On Sat, May 4, 2019 at 12:56 PM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List < everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
> > >> Regarding the dog, I would never run that specific experiment because >> it's unethical. There are potentially other ways to settle the bet, though. >> If we can generalize your prediction in a way you'd be ok with, then >> there's potentially other ways we can test it. How about: "conscious beings >> on the cusp of death will create new qualia in circumstances in which that >> qualia would enable them to survive." Do you accept that? >> >> Ok, and how do you generate the cusp of death ? > The good news is that you and I don't have to. It happens in reality all the time. We just need to identify situations in which people or animals *have* survived because they were able to create new qualia, in a way that the null hypothesis wouldn't predict (like with your example with the dog). Alternatively, we can identify situations where people or animals did not survive but could have if they were able to create the qualia necessary... in which case your prediction would be disproven. For example, dogs are still color blind. Why is that? It's certainly the case that probably millions, even hundreds of millions of dogs have starved to death throughout history. It doesn't seem likely that your scenario has never come up in all of those cases. I'm sure there's been blind people who've starved to death because they couldn't locate food that might have been available to them if only they could see. Why didn't they create that qualia? For that matter, take every human that ever starved to death. Why didn't they create the qualia of being nourished by dirt? Terren -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
