Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Faustus5]

Here's an analogy. Let's look at 5 apples, what can we say about them? Are the apples just as real, as the number 5 itself?
And if yes, then are we talking about 6 things now? Is that an objective fact that there are now 6 things?

Doesn't matter, don't care.

[Faustus5]

Your last claim is false. The "hard problem" was raised by David Chalmers, not as a secret theist agenda, but because it is a real conundrum. Processing v being. That is why neuroscientists have been trying all these years to work it out.

There is no possible sense in which any scientific project could ever solve the hard problem given how Chalmers has defined it. That alone should make us suspicious that it is nothing more than a philosophical artifact that can and should be dismissed.

Not so long ago it was proclaimed that we had found the ultimate generator of consciousness - the claustrum. It was major news for a while.

Forgive me, but I am highly skeptical of this claim, seeing as I follow this stuff pretty closely and I don't recall a single moment in which the scientific community was united in thinking the claustrum's discovery had sufficiently explained what consciousness is.

There's an obvious test to check our progress. How close are we to being able to create a sense of being in our creations and precisely measure their internality? How much do we know about the subtle (but possibly potent) interdependencies between the brain and metabolic systems? If we do not know, and cannot achieve, these then we do not understand the nature of being.

This sounds to me like an explicitly and entirely philosophical frame to these issues, which to my way of thinking just confuses things. When I start seeing the word "being" tossed around, a number of alarm sirens start sounding in my head.

[Faustus5]

Why do you find it more satisfying than Chalmers' approach which identifies similar problems with formulating a Theory of Consciousness, but says in essence this means we have to look deeper, rather than 'explain away' phenomenal experience?

Chalmer's approach is fundamentally anti-scientific and purely ideological in my opinion. That he is taken as seriously as he is, particularly the ridiculous zombie argument upon which his entire conception of the hard problem depends, tells me more about the current poverty in philosophy of mind than anything else.

[Consul]

Chalmer's approach is fundamentally anti-scientific and purely ideological in my opinion.

He insists that there is nothing antiscientific about his naturalistic dualism.

QUOTE>
"This view is entirely compatible with a contemporary scientific worldview, and is entirely naturalistic. On this view, the world still consists in a network of fundamental properties related by basic laws, and everything is to be ultimately explained in these terms. All that has happened is that the inventory of properties and laws has been expanded, as happened with Maxwell. Further, nothing about this view contradicts anything in physical theory; rather, it supplements this theory. A physical theory gives a theory of physical processes, and a psychophysical theory tells us how those processes give rise to experience.
To capture the spirit of the view I advocate, I call it naturalistic dualism. It is naturalistic because it posits that everything is a consequence of a network of basic properties and laws, and because it is compatible with all the results of contemporary science. And as with naturalistic theories in other domains, this view allows that we can explain consciousness in terms of basic natural laws. There need be nothing especially transcendental about consciousness; it is just another natural phenomenon. All that has happened is that our picture of nature has expanded. Sometimes 'naturalism' is taken to be synonymous with 'materialism', but it seems to me that a commitment to a naturalistic understanding of the world can survive the failure of materialism. (…) Some might find a certain irony in the name of the view, but what is most important is that it conveys the central message: to embrace dualism is not necessarily to embrace mystery."

(Chalmers, David J. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. pp. 127-28)
<QUOTE

[Atla]

You really seem to be under the misunderstanding that Dennett doesn't keep contradicting himself all over the place.

Yes, I understand that to someone who essentially doesn't have a clue about what Dennett really believes, this might seem to be the case. You could easily prove me wrong by providing two statement in his own words that directly contradict each other, but we both know that would require levels of scholarship you aren't going to bother with.

His contradictions about consciousness and information are what we've been talking so far. But as you said, when we get down to the details, you and Dennett don't care.

[Faustus5]

He insists that there is nothing antiscientific about his naturalistic dualism.

QUOTE>

Yep, I've read his book cover to cover, I know very well what he insists upon, I just think it is BS.

[Faustus5]

He insists that there is nothing antiscientific about his naturalistic dualism.

QUOTE>

Yep, I've read his book cover to cover, I know very well what he insists upon, I just think it is BS.

Is there an edit function around here that would let me correct my stupid formatting mistakes?

[Atla]

There is no possible sense in which any scientific project could ever solve the hard problem given how Chalmers has defined it. That alone should make us suspicious that it is nothing more than a philosophical artifact that can and should be dismissed.

Philosophical problems aren't actual problems, so they should be dismissed?

You seem to be one of those people who don't realize that science is instrumentalist, and your objective facts already carry a metaphysical baggage.

[Faustus5]

Philosophical problems aren't actual problems, so they should be dismissed?

Some are, some aren't. If something is just baggage created by bad thinking over an issue, as qualia and the hard problem are, it can be safely dismissed as nonsense cooked up from the safety of the armchair.

[Atla]

Philosophical problems aren't actual problems, so they should be dismissed?

Some are, some aren't. If something is just baggage created by bad thinking over an issue, as qualia and the hard problem are, it can be safely dismissed as nonsense cooked up from the safety of the armchair.

Ok here goes

I am experiencing qualia right now, and it's neither supernatural, nor contradicts science, nor does it have anything to do with some mind-body dualism or Cartesian theatre.

Actually it was pointed out a long time ago in philosophy, that the only thing we can be certain about is that there is this direct experience. We can doubt anything about the experience, but we can't doubt the experience.

You say it's nonsense, why?

[Faustus5]

I am experiencing qualia right now, and it's neither supernatural, nor contradicts science, nor does it have anything to do with some mind-body dualism or Cartesian theatre.

You are certainly having a conscious experience, but I would deny that it has the properties philosophers who believe in qualia say it has.

[Atla]

I am experiencing qualia right now, and it's neither supernatural, nor contradicts science, nor does it have anything to do with some mind-body dualism or Cartesian theatre.

You are certainly having a conscious experience, but I would deny that it has the properties philosophers who believe in qualia say it has.

But it does. Qualia is not nothing, and this "something" can't be explained by current science. (According to some people, it can't even be explained in principle by any instrumentalist approach.)

[Terrapin Station]

Philosophical problems aren't actual problems, so they should be dismissed?

Some are, some aren't. If something is just baggage created by bad thinking over an issue, as qualia and the hard problem are, it can be safely dismissed as nonsense cooked up from the safety of the armchair.

I wasn't following every post in the conversation. Just curious if you basically agree with Dennett's view, so that you would say that there are no qualia.

[Faustus5]

But it does. Qualia is not nothing, and this "something" can't be explained by current science.

An assertion not based on any facts or evidence, but merely ideology. That's why I reject it as occult nonsense.

[Faustus5]

I wasn't following every post in the conversation. Just curious if you basically agree with Dennett's view, so that you would say that there are no qualia.

Yes. Either that, or that qualia exist but not in the form many philosophers believe. I can go either way as either approach amounts to the same thing.