Comments

  • The Nature of Consciousness
    I decided to rephrase this concept in a way that I hope will be much clearer to everyone. Everyone's comments have been very helpful to me in finding out some flaws in my reasoning and am hoping that there are less of them in the second iteration. I decided to try my hand at formal logic this time since that way, it would be easier for anyone to analyze. It's an attempt at Proof by Contradiction.

    Premises
    1. Logically impossible things cannot be imagined.
    2. It’s possible to imagine that a philosophical zombie exists.
    3. If consciousness is a purely physical process, philosophical zombies are logically impossible.

    Hypothesis
    H. Consciousness is a purely physical process.

    Reasoning
    4. (1) and (2) produces “Philosophical Zombies are Logically Possible” by Modus Tollens.
    5. (3) and (H) produces “Philosophical Zombies are Logically Impossible” by Modus Ponens.

    Conclusion
    C. Consciousness is not a purely physical process by Proof by Contradiction w/ (H), (4), and (5).

    Validity of Premises
    1. Try imagining a triangle with 4 sides.
    2. Physical laws and causality have nothing to do with whether consciousness can or can’t exist. The world could be entirely devoid of sentience yet still follow the same physical laws we know today. There is no reason why an inner experience should exist in regards to certain interactions; no physical rule prohibits lack of consciousness and therefore no reason exists for people to not be unconscious in relation to its physicality.
    3. Qualia would have to remain consistent between real people and zombies if consciousness was purely physical and the two were physically identical to each other yet real people have qualia whereas zombies don’t by definition. Since real people can and do exist, this would mean that zombies can’t and don’t.
  • The Nature of Consciousness
    Ironically, this led me to realize that what I've been trying to do this whole time was perform a negation over the proof by contradiction method. That is to assume the hypothesis is true and then see if you can find anything wrong with its conclusion. I've been making my life so much harder than it needs to be as that falls under circular reasoning as you pointed out when you have insufficient life experience to balance theoretics with reality which occurs quite frequently in simulation. This whole process would've been so much easier if I just did normal proof by contradiction where I only negate the hypothesis rather than the whole process so thank you for your comment.
  • The Nature of Consciousness
    I probably should've been more clear. I'm not talking about differences in whether something like tomatoes actually exist in one but not the other. I'm talking about intrinsic differences that arise from following the rules of a world (physical laws) like whether tomatoes COULD exist in one but not the other.

    In the case of tomatoes, if the two worlds had the same physical laws and one of them had the possibility of producing a tomato, you would point out how a biochemical configuration representing a tomato can exist in the other world as well. You would not be able to say that there are two worlds - each which have the same physical laws in which tomatoes can exist in one but not the other. Either they can exist in both or they can't exist in both. It would be a logical fallacy to say otherwise.

    In the case of consciousness, you can imagine two worlds - one in which consciousness exists and another where it doesn't despite the two having the same physical laws as evident by the philosophical zombie introduced by "I like Sushi." Since the zombie acts and reacts in the exact same way a real conscious person would, it would still follow the causality intrinsic in physical laws.

    In logical proof, it's known that under a set of givens, if you hypothesize something and you have logical derivation that shows that you can evaluate something to be true and false at the same time, the thing that you have hypothesized is false. The negation of that is also true in that if you hypothesize something and you can't have logical derivation that shows you can evaluate something to be true and false at the same time, the thing that you have hypothesized is true.

    The fact that you can imagine something and not find any contradiction in its imagination shows that you don't have logical derivation that shows you can evaluate something to be true and false at the same time. This would make the hypothesis (consciousness not being physical) true.
  • The Nature of Consciousness
    Is there a reason why you're so concerned with whether matter contains qualia? I'm personally more interested in how causality would work between physical matter and spiritual matter.
  • The Nature of Consciousness
    Very interesting, I didn't know that there was already theory on this. Now I have some references when talking about this idea which is great!
  • Definitions of Moral Good and Moral Bad
    I'm not sure - I kind of lost interest after people started saying Good can't be definable only described because I don't buy Moore's argument. In my eyes, once you define Good correctly and it becomes a closed question as opposed to an open one then Moore's second premise that's required for his argument ends up becoming false so his conclusion never arrives. I think peoples' relations regarding happiness or otherwise is just a wrong definition which violates Moore's first premise but causes his second premise to become true which is why people think Moore's argument makes sense. I mean obviously if you put out a definition you think the definition is true and so you assume Moore's first premise is true, but for me if Moore's second premise that it's a open question is true then you should just assume that your definition is wrong and that's why it falls through.

