I challenge you: your best alternate to materialism

No, he is more than just an electrical engineer according to:

Hold on, I have a friend who basically has a doctorate Ph.D in cheese. Are you suggesting that his doctorate extends into everything? Because that is what you are blatantly attempting.

This friend, who we gently refer to as Dr. Cheese at this point, would make no claim outside his own particular area of expertise, and would be horrified at the blanket claims made. Sure, if you want to know about microorganisms in cheese he would be your go to guy. But he couldn't wire a plug and he knows it, and has no issue stating that out front, because he knows it is not his area of effort.

Another, who models fluid dynamics of weather systems, has not a single clue how the internal combustion engine works, nor the dynamics of the link budget for Apollo communication with the moon. He freely admits that too. It is not his metier.

So, yes. Your expert really is just an electrical engineer who happens to claim expertise beyond his chosen subject.
 
Hold on, I have a friend who basically has a doctorate Ph.D in cheese. Are you suggesting that his doctorate extends into everything? Because that is what you are blatantly attempting.

This friend, who we gently refer to as Dr. Cheese at this point, would make no claim outside his own particular area of expertise, and would be horrified at the blanket claims made. Sure, if you want to know about microorganisms in cheese he would be your go to guy. But he couldn't wire a plug and he knows it, and has no issue stating that out front, because he knows it is not his area of effort.

Another, who models fluid dynamics of weather systems, has not a single clue how the internal combustion engine works, nor the dynamics of the link budget for Apollo communication with the moon. He freely admits that too. It is not his metier.

So, yes. Your expert really is just an electrical engineer who happens to claim expertise beyond his chosen subject.

But here comes the fun part; if you point out that in each of those 600+ papers (and yes, we went through them *ALL* in the other thread) there are scientifically unsound methods or blatant lies (I showed a few that were simply fabrications, like crime rates that never were, that is why I called it Diederik Stapel in this thread) then all of a sudden you are not 'professional' enough, even though I have practiced this TM-Schtick and I have an interest in brain functions (I have studied AI at university).

Hipocrisy, thy name be Doron.

EDIT: The 'Not professional' came about when I asked for just one (1) paper that was peer reviewed AND accepted by anyone(!) not having anything to do with TM. So far, the result is zilch, noppes, nix, nada.
 
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Are you aware that these brain waves are _effects_ of brain function ?
Are you aware of that these brain waves are synchronized in such a way, which enables one's awareness to be in restful alertness (one is aware of itself without thoughts)?


That's not what your link says. It links these waves to meditation. It says nothing about neutral monism. Please explain how brain waves relate to me becoming aware of the simplest state of existence.
The simplest state of existence is exactly self-awareness without thoughts, and it is the invariant substance of all variant phenomena, including matter or matter's behavior, as measured by external material tools like electroencephalogram, which is also some variant phenomena.

Once again:

doronshadmi said:
Belz... said:
it remains that thoughts are a particular behaviour of the nervous system. By observing the behaviour, you can know the thought without asking the person.
Not correct, first you have to ask the person about the thoughts, and only then you are able to define the correspondence between these particular thoughts and the particular behavior of the nervous system, that is given to you by your martial agents, which are always external to the original experience of the thinker within itself.

Only at the seconded time, after you have got the needed knowledge from the thinker, you are able very roughly to know the thought without asking the person.

In other words, you have no chance to know up to the last detail what one really thinks, and your martial tools are no more than your external agents w.r.t to the original experience of the thinker within itself.
Exactly the same holds for one's awareness without thoughts, you first have to ask him\here about his\her experience and only then you are able to define the correspondence between the electroencephalogram's output and one's awareness without thoughts.
 
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The simplest state of existence is exactly self-awareness without thoughts,

That's what the dog-turd said "I stink therefore I am!"

But this is all just assertion and trying to change the way things go in proper science:

Doron, if you and/or TM claim something, like the above, then it is up to you and/or TM to prove it.

It is not up to others to disprove it.
 
Dr. Cheese
Your Cheese analogy has nothing to do with the record of this scientist, as appears in http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10422300&postcount=1072.

