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"credibility". yeah we differe there.
what your formal training?
Absolutely none. As I have stated several times, i am a very ordinary bod in the street who is obliged to do his best to consider claims bade for this and that. If I understand them, I can make some decision. If I can't, I leave them in the mental pending tray - which means that I cannot credit them pending some confirmation. The rule is disbelief until the case is made, not belief until it is disproven.
The preceeding maths lesson is interesting but from my perspective ignores a basic truth.
If we assert God=x without a proven value for God we are going nowhere.
As to wanting to know '"neural activity of type X" = "the qualitative feeling of Yellow" isn't speculation before empirical evidence is obtained only a word game? Maybe a fascinating word game but no more than that.
Your explanatory efforts are Herculean, Gaylen . . . if they do not get it from this post . . . they simply are not capable of doing so. It will not please Arq and the others to finally see that you have always rejected reductive materialism AS CURRENTLY UNDERSTOOD . . . because they think it is more than adequate as the default as it is.
I have understood the point about the unexplained aspects of qualia, but I have also understood that this cannot mean that we can say that the materialist default is wrong. I also am mystified by the idea of 'emergence' as 'magic'. I can only assume that some philosophical meaning is used here as in practical terms it is demonstrable.
Absolutely none. As I have stated several times, i am a very ordinary bod in the street who is obliged to do his best to consider claims bade for this and that. If I understand them, I can make some decision. If I can't, I leave them in the mental pending tray - which means that I cannot credit them pending some confirmation. The rule is disbelief until the case is made, not belief until it is disproven.
The preceeding maths lesson is interesting but from my perspective ignores a basic truth.
If we assert God=x without a proven value for God we are going nowhere.
As to wanting to know '"neural activity of type X" = "the qualitative feeling of Yellow" isn't speculation before empirical evidence is obtained only a word game? Maybe a fascinating word game but no more than that.
Thats right. thats where "hunching" comes in. "no nothing" is as meaningless as "poof there it is".
At last! The either/or game is put under the spotlight.Thanks.
lol, at last? It was under a long time ago. Thankfully Kc keeps repeating what needs to be repeated. Something, based on nothing, is something based on nothing.
Your explanatory efforts are Herculean, Gaylen . . . if they do not get it from this post . . . they simply are not capable of doing so. It will not please Arq and the others to finally see that you have always rejected reductive materialism AS CURRENTLY UNDERSTOOD . . . because they think it is more than adequate as the default as it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AREQUIPA
I have understood the point about the unexplained aspects of qualia, but I have also understood that this cannot mean that we can say that the materialist default is wrong. I also am mystified by the idea of 'emergence' as 'magic'. I can only assume that some philosophical meaning is used here as in practical terms it is demonstrable.
You have always not understood that emergence is not an explanation of anything. It is merely the observation of something that cannot be explained but cannot be denied either . . . hence the reference to magic. Emergence is a useless euphemism to placate the ignorance of those who cannot accept "We do not know" as the only answer currently available. It is joined by those other ubiquitous non-explanation explanations as self-organizing, and self-whatevers, random, etc.
If its disbelieve until validated, where we differ, then I believe my approach is considered logical and yours (if believe until disproven) is illogical. It's also unfeasible as what undisproven unprovens do you believe? All of them? Just the ones that appeal to you? If you do it that way, it's your choice, I suppose, but it will probably tend to undermine your case to others, even if they think the same way as, of course, they will have a different set of preferred beliefs, equally invalid, but equally held true until disproven.
You have always not understood that emergence is not an explanation of anything. It is merely the observation of something that cannot be explained but cannot be denied either . . . hence the reference to magic. Emergence is a useless euphemism to placate the ignorance of those who cannot accept "We do not know" as the only answer currently available. It is joined by those other ubiquitous non-explanation explanations as self-organizing, and self-whatevers, random, etc.
You have never understood (though I have explained it often enough) that it doesn't have to be understood, or explained down to the nano -particle. It just needs to be observed. As a pretty exact analogy, evolution by natural selection was observed and it WAS an explanation even though nobody knew until later that DNA was the way it worked. In fact I think emergence is pretty well explainable. I recall a you tube ...yes, on the fallacy of Genesis yesterday - showing particles bonding at the beginning of the universe and it struck me 'That's all the mechanism you need to propel 'emergence', Eveything, Universe and the Life and Evilooshun, Abiogenesis and Evolution. And it doesn't matter that some is still hypothetical or indeed Unknown. It is still the best explanation that explains the evidence.
I don't care whether you see this or not, I am saying that I do and I see therefore why your objections to Emergence are wrong -headed and denialist and it why your Cosmic Consciousness theory (though it could be right by accident) is misconceived and other explanations are in fact better and explain the evidence better.
