101–110 of 155 posts
Everybody keeps getting the Schrödinger's cat experiment 100% backwards. It was created by Schrödinger to highlight how absurd the interpretation of quantum mechanics was at that time. Since then, even the Copenhagen interpretation basically says that the "observation" happens already at the Geiger counter: "Analysis of an actual experiment found that measurement alone (for example by a Geiger counter) is sufficient…
If you believe in the existence of consciousness, what would prove to you that your qualitative experience is fundamentally no different to the state of a Turing machine? What would persuade you that what is called "consciousness" is of no special interest? OP states that "[consciousness is] a situation where a root cause is murky and escapes testability", which is simply special pleading. If you cannot test your hyp…
Some people get so used to the idea that science explains everything, that they became completely blind to opposing views. It's hardwired deeply into their brains. That's how I explain to myself this kind of blindness I witness in every discussion about consciousness. Why do I feel pain when the atoms in my brain are in a specific configuration? Current state-of-the-art physical models can't possibly explain that. An…
It's not that we can only discover things via science. It's just that we shouldn't trust discoveries made via flashes of insight, clairvoyance, intuition, guesswork, divine inspiration, etc.
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It occurred to me at one point - the fact that you and I even try to argue the point that consciousness exists, is evidence to outside observers that we are not philosophical zombies. (Which leads to an amusing, or perhaps disturbing, question about the people who scoff at the concept) Also, it may not be science but it is still philosophy and extremely important. Science is based on philosophy too.
It sounds like you're misunderstanding the concept of a zombie. Zombie simonster is physically identical to simonster. On Twin Earth he is also sitting in front of his computer talking about consciousness, and he also emphatically believes that he is conscious. The only difference between zombie simonster and me is that, when zombie simonster says he is conscious, he is wrong. David Chalmers discusses this possibilit…
EDIT: Ok I think I see a counterargument. Perhaps belief in consciousness is purely physical, and actual consciousness is just perception of this belief, and a perception of choice in acting on it, whereas our actions are deterministic. Seems like a strange scheme, but I suppose it's possible.
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Neuroscience hasn't been able to produce a single theory on the origin of consciousness, unless one accepts "it emerges from neural activity" as an explanation. Consciousness appears to be the ultimate mystery. There is something very fundamental about it that we don't understand at all. This makes a lot of people uncomfortable, especially the type of people that would like to turn Science into a religion. We just do…
I'm thinking that consciousness, as it stands right now, is associated with a lot of things that should and ought to be reduced to mere sensation. Consciousness is associated with thought, emotion, and sensation. Yet as neuroscience progresses, I think we will eventually functionalize thought, emotion, and sensation as biological processes. Some may argue that our mental processes are fundamentally differently percei…
That, my friend, is your little divinity. Keep the faith!
OK, what's your definition of consciousness? Most animals, even single celled, need to have some way to handle the separation between "me" and "the rest of the world". I look at say my cat - it definitely has this concept somewhere in its brain circuitry. What human has is just more neurons.
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And what is wrong with 'it emerges from neural activity'? really, it is quite an adequate solution for a species with our current level of philosophical and scientific understanding. That doesn't mean it is right, and doesn't discount potentially other options such as something that, despite my own strong scientific background, I have a fondness for through buddhism and meditation - and which is mentioned in the orig…
And what is wrong with 'it emerges from neural activity'? Nothing terribly wrong, but consider this: a) images on the television emerge from electrical activity in the television set; b) break the television and the the images cease. If we didn't already know that televisions receive signals , we might suppose that one day, after our science had progressed far enough, we might understand how televisions produce all t…
But we can agree that the images on the TV screen are caused by the configuration of physical matter making up the TV, just like our consciousness is caused by the physical matter making up our brain.
Granted, people have subjective (i.e. feel-happy) reasons to throw out Occam's razor and suppose we have e.g. an eternal soul, but the search for the soul-receiver in the brain will just give you fits (not so bold prediction: they'll never find it, because it doesn't exist).
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Some people get so used to the idea that science explains everything, that they became completely blind to opposing views. It's hardwired deeply into their brains. That's how I explain to myself this kind of blindness I witness in every discussion about consciousness. Why do I feel pain when the atoms in my brain are in a specific configuration? Current state-of-the-art physical models can't possibly explain that. An…
Science is not an opinionated entity that "explains" things. Rather, it is a method for learning more about the world around us while attempting to minimize influence from bias and other sources of human error. It's not that we can only discover things via science. It's just that we shouldn't trust discoveries made via flashes of insight, clairvoyance, intuition, guesswork, divine inspiration, etc.
If we can't trust discoveries through non-scientific means, than it seems to me you are saying we can only discover things via science. So if I have continuing experience of something so far yet to be confined within an ordered model of falsifiable hypotheses, what am I to do?
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I don't think the physics is missing - it should be all there, according to my confirmation. There are numerous examples around us. Waves propagate themselves owing to the very energy inside of them. Gravity is energy that is produced by the activities of everything in the world - the stress energy tensor says the same thing, but people don't seem to really recognize what it means.
well, gravity is actually distortions, curves in spacetime, not something carrying energy, as far as I know.
OK, what's your definition of consciousness? Most animals, even single celled, need to have some way to handle the separation between "me" and "the rest of the world". I look at say my cat - it definitely has this concept somewhere in its brain circuitry. What human has is just more neurons.
If single-cell organism is conscious, and each cell of our body is a "single cell", it immediately follows from here that "our" consciousness is in fact consciousness of a certain, very specialized, cell which resides somewhere in our body. Maybe it lives in the brain, maybe elsewhere, but it's a single cell nonetheless.
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If single-cell organism is conscious, and each cell of our body is a "single cell", it immediately follows from here that "our" consciousness is in fact consciousness of a certain, very specialized, cell which resides somewhere in our body. Maybe it lives in the brain, maybe elsewhere, but it's a single cell nonetheless.
It doesn't follow - the type of consciousness we experience could be different. Though if you were saying that it's absurd to call single cell 'conscious' in the sense that human brains are, then I agree.