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Old 20th May 2018, 04:07 AM   #201
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Originally Posted by JoeMorgue View Post
Even if "X can't explain Y" the alternative can't be "Magic diddit."
I really don't understand why anyone would think any philosophy will *explain* anything. Yes philosophy was one tool we came up with to explain the world around us but it's been surpassed with a new tool because the new tool worked and philosophy didn't.

As examples please tell me how any philosophy can explain the radioactive decay of uranium or tell me my stopping distance at 30mph in dry conditions?

The idea that any philosophy can be used to describe the world around us has been shown to be utterly wrong.
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Old 20th May 2018, 04:49 AM   #202
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The role of philosophy is to ask questions rather than provide answers
Anyone expecting the latter is doing it wrong as that is not its function
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Old 20th May 2018, 05:17 AM   #203
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I have sadly been forced into the conclusion that there a strain of odd, persistent anti-intellectualism that exists because some people need to see obtaining knowledge about how the universe works as an action with no process, no standards, no rules for how it works, no error checking, no way to be right or wrong, something that can be done at pure random and still be just at valid.

It is... sort of absurd. None of the Philosophy Fan Club here is offering any process, standard, or methodology for how to answer the "questions that materialism can't answer" or indeed even offering any process, standard, or methodology for how we might get to a process, standard, or methodology to answer it, or even accept the basic possibility that such a process, standard, or methodology could exist but rather being seemingly content to continue stamping their feet at the very idea of their opinions being held to any intellectual standard and repeatedly declaring their right to think things at random, rejecting the very idea that knowledge can be obtained by any process, hiding behind the far too broad umbrella term of "philosophy" to perpetually "turtles all the way down" the very idea of ability to obtain knowledge.

Slapping a new label on ignorance is not an answer. God didit, magic didit, it happened at random, it happened for no reason... these not alternatives to "I don't know." They are "I don't know" without the intellectual courage and honesty to admit "I don't know."

Which is why I haven't wasted the keystrokes answering all the proudly ignorant questions that are being banded about as some sort of counter to reality acceptance. "Can your precious science explain consciousness" is "Show me just one transitional fossil" level of having vaccinated oneself against knowledge. Might as well say "Astronomy doesn't work because it hasn't proven the sun isn't a magical flaming chariot being driven across the sky by Apollo." Explaining the facts to someone who is that far behind as to what science understands would be as much a waste of time as trying to teach a cow to make a summit attempt on Everest, a situation that could not be improved by you explaining it to them more clearly. So I have no intentions of PRATTing the entire base concept of neuroscience at them just to see goalposts break the land speed record they'd be moved back so fast. Once someone has openly and proudly dismissed the concept of reality itself just to get out of their opinions being held to any intellectual standards actually trying to engage them in conversation makes herding cats seem like working a Zen Garden.
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Old 20th May 2018, 05:58 AM   #204
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
OK, so consciousness is a process. So instead of 110101010101 being the switch combination for simulating a conscious working brain, it's a process of switching actions that simulates a conscious working brain 1010101010->10010101010->10100101010->...

The same problem arises. Why does one particular sequence of switching operations lead to consciousness while others don't?
That is like asking why does one program result in a video game and another in a word processor. It is because different processes do different things. (And in computers the actual meaning of a pattern of bits depends on the hardware/software that interprets it.)

The process of baking a cake and the process of digestion are both processes involving food, but they have very different results.

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Old 20th May 2018, 06:04 AM   #205
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Originally Posted by surreptitious57 View Post
The role of philosophy is to ask questions rather than provide answers
Anyone expecting the latter is doing it wrong as that is not its function
That is indeed how it argues for its relevance in today's world, but that has only come about after it was dumped for not doing what it used to claim it could do i. e. provide answers for why the world is as it is and be able to make predictions.
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Old 20th May 2018, 07:50 AM   #206
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Why questions can not be answered objectively whereas how questions can and it is why science is
better at explaining observable phenomena than philosophy is at explaining the nature of existence

Philosophy before the twentieth century was more commonly known as methodolgical naturalism and answered scientific questions
Since then it has been treated as an entirely separate discipline from science even though science is actually a branch of philosophy
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Old 20th May 2018, 07:56 AM   #207
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Originally Posted by jrhowell View Post
That is like asking why does one program result in a video game and another in a word processor. It is because different processes do different things. (And in computers the actual meaning of a pattern of bits depends on the hardware/software that interprets it.)

The process of baking a cake and the process of digestion are both processes involving food, but they have very different results.
Two things: 1. we're talking about simulating consciousness, which is categorically different than running a word processor. The objection applies: why does one set of switching operations give rise to conscious experience whilst another doesn't? Of course this has a real-world analogue: why does one set of neural impulses give rise to conscious experience while another doesn't.