    Premise 1 & Premise 2 referred throughout according to : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-question_argument#:~:text=That%20is%2C%20Moore's%20argument%20attempts,is%20good%3F%22%20is%20meaningless.

    Actually I just read through his argument again, he probably has a point. Alas, a description of what makes something good is probably just as good as defining good.
  • Definitions of Moral Good and Moral Bad
    I'm not completely sure that I'm sold on Moore's argument. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, but luckily I'm familiar with what syllogism modus tollens is. Before you define a word, it's an open question as to what that means. Once you define the word, it's no longer an open question as it has a definition that would negate premise 2 which states that it's an open question. At the same time, you could argue that a definition is wrong in which case the definition is not equal to the word which would negate premise 1. So I would say that I agree with the logic surrounding Moore's argument but there's never any real case where both premises are simultaneously true and therefore Moore can't ever make his conclusion. Either you define a word correctly and you no longer need to question its definition or you define a word incorrectly and it remains an open question as to what that is.

    Basically I'm saying Moore's second premise could always end up false if we find the correct definition of what is good as it would cease being an open question since the answer on whether something is good could always be derived from the meaning of the word good.
  • Definitions of Moral Good and Moral Bad
    You're the only one so far who provided an alternative definition to Good and Bad so I found that pleasant. It seems that your scale works off an ideal as opposed to changes in the status quo like mine so that's interesting. What differentiates a person's virtue from a vice though? Wouldn't that be a descriptive definition of morality as opposed to a normative one?
  • Definitions of Moral Good and Moral Bad
    According to a quick search online, Good can be both an adjective and a noun. The first definition for it being a noun is "that which is morally right; righteousness."
  • Definitions of Moral Good and Moral Bad
    Well I mean creating new definitions for words is pretty much how language works. I think I suggested a viable definition. If you hit someone, you harm someone's physical health and therefore their quality of life so it's bad, if you give food to the poor, you nourish them and raise their quality of life so it's good.
  • Definitions of Moral Good and Moral Bad
    Only those that don't have clear definitions. Like ask someone the difference between Morality and Ethics for example. For me Morality are principles that differentiate between Good and Bad while Ethics are a set of rules one follows to behave in a good manner.
  • Definitions of Moral Good and Moral Bad
    Well the merits of my system is that you can actually get feedback on what is good or bad. You could do something to someone and ask them if they liked or disliked what you did. Of course, this isn't infallible - there are things that raise someone's appreciation of life in the moment but harm them later on such as addictions after all. As for the same point that TheMadFool pointed out regarding an elaboration on what dictates a person's quality of life, I was thinking of something in terms of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
  • Definitions of Moral Good and Moral Bad
    You could argue that virtues such as stamina and resilience allow a person to live at a higher quality of life through their subjective experience despite being under worse objective conditions. Also wouldn't the goal of life be to live life well?
  • Definitions of Moral Good and Moral Bad
    Hi, thanks for the feedback. In that case, could you point me to some definitions of Moral Good and Moral Bad that exist in current theory? I couldn't find any in my first searches but there are probably many that I'm not aware of.
  • Proof for Free Will
    Yes I meant spiritual or transcendental
  • Proof for Free Will
    I appreciate all the feedback guys, I added an older version for my attempt at a proof for free will in the original post and would like your thoughts on that as well.
  • Proof for Free Will
    That's why I start by saying there are two distinct worlds rather than two distinct systems, each system is from each world so they follow different rules albeit the same physical laws - isn't it possible to imagine that our world could have all the same physical laws such as newton's law of motion and gravity but is different in that one can create consciousness while not the other.
  • Proof for Free Will
    Couldn't you maintain all physical laws within two worlds such as gravity and electromagnetism but have it so that one is capable of consciousness while the other isn't? So in the other world, human beings would exist and they would all react to stimuli under a very intricate set of causal rules similar to human beings in our own world but they wouldn't actually be aware of anything they do as if they were puppets following a complex set of unconscious processes? I'm saying if you could imagine a situation like this, it shows that physical laws alone can't break down the emergence of consciousness.
  • Proof for Free Will
    It's not so much that the quantum level is fundamentally random so much so that our most precise method of measurement (light through photons) ends up changing what we measure when we measure really small things so there's always a degree of uncertainty which is being attempted to be bypassed through probabilistic means. Also it may be possible that in the future we find out what configuration causes consciousness so it seems foolish to base a proof on something that is tenable to change.