On 3/10/2015 12:02 PM, LizR wrote:
On 11 March 2015 at 07:18, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 3/10/2015 10:41 AM, John Clark wrote:We routinely judge whether people are conscious or not based on their behavior. Materialist theories generally predict that chemical, electrical, or mechanical> I agree that no falsifiable theory of consciousness can be materialistic. It goes far beyond that, no theory of consciousness of any sort is falsifiable and that's why the subject is such a colossal waste of time.stimulus of the brain will have repeatable effects on the behavior we use to judge consciousness. That's why we rely on anesthesia, get a buzz from alcohol, and relieve epilepsy by surgery. If these didn't work repeatably that would be evidence against material theories of consciousness. Not definitive falsification - but lots of theories don't admit definitive falsification.Bear in mind that materialism in this context is shorthand for primary materialism, about which such theories say nothing.
The statement was not that primary materialism was falsifiable; it was that materialist theories of consciousness (or according to JKC, any theory of consciousness) is not falsifiable.
If I develop a theory of consciousness that consists of statements about neurons and chemicals and ion flux and it predicts when we will see a person behaving in the way we call conscious and when not; even predicting when they will appear sad or happy or angry. Is that not a falsifiable, material theory of consciousness? Couldn't its predictions be empirically wrong? And if they were wrong, wouldn't they be equally wrong whether or not primary materialism (whatever that means) were true.
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