you assumed wrong then

I'm not sure what you mean. We can certainly explain consciousness both in an explanatory and predictory manner. Consciousness has (as far as we know) for example never been communicated or reliably claimed by anything lacking a working brain, just like jumping has not been observed without muscles or technological equivalents. You might claim that I can't know how it is to be the conscious you, but then I'll merely counter-retort that you don't know how it is to be the jumping me.

I can also make predictions about what you will feel and how you will act. For example if you put your hand on a red hot stove, I predict you will feel immense pain, won't be able to think very well and you won't be able resist removing your hand from the stove... all readily explained by what we know of neural processes in your body's nervous system, the effects of pain and stress hormones.

But sure, if you mean explain it at some hypothetical essential level that transcends abstraction, no I can't do that. But you can't do that with jumping either.

So there are living people who do not have consciousness. wow I did not know that but i suspected there were non humans out there like people half alive but dead inside.

Thats not what I am saying, and Im pretty sure you know that

how? Yes, you can guess that the brain somehow produces it, but you cant show this in the way that you can show that tendons and muscles produce a jump.

I'll grant that we can't yet give a detailed explanation that gets from the molecular level (ion channels etc) to the psychological level. But it's not like it's just a guess that consciousness is produced by the brain. I stimulate your brain in a certain place and you'll experience a (predictable) event in consciousness. I ablate your brain in a certain place and you'll never experience that event in consciousness again.

As a general comment, while consciousness is still rather mysterious, the 'mystery of consciousness' is not at all mysterious. In other words, we know why it's difficult to solve:

1) The human brain is the most complex system in the known universe. So either we try to study incredibly complex human brains, or we study simple brains in simple animals. The first approach runs into the complexity problem, but at least we can have a handle on relating physical phenomena to mental events. The second approach is much easier, but organisms with simple brains (often invertebrates like flies and worms!) likely don't have consciousness to speak of, and if they do they certainly can't speak to us about it.

2) There are, very reasonably, ethical limits on what sort of experiments can be done on living human brains. Non-invasive techniques like fMRI have been useful, but can't (yet) get anywhere near the sort of resolution that we'd like.

3) There are aspects of consciousness that cannot be directly grasped in the third person, which is a problem for traditional reductionist scientific approaches. Happily, there are non-reductionist scientific approaches that seem promising for neuroscience (e.g. non-linear dynamics)

Zumby can you talk more about non-linear dynamics and how it is nonreductive? Or do you have a link or book recommendation?

That’s one of those can of worms better left unopened.

Nor can we say that a brain has been observed sans consciousness. (I don’t mean a brain in a jar of formaldehyde.) We posit a view or awareness from nowhere to account for the presence of a brain when it’s not in our awareness, and call that objective reality.

The all-possible is nothing.

I’m not sure that’s false. That is, I don’t know if the Void isn’t the All, or vice-versa. So in that sense, being aware of nothing at all, might mean the same thing or be the same experience as being aware of everything.

The human being in sleep does not have "earth consciousness" and likewise through the realms after death. the human being also has "dream consciousness".

The "consciousness of deep sleep" can be garnered but only a few are able to appreciate this realm, consciously.

Earth consciousness (of course via the senses), dream consciousness which does not relate to the senses as we usually know them and deep sleep consciousness, all can be appreciated with the intellect but not necessarily experienced consciously(deep sleep) .

Speaking to "consciousness" as if it were a "thing" to be laid out on the
anatomist's table does not compute. There is a dynamic involved but of course, that consciousness most involved with the awakened human being can be studied if one attempts to study the "senses".

Almost lost in this, the sleeping human being is "alive" but not sensate as in your original premise., no need for zombies. Also there are other realms of consciousness but that's another story that I can only speak to peripherally.

The logic of the above gives the "earth consciousness" in relation to the brain only in the sense that the brain (nervous system) is a "reflector" of human experience. the brain does not produce thoughts as the gall bladder/liver produces bile.

Of course you can. You can show that neural networks, chemicals and electric signals produce consciousness, just like you can show that tendons and muscles produce a jump.

You might argue that you can't know that it is "actual" consciousness, just something you observe that fall within a set of abtract criteria for consciousness. Then I merely counter-retort that you can't know it is an "actual" jump, just something you observe that fall within a set of abstract criteria for jumps.

Then you need to explain it to me like I'm a four year old because to me that is what you are saying.

I have no idea what you mean but I'm interested to learn more about such matters. Is there a book you can point to?

Theosophy by Rudolph Steiner: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA009/...009_index.html

It's really hard to it justice in a few paragraphs* so I'd highly recommend watching this video from Robert Sapolsky's lectures on Human Behavioural Biology over on the Stanford Youtube channel.

As far as a book goes, 'Chaos: Birth of a New Science' by James Gleick in the best starting place.

If you're really short on time, the SEP entry on "Reductionism in Biology" may be somewhat helpful.

* Actually it's almost just a case of pointing to the definitions of 'reductionism' and 'non-linear', or giving a cute example with rabbit population equations, but I feel that doing so might not cut to the heart of why non-linear dynamics are interesting.

Feel free to hit back with questions, of course.

Aha, I have read Chaos. Here it is right behind me on my shelf. Guess I have to read it again :P I think I was just reading too much into the word non-reductive. Thanks for the links though, I seem to go in cycles where I read things on this topic every couple years

Possibly. I think this is big problem among atheists btw... turning useful models / research programs (e.g. reductionism, materialism, determinism etc) into Very Important philosophical commitments. That in turn encourages theists to get too excited about new ideas that suggest that these philosophies might be flawed. And then atheists/naturalists get huffy and defensive about the new ideas.

But yeah, when I talk about non-reductive approaches, I don't mean magic

Just to add to that list... much as I like the guys over at Less Wrong, I can't take them entirely seriously because they've taken that step from "hey, Bayesian probability is really really useful" to "here's what it means to be a Bayesianist".