also, i think this thread is starting to get strange. if someone believes nothing is true or false, real or not, better or worse, just because we can't disprove that existence is a dream or something and because of this, a psychic grabbing a goats balls to tell you your future is just as credible or true as a scientific theory, well, for starters, i'd hate to see what kind of decisions you make in your life.
I agree that aspects of the thread are getting strange, but probably for different reasons than your own.
What is interesting here is that the strong adherents to scientism like you and wonderboy seem to cling to notions of truth so very strongly - even when faced with the fact that something as essential as human consciousness is not at all understood - by anyone. We live with the fact that while we can know things, we do not know of how or why we can know them - or if what we know in any way conforms to some form of "truth" (whatever that is). In short, that immediately sets us up for a considerable degree of doubt regarding what can be known. We have no clue regarding the margins of our perceptive limitations, and we have no idea of just how extensive these limitations are or how far they range. The point here is that these limitations inevitably restrict what we can know. Add to that, we can never have more perception that what our consciousness offers us, so that also means that there will always be limits on what can be known (we don't know what we don't know). That fact essentially forever limits the idea of obtaining "truth" in any extravagant sense of what we pretend to know regarding the meaning of that word. It even curtails the notion of certainty. The best we can do is to possess limited, tentative knowledge that is based on a shared range of rules of measurement and language that is shared among people, and both of these are limited by uncertainty. You may view this as an attack on what you believe to be the purpose of science, but in actual fact it is a gift that scientific philosophy has provided to humanity: no one can argue from a position of possessing or having access to absolute truth. There is no way to prove such a position. All knowledge is tentative.
i meant natural world as opposed to imaginary world
Given that imagination is presumed to be a product of the "natural" mind, are they not the same? I could also ask you to clarify the concept of "natural" in regard to comparing that to something else. In other words, what is natural, and where does something
not natural exist? It is you, after all, who has raised a distinction.
personally, i can't explain how consciousness fully works or why it exists.
As mentioned earlier, no one knows. That presents numerous problems when pursuing a line of reasoning that something that is essential to the notion of "being" is a producer of truths - all the while that this source of being (understanding, comprehending) is not actually understood. It presents a profound limit on knowledge, and that should be accepted.
of course, in regards to consciousness, there are probably dictionary definitions, medical definitions, legal definitions, etc. that may differ.
You are missing the point. A dictionary definition of consciousness
is not consciousness. While we experience a thing we call consciousness, we have no idea of what it is. No one knows what consciousness is. The definitions are, at best, tentative and superficial stand-ins to a major problem of uncertainty. The word explains nothing about the actual phenomena. Definitions such as these are a way of providing meaning where there actually is none. That approach writ large has a parallel to cosmologies where people create or imagine structures in order to give meaning to the universe. In many ways, scientific cosmology is no different - simply because we don't know anything regarding the full extent, structure or fundamental nature of the entire universe. We operate on assumptions that it is rationale based on a range examples, but we have no absolute proof that the universe conforms to that notion in every way. Add to that, the problem is amplified further once one moves from
how to
why (and once again, these very questions can be viewed as human-imposed strictures in and of themselves).
Even if human beings can one day understand consciousness - and can even artificially replicate it - there are still the inherent limitations of perception to deal with when considering what can be further understood or comprehended by such an act.
if someone believes nothing is true or false, real or not, better or worse, just because we can't disprove that existence is a dream or something and because of this, a psychic grabbing a goats balls to tell you your future is just as credible or true as a scientific theory, well, for starters, i'd hate to see what kind of decisions you make in your life
Anyone who deludes himself into thinking that he has some unobstructed access to the truth via science really is no better than the religious promulgators of the same idea. Scientific theories are
operational, they are not
truths. Obviously some forms of knowledge are more useful in certain circumstances than others, but this does not mean that the body of knowledge then automatically represents an unassailable form of truth (because you still would have to fully clarify the concept). Maybe you simply dislike the idea that you can never have access to the certainty or truth you promote. I think it to be more of a failing to actually examine the limits of those concepts in greater detail. That you continue to toss around science in some
supra-human fashion (as in the knowledge somehow being separate from the practitioners or user) is itself telling. Scientific knowledge doesn't just drop on our heads from out of the sky; people "do" science. Ultimately, it's the only way the stuff can make sense to us. The fact is that scientific knowledge (all knowledge, really) is a degree of order, language and values that we impose, and as such, the imposed language ordering and values used to explain phenomena are products that are always open to questioning and updating. There is knowing, but there is no truth.
I can both accept the products of scientific knowledge while at the same time recognizing the profound limits that define what this approach to knowledge can offer. I recognize and respect the fact that this approach can only come through human perception and human consciousness. There is no "special" knowledge out there to access - no matter what you want you want to think. People live life every day without ever knowing what the next moment will bring, so we all navigate our existence within a cloud or profound uncertainty. We can only know things tentatively, but we can never know things absolutely and "truly."