Re:Consciousness as a State of Matter
by joe_the_user on Wednesday January 08, 2014 @04:00PM
(#7026590)
I am glad this paper has been written...
What is there to celebrate about half-baked philosophy dressed as science and published?
Philosophers and theologians have spent the last two thousand years not agreeing what consciousness is and there is no clear consensus now. That's not really surprising - all the seemingly "basic" qualities people perceive - say lightness, darkness, wetness or coldness, are very "high level" compared to what we know about the real states of matter
The argument that consciousness is a state of matter because consciousness is something we intuitively perceive is something of a throw-back to the "four elements of matter" thinking - the prescientific system where matter is organized by its perceived properties in contrast to any serious investigation of the causes of those perceived properties.
What is there to celebrate about half-baked philosophy dressed as science and published?
Philosophers and theologians have spent the last two thousand years not agreeing what consciousness is and there is no clear consensus now. That's not really surprising - all the seemingly "basic" qualities people perceive - say lightness, darkness, wetness or coldness, are very "high level" compared to what we know about the real states of matter
The argument that consciousness is a state of matter because consciousness is something we intuitively perceive is something of a throw-back to the "four elements of matter" thinking - the prescientific system where matter is organized by its perceived properties in contrast to any serious investigation of the causes of those perceived properties.