And I would have thought it obvious that we have no knowledge of our own brains. It could not be otherwise. — Barry Etheridge
But it's hard to see how that could actually be, when one is a subjective lived experience and the other is an object in the world. How could they be the very same thing? — dukkha
If your conscious experience is caused by your brain, this means that the body (including your head, which you believe contains a physical brain which is causing your experience) and the world around that you perceive - perceptions being conscious experience - must therefore be caused by your brain. — dukkha
So you're left in the horrible epistemic position of the brain state that gives rise to/is equal to your conscious experience not being within your head that you feel, see, touch, etc. Rather, all those sense experiences, and the perceived world around you, and the people you interact with, must all already be caused by/equal to the particular state of a brain. — dukkha
Basically, if a brain is giving rise to your conscious experience, it can't be located within your head. Your perceived head would already be being caused by a brain, and so the brain causing this perception can't be located within this perception. You can't locate the brain that is causing your conscious experience, within your conscious experience of a head. It has to be the other way round, with perceptions being located within a brain, perceptions of your head included. But if this is so, then from your epistemic position you can have no knowledge of this brain which is causing your experience, including whether it even exists or not. — dukkha
I agree that brains do not cause conscious experience. Rather, brains, in particular states, ARE conscious experience. It's not a causal relationship. It's a relationship of identity. — Terrapin Station
Well, it can't be an identity. The information content of DNA is not the DNA. The program that won at Go is not the hardware, the symphony is not the notes on paper. — tom
Why this is so is a very complicated question involving philosophy, semiotics, and cognition. — Wayfarer
There is a relationship between a code and its meaning. but the relationship is not one of identity for the reasons Tom has given. — Wayfarer
the idea is supposed to be that DNA/DNA informational content, computer hardware/the program that won at Go, notes on pqper/a symphony all have the same code/meaning relation, as does brain/mind? — Terrapin Station
t's not a causal relationship. It's a relationship of identity — Terrapin Station
the idea is supposed to be that DNA/DNA informational content, computer hardware/the program, notes on paper/a symphony all have the same code/meaning relation, as does brain/mind? — TS
f your conscious experience is caused by your brain... — Dukkha
nteresting question! I suppose in computer science the rules are clear enough, computer language>assembly langage>machine code (something like that, I haven't studied programming formally.) The structure covered by the general description of syntax, isn't it? Syntax governs the rules, semantics is concerned with the meaning. So they're separable also. — Wayfarer
To the extent that brains/minds give them the same meaning, which some are happy to do, like Dennett and Kurzweil, and others, less so, like Lanier. — Marchesk
So you agree with Searle that it's a biological property, and not something that can be functionally recreated in a computer.
They are all examples of the idea that information and the way the meaning is information is encoded are separable. — Wayfarer
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