That everything we experience has already happened, even if it's fractions of the second later. That we "feel" like we've made decisions but really we're just experiencing the machinations of the brain's processes after the fact. This works pretty well for dualism, because then you no longer have to account for influence on the process. (However, it blows a hole through the theories of most dualists, who are arguing for a soul and the free will that accompanies it.)
Essentially, in this model of dualism, awareness simply detects what the brain is doing, possibly in a specific area of the brain (most likely the prefrontal cortex) - piecing it together into a coherent narrative simply for the purposes of experiencing it. When the brain is damaged, or its behavior altered, awareness is still simply detecting what the brain is doing. This accounts for alterations in personality due to disease, etc. It is however, purely academic, because if it has no influence, then who cares? Only the curious.
There's an island in the middle of the East river - North Brother Island. I've never been there, and I'll never go there. Few people ever will. It has no influence on me, but I'm curious about it because I find it fascinating. It's so far removed from my typical experience - and that's what makes it compelling.
Ok, I've typed too much already and I realize I never really specified what my viewpoint was.
My viewpoint is probably best described as agnostic - I know there are aspects of this discussion that are currently unknowable, so I ascribe to several options that seem to be equally believable.
I guess it's the "prefrontal cortex as awareness-sensory organ" with or without "quantum influence on output by awareness", combined with "awareness is distinct from personality and memory", which allows for some interesting (if not necessarily deep) philosophical musings on what happens to that elemental awareness once it's separated from the earthly body.


Quantum physics = if the numbers don't add up invent your own reasoning, e.g., dark matter or alternative universes while claiming nothing exists that I can not prove. The lack of proof does not equal the lack of existence. Critical thinking seems to be lacking.

>> ^Almanildo:
Is there any reason to doubt his awareness now? I can't see any.

Scientific reductionism is unscientific.

As far as we can tell, my consciousness exists because of the unique configuration of everything at the time of my birth. There's no way we can scientifically eliminate factors and test to see if I would still be the consciousness that was brought into existence. If we ask what factors were necessary to bring me into existence, we have to say "everything."

If we conceive it is possible to artificially create consciousness, then we have some crazy scenarios to imagine. For example, "pulsing" a consciousness on and off in rapid succession and giving it no memory so each entry to the world is its first. Is it the same consciousness? Is there any suffering? Is there any change to the state of a consciousness without the necessary cues of memory and senses? Is there no additional energy cost to producing a million consciousnesses inside a neural network versus just one?

What is consciousness if it is completely textureless and featureless, depending entirely on its host brain for all its function? The answer "an illusion" has to be disqualified because this "illusion" is at the foundation of all we know and experience. There are illusions in our conscious experience, but if it were entirely an illusion there would be no reason for anyone to be experiencing it. The term "illusion" itself requires a viewer to be experiencing it, who presumably would be conscious as well.

I have no doubt science will inform us more on this subject, but if I had to predict it, I would say that reductionism just won't do. Consciousness must be some kind of energy, and follow similar laws of other energies, and not just be an infinitely reproducable phenomenon. If it is infinitely reproducable, then everything in existence has a consciousness value and ours is just higher or more concentrated. One of those two.

Psychologic:

To initially approach the question of dualism from the perspective that it is essentially a "discussion about physical reality" is to assume your conclusion from the outset. The whole thing hinges on whether or not it is a discussion about physical reality, at least where "physical" is construed in the narrow sense as concerning the phenomena explainable by physics.

When I refer to the "hard" problem(s) of consciousness, I am using the distinction put forward by David Chalmers, between the "hard" problem--the explanation for the sense of internal experience that we have--and the "soft" problems regarding cognition, emotion, etc. It is not at all obvious why the chemical and electrical processes of the brain should give rise to or be associated with particular experiences.

Indeed, Chalmers makes this the bedrock of one of his arguments for dualism. We can, he says, conceive of the existence of what he calls p-zombies. A p-zombie is simply a human physiologically and behaviorally identical to any other--but entirely lacking this internal experience. If we can conceive of the existence of such a being, if we can know what it would be like for such a thing to be--and this is a point of philosophical contention--then it must be the case that our internal experience is not identical to the physical processes associated with it.

