On 19 Sep 2014, at 10:42, Telmo Menezes wrote:
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.
Assuming computationalism we cannot explain where the numbers or the
combinators comes from, but assuming the numbers, then we have the
combinators and all computations, and we know, as we assume
computationalism, that consciousness has to be related to those
computations, notably those who can know that they are sigma_1
complete. For them, the axiomatic definition of knowledge is satisfied
by the definition provides by Theaetetus, and, contrary to what Gerson
says, the machine knowing is not a propositional attidude. Similarly,
consciousness appears as an instinctive bet/induction in the existence
of oneself and some neighbors. An unconscious faith in a reality, that
we cannot justify or communicate, yet can't doubt (even with salvia!)
Maybe it's a still unknown property of matter. Maybe matter itself
is a dream of computations, like Bruno suggests.
Like I argue is necessary if you take the digital mechanist idea
seriously enough, I think.
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".
We never know. But some explanation are simpler, and fits more facts
than others, and there are many criteria, not always compatible to
favorize a theory or another. But some theory defends themselves by
putting problem under the rug, and indeed unable to say "I don't
know", if not frightening students who would dare to tackle the
subjects that *they* find "uninteresting. Academy is better than
anything else, but is in practice not immune to the (invalid) argument-
per-authority.
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.
It is the least we can say. The very existence of fundamentalism comes
from the separation between science and religion, which lead to
nonsense in BOTH science and religion.
In fact when you do not separate science from religion, you get the
paths toward the good and the means to accomplish them. When you
separate science and religion, you get the fundamentalism and the
destructve technologies.
"Beware that, when fighting monsters..."
Yes.
Bruno
Telmo.
Brent
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