On 9/24/2014 2:52 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 6:44 PM, John Clark <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 6:36 PM, Russell Standish <[email protected]
<mailto:[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).
No, the proposition is that consciousness is just a necessary concomitant of
intelligence. Evolution can select for intelligent behavior and so produced
consciousness. This supports Damasio's idea, since intelligent behavior requires that one
hypothesize future events in which one participates. So it requires a model of self.
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.
Per Bruno's definition of "conscious", I think not, at least not if the model of self were
used in decision making.
Brent
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