This isn't on par with why does one set up nerves make my toes move while another set sends pain messages. We know that. We know how nerves work. We know about word processors and games. We are utterly clueless about A) how to make a computer conscious, B) if it is conscious why is it conscious, and C) how to verify said computer is actually conscious. Can you imagine if there was some software and it was impossible to verify what kind of software it is? That's one of the insoluble problems of consciousness, and why it sets it apart from conventional programming.

2. Pretend there's a computer running some program out in the middle of nowhere with no one observing it. Does it make sense to say it's running any kind of program? Doesn't what ever it's doing depend on the observer? After all, it's just switches turning on and off. It takes an observer to give meaning to what those switches are doing.
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Old 20th May 2018, 08:00 AM   #208
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Originally Posted by JoeMorgue View Post
Even if "X can't explain Y" the alternative can't be "Magic diddit."
I agree. Idealism can't explain certain things. But it avoids the materialist magical explanation that when you move electrons between synapses-shazam!- consciousness.
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Old 20th May 2018, 08:06 AM   #209
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
The same problem arises. Why does one particular sequence of switching operations lead to consciousness while others don't?

Because one particular sequence of switching operations generates a running narrative of discrete objects and volitional agents interacting in a world, out of a stream of sensory inputs and a store of memory, while others don't.
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Old 20th May 2018, 08:08 AM   #210
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Originally Posted by surreptitious57 View Post
Why questions can not be answered objectively whereas how questions can and it is why science is
better at explaining observable phenomena than philosophy is at explaining the nature of existence
"Observable phenomena" sounds an awful lot like "Things that actually exist and aren't just made up."
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Old 20th May 2018, 08:17 AM   #211
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
But it avoids the materialist magical explanation that when you move electrons between synapses-shazam!- consciousness.
And this right here is exactly while I will not be baited into giving you some sort of Neuroscience 101 rundown of every way in which that statement is laughable.

This isn't wrong. This is proudly and intentionally ignorant. This is "Tide goes in, tide goes out. Can't explain that!" and "Magnets? How the %$#@! do they work?" level. It's Meme level.

This is pre-18th century level of knowledge. You might as well be demanding people prove to you that rotting meat doesn't spontaneously generate maggots or that California isn't an island or menstruating women won't spoil food by touching it.

I get the idea that how the human brain functions has to be presented as some totally unknown landscape for your mythology to work but God of the Gaps loses even more intellectual honesty when you have to make the gaps up.

I await loud angry incredulity and denial as your only response.
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Old 20th May 2018, 08:25 AM   #212
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
That's only half the problem. Materialism not only can't explain consciousness...

Idealism can't explain the cause of the relationship we experience between the experience of drinking water and the experience of thirst.

Of course, you made no attempt to do so when requested in this thread. But there have been some sketchy but laughable attempts from previous discussions. One said something like, it's that way because it's the opinion of some sentient cosmic being that it should be so, and that makes it so because all of our experiences are just thoughts of that cosmic being. Another idea was that it's really just the opinion of one person that it should be so, which makes it so because only that one person exists and the rest of us don't. Do you remember how the forum had a good laugh over that one?
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Old 20th May 2018, 08:33 AM   #213
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Pretend there's a computer running some program out in the middle of nowhere with no one observing it. Does it make sense to say it's running any kind of program? Doesn't what ever it's doing depend on the observer? After all, it's just switches turning on and off. It takes an observer to give meaning to what those switches are doing.

Pretend there's a computer tree running some program falling and making some kind of sound out in the middle of nowhere with no one observing it. Does it make sense to say it's running any kind of program making any kind of sound? Doesn't what ever it's doing depend on the observer? After all, it's just switches turning on and off air molecules moving. It takes an observer to give meaning to what those switches molecules are doing.

Pretend there's a tree falling and making some kind of sound just standing there out in the middle of nowhere with no one observing it. Does it make sense to say it's making any kind of sound actually there? Doesn't what ever it's doing whether it exists depend on the observer? It takes an observer to give meaning to what those molecules are doing the tree's presence or absence.
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Old 20th May 2018, 08:33 AM   #214
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Because when "materialism" (as we have to call "accepting reality and not making stuff up" now for some reason) explains something the Wooist just make up a purely linguistic distinction without difference and demand that be explained.

"Science can explain the mind but not the soul" or "Materialism can explain the feeling of pain but not the qualia of pain" or "Living in the real world and not making up random fantastical nonsense with no evidence lets me live my live but it doesn't let me experience the first hand subjective experience with sprinkles of my life."

