A scary chat with ChatGPT about latest NDE account in NDE thread

I wouldn't know as I haven't read it and don't intend to. I just observe that a lot of 'smart' people supposedly subscribe to this worldview.

Ok.

Googling Sam Harris reveals this position on the question of the 'self': “The sense of being an ego, an I, a thinker of thoughts in addition to the thoughts. An experiencer in addition to the experience. The sense that we all have of riding around inside our heads as a kind of a passenger in the vehicle of the body…. Now that sense of being a subject, a locus of consciousness inside the head is an illusion. It makes no neuro-anatomical sense. There’s no place in the brain for your ego to be hiding.”

Are you sure he thinks materialism it's nonsensical? I think he just critizes the possibility to objectively 'measure' a subjective experience.

Oh Harris wrong about that in addition to many other things but I was thinking of this essay:

The Mystery of Consciousness

"To say “Everything came out of nothing” is to assert a brute fact that defies our most basic intuitions of cause and effect—a miracle, in other words.
Likewise, the idea that consciousness is identical to (or emerged from) unconscious physical events is, I would argue, impossible to properly conceive—which is to say that we can think we are thinking it, but we are mistaken. We can say the right words, of course—“consciousness emerges from unconscious information processing.” We can also say “Some squares are as round as circles” and “2 plus 2 equals 7.” But are we really thinking these things all the way through? I don’t think so.

Consciousness—the sheer fact that this universe is illuminated by sentience—is precisely what unconsciousness is not. And I believe that no description of unconscious complexity will fully account for it. It seems to me that just as “something” and “nothing,” however juxtaposed, can do no explanatory work, an analysis of purely physical processes will never yield a picture of consciousness. However, this is not to say that some other thesis about consciousness must be true. Consciousness may very well be the lawful product of unconscious information processing. But I don’t know what that sentence means—and I don’t think anyone else does either."

Do you really believe this is the driving motivation for materialism/physicalism? Atheism? I would have thought the correlation between brain states and mental states which is hard to explain outside materialism/physicalism motivates this argument. It's really the elephant in the room I feel you 'dualists' tends to ignore.

Not a dualist. I think there's a difference between what you are talking about - which is the brain's role in consciousness - and the physicalist/materialist metaphysical argument.

There are atheists who reject that consciousness is reducible to whatever the "physical" or "material" is supposed to be, but yes I think the primary driver for the metaphysics of materialism is atheist evangelism. I just don't see what's serious in the argument.

Lol... I get a high probability that some parts of this post have been written by AI/GPT

I copied the little bit about the book review of Dennet's book from wiki. It was only to emphasize my point that it's not a fringe group of people subscribing to a view more or less identical with Dennet.

Not a dualist. I think there's a difference between what you are talking about - which is the brain's role in consciousness - and the physicalist/materialist metaphysical argument.

There are atheists who reject that consciousness is reducible to whatever the "physical" or "material" is supposed to be, but yes I think the primary driver for the metaphysics of materialism is atheist evangelism. I just don't see what's serious in the argument.

An idealist then?

I'm not so interested in the question of theism. Of course if materialism is true then atheism must also be true. If materialism is false atheism may be be true of false. If materialism is false survival of consciousness/self/something may be true or false.

By the way I read that sentence from Sam Harris as if he is on the fence with materialism.

Lol... I get a high probability that some parts of this post have been written by AI/GPT

I just asked chatGPT to improve my english. Here is it's version of the text. I didn't intend to express that the algorithmic problems that can be solved are "essentially limitless". I wonder if that's how you native english readers interpreted my original text?

.....

I fully understand that ChatGPT is ultimately a statistical model of language structure, predicting the next word based on the sequence of input word tokens provided by the user. Your repeated inquiries about my background seem to imply a sense of "I know better" arrogance, which is also evident in the statement, "Actually, I think outside of atheist-materialist fundamentalism, consciousness is pretty clear." I believe that a significant number of people accept the atheist-materialist fundamentalist worldview. For instance, Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained," which promotes this perspective, was named one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times. In The New York Times Book Review, George Johnson described it as "nothing short of brilliant."

