That's a knock on your philosophy. The LHC and Hubble and moon landing and ISS have been net goods. Not huge net goods, but net goods.

Can you respond to my point about scientific projects? How would a Randian society fund large-scale projects that don't return a realistic return on investment, like the Hubble Telescope and LHC?

I'm not exactly sure either. My understanding is they got a bunch of neurons to act as logic gates and coupled it to some software/hardware and taught it to play Pong.

How would large-scale science projects be funded? Say, the moon launch or Hubble Telescope or LHC. There is no realistic profit-motive for these projects, but they are a net-positive, so how would they come about in a Randian society?

I think Rawls has the right approach: if I was going to be placed in a society, and didn't know what my place will be in that society, I would like a certain amount of resources (say 10% of my income to start with, going up to 50% if I'm insanely rich) to go towards the military, police protection, science projects, and a basic safety net in case I'm a disadvantaged member of society who needs some basic help.

History has shown us that with statist/dirigist systems. You are describing the norm with states specifically. Laissez-Faire Economies have never existed. We only know what the markets have been capable of in Dirigist systems, and it has changed the world in 200 years. At least in Free Markets, we would be able to find an uninhibited market solution. — Garrett Travers

That's true, but to implement your system, and hope that charities can take up the slack, is quite a gamble. We have a system now that takes money from the richest and provides somewhat of a safety net for the worst off. It's not perfect, but your system is too much of a gamble. Are you familiar with John Rawl's veil of ignorance?

Yes. Taking care of them was their creators' responsibility. If you desire people to adopt that responsibility, you will need to appeal to them through reason. Forcing you to take care of them, or stealing your money so that I can, are ethical violations masquerading as virtue. And your real question should be: what did the creators do to place themselves in this position, and how do we ensure that this doesn't happen again. Of course, if they've died that's another thing. — Garrett Travers

Here's my problem with that: there are irresponsible people in this world. They have kids without planning for it. Sometimes their kids have problems. There are also tragedies that happen to parents who happen to have kids that need a lot of help. So we have this group of kids who, through no fault of their own, can't take care of themselves and also, through no fault of their own, have no one to provide for them. You think private charity is enough to care for this group. But history has shown that, in times of severe hardship, charities get overwhelmed. So, in the Ayn Randian society, when times are tough and charities are struggling...sucks to be you?

It will be, just like with children, the responsibility of those who created them to take care of them. — Garrett Travers

What happens if "those who created them" are unable to take care of them? Reliance on charities?

C. then the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals — Garrett Travers

What does an Ayn Randian society do with those who, through no fault of their own, are unable to pursue their own values. Specifically, I'm thinking of people who are severely handicapped, severely schizophrenic, children with severe birth-defects, etc.?

Is dishbrain conscious according to your definition of conscious?

I think we are asking if Dishbrain can feel anything. Whether it has experiences. — Daemon

Yes!

That we can only define consciousness by reference to our own consciousness, which is inaccessible to anyone else. I assume your conscious and subjective experiences are similar to mine (I also assume that you even have them), but I have no way of knowing.

You have what is called "ostensive definition", definition by pointing. You might point at a patch of green and say "that is green". You can define consciousness ostensively, that's what RogueAI was implying, I think. — Daemon

That's correct.

Brother, I hear you, but in this world, we have to pick the lesser of two evils, and that means voting as if our vote is the deciding one. I never like who I end up voting for, but I have to pick one or the other or abstain and write in a name in that I know won't win, and I consider the latter option the coward's way out because, realistically, there's not a chance in hell that a write-in candidate will win.

Apparently communing with God makes a person mysterious and arrogant. A story as old as time. — praxis

:up:

I don't think we can define consciousness, other than we each have a private definition of it, which we assume everyone else has a similar definition (are you a P-zombie, 180???). I think the lack of a rigorous definition of consciousness is a knock on science. Shouldn't we have a working definition of it by now? The fact that we don't suggests that modern science might not be the best tool to tackle the job.

