So you argue in favor of physicalism? — baker

Yes.

What do you mean? That people who mindlessly peruse FB have mush for brains? — baker

No, I mean the sort of physical identity that is of relevance here would be something like, "Having all of a person's the electrons, protons, and neutrons in the exact same relative locations and with the exact same momentums at some instant in time." (Of course not a knowable state, even if a physical possibility, but for the sake of the p-zombie argument - a good enough description of the sort of scenario under consideration.)

I'm impressed with Michael's patience in the face of incomprehension — bert1

Same.

There reaches a point where a person is no longer amenable to reason or evidence. Look no further than election denial, climate denial, 2nd amendment enthusiasts, flat earthers, etc. Doesn’t matter — there will always be some excuse to go on believing what you wanted to believe in the first place. — Mikie

The following excerpt from a Robert Cialdini book seems relevant, both to your observation and to various threads going on about morality, and discussion of promises.

https://medium.com/@charlesleon/consistency-and-commitment-9f2f9d38e188

Oh, this is an actual question about another poster?

No I am not him. Why did you think that? — Apustimelogist

I supposed it is a matter of surprising coincidences. The last time I saw a post from @Srap Tasmaner was a short while before the first post I saw from you and what you were saying seemed like it could well have been a continuation of a line of thinking he had been engaged in.

There is also similarity in posting style.

That, and sock puppet spotting has become a weird hobby of mine, and I've developed a significant degree of trust in my sock puppet spotting intuitions. On the other hand, experience as an engineer has taught me the value of test to failure, and not least in the case of my own intuitions.

Thus my question.

The solution? In Until the End of Time, Brian Greene wrote:
And within that mathematical description, affirmed by decades of data from particle colliders and powerful telescopes, there is nothing that even hints at the inner experiences those particles somehow generate. How can a collection of mindless, thoughtless, emotionless particles come together and yield inner sensations of color or sound, of elation or wonder, of confusion or surprise? Particles can have mass, electric charge, and a handful of other similar features (nuclear charges, which are more exotic versions of electric charge), but all these qualities seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience. How then does a whirl of particles inside a head—which is all that a brain is—create impressions, sensations, and feelings?
— Greene — Patterner

What does Greene follow that up with?

I don't get the impression, based on the following Greene interview, that he would agree much with the way you are using that quote.

Where the mistake is made is in thinking that these Christian Fundamentalists are comprised of the true primitive Christians, truly as they began and have existed for thousands of years. — Hanover

Well of course societies have continually evolved, and the form literalist Christianity has taken has varied. Are you sure there is anyone here making this mistake?

It's supposedly "hard" because we don't yet have a place in the physical sciences for the idea of phenomenal consciousness. — frank

I've never heard anyone say that, who wasn't rather naive about what is going on in the physical sciences. See the link I posted above. It is certainly informative about ways my phenomenal consciousness differs from that of others.

Your wave example doesn't help. It wouldn't explain why the wave is associated with some particular experie ces in the same way that current descriptions of vidual cortex activity cannot tell us what experiences we are having. — Apustimelogist

I see growing scientific evidence, that learning more about phase relationships between brainwaves and neuron firings will enhance our understanding of the nature of our perceptual experience at the least.

Lots of relevant stuff here. (And pointers to more relevant stuff.)

Sure, but I won't bother to do so unless Bob Ross commits himself to your position, namely that there is parity between the rational justification for an object's height, and the rational justification for a moral claim. If he honestly thinks that both of these things are similarly unjustifiable, then I will consider responding to your post. If not then I will not consider it worth responding to. — Leontiskos

Ah son, I've been involved in so many discussions with Christians like you, that I'm pretty unimpressed with threats to take your ball and go. Do what you need to do. Stomp the dust off your feet, or whatever.

I'm kind of a "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." sort of guy. So no sweat if you need to tune me out for awhile.

Still, perhaps I've instilled some subconscious recognition in you, of your tendency to look at things simplistically. Who knows? Perhaps some day you will have some recognition of how you have looked at morality simplistically.

Figurative interpretations has been accepted since ancient times:

https://biologos.org/common-questions/how-was-the-genesis-account-of-creation-interpreted-before-darwin — Hanover

Sure, there have always been some intellectuals who attained figurative views. However consider this Augustine quote:

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

This quote doesn't make much sense except there having been a context where Augustine was under the impression that there were an embarrassing number of Christians who aren't such critical thinkers.

So the evidence presented by Biologos itself, provides evidence of literalists going way back in history.
Does it really make sense to jump to a simplistic conclusion, about the thinking of religious people historically, on the basis of the views of a few intellectuals?

You don't even believe one can be rationally justified with regards to the height of an object? lol... — Leontiskos

The fact is, you have to settle for an approximation. Even if you were to get NIST to provide you with a measurement of your height, NIST would qualify their measurement result with an uncertainty.

So how is your belief, as to what your height is, rationally justified without settling for a simplistic answer at some point? I believe you settle for simplistic propositions without realizing that you are doing so. Do you think you can prove me wrong?

