RE: The Philosophy of Mind: Zombies, "radical emergence" and evidence of non-experiential
April 22, 2018 at 12:15 pm
(This post was last modified: April 22, 2018 at 12:23 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Quote:To a non-conscious robot, a painting it interacts with is only a noumenal object, it's not experienced as a 'painting' like it is to us.-and?
What does a robot and what it does (or doesn't do or experience) have to do with a human being, what it does or experiences, and what evolutionary advantages that conferred or contributed to?
Ostriches don't fly. That doesn't make their wings useless....nor would pointing to some bird that did fly..or even a creature that took to the air without wings, demonstrate that an ostriches wings were selectively neutral. Our art, our culture, our civilization, our ethics, our personal relationships are all colored by this thing we call experience. There may be other ways to derive some of this..all of it, but this was our way.
We might be the only creatures that possess it..at least in meaningfully human terms. Consider what an enormous coincidence it must have been that...after a few billion years of life slowly plugging along, with the appearance of a trait we recognize as a human consciousness 50k years ago (could have been earlier, hard to say..but no later),..the stage is set for the species in which that appears to utterly and completely outcompete every other species on the planet? It takes us a short 40k years to make another massive leap fundamentally tied to our experience..and this second appearence of a more elaborate consciousness derived framework is the death knell for literally every other living thing on earth, possibly even the earth, itself..in a sense.
That sounds like an awfully big effect, for an effect with no effects.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
