Re:Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of...
by Marazan on Wednesday January 21, 2015 @05:11PM
(#8926137)
You don't know your own consciousness exists. You can just be experiencing something that is not consciousness but that you think is. That's the ludicrous banality of the Hard Problem.
Re:Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of...
by rosser on Wednesday January 21, 2015 @05:21PM
(#8926195)
You can just be experiencing something that is not consciousness...
That's what consciousness is: to borrow Thomas Nagel's phrase (which Chalmers also uses frequently), "the thing that it feels like" to be something. By every reasonable definition I've ever heard — and I've studied and read about this stuff for decades — that's pretty much a constant: consciousness is the experiential part of ... you know, experience. Yes, it's entirely possible — even common — to be mistaken or misled about the content of your experience, but not the fact that you are experiencing.
In a discussion already absurdly full of sophistry, your comment should win a very large, gaudy prize.
As for point #4, and Dennett, I'm going to have to beg off discussing, because I don't want to have to resort to that kind of language before lunch. (Read: really, really not a fan.)