But that isn’t that a problem for physicalism, which says that conscious acts are reducible to objective referents? — Wayfarer
We're in accord here. Though I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it, so to speak, do you see how all this meshes with the notion of panpsychism?. — javra
With that, now we're getting into metaphysical underpinnings — javra
No, of course not. But it would need to give reasons for why tangible X, Y, and Z results in what it feels like to be conscious--rather than taking the latter occurrence for granted. — javra
I don't know what motivates you to not just ignore the screams of brown people but actively try to stop them from being helped. — Paul Edwards
You mean you're not 10 years old now??? Dang, I got that one wrong. — Hippyhead
I’m sometimes accused of ducking questions, obviously I’m not alone. — Wayfarer
A brain is tangible (to a consciousness); a consciousness is not tangible (to any consciousness).
Therein lies a, or maybe the, pivotal ontological difference—even when eschewing the issue of whether a consciousness can hold non-epiphenomenal, hence top-down, effects upon its own substratum of brain. — javra
Tangentially, I’ll add that this thread's persistent reference to brains is overlooking the fact that even amebas hold an awareness of other: such as in an ameba’s capacity to discern what is relative to itself a predator from what is a prey. — javra
Nonetheless, the physical brain and all it does will forever be tangible percepts which we perceive as other relative to us as the consciously aware observers. — javra
If, simplistically put, a living brain is identical to a consciousness, they then should both be either tangible or, else, intangible. But they hold different ontological properties in this respect; they are not identical. — javra
So how could the idea itself be identified with anything physical, when the physical representation is arbitary? You could invent a whole arbitrary system of symbols, but if it followed the rules, it would be valid even if noboby else understood it. And those rules are real, but I can't see how they're physical in nature. — Wayfarer
Are you saying we should let religious bigots decide whether they can enslave a population or not? — Paul Edwards
And does freedom for brown people have no value to you? Brown people shouldn't be fight and die in any fight for freedom? — Paul Edwards
Have you ever met even ONE person who supported the 2003 Iraq war so that America could control oil? — Paul Edwards
Not only didn't you care about the welfare of the Iraqi people, you actively tried to stop the cops when they tried to end the holocaust. — Paul Edwards
When Saddam was committing his crimes, it was LEGAL for him to do so. The police were on the side of the criminal. — Paul Edwards
When the US commits crimes, they are TRIED and JAILED, because it is ILLEGAL. — Paul Edwards
They may be described mathematically as waves, but they are portrayed graphically as balls — Gnomon
Take calculating some iterative algorithm that has no p-type solution. The step you happen to be on isn't the 'result' of the process, it's just the transient stage you're currently at. If we did want a result it might more properly be something like 'you're going to doing this forever', or 'you'll never get a number below 100', or some such limit. That's the way I'm seeing perceptual processing, from day one the perception is not a result, its a prediction to be input into the algorithm generating the next perception... — Isaac
True but Dennett is a philosopher to be fair, and not a strict neuroscientist. It would not be out of the realm of possibility for other philosophers to engage him in these kind of (philosophical) questions. And I recognize this might be a legitimate neuroscience question, it is a legitimate philosophical question. — schopenhauer1
It's when a philosopher handwaves it and then narrowly focuses on the correlates when clearly the question is not about the mechanisms of how the correlates integrate, but how it is that this correlation exists in the first place, that's when there is the continual ignoring of question or talking past each other. — schopenhauer1
They still call it the Wave Function "of a particle". So, it seems that most physicists still treat holistic quantum level wave functions as-if they are tiny balls of stuff. — Gnomon
Hard problemers wouldn't even discount that the neurological correlate is the thing itself. Rather, it would be why this metaphysical case exists that the neurological underpinnings is experiential. — schopenhauer1
Yep it "causes" experience. Not debated. How is it metaphysically the same as experience is the question. — schopenhauer1
I'm still not sure I'm prepared to accept that picking a point in an ongoing feedback process and labelling it the 'result' doesn't set us off on the wrong path as far as perception is concerned. — Isaac
True, but we have jettisoned phlogiston, humours, elan vital, and ether, (haven't we?) so is it not still a case of deciding what category qualia fall into? — Isaac
Not recognizing the legitimacy of the other side. — schopenhauer1
Again, you have to at least recognize that "hard problmers" are recognizing this too. — schopenhauer1
The trouble is it depends on a dualist—and ultimately unworkable—theory of consciousness. The underlying intuition is that consciousness is an added extra—something additional to and different from the physical processes on which it depends. Searching for the NCCs relies on this difference. On one side of the correlation you measure neural processes using EEG, fMRI or other kinds of brain scan; on the other you measure subjective experiences or 'consciousness itself'. — Blackmore
However, the easier questions aren't even approaching the answer, so how can it "close off" the hard problem when it never ventured the realm of answering it? — schopenhauer1
Now YOU have to be charitable enough to realize that hard questioners AREN'T denying the science of the findings of cognitive neuroscience. — schopenhauer1
It's ignoring it and then pointing to some other line of thought. — schopenhauer1
I strongly suspect that relating to our own perceptions in a manner that doesn't produce these conceptual traps upon reflection is a laborious, ongoing fight. A "relearning how to see". — fdrake
perceptual features are "submitted to" a phenomenal content receptor vs phenomenal content ascription is interweaved with the process of perceptual feature formation — fdrake
I'd suggest that the "phenomenal content" of a given perceptual feature is the perceptual feature itself — fdrake
Non-reductive physicalism is pretty standard in philosophy of mind. Is that what you're describing here? — frank
That's two different conversations. I would like to know Dennett's straight-ahead answer to it. — schopenhauer1
But you know that is a stance he (you) are taking on this, not necessarily the case, right? I mean it isn't a forgone conclusion that there is not a hard problem. — schopenhauer1
But my main point further, is certainly Dennett isn't even coming close to answering it by criticizing certain theories on the physical mechanisms and their subjective equivalent "illusionary" aspects, as they are reported by individuals. — schopenhauer1
Had you had your way, Saddam and his sons would still be attaching jumper cables to the genitals of anyone who got in their way. — Hippyhead
But women should take responsibility for their acts. — Gregory
But what is Dennett's response to the hard problem, if not to retreat to easier ones? — schopenhauer1
Strawson for example, seems to be asking for answers to the hard problem. Dennett keeps reaching for easier ones in response. — schopenhauer1
If the devil is in the details of the formation process of perceptual features, the way we read off features from already formed perceptions effectively has a sampling bias in that regard. — fdrake
Another fascinating (to me) aside, but I must stop getting sidetracked. Have a look at this paper, if you fancy, it's really interesting. — Isaac
‘Theory theorists’ in cognitive development point to an analogy between learning in children and learning in science. Causal Bayesian networks provide a computational account of a kind of inductive inference that should be familiar from everyday scientific thinking: testing hypotheses about the causal structure underlying a set of variables by observing patterns of correlation and partial correlation among these variables, and by examining the consequences of interventions (or experiments) on these variables.
