Consider two fundamental distinctions: Real vs. Unreal – In the space of all possible worlds, only one is the “real” world; the rest are unreal. Or if you prefer, among all mathematical structures, only some describe real things; the rest are only abstract math things.
you either make the leap past the demon to believe in an external world, or you don't and all you're left with is your experience (with no basis to assess whether it correlates to anything, has any meaning, etc.). once you believe in science -- and it's a matter of belief as much as religion -- then the tree makes noise even when no one's around. that leaves imaginary worlds as nothing more than internal brain states, language games, etc.
as for zombies, i love the idiocy of assuming something could be configured just like us, but not have whatever consciousness is. what's the basis for assuming the existence of this extra special secret sauce called consciousness, rather than just assuming it's how it feels to have a brain arranged this way, operating this way, etc. people playing zombie games have this weird quasi-religious need to assert we're magic in some way, rather than just matter like any other. (once you believe in science, the need for an observe to make the world real similarly seems silly (yes, i know about the silly anthro quantum theories, etc.).)
bonus: if you believe in evolution, it's silly to posit that we're the only one's with consciousness, and that it doesn't arise naturally out of a certain kind of brain structure. given that evolution explains how we developed, and from what, and how much we have in common with those things, occam again requires we assume it's pretty much all the same throughout the closely related mammals. (so dumb every time people are amazed animals use tools, or language, or mirrors, or etc.)
We’re just seeing problems of language and incompleteness in human ability to understand the entirety of existence.
I once suggested, to a person who had given a short talk on free will, that perhaps the semantic shift from causation to effection (actually I said effectation) might help. Does it? I mean, we have affection, why not effection? I think actually that’s probably a good thing – affection is key here.
I have to admit the reverse is also true: emergentism and compatiblism not only seem wrong but really irritate me. If Robin started writing about those, I'd probably be like "this is stupid -- you didnt write about anything this dumb before."
This is not really a metaphysical question. It may be meta the physics we have now, but is it meta the physics we will have tomorrow? Does the physics we have now actually deal with physis, Nature?
Its not metaphysical but it may well be totally impragmatic depending on your disposition.
I have to agree with tndal. I will leave this post with no greater or lesser understanding of how to operate in this world than I had prior to stumbling across it. It seems to access the, probably hard-wired, prejudice that there is a absolutely clear distinction between consciousness and reality.
I once had a girlfriend who constantly talked about "people making choices", so, I held up a red pen in front of her and asked her what I was holding. She instantly answered without contemplation that it was a red pen. Now if someone pokes me in the eye with that red pen the pain I would "feel" is no less a product of sense experience than my seeing a red pen, although I'm probably using different parts of my brain to process those different feelings.
We're just seeing problems of language and incompleteness in human ability to understand the entirety of existence.
I would also point out that this seems to commit the logical fallacy of moralism, the inverse of the naturalist fallacy, whereby we try to derive "is" from "ought".
I would guess them to be less humane, dividing the world population once more into A / not A.
Ah, but this happens all the time. Consider the various "oppression studies" types, web search the term SWPL, where heterosexual, white males are asserted to have an over-arching "privilege" that is beyond any empirical investigation. Consider the two following scenarios:
A) Poor, white males in the south utilize violence to minimize the incidences of black men having sex with white women (the leftist economist Gunnar Myrdal studied segregation exhaustively and concluded that sexual competition was the dominating reason behind it).
B) Educated, upper-class Arabs blow themselves up in order to kill average civilians going about their daily lives.
According to the post-modern left the first is an example of unmitigated evil, while the second is a product of oppression. See, for the post-modern left whites are the only autonomous moral agents capable of evil, and the only possible moral good available in the world is to reject "white privilege". In fact, the post-modern left agrees with the most staunch 18th century colonialist in attributing any lack of moral agency to non-whites. The only difference is that the leftist concludes that the putative lack of non-white autonomy absolves non-whites from any moral obligation to whites, while the colonialist concludes that this same putative lack absolves whites of any moral obligation to non-whites. There has never exist an intellectual totalitarianism so complete as that of today's post-modern left.
Human beings are pretty much little, totalitarian thugs and there's not much we can do about that but create alliances to protect ourselves from such thuggery. Which is pretty much what Hobbe's Leviathan is all about.
I don't see why that's relevant. The unitary experience of consciousness is a complex illusion created by the brain (split brain patients, etc.). It doesn't bear on questions of fundamental ontology,
In the end, it is all about consciousness. Even now, while you are reading this comment, hundreds of events are happening inside your body that you do not perceive or think about normally (such as breathing).
Consciousness delivers a patchy picture of "reality" on a certain level of organismic existence. Everything below the threshold of attention or even below the sensor triggering threshold is not "real" - it is "sub-real", and the mind cannot account for it.
Why the consciousness operates in this way is now clear - it improves the fitness of the organism. We can even say that the "reality" of things is a by-product of evolution, and as such is predetermined by the evolutionary pressures.