I’m trying to understand exactly what this problem is about. From my understanding, the biggest mystery is that we currently don’t have nearly enough knowledge in neuroscience to explain why some neural networks lead to conscious experience and others don’t.
But what if we did have that knowledge, would it solve the problem then?

Imagine we found some sort of wave that certain neural networks create, that is related to consciousness: whenever we observe this specific wave, conscious experiences comes along as well. Would that solve the hard problem of consciousness or would it still leave philosophers wondering how exactly that wave represents the conscious experience?

If the problem remains, then we have the same problem with a lot of other things like time, space,… However we try to rationalize it, no one can explain time and space, it’s just there in everything we know, there are building blocks of our world. The only way we can picture a world without time is if we imagine that time would stop. But that thought itself includes time. And it's the same with consciousness: consciousness is there whenever we think about it, any explanation would be self referencing.

So my question is: is the root of the hard problem self reference or is it our critical lack of knowledge in that domain? — Skalidris

I'd say some of both.

Assuming it is even possible to record the full detail of the physical activity occurring in human brains without killing a person, we aren't near to having the technology to do so. So the lack of knowledge is a significant issue.

If we did have such knowledge, what would we be able to do with it? A physical system can't simulate a physical system as complex as itself. On physicalism there is no reason to think that we could consciously grasp the full details of what occurs in our brains.

Not to say that there isn't (or won't be) progress being made in improving our understanding, but that there will inevitably be limits.

Rational justification doesn't work that way. Propositions are true or false. Conclusions are rationally justified or they aren't. "True for me," or, "Rationally justified for me," is a nonsense assertion. — Leontiskos

Such black or white thinking. I presume you have some belief about how tall you are. How is that belief rationally justified?

Philosophy is not the love of wisdom... — Lionino

Speaking for yourself, I presume?

We evolved, and exist, in this universe, with its consistent principles. Meaning they are within us. I think counting is our recognition of these attributes, these consistent principles, of the universe. It makes sense that we recognize the principles of our own existence when we see them outside of ourselves. It wouldn't make sense if we were surprised every time we added 2 and 2, and came up with 4. — Patterner

:up:

So I am an inadequate atheist in a sense - I never found the notion of gods coherent, attractive or useful, even before I heard any of the arguments. I wish I could say I had a deconversion experience, but it never happened. — Tom Storm

LOL

I wish I hadn't needed one.

Which leads to the question: "if the universe necessarily produces all this meaning and value, in what way is it meaningless and valueless?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Meaning and value are things naturally evolved minds project on things in the environment, since survival and reproduction is fostered by seeing things in the environment as meaningful and valuable. Obviously there is no requirement that people recognize their projection of value for what it actually is, (and most don't, and no one does all the time) in order for such subconscious projection to be adaptive.

How would you distinguish between something having value, and your mind subconsciously projecting value on that thing? Does not what you find meaningful and valuable change over time, and how would that be possible if you were somehow perceiving objective value?

It seems to me that the fixation of New Atheism on fundementalism has to do with it being an easy target, and it's an easy target because it makes explicit claims about the types of facts that scientific inquiry is well adapted to explore. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd think it is much more about recognition of the toxicity of fundamentalism. Remember the role 9/11 played.

I appreciate your courage, openness, and insights.

For me here I think it gets hazy because since in my example everything is completely identical except for this gamete part, it seems to me I could plausibly say they are the same person. — Apustimelogist

Speaking of identity, I can with a high degree of confidence say that you are the same person as "Srap Tasmaner". Care to verify or falsify my intuition? :nerd:

It is an example of how it can be simplistic to talk in terms of necessity regarding genetics.

My only purpose here was to try to make the nuance clear. — Banno

Pointing out nuances has been one of my purposes in this thread as well, for example my pointing out tetragametic chimeras earlier.

In 2002, after applying for government assistance in the state of Washington, Lydia Fairchild was told that her two children were not a genetic match with her and that therefore, biologically, she could not be their mother. Researchers later determined that the genetic mismatch was due to chimerism, a condition in which two genetically distinct cell lines are present in one body. The state accused Fairchild of fraud and filed a lawsuit against her. Following evidence from another case of chimerism documented in The New England Journal of Medicine in a woman named Karen Keegan, Fairchild was able to secure legal counsel and establish evidence of her biological maternity. A cervical swab eventually revealed Fairchild’s second distinct cell line, showing that she had not genetically matched her children because she was a chimera. Fairchild’s case was one of the first public accounts of chimerism and has been used as an example in subsequent discussions about the validity and reliability of DNA evidence in legal proceedings within the United States.

https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/case-lydia-fairchild-and-her-chimerism-2002

Hand waving. Are you saying it is an induction, like "all swans are black"? If not, what? — Banno

As I said, it is a sentence of your creation. It seems to allude to inductions that are frequently made these days, but I don't see any need to pigeonhole your sentence as you seem interested in.

