What Is It Like to Have a Brain?: Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness

Re:What Is It Like to Have a Brain?: Nineteen Ways of Lookin... by zasdffaa on Saturday October 15, 2022 @03:41PM (#33217926)

Asking where consciousness/qualia come from gets you saying "You know what consciousness is". So you don't answer.

> To ask what something _is_ implies reduction

Yes, but you learn something. What is wood? Partly it's lignin. What's that? Randomly polymerised phenol-like molecules. What's phenol? A benzene ring (unsaturated carbon ring) with an OH on it. What are C, O and H? Elements. What is (eg.) carbon? An atom composed of... etc.

You can't reduce consciousness/qualia in any way so you cop out.

The AI video #5 takes some interesting quantum stuff and extrapolates it with extreme dodginess and emotive language into some semi/pseudo-scientific conjectures. My guess is you haven't even watched the vids.

> I submit to you that AI succeeds, and the empirical adequacy of those claims is abundantly linked in the description of the material you are downloading

Nope.

I've had enough here.

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Re:What Is It Like to Have a Brain?: Nineteen Ways of Lookin... by namero999 on Sunday October 16, 2022 @10:07AM (#33223715)

> Yes, but you learn something. What is wood? Partly it's lignin. What's that? Randomly polymerised phenol-like molecules. What's phenol? A benzene ring (unsaturated carbon ring) with an OH on it. What are C, O and H? Elements. What is (eg.) carbon? An atom composed of... etc.

Do you notice that this is infinite regress? At a certain point you must accept a non-reducible fundamental. If you don't, then it's infinite regress and you have explained effectively nothing. Materialism accepts the quantum foam as primitive. Idealism consciousness. But it's the same epistemic step, accepting a primitive, and derive the rest from it.

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