Sy Borg wrote: ↑June 11th, 2021, 9:09 am
If you read what I said you'd notice that the questions about what happened before the Big Bang WERE wrongly rejected.
That mistake by earlier physicists is now acknowledged, but for many years any suggestion that there was a before the Big Bang was said to make no sense. In fact, it was ridiculed. Even today some scientists repeat Stephen Hawkings's offhand claim that speaking about what happened before the Big Bang is like trying to travel north of the north pole.
-This is a common misconception and blind generalization . Early questions were about the state of the universe before the Big Bang. That was a nonsensical statement since there was no Universe to point to. The ticking of the process(time) that resulted to what we identify as universe started with the big bang . Only by introducing the concept of the Cosmos, the question gained some meaning and epistemic value.
2. There was no intellectual dishonesty by me, but by you. The fact is that we do NOT know enough about consciousness for you to make such confident claims, as if the game is all sown up. My problem is with your misplaced certainty, even more than with your reliance of gimmicky smears.
We also don't know what is responsible for the misplacement of our keys......but we don't make up invisible magical agents to explain it.(well some of us do lol)
Again. We DON'T KNOW means WE DON'T KNOW...lets study what we observe directly. It doesn't mean "lets introduce a bigger mystery as an answer to a small one. We only have to demonstrate Necessity and Sufficiency of an observable causal mechanism (brain) and we have, sure we don't know every single detail or mechanism, but we are not done yet. The brain has complex functions, so before introducing magical mechanisms why don't you hold your horses and wait until the investigation is done?
3. You are just another who denies the hard problem, as discussed. The hard problem most certainly has not been rejected by "science". It has been rejected by some scientists, but they do not represent all. The jury remains out.
-THere is a hard problem, but it has nothing to do with Chalmer's "why" pseudo philosophical questions or similar claims from the rest of the pseudo philosophical circle. Science ignores his "why" questions because they are epistemically useless, not because of a philosophical bias.
As Solms has pointed out the difficulty is to isolate the brain area responsible for our conscious states from the areas responsible for introducing the content in those states.
"Philosophers'' may say whatever they want about "an imaginary remaining jury"that doesn't change anything. They did and still doing it with "life", they do it with theistic ideas etc. The fact is that the Philosophical Hard Problem of consciousness is dead for good.
4. My argument comparing the use of outliers as model examples is most certainly not a non sequitur. Do you know what a non sequitur is??
-Yes your conclusion did not follow from your premises...it was a logically unfounded comparison, with wrong accusations.
The issue here is that using outliers to model any phenomena is illogical.
-Science is the most systematic and methodical tool we currently have for the evaluation of our epistemic claims. Claiming that our scientific position on the subject is an outlier is a fractally wrong accusation
Science is, by nature, a bottom-up discipline. Anyone considering the phenomenon of consciousness by using human consciousness as a standard model is starting from near the top. That's fine if you want to research issues that will aid treatments for those with brain disease or injury. Medicine, of course, will be the source of most research dollars. To consider explorations of human consciousness in medical research as explorations of consciousness per se in all of life is irrational.
-You are ignorant on how we scientifically explore the ability of the human brain to be arouses and how it consciously processes stimuli from the environment and its organism. Medical research is only one out of numerous methodologies that inform our puzzle. Our medical applications are only the instrumental verification of the ability of our foundings to produce useful explanations and testable predictions. Our Surgery and Medical protocols work because their predictions are testable and they are testable because we can directly evaluate them. If only your ideology could have similar usefulness or relevance to reality! Why do you insist on talking about things you know nothing about????
You might as well study economics by using Jeff Bezos as a standard, and then declare that most people have no money whatsoever.
-Your last statement is equally as bad as the rest of your arguments.
Why won't you leave these arguments from ignorance aside and present a positive argument on why you believe our mental states aren't a product of the brain.
"because we can not prove it" is not an argument...but a fallacy. Give your best shot and produce the reason why you think that the source of consciousness is supernatural.
but I had no opinion or thoughts about it as I lolled relatively mindlessly in the chair. Of course, even this diminished human experience is exponentially more complex than the simple pulses and tingles that may be at the evolutionary root of qualia in the biosphere (wherever those limits may lie).