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neuro » October 9th, 2020, 9:48 pm wrote:Well, it is my impression that the only wrong doing here is to use the word consciousness. Because it is misleading.
Because if we talk about the scientific inexplicability of feeling pain (or hunger) it should be clear that we are talking about that!
Introducing a "p-consciousness" story... makes people think we are talking about some complex psychological phenomenon related to the extremely complex functions of consciousness....
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they yet also obviously have no physical substance
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It can cause complications to term both of these experiences “conscious,” however, because the question then arises of who or what is conscious of them.
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charon » October 14th, 2020, 12:35 am wrote:You're doing the right thing, observing yourself, using yourself as the example...
Don't go off to Chalmers or some other supposed authority, they don't know either, I can promise you that.
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T. Burbank » October 13th, 2020, 6:12 am wrote:Looking at Chalmers’ list of the various kinds of p-conscious experience in the OP, I guess that “conscious thought,” “mental imagery,” and “the sense of self” are probably those that “I” experience directly. The rest – visual, auditory and tactile sensations, pain, hunger, feelings of hot and cold, emotions, etc. – seem to be things that “I” merely know of, at second hand as it were, while their first-hand experiencer (assuming that there is just one for all of them) remains anonymous.
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1) how much the feeling of pain weighs, and 2) how much space it takes up, if it has physical substance?”
The obvious advantage is that I am dealing with things that I can know with certainty to be true (at least in theory).
what is this wondrous thing that you “can promise [me]” that “they don’t know”?
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charon » October 14th, 2020, 7:22 am wrote:Burbank -1) how much the feeling of pain weighs, and 2) how much space it takes up, if it has physical substance?”
The air around me as I speak is full of all kinds of signals - radio, TV, police, aircraft, peoples' cell phones... god knows what and how much or how many.
Are you telling me that none of this is material? Are you saying it's something metaphysical or supernatural? What are you talking about!
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BadgerJelly » October 14th, 2020, 12:54 am wrote:We may just as well ask about the ‘where’ and ‘when’. That is probably why language does too much work in covering up the gist of consciousness. Precision with a certain concept/idea is always inclined to fall into different, and confusing, categories of interest.
The question of consciousness is both a philosophical and scientific one. Parsing between them is a problem - especially when there is a common heuristic employed that too often insists on delineating between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ rather than working to eliminate their use when discussing the phenomenon of consciousness.
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Radio waves are clearly material.
What about the noise you hear when a tree falls?
Can we distinguish the difference between the pressure waves in the air and the actual noise we hear?
The objectively observable 'stuff' that we can all agree on is distinct and very different than the subjective experience of it.
The objectively observable 'stuff' that we can all agree on is distinct and very different than the subjective experience of it. They may go hand in hand, but one is objectively observable and the other is not.
If you asked any neuroscientist worth his salt to explain to you why that happens, why a color appears in our brains, why that specific color, why that specific noise of a tree falling, they would tell you we have no idea how we can even come close to explaining why we should experience it instead of nothing at all.
There is no obvious avenue we can go down to explain why we should experience something instead of nothing.
If that's not clear, don't get frustrated. Most people don't get it either. It's hard enough to understand the problem, impossible so far to provide any scientific explanation (ie: the "hard problem"), and much harder yet to explain without violating known physical laws.
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Dave_C » October 14th, 2020, 5:31 pm wrote:Hi Charon,
Does the paint on a fire truck for example, have that property of "red" that you see? Is it literally the color that you see?
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TheVat » October 14th, 2020, 5:48 pm wrote:The whole "raw feels" thing is so difficult for many people - and I don't mean that in a condescending way at all, plenty of great minds seem to founder on the hard, pointy, reddish-with-patches-of-mossy-green rocks of qualia. I've wondered if there's a really simple entry-level essay on qualia and the hard problem of consciousness that someone could link to.
Maybe Frank Jackson, with his gift for clarity, can help here? Here he discusses how a physicalist account of vision will ultimately fail to explain our experience of colors, i.e. that something will be left out.
https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd ... ackson.pdf
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That wasn't a trick question
To contribute to discussions like this around consciousness, you'll need to grasp at least a few basics
First one is that no, fire trucks and red paint are not actually red.
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(ie: the "hard problem"), and much harder yet to explain without violating known physical laws.
'What physical laws are being violated, seeing that's just how we're all made? If you find yourself violating physical laws when you're trying to explain it then the explanation is wrong, isn't it?'
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Dave_C » October 14th, 2020, 9:19 pm wrote:Agreed, there are distinctions Chalmers makes between different subjective experiences - tactile experiences as you point out versus experiences such as love or hatred, jealousy, surprise, etc... These experiences are all subjective and they occur during our present experiences.
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TheVat » October 15th, 2020, 12:48 am wrote:The whole "raw feels" thing is so difficult for many people - and I don't mean that in a condescending way at all, plenty of great minds seem to founder on the hard, pointy, reddish-with-patches-of-mossy-green rocks of qualia. I've wondered if there's a really simple entry-level essay on qualia and the hard problem of consciousness that someone could link to.
Maybe Frank Jackson, with his gift for clarity, can help here? Here he discusses how a physicalist account of vision will ultimately fail to explain our experience of colors, i.e. that something will be left out.
https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd ... ackson.pdf
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TheVat » October 17th, 2020, 8:14 am wrote:Thanks, I'm having a bit of trouble getting it to open. Will try to go in through a main page and get at it.
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TheVat » October 17th, 2020, 3:24 pm wrote:A being without qualia can just as readily register a food as bitter and spit it out. Hence, the concept of a p-zed, which has been discussed and linked on repeatedly here. A purely physicalist account can show how a neural network can, say, identify toxic alkaloids in a food, and initiate a rejecting behavior.
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The p-zed is a philosophic thought experiment
used to illuminate the issues
What's important is that the p-zed is logically possible
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