RE: If beauty doesn't require God, why should morality? (Bite me Dr. Craig.)
August 1, 2014 at 8:53 pm
(This post was last modified: August 1, 2014 at 9:18 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Unless the vacuum cleaner does know that it hits the table, and responds by turning away. Which they can and do. It's experiencing data processing. I'm not telling you that you're a vacuum cleaner, or that your experience is the same as the vacuum cleaners in content, or depth, or clarity, or "meaning" - whatever it is that's important to you and differentiates one type of data processing from another- but that it very well could be the same -in mechanics. The vacuum cleaner knows, in the same manner that we appear to know things - that something has happened, and that it must respond. To you, with your eyes, and your headgear - you "see" a table...you have that experience. The machine may only percieve or register a warning trigger. They are the same thing, referring to the same thing. I wouldn't expect a sentient vacuum cleaner to experience the world as you do, would you? All these words like "seeing" and "experiencing" appear to be tied to our biology - something explicable, something observable, something - ultimately, quantifiable. The vacuum doesn't "see" with eyes and so we wouldn't expect that experience, we wouldn't expect that language or those concepts. Have I made it clear yet that I don;t think that you are a vacuum cleaner? I just don't think you're as different from a vacuum cleaner as you clearly -need- to be.
If you insist that something simply cannot be observed, and refuse to accept the method you've used to determine that -I- have qualia, then so be it. I don't see the need. I place emphasis on observational data because it is powerful, explanatory data - whereas you have a special lockbox from which you are attempting to draw some conclusion.
You know more than two things for sure, you have very physical, very observable reasons for your qualia being something that you experience- instead of something that I experience (and from there you might have a working explanation as to why a vacuum doesn't experience your qualia, or you a vacuums - if they had any). You're the one jacked into the machine - not me (whatever that machine is). I have my own vehicle, and I experience things in a manner consistent with what that vehicle -could- experience....given what we know about the vehicle. That fact is hardly groundbreaking - and is absolutely under the authority of what we can observe. You're off on a tangent here between the subjective and the objective...which is pointless, because both you and I accept that our experience is subjective. Apparently, that's really mysterious to you (you keep repeating it like it were a mantra.....are you trying to cast a spell on me?) - it is not so mysterious to me. Are we disagreeing here on why our qualia is subjective?
The concepts we use to describe the two are separate (brain function/experience) - that doesn't mean that the two things are separate in actuality. We had time and space long before we had space-time. It seems that I can;t even help yopu to wrap your head around the fact that qualia as you describe it is special sauce. It;s some "thing" not to do with the function of a brain...a function that is not a function. It's pointless duality, as has been expressed to you. Even if we were to lay it out, 1:1 as you have said, you've already determined that it's still "something else". What? What else, where else, how else? It's not like were approaching this from equally undefinable positions. I say here is a brain, here is what it does - and one of those things is qualia.
The existence of your qualia cannot be denied -by you. I could deny the existence of your qualia all day long, the same way that you have done for anything that doesn't fit your idea of what qualia -is-. I won't do that though bud, you can have your thoughts, I trust you. It's so refreshing when a conversation dials down to this level of un-productivity, and no, Benny...you still don't get it, though you clearly disagree with "it". Have we scraped the bottom of this well? I think that by the time we say "Cogito, ego sum ipsum" we're about done, eh?
Would that work? "I think, therefore I am not a computer".
(latin buffs, help me arrange that ...lol)
If you insist that something simply cannot be observed, and refuse to accept the method you've used to determine that -I- have qualia, then so be it. I don't see the need. I place emphasis on observational data because it is powerful, explanatory data - whereas you have a special lockbox from which you are attempting to draw some conclusion.
You know more than two things for sure, you have very physical, very observable reasons for your qualia being something that you experience- instead of something that I experience (and from there you might have a working explanation as to why a vacuum doesn't experience your qualia, or you a vacuums - if they had any). You're the one jacked into the machine - not me (whatever that machine is). I have my own vehicle, and I experience things in a manner consistent with what that vehicle -could- experience....given what we know about the vehicle. That fact is hardly groundbreaking - and is absolutely under the authority of what we can observe. You're off on a tangent here between the subjective and the objective...which is pointless, because both you and I accept that our experience is subjective. Apparently, that's really mysterious to you (you keep repeating it like it were a mantra.....are you trying to cast a spell on me?) - it is not so mysterious to me. Are we disagreeing here on why our qualia is subjective?
The concepts we use to describe the two are separate (brain function/experience) - that doesn't mean that the two things are separate in actuality. We had time and space long before we had space-time. It seems that I can;t even help yopu to wrap your head around the fact that qualia as you describe it is special sauce. It;s some "thing" not to do with the function of a brain...a function that is not a function. It's pointless duality, as has been expressed to you. Even if we were to lay it out, 1:1 as you have said, you've already determined that it's still "something else". What? What else, where else, how else? It's not like were approaching this from equally undefinable positions. I say here is a brain, here is what it does - and one of those things is qualia.
The existence of your qualia cannot be denied -by you. I could deny the existence of your qualia all day long, the same way that you have done for anything that doesn't fit your idea of what qualia -is-. I won't do that though bud, you can have your thoughts, I trust you. It's so refreshing when a conversation dials down to this level of un-productivity, and no, Benny...you still don't get it, though you clearly disagree with "it". Have we scraped the bottom of this well? I think that by the time we say "Cogito, ego sum ipsum" we're about done, eh?
Would that work? "I think, therefore I am not a computer".
(latin buffs, help me arrange that ...lol)
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