Moreover, are M. Tomašević, E. Jovanov, V. Radivojević, P. Šuković, Ž. Martinović, M. Car, D. Radenović, Z. Jovanović-Ignjatić and L. Škarić (http://www.dejanrakovicfund.org/radovi/1999-INFORMATICA.pdf) nothing but "Dr. Cheese" (and also be aware of the fact that this research (including http://www.ece.uah.edu/~jovanov/papers/C1997_Tomasevic_TM.pdf research) was not done by members of TM movement) ?

Furthermore, your Dr. Cheese's chances to be in the editorial boards of the journals mentioned in http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10422300&postcount=1072 are probably zero.

(B.T.W being an electrical engineer can be very helpful in case of scientific researches that use tools like electroencephalogram)

So you, Nonpareil (and now also Belz... http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10423446&postcount=1088) simply have no case.
 
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your Cheese analogy has nothing to do with the record of this scientist, as appears in http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10422300&postcount=1072.

It has everything to do with it; I am a real-world professor, but you won't catch me saying I am an expert in cheese.

The guy you are pointing to has no cheese claiming anything with regards the brain, neurological functions or any other assertion you have shown.

Doron stop editing your posts after someone has replied to them!

But as an EDIT: You *know* that *ALL* of the people you mention are FRAUDSTERS. We had all of them exposed ages ago. It is really nasty to act as if you have forgotten that and just repost them here again.

There are NO researches by people that have nothing to do with TM (which is not the same as 'of the TM movement') that underwrite ANY claim made by TM.
 
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Are you aware of that these brain waves are synchronized in such a way, which enables one's awareness to be in restful alertness (one is aware of itself without thoughts)?

You first, Doron: Are you aware that these brain waves are _effects_ of brain function ?

It's impolite to avoid questions while asking your own.

The simplest state of existence is exactly self-awareness without thoughts

Wait a second. You said earlier that thought was a 'substance' that setmmed from this simplest state. That state thus cannot have thoughts, so how can it be aware ?

And this doesn't answer my question. Even if you are correct, it does not explain how your brain becomes aware of it. You seem to be under the impression that X will be aware of X because it's made of the same stuff. It's like saying that if I turn my brain to maple syrup, suddenly I will be able to communicate with another piece of maple. You need a mechanism for that, and you have not provided it.
 
Your Cheese analogy has nothing to do with the record of this scientist, as appears in http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10422300&postcount=1072.

Moreover, are M. Tomašević, E. Jovanov, V. Radivojević, P. Šuković, Ž. Martinović, M. Car, D. Radenović, Z. Jovanović-Ignjatić and L. Škarić (http://www.dejanrakovicfund.org/radovi/1999-INFORMATICA.pdf) nothing but "Dr. Cheese" (and also be aware of the fact that this research (including http://www.ece.uah.edu/~jovanov/papers/C1997_Tomasevic_TM.pdf research) was not done by members of TM movement) ?

Furthermore, your Dr. Cheese's chances to be in the editorial boards of the journals mentioned in http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10422300&postcount=1072 are probably zero.

(B.T.W being an electrical engineer can be very helpful in case of scientific researches that use tools like electroencephalogram)
Dr. Cheese is a tenured professor of an accredited university, sits on the editorial boards of two journals and has been the editor of a third, and is a peer review referee for most journals in his area of speciality having a h-index of 32. And that is the point...in his area of speciality. He does not use the mere existence of his PhD as a lever to claim expertise in other areas since that would be dishonest.

Your "expert" seems to have no such qualms at all.
 
You first, Doron: Are you aware that these brain waves are _effects_ of brain function ?

It's impolite to avoid questions while asking your own.
Let's do it again, without the ? mark.

The brain waves are synchronized in such a way, which enables one's awareness to be in restful alertness (one is aware of itself without thoughts).

Wait a second. You said earlier that thought was a 'substance' that setmmed from this simplest state.
No, thought is a variant phenomenon, which is emerged from the invariant substance of all possible variant phenomena.

