Now that I think about it, i was wrong; the steam analogy doesn't work. Steam has observable properties, yet your own private conscious experience doesn't. anyway, i have yet to view your other vids. perhaps I will in the future, so we can resume our drunken symposium on philosophy of mind.
sounds good to me!( 1 year ago by blueadept111)
sounds good to me!
Nobody takes ...( 1 year ago by NoumenalSoup)
Nobody takes dualism seriously? Cite?
one would have to ...( 1 year ago by clockworkhorrorshow)
one would have to be deaf to not know this. cite what? i'll cite the century. that's enough.
You hear a lot of ...( 1 year ago by NoumenalSoup)
You hear a lot of philosophy, then? I read it. I guess that's what makes us different, besides your anti-intellectualism.
...( 1 year ago by clockworkhorrorshow)
Anti-intellectualism? I doubt it. You've been reading too much Morris Berman. Substance Dualism is a mistaken position. There is no evidence that the nature of "mind substance" is not measurable in space-time. Show me something immaterial. It can't be done.
No, I have not been ...( 1 year ago by NoumenalSoup)
No, I have not been reading any Morris Berman. I've been reading philosophy, metamathematics, and science, so I guess I lose. PS show me material substance, cutie.
Talking is ...( 1 year ago by qwrus)
Talking is consequence of brain activity. So, if the non-physical does not affect the brain, how could you possibly come to _talk_ about your "non-physical" experiences, like pain and emotion?
(that was in ...( 1 year ago by qwrus)
(that was in response to blueadept111 talking about epiphenomenalism)
A chatterbot can ...( 1 year ago by blueadept111)
A chatterbot can talk about pain and emotion without experiencing pain or emotion.
Ok, I guess you ...( 1 year ago by qwrus)
Ok, I guess you missed my point.
My question is: how are you able to express your own "non-physical" experience if that experience does not affect the physical world in any way? Suppose you say "I feel happy" because you're happy. You wouldn't say you're happy unless you felt it (assuming you're honest). So, there must be some causal link from the non-physical event "feeling happy" to saying "I feel happy". How do you explain that, as an epiphenomenalist?
By the way, the ...( 1 year ago by qwrus)
By the way, the chatterbox isn't a counter-example because it's not expressing anything about the non-physical world, at least not directly. At best, you could argue it's expressing non-physical phenomena indirectly via its programmer, I suppose, but then have the same problem, transferred to the programmer.
The qualitative ...( 1 year ago by blueadept111)
The qualitative experience is an emergent property of the firing of neurons as they implement some specific algorithm. The words that one speaks is a also result of the firing of those same neurons. There's no causal link between what we experience and anything that we say.
that depends on how ...( 1 year ago by blueadept111)
that depends on how complex the chatterbox is, and whether or not you think that a sufficiently complex chatterbox can be distinguishable from a human (and also what the chatterbox is made of, possibly).
Ah ok, I get ya. ...( 1 year ago by qwrus)
Ah ok, I get ya. Our brains talk about emotions as a result of entering particular brain states. These brain states also happen to cause corresponding non-physical experiences. Fair enough.
I think it's worth exploring this more deeply though. Why would our brains talk about emotions being *non-physical*? Where would these physical machines (our brains) get the idea that these emergent properties might exist?
My point being: ...( 1 year ago by qwrus)
My point being: it's one thing for a brain to talk about things (emotions) that happen to correspond to non-physical phenomena. It's another thing altogether for a brain to go that extra step and actually *refer* (with authority) to those non-physical phenomena.
Sorry, ignore that ...( 1 year ago by qwrus)
Sorry, ignore that most recent comment ("My point being...") - it didn't come out right and seems a bit self-contradictory. It sucks that you can't edit posts...
You have to believe ...( 1 year ago by blueadept111)
You have to believe that even if people didn't actually experience any emotions at all, their behavior wouldn't change one iota, because neural processes and physiology is general is deterministic. We talk about emotions with authority for the same reasons that an object falls to the ground: physics. The real question is WHY is our behavior synchonized with an actual first-person consciousness. Beats me! :)
Ok great, I think ...( 1 year ago by qwrus)
Ok great, I think we've got to the bottom of this line of inquiry :)
Out of curiosity, why is it that you think epiphenemena exist in the first place? Why does materialism fail? I recomment "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett. Although he doesn't really fully explain consciousness, he does explain how consciousness *could* have a mechanistic explanation. It's a brilliant book.
The most immediate ...( 1 year ago by blueadept111)
The most immediate experience you have is that you are a conscious being, this is the only thing you can say for certain about the world. The rest of the "objective world" is filtered through our sensory organs. Any philosophy that results in the conclusion that I am not conscious must be incorrect. I'm not sure how your question is different from "how do you know that you are a conscious being in the first place?". What's the alternative?
Tbe alternative is ...( 1 year ago by qwrus)
Tbe alternative is that conscious experiences are just sequences of brain states - nothing more. The apparent non-physical nature of consciousness is an illusion.
You see, your brain ...( 1 year ago by qwrus)
You see, your brain is a computer that models the world, and it models itself within that model. Furthermore, your brain can process its own processing of this model. In other words, your brain can introspect on its own thought processes, and your brain attributes these thought processes to itself. This deep "awareness" of its existence and its own operation seems inherently non-physical to your brain (so it concludes as much). In reality, this awareness is just another brain state.
Maybe I'm not ...( 1 year ago by qwrus)
Maybe I'm not understanding epiphenomenalism, but I don't see what it explains that materialism doesn't. Consciousness is non-physical only in the sense that "capitalism" is non-physical: there's no physical object we can point to and say "we're looking at consciousness right now". But consciousness, like capitalism, is fully realised by physical events and entities. The invokation of some non-physical world is unnecessary and doesn't explain anything.
