
Originally Posted by
galexander
'Can Scientific Materialism Sufficiently Explain Human Consciousness?'
So, in my first post on these forums I will bring back this slightly derailed thread to the main question. Can Scientific Materialism Sufficiently Explain Human Consciousness?
The quick answer is no. To elaborate: Not at this moment. The studies some of the users refer to are relational studies. The only thing those studies show is that certain neurons get excited or are inhibited when the subject has a conscious experience or is doing some kind of task which involves some part of the consciousness. What it doesn't say is if those patterns of neuronal activity is a representation of what we call consciousness or if it is the cause of consciousness. The only solid conclusion that can be made is that it tends to co-occur together with conscious thought.
To answer the question if it EVER can be explained by scientific materialism; I can't tell you that. I saw one post which used the phrase similar to "not yet". That is very unscientific. The implication is made that there already is such a thing, you only just have to find it. If science would work that way, it would be an easy job. NEVER use the word "yet" if you expect something to be found in the future.
Perhaps Human Consciousness can never be explained by our current definition of Scientific Materialism, perhaps it can be explained by the definition of Scientific Materialism in 100 years, perhaps we we will find out that behind this neural activity and conscious experience there is some sort of substance or essence which current religions call "soul".
All these cases could come to pass, how ridiculous they may sound in the current context. As a scientist, you have to keep an open mind and try to think out of the current dominant paradigm, although impossible.
The point is that we have no idea about cause and effect in the workings of the brain. It could be that neural impulses are the start of everything, or it could be totally something else, perhaps consciousness has nothing to do with the brain. There is just not enough data to make a hard statement.