And this doesn't answer my question. Even if you are correct, it does not explain how your brain becomes aware of it. You seem to be under the impression that X will be aware of X because it's made of the same stuff. It's like saying that if I turn my brain to maple syrup, suddenly I will be able to communicate with another piece of maple. You need a mechanism for that, and you have not provided it.
You are still trying to get the correct answer to your question by using only the variant aspect of reality. Your question simply can't be answered by excluding the invariant aspect of reality. Transcendental Meditation (or similar techniques) actually enables you to directly be aware of the invariant substance of all possible variant phenomena (where thoughts are some variant phenomena).

Directly be aware of the invariant substance is exactly self-awareness without thoughts.

As long as you are not directly aware of yourself without thoughts, the best you can get is an endless rhetoric about it, and this is exactly your current position as long as you are not actually practicing techniques like Transcendental Meditation.

This time please do not reject the following table about restful alertness

Code:
             SELF-AWARENESS 
                
             NO         YES      
        +-----------+-----------+
 T      |           |           |
 H  YES | DREAMING  |  WAKING   |
 O      |           |           |
 U      +-----------+-----------+
 G      |           |  RESTFUL  |
 T  NO  | SLEEPING  |           |
 S      |           | ALERTNESS |
        +-----------+-----------+

that is based on the article http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12316/pdf, which is an excellent work about this subject.

But the most important thing is this:

Talking or thinking about X is not actually directly aware of X, and direct awareness of X can't systematically achieved without routinely actually practice techniques like Transcendental Meditation.

---------------------

It also has to be stressed that there are persons that are able to directly be aware of the simplest state of existence even if they do not practice techniques like Transcendental Meditation and in this case routine practice of techniques like Transcendental Meditation can stabilize the direct awareness of the simplest state of existence as the substance of the other three major states of consciousness in their daily life.

It also has to be stressed that there are persons that can practice techniques like Transcendental Meditation all their lives and never directly be aware of the simplest state of existence (self-awareness without thoughts).

Actually there is some poster here, that is generally ignored by me, which is probably a person that can practice techniques like Transcendental Meditation all his life and never directly be aware of the simplest state of existence (self-awareness without thoughts).

He is in my ignore list because aggressions like "That's what the dog-turd said "I stink therefore I am!"" are dead-end street for valuable communication.

Most of the population is somewhere between these extreme cases.
 
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No, it isn't.

Many people claim that it is. That is not the same thing.



No, the question is whether or not there is any evidence for it.

There isn't.
(I will pair the discussion down a bit, as I don't have the time for long replies just now.)
And findings in neurology arent evidence that it's not there. By the way you called it a soul here, I would refer to call it a monad specifically, the soul generally refers to something else.

Well here's your problem, logical is too solid a form of reasoning, rational thinking is more fluid, you can't reduce rationality to logic, you should use the word logical instead. Also the fact that logic is a human invention is a hindrance in a discussion like this, as it will put human ideas on a pedestal which they don't necessarily qualify for.


Not self-contradictory and/or possessing an actual definition.
Well I can go with this for a while, but it's not how I would put it.


No. But there's a difference between being the thing most likely to iproduce consciousness outside of a laboratory setting and being the only thing that can do it at all.

Again, there is no reason to think that life is a prerequisite for consciousness, since everything that we have points to brains being that requirement, and there is nothing in the definition of "brain" that requires organic origins.



It's either computation or it's magic. Take your pick.

We have evidence of the one. We do not have evidence of the other.



There is no evidence that organic life is a prerequisite for self-consciousness.
ok, so you say self consciousness is only a result of computation. By the way you are stretching the sinews of that brain like elastic there.
Which is not proof. Regardless of metabolic composition, if you were handed a human who did not behave as though they were conscious (if, for example, they were in a vegetative state), you would not decide that they were conscious (or, rather, you would be wrong if you did).

"I am conscious; therefore, others like me are conscious" is not proof. The proof is in looking at others and seeing that they are conscious.
Yes you would have proof if someone where behaving in a self-conscious way. But it is only in the knowledge that that person is biologically identical to yourself that you can rule out that it is not a robot mimicking that self consciousness.


Then we have the first problem of idealism, addressed in the same post. The only way to argue for such a position is to deny all possibility of evidence, which is irrational and untenable, as it crumbles as soon as you have any functional definition of "is".
Can you give me a functional definition of is? Or is there none?
Idealism is still not rational.
Do you mean logical?


