Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Tigydavid135 t1_j729scc wrote

Reply to comment by VoidHuntG03 in What makes humans unique is not reducible to our brains or biology, but how we make sense of experience | Raymond Tallis by IAI_Admin

It’s a phenomenon arising out of biology, it cannot be fully explained by biology, at least not yet

−11

HoneydewInMyAss t1_j72bld2 wrote

I think language acquisition can very much be explained by biology.

By our tongues, our teeth, our soft palette, Broca's and Wernicke's area in our brain.

Philosophers who don't understand science love complaining about science being "too reductive."

And language acquisition is one of the most distinctively "human" characteristics we have.

19

Tigydavid135 t1_j72d7d1 wrote

It goes beyond just language acquisition. How do you sum up the consciousness and awareness of humans through science? It’s a largely subjective experience. You can start from science and we’re still learning more about the brain from biology and neuroscience but I don’t agree that we can fully explain human psychology through hard science as of yet.

1

buttersstochfan-5956 t1_j73iejc wrote

Can you clarify what you mean "sum up the consciousness and awareness"?

9

Tigydavid135 t1_j73kt04 wrote

Sentience basically, just what it means to be human and all the faculties we have access to that other animals don’t (potential for introspection and high level thought and investigation, curiosity, etc) there’s a sort of wonder and joy to being alive that goes beyond hard science.

−2

Matt_Dragoon t1_j73nmrc wrote

How did you determined other animals don't have those things? Most animals I can think of are curious, and investigation arises from curiosity...

10

Gondoulf t1_j743fog wrote

Curiosity is very much an animal instinct ; human consciousness and animals' consciousness are very much different in how they differentiate through acting upon their instincts. As animals do, humans are a slave to their instincts (their unconscious) and as Nietzsche put it : before sacrificing God as what is most sacred to us, we had to sacrifice our instincts, meaning we had to repress our instincts to become "sophisticated". You cannot threaten an animal with the burden of death in the future ; you cannot give it an existential crisis by showing him the bones of his mate. They surely do mourn others but do not seem to understand that this also will happen to them. I do agree that some examples are very interesting ; for example, the elephants cemeteries where they go when they are old to die and the relationship they have with the concept of death. It would still seem to me as an instinct insofar as it looks very much like a biological clock. The idea of differenciation in consciousness in our species is also a very interesting one to explore ; people from very old tribes seem to have a different kind of consciousness than we do. Two types have been observed : a consciousness of events and a Collective consciousness . The first one seems to be the oldest one in terms of evolution ; it is simply not an individual consciousness nor a collective one ; the individual acts as if it isn't a person but merely one with the events around him. The second one came after : it is simply like the individual consciousness but shared by a group ; what is felt by one is also felt by the others. So the oldest one would very much look like an animal's type of consciousness. Now the question that arises is what's next ? Why does it goes from the events towards the individual and why has this particular order been selected ? What's the step after the individual, the hyper-individual ? This, too me, seem like the most interesting discussion to have with the discussion on the development of consciousness in humans and why does it seem different than the rest. Let me know what you think.

−2

bac5665 t1_j75gbe3 wrote

What does "fully explained" mean? By definition, an explanation is less accurate than the thing itself. An explanation that was without simplification or omission would simply be the thing being explained itself. Put another way, "all models are wrong, but some models are useful." An explanation is just a model.

Another problem with your formulation is that it takes a lack of knowledge, and just asserts that there must be something more than spacetime at play. But every phenomenon ever explained sufficiently has turned out to be "merely" spacetime. It would be foolish in the extreme to take an unexplained phenomenon and say "I know that everything else has turned out to be not magic, but this time, maybe it's magic!" Every single thing that keeps you alive and able to participate in our society - farming, medicine, the internet, cell phones, cars, airplanes, manufacturing, just to name a few - only work if the assumption is that the world works only via the cause and effect of physical processes. Every one of these fields requires millions of tests of that hypothesis a day. And every single one of those tests has come back as a success. Not once has anyone documented an instance where the cause and effect of the physical world didn't work. Out of, collectively billions of instances a day, not once.

So why would we, even for a second, take seriously the possibility that human cognition is the one exception to that rule? Especially when all of neuroscience increasingly can make accurate and dependable predictions that rely on the physical nature of cognition. To assume that we are special in that way, contrary to all evidence, would be the height of arrogance.

3