On any intellectual level this is like "X can explain ketchup but not catsup" or "Y can explain a blanket but not a duvet."

It's Soul argument again.

- "Science can't explain X!"
- "Well what is X?"
- "X is defined as that thing that science can't explain!"
- "Well what quality does X have that Y (Y being a functionally identical thing that science can explain) doesn't?"
- "That quality is X!"
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Old 20th May 2018, 09:00 AM   #215
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Have a look at this (it's an interview in the very well known series “Closer to Truth” hosted by Dr. Robert Khun … in this case Kuhn is asking theoretical physicist Sean Carroll what he thinks “consciousness” is) -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6z2RrTG4W4


You can find Kuhn in many similar YouTube interviews with philosophers and others who are far less clear than Carroll is (in fact, massively less clear), and where the others almost always descend immediately into a huge mass of impenetrable mumbo-jumbo language about what they think consciousness is.

In this case Sean Carroll is absolutely clear with a view & explanation that is unmistakable, whilst in opposition Kuhn is attempting every possible means of trying to deceive himself with complex words and really awful mistaken analogies, and all apparently because his own background in neuroscience (and maybe also in philosophy?) has lead him to believe that consciousness must be something deeply mysterious as if inexplicable to science, and as if it has to involve some sort of mystical or spiritual nonsense that he himself cannot actually articulate or explain in any coherent way at all.

And by the way; I usually like all the other interviews Kuhn does in this series. And I don't actually dislike this one. But this one does highlight how and why real scientists invariably have a much clearer view and explanation for things like so-called “consciousness”.
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Old 20th May 2018, 10:34 AM   #216
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
I agree. Idealism can't explain certain things. But it avoids the materialist magical explanation that when you move electrons between synapses-shazam!- consciousness.
No. Idealism doesn't explain ANYTHING at all, not just certain things. There is no testable prediction it ever did, starting from sensations and ideas, much less a quantifiable one.

Forget even predicting a satellite's orbit. How much sensation of drinking water does it take to sate your sensation of thirst? Well, it turns out that you can't even have any correlation there, much less predict a number. It can be anything between zero sensation of drinking, if you get the water via an IV drip or as an enema, and hours of it having no effect at all, if you're just dreaming it.

In fact, you don't even need any sensation at all of the former, to sate the latter. E.g., someone in a coma may not even be aware that he's getting an IV drip. His dying brain may be hallucinating something completely different, like being a butterfly in some meadow. But he will die nevertheless if he doesn't get a constant supply of water.

It's in fact ONLY materialism that can even make that difference at all. Not to mention put a number on how much water should you give a guy on an IV drip.


So anyway, the only magical thinking involved is your brainfart where if one explanation is not 100% complete, somehow it's right to pick the one that has exactly 0% going for it.
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Old 20th May 2018, 10:36 AM   #217
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Originally Posted by JoeMorgue View Post
On any intellectual level this is like "X can explain ketchup but not catsup" or "Y can explain a blanket but not a duvet."
Well, hey, some of us are still waiting for a good scientific explanation of duvets
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Old 20th May 2018, 10:54 AM   #218
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Originally Posted by surreptitious57 View Post
Why questions can not be answered objectively whereas how questions can and it is why science is
better at explaining observable phenomena than philosophy is at explaining the nature of existence

Philosophy before the twentieth century was more commonly known as methodolgical naturalism and answered scientific questions
Since then it has been treated as an entirely separate discipline from science even though science is actually a branch of philosophy
"why" is just a human behaviour like any other part of our language. Nearly all of language came about before we had a clue about how and why the world works as it does. People often place too much importance in language, especially when they try to hide behind ambiguity.

That's why we get the silliness of comments like "point to love in the brain".
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Old 20th May 2018, 10:59 AM   #219
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
I agree. Idealism can't explain certain things. But it avoids the materialist magical explanation that when you move electrons between synapses-shazam!- consciousness.
Using idealism tell me the stopping distance of a car going 30mph. Explain to me the radioactive decay of an element.
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Old 20th May 2018, 11:24 AM   #220
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Originally Posted by Myriad View Post
Idealism can't explain the cause of the relationship we experience between the experience of drinking water and the experience of thirst.