No logical argument can definitively disprove Dennett's view, just as none can disprove David Chalmers' view. According to Karl Popper's definition of science, discussions on these matters fall within the realm of metaphysical speculation. Many people devote their entire careers to exploring consciousness, yet we have someone here claiming to possess all the answers?

Although modern electronic circuits function fundamentally the same way as my old Commodore 64, the potential problems that can be algorithmically solved with increasing RAM and processor capacity are essentially limitless. Recently, an AI capable of predicting protein folding from amino acid chains became available, astonishing experts who believed it would take many more years to achieve. I predict that in a few years, chatbots will be able to provide answers to questions that would deceive anyone outside of Searle's box. The path to achieving this will involve training these chatbots using, among other sources, "the efforts of millions of humans who have contributed to the Internet piece by piece," as David mentioned earlier. In the end, these chatbots will appear to possess reason comparable to ours, as they are unlikely to encounter input beyond the parameters they have been trained on.

The workings of our thoughts remain a mystery. One theory suggests that thoughts are generated when neurons fire. External factors, such as our environment, relationships, and media, trigger patterns of neuronal firing that result in thought processes. Continuous patterns of neuronal firing reinforce the circuitry.

An idealist then?

I'm not so interested in the question of theism. Of course if materialism is true then atheism must also be true. If materialism is false atheism may be be true of false. If materialism is false survival of consciousness/self/something may be true or false.

Not Idealist really, not really anything specific but maybe a "Neutral Monist" for half the week and the Pluralist for the other half.

I agree with your points, we shouldn't rule out Survival if Materialism is true but also Materialism being false (which seems obvious IMO) doesn't guarantee Survival.

 I would have thought the correlation between brain states and mental states which is hard to explain outside materialism/physicalism motivates this argument. It's really the elephant in the room I feel you 'dualists' tends to ignore.

This sounds like the "promissory materialism" that many are guilty of (Critics of materialism tend to be gulity of similar things tho)

There are hundreds of Weymo taxi's in the USA, taking passengers all day, every day. There are literally thousands of youtube video's...?

OK Max, you got me there!

I think the jury about automatic driving is still open - they don't seem to be permitted in most places - including the UK - and they have caused some accidents.

Let's save any further discussion to the new thread on exactly this subject.

David

Do you really believe this is the driving motivation for materialism/physicalism? Atheism? I would have thought the correlation between brain states and mental states which is hard to explain outside materialism/physicalism motivates this argument. It's really the elephant in the room I feel you 'dualists' tends to ignore.

We've covered these arguments over and over again on here, Sbu. There's even a case in Bruce Greyson's book where a young man has taken some substance (that's not doing him much good) and he's experiencing an OBE. Before he left his body (had the OBE), he was seeing little creatures around his legs, but from the position outside of his body, he could see no creatures and felt great. I know that's another anecdote but it's not on it's own.

The elephant in the room is a problem for materialists, not proponents. You need to explain how that young woman in the NDE (which you stuck in the Chat box) could see what was going on around her in stage four shock (dead basically) or how the young police woman with seven gunshot holes in her brain could see what was going on when she was comatose (dead more or less). That's the elephant in the room. 

I was listening to Peter Cummings yesterday, the neuropathologist, neurologist etc and he was saying the majority of neuroscientists in the second to the latter stage of their careers believe that the mind is dual to the brain, two separate things. It looks to me like the war is lost for you guys (you do seem determined to stick to your guns)

[Ninshub]

It looks to me like the war is lost for you guys (you do seem determined to stick to your guns)

To be fair, I'm not sure if sbu is arguing for materialism here, or just explaining what he thinks is the argument (irrespective of our evaluation of it) motivating materialists.

To be fair, I'm not sure if sbu is arguing for materialism here, or just explaining what he thinks is the argument (irrespective of our evaluation of it) motivating materialists.

Fair enough, Ian ! A few weeks ago though, he did make a clear statement on his position. That's perfectly acceptable, though, I just wish materialists would offer an explanation for cases that I stick up, because they don't. They just say anecdote and leave it at that.