So we should ask ourselves - why is that evolution was possible in the first place? We do not know that answer yet. It may turn out that evolution itself is a byproduct of some more fundamental processes that we do not understand (if our universe is part of a bigger system).
you either make the leap past the demon to believe in an external world, or you don't and all you're left with is your experience (with no basis to assess whether it correlates to anything, has any meaning, etc.). once you believe in science -- and it's a matter of belief as much as religion -- then the tree makes noise even when no one's around. that leaves imaginary worlds as nothing more than internal brain states, language games, etc.
as for zombies, i love the idiocy of assuming something could be configured just like us, but not have whatever consciousness is. what's the basis for assuming the existence of this extra special secret sauce called consciousness, rather than just assuming it's how it feels to have a brain arranged this way, operating this way, etc. people playing zombie games have this weird quasi-religious need to assert we're magic in some way, rather than just matter like any other. (once you believe in science, the need for an observe to make the world real similarly seems silly (yes, i know about the silly anthro quantum theories, etc.).)
bonus: if you believe in evolution, it's silly to posit that we're the only one's with consciousness, and that it doesn't arise naturally out of a certain kind of brain structure. given that evolution explains how we developed, and from what, and how much we have in common with those things, occam again requires we assume it's pretty much all the same throughout the closely related mammals. (so dumb every time people are amazed animals use tools, or language, or mirrors, or etc.)
@Asher
We’re just seeing problems of language and incompleteness in human ability to understand the entirety of existence.
I once suggested, to a person who had given a short talk on free will, that perhaps the semantic shift from causation to effection (actually I said effectation) might help. Does it? I mean, we have affection, why not effection? I think actually that’s probably a good thing – affection is key here.
I have to admit the reverse is also true: emergentism and compatiblism not only seem wrong but really irritate me. If Robin started writing about those, I'd probably be like "this is stupid -- you didnt write about anything this dumb before."
*lulz*
"We’re just seeing problems of language and incompleteness in human ability to understand the entirety of existence."
We sacrifice the whole truth of any given experience for the value to which we are constrained.
If you were born with the soul of a materialist, the feelings of a behaviorist, this topic will always bore and even irritate.
This is not really a metaphysical question. It may be meta the physics we have now, but is it meta the physics we will have tomorrow? Does the physics we have now actually deal with physis, Nature?
Its not metaphysical but it may well be totally impragmatic depending on your disposition.
> Once this blog posted reasonable essays on AI and cognitive science.
Things which of course have nothing to do with consciousness and qualia.
AI -- a field without a subject. . .
I have to agree with tndal. I will leave this post with no greater or lesser understanding of how to operate in this world than I had prior to stumbling across it. It seems to access the, probably hard-wired, prejudice that there is a absolutely clear distinction between consciousness and reality.
I once had a girlfriend who constantly talked about "people making choices", so, I held up a red pen in front of her and asked her what I was holding. She instantly answered without contemplation that it was a red pen. Now if someone pokes me in the eye with that red pen the pain I would "feel" is no less a product of sense experience than my seeing a red pen, although I'm probably using different parts of my brain to process those different feelings.
We're just seeing problems of language and incompleteness in human ability to understand the entirety of existence.
> I don`t know if thinking about it is sensible (because it is pure metaphysics).
It wont be metaphysical at all when you are 5 minutes from croaking. Therefore one might question whether it is metaphysical on balance.
I would also point out that this seems to commit the logical fallacy of moralism, the inverse of the naturalist fallacy, whereby we try to derive "is" from "ought".
I would guess them to be less humane, dividing the world population once more into A / not A.
Ah, but this happens all the time. Consider the various "oppression studies" types, web search the term SWPL, where heterosexual, white males are asserted to have an over-arching "privilege" that is beyond any empirical investigation. Consider the two following scenarios:
A) Poor, white males in the south utilize violence to minimize the incidences of black men having sex with white women (the leftist economist Gunnar Myrdal studied segregation exhaustively and concluded that sexual competition was the dominating reason behind it).
B) Educated, upper-class Arabs blow themselves up in order to kill average civilians going about their daily lives.
According to the post-modern left the first is an example of unmitigated evil, while the second is a product of oppression. See, for the post-modern left whites are the only autonomous moral agents capable of evil, and the only possible moral good available in the world is to reject "white privilege". In fact, the post-modern left agrees with the most staunch 18th century colonialist in attributing any lack of moral agency to non-whites. The only difference is that the leftist concludes that the putative lack of non-white autonomy absolves non-whites from any moral obligation to whites, while the colonialist concludes that this same putative lack absolves whites of any moral obligation to non-whites. There has never exist an intellectual totalitarianism so complete as that of today's post-modern left.
Human beings are pretty much little, totalitarian thugs and there's not much we can do about that but create alliances to protect ourselves from such thuggery. Which is pretty much what Hobbe's Leviathan is all about.
I don't see why that's relevant. The unitary experience of consciousness is a complex illusion created by the brain (split brain patients, etc.). It doesn't bear on questions of fundamental ontology,
Polonius: "What do you read, my lord?" Hamlet: "Words, words, words."
(Hamlet, 2.2.191)
Once this blog posted reasonable essays on AI and cognitive science. Now it is bogged down in medieval philosophy.
In the end, it is all about consciousness. Even now, while you are reading this comment, hundreds of events are happening inside your body that you do not perceive or think about normally (such as breathing).
Consciousness delivers a patchy picture of "reality" on a certain level of organismic existence. Everything below the threshold of attention or even below the sensor triggering threshold is not "real" - it is "sub-real", and the mind cannot account for it.
Why the consciousness operates in this way is now clear - it improves the fitness of the organism. We can even say that the "reality" of things is a by-product of evolution, and as such is predetermined by the evolutionary pressures.
So we should ask ourselves - why is that evolution was possible in the first place? We do not know that answer yet. It may turn out that evolution itself is a byproduct of some more fundamental processes that we do not understand (if our universe is part of a bigger system).