It's not an observation; so in what way could it be considered empirical? — Banno

It alludes to reasonable expectations we could have based on a wide range of empirical observations which have been made regardless of not in itself stating an empirical observation.

Because I'm suggesting it is not empirical, but a choice about how you would use the name "schopenhauer1". — Banno

Well it certainly isn't a choice about how I personally would use the name "schopenhauer1". I use the name " schopenhauer1" to refer to some dude on the internet I have a fairly fuzzy concept of, though I am quite confident that he has a fairly unique genome.

By way of trying, what status, what sort of sentence, do you think the one labeled K1 has? Do you think it an observation? Something that is empirically verifiable? — Banno

It is a sentence you came up with. It is a simplistic assertion. No, it is not an observation. As it stands it is too vague to be empirically verifiable.

Anyway, I've never taken much of an interest in the details of language that you are interested in, and undoubtedly I'm not going to be very good at playing guess what Banno is thinking on subjects such as this.

Do you consider being scientifically informed an aspect of being well educated? I seem to get mixed messages on that subject from you.

I suspect schopenhauer1, ↪wonderer1, too, think they are making an observation, but it doesn't look that way to me. More generally, if folk do not accept that we bring things about using words - that there are commissive utterance - they will have a hard time understanding what is going on here. — Banno

I don't really know what you are imagining here. Of course there are commisive utterances. I don't see what that has to do with this thread.

The suggestiong to my mind is if one could establish that human beings are a natural kind, and natural kinds of the sort that human beings are can be said to be different under such-and-such circumstances, then we could say when a person is, which in turn should at least hint whether genetics are necessary for the identity of a person as an object... — Moliere

I'm not seeing a need for establishing humans as a natural kind, in order to recognize genetics as playing a necessary causal role in maintaining human identity.

It is enormously scientifically supported, that our genes play an ongoing role in maintaining us in existence as living human beings. What would the notion of a natural kind add?

When one's argument against moral realism involves claiming to not know what it means when some behaviour is forbidden, then I'm not sure what else I could say to help. Knowing that mush seems to be a necessary prerequisite for doing metaethics. — creativesoul

This is coming across to me like "What is wrong with you for questioning whether the emperor is wearing clothes?"

I'd just say Chalmers has bad epistemic hygiene. Inflationism might be handy for making weak arguments appear strong, but I'm not seeing a good reason to take it seriously based on what the SEP says.

Logical and metaphysical possibility amount to the same thing. — frank

Philosophers disagree.

We can conceive of something that is physically identical to us not having consciousness, therefore it is metaphysically possible for something physically identical to us to not have consciousness — Michael

How do you get from being able to imagine something, to that thing being metaphysically possible?

People can certainly imagine things that aren't physically possible. Why would the situation be different for metaphysical possibility.

And yet there are people who pretty much live like zombies, at least some of their time. Not people in a coma, but people who mindlessly peruse Facebook and such. — baker

Those people are not physically identical to us, and so aren't relevant to Michael's argument.

Ah, I was hasty and didn't pay sufficient attention to the "identical" in 1.

With that aspect of the definition in mind, I'll shove p-zombies the short distance from utterly ludicrous to metaphysically impossible.

2. P-zombies are not a metaphysical impossibility
3. Therefore consciousness, if it exists, is non-physical — Michael

I don't see a need to reject 2 in order to reject 3.

Getting to 3 in your argument seems to require a non-sequitur.

Impossible because conscious experience is physical or impossible because non-physical conscious experience is a necessary consequence of brain activity (or other physical processes in the body)? — Michael

I wouldn't say impossible, but it's ludicrous to think there would be a couple of p-zombies carrying on, what to us would appear to be a deeply personal heartfelt conversation, while in fact their conversation is simply meaningless noises they are making for no reason.

I have to think that people considering p-zombies plausible is a result of not having really thought through what is under consideration.

That doesn’t counter my gametes theory, it just elaborates on an interesting variation of it. — schopenhauer1

Right.

My quest here is to find an objective thing that differentiates a person from being all possibilities that that person can hold. Clearly the stopping point for that person to be all counterparts of that person would be at conception. How could it be otherwise? — schopenhauer1

Consider tetragametic chimeras.

Tetragametic chimerism is a form of congenital chimerism. This condition occurs through the fertilization of two separate ova by two sperm, followed by aggregation of the two at the blastocyst or zygote stages. This results in the development of an organism with intermingled cell lines. Put another way, the chimera is formed from the merging of two nonidentical twins (a similar merging presumably occurs with identical twins, but as their genotypes are not significantly distinct, the resulting individual would not be considered a chimera). As such, they can be male, female, or have mixed intersex characteristics.

In such a case there were two separate conceptions resulting in one person.

And it's navigating the world and doing its job effectively, and it's doing all this without knowing anything??? How does that work, exactly? — RogueAI

Why think it does work? I think the most reasonable perspective on p-zombies is that they are an incoherent idea.

Assembly language is the best. — unenlightened

Machine language is 102 97 114 32 98 101 116 116 101 114