RE: why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?
January 20, 2019 at 11:24 pm
(This post was last modified: January 20, 2019 at 11:48 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(January 20, 2019 at 11:07 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Not sure what to say, except nope.Does it matter to you if your experience is (as it certainly is, lol) a simulation......? Why..and if so, is that caring itself part of the simulation?
In the case of a bridge, it doesn't matter to me if it's a simulation. So long as the Matrix bridge built of Matrix material stands up when I walk on it, that is sufficient for me. But in the case of sentience, a simulated mind is not sufficient to me.
Quote:These are not mutually exclusive. The brain is clearly different from non-brain things, by definition.Not in the relevant sense, it isn't..or at least we haven't found it to be so as of yet. It seems to work like everything else does. Again, there are no "brain physics"..just physics.
You're rejecting this, but there's no sense or means to do so. Either you satisfy yourself with a special pleading case and hope to heaven that the thing in question turns out to be meaningfully special, or you don't. If you do, understand that your objections simply -are- special pleading (which isn't always a fallacy, only when the damned thing aint special in the sense required)..or implicate every scientific inference.
Yes, Benny, they're exclusive. Either the thing is like other things or it aint. If it's like other things, the statements made by nueroscience are just as credible and for the same reasons as statements made about bridges. If it's not, then they're not...but one immediately has to wonder about bridge claims, then. You only have the two choices on this one, because it's been reduced to simplicity - and both choices are a shit sandwich, clearly..by reference to your rejection.
Oh well. The universe isn't under any compulsion to satisfy us.
Let me offer a concrete example. A voltimeter doesn't directly measure electricity. It can't..hell, it doesn't even know what that is. What it measures is the difference between the charges of two points against a known volume of electrical current (abnd it doesn't know what that is, either, lol). It only "sees" the effect. If theres a "charge" of x on one end of a conductive array and a "charge" of y on the other end, then something has occurred between those two ends to consume (or produce) the difference. When we make statements based on measurements like these we consider them to be flatly accurate and scientific, the very definition of, no less...why would they be any less so when the thing being measured is a brain or a mind?
Either the voltimeter (and, by extension, neuroscience) is or isn't credible. Is or isn't a scientific measurement. Is or isn't a special case. If we can say "x goes into region b, and when it comes out, it has a value of y" we have described thought as accurately as a voltimeter describes electrical current.
Does that help?
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