On 12/8/2013 4:33 PM, LizR wrote:
On 9 December 2013 05:52, John Clark <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 4:38 PM, LizR <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
> Could you name a materialistic theory that explains consciousness
Consciousness is the feeling information has when it is being processed; if
conscious is fundamental, that is to say it comes at the end of a long line of
"what
is that?" questions, then after saying that there is just nothing more that
can be
said about it. And hey, it's just as good as a billion other consciousness
theories.
Ah yes, Max Tegmark's "theory".These aren't theories, is the problem. One needs a
rigorous definition of what consciousness is, to start with,
I think that's wrong. Consciousness is defined ostensively: What you're thinking as you
read this and similar experiences. Of course you can define something in a model and say
this is going to turn out to be consciousness in my model. This is what Bruno tries to
do, he takes computation by the UD and then says proving theorems of arithmetic are
beliefs and other conscious experiences must be in there somewhere. But it's not that
much more complete than the one you credit to Tegmark (I think it far preceded him).
and then a theory that explains all its observed features, and makes testable
predictions. Otherwise all one has is a jumble of words.
And the real gold standard is that it makes a successful and surprising
prediction.
Brent
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