On Mon, Jul 8, 2024 at 2:23 PM Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote:
*> If you believe mental states do not cause anything, then you believe > philosophical zombies are logically possible (since we could remove > consciousness without altering behavior).* > Not if consciousness is the inevitable byproduct of intelligece, and I'm almost certain that it is. *> I view mental states as high-level states operating in their own regime > of causality (much like a Java computer program).* > I have no problem with that, actually it's very similar to my view. > *> The java computer program can run on any platform, regardless of the > particular physical nature of it.* > Right. You could even say that "computer program" is not a noun, it is an adjective, it is the way a computer will behave when the machine's logical states are organized in a certain way. And "I" is the way atoms behave when they are organized in a Johnkclarkian way, and "you" is the way atoms behave when they are organized in a Jasonreschian way. *> I view consciousness as like that high-level control structure. It > operates within a causal realm where ideas and thoughts have causal > influence and power, and can reach down to the lower level to do things > like trigger nerve impulses.* > Consciousness is a high-level description of brain states that can be extremely useful, but that doesn't mean that lower level and much more finely grained description of brain states involving nerve impulses, or even more finely grained descriptions involving electrons and quarks are wrong, it's just that such level of detail is unnecessary and impractical for some purposes. John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> qb2 -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv28Yh4o5TGpuZ2nfh7NFxYWbi4yVW%2B5v%3DbeXULDqdbPsg%40mail.gmail.com.