Of course, you made no attempt to do so when requested in this thread. But there have been some sketchy but laughable attempts from previous discussions. One said something like, it's that way because it's the opinion of some sentient cosmic being that it should be so, and that makes it so because all of our experiences are just thoughts of that cosmic being. Another idea was that it's really just the opinion of one person that it should be so, which makes it so because only that one person exists and the rest of us don't. Do you remember how the forum had a good laugh over that one?
Water again? Do you think the sensation of drinking and having your thirst quenched is somehow unique? You think it precludes reality being a simulation? Or you being a brain-in-a-vat? Or you being in a dream? Of course it doesn't. Do you think Nick Bostrom looked at his simulation argument, took a drink, and then did a spit-take? Really, now.
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Old 20th May 2018, 11:27 AM   #221
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Originally Posted by Darat View Post
Using idealism tell me the stopping distance of a car going 30mph. Explain to me the radioactive decay of an element.
Do you think materialism is required to do science? This was brought up earlier and David (I think) rightly pointed out the obvious: it's not. Whether you believe in materialism, gods, dreams, simulations, it doesn't stop you from doing science.
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Old 20th May 2018, 12:05 PM   #222
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
why does one set of switching operations give rise to conscious experience whilst another doesn't? Of course this has a real-world analogue: why does one set of neural impulses give rise to conscious experience while another doesn't.
I just answered that. Each program (and specific neural network) does whatever it does, not something else.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
...how to verify said computer is actually conscious. Can you imagine if there was some software and it was impossible to verify what kind of software it is?
Judge it the same way we would a human, based on whether or not its actions meet whatever definition we agree on using for consciousness. Then it a matter of agreeing on a concrete definition of consciousness.

I think the real problem here is the assumption that consciousness is something magical, rather than just something very difficult to achieve. You imply that there is something mystical and special about consciousness that doesn't apply to other processes. I don't believe that to be true.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
2. Pretend there's a computer running some program out in the middle of nowhere with no one observing it. Does it make sense to say it's running any kind of program? Doesn't what ever it's doing depend on the observer? After all, it's just switches turning on and off. It takes an observer to give meaning to what those switches are doing.
If a monkey hitting keys on a typewriter comes up with "1 + 1 = 2" did it just do mathematics or not?

I'd say for that and for your example, there is no one right answer. It's a matter of how you interpret it.
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Old 20th May 2018, 12:10 PM   #223
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Originally Posted by Myriad View Post
Pretend there's a computer tree running some program falling and making some kind of sound out in the middle of nowhere with no one observing it. Does it make sense to say it's running any kind of program making any kind of sound? Doesn't what ever it's doing depend on the observer? After all, it's just switches turning on and off air molecules moving. It takes an observer to give meaning to what those switches molecules are doing.

Pretend there's a tree falling and making some kind of sound just standing there out in the middle of nowhere with no one observing it. Does it make sense to say it's making any kind of sound actually there? Doesn't what ever it's doing whether it exists depend on the observer? It takes an observer to give meaning to what those molecules are doing the tree's presence or absence.
When people talk about the heyday of the forum, it's in reference to stuff like this. Piggy would give the simulation argument I gave (and toss in something about simulated tornadoes not being able to blow anything down), and Rocketdodger and PixyMisa would respond with "the world of the simulation", and it would be interesting.

Instead there's this... whatever it is you want to call the philosophical abortion you did. But those old threads are still archived, I believe, and they're great stuff.
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Old 20th May 2018, 12:12 PM   #224
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"Well can your science explain X?"
"Yes very easily, here's the explanation."
"That's Y! That's not the same as X!"
"What's the difference between Y and X?"
"Y is the thing science can explain, X is the exact same thing I'm just calling it something different, making up a vague, undefined extra quality, and saying science can't explain it."
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Old 20th May 2018, 12:14 PM   #225
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The Simulation Argument is just Descartes's Evil Demon gussied up with post-Matrix pseudoscience language.

It's as intellectually meaningful as Last Thursdayism.
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Old 20th May 2018, 01:02 PM   #226
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Do you think materialism is required to do science? This was brought up earlier and David (I think) rightly pointed out the obvious: it's not. Whether you believe in materialism, gods, dreams, simulations, it doesn't stop you from doing science.
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Old 20th May 2018, 01:43 PM   #227
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Water again?

No answer to my question again?

Without physical stuff, how do you explain our experience of the relationship between our experience of drinking water and our experience of thirst?

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Do you think the sensation of drinking and having your thirst quenched is somehow unique?

No, in fact I think it's typical of countless different patterns in our experience, which we also experience. It's just the one I've chosen to question you about, to probe the explanatory power of your "physical stuff doesn't exist" hypothesis regarding the very simplest things we experience as part of the experience of maintaining mortal existence (e.g. the need for air, water, and food).

So far you've come up empty. How about answering the question instead of making excuses?

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You think it precludes reality being a simulation?

Physical stuff not existing precludes reality being a simulation in a simulator made of physical stuff. We know how simulators made of physical stuff might work. What kind of simulation are you talking about?

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Or you being a brain-in-a-vat?

