The Philosophy of Mind: Zombies, "radical emergence" and evidence of non-experiential

[Edwardo Piet]

You do realize that you just contradicted yourself from sentence to sentence...right?

Only if you equivocate. When I'm talking on two different levels, there's no contradiction.

Imagine a piece of art, say a painting... is it really a 'painting' if it doesn't look like a painting, doesn't feel like a painting, and isn't experienced by anyone or anything at all? I would say no, so I would say that paintings don't exist without people to experience them. But whatever equivalent object exists in the place of a painting, in the objective world, still exists, and can be interacted with, if an objective world exists outside of our experience, and if our experience didn't exist.

That's what i mean when I say we could still do art, and we could still paint paintings even though the painting wouldn't exactly be a 'painting'. The thing in itself would be there, but a 'painting' as we know it, obviously wouldn't be there to be experienced. It's the phenomenal object that wouldn't exist, the noumenal object would still exist.

......reproductive advantage is evolutionary utility.  Art, society, civilization is evolutionary utility. 

And none of those things require consciousness.

The latter advantages us as a population, the former advantages us -within- a population.  If you can conclude that some portion of any of that is derived from consciousness (however you define or describe it..I could maintain that consciousness was a ghostly soul and it wouldn't alter the evolutionary utility of that x)......then consciousness is not useless...in an evolutionary context.

I'm not concluding that. Consciousness as qualia appears to provide no evolutionary or reproductive (obviously reproductive is evolutionary utility. There you go stating irrelevant truths I already know as if it interacts with my point when it doesn't again) function or utility. Other things do provide utility, but you take away qualia and you don't appear to lose any utility at all. How many times do I have to point out Strawson's point without you addressing it? How many times do I have to point out multiple points without you addressing them?

You're terrible at winning arguments, and merely good at convincing people that you've won them. You need to actually interact with what I'm saying to actually refute me. I'm here fully open to being refuted because if I'm wrong I want to be shown to be wrong. But if you have any chance in hell you've got to at least start by interacting with my points.

But this is more for your benefit than mine, my arguing with you, as you are surely not even close to up to the task, and you misrep and go on irrelevant digressions so often that it seems like you're being unhelpful on purpose and just trying to hope gullible people who can't understand what you're saying will believe your conclusions, despite the fact your points don't even interact with mine.

I may put you on block eventually so people like Rob can actually have a proper discussion with me more easily with me. Feel free to post on the thread and I'll keep responding to you for now, despite the fact it's 99% of me taking your disingenuous foot out of my mouth.... but if I block you again eventually (because you're basically a troll doing highly undetectable trolling as far as I'm concerned. You're , like I said, an atheistic William Lane Craig)..... you're of course welcome on the thread. It is indeed against the rules to control who participates in a thread. Although I don't think you even deserve to post on these forums, and if I could prove what you're doing, I would. But I can't so I won't. Post here as much as you like, but you may end up having to discuss with other people who post here. Because eventually I may get bored of arguing with someone who is deliberately obfuscating as much as possible.

Sure, it may not be on purpose. But then what is causing your repeated sophism? Your repeated misrepping me anytime we disagree? Your repeated irrelevant statements? Your jumping on an apparent contradiction immediately even when I'm obviously not stupid enough to do that and obviously must have been talking on two levels. When are you going to actually address any of my points? Rob has already done it. Even Jor addressed what Strawson said, she just got things backwards because if anyone is begging the question it is the other side by assuming that consciousness has a function. I ask for the evidence that consciousness has a function, and mention evidence to the contrary, and I get the equivalent of "But of course it has a function". Hence why you're begging the question. Not interested in your incredulity. Try and address my points and argue against them.

Maybe it's because you haven't got an argument, lol.