On 12 Jan 2014, at 06:21, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 12 January 2014 15:12, Colin Geoffrey Hales
<cgha...@unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
RE: arXiv: 1401.1219v1 [quant-ph] 6 Jan 2014
Consciousness as a State of Matter
Max Tegmark, January 8, 2014
Hi Folk,
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
I confess that after 12 years of deep immersion in science’s
grapplings with
consciousness, the blindspot I see operating is so obvious and so
pervasive
and so incredibly unseen it beggars belief. I know it’s a long way
from
physics to neuroscience (discipline-wise). But surely in 2014 we
can see it
for what it is. Can’t they (Tegmark and ilk) see that the so-called
“science of consciousness” is
· the “the science of the scientific observer”
· trying to explain observing with observations
· trying to explain experience with experiences
· trying to explain how scientists do science.
· a science of scientific behaviour.
· Descriptive and never explanatory.
· Assuming that the use of consciousness to confirm ‘laws
of nature’
contacts the actual underlying reality...
· Assuming there’s only 1 scientific behaviour and never
ever ever
questioning that.
· Assuming scientists are not scientific evidence of
anything.
· Assuming that objectivity, in objectifying something out of
subjectivity, doesn’t evidence the subjectivity at the heart of it.
· Confusing scientific evidence as being an identity with
objectified phenomena.
2500 years of blinkered paradigmatic tacit presupposition....now
gives us
exactly what happened for phlogiston during the 1600s. A new ‘state
of
matter’? Bah! Phlogiston!!! Of course not! All we have to do is
admit we
are actually inside the universe, made of whatever it is made of,
getting a
view from the point of view of being a bit of it...... grrrrrrrr.
The big
mistake is that thinking that physics has ever, in the history of
science,
ever ever ever dealt with what the universe is actually made of, as
opposed
to merely describing what a presupposed observer ‘sees it looking
like’. The
next biggest mistake is assuming that we can’t deal with what the
universe
is actually made of, when that very stuff is delivering an ability to
scientifically observe in the first place.
These sorts of expositions have failed before the authors have even
lifted a
finger over the keyboard. Those involved don’t even know what the
problem
is. The problem is not one _for_ science. The problem is _science
itself_
... _us_.
Sorry. I just get very very frustrated at times. I have written a
book on
this and hopefully it’ll be out within 6 months. That’ll sort them
out.
Happy new year!
I'm a lump of dumb matter arranged in a special way and I am
conscious,
I think this is misleading. Are you really a dumb of matter? I think
that your body can be a lump of dumb matter, but that *you* are a
person, using that dumb of matter as a vehicle and mean to manifest
yourself. In principle (assuming comp of course), you can change your
body every morning (and as you have often explain your self, we do
change our "lump of dumb matter" every n number of years.
so I don't see why another lump of dumb matter arranged in
a special way might not also be conscious.
But here I agree with your point, although it is less misleading to
consider the person as some immaterial entity (like a game, a program,
memories, personality traits, ... no need of magical soul with wings)
owning your body.
If the human would born directly fixed inside a car, they would also
believe that their car is part of their body. Nature provides us with
a body at birth, and that might be the reason why we tend to identify
ourselves with our bodies, but comp, which I think you accept, shows
the limit of this identification, imo.
Eventually, the UDA shows that at a very fundamental level, bodies are
only statistical machine's percepts, or statistical relative numbers
percepts.
What is it about that idea
that you see as not only wrong, but ridiculous?
It is not what I am saying here, to be sure.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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