Julia Mossbridge - Is Consciousness Entirely Physical?

Here's the big question about consciousness, our inner experience of what things feel like. Is consciousness a product of the physical world alone? Because if consciousness is the output of the physical brain by itself, however complex, then consciousness as physicalism would defeat those who believe, or hope for, the existence of nonphysical realities.



Julia Mossbridge, M.A., Ph.D. is a Visiting Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), the CEO and Research Director of Mossbridge Institute, LLC, and a Visiting Scholar in the Psychology Department at Northwestern University.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[MAGT]

She has got something there. It makes sense. Why is he trying to complicate it? Julia stayed strong. Way to go Julia!

[samueldeoliveira]

Can't help but feel Robert was missing the point. The word "science" is sometimes used to mean "excluding subjective experience." Julia is rightly pointing out that all we can possibly know empirically begins at subjective experience. We cannot have a truly rigorous scientific understanding of reality outside ourselves if it doesn't begin axiomatically at the inside reality.

[magnusbrzenk]

Thank you Julia. I clicked on this title expecting to roll my eyes at the usual neuro-psycho BS, but you stood your ground against it

[joeolson]

Way to go Julia ! You are the first person I’ve seen on this channel that truly not only understands but knows consciousness has to be numero uno. And the way I look at this “problem “ is There is only Consciousness. How can there be anything such as a thought unless consciousness is there. Anytime Robert is talking to anyone about consciousness he just can’t see this thru his scientific glasses. Hooray for Julia.

[DavidKolbSantosh]

To the point and indisputable! I like this lady! She knows what she says, and will not budge.

[DoubleRaven]

Refreshing academic honesty. The only thing we experience directly is consciousness.

[execwebtech]

Julie's take is right on. Finally.

[phonsefagan]

Dr. Kuhn, I admire your patience. As Dr. Mossbridge appears to be caught in a logical fallacy, rooted in a desire for the universe to follow some pre-conceived and strongly-favored notion. And, as we well know, this approach favors a deficit of the detachment needed for a balanced, Occam's-razor-type, analysis.

She claims that:
Because X is the only tool by which I can experience reality
then X must be the primary thing in all of reality.


And, also asserts that: Even if we figured out how to build demonstrably conscious machines from demonstrably unconscious (by any accepted definition) constituents, it would make no difference to her position. Presumably because she already "knows" the answer, and chooses to reframe all new information to fit the favored model. Of course, since there is no way to absolutely prove her wrong, then she must be right! Right?

Also consider that: In any physical measurement, we don't assert that the measuring device is any more real the thing being measured.

Moreover: Is it not only possible, but common, to have a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts? Clearly, we have examples of how a "group intelligence" (needed to create complex hives and mounds) can be emergent from the collective actions of "dumb" bees, termites, and ants. So, what is to prevent a subjective sense of being in the world from emerging from: a constant feedback flow of sophisticated "measurements" of that world; the maintenance of an internal record (aka memories); and the ability to compare ongoing measurements to memories (learning) to predict the results of future measurements? After all, to NOT YET KNOW how the process works represents a DEFICIT in our rapidly-growing understanding - and does NOT justify the claim that the process CANNOT work.

Beyond this, we have the more direct experiences of having our perceptions significantly altered by "dumb" chemicals (drugs), and we can be easily rendered "unconscious" by a physical blow to the head or by inhaling an anesthetic. So, here we have what we would call "physical things", somehow altering and even shutting down an "unphysical" and "more fundamental" thing.

As in all things scientific, we are wise to go with the most likely explanation. In this regard, the "physicalist" assumption (so often attacked in such debates) is, by far, the less speculative claim. After all, we generally see what we understand to be consciousness associated only with extremely complex objects (brains): and, the more complex the brain, the greater range of abilities. Clearly this cannot prove, but does strongly support, a bottom-up rather than a top-down model: whereby consciousness is emergent from a complex arrangement of simpler objects (atoms and their associated fields).

And, if you are now going to demand that basic electromagnetic interactions, even within inanimate objects, are a more "basic form of consciousness", then you have merely moved the goalposts - and are choosing to play a semantic game: which is most likely to lead absolutely nowhere.

But perhaps this kind of woo woo is just a handy way to come off as clever and "spiritual" at dinner parties. And I don't think that there is any amount of evidence or debate that can compete with that.

[kiuliasi]

Even if we humans are able to explain, or prove, that consciousness is entirely physical, we still don't know that the physical is real - that's what Dr. Julia is saying. All we know is consciousness is real, but we don't know whether the physical is real.

[koldourrutia]

Thank you to JULIA M. for her clarity. AGREE 100%….It seems, some still understand It backwards

[philcarter]

Julia, you hit the nail on the head. Well done, and keep going!

[CloroxBleachCompany]

Give Robert some DMT and maybe he won’t take himself so seriously

[neilmccafferty]

Totally off the wall, unconvincing and unable to explain herself. Probably just as well. Utter nonsense. Consciousness clearly underpinned by the physical and brain based. Ever found a consciousness without a corpus? Thought not.

[justa_dude]

Thank you for posting such mind stretching content, it always makes me think and as we know, once the mind is stretched it cannot go back to the same size.

[shelwincornelia]

Finally someone who realizes the importance for us to know the nature of our own consciousness, before we can pretend to know how the universe has originated.

[ToddSullivanacrowsflying]

I’m not sure why he’s having a difficult problem in understanding her argument. There are some who want to say that there is a real world, and then consciousness which perceives it. But their “real world” is only being perceived through consciousness. There is no other way for it to happen.

Link up a newborn baby into a VR, and that baby will, throughout its life, think that that VR is the “real world”. Everyone on the outside will know better, however. Yet if that baby, and other babies all linked up to the VR, decide one day that they’ve figured out the real world, us on the outside will know the flaw in their ultimate deduction.

We will never know reality through any other prism except our consciousness. But to say that we know the “real world” is just to come to decision that we’ve reached the limits of our perception. It says absolutely nothing about actual reality, of which we can never know except through our consciousness.

[ral]

Max Planck said “You can’t get behind consciousness” Nothing in our experience can be there without our awareness of it

[lucnijs]

Not sure in what discussion he tries to lure her but after decades of thinking we still have no proper definition of the ontological and epistemological position of consciousness. And so what we experience through our 'sensors' is what we call reality and empirical evidence ('Wiener Kreis'). For sure we can agree that if we had a different 'infrastructure' (than our body) through which we perceive/experience things our understanding of nature/reality/cosmos would be different. So, as long as we have no proper understanding of the nature of consciousness we can make no 'final' claims about reality or the final validity of truth relative to our experiences. We are rangebound by our infrastructure through which consciousness emerges. Probably nature thought there was a good reason for that to be built in.

[winstonchang]

The brain is a material can explain and correlate EVERY aspect of the brain to the CONSCIOUSNESS we KNOW and FEEL,
does not mean consciousness comes from the brain or any physicality. We can study a brain pattern of a sleeping person and know that AT THIS POINT,
hes/he is having an intense dream. Then, we have to ask, who or what is dreaming ? Let alone the contents of the

[Virtues]

Kudos for Julia !! To talk about anything, you start with consciousness, so to say it is physical is a contradiction in terms!!