:up:

I want to talk about the “consciousness” people talk about when they discuss “The hard problem of consciousness.” T — T Clark

I think some call this phenomenal consciousness or 'what is it like to be consciousness' per Nagel/Chalmers.

:joke:

Once we accept this truth we can free ourselves from mental constructs and focus on the utility of the mind. I postulate that most, if not all, current philosophy regarding the soul or spirit can be transposed to the ‘mind’. As a perspective experiment contemplate this in the context of other religions and theology. Literally replace the word and meaning of soul or spirit with the word mind. — Brock Harding

This seems to be a rewrite of your last thread. Same argument. Does the mind have the properties the soul is alleged to have - is it immortal and immaterial? If not, all you have said is the soul doesn't exist. Physicalists have been saying that for generations. This leaves us with the mind and conscious experience. Some even argue that the conscious self is an illusion (e.g., elimitivist Daniel Dennett). How does consciousness relate to mind? The question of what it is like to be you - is that just the mind operating, or is consciousness something which inhabits the mind?

:wink:

Jean Baudrillard writing an article "The Gulf War did not take place". — ssu

That's true but he didn't mean this as a literal statement. He took the line from a French play - The Trojan War Did Not Take Place (Giraudoux). B did believed the war took place but wanted to contrast the gap between how the war was depicted and what happened. Was it in fact a 'war'?

You call people "anti-semites" for no reason — Apollodorus

Evidence for your defensiveness right here. You used an anti-Semitic trope 'cabal of bankers' and I asked for clarification. Your response is that you are being called anti-Semitic. You will remember I asked you - 'Where are you headed?" This is not calling you an anti-Semite. It is clarifying your position. If you are not suggesting a world conspiracy of Jewish bankers and industrialists then that's great. Happy to hear it and we can move on.

So why are you trying to prevent people from speaking up by calling them "anti-semites"? — Apollodorus

And please stop using such weak attacks as a defense. I am not trying to stop you or anyone from posing questions and presenting ideas. If your ideas are so brittle that my attempt at clarifications are spun by you as an attempt to try to 'prevent' you or anyone from engaging in a discussion, that's on you, Bud.

I have no problem with people calling out aspects of our political system as dysfunctional and corrupt. Clearly it is. But the devil is in the detail.

Yet doesn't that fit perfectly post-modernism? Truth doesn't exist and it's all a power play! — ssu

Kind of. But there is a difference. These folk aren't relativists and they don't deny truth - it just doesn't matter to them.

Labyrinthine?

Maybe. In life the interesting question regarding beliefs is who really believes what they say they believe and who is holding the belief for other reasons (posturing, peer group, fashion, controversy).

In relation to 'woke' is this not a term of the right - an updated companion to 'political correctness' and a largely a pejorative? Does anyone actually say they are woke? Or is is said about an individual? I do what I can to avoid political fashions and debates.

Your defensiveness is interesting. Clarifying means asking questions - it's what we do here. No need to be suspicious, A.

Main thing is they don't represent the people unless you object to that as well. — Apollodorus

I am not objecting, I am clarifying. Sometimes people like to spray around the Protocols to the Elders of Zion type stuff, which is all about a cabal of bankers and how society is controlled by a vast conspiracy. These ideas are very old and multipurpose and take a range of forms.

As to representing the people - politics sometimes manages to do this but generally by accident.

I must totally misunderstand what you said because there is an important difference between being a Frenchman or a German when these two countries were fighting each other and it is philosophical notions that make people so different. — Athena

You partly understand me. What you have described are cultural differences, which are a mix of nationalism, propaganda and, yes, some of this is philosophically derived, sure. I didn't say ideas weren't important. I was simply referring to academic or the serious study of philosophy, which most people don't do and still manage to be good people. A simple observation of no particular worth.

I only mentioned those that are regarded by the left as "heroes" and "saviors" which of course they aren't. If you think otherwise, that's fine by me. — Apollodorus

Not sure many leftists would consider them heroes. Reminds me of the famous quote by Gore Vidal. There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.

Bill Clinton, Obama, Biden, all know it too well. — Apollodorus

Interesting you don't include Reagan, Bush and Bush. Also when people are talking about a 'cabal of bankers' this is often coded anti-semitism. Where are you headed?

