I don't think you actually understand what I mean and blame my "lack of clarity" (so far you're the only one, bert) for your failure to understand me. — 180 Proof

I read the words you wrote. That should be enough no? What else do you want me to do?

Do you understand the Bayesian/semiotic approach to modelling well enough to justify such a doubt?

If not, your proclaimed doubt is “happening in the dark”. — apokrisis

I might take the trouble to look into it if I think it's worth it. I don't see any reason to. You haven't given a prima facie reason why the modelling must feel like something. You've asserted it and said the burden of proof is on the doubter, which is rhetorical nonsense.

It's grammar. I don't think you're actually saying what you mean. You might be making a perfectly good point, but you haven't made it clear.

it should be easy enough to see that the brain - in modelling its environment in terms of its embodied self-interest - ought to feel like something. — apokrisis

This is the crux of it. Why should it feel like something? Why can't the modelling happen in the dark?

"Different" but not unrelated: noun, verb, and preposition, respectively. — 180 Proof

Eh? All three are nouns

What seems to be the problem? — Olivier5

It's unlikely you'll get a conversation.

I'm a monist but it's perfectly obvious, as you have pointed out, that the first challenge that a monist has to answer is: What is the explanation of the manifest duality that I see? This may be easily dealt with, or it may not. But it is a serious question, and not to be dismissed as an argument from incredulity, even if the challenge is framed using language like "I don't see how..."

I think play is living in the moment. — James Riley

Yes, that might be another way of expressing the same concept. Goal-directedness is always thinking of a future state. And to achieve anything, one needs to do the right things one thing after another, serially, seriously.

Perhaps, if work is goal-directed activity, play is non-goal directed activity. Any good?

I actually think the idea of a legal system that contained only rights is an interesting concept.

There are ways to structure democracies that mitigate against the power hungry. For example, have like a jury service system for candidates. You're called up, you're trained for the role, you develop policies in consultation with experts, then people vote.

And screen for narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths.

Bartricks, I suspect one reason people don't engage with you very much on your own terms is because they forsee hours of weary unproductive uncharitable tedium. I could be wrong. You openly disdain us, and then want us to engage with you. I find your posts somewhat interesting, but I can't be arsed with you. You're too much hassle, and not popular enough on the forum for me to feel a duty to rebut your musings.

This OP badly needs an example

One issue: there's no representation for some positions. Lets say you are in favour of huge reduction in the US military in favour of programmes of social welfare. And lets say you are in favour of electoral reform. And in favour of a universal basic income. Who should you vote for?

Very low. :) My ironometer clearly wasn't working this morning.

There are only two parties in American democracy for the simple reason that those who created it realized, much to our benefit, that given any issue, only two voices matter - those for and those against. Vote abstention is possible and practiced even in a 2-party system. In short, we have all the advantages of a democracy with none of the downsides of a multi-party democracy which, to my reckoning, adds another layer of complexity confusion to politics. :grin: — TheMadFool

Do you really think that?

What Oliver5 said. It's a mechanical result of the first part the post system. You vote for the people who have the best chance of defeating who you don't like, because who you do like is too small ever to win. The result is two parties. UK is basically the same.

People vote republican because they don't want the democrats. People for democrat because they don't want the republicans. Each party then just criticises the other, as that is the best tactic. Horrible system.

Interestingly, there is no 7th dimension. It skips straight from 6 to 8.

I think this thread is a creative variable thing. Does that work?

I have a soft spot for new ways to carve up the world. This is an interesting one. Are the 'things' you have in mind physical objects? Activities? Goals, purposes? People? Living things? Any and all of these?

A few examples might be interesting.

I remained awake and I'm glad I did. I remember when I lived in the North West of England where it was customary to accost neighbours on the way to the shops and tell them, in great detail, all of the personal events that have been exercising their minds since one saw them last and before, repetition being no bar. I had thought this merely boring and incredibly rude. However I now see clearly that these neighbours were actively destructive variable things.

I mean, seriously. Have you ever interacted with, say, the better arguers in Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Inc? These discussions generally strike me as so facile. Go out and find the better proponents of what gets called a conspiracy theory and argue your case that you present here. IOW tell them that really it is based on ad hoc, cherry picking and other fallacies. Point out to them where, see how it goes. — Bylaw

Yep. I'd be interested as well. I'm baffled as to how anyone can look at the collapse of WTC7 and think it was office fires. None of the NIST stuff is convincing.

Bylaw, yeah, team reason gets on my tits. Don't like the other teams much either.

I don't see how any approach to the study of consciousness which is not rooted in a phenomenological approach can actually be a study of consciousness at all, as a matter of definition.

1. If God exists, then he would not suffer innocents to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
2. God exists
3. Therefore, God has not suffered innocents to live in ignorance in a dangerous world — Bartricks

Valid but unsound I reckon. At least #1 is false, to my mind. Omnibenevolence only entails that from God's POV everything is good. That's perfectly consistent with human suffering. I'm a meta-ethical relativist. So you always have to specify a POV from which something is good or evil to avoid gibbering.

That's interesting (I hate to say). Looks like the term goes back longer than I thought. According to Wikipedia there may have been a time that it wasn't implicitly derogatory.

