On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 2:03 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 9/18/2014 4:20 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > > We have no way to measure or detect consciousness, >>> >> >> That certainly isn't true in my case, there is one particular >> consciousness that I'm very very good at detecting, and although I can't >> prove it I have a hunch there is one consciousness you can detect too. >> > > Right, but you can't propose an experiment that tests the claim that you > are conscious or that I am conscious to a third party. > > > I don't know what you do for a living, Telmo, but I sure hope you're not > an anesthesiologist. > I'm not, but I'm glad they exist. Anaesthesia seems to shut down the brain's ability to perceive the environment and to form memories. I have no contention with that. I also have no contention with most of modern science, including (the still very crude) field of neuroscience. I am sure the brain is an asynchronous computer, that intelligence is a property of this computer and so on. The trouble is that none of this seems to explain how consciousness originates. Maybe it's a still unknown property of matter. Maybe matter itself is a dream of computations, like Bruno suggests. The point is, we have no reason to prefer one explanation over the other, they both fit the facts. What disturbs me the most is our growing inability to say "I don't know". I think I know where this comes from. Science has been under attack by several brands of dark ages fundamentalism, so scientists react by becoming more militant. This is a mistake. "Beware that, when fighting monsters..." Telmo. > > > Brent > > -- > 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. > -- 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.
