Based on what is known.. We can't know what we don't know..

What evidence do you have that we only have one lifetime? How is that a known thing?

We work with what is known. We can imply anything.. QM theory says... (place any possibility because infinite multiverse).

It is not known that we only have this one lifetime. You're making an assumption.

How would anyone know the converse? I don't see the justification in assuming this is the only life we've ever lived. A popular interpretation of QM implies there are near infinite copies of me in other real universes. If this (possibly) happens spatially, why not temporally?

What if one believed that people choose to come back again (reincarnation)? In that case, there would be no consent issue to having kids.

Hi Javi, to be fair, he is talking about "absolute antinatalism".. that is antintalism that thinks NO parents should ever have children because they want to prevent a future person from suffering. It doesn't matter the background of the parent, or the circumstances. All birth should be prevented if possible.

I already gave my answer as to the difference between beginning a life, and continuing a life that is already here and how ANs would not use the very things they are against (not forcing a situation onto someone, not getting consent, not harming) to prevent current suffering. The nonexistence of an actual person prior to birth makes all the difference here.

How sure are you that people are non-existent before they're born? Does your whole position rest on that?

Of course, no one can answer that these days. But maybe a picture will help.Consciousness is like superconductivity, it is there or not. If something is not right (too high temperature, too strong magnetic field), then the superconductivity disappears. The whole system is superconducting, not the single atoms.

I've been thinking about that. We tend to value animals in proportion to their perceived intelligence, but does intelligence mean anything when talking about consciousness? Is my consciousness "greater" than a person born MR? That doesn't make any sense, and when I get high, my IQ drops to fantastically low levels, but my consciousness seems to expand. If consciousness IS an on/off thing, as I suspect it is, then we need to find out what the consciousness dividing line is, if one exists. Maybe the panpsychists are right and everything has a rich inner mental life, even electrons, although idealism seems the more parsimonious theory.

I think the most important thing a person can do is conquer their ego. It's the root cause of a lot of problems, for men and women. I don't think it's possible to totally overcome your ego, but it's possible to minimize it's destructive influence.

It doesn't follow that something predicable of the whole should be predicable of any of the parts.

That's true. Each individual neuron doesn't think or feel anything, but combined, they are more than the sum of their parts. Your position is going to lead to the hard problem: if the parts of a person don't experience pain, but the person does, how does that work? Which parts are involved? What's their function? How do they combine to produce the experience of pain? Why pain and not some other experience?

I agree, so why did you bring it up?

Is there any gain to using the word "being" when talking about whether rocks and bats have minds? If so, what is it?

It is you that is experiencing pain (or is in pain), not your toe.

This is a problem. Suppose I've made an exhaustive list of everything that makes up me. I'm also experiencing some pain from stubbing my toe. If I ask you: is my kidney experiencing pain? And you say: no. Is my toe experiencing pain? and you say: no. Is my x experiencing pain? And on and on. Eventually, you're going to have to say "yes" to one of my questions or else concede that I'm in pain, but no part of me is experiencing any pain, which of course is an absurdity.

I've been reading Sean Carrol (theoretical physicist). I get the impression that if you accept the idea that there are a lot of worlds other than this one, a lot of quantum mechanics' problems go away (the Many Worlds Interpretation). That sounds a lot like idealism: if you stop thinking this mindless material stuff exists, a lot of the problems related to consciousness go away. Of course, you have to go along with the idea that this is all just a dream.

The fact that one has a mind and the other doesn't is a "being" statement? It's just a factual description: the rock is mindless, the bat has a mind.

So we agree that there is a difference in quality between a rock and a bat, but disagree as to how to elucidate that difference.

One has a mind and the other doesn't. That's the fundamental difference between the two: one is conscious and other isn't (or maybe the rock is? Anyone want to argue that?).

People (or bats) have experiences, not brains or minds.

A person is made up of many things: arms, legs, organs, tissue, brain, etc. If I stub my toe and experience pain, where exactly in my body is that experience taking place? Not in my pinky. Not in my kidney.

Not if subjective means "in the mind" as opposed to "in the world" which in this context is a Cartesian distinction, not an ordinary or natural distinction.

You don't believe experiences happen in the mind? If not, then where? In the world? If so, then specifically where in the world do experiences (or experiencing, if you prefer) happen? The brain?

Experience is a subjective thing. When you unpack "1. A bat experiences the world when it uses echolocation.", you're saying there's an experiencer (the bat), and it has experiences. Those experiences are therefore the bat's subjective experiences.

If you're not a dualist, and you believe experiences are real, how are they real?

I think we're talking past each other. No worries.

Definitive proof of theism (of the kind of god I described) entails definitive proof of the supernatural. Supernatural inquiry would then become legitimate. There would be a crash effort to discover the nature of this god and attempt to communicate with it. Everything would be on the table: psi, mediumship, prayer, meditation, drugs, the wobble of the muon. It would become the number one problem in science, because any given scientific experiment done in a theistic universe begs the question: were the results accurate, or did the god do it?

So you're telling me Fish, that if you knew for certain that a god exists (and here I mean some powerful supernatural being capable of creating a universe like ours), you would have no follow-up questions? Really? You would just take it in stride?