Anecdotes are not evidence. And I was addressing the first form of idealism, as above, which rejects all notions of evidence.



Until such a time as it is presented, idealism is irrational.
Well you really have little understanding of the issue if you are reducing the discussion to evidence(see my next response*)


No, an analogy. The fact that it is leprechauns specifically is irrelevant. The point is that, if all you're doing is saying "it looks in every way exactly like X, and there can never be evidence, even in theory, of it being Y, but it really is Y", then you are committing the special pleading fallacy.
*No, if anything, I am saying it may be Y. If it is Y then everything we are aware of is irrefutable evidence.


No. That is the point. An entity which behaves exactly in every circumstance as though it is conscious is conscious.
Except for the machines which mimic conscious behaviour.
Saying "oh but it could all be done unconsciously" is incoherent. It is the same problem that the definition has.

This is an actual case of claiming A AND ~A.
Incorect, all that is required is computation that mimics self conscious behaviour.


In which case belief in idealism is irrational and will always be irrational.



In which case belief in idealism is irrational and will remain irrational until some evidence of idealism is put forth.
I would not advocate belief in anything(in the religious sense), anyway this is not a question of belief, it is philosophical positions.


Neither of these entities are p-zombies, even in-universe. Data is explicitly self-aware, conscious, and in possession of his own mind. He simply isn't human and lacks social protocols - arguably, the entire point of his character is showing that he is conscious.

The Borg, on the other hand, are a hive mind and are explicitly not individually self-aware, save for the Borg Queen, who is. The rest of the Borg are essentially her limbs.
This illustrates the subtle complexity of the issue of being. Irrespective of whether the authors intended Data to be self-conscious, he could do and be all that while not having consciousness, or self consciousness, it would all be mimicry. Also I wouldn't be surprised to see a Borg in a future episode which is one of those limbs and can perform all the behaviour of Data. Indeed, I seem to remember a situation like this in the episode when Picard was saved from full assimilation into the Borg by Data.
But it's all moot anyway, since they are fictional characters. Even if they had been explicitly labeled p-zombies in-universe, all that would mean is that the show writers had attempted to make use of an incoherent concept.
I suggest you give mimicry some thought.
 
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Code:
             SELF-AWARENESS 
                
             NO         YES      
        +-----------+-----------+
 T      |           |           |
 H  YES | DREAMING  |  WAKING   |
 O      |           |           |
 U      +-----------+-----------+
 G      |           |  RESTFUL  |
 T  NO  | SLEEPING  |           |
 S      |           | ALERTNESS |
        +-----------+-----------+

Unfortunately offer an incompelte and maybe downright wrong picture and thus useless

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream

Which makes your top left not always right for dream , as in lucid dream you have self awareness.

But whatever.

ETA: also what the heck , self awareness yes and NO thought means restfull alertness ? That's downright wrong.
 
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Unfortunately offer an incompelte and maybe downright wrong picture and thus useless

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream

Which makes your top left not always right for dream , as in lucid dream you have self awareness.

But whatever.

ETA: also what the heck , self awareness yes and NO thought means restfull alertness ? That's downright wrong.
Lucid_dream is more in the category of Waking, because one is aware of the fact that he\she actually dreaming, or in other words during lucid dream one has mata awareness (and probably mata control) on what happens during the dream.

The difference between Waking and lucid dream is that under lucid dream, self-awareness mostly takes control only on its subjective experiences.

More generally, four three major states of consciousness does not mean that there can't be mixed states among them.

Furthermore, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12316/pdf actually talking about the fifth major state of consciousness, which is invariant under the four major states of consciousness.
 
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Let's do it again, without the ? mark.

<SNIP>

It also has to be stressed that there are persons that can practice techniques like Transcendental Meditation all their lives and never directly be aware of the simplest state of existence (self-awareness without thoughts).

Most of the population is somewhere between these extreme cases.

And now we get to Doron's real reason for 'ignoring' me; The Two Islands problem I posed him in the other thread.

Put very short (if you want the long version, use search ;) ):

- If you put people on two islands that can not, under any circumstance, have any contact with each other, what would an outsider observe to be different when one population practices TM and the other does not?