It seems then that our disagreement (small such as it is) is only over whether dismissal of Qualia in their entirety puts this idea at risk (throws the baby out with the bathwater, as you put it). My feeling is that the idea here is so generalised and applicable to a field much wider than qualia, that dismissing all talk of qualia maintains the conscious awareness of the results of unconscious processing completely intact. — Isaac
There are plenty of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientist working under the former assumption without ever mentioning qualia or anything like them, so I think it can work. (there are, of course also plenty who do - much to their shame!). — Isaac
why didn't you play off one fascist against another to get the end result, — Paul Edwards
And you seem to be policing America, despite America being a sovereign nation — Paul Edwards
It is Saddam who was the fascist. — Paul Edwards
No, all anyone is asking you to do is be a citizen who supports the police (or a posse) who is in the process of arresting a criminal. You don't personally need to go to Iraq, there are sufficient volunteers willing to do that already. All anyone is asking you to do is say "thanks America", like I did here. — Paul Edwards
Instead of sitting back and expecting Bush to articulate a perfect reason for liberating Iraq, why weren't you actively stating the case for liberating Iraq yourself? Then, when Bush came along, you could have said "well that's nuts, but it fits into my objective anyway, so go right ahead". — Paul Edwards
The war crime in my opinion is to stand in the way of the police as they try to bring the criminal Saddam to justice. And as I said, you should have been part of the police yourself. — Paul Edwards
The Iraq was most definitely NOT a war crime. If you believe there is a law that protects Saddam's "right" to rape and mutilate, you have a duty to ignore that "law" and then do your best to CHANGE that "law". — Paul Edwards
I'm not pro-US-war crimes. Nor is the American government or the American people. If an American commits a war crime, or any crime for that matter, they are charged and jailed (and I support that). — Paul Edwards
Physics can never show "WHY" Reality behaves as it does until we understand its inherent flaws. — Chris1952Engineer
And that description is best suited to Saddam. Which you happily ignore, and even go so far as standing in the way of those who would put an end to his criminality. — Paul Edwards
No, it's not whataboutery. It's the fact that Saddam was a criminal who ordered the rape and mutilation of innocent Iraqis, and by any sane philosophical position should have been brought to justice. The appropriate tool to bring him to justice was a war of liberation, which is exactly what Bush did and what you should have supported.
You should not have supported the alternative of allowing a criminal to continue committing crimes, and trying to stop the police from arresting him.
It's a very simple concept. — Paul Edwards
So it's a case of "Don't listen to philosophers, it's all nonsense. Now, listen to my philosophical claims..." — Mijin
Even so, most quantum physicists continue to "interpret" photons as-if they are petite balls of solid stuff. — Gnomon
To some even suggesting that Quantum physics is proof that nothing exists or is real (it doesn't but any interpretation of it can say what you want it to say). Considering how weird it is, and how not even the people who do it fully understand what is going on do you think there is a place for philosophy in this or should we just leave well enough alone. — Darkneos
The reason why we feel like we're living some story is because we're constantly scenario-planning and to do that we have to integrate our current environment into the 'the story so far...' section of the film. — Isaac
The point is that there's no reason to think that 'identifying the object' is an event in any singular manner. — Isaac
Another fascinating (to me) aside, but I must stop getting sidetracked. Have a look at this paper, if you fancy, it's really interesting. — Isaac
I could almost get behind that but would have to add that consciousness may not be the kind of thing that has the kind of properties we're talking about. Consciousness seems to be a set of processes, story building... — Isaac
Kenosha Kid. It looks like fdrake has already said what I just answered to you - I should really read the whole thread before replying. — Isaac
While it doesn't matter how many people Saddam killed? — Paul Edwards
And it is the Iraqi people's politics that were being forced on the Iraqi leadership, not US politics. — Paul Edwards
I rather liked Trumps idea of a wall, We could all contribute and extend it around the whole place. — FrancisRay
I am sure there are examples where removing dictators worked for the good but I cannot think of one. — tim wood