The only brains and vats we have knowledge of are made of physical stuff. We experience interacting with physical stuff but we do not experience being brains in vats. So if there's no physical stuff, and only what we directly experience (e.g. consciousness) is real, then we cannot be brains in vats. So yes, the hypothesis of the nonexistence of physical stuff absolutely precludes our being brains in vats.

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Or you being in a dream? Of course it doesn't.

The water I experience in dreams does not quench my thirst even in the dream. When I then wake up thirsty and drink water, I no longer experience thirst. That is inconsistent with all life being a dream, if the word "dream" as you've used it above has any actual meaning as a distinct type of experience.

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Do you think Nick Bostrom looked at his simulation argument, took a drink, and then did a spit-take? Really, now.

Does Nick Bostrom think physical stuff exists?
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Old 20th May 2018, 02:00 PM   #228
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
When people talk about the heyday of the forum, it's in reference to stuff like this. Piggy would give the simulation argument I gave (and toss in something about simulated tornadoes not being able to blow anything down), and Rocketdodger and PixyMisa would respond with "the world of the simulation", and it would be interesting.

Instead there's this... whatever it is you want to call the philosophical abortion you did. But those old threads are still archived, I believe, and they're great stuff.

You're welcome to read those old threads if you prefer. It appears they weren't very effective, though, if you're still trying to make credible claims about having a better explanation of the nature of reality without showing it by actually explaining anything.

What I call the philosophical abortion I posted is a direct analogy of your own claim. Is a computer out in the middle of nowhere with no one around truly running a program? I don't know; is a tree out in the middle of nowhere with one one around truly photosynthesizing sugars and transpiring water? Maybe you didn't understand the analogy, since I didn't explicitly say "this is an analogy." Piggy and PixyMisa always tried to state things in the simplest possible terminology, which I don't always do. I apologize if that reduces your enjoyment of the discussion.
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Old 20th May 2018, 02:05 PM   #229
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
When people talk about the heyday of the forum, it's in reference to stuff like this. Piggy would give the simulation argument I gave (and toss in something about simulated tornadoes not being able to blow anything down), and Rocketdodger and PixyMisa would respond with "the world of the simulation", and it would be interesting.
In the same sense as a Three Stooges movie is interesting. But unfortunately stuff being interesting is orthogonal to its having any intellectual merit. E.g., "The Three Stooges: Disorder In Court" is MUCH more interesting to watch than reading about actual court transcripts and precedents from 1936 (same year as the movie), but I rather hope my lawyer studies the latter and not the former

So, yeah, if you want to learn how stuff actually works, I'm afraid that choosing the more interesting nonsense is not the right epistemology
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Old 20th May 2018, 02:26 PM   #230
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"Okay but what if everything is an illusion and nothing we can ever know matters" doesn't strike me as interesting.

The obsession so many people have to reducing all intellectual discourse into nothing but a "who can make up the most nonsense" shared creative writing exercise will never cease to baffle me.
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Old 20th May 2018, 04:07 PM   #231
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Originally Posted by Darat View Post
"why" is just a human behaviour like any other part of our language. Nearly all of language came about before we had a clue about how and why the world works as it does. People often place too much importance in language, especially when they try to hide behind ambiguity.

That's why we get the silliness of comments like "point to love in the brain".
"What's north of the North pole?"
"What do you call a square circle?"
"If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what you do you call the one you have left, an odd or an end?"

Lookit me doing philosophy!

But yeah the ability to linguistically form a statement or question is... absolutely meaningless. As Stephen King pointed out in On Writing take a verb and pair it with a noun and technically speaking you've got yourself a sentence; Rocks Float, Sheep Transmit, Plums Defy. None of that requires us to face the metaphysical question of how rocks float, why sheep transmit, or what exactly plums are defying.

Even robbed of literally thousands of years of fluff that all this base question is. The duality/materialistic question is essentially a monstrously wordy, ponderous, and pretentious way of going "What would reality be like if reality didn't exist." Well it wouldn't, it's North of the North Pole. It's not right or wrong, it's null, it's mu. It's pointless and badly worded, not world changing.

Internet level philosophy is 1/3 silly word games, 1/3 "Have you stopped beating your wife?" questions, 1/3 bad stand up routine about why we drive on parkways and park in driveways, and 2% butterscotch ripple.

Taking apart my computer, shoving the hard drive under my nose and demanding I show you where "Doom" is located isn't the act of some wise old man on the mountain brilliantly squeegeeing my third eye about the nature of reality, it's an idiot asking a pointless nonsense question because taking the time to learn how hard drives store information makes their thinker hurt.
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Old 20th May 2018, 06:19 PM   #232
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Originally Posted by jrhowell View Post
I just answered that. Each program (and specific neural network) does whatever it does, not something else.
You haven't answered that at all. Why do neurons X,Y,Z, firing in whatever order they fire in, produce the subjective experience of stubbing your toe? How do they produce any subjective experience? Why does that particular sequence produce those particular experiences? THAT is the hard problem.

