On 22 Dec 2017 19:57, "Brent Meeker" <[email protected]> wrote:
On 12/22/2017 2:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> >> On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >> >>> So we are told. But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you >>>> brain and tell you what you were thinking? >>>> >>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and >>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along. >>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the >>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by >>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my >>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this >>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie? >>> >> >> Well, you can't lie to the MRI. But otherwise I agree. Except that I >> then >> ask, "What mystery?" If having thoughts, however expressed or detected, >> is >> consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed back to why >> do >> we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible. >> > Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say > that we are both inclined to believe that: > > "Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain states of > consciousness, and it must be so." > > Yes? > > The mystery here is: why must it be so? It is a perfectly legitimate > scientific question, I would say. > Any question is legitimate if you can think of a what an answer might be or how to test it. But haven't you ever been engage with someone who has a naive but enthusiastic view of science and so asks lots of questions like "Why is the speed of light constant?" or "Why are there only two electric charges?" or "Why did the universe expand?" At the fundamental level science doesn't answer "why" questions, because an answer would have to invoke a more basic level (hence my virtuous circle model of explanation). Of course you can never know that you're at the fundamental level. The point I'm gently trying to make is that the "hard problem of consciousness" is a why question, as you've posed it above, and scientific progress is made by answering "how" questions. Gently? OK buster, that's enough. Who are you and why are you pretending to be Brent Meeker? It seems to me that people who want an answer to the "the hard problem" are asking why can't we explain consciousness the way we explain gravity and metabolism and atoms. I'm saying we can - it's just that all those explanations are how explanations and so let's get some "how" explanations of consciousness - the engineering approach. Well, whoever you are, that just sounds too bloody reasonable to disagree with. David Brent The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work. --—John von Neumann -- 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 https://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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