I'm going to kill myself from boredom, but to buy myself a bit of time I'll make another post. I think the issue here is that the meaning of 'conspiracy theory' can no longer be deduced from the meaning of 'conspiracy' and 'theory', both of which are totally respectable concepts. What has happened, at some point, maybe in the last thirty years or so (I don't know, don't really care) is that the combination 'conspiracy theory' has had falsity and irrationality imported into its definition. That's the way 180 is using the word-combo, I guess, and I am sick to say, consistently with current usage. I'm objecting to that usage, because I'm an old cunt. I hate it when people hijack words. Happens all the time. It's perfectly clear to me that 180 does believe some conspiracy theories, because he thinks plots happen. Plots are conspiracies by definition. And theories are theories by definition. Therefore plot theories, some of which he believes, are also conspiracy theories, if we take the meanings of those words separately.

It'd be interesting (not) to find out the earliest use of the 'conspiracy theory' combo implying falsity. Any ideas? I'm not interested by the way. I don't give a fuck.

this is boring me stupid

There was a plot to knocked down the WTC and it succeeded. — 180 Proof

Was it a conspiracy as well as a plot? A secret plot just is a conspiracy isn't it?

There is no single truther conspiracy. I don't believe any particular one.

An example of a "true conspiracy theory" please. — 180 Proof

The only very specific conspiracy theories I know for sure are true are regarding conspiracies I've been personally involved in, featuring me as a manager conspiring with other managers.

It's harder with large public events, like 9/11. The more specific the conspiracy theory, the less likely it is to be true. I know with a high degree of certainty that building 7 did not collapse from office fires (just from watching the footage), and I can infer that there was some kind of conspiracy involved there, but exactly what it was I have no idea. So that's a true but very vague theory.

This is just a matter of meanings. A conspiracy theory is when someone speculates, with or without good evidence, that the correct explanation for some social/political/physical phenomenon or event is the intended result of a group of people who arranged it in secret.

Some conspiracy theories will turn out to be true, others false. Somehow it has come to be identified as applicable to only irrational theories.

There is no common sense in philosophy. The writer has to be clear and unambiguous, and not blame the reader for not understanding it. Common sense is shared assumptions (or is it?). Philosophy is the examination of assumptions, among other things.

EDIT: What Tim said

Democratic world government, not first past the post, publicly funded party campaigns, I'd vote for: government administered by an AI, managed reduction in population, rationing (especially meat), rewilding, sailing ships, heave ho, bicycles, no packaging, everything loose in boxes, baskets reusable bags etc, compost toilets, everybody sleep a lot more.

A first clarification would be that brains work not on stored memories but active anticipations. They are designed not to remember the past but predict the future. So the comparison is between what is expected to be the case, and what turns out to be the case. — apokrisis

I slag you off a lot Apo but I like this bit. Not that I'm qualified to judge, merely being an armchair philosopher. :) If the human brain is really supposed to remember stuff, it's fucking shit at it. It can do it a bit, but if a computer had my memory it wouldn't even boot.

Where did I say that? Again, you put the words into my thread. — GraveItty

I think T Clark plausibly inferred that from what you did say.

Is not remembering that we are conscious simply to repeat to ourselves "I am conscious"? — Janus

Yes, although if, say, Banno said that, he would likely just mean that he was awake. If I say that when I'm in a philosophical mood, I would mean "I am a centre of experience" or something like that. But Banno rejects these other definitions. It's baffling to me, but one explanation is that he hasn't noticed he is conscious in that sense. I struggle to believe that though.

It's obvious to everyone, — Wayfarer

Ah, would that it were, would that it were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npvQ3M3WaPA

Would the question "how does it feel to be a seagull" have any meaning beyond these specific inquiries? — Janus

Probably not. I wouldn't really expect any answer to that query. Yet one may still idly wonder what it would feel like to be a seagull, even though the question is impossible to answer. One could guess at approximations, as you say, based on comparisons with human experience. So yeah, I agree with you.

The whole comparison thing comes up every time the phrase 'what it is like' is discussed, and it's a total red herring, but an understandable one. I think it's revealing though, as it is an indicator of whether or not the concept of consciousness has actually been grasped. Stephen Priest has often said "Some philosophers have not noticed they are conscious." I always used to think that this was an uncharitable and ridiculous. But now I think he might have been right.

It's nothing to do with comparison. "I wonder what it is like to be a seagull" just means "I wonder how it feels to be a seagull"

"Is there something it is like to be a snail?" just means "Are snails conscious?"

I'm more of the opinion that consciousness in this scenario constitutes a nescio quid, such that for a zombie to make a true qualia-claim it would be referring to something to which it in principle does not have access. — Pantagruel

Indeed. Any claim to having an experience must be false if expressed by a zombie, very much a nescio quid for the zombie. But for the human, who has noticed he is conscious, it's more of a, er, conscio quid, or something.

Person and zombie-clone don't violate the identity of indiscernibles law. They are conceptually discernable - one is conscious and the other one isn't. You just can't tell which is which from the outside. The whole point is that they are conceptually discernible, but physically indiscernible (whatever 'physically' means in this context). And they are actually discernible by the one which is conscious. He knows which one he is.

If zombie-consciousness is devoid of phenomenality, what possible set of conditions could give rise to the zombie asserting phenomenality? Isn't this a petitio principii? — Pantagruel

If the zombie is the clone of a liar, ill educated, or mad person.