RE: The Philosophy of Mind: Zombies, "radical emergence" and evidence of non-experiential
April 21, 2018 at 7:14 pm
(This post was last modified: April 21, 2018 at 7:31 pm by Edwardo Piet.)
(April 21, 2018 at 10:28 am)Khemikal Wrote: Personally, I would caution against any notion that consciousness does nothing and provides no benefit. There are many evolutionary pathways to flight, or any other number of functional spaces for adaptation, as well. It might be that behavior x is possible some other way (even many other ways), as it is with different types and paths to wings or flight, for example...but it would be a reach to then say that the specific manner in which a creature achieves behavior x is therefore useless
Ironically THIS begs the question. The entire point is there's no evidence that consciousness does anything useful and you are making an analogy that consciousness is like pathways to flight, which just presupposes that consciousness is a pathway and is already useful. You're basically just saying "But in this case it is useful" and comparing it to flight. It's pathetic. You haven't shown that consciousness is useful, and the evidence points in the other direction. How is it useful? And the evidence indicates otherwise. This is (one of) my entire points... which you haven't addressed. And you haven't even replied to many of the others.
(April 21, 2018 at 7:10 pm)Lutrinae Wrote: This thread:
https://atheistforums.org/thread-53697.html
Philosophical zombies are interesting but I wanted to talk about other things too ("radical emergence" and evidence for the non-experiential). They're all in the OP too, and Khem didn't even bother to reply to those points. I'm interested in consciousness in general. P-zeds is merely one interesting aspect to the subject. I also explained why Dennett is wrong, and what he's wrong about, and what he got right. And Khem didn't address any of that, he's just covertly talking about how he thinks he's right without addressing any of my actual points against Dennett (he was suggesting that I was defining it "narrowly" which alludes to the fact that he, like Dennett, defines it differently (all this crap about "folk psychology". Fair enough, redefine stuff so science can address it all you like... but then don't pretend that the kind that must exist is illusory (the whole of the universe could be an illusion, we could be in the Matrix... but we're still conscious. We're conscious even if the whole universe is an illusion. So Dennett has it completely backwards)).... he doesn't actually interact with my arguments. It's all just rhetoric and irrelevant facts that don't even address what I'm saying, many of which I already agree with. But then he pretends to be reasonable by saying we agree on matters that we clearly disagree on, and then when I say that he tries to prove me wrong and that we do agree by then saying a bunch of irrelevant obviously true trival trues that no one disagrees with. It's getting hilariously transparently disingenous. Like I said, Khem appears to be the atheistic William Lane Craig of AF. If he's not doing it on purpose he must be suffering from a strange affliction I shall deem "accidentally-constantly-mirsrepresent-my-opponent-state-irrelevant-truths-and-engage-in-manipulative-sophistry-in-general-disorder".
I need to go to bed now. I'm tired. I thought this thread was going to be a success. Goodnight.
