On naturalism and consciousness

[The Grand Nudger]

Rhythm, your children do not have toys that have "personal feelings" or "sensuous experiences." If they do, you'd better make sure your children treat them with the utmost respect and care!

Of course they do, but not because toys are so advanced as to adequately emulate human beings - more because (and I guarantee you this) you wont be able to tell me what a "personal feeling" or "sensuous experience" -is- that does not also apply to some sort of machine logic/language/architecture (bet I could map either to a pocket calculator, btw).

The "just different" explanation is, honestly, implied in your response. You've written off machines before we even begin.

(they treat them like shit, of course. Daddy appreciates...but that's because daddy had to play with balsa airplanes and milk duds sailboats when he was their age)

I'm watching yall turn this into a circlejerk of assumptions and useless claims. It bothers me. We have practical, observable, quantifiable systems that can offer insight. We have practical, observable, quantifiable experiments involving "mind" and brain (and our ability to manipulate one by manipulating the other, etc). It's almost like we have to avoid them because they're "diseased".

For Benny-

What's the difference between a gazillion QM particles vibrating in space and a brain? I'll tell you-- it's a concept imposed on collections of particles by a mind which experiences life symbolically. Without a mind to make that categorization, there's no such thing as a brain.

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around....... Brains exist, they existed even when "minds" did not. The particulars of what they may be- and how they might possibly operate, well - that's a little bit shaky eh? Lets not confuse the boxes that we can draw conceptually with physical lines in the biological sand, eh?