On Questioning Consciousness

[SisterRay100]

3:05

"One cannot properly lack what is absurd to attribute to any being"

Wittgenstein uses a thought experiment of a zombie tribe that we want to enslave whose people behave exactly as we do.His point is that no observation can confirm or refute the existence or absence of such consciousness.We find ourselves talking about their states in the same way we talk about our own mental states.The attribution or denial of consciousness is merely an act of changing our attitude toward them.(Zettel528)

[DanaGarrett]

@SisterRay100 Perhaps I'm not following, but I would wonder, then, why we would call them "zombies" if they "behave exactly as we do," assuming, of course, that part of that behavior is engaging in the robust and complex linguistic behavior we engage in like attributing internal states to ourselves (e.g. pain). What would be the difference?

Your the first person to quote Zettel to me. That's impressive.

[SisterRay100]

@DanaGarrett

That's exactly the point - that such a thought experiment is not really intelligible. There is nothing there whose presence could be explained or whose absence could be conceived. Asking how consciousness (in the sense of pure subjectivity, or qualia) came about, can't provide us any information or improve our attunement with the world. It does not play any role in our coping with the world (that's how I put it. not Wittgenstein)

[TomValedro]

santa?

[DanaGarrett]

@WiseMonkey888 As an illustration of how unintelligent I am, I don't understand the distinction between being "intelligent" and being "particularly intelligent." :)

[conferencereport]

I see no difference between consciousness and what you refer to as 'the experience of consciousness'. As far as emergent properties go, I have no problem with saying that consciousness (or motricity) are indeed emergent, but this is really just hand-waving until you specify the processes by which they emerge. I may be wrong but I think that if the processes by which consciousness emerged were fully explained (if they haven't been already) we would still be looked for an essentialism.

[2bsirius]

@conferencereport

I'm NOT saying I agree with this, but Jaegwon Kim in his book, Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation, postulates that consciousness is likely an emergent property which results from what he defined as causal exclusion. I think he says the same thing in his more recent book, "Physicalism, or Something Near Enough"...His argument depends on what he calls the "supervenience" argument and it's also called the "exclusion" argument.

[theDracoIX]

@conferencereport You weren't expecting that last comment were you, lol. Shit got real - didn't it though? A little too real for a fake, fvcking cowardly soulless faggot like you. So block me - yea, that's good. You need to keep the real world at bay... so you can continue on with your fake fvcking conversations about your fake fvcking life in your fake fvcking world.

Have fun with the voices in your head, you fvcking nobody.

[conferencereport]

@theDracoIX I think you'll find that the word 'fucking' is spelt with a 'u' not a 'v'.. Thanks for the exchange, always a pleasure.

[2bsirius]

I'm glad that you're talking about the elephant in the room, emergent properties.

It's NOT magic or spooky, as you point out.

[DanaGarrett]

@2bsirius Yes, you are right. They are not spooky but nearly universally recognized in the physical sciences. The complex symmetrical patterns of crystals is merely one case in point.

[Pulchism]

@DanaGarrett pardon my ignoramousness but what's the connection between crystallography and emergent behaviour/systems?

[marcmerlin]

Thanks! That was a very nice summary of a very difficult question.