131–140 of 393 posts
I've been studying consciousness recently, specifically the question of how physics can explain it. It turns out there is a Strong Emergence theory, which physics shows only consciousness as proof. I find it a fascinating theory. It is strong emergence if "The whole is other than the sum of its parts."
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Yeah, you need a theory of identity to answer your questions, first year philosophy sutff [1]. 1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/
Exactly. But having a theory of identity is just a declaration that you subscribe to one, not anything meaningful.
My pet theory is that people who think that consciousness is not a hard problem are P-Zombies that can't experience the problem. On a more serious note, as a materialist, I have a really hard time accepting that my self/experience can't be explained materialistically. It's like I have this nice theory of everything, but it fails when I try to apply it to myself. Reminds me of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
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Exactly. But having a theory of identity is just a declaration that you subscribe to one, not anything meaningful.
Umm, no. Having a theory of identity allows you to deduce the answers to your questions.
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> The little guy is a how the brain tries to make sens of itself. That still doesn't explain consciousness itself. Though I think there are many different interpretations and definitions for the word consciousness so we might be talking about a different one. > Without some sens of self any creature would have a pretty difficult time surviving, as it wouldn't be able to tell itself apart from the rest of the world. A…
> That still doesn't explain consciousness itself. Well, which part doesn't it explain? It's pretty conclusive as far as I am concerned. As among other things, you can explain why philosophers would even ask that question in the first place. > A cell just replicates because that's what the molecules in it happen to do And transistors just go on and off, yet people still spend years studying computer science. The exis…
It doesn't explain how consciousness emerges from this. Brains/computers/processes can self-reference or self-explain all they want, that still doesn't say how doing so results in having the actual consciousness you experience.
It's not a trivial thing we're talking about here: there could be a brain just executing logic and making decisions, or there could be that same brain but it's actually aware of that fact, not just aware in the sense that it's processing inputs including the inputs from which it can derive that it itself exists, but aware like you are there and the one in that brain.
The only one that you can know for sure has consciousness is yourself, but can you explain why you have it?
If the brain is an electromechanical process that works on its own, and consciousness is just observing it, then it doesn't need this observer, the process already does the same on its own.
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"What is the difference between the speed and the car?" The car is a thing, like your body. The speed is what the car is doing, like your mind is something your brain is doing. No problem, nothing to accept. My own mind is something I am doing, just as I am typing just now. It should be obvious enough that neither is something you are doing.
I simply don't subscribe to self-causation.
"Causation" is purely interpretation; the universe has nothing to do with that. People invented causation to help understand the universe, but there is nothing fundamental about it. So long as you think you need causation of any kind to understand consciousness, you will get nowhere.
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> What's the connection between my perspective and my body? Your body is doing the experiencing. It is what's perceiving. Your mind is just your body's UI for the world and your body is the user.
I understand that. It's my body that's doing the thinking, and my body that's typing this comment. The question is why there's some sort of proximity that I have with my comment that I don't have to yours.
Because it expresses your thoughts. Your mind has access to them in a way that it does not have access to anyone else's thoughts.
In particular, that access includes memories of having them and taking the actions necessary to post them. If you lost those memories, and your words were not identified as being yours, you would no longer regard them any differently than you do anyone else's (it is not even certain that you would agree with them.)
Note that the above statements involve no presupposition of materialism, but they are consistent with it. In particular, from a physical point of view, it is obvious why one would only have privileged access to one's own thoughts and experiences.
I've been studying consciousness recently, specifically the question of how physics can explain it. It turns out there is a Strong Emergence theory, which physics shows only consciousness as proof. I find it a fascinating theory. It is strong emergence if "The whole is other than the sum of its parts."
I.e., "The speed is other than the sum of the car parts." There is nothing there.
My pet theory is that people who think that consciousness is not a hard problem are P-Zombies that can't experience the problem. On a more serious note, as a materialist, I have a really hard time accepting that my self/experience can't be explained materialistically. It's like I have this nice theory of everything, but it fails when I try to apply it to myself. Reminds me of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
> people who think that consciousness is not a hard problem are P-Zombies that can't experience the problem I've come to the same conclusion. Meaning no disrespect or insult to them, it seems to me that it must be the case that some folks just haven't noticed themselves. P.D. Ouspensky talks about learning to "remember myself" in "In Search of the Miraculous" and describes how it was for him to practice changing from…
Some folks don't enjoy tying themselves in knots. You are absolutely welcome to spend your precious seconds of limited life on it, but it doesn't make you superior, however much you would like to think it does. It's just a choice, like between working and playing.
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The experiences are real, but the homunculus behind your eyes that you think of as yourself is an illusion. In reality there are a bunch of fairly independent processes talking to each other, sharing the perceptions, reacting to them, feedback from those reactions again become a perception, a "narrator" process that often gives running commentary in your mother-tongue, etc. The interaction of those processes feels li…
If I understand correctly, you're referring to the "easy" problem of consciousness, i.e. the "mechanistic" explanation of how a self could be constructed by the brain. That's an interesting question and I think your take is a coherent and plausible one (from a materialistic perspective). However, I still think this doesn't get around the hard problem of why these interactions actually feel like anything. I've never h…