How that ties into simulation is: suppose you think you've simulated a conscious working brain. OK, so instead of neurons X,Y,Z doing something, you've got switches A,B,C, switching on and off in certain patterns. The same questions are going to be asked, only instead of neurons, it will be about switches. The substrate doesn't matter. That's what makes this so much different than a video game or word processor.



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Judge it the same way we would a human, based on whether or not its actions meet whatever definition we agree on using for consciousness. Then it a matter of agreeing on a concrete definition of consciousness.
I agree, and that will work for practical purposes, but you'll still never know if it's conscious or not. How could you? I infer you're conscious because you're an organism like me, and a machine that's functionally identical to how our brains work should be conscious, but there's really no way to tell, is there? That makes the problem of "is it conscious?" a very unique one. If you present a bunch of people with a mystery program (say a choice between HALO and MSWord) they will eventually figure out whether it's a video game or word processor, and they'll know it beyond a shadow of a doubt. But if you tell them you've created a conscious machine, no one will ever be able to verify your claim. It's a categorically different problem.

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I think the real problem here is the assumption that consciousness is something magical, rather than just something very difficult to achieve. You imply that there is something mystical and special about consciousness that doesn't apply to other processes. I don't believe that to be true.
I imply that materialism is incapable of explaining how consciousness arises from matter. So far it hasn't. None of the explanations offered are agreed upon, and all lead to absurdities. I don't see any parallels when it comes to anything else materialism has tackled. Dark Matter and Dark Energy are proving particularly elusive, but we've only known about them for a relatively short amount of time. We've known the brain "supposedly" produces conscious experience for how long now? Are we any closer to a solution how consciousness arises from matter than we were 100 years ago? What progress do you think has been made? And unlike consciousness, the proposed solutions for Dark Matter (e.g., WIMP's) don't lead to absurdities like a conscious collection of ropes and pulleys, or consciousness being produced by moving rocks around. I take it you don't think it's possible your conscious experience is being produced by a guy moving rocks around, right? That's pretty fantastical, agreed? There are materialists who believe in that possibility fanatically. They're not crazy. They're following a chain of logic that is spelled out in the link I provided.



Quote:
If a monkey hitting keys on a typewriter comes up with "1 + 1 = 2" did it just do mathematics or not?

I'd say for that and for your example, there is no one right answer. It's a matter of how you interpret it.
Those are very hard questions to answer. Is an abacus bouncing down a hill doing math? if you explore Integrated Information Theory, that becomes quite the issue.

This thread seems to be dying, so I'll close. Good discussion.

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Old 20th May 2018, 07:24 PM   #233
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
The same problem arises. Why does one particular sequence of switching operations lead to consciousness while others don't?
We don't know.

The fact that we don't know doesn't make it any less certain that this does happen.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
If materialism entails those possibilities are taken to be considered "live" possibilities (things that can actually happen), then the theory itself is absurd.
You personally disliking the implications of a particular framework does not invalidate that framework.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
2. Pretend there's a computer running some program out in the middle of nowhere with no one observing it. Does it make sense to say it's running any kind of program?
Yes.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Doesn't what ever it's doing depend on the observer?
No.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
But it avoids the materialist magical explanation that when you move electrons between synapses-shazam!- consciousness.
That isn't a complete explanation. No one is pretending that it is. Stop acting as though it needs to be.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
When people talk about the heyday of the forum, it's in reference to stuff like this. Piggy would give the simulation argument I gave (and toss in something about simulated tornadoes not being able to blow anything down), and Rocketdodger and PixyMisa would respond with "the world of the simulation", and it would be interesting.

Instead there's this... whatever it is you want to call the philosophical abortion you did.
And the point goes sailing over your head.

On another note, no one cares what you consider the "heyday" of this forum, or whether or not you like the arguments being presented. They don't have to be pleasing to you to be valid.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
I agree, and that will work for practical purposes, but you'll still never know if it's conscious or not. How could you?
By having a more complete explanation for consciousness than we have now.

The fact that we don't have one yet doesn't mean that we won't ever have one. Your personal insistence that this problem is intractable carries no weight whatsoever.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
I imply that materialism is incapable of explaining how consciousness arises from matter.
You assert this, yes.

You absolutely fail to support it.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
So far it hasn't.
That does not support it.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
We've known the brain "supposedly" produces conscious experience
Definitively.