If there is no difference, then all of the claims of TM are just blahblah.

If there is a difference, then why do none of the concentrations of TM adherents (like in Vlodrop, in the Siddha Village in Lelystad, in Fairfield Iowa at the Maharishi University) show any of these differences? (Oh, sure, there are 'publications', but these have been full of scientific errors like confirmation bias, cherrypicked data and outright fraud. There are none that would get through to, let's say Nature or Science).

The thing is, we can deduce the existence of anything worthwile in TM without practicing it, without experiencing it. We just look at secondary and tertiary effects.

As far as the world now stands, the secondary effects are merely brainwashed cultist ramblings and the tertiary effects an enormous cashflow to the family of the Maharishi.
 

That changes nothing: his expertise is NOT relevant to the topic. That is the essence of that fallacy.

The brain waves are synchronized in such a way, which enables one's awareness to be in restful alertness (one is aware of itself without thoughts).

Again, this does not answer my question: Yes or no: Are you aware that these brain waves are _effects_ of brain function ?
 
You are still trying to get the correct answer to your question by using only the variant aspect of reality.

No, I'm not. Variant or invariant or bounded or not or cheese or otherwise, reality must have mechanisms, right ? Otherwise you can't know anything anyway. So if you're saying that something works, it must work somehow. I'm asking you what that mechanism is. So far you have only shown that you have no idea.

Transcendental Meditation (or similar techniques) actually enables you to directly be aware of the invariant substance of all possible variant phenomena (where thoughts are some variant phenomena).

HOW ?

Directly be aware of the invariant substance is exactly self-awareness without thoughts.

Awareness requires thought in this case. Your claim is contradictory in addition to being unevidenced.

As long as you are not directly aware of yourself without thoughts, the best you can get is an endless rhetoric about it, and this is exactly your current position as long as you are not actually practicing techniques like Transcendental Meditation.

That's like saying that I can't understand law without being a lawyer or judge. That's ridiculous. If your claim is true, it can be explained.

This time please do not reject the following table about restful alertness

What do you think the table means ? I see the table but I don't know how it relates to my question, and I wager you don't, either.

It also has to be stressed that there are persons that are able to directly be aware of the simplest state of existence even if they do not practice techniques like Transcendental Meditation and in this case routine practice of techniques like Transcendental Meditation can stabilize the direct awareness of the simplest state of existence as the substance of the other three major states of consciousness in their daily life.

Good, so TM is irrelevant to the discussion. Thanks for clearing that up. Now kindly don't mention it again.
 
Lucid_dream is more in the category of Waking, because one is aware of the fact that he\she actually dreaming, or in other words during lucid dream one has mata awareness (and probably mata control) on what happens during the dream.

You are redefining terms to avoid admitting that your graph is wrong.
 
Awareness requires thought in this case. Your claim is contradictory in addition to being unevidenced.
Dear Belz... this is indeed the best conclusion that one can get by only talking or thinking about awareness.
 
Yes or no: Are you aware that these brain waves are _effects_ of brain function ?
Yes, and I am also directly aware of their invariant substance, which is something that your current awareness do not have, according to your own evidence ("Awareness requires thought in this case. Your claim is contradictory in addition to being unevidenced.")

You are still missing http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10423465&postcount=1092 that gives you the direction in order actually find the answer to your question.
 
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That's like saying that I can't understand law without being a lawyer or judge. That's ridiculous. If your claim is true, it can be explained.
Exactly the opposite, you really know the law and naturally act according to it only if your awareness is directly aware of the substance of all possible phenomena (you are naturally developed into an harmonious factor among all possible phenomena).

No woo or any supernatural nonsense is involved here.
 
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Dear Belz... this is indeed the best conclusion that one can get by only talking or thinking about awareness.

This is what people say that are not proficient at inferring information from secondary, tertiary... order artefacts.

The whole 'you can not know X because you only talk about X' makes X non-existent in the communal knowledge domain.

EDIT: Or to put it in another way: I do not have to *be* the Higgs-Boson to show that it exists. Capiche?

So, unless you are able to show how one can infer X, that sentence can be construed as 'I have no clue what I am talking about, but I would like to come over as knowledgable and interesting'.
 
