Blunder - But that doesn’t mean the book isn’t real. The carving out we do is in naming the thing. That we break the Universe up into little pieces doesn’t mean those pieces aren’t real. It’s stretching credulity more to assume that those things aren’t real than to assume that they are.
You assume a dualism. That science can’t provide a metaphysic doesn’t mean there is a metaphysic. And once you assume a profound and ongoing truth, science doesn’t apply. Your argument is simply that since science hasn’t answered all your questions, that there must be something else that does. But it could also be true that your questions are fruitless.
It seems to me that profound and ongoing truths should be able to fend for themselves.
Of course, if the possibility that we are all zombies - all but you - really troubles you that much, by all means keep asking. Just don’t let it stop you from finding a nice girl (or boy) and settling doen to raise as family.
interesting - i think in some ways consciousness might be better understood as a kind of universal substrate underlying/overlaying individual brains - it’s like an environmental force - we might be better off if we started conceiving of it as NOT strictly something that we, as individuals, posess or own … it evolves in ways that transcend the development of any individual minds - science is its own tool for developing consciousness, for example, but it is not the product of any single conscious individual - it is the result of the activity of conciousness as a whole - as a unit - that’s what your radar analogy made me think of, anyway …
This to metaphysics is to science the idea that the earth is at the centre of the universe. The book in your hand is part of your mental representation of the world. Physically speaking, it was created in your brain using electrical signals from sensory inputs. The “external world” is subjective, not objective.
You will’ve been closer to the truth second time.
I don’t quite get you… I’m not saying that science hasn’t answered all my questions and that I’m therefore going elsewhere, I’m saying that science operates within a certain area, and that outside that area, philosophy takes over.
Ideally, yes, but in this “human game”, truths don’t always win out, for various reasons
Don’t know where you got this bit from. I’m not a solipsist, nor does it worry me.
Solipcism (sp?) has been addressed. Humans outside you have consciousness because we can perform tests on nonhuman animals to show that at least aspects of consciousness like self awareness/theory of mind are required for tasks humans routinely do. As in aspects of consciousness MAKE A DIFFERENCE in whether you can or can’t do specific tasks IN THE REAL WORLD. Some monkeys lack the ability to think of other minds, on that basis they can’t HIDE A BANANA from another monkey(monkey can’t tell that 2nd monkey has experiences) while an ape some CAN HIDE the item.
Really things without consciousness can’t do things humans do. Solipcism might make sense if everyone else was autistic, where they aren’t as self aware as monkeys/can’t think about other minds.
Its a stupid philosophical thought that consciousness isn’t ‘needed’ to perform X task and a very well programmed unconscious zombie could do the trick. Even if it was true which is stupid to assume it takes the additional assumption that consciousness takes
Again I can show other humans are conscious in meaningful ways because I can point to a massive amount of humans/animals that lack it and point out how they fail in tasks which more conscious creatures pass.
If being self aware helps you predict the actions of others which it certainly does the arguement dies. How can you tell how self aware autistic kids are? Once you have a reasonable basis for understanding lack of consciousness (the way we understand it) you have a reasonable basis to test for it.
By consciousness, I mean the experience, not the behaviour. Imagine a blind man in a room whose layout and contents he knows exactly, to the inch. He can walk around in there and manipulate those objects as though he could see them, when in fact he can’t see a thing. Similarly (but not exactly the same), a person’s brain could perform its function (inputs in, process them, motor outputs out) without him having any experience of what he’s doing. This is the solipsism I’m talking about.
You mentioned a “first time”, from which I presumed they’d been a second. Because I don’t agree with your first, I hazarded that your second might be better.
You assume the blind person could do the task EQUALLY WELL when I just told you, in the real world having first hand experience MAKES A DIFFERENCE. EXPERIENCE is the definition of ToM and SA both aspects of consciousness THE EXPERIENCE of it, allows greater PREDICTION powers about HIDING THE BANANA.
the EXPERIENCE allows for CERTAIN BEHAVIORS which otherwise aren’t possible. THE EXPERIENCE of autistic people lack of ToM and SA is WHAT LIMITS THEIR BEHAVIORS. Without the experience of consciousness which severe autistics lack is what prevents them from normal behaviors we take for granted. Its easy to suggest theres something special about ‘experience’ until you realize it OPENS UP BEHAVIORAL pathways/predictions about the world.
a well programmed zombie wouldn’t be able to perform those tasks outside of experience.
When someone does something, there is a succession of brain states (synapses firing, etc.) during the activity. This is what science is concerned with. Their brain co-ordinates sensorimotor behaviour – the sort of behaviour you cite in those experiments.
It’s a brain operation. Why does mind/consciousness have to be involved?
(Forget about the blind man example, which isn’t that good an analogy. Hence I said it was “not exactly the same” as what I was talking about.)
My caps key is used like a symbolic hammer to smash ideas into your head that i’m forced to repeat. Individual experience ie consciousness is beneficial, it allows creatures to behave/predict in ways which it couldn’t* otherwise. The experience of consciousness for whatever reason creates behavorial choices otherwise impossible for the brain, or at LEAST its easier to evolve. As in creatures without ‘conscious experience’ can’t perform the same tasks, maybe evolution could build a nonconscious mind capable of the same things BUT IT HASN’T, even if it was possible we can assume it’d be expensive to build so evolutioned opted for easier wiring with less chance of failure.
You’re assuming nonconscious minds are capable of the same tasks as those with experiences.
You’re assuming on top of that, that a nonconscious mind capable of performing the same tasks isn’t a massive waste of energy.
You’re assuming that there is another area to consciousness. If there isn’t, and there is no reason to believe out-of-hand that there is, then there is nothing for philosophy to take over. Not everything is philosophical question. History is rife with writers who have assumed that that which cannot be explained by science must be explained by metaphysics, which your dualism contains.
autistic people lack some aspects of consciousness one aspect Theory of mind, which allows you to percieve other minds is sometimes lacking. They cannot predict what other people will do, at all. period. Thats the problem. A mind that could WITHOUT TOM make those predictions would be MASSIVELY complicated if possible at all.
Sure, I understand that there’s a book and that it is distinct from its background but what does that have to do with my other point? I am still carving out the book “in-itself” whatever that is supposed to mean, not a representation of the book. I’m not carving out a picture of the book. It IS the book.
I can’t find ‘washing’ among the mechanical parts of a washing machine, I don’t need to get into the deep philosophy of washing machines, do I? ‘washing’ is a label we give to function. I can’t find consciousness in the brain cause its not located there or anywhere else.
none the less the science of that function, the how, the why, the ‘what components make it up’ can be understood for consciousness just like we can understand what washing is.
No it isn’t actually. The book in my hands is part of being-in-the-world, as is the concept of a mental representation. We couldn’t even get an idea of mental representation off the ground without first being-in-the-world.
if consciousness can’t be understood we’d know nothing about consciousness that our hunter gatherer ancestors didn’t see as obvious… we all know thats bullshit. The fact that we know unconscious factors influence consciousness AT ALL (not in the freud sense) contradicts that. Like I said earlier we learned through Phineas Gage that a steal pipe through your frontal lobes can change individual experiences of consciousness.
And if we are going to posit this ghostly, spiritual figure of a “mental representation” which always has to be a representation OF something, why are we assuming that it is a representation of anything other than the book just as it is?