This is similar to what I was getting at earlier. What in the world would it be for any phenomenon to be wholly defined, described and explained?wholly defined, described and explained — Pattern-chaser
Our wish to understand whether our beliefs are justified or not? — Pattern-chaser
Justification is simply a matter of an individual feeling that they have good reasons to believe something — Terrapin Station
What makes any explanation necessary or not necessary? (I mean in general, not just re this issue.)
Also what makes any explanation sufficient/adequate or insufficient/inadequate? (Again, in general.) — Terrapin Station
↪SteveKlinko Leaving Aside your Questions, You Don't need to Randomly Capitalise Words.
Do you believe in God, or is that a software glitch?
An article about the promises and pitfalls of fMRI
...when you divide the brain into bitty bits and make millions of calculations according to a bunch of inferences, there are abundant opportunities for error, particularly when you are relying on software to do much of the work. This was made glaringly apparent back in 2009, when a graduate student conducted an fM.R.I. scan of a dead salmon and found neural activity in its brain when it was shown photographs of humans in social situations. Again, it was a salmon. And it was dead. — Wayfarer
I don't want make any generalizations. But for this specific case the disparate nature of the Phenomenon of Neural Activity and the Phenomenon Conscious Activity demand an Explanation. — SteveKlinko
Are you saying that the explanations of neural etc. activity don't seem like consciousness to you, and you wouldn't count something as an explanation that doesn't seem like consciousness? — Terrapin Station
The explanations of neural activity are not consciousness — Marchesk
And explanations of how to play a C major seventh chord are not a C major seventh chord, and so on. — Terrapin Station
But if we want to explain consciousness, it's not sufficient to point to neural activity, unless the neural activity actually explains consciousness — Marchesk
Explanations are sets of words, right? — Terrapin Station
Sure. So neural activity isn't going to itself explain consciousness (if we read that literally). A person would have to explain consciousness. — Terrapin Station
What "makes sense of some phenomenon" is going to be different for different people, no? — Terrapin Station
So what we'd need to look at is why you take the explanations of photosynthesis to be sufficient to "make sense of photosynthesis" to you, — Terrapin Station
Or to put it another way, we can write down the process for photosynthesis or simulate it. — Marchesk
Are you saying that the explanations of neural etc. activity don't seem like consciousness to you, and you wouldn't count something as an explanation that doesn't seem like consciousness? — Terrapin Station
Seriously, are you implying that Neural Activity seems like Consciousness to you? — SteveKlinko
Seriously, are you implying that Neural Activity seems like Consciousness to you? — SteveKlinko
What I'm saying is that no explanation of anything seems like what it's explaining. — Terrapin Station
So you are playing some kind of Semantic game with this. — SteveKlinko
So you are playing some kind of Semantic game with this. — SteveKlinko
You'd have to explain how you're reading it that way, because that comment makes no sense to me.
Your argument is based on the explanation not seeming like consciousness. But no explanation seems like what it's explaining. Explanations for neural activity do not SEEM like neural activity. That's the nature of explanations. There's nothing semantic about that. It's that you're using a rather odd double standard and/or you don't really understand the relationship between explanans and explanandum. — Terrapin Station
We need an Explanation for that question, and not some Dive into the meaning of the word "Explanations". — SteveKlinko
We need an Explanation for that question, and not some Dive into the meaning of the word "Explanations". — SteveKlinko
"If you're going to forward an argument hinging on explanations, you'd better have a theory of explanations that is coherent, consistent, etc."
Objecting to critically looking at your theory of explanations isn't a good argument. — Terrapin Station
Ok, I give up. What is your theory of Explanations? Lets just use your theory and answer the question: How does Neural Activity produce Conscious Activity?Right, so the first thing I typed there was, ""If you're going to forward an argument hinging on explanations, you'd better have a theory of explanations that is coherent, consistent, etc." — Terrapin Station
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