Great reply!

The problem with things like traffic lights "causing" anything is that the propositions almost always end up relying on counterfactuals. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Can't we just say that the changing light causes a mental state that then causes the person to brake?

Red is an experience, not a fact. It is a data integration on the part of the brain. It isn't itself real, it is the representation of a wavelength that brain can detect and differentiate objective fact values with. — Garrett Travers

The experience of seeing red certainly is real. So is being in pain. To deny the reality of experience is extremely counter-intuitive, and something I can't get on board with. I think your claim is more along the lines of experiences are illusions. Is that more accurate? Very Dennettian, if so!

But they're all imperatives and they have the same source: Reason. And as they're imperatives they need an imperator. And as only a mind can be an imperator, Reason - the source of all the imperatives of Reason, is a mind. — Bartricks

:100:

I would say that Mary has complete knowledge of seeing red iff she has seen red. Learning the physical facts of seeing red alone is not sufficient. This seems irrefutable to me. It's the old saw that a blind person can read up on seeing as much as they want, but they'll still have no idea what seeing actually is until they experience it.

I am somewhat stumped by the physicalist move of the ability argument- Mary doesn't learn new information, she gains a new ability: what seeing red is. I tend to believe that after she sees red, she does have new propositional knowledge: seeing red [the broad experience] is like seeing red [Mary's experience], but this seems too tautological to be considered some new fact about that world. It also might not be true, since Mary doesn't know what seeing red [in the broad sense] is like. None of us do. We only have access to our own particular experiences.

There's no problem there - they come from a mind.

And they do exist - the reason (the faculty of resaon) of virtually everyone tells them that there are ways we ought to behave and ways we ought not to behave. Disagreement exists over exactly what we ought to do and ought not to do, but 'that' we ought to be doing some things and not others is beyond reasonable doubt. — Bartricks

I'm not so sure about that. Just because you ought to do something does not mean there's a moral obligation. For example, if I want to be a champion chess player, then I ought to practice chess, but I'm under no moral obligation to practice chess.

It seems obvious that we ought not torture children for the fun of it, but even there, I can remove the moral component if I stipulate that there are no children- there's only the one mind and what different aspects of it are doing to itself in its dreams. But still, I would agree that even in a dream, children should not be tortured, but not for moral reasons, but because doing things like torturing children and in general behaving like an egotistically ass in this dream we're all having will not help one reach one's goal: to wake up.

Awesome!

:up:

Is this where you're coming from?
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/

that what we generally use the term "thoughts" to describe, are actually neuronal processes of computation by the brain — Garrett Travers

So computation is the basis for thoughts (and presumably consciousness)?

The fact that two people could exchange information about their minds without also exchanging information about their brains suggests minds aren't brains.

And, generally that's correct about colors/ There are numerous pathways that are used to interpret sight, the thalamus, a couple visual cortexes, and the occipital lobe all work togethor to piece things to gather rapidly in accordance with the natural properties of that being processes in sight. — Garrett Travers

What is your position on Mary's Room?

A disappointing response.

Brain states are mental states. — Garrett Travers

Imagine we have two ancient Greeks conversing about their mental states. They talk about being happy to see their kids grow up, and about the aches and pains of being old. You would agree they are exchanging meaningful information about their mental states with each other, right?

Now, let's stipulate that these ancient Greeks had no idea what the brain does. Even worse, they believe the function of the brain is to cool the blood. And yet, if mental states are brain states, and the two Greeks are meaningfully exchanging information about their mental states, it follows that they are also meaningfully exchanging information about their brain states. But that is clearly impossible, since they have no idea what brain states even are, and are clueless about what the function of the brain is.

Brain states are mental states. — Garrett Travers

Are you saying mental states are identical to brain states?

But you are adding an additional premise, namely that there is only one mind. — Bartricks

But that premise solves the question of where moral imperatives come from: there are no moral imperatives. If all that exists is one cosmic mind, how is there any morality? Does the one mind have moral imperatives as to how it treats itself?