Another argument that consciousness cannot be explained by a scientifically reductionist account comes out of the work of Thomas Nagel, notably in famous essay "What is it like to be a bat?", and explored more thoroughly in The View from Nowhere. While Nagel himself is a confirmed physicalist, similar lines of argument have been advanced to defend dualist notions.

And, of course, there are the many other arguments--some good, some bad, none very decisive--regarding the existence of non-physical qualia.

> ^HadouKen24:
Psychologic, the current argument in philosophy is precisely about whether or not an empiricist, scientific mode of investigating the mind can ever solve the "hard" problems of consciousness (as opposed to the soft problems--how cognition in the brain works, how the brain assimilates language, how brain chemistry affects emotions, etc.). It is at best naive to decide at the outset that only a scientific account will do before examining whether such an account can in principle actually provide an answer.




What other modes of investigation are you referring to, and what is their goal? If you're talking about the nature of subjective experience then I will agree that this is not necessarily a scientific endeavor, but it also doesn't address the origin or mechanics of awareness.

When non-scientific arguments are brought into discussions of physical reality then it seems to say "we don't need evidence to draw conclusions". I may be unaware of the "good" arguments out there though. What are some of the stronger ones, and what questions do they seek to address? What are the "hard" problems to which you refer?

Most of the arguments I have come across in this area have been used as a basis for declaring that "computers" can never be conscious. I haven't found any of them to be terribly convincing, but I can only speak for the positions I have been exposed to. The wonderful thing about science is that we learn far more when we come across events or behaviors that we cannot explain. I'll be quite happy when we can fully emulate brain function in a computer yet find that we still cannot account for certain aspects of awareness. That is when the subject should get very interesting.

> ^HadouKen24:
In the current (read: last fifteen years or so) state of the discussion of the philosophy of mind, the argument for or against dualism does not hinge upon whether science has yet provided a coherent account of consciousness--we all know it hasn't--but whether it can in principle provide such an account. It is not obvious that any advance in science could provide us with a satisfactory account of consciousness. It is thus not an argument from ignorance.




Argument from ignorance: claiming something is true because it has not been proven false. (or vice versa)

"We do not know" vs "we cannot know". Substance dualism is still filling in the gaps where there is no testable consensus. There is nothing inherently wrong with speculation... it's how we form theories and predictions to test. The problem is when people say "we don't know, so we're unlikely to ever know, therefore it means <insert opinion> is what is really going on".

Of course, it could take pages and pages just to define the exact definitions of the terms and phrases we are debating. I think most of the issue here is when someone mentions "dualism", "non-physical", etc, that different readers assume slightly different meanings. I may be addressing points that weren't even made due to my interpretation the the language used.

I'll try to be specific. My arguments target those who base their conclusions on a lack of evidence rather than reproducible experimental results or observations. I do not accept the argument that any part of consciousness is beyond the scope of science, because there is no evidence for it, other than the fact the we do not currently know everything about the mind. Such and argument my be stronger when cognitive research grinds to a halt despite unanswered questions, but research in that area is currently progressing faster than any other time in human history.

On the other hand, if all substance dualism states is "there are parts of human experience that science cannot currently account for" then I can't disagree. Just realize that such a statement is not evidence for anything.

In summary:

Speculation = fine.
Acceptance of speculation as reality = logical fallacy.

>> ^Haldaug:

One could have said the same on the theory of evolution before we found out about DNA. Before the discovery of DNA one couldn't possible concede of a satisfactory way to fully describe the origin of the species because there didn't exist a way to explain the way information could passed on through generations and how that information changed minutely to make the "survival of the fittest" possible.


One could have conceived of possible theories which might, if true, explain the transmission of genetic information. And in fact there were numerous hypotheses which were proposed and tested, including hypotheses defending vitalism.

The situation with contemporary dualists is quite different. They argue that no such theories are in principle possible, even as hypotheses which could explain things if true. One need not be a dualist to acknowledge that these arguments are often at least initially convincing.