On 12 March 2015 at 21:15, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 1:18 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 3/10/2015 4:35 PM, LizR wrote: >> >> On 11 March 2015 at 08:30, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> 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? >>> >> >> Yes of course they could. That isn't at issue, as far as I know. >> >> >>> And if they were wrong, wouldn't they be equally wrong whether or not >>> primary materialism (whatever that means) were true. >>> >>> Yes, that was my point. >> >> Primary materialism is the theory that there is no deeper explanation >> for existence (or consciousness, specifically, in this discussion) than the >> fact that matter exists. In discussions on this list "primary materialism" >> is often abbreviated to just "materialism", presumably to save time and >> wear and tear on the fingers / keyboards of those involved. >> >> >> I seems to me there's confusion between falsifying the theory that matter >> is primary and falsifying a materialistic theory of consciousness. >> > Yes, exactly. The materialistic theory of consciousness is the basis of comp, for example, but comp leads to the deduction that materialism can't be the final explanation. -- 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.