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Dear Belz... this is indeed the best conclusion that one can get by only talking or thinking about awareness.

That is a dodge. You are unable to provide evidence for your case, and when I point it out, you retort that evidence is the wrong way to look at it. In other words you deny the possibility of knowledge, and thus no claim you make could ever be considered true.

See how that works ? If you deny the possibility of evidence, then you cannot know anything, and thus no claim can ever be true or false.


Excellent ! See how smoothly things go when you put your mind to it ?

I am also directly aware of their invariant substance

Brain waves are the invariant substance ? You said the invariant substance is the underlying reality of thought and matter. Now, admitting that brain waves are _generated_ by thoughts, how can you maintain that ?

according to your own evidence

Stop using that word. You have no idea what it means. Look up a dictionary.

You are still missing http://www.internationalskeptics.com...postcount=1092 that gives you the direction in order actually find the answer to your question.

It does no such thing.

Also, I don't want directions. I want evidence. I'm not participating in a treasure hunt.
 
Originally Posted by Belz... View Post
That's like saying that I can't understand law without being a lawyer or judge. That's ridiculous. If your claim is true, it can be explained.
Exactly the opposite, you really know the law and naturally act according to it only if your awareness is directly aware of the substance of all possible phenomena (you are naturally developed into an harmonious factor among all possible phenomena).

No woo or any supernatural nonsense is involved here.

Riiiight- just a convenient distortion of what Belz pretty obviously meant by "law," to fit your agenda rather than Belz's analogy. It's just coincidence, I'm sure, that that sort of dishonest re-definition is one tactic by which woo is maintained.
 
Idealism is based on a simple rational analysis of personal experience. It is derived from thoughts like " I think therefore I am". Perhaps it is attempts to describe or explain the mechanisms in an idealist universe which are equivalent to the angry gods in a volcano explanation.

And what makes you think that thoughts are accurate?
 
Deep come is a phenomena at the expressed level of reality, which is simply the lack of one's awareness.

This is not the case of TM where one's awareness is not bounded by any phenomena at the expressed level of reality, including the lack of one's awareness at deep coma.

So you are contradicting yourself.
 
Please look at this diagram:

[qimg]https://c4.staticflickr.com/4/3296/5721561558_c5b78c3152_b.jpg[/qimg]

The absolute symmetry in that diagram is defined (without loss of generality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Without_loss_of_generality)) by the endless non-composed 1-dimesional element, whether it is straight or not, and it remains invariant among all of its possible vibrations and their combinations with each other, defined as the expressed level of the endless non-composed 1-dimesional element.

So actually there is only absolute symmetry (only one endless non-composed 1-dimesional element, which is not one_of many thing) that is expressed as multiple phenomena that do not break its absolute symmetry.

Techniques like TM simply unfold the absolute symmetry to the human brain, first only by its straight state during TM practice, and then also by its non-straight states and their combinations, during daily life.

The benefit of naturally being aware of absolute symmetry during daily life is fulfilled by actually becoming a factor of harmony among all possible expressed phenomena, which are naturally tuned by absolute symmetry, which remains unbroken and invariant among all of its possible broken and variant expressions.

The outer "{" and "}" in set theory is exactly the absolute symmetry among all of its possible broken and variant expressions (transformations) defined as its members.



Not at all, our brain is exactly the linkage that enables each one of us to become a factor of harmony during daily life.




Personally you are (yet) misunderstanding binary trees, as clearly seen in http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10381545&postcount=645.



Take for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGijME2caEM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtd2zqDXZkA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO3AnD2QbIg

I see a graph, and you are still wrong, the chirality of the weak force means that there is broken symmetry. period.
 
(I will pair the discussion down a bit, as I don't have the time for long replies just now.)

A moment of pedantry, since homonyms are a bit of an obsession of mine: you mean "pare", not "pair".

Sorry. Completely irrelevant, feel free to ignore it in later posts. Just had to say it because my inner word Nazi was kicking up a storm.

And findings in neurology arent evidence that it's not there.

I didn't say they were, though they are certainly evidence that it's not necessary.

And there's still no evidence for it, either.

