On 1/28/2011 7:44 PM, Rex Allen wrote:
On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 12:48 PM, Brent Meeker<meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
On 1/27/2011 8:34 PM, Rex Allen wrote:
On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Brent Meeker<meeke...@dslextreme.com>
wrote:
What does "locally" mean in this context? I doubt that consciousness is
strictly local in the physical sense; it requires and world to interact
with.
I would have thought that dreams would be a pretty clear
counter-example to the claim that consciousness requires a world to
interact with...?
Do you think you could have dreams if you had never interacted with the
world?
Yes. Why wouldn't I be able to?
I assume your point is, "Where would the contents of your dreams come from?"
Well, where do the contents of the "external world" come from?
Why do they have to "come from" somewhere?
You haven't answered any questions by introducing the "external
world"...every question you can ask about a dream is still a valid
question for the "external world".
Sure I have. It explains why this interchange is different from a dream.
Isn't it? What am I missing, do you think? What has been
accomplished by introducing the extra metaphysical layer of the
"external world"?
You're missing the intellectual honesty to admit that live your life as
if there is an external world with different people in it and that you
are as certain of the existence of this world as you are of anything
(which is not to say perfectly certain).
If you fall back on your recurring theme "usefulness", then does that
mean that any belief that someone finds useful, they are justified in
attributing ontological significance to this belief?
If the usefulness of science's predictions justifies the belief in
quarks and electrons, then couldn't one equally say that if someone
gets some use out of their religion (say, motivating they and their
countrymen to win a war), then this justifies their belief in God?
Of course patently false beliefs may be useful in limited
circumstances. Science aims at propositions about which there will be
intersubjective agreement that they work, what Stenger calls Point of
View Invariance.
Isn't what's useful dependent on contingent circumstances and personal goals?
On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 7:58 PM, Brent Meeker<meeke...@dslextreme.com>
wrote:
On 1/27/2011 8:34 PM, Rex Allen wrote:
But then the material world we observe doesn't cause our
consciousness. Rather, the underlying emulation substrate (which we
have no access to) causes both the material world and consciousness.
That's possible, or it may be that the emulatated matter causes the emulated
consciousness; in which case we have the same questions about consciousness
we had before assuming the world is an emulation.
But isn't "emulated matter" just patterns in the substrate? So by
saying "emulated matter causes consciousness", aren't you effectively
saying that patterns cause consciousness?
I'm saying that emulated patterns in a particular substrate my cause
consciousness to be an attribute of other patterns in that substrate.
"Seeing patterns" is then a relation between processes in that substrate.
Brent
But then what are patterns? Are patterns that no one sees still
patterns? If so, don't "unseen" patterns exist all around us? Shades
of Searle's wordstar walls and Putnam mappings...
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