There is no other explanation that fits observable data.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
This thread seems to be dying, so I'll close.
Ha. Sure. That's what's happening.
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Old 21st May 2018, 02:38 AM   #234
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
I infer you're conscious because you're an organism like me,
How do you know I am an organism like you?

How do you know I even exist?
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Old 21st May 2018, 03:36 AM   #235
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Originally Posted by JoeMorgue View Post
"Okay but what if everything is an illusion and nothing we can ever know matters" doesn't strike me as interesting.

The obsession so many people have to reducing all intellectual discourse into nothing but a "who can make up the most nonsense" shared creative writing exercise will never cease to baffle me.
I don't think "who can make up the most nonsense" is the whole story there. The whole story is "who can make up the most nonsense that 'supports' the particular woowoo they really really want to believe in."

And as such, it can lead to some interesting brainfarts. From Fudbucker alone, he manages to simultaneously call 'magical thinking' the idea that mere matter could run a consciousness, yet do just that when he's proposing we're a simulation: so basically whatever computer we supposedly are simulated on CAN run a consciousness or for that matter several billion. You can't make up the kind of confusion of mind that actually seriously proposes the same argument he just called magical thinking.

Or as I was mentioning before, in the other thread he actually manages, in consecutive paragraphs of the same message, to (A) concede that you can't actually have evidence, even with the best data mining, for a god, and (B) that there are good reasons to believe in one because, you know, personal experiences, bla, bla, bla. But wait, didn't A just say that any such arguments are unsound?

So yeah, when I said it was interesting in the same way The Three Stooges are, I really meant the Three Stooges part
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Old 21st May 2018, 03:51 AM   #236
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Originally Posted by HansMustermann View Post
I don't think "who can make up the most nonsense" is the whole story there. The whole story is "who can make up the most nonsense that 'supports' the particular woowoo they really really want to believe in."
Oh obviously. The subtext of "Therefore my Woo is True" is so obvious in this thread I scarcely felt the need to state it directly.

Which is, as you say, sad because I agree that it would be nice to just bounce many of these ideas around for fun and as a sort of mental brain stretching exercise. I just can't do it when I know one of the Woo Slingers is going to grab it and go "Therefore I get to make stuff up..."

This is why the Woo Apologetic Philosophy Fan Club continuing to paint people as "Anti-philosophy" is so bloody sad and annoying.

When Descartes opined the Evil Demon, when Caspar Hare clarified his views on cartesian doubt, when Gilbert Harman introduced the Brain in a Vat thought experiment, hell in Plato in his cave.... none of them then immediately went "Therefore human knowledge is useless, believe stuff at random and be hostile to anyone who attempts to have a discussion with intellectual standards."

None of the real world, legendary and respected philosophers and philosophical concepts that keep getting name checked in this discussion were ever meant to be used as a justification for anti-intellectualism.
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Old 21st May 2018, 03:54 AM   #237
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Yep. Sadly.
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Old 21st May 2018, 06:22 AM   #238
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
How that ties into simulation is: suppose you think you've simulated a conscious working brain. OK, so instead of neurons X,Y,Z doing something, you've got switches A,B,C, switching on and off in certain patterns. The same questions are going to be asked, only instead of neurons, it will be about switches. The substrate doesn't matter. That's what makes this so much different than a video game or word processor.
We agree that the substrate doesn't matter, but we differ in our understanding of the implications.

You believe that implementing consciousness using automatic flushing toilets is ridiculous and so proves that consciousness can't be implemented using any type of hardware, including a brain. But you fail to see that the same logic can be used to prove that video games and word processors can't exist either.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
You haven't answered that at all. Why do neurons X,Y,Z, firing in whatever order they fire in, produce the subjective experience of stubbing your toe? How do they produce any subjective experience? Why does that particular sequence produce those particular experiences? THAT is the hard problem.
I cannot answer completely, just as I can't answer the question of why some cells become cancerous and some don't. We just don't know enough yet.

I believe that subjective experience isn't as mysterious as it's made out to be. To me it is just another sense: A sense of what you are thinking. A feedback loop within the processing done by the brain. Much like you are aware of the position of your limbs you are also aware of some of the thoughts being produced by different parts of your brain.

You are aware of sensory input at multiple levels. With vision you see a raw 2D image, inferred 3D, and identification of objects in the scene. Optical illusions can demonstrate some of this processing by showing that it doesn't always work perfectly. I believe that the mysterious "qualia" lies in this sort of processing.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
I imply that materialism is incapable of explaining how consciousness arises from matter. So far it hasn't. None of the explanations offered are agreed upon, and all lead to absurdities.
We don't have a complete answer, but we continue to make progress chipping away at the problem. I believe that our understanding of neural networks, autonomous vehicles, facial recognition, speech recognition, question answering software, and many other parallel developments are all progress toward that end.

