Yes, but only if you're making an inference. Simply holding the position that both parts and the whole of, say, a plank, simultaneously have their own conscious identities (as I do) need not commit fallacies of composition/division if that conclusion was arrived at by other types of inference. You have to have an inference to have a fallacy. — bert1
You define consciousness as a "first person experience". But what does that really mean? What is an experience? What does it mean for an experience to be first person? Is there such a thing as second or third, or zero (views from nowhere) person experiences? — Harry Hindu
But that doesn't really answer the question. What is "you"? It goes back to my question before...Are "you" one neuron, a group of neurons, a brain, a body, or what? And what is it about you that provides you with different evidence of your consciousness than I have of your consciousness?Good question. The answer presumably is "Because I am me and no on else is." — bert1
not anymore than you could predict what a car does based only on a description of its parts. — Olivier5
you'd need to know additional stuff about the environment of the car / protein to understand its function. — Olivier5
We know this by looking at how it works in a cell, not by looking at it's atoms. — Olivier5
I understand what you mean. If you want to know what "red" means, I'd simply point to things that are red. But the same cannot be said about consciousness. Consciousness is not as simple as "red" and "square". Consciousness is a more complex entity that is composed of those things and much more. The goal for a proper definition and theory of consciousness would include how it interacts with, and relates to, the rest of the world, and defining it simply as a "first-person experience" just doesn't do that.All of these are questions you already know the answers to. By trying to ask for more and more precise definitions all you end up doing is muddying things that are perfectly clear. It's like if I asked you to define "Red" or "Run" how would you? These concepts are too basic so as to require much definition.
I made a topic about this years ago but basically I think there are some concepts that don't need definition only "assignment". An "assignment" is when you already know the meaning of a word but just need to assign a word to the already present meaning. These concepts include: Color, Space, Shape, Time, Consciousness and many others. You can't define "color" or "shape" or "consciousness" in simpler terms, all you can do is assign a word to a concept that you come pre equipped with. At least that's what it seems like to me. If you want to disagree then by all means try to define "Space" or "Shape" in simpler terms. — khaled
Consciousness is not as simple as "red" and "square" — Harry Hindu
definition and theory of consciousness would include how it interacts with, and relates to, the rest of the world — Harry Hindu
"Synonymous" isn't the word I would use. I would say that without consciousness, there would be no red - only 600 nanometer electromagnetic waves (and there is even question as to whether there is actually 600 nanometer EM waves, as 600 nanometers and waves are conscious constructs). Something cannot be synonymous with something else that doesn't exist.Then we're probably not talking about the same thing. Consciousness is more fundamental than "red" and "square". Without consciousness "red" and "600 nanometer electromagnetic wave" would be synonymous, but they're clearly not (or else we would need to teach children about electromagnetic waves before they understand what "red" means). I don't see consciousness as a complex entity at all.
I'm curious how you would define it now. — khaled
But you will never know everything there is to know about anything, so this is a false, unrealistic premise.Are you simply trying to say "You can't know what a car is used for just by studying its components"? Yes, obviously, no one is debating that. However if you DO know everything there is to know about cars and you were asked "what happens when the key turns", your explanation (while likely to be very techincal and complicated) has to be reducible to "the car turns on". — khaled
So that's the important difference? That means it applies to anything alive? Eg like plants too are tenacious and stubborn in their own way? — Olivier5
What is important is that the components do not, by themselves, contain the information you need to explain the function of the whole — Olivier5
The really useful information is at a level higher then that of components — Olivier5
It's just that this is the trope most people use, and I wanted you to try and paraphrase what it means to you — Harry Hindu
Are there other words that you might use, like "awareness", or "informed"? — Harry Hindu
as in only you have this view and no one else does? — Harry Hindu
we ought to be able to identify it in an object of study by what how it behaves. — Kenosha Kid
The scientific study of all aspects of consciousness, such as perception and identity, fall within psychology and therefore, where possible, neurology. — Kenosha Kid
But that would be akin to saying "When I press A on my keyboard the letter A is typed on the screen". This would work for explaining how a PC works eventually by testing countless hypothesis and sometimes breaking open the PC (neurology) but it does not answer whether or not the PC is conscious, or why it would or wouldn't be. — khaled
...a requirement of a proper definition of consciousness such that explaining consciousness is actually explaining something is that we can identify it in something that has it that is not ourselves... — Kenosha Kid
I made a topic about this years ago but basically I think there are some concepts that don't need definition only "assignment". An "assignment" is when you already know the meaning of a word but just need to assign a word to the already present meaning. These concepts include: Color, Space, Shape, Time, Consciousness and many others. You can't define "color" or "shape" or "consciousness" in simpler terms, all you can do is assign a word to a concept that you come pre equipped with. At least that's what it seems like to me. If you want to disagree then by all means try to define "Space" or "Shape" in simpler terms. — khaled
The structure adds no extra predictive power and is therefore merely a simplification. That’s what I’m saying. — khaled
then there must be a circumstance in which the presence or absence of that property can be ascertained — Kenosha Kid
otherwise it is meaningless to say that it has such a property, since ascribing it says nothing at all. — Kenosha Kid
So the pragmatic way of proceeding is to define what we mean by consciousness in terms of what the property actually does, how it interacts with the world, what it's correlates are, then look for it. — Kenosha Kid
You start with a putative idea of how a conscious thing behaves such that a non-conscious thing would not behave that way, and then you refine. — Kenosha Kid
You have to explain *why* science cannot explain, which means describing its properties such that they aren't amenable to scientific modelling. This is not what you are doing — Kenosha Kid
I would have thought the structure adds predictive power where knowledge of the components may be incomplete. — Possibility
I will ask again. Are you asserting that electrons are "conscious"? — prothero
The internal behavior in the human object of study, such behavior apodeitically known only to himself, is his thinking. Any characterization of the means for such behavior, by which the ends of such behavior are sufficiently, but henceforth also necessarily, given, can have no possible external explanation whatsoever, for that which is known only to the self can be explained only by the self, and then only with respect to the self. — Mww
is catastrophically false, under the predication that scientific study is itself in terms of natural law, in conjunction with the absolutely necessary condition that consciousness is a product of human internal behavior alone, which is not. — Mww
The intrinsic circularity, as ground for asserting the falliciousness, is obvious, insofar as no science is at all possible that has no relevant thought antecedent to it, of which consciousness itself is an integral member. — Mww
It is current physics which must throw up its hands in defeat, and grant extant metaphysics its true purpose — Mww
I see but here's the deal. If I say everything has a soul/mind, what does everything mean? — TheMadFool
There's a boundary that's been crossed - the boundary between parts and wholes - and it's necessary that an inference be the means of doing that.
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