(August 10, 2013 at 4:55 am)bennyboy Wrote: Fine. Show me the "actual" measurement of consciousness. I'll wager you're going to show me an fMRI readout.
That's right.
(August 10, 2013 at 4:55 am)bennyboy Wrote: Okay, you have some pretty varied definitions there. The "brain" definition is an obvious question-beggar, and is out. Now, when I talk about "feeling," I'm talking about an experience. I already know that you're going to wiki feeling and give a definition that does not describe it adequately in my view, like: "the neurological response of an organism's brain to stimulus."
I already gave you the word for it and its definition.
(August 10, 2013 at 4:55 am)bennyboy Wrote: You are about to define sentience as an ability, rather than as any kind of content, so you might want to iron out that inconsistency.
Predictions like "you are about to define..." aren't as impressive when I've already done the defining.
(August 10, 2013 at 4:55 am)bennyboy Wrote: But my point is, WHATEVER word we use, even sentience, will eventually get distilled down to a physical-compatible definition, no matter how un-physical-compatible it started out in its initial intention.
And this is where you "beg the question". You assume that the concept started out as physicalist-incompatible - that the 'correct' definition reflects that incompatibility and that any physicalist compatibility indicates a redefinition.
(August 10, 2013 at 4:55 am)bennyboy Wrote: Holy strawman, Batman!-- you have just insisted that I'm talking about sentience, and then you go on to show that sentience isn't mind, but a part of it. Nice trick if you can get away with it.
And I can get away with it because its not a strawman. You specifically asked for the word used to describe "subjective experience of sensation and ideas" and as it happens sentience (the ability of subjective experience) and qualia (the subjective experience itself) are used to to describe that concept. Further, as it happens, these are identified not as the whole of mind, but as specific aspects of it as distinct from other aspects.
(August 10, 2013 at 4:55 am)bennyboy Wrote: At any rate, whatever you want to call it, or whatever semantic quibble we can make about it, the fact is that there's something about what happens in a human being that separates it (at least we think so) from any other kind of data-processing: the ability to actually experience. In a conversation about free will, we are looking at the possibility that some quality of humanity (call it whatever you want) can affect how the universe unfolds through time. Defining everything in physical terms isn't debating-- it's a refusal to take the debate seriously, or (as you'll see at the end of this post) a refusal to debate.
The first thing to note is that you made it a semantic quibble when you started arguing from 'correct' definition. Secondly, the definitions given here are not limiting the concept in physical terms - they are equally applicable to substance dualism, pan-psychicism or idealism. Thirdly, the implications of these definitions within a particular philosophy do not constitute a refusal to debate, they put the debate in context and clarify the points at which the debate actually makes sense.
(August 10, 2013 at 4:55 am)bennyboy Wrote: Hang on, you're getting ahead of things here. I'm still waiting for you to show me a mind, or to prove it exists. You might as well be talking about how God is physical, or IPU.
By mind you mean the faculty of consciousness, perception, thought, judgment and memory. So the proof would mean a conscious individual capable of awareness, perceiving, thinking, judging and remembering. Do you not qualify for this?
(August 10, 2013 at 4:55 am)bennyboy Wrote: People care about their subjective experience, because it's a fact of high significance to them. And so they have a word to talk about that part of their experience which is not shareable with others except through intermediary symbolism-- the mind.
Which is precisely why even if we were to discover that "sentience" is a brain function, the word would continue to be meaningful and people would continue to use it in the same sense they currently do.
(August 10, 2013 at 4:55 am)bennyboy Wrote: And yet, the mind is capable of examining itself, and of thinking about itself, without reference to the physical world outside it, and cannot be directly perceived by others. If you want to argue that my ideas about my own mind are objective, and not subjective, then good luck with that.
Yes, self-awareness is one of the features of the mind - but the terms subjective or objective are not applicable at this point.
(August 10, 2013 at 4:55 am)bennyboy Wrote: I'd add: it can be shown to exist.
You'd be wrong. Like I said, our capability to show whether or not it exists would've no bearing on whether it actually exists or if it is physical.
(August 10, 2013 at 4:55 am)bennyboy Wrote: I don't think there's much point continuing with this, unless you want to begin a formal 1 vs. 1 debate; things are getting too squirmy now. The long and short of it is that I don't accept your definitions, or your rationale for choosing them: I think that they beg the question, and you think they are just adapted to different contexts. You don't accept my assertion that some words are intrinsically dualistic or idealistic, and that they must therefore be used in that context.
In the end, when a debate fails at the definition of terms, then that's pretty much all she wrote. We cannot agree on what free will is, and so we cannot carry on a sensible debate about whether it has anything to do with determinism or Divine Providence.
It's been fun trying, though.
I think you should accept my given definitions because they are, in fact, the given definitions, i.e. indicative of what most people mean by the word when they use it. And this happens to be one of the few cases where appeal to popularity is not a logical fallacy.
I do accept that certain words are intrinsically dualistic or idealistic - words such as "soul" or "spirit". What I do not accept is that "mind", "sentience" or "will" are some of those words. I do not accept it because when I look at their 'correct' definitions, I find them to be equally applicable in monist, dualist or idealist contexts.
I also do not think that a disagreement in definitions should be an end of the debate especially when one definition is more inclusive than the other. For example, if we disagree on "free" where you consider it to mean "free from determinism" and I consider it to mean "free from certain constraints which may or may not be determinism", then the next logical step is to discuss which constraints make sense and whether or not determinism is one of them. Similarly, if you consider "will" to mean "non-physical attribute of the mind that makes decisions" and I consider it to be "attribute of the mind that makes decisions", the next step would be to discuss if "will" would have to be necessarily non-physical or physical.