On Thursday, May 2, 2019 at 10:52:50 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote: > > > > On 5/2/2019 12:58 AM, [email protected] <javascript:> wrote: > > > > On Wednesday, May 1, 2019 at 7:10:03 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: >> >> >> >> On 5/1/2019 4:24 PM, [email protected] wrote: >> > I would say that one could have a Jupiter planet-sized network of >> > Intel® Core™ processors + whatever distributed program running on it, >> > and it will not be conscious. >> >> Based on what? Human hubris? >> >> Brent >> > > > A racist is [via Google definition] "a person who shows or feels > discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes > that a particular race is superior to another". > > I'm not that, but I do think that different types of matter have different > capabilities (as materials scientists do). > > > Is there a type that is different from quarks and leptons? >
Apparently *matter* is not "reducible" to just the physics a couple of particles. Phases of matter is a mystery: https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-aim-to-classify-all-possible-phases-of-matter-20180103/ https://news.stonybrook.edu/oncampus/simons-center-lecture-on-new-electronic-phases-of-matter-may-8/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/04/new-phase-matter-confirmed-solid-and-liquid-same-time-potassium-physics/ No one can say except via the certainty of fundamentalist religion that all of chemistry, biochemistry, biology, neurobiology can be reduced to the physics of a few particles. > > > I am a materialist. > > > Except you imbue matter with properties that are undetectable. You place > emphasis on matter having experience, but that seems like a half-measure to > me. Why not go all the way and say that it has libertarian free will too. > > Brent > Consciousness itself - my 'self' - is detected. Galen Strawson (on free will): via http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/strawsong/ "[T]he best way to try to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the free will debate, and of the reason why it is interminable, is to study the thing that keeps it going — our experience of freedom. Because this experience is something real, complex, and important, even if free will itself is not real. Because it may be that the experience of freedom is really all there is, so far as free will is concerned.* [footnote *] It may then be said that free will is real after all, because the reality of free will resides precisely in the reality of the experience of being free." (on consciousness): Consciousness Never Left https://www.academia.edu/35683187/Consciousness_Never_Left "... So there is no mystery of consciousness. What we do not understand, what we find a mystery [(that is, matter)], is how conscious experience can be simply a matter of goings-on in the brain. But this is not because we do not know what consciousness is. It is because we do not know how to relate the things we know about the brain, when we use the language of physics and neurophysiology, to the things we know about the brain simply in having conscious experience – whose nature we know simply in having it." @philipthrift > > On the other hand, the *new materialists* [ > https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mirroring-and-mattering-science-politics-and-the-new-feminist-materialism/ > ] > > reconceptualize “the terms of social theory, such that the social is seen > as a part of, rather than distinct from, the natural, an undertaking that > requires a rethinking of the natural too.” In this newly monist view, the > proper response to the threat of biological determinism — the claim that > biology is destiny or that our fate lies in our genes — is not to reject > the natural sciences and assert the primacy of the social, nor indeed to > treat the world as text, but rather to grasp the inseparability of the > “bio” and the “social,” as captured in the word “biosocial.” In place of a > linguistic process of representing the world, the new materialism proposes > “mattering” as the generative process through which matter comes into > being. > > *Material stuff — bodies, tools, objects — are understood as imbued with > vitality and dynamic force. * > > This is a philosophical claim, but one that entails a political > sensibility. And while materialism is a venerable school of thought, this > conception of “mattering” seems, as I have suggested, very much of the > moment. > > > @philipthrift > > > -- 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.
