RE: What's the point of philosophy any more?
March 25, 2018 at 7:02 pm
(This post was last modified: March 25, 2018 at 7:05 pm by vulcanlogician.)
(March 25, 2018 at 6:54 pm)polymath257 Wrote: Well, yes, the first person experience isn't discernible to me because their brain isn't my brain. But I would know that they are feeling pain, or in the case of the bat, sonar. I would be able to describe, probably in some detail, *what* they are experiencing. But yes, it is not my brain that is experiencing it all.
But I fail to see why that is such a deep issue to so many people. When my computer gets some information, and processes it, your computer may not get the same information or it may process it slightly differently. That seems, to me, to the sole difference in 'first person' versus 'third person' descriptions.
The problem isn't missing information. The problem is, even when every single piece information is accounted for, something is still missing.
That is the essence of the mind/body problem, and that is the great riddle of consciousness.
Of course, some will say it's really no big problem at all, which is why super empirically-minded folks seem comfortable with functionalism. I'm not one of them though. Something about the mystery of consciousness intrigues me. Looking at it one way, it almost seems more fundamental than any other metaphysical problem. Looking at it another way, its a simple distinction that (if made like the functionalists make it) is really no problem at all.
