You seem to be operating under the impression that the "Boltzmann Brain" is "a brain and just a brain experiencing is space." It isn't. It is just "physical system capable of producing consciousness." It says absolutely nothing about brains floating in vacuum having experiences. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Sorry, I wasn't trying to be comical or ridiculous. I was just saying that my experience doesn't have to reflect interaction with my environment
I was just saying that my experience doesn't have to reflect interaction with my environment. I have long had a recurring dream about a house that opens up into another house. Though I've experienced being in this weird house multiple times, it doesn't exist. My environment at the time was my bedroom. It appears that experience was generated by my brain.
However, we can certainly extrapolate from biology and neuroscience that a Boltzmann brain would need to exist in some range of ambient temperature, atmosphere, etc. in order to produce anything like say "5 seconds of human experience." — Count Timothy von Icarus
It is just "physical system capable of producing consciousness." — Count Timothy von Icarus
The scenario initially involved only a single brain with false memories, but physicist Sean M. Carroll pointed out that, in a fluctuating universe, the scenario works just as well with entire bodies, even entire galaxies.
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… human brains are vastly more likely to arise from random fluctuation …
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Boltzmann-style thought experiments generally focus on structures like human brains that are presumably self-aware observers.
Or, are they just allowing us to see the colors the fruit had all the time.
— Richard B
This makes no sense. Colours aren't mind-independent properties. — Michael
I haven't said that mental phenomena aren't just particular brain states. I'm not necessarily arguing for any kind of dualism. I'm leaving that open. Maybe pain just is the firing of C-fibers, as Churchland argues. Maybe colours just are the firing of V4 neurons.
Regardless of what mental phenomena are, pain and colours are mental phenomena; they are not mind-independent properties of fire. — Michael
the colour that you experience exists regardless of being experienced — jkop
But this isn’t colour. — Michael
How do we perceive this propensity? Do we just assume our perceptions are externally caused?The existence of its atoms and their propensity to reflect light at certain wavelengths. — Michael
As such there is no (visible) light to stimulate the rods and cones in our eyes, and so the V4 neurons are not fired, and so no colour percepts are produced.
It’s certainly not the case that black is some mind-independent property of objects that is seen by the absence of (visible) light. That just makes no sense at all. — Michael
If you don't distinguish between experience (i.e. event in your brain) and colour (i.e. object of the experience), then you can't distinguish between veridical experiences and hallucinations. How could any animal have survived on this planet if they were only hallucinating and never saw objects and states of affairs? Arguments from illusion or hallucination suck. — jkop
I didn't say that. I said that the pigment and the light have the disposition to systematically cause the experience of colour. This means that the colour experience arises when an animal that has the ability sees the pigment or light, while the colour is a property of the pigment or light in the form of a disposition. — jkop
Yet, I can see black objects. I can pick out an object that is black from other objects that are colored. Why can't we say it lacks the property of color? What makes less sense is to say I pick out a black object because it has no mental percepts. I pick it out because it was black. — Richard B
How do we perceive this propensity? — Hanover
Do we just assume our perceptions are externally caused? — Hanover
Since all perceptions are subjective responses, you can't claim any property to exist objectively, except to just say the perceptions must be being elicited by something. — Hanover
That is, an atom has no particular shape, size or color. It just makes me see what I think to be a chair. — Hanover
We can use the adjective “red” to describe a mind-independent pen that has properties that are the cause of red colour percepts. But the noun “red” refers to that colour percept, not a mind-independent property of the pen. — Michael
There is no practical reason to refer to "mental percepts" at all, or for that matter — Richard B
I should be the one to apologize, I just meant to add some rhetorical flourish, not impune anything. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Funny enough, I've been working on a novel that involves people stuck in an infinite house. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Rather I would frame it like this: "our experiences don't always correlate with the enviornment the way we think they do under 'normal' conditions." — Count Timothy von Icarus
However, we can certainly extrapolate from biology and neuroscience that a Boltzmann brain would need to exist in some range of ambient temperature, atmosphere, etc. in order to produce anything like say "5 seconds of human experience." — Count Timothy von Icarus
Since all perceptions are subjective responses, you can't claim any property to exist objectively, except to just say the perceptions must be being elicited by something. — Hanover
When one has an experience, it is an experience of something. When there is no "something", it's an hallucination.So, yes, apparently brains can generate experiences in the vacuum of space. All that is required is the appropriate neural activity, regardless of what causes and maintains it. — Michael
Six months later, Michale is still here to argue that he is most probably a Boltzmann brain, making it vanishingly unlikely that he is correct.Supose you are a quantum fluctuation, having just popped into existence last Tuesday. The chances of you persisting into the next few seconds are vanishingly small. Chances are the world around you is ephemeral, and will disappear, or at the least not continue in a coherent fashion.
And yet for us, the world continues on in a regular and predictable fashion.
...that the world persists shows that it is very unlikely that you are a Boltzmann brain. — Banno
n the case of colour there is no such thing as veridical. — Michael
We can use colour terms however we like, but when we ordinarily use them we are referring to colour percepts, not an object’s disposition to reflect a certain wavelength of light. — Michael
..I look at the photo of the dress and describe its colours as white and gold.... ..someone else looks at that same photo and describes its colours as black and blue... — Michael
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