Adding that premise would not challenge the conclusion that divine command theory is true, it would just mean that you yourself are God.

Right.

Yet of course, you have good evidence that you are not God, for you do not appear to be omnipotent, omniscient or omnibenevolent. Moral norms, and the norms of Reason more generally, do not seem to be emanating from you. So the additional premise seems unjustified.

It is very counter-intuitive. However, it doesn't seem impossible that a god could choose to experience things in a very limited way. If the goal is to experience as much as possible, then retaining the attributes of godhood would limit the experiences a god could have. I mean, a god can't very well experience things as a lowly human like me unless it becomes a lowly human like me (and bacteria, and virus, and aphid, and all the other limited things that are capable of having experiences).

The solipsist version of idealism you refer to is not characteristic of idealism per se. Idealism doesn't imply solipsism.

Right.

↪SwampMan I am a divine command theorist. I arrived at the view after reflecting on the following argument:

1. Moral imperatives are imperatives of reason
2. Imperatives of reason have a single source: Reason
3. Only a mind issues imperatives
4. Therefore, moral imperatives are the imperatives of a single mind
5. The single mind whose imperatives are the imperatives of reason will be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent (God).

What mistake have I made? — Bartricks

As an idealist who believes that there is only one cosmic mind (and we are dissociated aspects of it- separateness is an illusion), I would argue there are no moral imperatives, there is only a single cosmic mind dreaming and experiencing. Some of the dreams are horrific, but are bad dreams immoral? Is there a moral imperative for God to dream nothing but good dreams?

:up:

Sounds like you are already a believer but I wonder if this is an argument from ignorance at work. Personally I am sympathetic to mysterianism. The question of climate change and other physically understood problems will matter a lot more in this timeframe than resolving the consciousness puzzle. Are you an idealist along Kastrup lines? — Tom Storm

Pretty much, and I admit that if science can't solve the hard problem, the needle may never swing further than mysterianism, but deep down, I don't think people will accept that as an answer. I think idealism and dualism will become more popular with a corresponding dip in materialism. That could be my own bias.

I like a lot of what Kastrup says.

I know this is not to me but... do facts run to a stopwatch? :wink: What if it takes 200 years? And it isn't just science that hasn't resolved these questions- - there is no agreed upon account outside of science or physicalism either. If we still can't explain consciousness using a superphysical explanation in 100 years, will people start questioning the assumption that consciousness is magic spirit? — Tom Storm

Facts don't run on a stopwatch, but explanations do, to some extent. For the longest time, dark matter was thought to be some type of particular. It still is, but you're seeing more and more people kicking around the idea that it's not a particle. As the failed dark matter experiments pile up, the theory that dark matter isn't a particular becomes more and more popular.

In the case of consciousness, if science can't explain it 1,000 years from now, I fully expect people to have abandoned the assumption that mind comes from matter. It will happen a lot sooner than that.

Progress on the easy problem is made, sure. On the hard problem? What progress is there? Integrated Information Theory is all the rage, but it's still just that: a theory. Suppose that in 100 years, IIT is still just a theory. 1,000 years? At what point do we start questioning the assumption that consciousness comes from matter?

You claim that computer consciousness is a possibility, and you have an explanation for how computers might be conscious, but how would you verify whether that explanation is true or not? For example, you would claim that that computer over there is conscious because xyz, while I would claim that it's not conscious because abc. If both of our explanations are coherent, how do we determine who is correct?

Some claim that consciousness or intelligence is fundamental, but at present we have no way to settle the issue one way or the other. We cannot even come to agreement on terms. What does it mean to be conscious? What counts as evidence of consciousness? It the self-organization of matter an intelligent process? Is the ability to complete complicated tasks an indication of intelligence? — Fooloso4

Do you see this as a problem for science? If science still has not made progress on these fundamental questions, say, a century from now, do you think people will start questioning the assumption that consciousness can come from matter?

You're not being honest.