Re:Toward a Mature Science of Consciousness
by naasking on Thursday June 28, 2018 @03:37PM
(#17419830)
> But Y does not really explain X. That is core point. Saying Y explains X is just igoring the question. It is just Dennett claiming "Y explains X" with a flawed argument.
We have no reason to believe that Y cannot explain X, and ample reason to believe it can. Every previous circumstance of special pleading of this sort has eventually fallen to scientific inquiry.
Furthermore, various observations and theorems in physics, like the conservation of energy and the Bekenstein Bound, suggest strongly that the mind is a fully encapsulated, bounded physical system.
The only way to escape this inevitability is to posit that consciousness is some extra-physical quantity that has no impact on physical matter whatsoever. And what problem does adding this to our axiomatic basis solve exactly? None that I can see except yet another instance of special pleading.
If anything, such a step actually introduces more problems, because how would you explain the fact that we, beings of physical matter, are talking about consciousness if consciousness cannot influence matter?
We have no reason to believe that Y cannot explain X, and ample reason to believe it can. Every previous circumstance of special pleading of this sort has eventually fallen to scientific inquiry.
Furthermore, various observations and theorems in physics, like the conservation of energy and the Bekenstein Bound, suggest strongly that the mind is a fully encapsulated, bounded physical system.
The only way to escape this inevitability is to posit that consciousness is some extra-physical quantity that has no impact on physical matter whatsoever. And what problem does adding this to our axiomatic basis solve exactly? None that I can see except yet another instance of special pleading.
If anything, such a step actually introduces more problems, because how would you explain the fact that we, beings of physical matter, are talking about consciousness if consciousness cannot influence matter?