The hard problem is understood by some precisely so that progress can't be made (so that nothing could count as progress.) — Yellow Horse
'I demand an objective explanation for stuff that only I have access to or am.' — Yellow Horse
I'd argue toward a philosophical explanation of consciousness. The word 'materialistic' tends to mislead people into equally useless assumptions (of ineffable stuff we can't be objective about). — Yellow Horse
Well I have direct (personal) experience of the 17 gods who created our world. Is that an 'ultimate proof' of my 17-god theology? — Yellow Horse
The hard problem is understood by some precisely so that progress can't be made (so that nothing could count as progress.) — Yellow Horse
Grounds are an illusion, they don't exist. It's a word invented by you and you don't exist, therefore ''grounds'' doesn't exist.Floats your lil rowboat but not mine. I'm interested in the grounds for doubt or belief, not "proof" (ultimate or otherwise). — 180 Proof
Logic (i.e. sound inferential reasoning) to start. We also can - must - trust experience, but within limits. — 180 Proof
Oh brother. Obviously at no point have I even given the appearance of arguing against the proposition that "cognitive science is deficient or invalid or broken"- a proposition which had not appeared til you typed it just now. I understand quite well what you're saying and feel like my own remarks have been pretty clear.. and so I've said all I mean to say on the idea that 400 years of philosophy of mind + an incredibly productive last few decades in neuroscience has amounted to "no actual progress on how non-conscious stuff can produce consciousness since Descartes" (a statement of dogma if ever there was one). — Enai De A Lukal
The fact that the gap between what is believed by materialists, and what is believed by idealists, continues to widen, is clear evidence that progress has not been made. The fact that the materialists ignore this evidence to claim that progress has been made, is simple denial. So the materialists float off in their self-induced bubble, further and further from the idealist perspective, while all the time claiming progress is being made in closing the gap between them. — Metaphysician Undercover
I thought people who claim that they are lead by science are objective, open-minded, and ready to admit their failures. — Eugen
So what you're looking for to accommodate your need for your personal feelings on the matter to be investigated thoroughly and failure admitted when they are not resolved, is a therapist,not a scientist. — Isaac
We're pretty sure Dark Matter is a particle of some sort. Dark Energy may be the energy of space itself. How does materialism even begin to explain how moving electrons across synaptic gaps in certain ways gives rise to conscious experience? The only things I've been seeing lately are vague handwavings about integrating information or lame attempts to define conscious experience out of existence. There's been no actual progress on how non-conscious stuff can produce consciousness since Descartes.
Since we've known that brains produce consciousness for a long time now, shouldn't we be closer to an actual explanation? At what point do we begin to question the premise "brains produce consciousness"? Do we reject it if there's no explanation in 100 years? 1,000 years? 10,000 years*?
*by then the question will no doubt be "Does X produce consciousness?" where X is whatever machine we've invented to replace brains. — RogueAI
A comprehensive review of EBS research compiled a list of many different acute impacts of stimulation depending on the brain region targeted. Following are some examples of the effects documented:[6]
Sensory: Feelings of body tingling, swaying, movement, suffocation, burning, shock, warmth, paresthesia, feeling of falling, oscillopsia, dysesthesia, levitation, sounds, phosphenes, hallucinations, micropsia, diplopia, etc.
Motor: Eye movements, locomotion, speech arrest, automatisms, laughter, palilalia, chewing, urge to move, crying without feeling sad, etc.
Autonomic: Blushing, mydriasis, change in blood pressure and breathing, apnea, nausea, tachycardia, sweating, etc.
Emotional: Anxiety, mirth, feeling of unreality, fear, happiness, anger, sadness, transient acute depression, hypomania, etc.
Cognitive: Acalculia, paraphasia, anomic aphasia, recalling memories, "going into a trance", "out of this world", conduction aphasia, hemispatial neglect, alexia, déjà vu, reliving past experiences, agraphia, apraxia, etc.
EBS in face-sensitive regions of the fusiform gyrus caused a patient to report that the faces of the people in the room with him had "metamorphosed" and became distorted: "Your nose got saggy, went to the left. [...] Only your face changed, everything else was the same." — Wikipedia
if EBS shows anything it's that many aspects of what we call consciousness can be elicited physically. What do you think this means for the nature of consciousness? — TheMadFool
It shows that we will be able to find out how consciousness arises, dissapears, and correlates with phisicsl states, it tells nothing about the 1st person experiences and it cannot explain how some electric signals or whatever they find can have a 1st person experiences — Eugen
Presumably all conscious aspects that were evoked by EBS were 1st person experiences related to the experimenters by the subject. — TheMadFool
That makes absolutely no difference in terms of the hard problem. See, this is the problem with materialism. They postulate all kind of information that's never really related to the core issue, but they claim it is. It isn't. Other times they simply say there is no hard problem.
Again... if materialism is true, absolutely every question can be theoretically answered by physics. The problem is that your EBS and any other futuristic ultra-sophisticated technology will be able to answer only "how" things happen at the level of atoms and fields. But when asked about the intrinsic nature of consciousness, or why supposedly non-consciouss matter produces 1st person experience, or how is to feel something, etc., materialists have 2 answers:
1. These questions have no meaning, I have already shown you everything.
2. There is nothing intrinsic, it's all an illusion.
This is why I think materialism cannot go too far. — Eugen
What is this "intrinsic nature of consciousness"? Also, once the "how" has been answered, the explanation of consciousness in terms of the physical is complete, no? — TheMadFool
That's the point. No.
X#7366$€÷77_÷3663%#%#_77#_6#6# like equations or description of atom movemnts will never explain the "redness" of red. Just get over it and accept this reality. — Eugen
What's so special about "redness"? If materialism is true then it's nothing more than the neurons connected to a certain subcategory of retinal cones being activated. — TheMadFool
1. These questions have no meaning, I have already shown you everything.
2. There is nothing intrinsic, it's all an illusion. — Eugen
Imagine an alien race having a feeling called zappiness, zappiness being a feeling only those aliens can experience. You could come up with tons of equations and neuron movements, you won't be able to really know what zappiness is. — Eugen
To think an explanation is the same thing as that which is being explained is preposterous. One is providing causal basis for a certain phenomena, evidently distinct from the phenomena themselves. — TheMadFool
Exactly!!! — Eugen
So, you agree that there's nothing wrong with materialism then? After all, the way you argued your position, everything depended on explanations having to evoke the experiences the explanation was about. — TheMadFool
then it's nothing more than the neurons connected to a certain subcategory of retinal cones being activated. — TheMadFool
One is providing causal basis for a certain phenomena, evidently distinct from the phenomena themselves. — TheMadFool
1. Things with no purpose, no will, no first person experience cannot create something with first person experience, therefore consciousness doesn't exist - STUPID
2. Things with no purpose, no will, no first person experience can create something with first person experience - good luck explaining that! — Eugen
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