• Clarendon
    119
    Good will account: overdrawn.
  • frank
    19k

    It's no big deal. Just look it up. It's fascinating stuff.
  • L'éléphant
    1.7k
    I feel that you didn't need to be so vulgar and abrupt in your comment on what is after all a philosophical topic discussion.Corvus
    I wasn't. And I don't know what "abrupt" when reading posts in forums like this.

    I gave the most accurate and realistic account of consciousness. But you somehow sound not only negative but also rude. I can only assume either you are hurt in your feelings for some reason or you are just obtuse and pretentious in your comment. Maybe both.Corvus

    First, I'm neither of the above. But I didn't think your post, which I criticized, should even be the question -- meaning, I expected more from you than posting nonsense like that.

    @Clarendon I will try to provide some passages from philosophers related to the Vienna Circle. Herbert Feigl probably. At the moment I don't have an access to their writings.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    5.2k
    Mark Bedeau's influential paperSophistiCat

    Thanks for pointing this out. It's a very curious piece of work, that paper. Not what I was expecting.
  • Patterner
    2k
    ↪frank Good will account: overdrawn.Clarendon
    He is right, though.
    Combining objects of different weights will result in a whole that weighs more than any of its parts. The weight is said to be weakly emergent.Clarendon
    That is not weak emergence. According to you, you started with things that had weight. Weight didn't emerge.
  • T Clark
    16.1k
    I don't know how you define life. It seems to me it's a bunch of physical processes. Metabolism. Respiration. Circulation. Immune systems. Reproduction. Growth. What aspect of life is not physical? What aspect can't be observed, measured, followed step-by-step?Patterner

    My analogy between life and consciousness mostly has to do with the inability of people on one side of the argument to conceive that a particular phenomenon might be a manifestation of a physical process. There must be something else. For life it was "elan vital," a spark of life coming from outside. The need for that explanatory factor no longer seems to be an issue for most people. What is the spark for consciousness?

    And what aspect of consciousness is physical, and can be observed, measured, followed step-by-step? How can we know that everything needed for the existence of consciousness is purely physical if no aspect of consciousness is?Patterner

    How do we know that someone or something other than ourselves is conscious? By observing their behavior. The most obvious way is by listening to what another person says--how they describe their own first-person experience. Obviously that's not enough. Not all conscious entities have language to self-report. What I need to do to make this a better argument is to identify non-verbal patterns of behavior that demonstrate consciousness. I'm not prepared to have that discussion right now.

    And when I do that, will that be enough? Is consciousness more than just patterns of behavior? I know you'll say yes. What do I say? I'm not sure. This is why I was trying to avoid a discussion of the "hard problem” until I have a better answer.
  • Clarendon
    119
    This just ignores what I explicitly said I mean by weak emergence. I am using it to mean: something had by the whole, but not by any of the parts. If the whole weighs 10 stone but the parts weigh 1 stone each, then the whole has a property - weighing 10 stone - that none of the parts have.

    If someone wants to use weak emergence to mean something else, that is a verbal disagreement. But it is not a criticism of my claim. One might as well say 'I know someone called 'Emergence' and they're strong. Therefore there is strong emergence.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    5.2k
    From Humpty Dumpty +‎ -ism, after the fictional character in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, who, when asked what he means by glory, replies, "I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'" Alice protests that this isn't the meaning of glory and Humpty Dumpty replies, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean——neither more nor less."wiki
  • Clarendon
    119
    You do realize YOU are the one Humpty dumptying? Despite my having said what I mean by weak emergence numerous times you have decided that you can just decide to give it a different meaning and thereby win a point! Anyway, this is not profitable and I won't be responding to you anymore. You can take that as a victory (alongside Mary Antoinette's victorious shampoo savings)
  • T Clark
    16.1k
    This just ignores what I explicitly said I mean by weak emergence.Clarendon

    @Patterner is right about what weak emergence means. A good example is the emergence of macroscopic ideal gas behavior out of the microscopic behavior of molecules. An example of strong emergence is the development of biological life out of chemical interactions.
  • Clarendon
    119
    Dictionary definition fallacy. Look it up.

    Oh, and I won't be responding to you again btw. You are on the 'not worth it' list.
  • T Clark
    16.1k
    Oh, and I won't be responding to you again btw. You are on the 'not worth it' list.Clarendon

    Alas. And since you’re making up definitions for words that already have well established meanings, I assume you’re using “not worth it,” to mean “points out when I am wrong.”
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