The thread has been revived, like a p-zombie at a picnic!

Nagel post you responded to.

I thought Davidson argued against incommensurability?

I updated to include McGinn's cognitive closue and a Wity reference.

I agree with Nagel the most. But McGinn's cognitive closure is a possibility.

That of which we cannot speak ...?

See directly above. Except I don't defend some form of panpyschism, because I don't know what consciousness is, other than it being strongly correlated with brain activity. It just seems like a hard problem.

Maybe I'm a little too close to the fence.

As I've repeatedly argued, regardless of whether one wishes to defend the concept of qualia, it's the colors, sounds, feels, etc. that do not fit easily with the mathematizeable explanations of science.

Or as Chalmers puts it, the structure and function does not account for the sensations of experience without positing some extra natural law, like integrated information theory.

We're not getting our gold stars, being on the wrong team in this thread.

@Banno

I guess this is because representation mechanisms can sit pretty uneasy with direct realism? — fdrake

Isaac is an indirect realist.

So in the context of consciousness, since we already know we're conscious, we can ask whether our physical explanations account for consciousness.

What about Hume's critique of causation? What about Kant's categories of thoughts? Or Berkeley's ideas? The empirical world has a consistent structure, whatever that means.

While I agree that a physical reality is the most compelling explanation for the empirical, it's not the only coherent one. And I don't agree that it's necessarily complete. As in, there could be more to the world than what physics, chemistry or biology posits, since those are explanations we come up with, not some God's eye view.

Wait, aren't you advocating for physicalism? How is that not a metaphysical position?

Distaste. — frank

The qualia Banno mixes into his morning coffee.

The Trump thread is the real goal.

What does that feel like? Do you experience an ineffable annoyance?

Fading qualia.

The problem is if we start off in the simulation/dream/vat, then we don't have the real world to compare glitching to.

But I agree, we can't be certain. I'd say the skeptical scenarios are unlikely.

All the world's a cartesian theatre?

It took a rumor to make me wonder
Now I'm convinced I'm going inner
How about red, pain, anger, looooOOOVE?

What is the difference from "being physical" and "existing"? Aren't those two ways of saying the same thing? — EricH

Only if everything is entirely physical. Why assume the conclusion? Are we to the point of just defining physicalism as true?

Isn't that what the theists tried to do with God?

Some of us, anyway.

But no Rob Zombie?

Perfect!

If you can't tell me what pain is then how do you expect to tell me how it works? — Harry Hindu

Don't you already know what pain is? Are you one of those rare individuals who can't feel pain? What's that like?

The whole idea of reducing all of reality to a single substance has been somewhat of a misguided quest in philosophy no doubt. — ChatteringMonkey

Part of the problem might be that we don't have the language to name a single substance that incorporates everything without issues. Or that language is inherently limited when it comes to that sort of thing.

So to use the word is to play their game. — Wayfarer

If you started a thread to debate consciousness (because we need yet another one of those), what word(s) would you use instead? I do agree qualia is a problematic term. That's why I try to talk about sensations instead.

But It seems everyone has their own criteria for what counts as being conscious.

You enjoy sucking on dreams
So I will fall asleep with a zombie other than you
I had a thought you would take me seriously
And keep posting on

Serpents in my mind
I am searching for your qualia
Everything changes
In time

What is pain?
Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me
No more

Such recognition may not threaten anyone's intuition of purely phenomenal "sound" events, even if they begin to notice that shivering at some level always accompanies them. — bongo fury

Most people on the phenomenal side admit to the shivering accompaniment. The question is how/why it's not just shivering.

If we have a shivering ontology, then it's strange that our experiences are more than the shivering. Thus the weird emerging from bio-physics.

Yes, and I'm not sure whether Sara was arguing epistemology or ontology. It sounded like she wanted to expand physics to incorporate the emergent biological information.

All in one acid trip. — frank

A simulated brain in a vat dreaming it's a bat while on acid.

The set of all possible qualia.

All these arguments over consciousness might as well take place inside a simulation.

It's not all perceptual. A dream of a red apple isn't information about an apple in the external environment.

We agree? Damn.

So what do you think consciousness is? If it's physical, how so? In an emergent sort of way? A non-reductive kind of physical?

I never understood the binary choice between nature being exactly what science says it is and it being supernatural. Science is based on empiricism, and to the extent our empirical knowledge is limited, the world is more than science. It's just possible that we didn't evolve the capabilities to perfectly model the cosmos. Or that our modeling leaves something out since it's abstracting the patterns from empirical experience.

But somehow, physicalism has come to mean the same thing as naturalism.

Perhaps, but that doesn't explain (away) the duality of the experience. — Luke

Agreed. The experience of red is something more than the perceptual process leading up to it. Or at least our description of it.