Consciousness is not amenable to science_post_10

Company

Ru

Company

Ru

Consciousness
is not amenable to science

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For example, Konstantin Anokhin, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has introduced the principles of GIN (Global Integrative Network), FUS (Functional Systems), and NEM (Network Memory) to work on that theory.

Once the concept of mental phenomena emerged, elements of the concept of consciousness finally began to be used in science. While classical cognitive science did not account for the concept of consciousness, modern cognitive science has made it the object of its study.

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It’s true that "classical" cognitive science ignored the fact that consciousness and the brain are connected, along with the fact that psychology is linked, for example, to neurobiology. So a new discipline, cognitive neurobiology, emerged, and it uses brain imaging techniques, among other things. Cognitive neurobiology tries to associate so-called mental phenomena with the physiology of the brain.

According to him, it is enough that the conditions he describes in the three principles are met (appear) and that these conditions are repeated millions of times in the course of evolution, which would give rise to a complex network having the properties of psyche and consciousness. This statement seems doubtful to us.

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The whole is not the sum of its constituent parts. Understanding the biological processes in the brain, even at the cellular level, does not provide the basis for a logical transition to explaining the way its "neural network" of nerve cells, synapses, axons, dendrites, and other things works, nor does it provide an explanation of psyche, mind, thinking, or consciousness.

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But is a general theory even possible? Can we put together data from various scientific disciplines that make up biology (those that study the brain) and a whole plethora of scientific disciplines that make up "cognitive science" — with all their hypotheses, data, experiments — and create something coherent and worthy that would allow describing brain function from both biological and cognitive perspectives? We think not.

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People who explore the general subject of mind, thinking, and brain have to look for ways to study consciousness outside of science. Consciousness is not amenable to science.

But it is presumed that adding another unknown, i.e., consciousness, to the unknowns that are already there today — and the brain still remains one — is supposed to help solve the equation consisting of nothing but unknowns. Once again, we are faced with the question whether facts about parts of the whole — which are the brain, thinking, and consciousness — can help get the whole picture?

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Some scientists are considering bringing biology and cognitive science together to create a general theory that explains brain function from biological and cognitive perspectives.

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In fact, other things need to be studied. For example, the methods and principles of thinking or the analogies that arise when solving problems "the way the brain does." We (or rather Jerry Fodor) propose the notion of a "language of thought", a kind of brain’s own "computing" tool that should be studied separately and by quite different means than computer modeling, neurobiological methods, etc., that do not and cannot provide results.

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