Of course it is true. But it may nobe the only kind of consciosness On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 8:24 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 22 September 2014 12:07, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 1:34 AM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Good point Brent and one on which I am also equivocal, which is why I >>> have been keen to tease out whether people are talking about consciousness >>> or the contents of consciousness, and to try to work out whether there is, >>> in fact, any difference. If there isn't, consciousness becomes something >>> like *elan vital*, a supposed magic extra that isn't in fact necessary >>> in explanatory terms - all that exists are "bundles of sensations" (or >>> however Hume phrased it). >>> >> >> But in materialism we still have a magic extra: matter itself. In the MUH >> math is the magic extra. I don't know of any theory that gets rid of all >> "magic" assumptions. >> > > My point was that on this theory, which is basically eliminativism, > consciousness doesn't actually exist, in the same way as there was no > "special ingredient" needed to animate living matter, to distinguish it > from dead matter, it turned out to be "merely" a question of how the > constituents were organised. Similarly there *may* be no special > ingredient needed to turn bundles of sensations into consciousness. > > I agree that materialism has magic matter, however that isn't in itself an > argument against an eliminativist explanation of consciousness. Otherwise > it could be used as an argument for elan vital, or souls, or anything else. > It just means the chain of explanation doesn't appear to end with matter. > > However, I don't agree that the MUH *necessarily* has magic maths, it's > at least possible that maths is a logical necessity. Since it's the only > thing we know of that couldn't be otherwise (except in very abstruse ways, > at least) it is at least a candidate for being fundamental, i.e. the last > link in the chain of explanation. > >> >> In reply to John's comment, we *don't* know that sure that certain types >>> of brain activity cause consciousness, that's a (very reasonable) >>> hypothesis based on the fact the two appear to be always correlated. >>> >> >> We don't even know if they are strongly correlated, because we don't know >> what else is conscious. Is an insect swarm conscious? Is your computer? Are >> galaxies? The problem is that we might be confusing empathy for >> consciousness. It is clear that the more an organism is similar to us the >> more empathy we feel (human > monkey > cat > insect > bacteria, ...). >> > > Right. Hence my use of "appear to be" above. It's very reasonable to > assume that consciousness requires a fairly complex central nervous system, > which somehow generates it - this theory isn't contradicted by any evidence > I know of, except perhaps for NDEs, and has quite a lot of (apparent) > explanatory power. That doesn't make it true, of course. > > -- > 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.