And after the collapse there these people continued with their careers as if nothing happened. Now many of them can indeed criticize the past quite well. T — ssu

The leftists I have known in academia and publishing mainly renounced their support of Marxism and the Soviet project in 1956, when the Soviet tanks invaded Hungary. The rest of them were well and truly out of it by 1974, Solzhenitsyn's book taking out the last of the naive or (look the other way) apologists. Some of these former radicals of course became neocons, a whole different problem for the world.

I have a highly speculative theory that whatever you want to call the Symbolic, effectively a kind of mythic order to the world, 'died' with the outset of Modernity, which I think became embodied by the play, Hamlet, and that much of the human catastrophe of the twentieth century has been because of an incapacity to cope with that. It's not that people need the social stability and purpose that religion ostensibly offers, though; it's that they have to cope with having come to awareness that there is none. I don't really agree with Nietzsche's means to do this, but I do think that he does identify the primary plight of the human condition. — thewonder

That's tantalizing. I guess there's no way to test if this is true. One of the things people misunderstand about religion is that its dominant activity isn't necessarily spirituality or grace. People didn't necessarily behave more ethically when religion was strong. The abyss was always there if you were looking, or if you had a certain susceptibility. Holy crusades, inquisitions, witch trials, anti-Semitic pogroms, the KKK and more, were all Christian artifacts. Religion may well have been more about in-groups and community/social connection than transcendence or union with God. We certainly seem to have lost elements of community. But this has dissipated for many reasons and the waning of religion is just one of them.

I'd add "and those who can do neither, post. — csalisbury

I thought it went: 'and those who can't teach, take gym...'

Sounds like things are a bit tough for you. I'm sorry to hear that. I value your contributions here - you have a nimble mind and use language beautifully.

But meanwhile, do meditation, help friends and family when they need, cook good meals, so forth. And maybe sometimes be the grumpy person when doing it?) — csalisbury

I like this advice. I can be grumpy sometimes and it is my least useful and most unattractive attribute.

We know of all these people that they were difficult in their own lives - their own relationships fell ever apart - but razor-sharp and charming while appraising the situations of others. Why is that? — csalisbury

'Those who can, do; those who can't, teach'. It's G B Shaw, not the Tao Te Ching. I've often found that the person who knows how others should live is often a deeply flawed or dangerous individual.

Nice. I see how he incorporates Plato. I am unsure if that comparison is sustainable more broadly but he would know better than I. It does stand to reason that the human perceptual framework has a finite capacity and what now amounts to metaphoric notions of materialism were bound to run out of usefulness at some point in our relentless enquiries.

For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures

It's food for thought and the question with this is where do we go that doesn't lead us back to speculative inanities. And back to the bad physics thread?? :razz:

Somehow many discussions seem to return to the matter of fields. Which I kind of like, to be honest. Probabilistic theories with math as the key language are not all that democratic however.

:up:

Anyways, as it concerns ideals and utopia, I think that there's a great difference between sanctimony and whatever you want to call virtue or righteousness and attempting to create as ideal of a world as you can while you're here and believing that you have established the final project for all of humanity. — thewonder

I'm always terrified by anyone who thinks they know what's best for other people and what 'should' happen. Doesn't matter if it is the right, the left, a guru, a therapist or a rabbi.

Physicist Paul Davies seems to think so - he argues for Newtonian materialism the 'inert lumps' being displaced by quantum mechanics.

Left is to just simply deny any affiliation with the former Soviet Union whatsoever. — thewonder

I don't really care for politics or utopianism but I have known many leftists over the years who would argue that Russia was never a Marxist state, just a dictatorship. Chomsky has made the point about the revolution being betrayed pretty much the same year it started. Given Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky's status as sociopaths, it's not hard to see how things went amiss.

This reminds me of all the Christians who argue that the Vatican and all the dreadful sins of Christianity over the centuries (and now) were not done by true Christians. In this vein, there's that quote from Chesterton - The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” There are people in the left who would substitute Christian with Communist.

