Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

noemamag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

721–730 of 822 posts

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#721

Post by lo_zamoyski »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #466

Some good reminders in this article. However, while I, too, reject Cartesian dualism, some of the claims of the author need correction... "Many felt confounded or degraded by the idea of sharing a family tree with donkeys. [...] Amid the current cultural backlash against progressive ideas, today’s debate on consciousness reflects our human fears of belonging to the same family as inanimate matter and losing our dear,…

I failed to mention a great recent English language resource on the topic, namely, Ed Feser's "Immortal Souls" [0]. For broader philosophy of science context, his recent "Aristotle's Revenge" [1] will serve as a good companion read.

[0] https://a.co/d/03xoxiaY

[1] https://a.co/d/00oSQ64j

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#722

Post by nothinkjustai »

> From a non-dual perspective either nobody is a p-zombie or everybody is a p-zombie.

Why? It’s perfectly sane to just treat claims as is. You claim you’re a p-zombie, than you are. Claim you are conscious, than you are same as me. Claim you aren’t and you get no moral affordances, let’s see how long you last with that tactic.

Clankers are not conscious, good luck convincing me otherwise idiot.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#723

Post by qsera »

mjburgess wrote: post #689
qsera wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those that are more useful. Oh it is useful. It answers questions like "why do reality exist". "who created it", "What was before it"...Or may be I should say it does not really answer them but makes the questions irrelevant. Just like how earth centric hypothesis posed questions like "Why is everything circling the earth and why is earth special", and heliocentric hypothesis made that irrelevant by proving that it…

It makes the questions incoherent. This isnt a benefit, it's a sign that the semantics you're giving language fail to actually model its meaning. The position isnt self-consistent, unless you engage in the typical idealist peformance of pretending not to know what these questions mean. In the end, idealism is defeated by the very implausibility of this performance. The idealist, is implicated in the rich ontology of…

>what was here before I existed?

This is no longer meaningful. It would be like a thing inside a painting on a paper asking "what was here on this paper, before this paper existed"?

Space and time are illusions of consciousness. It does not make sense to ask "where", when there is no space, and "when", when there is no time.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#724

Post by H8crilA »

Tier2Capital wrote: post #526
H8crilA wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assure you that I am not conscious (and a human, not an LLM). Therefore at least partial solipsism is true.

what do you mean youre not conscious?

I'm trolling, figured some people would actually spend time thinking about this. Wasn't wrong :)

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#725

Post by pixl97 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #717
pixl97 wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I simply don’t buy that my consciousness comes from my physical brain, it seems more likely that my brain comes from my consciousness Cool, I'll give you some drugs that alter the physical reactions in your brain and turn off your consciousness, then tell me all about it.... oh.

If I mess with the voltages of a CPU board, it can mess up the software. Do you conclude from that that software is electrical? You should conclude that it runs on an electrical substrate, but not that the software itself is electrical.

> Do you conclude from that that software is electrical?

Yes, yes it is, unless you have some biological software or an analog computer with software to show me.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#726

Post by qsera »

pixl97 wrote: post #673
qsera wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then if all conscious beings (lets say humans are the only ones for sake of argument) die, then existence ends. The starting idea is that there can be no definition of existence other than "something a consciousness can detect (directly or indirectly)". So if there is no consciousness, there is no existence. But I think there could be a difference between death of all conscious beings, and consciousness itself disap…

>The starting idea is that there can be no definition of existence Yea, I don't subscribe to this line of thinking as consciousness had to happen before existence. Kinda messy when you think about it. >Consciousness could also be something that evolution found a way to tap into. This, at least how it's written makes consciousness something like the electromagnetic field that exists everywhere. For example if I said "…

>consciousness had to happen before existence

Concepts like "before", "happen" does not have a meaning in this context? Did the left part of a circle happened before the right part?

In a similar way, consciousness and existence could be part of the same structure that exists outside of time and space. It is not meaningful to say that one part existed before the other. It is not even meaningful to say that this structure had always existed.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#727

Post by qsera »

pixl97 wrote: post #691
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what if you are the only conscious being?

Then I'm fucking up by not surrounding myself with all the hottest women and wealth.

> not surrounding myself with all the hottest women and wealth.

You are, in some reality.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#728

Post by DangitBobby »

mikk14 wrote: post #475
energy123 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing you need to solve because definitions of words are subjective social constructs that are neither correct or incorrect. Definitions are axioms. You have chosen to define the word "you" to require continuity, under some rubric. By that definition, a copy of you isn't really you. That's correct under your axiom , but it is incorrect under other axioms. The functionalists I am trying to channel in this co…

Sorry, perhaps I just don't know what "monism" truly means, I admit my ignorance, but if we just limit ourselves to the mind-body problem, I just meant that a dualist position considers the mind as separate from the body, and monism rejects that. The functionalist point of view you propose doesn't seem to be to be useful at all in this context. Let's backtrack. The original example I provided you when you asked about…

I pretty much agree with your position. The thought occurs to me, though, that via this same definition we die every time we go to sleep or are out under anesthesia. Maybe even every moment is a tiny death and rebirth. The real difference between these events and being "teleported" is that you do them without fear (maybe some fear for anesthesia) and without being any worse off for the lack of continuity.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#729

Post by jatora »

jwilliams wrote: post #111

Rovelli is arguing (I think) that we need to fundamentally view consciousness as a natural phenomenon - albeit one that is extremely complex and poorly understood. So we ditch the philosophical puzzle and focus on the reality we can perceive and reason on. The problem is that consciousness is a philosophical invention (and a slippery one at that). We're in the wrong frame. If you accept consciousness is a thing you e…

[flagged]

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#730

Post by jatora »

prmph wrote: post #300
jwilliams wrote: post #111

Rovelli is arguing (I think) that we need to fundamentally view consciousness as a natural phenomenon - albeit one that is extremely complex and poorly understood. So we ditch the philosophical puzzle and focus on the reality we can perceive and reason on. The problem is that consciousness is a philosophical invention (and a slippery one at that). We're in the wrong frame. If you accept consciousness is a thing you e…

Consciousness the the fundamental reality; it is the only thing we know for sure. I know for sure what I am perceiving. Forget about if it is a simulation or not: it is still what I am perceiving. There is nothing else I can be sure of. So you are correct that it is, in some sense, un-explorable. However, if the above is the reason, then nothing else is explorable also; you cannot prove that we are not in a simulatio…

[dead]
Post reply on HN