RE: If beauty doesn't require God, why should morality? (Bite me Dr. Craig.)
July 28, 2014 at 10:08 am
(This post was last modified: July 28, 2014 at 10:32 am by The Grand Nudger.)
I think you may be driving right over my grass. I'm suggesting that qualia -is- data processing. How would we determine that it wasn't? Sure, we could process data some other way - in the case of a punchcard reader, for example(which we assume has no qauaia)...but we aren't punchcard readers. If qualia is the sum total of experience, and an overview of it from some specific POV, the subjective experience of consciosness - what line are we drawing. Is a chain of origami swans not, ultimately, a chain of paper? If someone pointed to that and said "This is origami, these are swans- not paper" wouldn't we be a little bit mystified by that claim? What is the distinction between data processing -in humans, and qualia-in humans? I'm suggesting, in no uncertain terms..that we place too much value on qualia, creating a box for it simply because it is "ours" and important to us. Perhaps it is just data processing, and you are just a "dead" machine, or at least no different from one functionally and observationaly speaking.
Also, as I've been mentioning, no matter how you define qualia, so long as you do so by means of our brains or reference to our brains there is a plausible explanation for it's existence and it's evolution. If wings were blue, and selection favored wings...it would favor "blue" by association. Understand? In this manner, even harmful (either potentially or actually) ancillary traits can be preserved due to the strength of whatever trait is being selected for. We could conceptualize this with regards to our experience by reference to our experience making us easier to "trick" than a sunflower might be. We don't seem to have been selected out on the basis of this potentially harmful trait that comes as added baggage to our immense data processing power (especially relative to sunflowers).
Also, as I've been mentioning, no matter how you define qualia, so long as you do so by means of our brains or reference to our brains there is a plausible explanation for it's existence and it's evolution. If wings were blue, and selection favored wings...it would favor "blue" by association. Understand? In this manner, even harmful (either potentially or actually) ancillary traits can be preserved due to the strength of whatever trait is being selected for. We could conceptualize this with regards to our experience by reference to our experience making us easier to "trick" than a sunflower might be. We don't seem to have been selected out on the basis of this potentially harmful trait that comes as added baggage to our immense data processing power (especially relative to sunflowers).
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