On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 3:38 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:
> > > On Friday, March 15, 2013 3:04:24 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote: >> >> No, I think that you haven't understood it, >> > > That's because you are only working with a straw man of me. What is it > that you think that I don't understand? The legacy view is that if you have > many molecular systems working together mechanically, you will naturally > get emergent properties that could be mistaken for teleological entities. > You can't tell the difference between a brain change that seems meaningful > to you and a meaningful experience which causes a brain change. Just > because you feel like you are moving your arm doesn't mean that isn't just > a narrative fiction that serves a valuable evolutionary purpose. > > All of that is fine, in some other theoretical universe. In our universe > however, it can't work. There is no evolutionary purpose for consciousness > or narrative fictions. > The entire field of evolutionary psychology would beg to differ. > The existence of the feeling that you can control your body makes no sense > in universe where control is impersonal and involuntary. There is no > possibility for teleology to even be conceived in a universe of endless > meaningless chain reactions - no basis for proprietary attachment of any > kind. It's circular to imagine that it could be important for an > epiphenomenal self to believe it is phenomenal. Important how? It's like > adding a steering wheel to a mountain. > The fact that you can't conceive of how consciousness could arise from mechanism does not amount to an argument against it. > > >> due to whatever biases have led you to invest so much in your theory - a >> theory which is AFAICT completely unfalsifiable and predicts nothing. >> > > No theory which models consciousness will ever be falsifiable, because > falsifiability is a quality within consciousness. As far as prediction > goes, one of the things it predicts that people who are bound to the > extremes of the philosophical spectrum will be intolerant and misrepresent > other perspectives. They will cling pathologically to unreal abstractions > while flatly denying ordinary experience. > > But you don't have a theory of consciousness, because you assume it. You beg the question. And if you are saying physics is wrong - something you have asserted many times - then it should be possible to construct an experiment that shows that. > Craig > > >> > >> >> >> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com>wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> On Friday, March 15, 2013 1:55:26 PM UTC-4, Terren Suydam wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com>wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> Exactly. It is interesting also in that it seems to be like one of >>>>> those ambiguous images, in that as long as people are focused on one fixed >>>>> idea of reality, they are honestly incapable of seeing any other, even if >>>>> they themselves are sitting on top of it. >>>>> >>>>> >>>> The irony in that statement is staggering. I couldn't satirize you any >>>> better if I tried. >>>> >>> >>> Why, do you think that I have never considered the bottom up model of >>> causation? >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Everything List" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to everything-li...@**googlegroups.com. >>> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.**com. >>> >>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** >>> group/everything-list?hl=en<http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en> >>> . >>> For more options, visit >>> https://groups.google.com/**groups/opt_out<https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out> >>> . >>> >>> >>> >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
