On 31 July 2014 04:43, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 5:51 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Suppose for the sake of argument that in order to be conscious, people >> needed a Descartes-style spirit to be attached to their brains. >> > > Then changes in the Descartes-style spirit changes the material world and > changes in the material world changes the Descartes-style spirit; so why do > you call this thing a "spirit"? What exactly makes it more unmaterial than > an electron or a photon or even a baseball? >
Not necessarily. We could assume consciousness is an epiphenomenon, just along for the ride. A p-zombie would act the same way, by hypothesis. Note that this is all just for the sake of argument, to see where it leads (if anywhere). > > > Then materialism would explain the experiences that this spirit had, but >> not the existence of consciousness itself, which by hypothesis requires >> this supernatural extra. >> > > The sequence of "what explains that?" questions either comes to a end or > it does not. If it does come to a end then we might as well stop with > consciousness because the God hypothesis adds nothing new and is just a > useless complication, therefore we conclude that consciousness is > fundamental and thus after saying that consciousness is the way data feels > like when it is being processed there is simply nothing more that can be > said on the subject. > It's true that explanatory chains have to start and end somewhere, which is why I gave up arguing with Brent, since he claimed (via a circular explanatory diagram) that he doesn't think this is so. I'm not sure where you got God from, though. So if we stop with consciousness, and consciousness is data being processed, then we need to take seriously any consequences of this, which takes us back to comp, the UDA and so on (unless we can prove otherwise). > > On the other hand if the sequence of "what explains that? questions never > comes to a end then the next element in the sequence is obviously "what > explains God?". Either way the God hypothesis adds nothing. > > >> I can't comment on that, "comp" means whatever Bruno wants it to mean, >>> and that changes from day to day. >>> >> >> > Here I respectfully disagree, he seems more or less consistent to me, >> give or take the odd ambiguity due to English not being his first language. >> > > If Bruno is not fluent in English then he has no business inventing a new > English word. Bruno claims that "comp" is just short for computationalism > but I don't think even Bruno really believes that, if he did he could avoid > all this by simply adding a few extra letters but he knows he can't do that > because he is constantly saying things like "according to comp X is true" > when computationalism is saying nothing of the sort. Therefore Bruno has > no choice but to invent a new word in a unfamiliar language that means > whatever he wants it to mean. > Well, he gives the arguments for why X is true according to comp. That is, it's a consequence of computationalism, not one of its assumptions. > > >> > But I have to admit that I have yet to grok comp in its entirety. >> > > That is to your credit because there is no there there to grok > Eventually I hope to grok that for myself, if it is in fact the case. -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
