111–120 of 216 posts
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This sounds similar to thought-terminating cliche .
I think the idea of umbrella words is thought-terminating itself.
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Technically though describing consciousness as emergent property of neural functioning is a conjecture, though a very credible one. Unlike turbulence, I only have one case where I have ever seen this consciousness which I am trying to explain as an epiphenomenon, namely my own. All others consciousness (if they even exist which I can't prove directly) are not remotely observed in the same way, they are self reported…
You have some assumption wrt time in there. To say that your consciousness is continuous relies on you trusting your memory of it being so, which, lacking a time machine, is no more provable or observable than others consciousness. Removing the continuity assumption, perhaps even time, kind resolves the duplicate question: both copies (if conscious) should have a memory of conscious you and experience their conscious…
What I perceive as a continuous consciousness is really just a memory of other "I"s who were caused by this brain in the past, left a memory of introspection and then dissipated to be replaced by an new one.
This view has many advantages: it solves the problem of time you elude to, it answers the problem of other minds and the problem of my childhood self. The only problem I can not see solved is the hypothetical molecular level duplicate I mentioned above.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically though describing consciousness as emergent property of neural functioning is a conjecture, though a very credible one. Unlike turbulence, I only have one case where I have ever seen this consciousness which I am trying to explain as an epiphenomenon, namely my own. All others consciousness (if they even exist which I can't prove directly) are not remotely observed in the same way, they are self reported…
Why is dualism's patent absurdity obvious?
Put another way, using our current knowledge of physics and chemistry, we can, on a high level anyway, account for every item in the cause and effect chain from the photons hitting the retina to the arm that a person raises to shade his eyes. There is no room to insert anything into that causal chain let alone something so massively influential that it causes all the body actions that we consider driven by conscious choice. Thus whatever is going on must be made from very ordinary matter.
It's this very fact that makes it such a fun puzzle to look at, very ordinary mater maybe doing something (causing consciousness) that is wildly unexpected.
This is terrible. Is is even an argument? I was reading "Hard problem of consciousness" Wikipedia article this morning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness I'm not sure this adds anything to that. The author seems to want to say that consciousness is primary and that the physical universe, matter, is consciousness somehow, so poof no more mystery. But this doesn't touch the "hard problem" so w…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishads
https://www.amazon.com/Upanishads-Classic-Indian-Spiritualit...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically though describing consciousness as emergent property of neural functioning is a conjecture, though a very credible one. Unlike turbulence, I only have one case where I have ever seen this consciousness which I am trying to explain as an epiphenomenon, namely my own. All others consciousness (if they even exist which I can't prove directly) are not remotely observed in the same way, they are self reported…
I don't see a major problem with the difference between your own and other consciousness. Let's say you are American, and had never travelled abroad. You've only heard tales of France and Japan from others. Do you suspect that other countries have a fundamentally different nature to your own? >So you have the question of why I can only directly perceive that emergent property in exactly one brain and not others You a…
I put you in a duplication chamber. In front of you is a card with the letter "A"
In a neighboring identical empty chamber is card with a "B" on it.
You close your eyes and I pull a big steam-punk lever and an exact copy of you is made in chamber B
When you open your eyes, what letter do you see and why?
"Human conscious experience is wholly a matter of physical goings-on in the body and in particular the brain." Is there any proof of this? The while article seems to hinge on this assumption and then go on from there. We can't see or measure consciousness (brain activity yes, consciousness no). We only experience it. The article makes far to many naive assumptions without any proof.
If consciousness is something fundamentally nonphysical than causality is out the window, because my actions in the world are not actually caused by anything in the world.
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All the proof you need is the existence of psychoactive chemicals, the effectiveness of transcranial magnetic stimulation, evidence from fMRI studies, and the selective personality alterations that occur in cases of localized brain damage.
That's not a proof. One could argue that consciousness is a field phenomena and that our (gross) material brain is a device that interacts with this field. Modify the device and you modify the local effect.
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That's not a proof. One could argue that consciousness is a field phenomena and that our (gross) material brain is a device that interacts with this field. Modify the device and you modify the local effect.
Field phenomena seem awfully physical to me.
"Human conscious experience is wholly a matter of physical goings-on in the body and in particular the brain." Is there any proof of this? The while article seems to hinge on this assumption and then go on from there. We can't see or measure consciousness (brain activity yes, consciousness no). We only experience it. The article makes far to many naive assumptions without any proof.
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/23/the-laws...
And by the way, it clearly worked : we colonized the planet. And now we have arrived at a juncture wherein we are left having to explain our existence when the reality is that our only identifiable purpose is to reproduce. Everything else is incidental.