(2018-08-22, 04:49 PM)YouDante Wrote: [ -> ]You like facts? Brian observed that electric toasters aren’t sentient. That seems factual to me, unless you’d like to challenge that statement.
It doesn’t seem an unreasonable question to wonder how consciousness could reduce to pure, as-we-currently-understand-it matter when you take an object that fits that description, like an electric toaster, and see that it does not have the same qualities as a human being.
Your ignorant and immature dismissal of philosophy that you don’t understand aside, there were no philosophical arguments made by Brian. He said a toaster is made of the same matter we are but isn’t conscious. Why?
Brian's response was not appropriate to my question and you don't answer a question with a question.
I never implied it was unreasonable. May you or Brian start a toaster thread.
And we aren't in this thread discussing consciousness. This is a thread on evolution with the intent realized or not to undermine and inject mystical reason why it can't happen by purely physical means.
Yes, let's put purile insults aside.
(2018-08-22, 08:32 AM)Brian Wrote: [ -> ]Otherwise an electric toaster is also conscious! Think of the difference between how a machine doesn't experience anything whereas a sentient being does.
Are you saying that if subjective experience can be reduced to matter and energy, then everything must be conscious? If so, do you have a proof of this assertion? Your second sentence is just another assertion.
If photosynthesis can be reduced to matter and energy, then everything must photosynthesize.
~~ Paul
(2018-08-24, 09:50 AM)Brian Wrote: [ -> ]Are you saying that you have proof of your position?
I must point out
again one does not debate an opponents position by asking a question. Doing such indicates mere bluster.
(2018-08-06, 04:30 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]As has been pointed out so many times, the elements of subjective experience simply can't be reduced to matter and energy and their interactions.
(2018-08-06, 06:07 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]How does anyone know this as factual?
By virtue of the meanings of the words involved, just as we know that the statement that "the elements of sound simply can't be reduced to colours and shades and their interactions" is true in virtue of what we mean by "colour", "sound" and "reduced". Whilst some people experience chromesthesia, we understand this as an association between sound and colour rather than as a reduction of the one to the other - again, in virtue of the meanings of those same words. For sounds to really be reducible to colours we would have to revise the definitions of those words - just as, whilst we recognise an association between the two, we would have to revise the definitions of the terms for "subjective experience" to really be "reducible" to "matter and energy".
(2018-08-24, 11:52 AM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]By virtue of the meanings of the words involved, just as we know that the statement that "the elements of sound simply can't be reduced to colours and shades and their interactions" is true in virtue of what we mean by "colour", "sound" and "reduced". Whilst some people experience chromesthesia, we understand this as an association between sound and colour rather than as a reduction of the one to the other - again, in virtue of the meanings of those same words. For sounds to really be reducible to colours we would have to revise the definitions of those words - just as, whilst we recognise an association between the two, we would have to revise the definitions of the terms for "subjective experience" to really be "reducible" to "matter and energy".
In your own words. What point are you making?
(2018-08-24, 01:52 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]In your own words. What point are you making?
Hmm? I was answering your question. If you didn't understand my answer, then maybe you could explain what you're finding confusing about it?
(2018-08-24, 01:52 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]In your own words. What point are you making?
(2018-08-24, 01:59 PM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]Hmm? I was answering your question. If you didn't understand my answer, then maybe you could explain what you're finding confusing about it?
If I understand your point by proxy, this is my reply.
Let's go back to where it all started.
Nbtruthman:
Quote:As has been pointed out so many times, the elements of subjective experience simply can't be reduced to matter and energy and their interactions.
Why not?
Laird:
Quote:By virtue of the meanings of the words involved, just as we know that the statement that "the elements of sound simply can't be reduced to colours and shades and their interactions" is true in virtue of what we mean by "colour", "sound" and "reduced". Whilst some people experience chromesthesia, we understand this as an association between sound and colour rather than as a reduction of the one to the other - again, in virtue of the meanings of those same words.For sounds to really be reducible to colours we would have to revise the definitions of those words - just as, whilst we recognise an association between the two, we would have to revise the definitions of the terms for "subjective experience" to really be "reducible" to "matter and energy".
My objection to this is one can assert till the cows come home. But asserting something doesn't somehow make it truth. How does nbtruthman know there is subjective experience without matter and energy? nbtruthman doesn't
Semantic revision still won't make an assertion truth.
(2018-08-24, 09:50 AM)Brian Wrote: [ -> ]Are you saying that you have proof of your position?
I am making no claims. I believe that consciousness is brain function, but there is certainly the possibility that it is not.
~~ Paul
(2018-08-24, 07:59 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]My objection to this is one can assert till the cows come home.
But that shouldn't be a reason to object to my answer - it should be a reason to endorse it! Why? Because:
(2018-08-24, 07:59 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ][A]sserting something doesn't somehow make it truth.
Exactly! One can assert "Words might be reducible to cheese" or "Numbers might be reducible to visual impressions" or "Subjective experiences might be reducible to matter and energy" but simply asserting any of these things doesn't somehow make them true - in fact, we know from their meanings that the possible reductions they suggest are strictly nonsensical.
(2018-08-24, 07:59 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]How does nbtruthman know there is subjective experience without matter and energy?
But that wasn't what he claimed to know. He claimed simply that the former couldn't be
reduced to the latter.
[Edit: Admittedly, in rereading his post, I may be reading his claim a little too narrowly and out of context, because in context it may be seen to be denying the "idealistically compatible" suggestion that Paul makes and which I've quoted and responded to below.
Edit2: But then again, viewed through the lens of the coin analogy (below), both he and Paul are correct: his reasonable position would seem to be that the one side of the coin is not identical with the other, even as Paul could reasonably assert that it is nevertheless the same coin.]
(2018-08-25, 12:29 AM)Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Wrote: [ -> ]I believe that consciousness is brain function
I think it was Neil who pointed out on Skeptiko some years back that this sort of theory of mind is essentially compatible with idealism. In other words, with respect to it, one can make the same sort of suggestion that Bernardo Kastrup makes with respect to idealism: that the brain (i.e. "matter and energy and their interactions") is the external appearance of "mind" or "consciousness", which involves a corresponding internal, subjective experience. It's sort of a "two sides of the same coin" thing - the one side being the external appearance and the other being the internal experience. But in my view one couldn't then say that "one side of the coin
reduces to the other". This would imply that "one side of the coin" is more fundamental than, and gives rise to, the other, which is not the case.