The experience of consciousness is integral to understanding how it functions. Both experiencing and understanding are necessary to form a complete picture. For instance, during my surgery, I received an anesthetic block that left my left arm lifeless. What I experienced was the loss of my arm’s position in space and the disappearance of the mental map that the brain creates to represent it. This experience offered valuable insight and understanding into how the brain probably constructs these representations and reinforced the importance of these mental maps in navigating the world.
As the anesthetic began to wear off, the mental map of my arm returned—but it didn’t align with the arm’s actual position. I had the distinct sensation that my arm was stretched out in front of me, even though it was resting on my abdomen. This experience underscored the critical role of sensory input in shaping both our understanding of the body and the brain. These sensations are key to unraveling what is truly happening in the brain. Merely stating that a particular nerve was involved doesn’t capture the full complexity of what was actually happening.
As for how this ties into life and reality, it’s simple: everything we experience and understand is part of life and reality. Consciousness is woven into the very fabric of our existence, and understanding it—even in small, experiential moments like this one—helps illuminate the broader questions of life itself.
And, you have no way of deciding that life can be reduced to physical processes.
Axioms are something you get in mathematics, and they aren’t truths about the world; they’re statements that determine the structures of mathematics; other statements would determine different structures, as in the assumption that parallel lines never meet, or alternatively that they do meet. What axioms do you consider to be truths about the world? And how would you know if they were truths?
I’d encourage you to read my most recent response to John Harshman, as it may help clarify my position on the importance of combining both objective understanding and subjective experience.
Axioms are assumptions so basic that nothing else makes sense unless they are true. The Axiom of Identity for example, that all things (sets) are equivalent to themselves, is universally accepted. There are others like the Axiom of Choice that are not universally accepted, leading to a different basis for mathematics in which some things cannot be proven.
MOST people do not spend their days trying to pare everything down to the most basic axioms - they wouldn’t get anything useful done if they did. But it can be a good thought exercise to trying to work on a problem from First Principles (not quite the same as axioms, but close enough for most people).
There is IMO a sort of “Axiom of Faith”, that some people use in their thinking. It doesn’t pass the “nothing else makes sense” test, but it fits with how many people live their lives. (If it did pass this test there wouldn’t be any need to argue about it.) It functions as a shortcut to certain conclusions without all the tedious mucking about with Set Theory. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but it may cause conflicts when misused.
For this discussion I think we are considering a similar sort of “axiom”. The questions are: What are the conclusions this shortcut leads too? Are those conclusions useful in any sense? Can this assumption be pared down to an even simpler concept?
The answer seems to depend on the value a person assigns to this Axion of Faith in the first place.
That is not fun, and I wish you a speedy recovery!
The nervous system isn’t entirely in the brain, and there is “muscle memory” which helps us coordinate our physical activity without active thought. We also have a “kinesthetic” sense - not counted in the 5 basic senses everyone learns about - which enables that mental map of the body. We don’t normally register these as part of our mental activity.
The relevance here, is the something more you are seeking may already be a part of y(our) physical existence. Maybe there is still more in addition to that, but you need to separate parts that can be described by the physical from the parts that cannot.
Or not. This is getting down to personal views on the world, and I do not mean to intrude on your.
Again, entirely textual. IMO, you’re ignoring the massive complexity that continues to be compiled by science in favor of attacking straw men. I’m not seeing anything cohesive about your approach.
Nor does your experience. But if your experience is repeatable and generalizable, it might contribute, through science, to a better understanding of something going on in the brain. But that seems quite separate from an understanding of consciousness.
Not immediately, sure. But every time we observe something happening through physical processes, that decreases the space in which something else can hide. The fact that a physical anesthetic messes with your mental map, for example, suggests that the map is the result of a physical process.
Of course they would be possible. Your statement is like saying we couldn’t play chess if the rules of the game were not “truths.” But that is not the case. The rules of the game are just what they are. The concept of “truth” does not apply to them outside of the game.
Now, whether anyone would actually want to play the Game of ScienceTM if it didn’t routinely produce results that uncannily resemble things that are The Truth, is another question entirely.
And how do you know they’re possible but empirically?
You’re basically saying you know they’re true because the world you observe appear to look like they are. You call them axioms as if they’re based on nothing and you know them to be true a priori. But in fact here you argue for their truth on the basis of what the world is like to your senses.
Presumably if the world appeared to allow contradictions you wouldn’t take them as axioms?
I think @Giltil has this mostly correct; the Axiom of Identify is fundamental to all systems of reasoning. My google says there could be systems that “partially omit” Identify, but I don’t know what that means, and this leads to an academic exercise in toy systems of logic, which doesn’t seem relevant here. Google also says there are “3-value” logical system that partially omit non-contradiction, but this exception doesn’t appear to be helpful either.
As I wrote above, if we want to accomplish anything useful then we need to start with common axioms (or perhaps Common Ground), otherwise we cannot accomplish any useful reasoning.
OTHER axioms may be less necessary, like the Axiom of Choice, or maybe the Axiom of Faith I suggested above. These are things we can argue about based on the axioms we all accept.
As discussions go, I say this has been entirely successful; we have torn the question down to the meaning and interpretation of axioms, and it doesn’t get any more basic than that.
If we add some sort of Axiom of Faith to our agreed system of reasoning - some version that does not trivially prove everything, do we get a new system that can accomplish reasoning we could not do before? I’ll give that a qualified “Yes”. We see such systems operating in every religion, but the value of this new reasoning depends on acceptance of that Axiom of Faith.
I’ll go one step further. If such an Axiom of Faith is to be added, it’s important that it should not contradict any axioms already in use. Otherwise the system of logic is broken. We might find examples where this has already happened.
But it can be a good thought exercise to trying to work on a problem from First Principles (not quite the same as axioms, but close enough for most people).
