OK. I don't think anybody would suggest that a roomba has the complexity needed for human awareness/experience, but neither does a bat. The bat gets closer. — noAxioms

Yes, different things have different mental abilities. Many things have no mental abilities. — Patterner

I cringe at calling those abilities 'mental' since there's such a strong connotation of both life-form and dualism with that word. Let's just say I am considering the cognitive abilities of that roomba.

But at some point, he goes so far as to conclude the necessity (does he? or just he possibility?) of these mental properties that don't supervene on physical properties, — noAxioms

Sorry, I don't know what you're asking.

I wasn't a question. I was noting that Nagel concludes dualism from his musings, and I don't follow the logic by which he gets there. Maybe if I read his work, I'd know better, but maybe not even then since the only argument I ever see is incredulity.

If you think rocks are conscious (just not very) — noAxioms

I don't.

I'm sure I'm getting your stance wrong, but i had gathered that you believe that matter (all matter) has mental properties, and since the rock is made of matter, it must have mental properties. OK, having mental properties is different than being conscious, but then at which point does the latter kick in? You either draw a line somewhere, or deny the line. Denying the line makes for conscious rocks. So where do you draw it?

Regarding the issue of presentism and eternalism, I wasn't necessarily advocating for presentism. Rather, I was arguing against eternalism. — boundless

Didn't know there was more than the two, even if presentism comes in half a dozen different flavors, but all sharing the premise of a preferred moment in time.

Also, when I think about the word 'evidence', I don't think it means a 'conclusive evidence' or an 'convincing evidence beyond reasonable doubt'.

OK. You accept intuition as evidence and I don't. That's fair. I agree, I think more along the 'falsification' line of thinking.
Eternalism does not deny change, so awareness of that is to be expected.

In philosophy, like in jury, some evidence might have less conciving powers but still have some importance.

Good example. I was trapped in a hung jury once. Being hung like that is bad, but the reasons why they voted their way were often the wrong reasons. I was probably the most waffley guy there, most likely to be swayed to the other side. The facts were clear. It was the interpretation of them that split the decisions.

I believe that simply appealing to GR or other seemingly eternalist scientific theory isn't enough to conclude that 'it is an illusion'

Agree. Relativity and absolutist theories make (almost) the same predictions, so the appeal to a model doesn't work.

Not sure how this got worked into a topic about first person being magical or not.

Regarding knowledge, instead, again I believe there are evidences (in the weak sense) that seem to point to the fact that machines can't 'know' in the same way we 'know'. — boundless

I'm fine with that. I didn't claim it was the way we do it. And no, you're not aware of all the things you've learned. But my point was, however the roomba does it, it acquires the information of where it can be, where it has been and where it has yet to be. It couldn't do what it does without that information. If you don't want to label that 'knowing', then you're just saying that the language usage of that word is restricted to a privileged subset, but it doesn't change what the roomba is actually doing. It only alters the words available to something else trying to describe it. The roomba functions just fine regardless of which words you find eligible for describing it.

That is, in human beings, it seems that knowledge is a specific kind of qualitative experience. If it is true, then, is it possible that a machine can 'know' things? Yes, if a machine has qualitative experiences.

You put it in scare quotes, suggesting that the word is reserved for things that do it the human way. I didn't claim the roomba has any need to do that.
You willingness to stamp 'qualitative experience' on what the roomba is doing is similarly irrelevant. Point is, it is gathering information on its own by whatever means and reacting appropriately to that information. The way it gathers that information can be expressed as 'qualitative experience' or not. The roomba operation doesn't depend on anybody's designation of where that term applies or doesn't. You apparently decline to apply the term. That's fine. Nobody claimed it is experiencing the way you do.

it seems that in order to have some kind of self-awareness a degree of autonomy is needed

I don't see how these two are related at all, and while I don't know how you distinguish autonomy from the lack of it (to the point that you can demonstrate that you have it, rather than just feel like you have it), the roomba is admittedly a slave, doing what it's told, but leaving how to do it open.
Or alternatively, demonstrate that you're not algorithmic, since that term is also put out there. I attempted to describe a test for that in the OP.

I would here also add that in the case of algorihm-based machines, consciousness seems to be unnecessary. — boundless

Perhaps we define consciousness differently. The roomba needs to measure its environment and react appropriately to that. Refusal to apply that word to the situation just seems to be a word-definition choice, not a denial that the roomba is doing the same thing, just in it's own way, just like frogs do it their own way.

The usage comes from "The world is all that is the case", the first lines of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. — Banno

Ambiguous. Do they mean 'all that is empirically the case' or 'all that is objectively the case'? The former seems idealistic/relational, and seems to be how you're using the term. The latter wording is realism.

I say that, but most people's idea of 'realism' is 'it's real because I see it;, which is the relational usage again. If I say I'm not a realist, I mean I'm not an objective realist because I cannot identity a meaningful distinction between something real and something not. I only see relations.

The world is the facts, experienced or not, known or not.

That is very different than how you've been using the word, which seems very much based on experience and induction.

There is no mystery. First and Third person views are the way of human perception. — Corvus

There are those that assert that a human being supervening only on physical particles and laws cannot have a first person view. That's part of what the topic is about. The other part is drawing the line between what can have it and what cannot. If it's confined only to humans (or a subset of them, as has been argued), one must justify what makes us the preferred entity, and when that preference was acquired.

"The world is all that is the case"

Ambiguous. Do they mean 'all that is empirically the case' or 'all that is objectively the case'? The former seems idealistic/relational, and seems to be how you're using the term. The latter wording is realism. — noAxioms

:lol:

No, he meant "all that is the case". Empirical, non-empirical, objective, subjective...

It's almost a tautology... but not quite, which is why it is so important.

I cringe at calling those abilities 'mental' since there's such a strong connotation of both life-form and dualism with that word. Let's just say I am considering the cognitive abilities of that roomba. — noAxioms

I think we already have machines with mental abilities. Also, I think the physical events that make up our mental abilities, like the physical events that makes up motion, are not consciousness, and don't involve dualism.

I wasn't a question. I was noting that Nagel concludes dualism from his musings, and I don't follow the logic by which he gets there. Maybe if I read his work, I'd know better, but maybe not even then since the only argument I ever see is incredulity. — noAxioms

I assume you mean incredulity regarding consciousness emerging from physicalism. If that's the case, I would say that no similarity between physical properties/characteristics and consciousness; no logic to physical matter arranging itself according to the laws of physics, then, for no reason, become conscious; and no theory of how this happens from anyone, is less incredulity, and more looking for answers to legitimate questions.

There are those that assert that a human being supervening only on physical particles and laws cannot have a first person view. That's part of what the topic is about. — noAxioms

Your reply is very sketchy. Could you elaborate more?