On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 2:24 AM, 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. >
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 [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.
