That's why all that remains in the realm of groundless speculation and faith. — Janus

Where in the animal kingdom does sentience begin? — Janus

The law of identity, the fact that I’m here and you’re there, the fact that you do not have a single cell I have, proves there is nothing about us that is identical. — NOS4A2

If I’m to avoid question-begging and deification, — NOS4A2

He (David Chalmers) gives the crowd what it wants. — apokrisis

It doesn't even make metaphysical sense — apokrisis

Awfully loose usage of "identical" there. — wonderer1

I think when people start uploading videos of themselves abusing AGI humanoid robots, there's going to be a reaction. — RogueAI

in order for salvation to take place, first you have to be damned — Vera Mont

I wasn't referring to atomism — L'éléphant

The ultimate reality -- what is the smallest unit they could reduce existence and still be true to the real. — L'éléphant

Parmenides who couldn't stay away from shaping the truth into something we mortals could grasp, even though he purportedly rejected the sensible world. — L'éléphant

The only reason its controversial to think that physical combinations of matter and energy can have consciousness is because people think there is a soul — Philosophim

The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental – consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory. — Thomas Nagel, The Core of Mind and Cosmos

This also accounts for why I cannot see from your perspective, which is the perspective of your particular and discrete biology — NOS4A2

We do not need to stir in fictions like experience, consciousness, and mental properties, because all states of experience (as Chalmers called them) are states of the body. — NOS4A2

Nature works. Just go out in the woods, or walk along a beach; gaze at stars or learn about coral reefs. — Vera Mont

In traditional theology and metaphysics, the natural was largely conceived as the evil, and the spiritual or supernatural as the good. In popular Darwinism, the good is the well-adapted, and the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of the spirit’s antagonism to nature – even as implied in the doctrine of interrelation between the various forms of organic life, including man – frequently amounts in practice to subscribing to the principle of man’s continuous and thoroughgoing domination of nature. Regarding reason as a natural organ does not divest it of the trend to domination or invest it with greater potentialities for reconciliation. On the contrary, the abdication of the spirit in popular Darwinism entails the rejection of any elements of the mind that transcend the function of adaptation and consequently are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface, this new empirical reason seems more humble toward nature than the reason of the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it is arrogant, practical mind riding roughshod over the ‘useless spiritual,’ and dismissing any view of nature in which the latter is taken to be more than a stimulus to human activity. The effects of this view are not confined to modern philosophy. — Max Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason, P11

Chalmers was a big hit because he was "making it respectable to be a Cartesian dualist again". That was literally the gleeful response of the philosopher sat next to me when Chalmers gave the hard problem talk that made his name. — apokrisis

A sociological side-show in other words. — apokrisis

What am I not grasping? — NOS4A2

“Consciousness, properly an abstract term which, like “happiness”, “graciousness”, or “thoroughness”, refers to some quality of the human being taken in abstracto. However, the hypostatizing tendency of human thinking has led to its use as if referring to something existential. Since a man may be conscious, it is easy to fall into the assumption that he may have consciousness, then that something like a consciousness exists.

The problem is: when we look around for what it is Chalmers is talking about we come up empty-handed. — NOS4A2

But upon an objective analysis we find there is only one state and it is wholly biological. — NOS4A2

Only when that method fails due to accidental circumstances our consciousness will take action to correct our actions. — Ypan1944

It effectively is as you can find thousands of examples of that, even to this day. Religion was an old form of trying to understand the world but as time moved forward it became evident that it wasn’t as more scientific explanations proved better. — Darkneos

It would seem kinder to the author to assume he wasn't claiming that Jesus said "I am the truth, the truth and the truth" but drew a distinction between "the truth" and "the way" and "the life." Regardless, though, it's clear that Jesus is portrayed as claiming he alone is the way, the truth and the life. — Ciceronianus

What do we mean by dogma? — Moliere

it kind of depends on the kind of atheism one is listening to or supports. — Manuel

The religious person perceives our present life, or our natural life, as radically deficient, deficient from the root (radix) up, as fundamentally unsatisfactory; he feels it to be, not a mere condition, but a predicament; it strikes him as vain or empty if taken as an end in itself; he sees himself as homo viator, as a wayfarer or pilgrim treading a via dolorosa (path of sorrows) through a vale that cannot possibly be a final and fitting resting place; he senses or glimpses from time to time the possibility of a Higher Life; he feels himself in danger of missing out on this Higher Life of true happiness. If this doesn't strike a chord in you, then I suggest you do not have a religious disposition. Some people don't, and it cannot be helped. One cannot discuss religion with them, for it cannot be real to them. It is not, for them, what William James in "The Will to Believe" calls a "living option," let alone a "forced" or "momentous" one.

Did you know what Parmenides and his contemporaries wanted to know? The ultimate reality -- what is the smallest unit they could reduce existence and still be true to the real. — L'éléphant

People adopt them on account of what seems most plausible to them, but as I keep saying, that will depend on what one's own set of unargued premises or presuppositions are. — Janus

In the cause of physical brains, the brain state will be the configuration required to instantiate non-physical mental content. — Mark Nyquist

One line of argument against that is a variation of what is known as 'the argument from reason'. This says that, whatever we understand 'brain states' to be, if we are arguing that they are physical in nature, then they're incommensurable with propositional content (incommensurable meaning not able to be judged by the same standards; having no common standard of measurement.) Why? Because propositional content is wholly dependent on the relationship of ideas and if-then statements - if this is the case, then that is so. Any arguments relying on rational inference or logical syllogisms make use of something like this, and are instances of logical necessity - that is [x] is the case, then it must also be that [y]. But physical causation is of a different order to logical necessity. — Wayfarer

Do you think your intuitive preconceptions about how things must be are the last word on how things actually are? — Janus

The point is that we know objects persist — Janus

“Not one Republican should vote for this bill,” Representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and influential member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, said at a news conference outside the Capitol. “We will continue to fight it today, tomorrow, and no matter what happens, there’s going to be a reckoning about what just occurred unless we stop this bill by tomorrow.”

Another member of the group, Representative Dan Bishop of North Carolina, said he considered the deal grounds for ousting Mr. McCarthy from his post, something that any one lawmaker can attempt thanks to a rule Mr. McCarthy agreed to while he was grasping for the votes for his job.

Two of the Rules Committee’s arch-conservative members, Mr. Roy and Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, could vote against allowing it to move forward, in a sharp rebuke to the speaker. If they were joined by another Republican on the committee, they could sideline the agreement before it even reached the floor.

In the cause of physical brains, the brain state will be the configuration required to instantiate non-physical mental content. — Mark Nyquist

Again, nothing has “arisen” from this state, forever discounting the claim that it “gives rise” to something — NOS4A2

This is what supports Aristotle's definition of "man" as rational animal. — Metaphysician Undercover

2. Establish the scientific method with truth as the only and unquestionable value. — unenlightened