All revolutionary fervor aside, I tend to agree with Milan Kundera - You build a utopia and very soon there's a need to build a small concentration camp.

I find it odd that some people belive that they has a distinct soul and spirit seperate to the body. — Brock Harding

I don't know why this would be odd, it has been a dominant belief for centuries.

Even the Koran says he was a prophet. — Apollodorus

The Koran says Jesus was just a man and not the son of God so...

But yes, I was always taught in Christian school that Jesus was a Rabbi.

It seems to me that sometimes this is said to be experienced when what is seen by others is a shrinking away from life and a palpable decrease in liberty.

Anyone who has committed to some goal can be described with such words. For example, a highly successful businessman can be seen by others as shrinking away from life and palpably decreasing in liberty. Such is the nature of pursuing goals: one's options in life shrink. — baker

I agree. And I think the business man's story is a sad one also.

Is "pure" mathematics, meaning, mathematics that does not apply to the world (via physics, for example), something invented or discovered? — Manuel

There's a whole thread on this and, predictably, there are different views on this.

I find it weird that people are very quick to say machines aren’t conscious while not having any clear definition of what “conscious” means or how we can know if something is conscious or not. — khaled

You are quite right that consciousness can be defined in several ways, some of which might include machines. A useful definition of consciousness did not come up yet but probably should have. In relation to the hard problem of consciousness David Chalmers says the question is what is the feeling which accompanies awareness of sensory information and why do we have it? It's Thomas Nagel's; the feeling of what it is like to be something.

Attack the thoughts, not the person. — Athena

I'm sorry if you thought I was attacking you, Athena. That was not my intention. What I should have said was that those ideas seem to me to depict a worse scenario than the one I see. But really my broader point was that theorized or disciplined philosophical study have no necessary connection to good citizenship. It might improve it, it might make it worse, that is an open question.

Ultimately, I try to be open, and non judgemental of anyone's ideas, and I keep an ongoing open understanding of any new ideas which I encounter. — Jack Cummins

Sure. I was just trying to open up the subject a bit more.

My argument is such that :
P1) Everything that there is to know about a information-processing system/physical object is how it works.
P2) Humans are a physical object/information-processing system.
C1) Everything that there is to know about a human is how it works.
The thing is if i know perfectly how i physically work, i also know what happen when i talk about consciousness. Therefore the problem falls quite flat. — Nzomigni

So this is a familiar and reductive materialist argument - one I put up myself in the 1980's. People will have an issue with Premise 2. Humans are likely to be more than an information processing system (which in itself is somewhat unclear).

And you have solved it.

Why you assume machines can't have self-awareness ? — Nzomigni

They don't yet.

I think the problem is more complicated than this, N. Have you read an account of the hard problem of consciousness?

I understand that but the issue is more complex than this. Machines do not yet have consciousness. How do you explain subjective experience and consciousness? This is not called a hard problem for nothing.

If you think there is a fundamental difference between your body(brain, etc) and yourself, you won't probably be able to solve/dissolve theses questions. — Nzomigni

Everyone knows this. The problem is there is a difference.

A computer asks itself these questions openly: — Nzomigni

But it doesn't, so why provide this as a comparison to human self-awareness?

I don't think Searle's analogy holds any water, to say the least. — Sam26

In fairness to Searle, it holds more than water. It also holds food and alcohol - digestion is complex.

You are far too dramatic. Voting well and community solidarity does not require you read Schopenhauer or Plato or care about the nature of reality. The people I am talking about well and truly take care of social responsibilities.

Incidentally Hitler was begat by one of the most well read, most cultured, philosophically literate societies on earth. Just saying...

My physicalism includes consciousness as is ordinarily understood in everyday living. I'm only saying that consciousness is physical, it is the fact of existence of which we are most confident, not that there's a particular problem with our experience of the world. — Manuel

I wasn't questioning your view, just expanding on your points for the OP. :smile:

What is your physicalism arguing against? — Manuel

I think this may prove an interesting angle. What models of reality are in competition with your version of physicalism? Nature of consciousness? Subjective experience?

Invariably we will come to quantum mechanics and this is where the behavior of physical things seems less than physical; depending on where your theoretical models take you.