The structures which we call life can do nothing else but evolve towards low entropy states, being situated periodically in the heat baths of the star and the cold bath of the void of night. Nothing special about that. — Cartuna
You need to study the thermodynamics of dissipative structures that are enclosed by a Markov blanket - that have an epistemic cut or a modelling relation with their environment — apokrisis
The processes corresponding to seeing color could just as well occur without an accompanying conscious experience of color. — Cartuna
I'm fully aware how organisms evolved on Earth, but it still doesn't offer an explanation of consciousness. That's why it's called the hard problem. — Cartuna
The only thing that can explain is consciousness itself. The felt experience. That's how you can explain your consciousness to others. No theory can do that — Cartuna
Baseless assumptions. — Miller
i could just say the opposite of both statements and it would be equally true — Miller
This is where you get to explain just how the processes could fail to be accompanied by a conscious experience — apokrisis
Perhaps there is a more fundamental theory to consciousness. — tom111
TV is just a medium. — Cartuna
So it isn’t rhetorical to the degree there is genuine scientific advance being made. There is a new model of modelling which defines it as physically generic and mathematically necessary. — apokrisis
Now you can doubt or dispute this model of modelling. But first you have to show you understand the argument being made. — apokrisis
This idea that neural firing must somehow produce an experienced representation is just a hangover from Cartesian representationalism and the “naturalisation” of that ontology due to the great success of universal Turing machines as a 20th century technology.
But we wouldn’t say steam engines explain the mechanisms of life. So why would we say computer metaphors would have anything deep to say about the mechanisms of mind? — apokrisis
I was speaking of the TV set - a fully material electronic device. Inside, it has circuits, switches, and all that signal processing stuff. It is powered and receives patterned
signal input from outside. — T Clark
Exactly the same holds for air. The direct medium. Like you put it, a newspaper should be comparable to a brain and the stories in it to the mind. Or air to a brain and the songs traveling in it to the mind. The problem is that all media belong to the same physical world as the information contained in them. The brain is no medium though. — Cartuna
I don't get the comparisons you're trying to make. A newspaper is not a processing device. Air is not a processing device. A TV set is not a medium. It's just a box of wire and plastic. — T Clark
You are arguing against someone else. I’m a structuralist, not a materialist. — apokrisis
A TV, like the computer you are talking with me now, is just a medium. — Cartuna
How can I repeat myself if I have responded only once to you? — Cartuna
Without matter there can be no structure. — Cartuna
I can imagine all structured neuron activity taking place without a conscious experience. — Cartuna
By itself, it's ballast. — T Clark
A naive realist might say that. A structural realist adopts a more sophisticated ontology. — apokrisis
You are free to imagine whatever you want. I simply ask for a clear reason why all that structured action would fail to produce what it ordinarily produces. — apokrisis
Why would a normally developing brain in a normally developing human fail to be conscious in the normal developing way? Answer me that. Don’t simply make extravagant claims of what you could imagine. — apokrisis
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