Assuming instead that consciousness is an indivisible fundamental principle that is inherently unyielding to analysis leads nowhere.
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Old 21st May 2018, 06:30 AM   #239
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Originally Posted by JoeMorgue View Post
Oh obviously. The subtext of "Therefore my Woo is True" is so obvious in this thread I scarcely felt the need to state it directly.

Which is, as you say, sad because I agree that it would be nice to just bounce many of these ideas around for fun and as a sort of mental brain stretching exercise. I just can't do it when I know one of the Woo Slingers is going to grab it and go "Therefore I get to make stuff up..."

This is why the Woo Apologetic Philosophy Fan Club continuing to paint people as "Anti-philosophy" is so bloody sad and annoying.

When Descartes opined the Evil Demon, when Caspar Hare clarified his views on cartesian doubt, when Gilbert Harman introduced the Brain in a Vat thought experiment, hell in Plato in his cave.... none of them then immediately went "Therefore human knowledge is useless, believe stuff at random and be hostile to anyone who attempts to have a discussion with intellectual standards."

None of the real world, legendary and respected philosophers and philosophical concepts that keep getting name checked in this discussion were ever meant to be used as a justification for anti-intellectualism.
Just as an aside - Plato was against learning about the real world through empirical means, he was an idealist believing that there are "ultimate" or abstract essences and what we perceive as being real are merely poor "copies" of these essences.
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Old 21st May 2018, 06:36 AM   #240
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Originally Posted by surreptitious57 View Post
The role of philosophy is to ask questions rather than provide answers
Anyone expecting the latter is doing it wrong as that is not its function

If that's it's role, then it's not needed. Because all of us are perfectly capable of asking questions ourselves (without any academic philosophers telling us what we ought to ask or telling us what we ought to believe).

On top of which, science has discovered literally millions of questions (and millions of answers), which philosophers never even realised existed. Ie the philosophers where completely ignorant of almost all of those millions of things that science has since discovered and explained.


Originally Posted by surreptitious57 View Post
Why questions can not be answered objectively whereas how questions can and it is why science is
better at explaining observable phenomena than philosophy is at explaining the nature of existence

Philosophy before the twentieth century was more commonly known as methodolgical naturalism and answered scientific questions
Since then it has been treated as an entirely separate discipline from science even though science is actually a branch of philosophy

The so-called “why” question is not really any different than the “how question”. Of course, in recent times it has been pointed out that when people ask “why did X happen?” they are often choosing to use the word “why” to deliberately imply the involvement of some intelligent deliberate agency, i.e. almost always implying a role for God.

As for saying science is a branch of philosophy – that sounds like philosophers trying to take credit for the success of science. And it's really not true. When modern science began around 1600 with people like Galileo, there were only two types of academic “thinkers” - senior theists, and people who called themselves “philosophers” … often they were the same individuals, i.e. the philosophers were often also deeply religious (though to be fair, almost everyone was deeply religious at that time).

But what seems to have happened (afaik) was that by 1600 a few philosophers such as Galileo, began to take advantage of what were at that time “new” mechanical instruments such as the telescope and the pendulum, to make actual experimental observations from which they could record numerical data (I put “new” in parenthesis, because some of these instruments had been known long before 1600, but few individuals had the means or skill to construct them for themselves).

Again to be fair, I should add that even in biblical times (OT and NT) some philosophers had tried to use mechanical instruments to record measurements, and some had tried to use what 2000 years later became recognised as a “scientific approach” (e.g. trying to test their ideas by a range of different means). But overall none of that amounted to anything like the sort of truly scientific approach that emerged from early modern-science with people like Galileo, then Newton, and then much later scientists in the 18th and 19th centuries onwards.

However, what Galileo and his immediate successors did, was not to “form another branch of philosophy”. What they did, and what became increasingly obvious from 1600 until modern times, is that they departed entirely from the approach of classical philosophers who thought they could accurately understand the workings of the universe by mere intellectual thought and rational argument in words and speech alone. Instead what became increasingly clear after Galileo was that modern “science” was really a very different approach indeed …

… the real difference being that science finally took an honest objective and unbiased approach to investigating and trying to explain anything. That is – before modern science, both religion and philosophy had insisted that theists and philosophers could know the truth about the universe merely by the force of their own personal intellect and the self-assumed validity of the arguments they could produce as words on a page …

… whereas what Galileo and his successors showed was that philosophical beliefs like that (and religious beliefs) were actually not capable of correctly understanding the universe merely by people who thought they were supremely clever sitting down to pontificate about it.

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