How do you think the world and scientific community would react to definitive proof of theism? I think people would completely lose their shit. Because once you know some god exists, it becomes pretty important to find out what its plans are for you and whether you're in its good graces.

Name a staggering implication if theism is true? OK: God exists.

I don't think you're reading this right:
"Simulation theory and "god did it" are both very similar in that they're impossible to prove, but if true, have staggering implications."

If you knew for certain that god exists, that wouldn't change your life in any way?

I think you're conflating the difficulty of proving "god did it" with "god did it". Simulation theory and "god did it" are both very similar in that they're impossible to prove, but if true, have staggering implications.

Fishfry, if we discovered for sure that God did something, wouldn't it become of paramount importance to figure out the nature of this god? And then try to communicate with it? Of course. The "god did it" explanation, if true, has profound implications.

Our best cosmologists can only come up with absurdities to avoid believing "God did it." Yet "God did it" is useless as a scientific theory or an explanation of anything.

Why is "God did it" useless as an explanation? Doesn't it tell you why something happened? God did it!

But how could they not have made those distinctions? Again, as soon as you posit the world is made of mindless non-conscious atoms, doesn't the objection immediately arise: My mind isn't made of atoms! Which would have started the whole mind-body problem going. Socrates briefly alludes to this:

"It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body I cannot execute my purposes. But to say that I do as I do because of them, and that this is the way in which mind acts, and not from the choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of speaking."

But that's only hinting at the problem. They weren't all panpsychists and they weren't all dualists, so this should have been quite the dilemma for at least a few of them.

We just assume we're all pretty much the same.

If I can force a materialist, through argumentation, to admit brain states ARE mental states (and not wuss out like most do and say brain states cause mental states, but they're somehow not the same thing) I'm pleased, because that to me is an absurdity (I also don't think it's that popular anymore, but I could be wrong on that), and the more absurd I can make materialism the better I feel because it's a horrible belief system. But I would like it to be false on the merits, and I think it fails catastrophically with regards to consciousness.

This is the argument I just thought up.

If a materialist/physicalist admits that experiences are real, in any sense of the word, they have to admit experiences can be compared, else you get the existence in a physical universe of two incomparable real things (that would seem to be a problem, maybe not?). So then how would a materialist explain how experiences can be compared? Can we compare experiences by talking about them? But how can I ever verify what you mean when you refer to your own experiences? That referent is closed off to me. Measuring brain states? But then doesn't that commit a materialist to a strict reductionist view that mental states are identical to brain states?

Our exchange was very productive. I like this little argument. Maybe it crashes and burns.

It's not a grammatical nitpick. You're either defining what a particular experience is or you're not talking about experience at all, you're talking about something that causes an experience.

Hitting your toe against the floor causes the experience of the pain of stubbing a toe, yes. I think that's what you meant. But when I ask you how experiences are compared and you say, "One hit her left foot, the other her right." you are not talking about experiences, you are talking about the causes of experiences. I have no problem with the idea of comparing causes of experiences. There's no tension there. But I would like to know how experiences can be compared. I don't think we can use language, because there's no way to verify what another person means when they refer to their own expereinces.

Unless you mean the physical act of hitting your toe on the floor is an actual experience. Are you a reductionist? That's one way to compare brain states: wire the two people up and see what's going on, but then that commits you to "brain states = mental states". Is that your view?

"One hit her left foot"

Are you saying that "hitting her left foot" is an experience or causes an experience?

How?

Can those two experiences be compared, yes or no?

Can those two experiences be compared?

Now, lets stipulate that there are two experiencers, A and B, and they are both experiencing the pain of stubbing a toe. Still with me?

...and those experiences are then subjective.
— RogueAI

What does that mean?

Let's start simple. You admit there are experiences. It follows there must be experiencer(s). Agreed?

Are experiences real? Yes.

I'm puzzled that you need to add "subjective". It's a term that carrie so much baggage. Drop it, and get on with doing stuff.

If experiences are real, then there are experiencer(s), and those experiences are subjective. There's no avoiding it- subjectiveness is contained within the meaning of "experience".

Also: if experiences are real, who's doing the experiencing? Something must be. If there is more than one experiencer, can we talk about comparing their experiences? Why not?

Banno, are subjective experiences real? If so, are they only real in the moment, or is a past experience "real" in any sense? What about a future experience?

It's rather that we cannot even determine if there is a something that it is like to be a bat.

You've admitted that dolphins feel pain, so there is something that it is like to be a dolphin in pain: namely, a dolphin in pain. The question then naturally arises: is a dolphin in pain similar to a human in pain? Is your claim then that that's a nonsensical question or simply one that can't be answered?

Only if "there is something it is like" makes sense. And it doesn't make sense for "there I something it is like to be RogueAI", because what it is like to be you changes.

That's a copout. The Banno of five minutes ago is still you. Questions about your subjective experiences are sensical: what is Banno's experience of pain like? Is it like mine? What about his (her?) experience of red? Same as mine or slightly different? Those are questions that make sense and have answers (even if we'll never be sure of them). Agree so far?

Well, let's explore this. Do you think dolphins experience pain?