DwayneHoover
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2007
- Messages
- 2,746
Thanks VERY much for the link to Kevin O'Regan's paper, and all the other material at the oreagan.pdf page, invert... I'll definitely check it out, LOTS of fascinating material there!
But I think you are wrong that it is truly and fully possible to share internal subjective sensations in any meaningful way. No matter what you do or say, it is utterly impossible to explain to someone who has been totally color blind since birth what the EXPERIENCE of any color is "LIKE". Which leads to the entire question of, "what exactly ARE these internal conscious experiences we have?"
I agree with where Chalmers seems to land: what we call "subjective consciousness" is some fundamental & irreducible property of our universe, like charge/mass/time/etc. that we must take as a given and cannot really 'pick apart' in any meaningful way. I think that our brains evolved to take advantage of this basic property of reality as the most powerful available aid to survival of the organism and genome, just as they evolved eyes to take advantage of the existence of light, and other features of our organisms to take advantage of air-vibrations, gravity, energy, leverage, etc... DNA did not INVENT any of these things, but it WAS powerful enough to be able to eventually devise ways to USE them. I think it must be the same with "subjective consciousness." It seems presumptuous and maybe even preposterous to assume that the only answer is that DNA "invented" consciousness by evolving neural structures/processes that conjure it up out of nothingness. Hence the attempt to "explain" what is "really is" by looking at details of brain function is a fool's chase for a chimera that does not exist... hence the "Mysterian" position.
The classic question of how you explain the nature of the perception of a color, or any internal subjective experience, remains. O'Regan's paper still just addresses structuralist topics... it really says nothing to the basic question "WHY/HOW DOES IT 'FEEL LIKE' ANYTHING TO BE A BRAIN" In other words, in what ontological reality does our subjective experience reside.
To say it is some kind of illusion and and is not really real, is essentially cancelling yourself out of the discussion is it not? That is like saying "I" am an imaginary illusory construct and I do not believe my own subjective experiences actually have any true existence in the universe... only matter and physical processes are real, and therefore 'I' am not" Huh? This is totally self contradictory is seems to me like it is just trying to brush this deep, centuries old issue under the carpet and get people to stop talking about it, which, like Chalmers, I just cannot accept as a valid contribution.
Isn't the position that ONLY matter and physical processes are "real", and the subjective experiences are somehow less "real" or "true", as much a matter of some kind of faith as religion?
But I think you are wrong that it is truly and fully possible to share internal subjective sensations in any meaningful way. No matter what you do or say, it is utterly impossible to explain to someone who has been totally color blind since birth what the EXPERIENCE of any color is "LIKE". Which leads to the entire question of, "what exactly ARE these internal conscious experiences we have?"
I agree with where Chalmers seems to land: what we call "subjective consciousness" is some fundamental & irreducible property of our universe, like charge/mass/time/etc. that we must take as a given and cannot really 'pick apart' in any meaningful way. I think that our brains evolved to take advantage of this basic property of reality as the most powerful available aid to survival of the organism and genome, just as they evolved eyes to take advantage of the existence of light, and other features of our organisms to take advantage of air-vibrations, gravity, energy, leverage, etc... DNA did not INVENT any of these things, but it WAS powerful enough to be able to eventually devise ways to USE them. I think it must be the same with "subjective consciousness." It seems presumptuous and maybe even preposterous to assume that the only answer is that DNA "invented" consciousness by evolving neural structures/processes that conjure it up out of nothingness. Hence the attempt to "explain" what is "really is" by looking at details of brain function is a fool's chase for a chimera that does not exist... hence the "Mysterian" position.
The classic question of how you explain the nature of the perception of a color, or any internal subjective experience, remains. O'Regan's paper still just addresses structuralist topics... it really says nothing to the basic question "WHY/HOW DOES IT 'FEEL LIKE' ANYTHING TO BE A BRAIN" In other words, in what ontological reality does our subjective experience reside.
To say it is some kind of illusion and and is not really real, is essentially cancelling yourself out of the discussion is it not? That is like saying "I" am an imaginary illusory construct and I do not believe my own subjective experiences actually have any true existence in the universe... only matter and physical processes are real, and therefore 'I' am not" Huh? This is totally self contradictory is seems to me like it is just trying to brush this deep, centuries old issue under the carpet and get people to stop talking about it, which, like Chalmers, I just cannot accept as a valid contribution.
Isn't the position that ONLY matter and physical processes are "real", and the subjective experiences are somehow less "real" or "true", as much a matter of some kind of faith as religion?
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