Just to be clear: I love science and I have had several years of college-level classes in various sciences, but I do admit that my approach to the nature of consciousness has been more along the lines of philosophy of science, rather than straight-out scientific. Still, I think it is worth noting that even some highly respected scientists are taking approaches similar to mine. One of my favorite examples is Christof Koch. In in 2004 book The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, he was convinced that conventional science could solve the puzzle. A quote from this Scientific American articlepretty much sums up his thinking at the time:
Christof Koch rejects all this skepticism. As one of the world's leaders in the field, the California Institute of Technology neuroscientist believes that consciousness is distinctly physical, that it can be described by existing neurological theories, and that he is on the way to figuring it out. He has some invaluable help in collaborators such as Tomaso A. Poggio, the neural-networks and artificial-intelligence guru at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and some lasting inspiration instilled by his close friend and longtime collaborator, the late Francis Crick....
After one such seminar, the late neurologist Volker Henn in Zurich asked a simple question: Suppose that all of Crick’s and your ideas pan out and that layer 5 cortical neurons in the visual cortex that fire rhythmically and that send their output to the front of the brain are the critical neural correlates of consciousness. What is it about these cells that gives rise to awareness? How, in principle, is your hypothesis different from Descartes’proposal that the pineal gland is the seat of the soul? […] Henn’s question can be generalized. Global availability, strange loops, attractor networks, this neurotransmitter or that brain region have all been nominated for the essence of consciousness. The more unconventional proposals invoke quantum mechanical entanglement or other exotic physics. But no matter what features provecritical, what is it about these particular ones that explain subjectivity? […] Yet Henn’s challenge must be answered. The endpoint of my quest must be a theory that explains how and why the physical world is capable of generating phenomenal experience.[Koch, p. 111-115]
I used to be a proponent of the idea of consciousness emerging out of complex nervous networks. Just read my earlier Quest. But over the years, my thinking has changed. Subjectivity is too radically different from anything physical for it to be an emergent phenomenon. A kind of blue is fundamentally different from electrical activity in the cone photoreceptors of the eyes, even though I’m perfectly cognizant that the latter is necessary for the former. One is intrinsic to my brain and can’t be inferred from the outside, whereas the other has objective properties that can be accessed by an external observer. The phenomenal hails from a different kingdom than the physical and is subject to different laws. I see no way for the divide between unconsciousand conscious creatures to be bridged by more neurons. […] This point of viewdoes come with a metaphysical cost many are unwilling to pay – the admission that experience, the interior perspective of a functioning brain, is something fundamentally different from the material thing causing it and that it can never be fully reduced to physical properties of the brain. [Koch p. 119]
Sorry for the long quotes, but I want to show the similarities between what this well-respected neuroscientist is saying, and what I've been saying. And he is certainly not the only one. Plenty of other neuroscientists take qualia and the hard problem seriously, as do various physicists. I'm not just a kook blabbering all alone in the wilderness. (Okay, yeah, I might be a blabbering kook, but I'm not alone in the wilderness.)
BTW, don't panic. Koch did not go off the deep end and become a Christian. He adopted a theory of "integrated Information" that, as I see it, falls roughly in my own ballpark - a variation of dual-aspect theory.
Some of my ideas provide (I hope) some slightly new twists on the problem of consciousness, but what I keep getting attacked for in these C-D threads is not anything specific to my approach. It seems to me that it is the dual-aspect core of my approach that keeps drawing fire as being unscientific "woo" - and perhaps it is - but the point I want to make is that this is not "scientists vs. philosophers". There are top-notch scientists on both sides of the debate, philosophers on both sides of the debate, and atheists on both sides of the debate. The battle is between those who accept the promissory note of reductive materialism, and those who do not. I don't think you have to be "mystical" to reject the promissory note, but you do need to be able to see that there are deeply logical flaws in standard reductive materialism. The funny thing is this: Those who can see the logical flaws are immediately labeled "mystical" by those who (as I see it) do not comprehend the logical issues involved.
It seems to me that one side of the debate is suffering from a cognitive blind spot. Obviously I think it is not my side who suffers from the blind spot, but since a person who suffers from a blind spot can't see that they have a blind spot, I have to remain humble and try my best to understand the other side of the debate, just in case I am the blind one. If I am the blind one, then I want to learn to see what I've been missing.
"I see no way to bridge through neurons"? really? At some point we have to be honest about it. he's see no way ... so make sit up? that's good.
Koch, funny the name. so funny indeed that I have to ask. Do web sites pay people to post? for hits?
This post is also More proof that the internet will support any belief a person has.
It really is like a brain.
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Absolutely none. As I have stated several times, i am a very ordinary bod in the street who is obliged to do his best to consider claims bade for this and that. If I understand them, I can make some decision. If I can't, I leave them in the mental pending tray - which means that I cannot credit them pending some confirmation. The rule is disbelief until the case is made, not belief until it is disproven.