Also the fact that logic is a human invention is a hindrance in a discussion like this, as it will put human ideas on a pedestal which they don't necessarily qualify for.

"Logic is a human invention" holds no weight when it demonstrably works.

ok, so you say self consciousness is only a result of computation. By the way you are stretching the sinews of that brain like elastic there.

You can think it as unlikely as you like. Every piece of evidence we have points towards that conclusion.

Yes you would have proof if someone where behaving in a self-conscious way. But it is only in the knowledge that that person is biologically identical to yourself that you can rule out that it is not a robot mimicking that self consciousness.

"You have proof, but you don't have proof."

Contradictory statements aside, this is still circular reasoning. You are assuming that organic life is a prerequisite for consciousness, then using that assumption to assert that p-zombies can exist if they are machines.

But even that doesn't really help you. The moment that a machine that behaves in every circumstance exactly as though it is conscious shows up, we have evidence that the machine is conscious - which would send your entire argument against machine consciousness out the window.

Can you give me a functional definition of is? Or is there none?

I have given it before, both in this thread and in others.

"Behaves in every circumstance exactly as though something is true."

*No, if anything, I am saying it may be Y. If it is Y then everything we are aware of is irrefutable evidence.

Which does not help you in any way, since you have no way of ever knowing, ever, that it is Y.

Idealism is still not rational.

Except for the machines which mimic conscious behaviour.

"A thing that has X property has X property."

"Unless it's a machine!"

That isn't how it works. It still has X property.

Incorect, all that is required is computation that mimics self conscious behaviour.

An absolutely perfect mimicry is the thing it is mimicking.

I would not advocate belief in anything(in the religious sense), anyway this is not a question of belief, it is philosophical positions.

Word games.

Idealism as a philosophical position remains untenable. You either reject all possibility of knowledge and retreat towards solipsism, in which case you still aren't rational in any sense and your entire position collapses as soon as you understand what "is" means, or you simply don't have any supporting evidence.

You really can't get around this.
 
"Logic is a human invention" holds no weight when it demonstrably works.

Always, I'd add.

An absolutely perfect mimicry is the thing it is mimicking.

This is a critical point that anti-AI people don't understand. They are assuming a distinction that is supernatural, even if they don't admit it. They want everything to be the same physically and yet something that remains that's different. Same problem with qualia.
 
This is a critical point that anti-AI people don't understand. They are assuming a distinction that is supernatural, even if they don't admit it. They want everything to be the same physically and yet something that remains that's different. Same problem with qualia.

Exactly. It's the p-zombie problem. You cannot behave in every circumstance exactly as though you are something and not be that thing. The idea is incoherent. That is what it means to be something.

For something to be true mimicry - by which I mean that it is an illusion, and not the real thing - there must be a point where the illusion breaks down. If it does, then the entity does not behave exactly in every circumstance as though it is the thing it is mimicking.

But that still doesn't make p-zombies a coherent concept. If there is a point where the illusion breaks down, then the p-zombie is not indistinguishable from an actual, conscious entity - which means it doesn't even meet the first of the two criteria for p-zombiehood, which are still self-contradictory.
 
Brain waves are the invariant substance ?
No, in addition to the variant phenomena known as brain waves, I am also aware of their invariant substance (the simplest form of existence), which is naturally free of any activity like waves or thoughts.
 
No, in addition to the variant phenomena known as brain waves, I am also aware of their invariant substance (the simplest form of existence), which is naturally free of any activity like waves or thoughts.

That's not what you said. You said you were aware of [brain waves]' invariant substance. What did you mean by that ?

Wrong, you simply ignored the rest of the post.

I did read it. Stop making things up. You redefined a type of dream as non-dreaming. Your graph is simply too simplistic to account for all scenarios.
 
I see a graph, and you are still wrong, the chirality of the weak force means that there is broken symmetry. period.
Any asymmetry, including the weak force, is derived from and returns to the absolute symmetry (the simplest state of existence) all along space\time phenomena, in the past, right know and in the future, where only absolute symmetry remains unchanged all along space\time phenomena as its invariant substance.

This is exactly the reason of why one's awareness can be aware of itself without thoughts.
 

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