Re:When you split the brain, do you split the person?
by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @01:52PM
(#15394441)
In other words, you have absolutely no idea if a state experiences "consciousness" in the philosophical sense, so instead have claimed that it doesn't simply because it is too different from you to receive the benefit of the doubt, even though you recognize that such an assertion is impossible within an empirical framework.
Re:When you split the brain, do you split the person?
by liberte82 on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:21PM
(#15396316)
Sure... but it's just as impossible to make a claim that it does.
Re:When you split the brain, do you split the person?
by dpark on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @08:14PM
(#15397347)
Except that it's not. The assertion made was that any empirical definition of consciousness that applies to humans would likewise apply to states. This is a straightforward claim.
If you dispute this claim then all you need to do is provide an empirical definition of consciousness that applies to humans but not states. I will note that defining "consciousness" as something like "the human experience" is vacuous and doesn't count.
If humans didn't have egos, identities and a sense of "I" and were merely sensory machines, then maybe there could be an equivalence.
That is, if ego and identity are the same thing as consciousness. I'm not sure they are. Frankly, it's a mystery to me, as I think it is to everyone, except for perhaps a few enlightened Buddhist monks.