On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 2:24 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 22 September 2014 12:07, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote: > >> On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 1:34 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> 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. >
Ok, but I would say that this happened because we learned more things about matter. We learned about its building blocks, how they can be combined in a complex carbon-based chemistry and how certain stochastic processes can create pockets of complexity like we have on earth. This is a full model based on stuff that we can observe and then reason about, > Similarly there *may* be no special ingredient needed to turn bundles of > sensations into consciousness. > Indeed, but nobody knows what "bundles of sensations" even mean, let alone how to measure such a thing. Se we are in a very different situation with this one. Zero progress has been made after centuries of science, and I would say that this is a clue that we are missing some fundamental insight that might make the rest of the edifice crumble. > > I agree that materialism has magic matter, however that isn't in itself an > argument against an eliminativist explanation of consciousness. > I agree. My problem is with the lack of falsifiability of such a claim, and where it becomes apparent that strong materialism is a religious belief. It was this realisation that made me an agnostic (while previously I was a strong atheist). > Otherwise it could be used as an argument for elan vital, or souls, or > anything else. > This is too binary. There are other options between rejecting emergentism and embracing souls. > 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. > Magic in the sense that it pre-exists everything else without any further explanation on its origin. It exists without cause. I don't believe we can get rid or magic in this sense, I'm just saying that it is useful to point out where the magic is in each model. > >> 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 > It is reasonable to assume these things iff you also assume that intelligence=consciousness. > - 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
