On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 6:37 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. >
I have more than once said that if Darwin was right (and he was) then the above MUST be true, consciousness MUST be a evolutionary spandrel, but it was still caused by something just as a architectural spandrel was caused by something; in one case the need for intelligent behavior to get genes into the next generation and in the other case the inherent shape of a arch. And neither is more supernatural than a electron or a baseball. > A p-zombie would act the same way > Yes, but if consciousness is a epiphenomenon just along for the ride then a intelligent zombie can not exist. > > It's true that explanatory chains have to start and end somewhere > Not necessarily, the chain of explanations might go on forever and for that reason there may not be a theory of everything, but it is true that the chain comes to a end or it doesn't, and in either case the God hypothesis is of no help whatsoever. > I'm not sure where you got God from, though. > So in a discussion about ultimate reality and the nature of consciousness you talk about a "supernatural extra" but don't understand why I inferred from that you were talking about God. I don't believe you are being entirely candid with me. > > So if we stop with consciousness, and consciousness is data being > processed, then we need to take seriously any consequences of this, > Yes. > which takes us back to comp, the UDA > I'm not interested in the Universal Dance Association and unlike "computationalism" there is no consistent meaning to "comp". As Kim Jones said "Comp is obviously going to mean different things to different people". John K Clark -- 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.
