It's too hot!

Yes, it seems wholly quantum-mechanistic; and, for that matter, whatever consists of atoms, wholly classical-mechanistic. And yet we, who consist of atoms, have consciousness.

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I think it’s a fad, akin to the South Sea Bubble or Tulip mania. It has even more parallels with a scientific fad of a hundred years earlier, namely, eugenics. After Darwin, people began to worry that the human race was degenerating, and so they began to think of methods of preventing this by selective breeding and weeding out the less fit. Just like the climate fad, this rumbled on for decades, gaining ever more influence, finally reaching its culmination in Nazi Germany. Since then it has lost its popularity, though you still get a few diehards. It tracks the development of the climate fad almost precisely. Just as with eugenics, and with most things generally, if you look for evidence of something, fully expecting and wanting to find it, you will. Especially if that’s where your funding is coming from.

It begs the question, what actually is consciousness? I realise that’s quite a big one, though.

That’s not even hot lol.

You know what consciousness is…

I know what it is for me.

and me too. as opinions divide into two at the present time. There is consciousness, and there are Consciousnesses that may exist far away and long ago or even long into the future, which are not at all disconcerted about this planet :earth_americas: here.

This view may be even an up and coming verifiable fact, before the theory fizzles out, it needs more and more spread out exogenous awareness out there, to give it creedence.

Fortunately, there is an inverse relationship between the doubling of resourceful information and the halving of time to approach this , loosely estimated.

Whatever consciousness is, it would have to be a very similar ‘thing’ for any and everyone who shared the language in which the word ‘consciousness’ exists, or else one couldn’t be sure another understood the question “what is consciousness” and there could be no meaningful conversation about ‘consciousness’.

In fact, there could be no such thing as ‘consciousness’ as we use and mean it ninety percent of the time, and we’d still use it meaningfully to convey useful information in philosophical, metaphorical and poetic senses.

I imagine that the special philosophical and neuroscientific use of the word ‘mind’ is for the purpose of accounting for mental unconscious states and activities happening when someone isn’t ‘conscious’, only, or else there would be no need for two descriptors for the experience of ‘inner qualia’ (for lack of better phrasing) that all people have (including the blind like Maia).

It would be enough to say ‘he’s conscious or not’ if people turned off like robots instead of going into an active dream state sleep mode. That’s gotta be the reason the most ancient of philosophers created a branch in epistemology for ‘mind’, another kind of platonic category for something different or more essential than consciousness.

All becuz somebody was tossing and turning in their sleep… or waking up to report some bizarre dream. Lol imagine how puzzled pre-scientific ages were by dreams.

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Yo Maia you might like to check out Frank Jackson’s Mary The Super-Scientist argument.

Here’s the skinny: mary has never experienced the color blue (let’s say) but she has all the knowledge about everything involved in producing the color blue and an experience of the color blue.

By a physicalist’s account, Mary wouldn’t acquire any new information about blue if she were to step out of the black and white room and actually see the color blue. Jackson says this is wrong; that the physicalist’s theory cannot account for new information that would only be acquired by experience. The ‘what-it-is-like-ness’ of seeing blue.

Who amoung you are Jacksonites?

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Yes, I’ve come across this idea, or something similar, before. It’s a complete load of tosh, of course. I’d love to know what blue looks like, or indeed anything really.

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I think that you would have to feel/intuit blue, rather than know what blue looked like… think cool breezy days and cold winds blowing against your warm cheek.

Absolutely, yes. I particularly like, for example, green equals life. And grass.

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Gr

Green would then equate to the smell/feel of grass, and the smell/taste of apples, cider, leaves etc,

Yes, very much so. I have a whole load of workarounds, if that’s the right word, to think about colours and their meaning.

You are right. It won’t ‘hurt the earth’ but humans will be extinct and won’t get to see it breathe a sigh of relief.

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Well aren’t you a ray of eternal sunshine… :smirk:

Am I obliged to be? I could say the same about you with your little passive-aggressive snipe.

Did you derive that method by yourself, or is there an already-existing structure of conceptual colour-theory that you work from?

Next up, citrus colour theory..

I worked it out myself, going back as far as I can remember. I later came across other systems, but I already had my own.

No..

..but would you like to be?

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I could say the same about you with your little passive-aggressive snipe.

I just noticed that that was your m.o. in every single post you made.. perhaps my m.o. is to always point such things out.. :woman_shrugging: