Boy visits heaven

[Angrboda]

Chalmer's hard problem? Hameroff? Buddha? Plato? Penrose?

All we need now are Henry Stapp and Thomas Nagel and we can have a woo-infected circle jerk.

Honestly, of the lot only Buddha, and, perhaps Penrose, are even worth considering as philosophers of mind. And I'm rather confident the Buddha got an important point wrong. (Okay, Plato can come too, but modern research shows he was wrong; see J. Haidt, 2012)


I sympathize, really I do — I've read much of the same literature, and many of the ideas are seductively appealing. But most of the names listed present superficial and invalid arguments for their viewpoint. But I understand that their arguments are convincing; I also have good confidence they are all wrong.

But here's an idea to wrap your head around, since I have no intention of opening the vaults for you. We have millions upon millions of independent observations that attest to the existence of matter and energy. We have no independent witnesses to your subjective mental phenomenon or anyone else's; only vague, religiously derived theories that "seem" consistent with what you experience subjectively. But none of these theories have any confirmation of any of them — and much as we'd like, we can't expect the mind to witness its own existence from "outside itself". So we have zillions of observations of matter and energy, and zero credible observations of non-material phenomenon, zero, zilch, nada. Now you're a man of learning, so I shouldn't have to point this out to you, but, on that basis alone, a Bayesian calculation of prior probabilities makes it infinitely more probably that any observation will belong to either the category of matter, or energy, and not the non-material. Now, if you had some actual evidence of the non-material, other than your "mental theories", or any actual observations of, things would be different; but they're not.

Anyway, I realize given your religious presumptions, it will be near impossible to wean yourself from unreliable thinkers like Chalmers and so forth, but I suggest you at least leaven them with some true materialist theories. Off the top of my head, Dennett's work on philosophy of mind is good, and while I haven't read it personally, given your bent, I would highly suggest you track down Dennett's "Quining Qualia" (if need, I can help). The other primary resource I would suggest is Patricia Churchland's "Neurophilosophy" — not so much a book of arguments as a book on how to think about these questions, and what pitfalls to avoid. (I must confess, it's been ages since I've read Churchland, so she might be a bit out of date, but valuable nonetheless.) Alas, I haven't gotten to the following work, but have heard good things. Stephen Stich, during an eliminative materialist phase wrote "From Folk Psychology To Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief". If you're interested, I'll see if I can come up with more pertinent suggestions.

Anyway, to the hunt !


Oh, ETA, this may be a bit out of your depth, but if you want to see an example of what to me is some very promising work suggesting the possibility
of meshing temporal concepts and process in machine thinking. It's in five parts, totaling 45 minutes.

Anyway, if you feel like it.