On 2/28/2022 2:09 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 8:33 AM Telmo Menezes <[email protected]>
wrote:
Am Mo, 26. Apr 2021, um 17:16, schrieb John Clark:
On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 10:45 AM Terren Suydam
<[email protected]> wrote:
> It's impossible to refute solipsism
True, but it's equally impossible to refute the idea that
everything including rocks is conscious. And if both a theory and
its exact opposite can neither be proven nor disproven then
neither speculation is of any value in trying to figure out how
the world works.
When I was a little kid I would ask adults if rocks were
conscious. They tried to train me to stop asking such questions,
because they were worried about what other people would think. To
this day, I never stopped asking these questions. I see three
options here:
(1) They were correct to worry and I have a mental issue.
(2) I am really dumb and don't see something obvious.
(3) Beliefs surrounding consciousness are socially normative, and
asking question outside of such boundaries is a taboo.
Consider the case where a god-like super intelligence for fun decided
to wire up everything experienced by a particular rock during its
billion year existence. All the light that fell on the rock's face,
that super being could see, all the accelerations it underwent, it
could feel. During this rock's history, it came to the surface in the
1800s, and then a house was built not far from where you grew up. One
day you notice and decide to kick this rock, and the super being who
chose to experience everything this particular rock felt, feels the kick.
In a way, this god-like being has connected through nerves which are
invisible to you (via its perfect knowledge of the history of this
rock) to its brain. But these connections, though invisible, are no
less real or concrete than the nerves that connect your hand to your
brain. This super being might exist at a level outside our universe
(e.g. in the universe running the simulation of this one).
Ought we to conclude from this possibility that there is no way, even
in principle, to detect which objects are capable of perceiving? That
there is no way to know which objects happen to be imbued with
consciousness, even for something that seems as inanimate and inert as
a rock?
You asked great questions.
Jason
I think that's a mistaken idea of consciousness. To be conscious is to
be conscious */of/* something. It must have a correspondence with an
environment and it must include an /*ability to act*/ on that
correspondence in some sense. Otherwise it's just a recording machine.
This conception of consciousness admits of a continuum of degrees of
consciousness. In this sense a rock can be conscious, but its
consciousness is very limited because it's ability to act is very limited.
Brent
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