RE: Does it make sense to speak of "Universal Consciousness" or "Univer...
May 18, 2014 at 3:09 pm
(This post was last modified: May 18, 2014 at 3:27 pm by bennyboy.)
Chas Wrote:You are making unsubstantiated claims when you say what consciousness is not. You don't know this. Is this your statement of faith?No. It's a definition. When I open my eyes in the morning, I become aware of colors, shapes, etc. as qualia-- the "what it's like." Whether the source of those experiences is a physical universe, the Matrix, or the Mind of God is irrelevant to that definition. Conflating the word for experience with ideas about the source of the experience is unnecessary.
Quote:I call bullshit. I have not defined 'evidence' to fit into any theory; without evidence, you've got squat.Maybe you should define what evidence means to you. What nature of evidence would you consider relevant to the OP, or to the past few posts?
Quote:You are declaring things out of bounds for science. Is this your faith, again?I haven't made any statements of faith, so you are wrong to use the word "again."
Science can mean a lot of things, but I assume we are all in this thread talking about science as it is practiced now: physical observation, hypothesis, and experimentation or other methods of confirming the hypothesis. And-- most importantly-- the ability for others to independently reproduce the observation and confirmation.
Some things are not observable by others. For example, my qualia are real and easily identified-- by me. You, however, cannot ever have access to my "what it's like to drink cocoa" sensations. At best, you can correlate someone's verbal descriptions with physical markers, like blood flow or brain wave measurements. Qualia themselves are therefore outside the sphere of science, because they cannot be observed, directly interacted with, or even confirmed to exist. Correlations between reported qualia and the brain, on the other hand, are within the sphere of science, because verbal descriptions are sharable, as are brain scans. The problem is that people are not careful in distinguishing between the two.
(May 18, 2014 at 2:57 pm)Cato Wrote: Give me an example of a non-physical structure which actually experiences qualia, rather than just seeming to. In fact, you can't demonstrate a non-physical structure that just seems to.Neither you nor I can give any example of ANY entity --physical or otherwise-- which actually experiences qualia, rather than just seeming to. The belief that qualia exists outside of my experience cannot be founded in evidence. It can only be rooted in a philosophical assumption.
Quote:Just one example that supports my position is that my grandfather's experience of the taste of meatloaf disappeared when his brain died, unless you are going to make the argument that his experience is disembodied and floating around in the proverbial ether.How do you know your grandfather wasn't a philosophical zombie? You know what words came out of his mouth, the look in his eyes, the way his limbs moved; you might have had access to fMRI or other brain scans. His qualia, if he actually had any, are for you only a matter of philosophical assumption.
Now, let's consider the OP proposition. How would you know whether an atom, or a star, or the galaxy has some kind of awareness-- its own kind of qualia? You can't-- because you never had access to qualia in the first place. An atom won't produce words about meatloaf or have shaky hands, or show any of the physical markers that make you feel justified in making your philosophical assumption about people's minds.
