RE: Christianity is heading for a full allegorization
January 20, 2022 at 1:45 am
(This post was last modified: January 20, 2022 at 2:02 am by emjay.)
First thing's first, no offence mate, but I don't think I can handle this conversation twice over, so if it's okay with you, can we keep this interlude brief? These sorts of conversations take a lot out of me, and I didn't realise how hard it would be to explain what to me is a perfectly simple and intuitive concept.
Beyond what I've said to polymath, I don't know how to answer this. Conscious experience is just something that is evident and different from nothing... there's the perception of something, anything. Even if you go deep down to the rawest level of it... forget colours or any other specific qualia, there is just at the very least the perception of change... there is something say over here on your visual field that is different from something over there... or change of perceptions over time. There is something there... that requires an explanation. And sure you can pretend it doesn't exist or write it off as an illusion, but I don't think that's helpful. I'm open to it being an illusion in some sense, but in the main sense of awareness of something, anything, of change, of time... of something different than nothing, it's not an illusion; there is something there needing an explanation. So I don't know what to say really; if you truly think it's possible to doubt the presence of your own conscious experience, then have at it if it helps you sleep at night, but I don't think there's anywhere for us to go in conversation.
I'll answer the bottom bit first... how can you have 2 without 1? Because the brain and body is a physical system that obeys the laws of physics, and it's my contention that everything in consciousness has a neural representation, and therefore to the extent that consciousness is some sort of mirror/emergent property of the brain and/or its information processing, it only represents what is already represented neurally in the brain, and is therefore seemingly superfluous, dragged along for the ride as it were, but with no causal power of its own... a sideshow as it were. So it's my contention that it's at least theoretically possible for there to be such thing as a PZ; something that ticks along as the physical and biological machine that it is, but without that sideshow. It's not that I believe PZ's are definitively a thing, and as I said there'd be no way to detect one anyway even if they did exist, but more that I can't rule them out as a logical possibility. Ie in my view, there's nothing about the brain that necessitates the presence of phenomenal consciousness, therefore making it seem superfluous, and therefore making the possibility of its lack something I can't rule out.
As to the experience of the PZ... for one thing it wouldn't have experience, but it would still have the same neural representations as one that did... so if you asked it a question, it would still receive the same audio signals and process them in the same way, just not hear them as a phenomenal experience of sound, it would still neurally trigger the same memories, just not experience them in the mind's eye, because it has no mind's eye, it would still trigger the same brain areas involved in say planning and language, and the motor neurons involved in turning all of that into the behaviour of speaking to reply. As to the purely unprompted introspective... if the conscious can do it, so should the PZ, and again I see no reason why not; the brain is basically a black box, deeper than just direct inputs and outputs... as the behaviourists (hopefully) learnt long ago... ie we have a whole mental life ticking along under the hood (daydreaming, planning etc), not directly conditioned by external stimuli... and I'd contend that those processes involved in that are no different... they have their own neural representations to be activated, and do not require phenomenal consciousness. So in my view the PZ would daydream in the sense that it activates all the relevant neural representations, but it would not daydream in the sense of actually experiencing the phenomena of a daydream.
(January 19, 2022 at 11:57 pm)Ferrocyanide Wrote:(January 19, 2022 at 10:02 pm)emjay Wrote: Well I would say, if you experience anything then you're not a PZ... because a PZ just does not experience, full stop. So if you have any kind of mental experience... of the unity, continuity, sense of self, experience of time and changing perceptions etc... then you're not a PZ.
The question by polymath257 is badly formed. He isn't asking what the definition of zombie is.
He is in fact asking, "How do I know that I am experiencing anything?"
How is that determined?
How does the human determine that he is experiencing things? Is he the judge of himself? He might say "He isn't experiencing anything." which means that he might be wrong.
Beyond what I've said to polymath, I don't know how to answer this. Conscious experience is just something that is evident and different from nothing... there's the perception of something, anything. Even if you go deep down to the rawest level of it... forget colours or any other specific qualia, there is just at the very least the perception of change... there is something say over here on your visual field that is different from something over there... or change of perceptions over time. There is something there... that requires an explanation. And sure you can pretend it doesn't exist or write it off as an illusion, but I don't think that's helpful. I'm open to it being an illusion in some sense, but in the main sense of awareness of something, anything, of change, of time... of something different than nothing, it's not an illusion; there is something there needing an explanation. So I don't know what to say really; if you truly think it's possible to doubt the presence of your own conscious experience, then have at it if it helps you sleep at night, but I don't think there's anywhere for us to go in conversation.
Quote:How does the zombie determine that he is experiencing things? Is he the judge of himself? He might say "He IS experiencing things." which means that he might be wrong.
There is this claim that you can have a person who does not experience anything and that it behaves just as any other human.
[...]
Quote:...
How can you have 2 without 1?
I'll answer the bottom bit first... how can you have 2 without 1? Because the brain and body is a physical system that obeys the laws of physics, and it's my contention that everything in consciousness has a neural representation, and therefore to the extent that consciousness is some sort of mirror/emergent property of the brain and/or its information processing, it only represents what is already represented neurally in the brain, and is therefore seemingly superfluous, dragged along for the ride as it were, but with no causal power of its own... a sideshow as it were. So it's my contention that it's at least theoretically possible for there to be such thing as a PZ; something that ticks along as the physical and biological machine that it is, but without that sideshow. It's not that I believe PZ's are definitively a thing, and as I said there'd be no way to detect one anyway even if they did exist, but more that I can't rule them out as a logical possibility. Ie in my view, there's nothing about the brain that necessitates the presence of phenomenal consciousness, therefore making it seem superfluous, and therefore making the possibility of its lack something I can't rule out.
As to the experience of the PZ... for one thing it wouldn't have experience, but it would still have the same neural representations as one that did... so if you asked it a question, it would still receive the same audio signals and process them in the same way, just not hear them as a phenomenal experience of sound, it would still neurally trigger the same memories, just not experience them in the mind's eye, because it has no mind's eye, it would still trigger the same brain areas involved in say planning and language, and the motor neurons involved in turning all of that into the behaviour of speaking to reply. As to the purely unprompted introspective... if the conscious can do it, so should the PZ, and again I see no reason why not; the brain is basically a black box, deeper than just direct inputs and outputs... as the behaviourists (hopefully) learnt long ago... ie we have a whole mental life ticking along under the hood (daydreaming, planning etc), not directly conditioned by external stimuli... and I'd contend that those processes involved in that are no different... they have their own neural representations to be activated, and do not require phenomenal consciousness. So in my view the PZ would daydream in the sense that it activates all the relevant neural representations, but it would not daydream in the sense of actually experiencing the phenomena of a daydream.
