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

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

#631

Post by d0mine »

zetalyrae wrote: post #11

The first point (analogizing the hard problem to the reaction to Darwinism) is a very common rhetorical move: an analogy and history of ideas, which is convincing to many people, but what does it prove? > A philosophical zombie would claim to know what subjective experience is; otherwise, it would be empirically distinguishable from a human. Chalmers’s point is that the existence of the hypothetical, irreducible cons…

“Either or” is too extreme. Both can be true at the same time even if at different levels of abstraction eg a table and atoms it consists of may exist at the same time. Depending on the task different levels of abstraction may be useful. It is ridiculous to claim that a table doesn’t exist just because we can prove it is made of atoms (or strings excitation—doesn’t matter here)

On the other hand, "consciousness" concept might be as much useful for modeling thinking as “the four elements” for describing anatomy (not useful at all)—and we create better models eventually.

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

#632

Post by pixl97 »

qsera wrote: post #551
mjburgess wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, no I am not. They're properties of the world which consciousness measures. A mountain is painted in the ink of a photo, the mountain is not an illusion. You're focused only on the measurement, and not what is measured.

The point is that all existence is built on top of consciousness. I understand your difficulty. It is hard to imagine the universe disappearing if all consciousness cease to exist the next second. But is that really hard? Don't everything in your dreams disappear when you wake up? Let me ask another question. Can you differentiate between a consciousness observing a universe, and a consciousness with a sensation of a…

>The point is that all existence is built on top of consciousness.

Then if all conscious beings (lets say humans are the only ones for sake of argument) die, then existence ends. Simply put, this does not happen because consciousness occurs in a substrate.

Take the thought experiment of the boltzmann brain, it still requires the assembly of probabilistic entropy to occur, it is not nothing.

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

#633

Post by dreamlayers »

mistidoi wrote: post #600

I found this article really frustrating. The author takes a blurry position between non-dualist naturalists like John Searle and eliminativists like Dennett and the Churchlands and doesn't seem to engage with them at all, much less probing into the issues with those views that might motivate people like Chalmers and Nagel. It crescendos with a hand-wave: > The mind is the behavior of the brain, properly described in…

I find this subject frustrating. People actually know very little about it, yet they end up telling and debating complex stories about it.

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

#634

Post by smokedetector1 »

argee wrote: post #624
smokedetector1 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry my comment was unclear. My point is, the process of “making up a narrative” does seem to imply a subjective experience, doesnt it? My point is, the existence of the experiencer can’t be denied. Even if the experience itself is some kind of illusion, theres no coherent way to say that there is no entity having an experience. Every attempt to do so ends up implying the existence of an experiencer (the one having…

I think you've missed my point, which was about epistemology and dogma, given that you continue to repeat the dogma in question. Did you read my comment at all? To engage with my argument you'd have to confront the idea that your current assumptions will continue to be "the truth" hitherto, which it doesn't look like you've attempted to address at all. To continue the ancient Greeks' mirror analogy, this would be aki…

I think youve missed the point which is that your objections still imply an observer. Your rudeness is unnecessary and I wont be continuing this conversation. Have a good day.

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

#635

Post by pixl97 »

JCTheDenthog wrote: post #508
visarga wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "you" could be a program running on a computer If you are in a sim, then the sim execution is an expensive process, it produces heat and consumes energy. If you are in reality, a material body, then keeping alive also consumes energy. The debates about consciousness often assume a cost-free regime, a platonic perspective. I think this is wrong. We have much to gain thinking about how a process provides its own ener…

>If you are in a sim, then the sim execution is an expensive process, it produces heat and consumes energy. If simulation theory (or similar ideas) are real, it's entirely possible that the "real world" running the simulation operates on completely different physical laws than the simulation.

Again, this is unknowable if the creator of the simulation doesn't want you to figure out it's a simulation. Simulation or not, this is our reality, and our consciousness would be a simulation inside that simulation. Instead of a weird wobbly space universe, we'd just have an execution platform universe.

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

#636

Post by JCTheDenthog »

pixl97 wrote: post #635
JCTheDenthog wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you are in a sim, then the sim execution is an expensive process, it produces heat and consumes energy. If simulation theory (or similar ideas) are real, it's entirely possible that the "real world" running the simulation operates on completely different physical laws than the simulation.

Again, this is unknowable if the creator of the simulation doesn't want you to figure out it's a simulation. Simulation or not, this is our reality, and our consciousness would be a simulation inside that simulation. Instead of a weird wobbly space universe, we'd just have an execution platform universe.

I agree completely, and I think most debates/arguments around simulation theory and similar ideas are largely pointless, though they can at least be fun sometimes.

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

#637

Post by [deleted] »

argee wrote: post #624
smokedetector1 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry my comment was unclear. My point is, the process of “making up a narrative” does seem to imply a subjective experience, doesnt it? My point is, the existence of the experiencer can’t be denied. Even if the experience itself is some kind of illusion, theres no coherent way to say that there is no entity having an experience. Every attempt to do so ends up implying the existence of an experiencer (the one having…

I think you've missed my point, which was about epistemology and dogma, given that you continue to repeat the dogma in question. Did you read my comment at all? To engage with my argument you'd have to confront the idea that your current assumptions will continue to be "the truth" hitherto, which it doesn't look like you've attempted to address at all. To continue the ancient Greeks' mirror analogy, this would be aki…

[deleted]

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

#638

Post by pixl97 »

nemomarx wrote: post #379
smackeyacky wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t we already work out they are similar in their spectral output to the Sun, enough to conclude they are the same kind of thing? And observing their movements makes them far away. Do each of us have to do the experiments again to validate that we know what they are?

Something could only appear to be similar to the Sun. We have to trust in observation at some level for all of those experiments to be valid, basically, which means first believing that you're conscious and second believing that you can experience reality and so on from there. You can never really disprove that some malicious entity is just making you think you're seeing the stars and talking to people, if you want t…

[dead]

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

#639

Post by kodt »

delecti wrote: post #576
mikk14 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this is discussed by actual serious philosophers, but consider the issue of "mind uploading." I have seen very staunch monists seriously discussing that, if you were to produce a complete digital copy of your brain -- copying any possible information to the most minute synapse -- then you effectively "uploaded" yourself into a computer and can live a digital life. These people believe this while at th…

Are there people who say that digitizing one's conscious moves their mind? If I upload a file from my computer to to a server, the file still exists on my computer (until deleted). I've never thought that a mind upload would work any differently. I think that many who talk about consciousness digitization handwave away what happens to their body/brain afterwards, but I don't necessarily think that means they think th…

depends if you do a copy paste or cut and paste

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

#640

Post by pixl97 »

Xcelerate wrote: post #380
prmph wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Consciousness the the fundamental reality; it is the only thing we know for sure. > I know for sure what I am perceiving This reflects my view. And I’ve always found it mildly amusing that beings I cannot prove to myself are perceiving attempt to convince me that I’m not perceiving, when that’s exactly what I’m maximally sure of. Imagine arguing with an LLM designed to convince you that you’re not real. It would be…

> It would be weird, wouldn’t it?

That depends how it tried and what influences the LLM had on the outside world.

For example if the LLM could drug you, either by convincing you to take drugs, or trick you into doing it, then convincing you that you're not real becomes monumentally easy. Derealization can be a monumentally profound/terrifying experience to your psyche.

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