On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 6:44 PM, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 6:36 PM, Russell Standish <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > physicalism, which essentially states that consciousness is nothing more >> than an epiphenomenon, that physical processes and relationships suffice to >> fully and completely explain everything. > > > It's almost a tautology that physical processes and relationships can > explain anything that can be explained, because any explanation corresponds > to a physical arrangement of neurons in various physical states. Obviously > nothing can explain a brute fact because no explanation exists, and I think > that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed is > (probably) a brute fact. To put it another way, I don't think that all > sequences of "what caused that?" questions go on forever, I think some of > them terminate. > > >> > John argues that consciousness has real world consequences in terms of >> being evolutionary selected > > > Either that or consciousness is the side effect of something else that has > real world consequences; if Darwin was right it can't be any other way. > You keep saying this. You also like to say things like "consciousness is how information feels when it's being processed". I like that idea. It shows that you can indeed consider alternatives to the binary choice above. In this case evolution created a very complex scenario for conscious to feel when being processed. But it did not create consciousness, nor does this falsify Darwin's theory in any way. On the other hand, if evolution created consciousness then it's fair to ask what its evolutionary advantage is (as opposed to just having philosophical zombies). Antonio Damásio tried this route, but it's very unconvincing because he just assumes that consciousness = model of self. Philosophical zombies can (maybe) have a model of self without being conscious. Are these guys conscious? http://creativemachines.cornell.edu/emergent_self_models Telmo. > > John K Clark > > > > -- > 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.
