RE: The Philosophy of Mind: Zombies, "radical emergence" and evidence of non-experiential
April 22, 2018 at 6:57 am
(This post was last modified: April 22, 2018 at 7:24 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Psh, cmon bud, you know I don't fret over that kind of shit, no apology necessary. In any case, the employment of the term computational competence was to separate that from consciousness even if only as a matter of categorization. I think you're tilting at dennet like a windmill, but, as I've said, your issues with dennet are your issues with dennet. Though it might be helpful for you to know that dennet likes to employ the terms competence and comprehension to differentiate between what we do subconsciously and what we do consciously. If you, for example..think that computational competence is not consciousness, well..you and dennet agree.
Our issue, the only thing I commented on in your op, is the notion of selective neutrality in the case of possession of consciousness. I don't think it's useless, and I don't agree that such a conclusion follows from a one line item...even if that one line item means alot to us and is a subject of deep interest....even if that one line item was traditionally conceived of as the role of consciousness in the human organism.
It need not be -that-...to be useful, to confer advantage. It need not be the only way to achieve whatever it does to confer advantage, and it very certainly could have evolved as a side effect of some other thing (like..say, computational competence and general intelligence). Wings weren't intitially a flight adaptation, either. Flight..at some point, becomes a "mere side effect" of a particular type of wing...but if we limit biological utility of wings to flight then all swimming and flightless birds have useless wings.
That doesn't track with what we understand about selection or adaptation, at all. It's a function of tunnel vision, a narrow definition that excludes all other utility by fiat in favor of "control" or "free will". If all consciousness did was make you comparatively more fuckable..it would have evolutionary utility just like display feathers that can't fly. In order for the "science to be on your side" on the claim of selective neutrality, on the issue of evolutionary utility......consciousness could not, itself...whatever it is... be even partially responsible for any advantageous thing.
I sometimes like to joke that, if consciousness were the "free willing" mechanism we thought it was for so long... it might actually -be- deleterious. It;s a good thing I can't choose or decide to stop my heart, for example. Plenty of us would have done it out of incompetence, curiosity, sheer boredom, or just plain bad luck and fumbling mental button fingers....long, long ago. That said, the benefits of a truly free agency might override that specific (hypothetical) risk, anyway. Just as the benefits of a consciousness would appear to override the many inherent flaws in our perception thereof (or flaws in itself) and the many ways that a self consciousness works counter-productively in human populations (and privately, within the human organism).
Science, as you used for an example..seems at least partially dependent on consciousness (at least for now..)..and the posession of tools that can create something like that would -seem- to be immensely useful in propagating the humane genome. While consciousness may possess no computational utility (I doubt this as well..but I'm running with it to avoid truly useless disagreement), evolutionary utility is a whole different bag of worms, don't you think? Can you look at the civilization around you, all of it, all of human civilization...this monolithic edifice to human consciousness (however imperfectly described or known), and convince yourself that it conferred no reproductive advantages whatsoever?
Our issue, the only thing I commented on in your op, is the notion of selective neutrality in the case of possession of consciousness. I don't think it's useless, and I don't agree that such a conclusion follows from a one line item...even if that one line item means alot to us and is a subject of deep interest....even if that one line item was traditionally conceived of as the role of consciousness in the human organism.
It need not be -that-...to be useful, to confer advantage. It need not be the only way to achieve whatever it does to confer advantage, and it very certainly could have evolved as a side effect of some other thing (like..say, computational competence and general intelligence). Wings weren't intitially a flight adaptation, either. Flight..at some point, becomes a "mere side effect" of a particular type of wing...but if we limit biological utility of wings to flight then all swimming and flightless birds have useless wings.
That doesn't track with what we understand about selection or adaptation, at all. It's a function of tunnel vision, a narrow definition that excludes all other utility by fiat in favor of "control" or "free will". If all consciousness did was make you comparatively more fuckable..it would have evolutionary utility just like display feathers that can't fly. In order for the "science to be on your side" on the claim of selective neutrality, on the issue of evolutionary utility......consciousness could not, itself...whatever it is... be even partially responsible for any advantageous thing.
I sometimes like to joke that, if consciousness were the "free willing" mechanism we thought it was for so long... it might actually -be- deleterious. It;s a good thing I can't choose or decide to stop my heart, for example. Plenty of us would have done it out of incompetence, curiosity, sheer boredom, or just plain bad luck and fumbling mental button fingers....long, long ago. That said, the benefits of a truly free agency might override that specific (hypothetical) risk, anyway. Just as the benefits of a consciousness would appear to override the many inherent flaws in our perception thereof (or flaws in itself) and the many ways that a self consciousness works counter-productively in human populations (and privately, within the human organism).
Science, as you used for an example..seems at least partially dependent on consciousness (at least for now..)..and the posession of tools that can create something like that would -seem- to be immensely useful in propagating the humane genome. While consciousness may possess no computational utility (I doubt this as well..but I'm running with it to avoid truly useless disagreement), evolutionary utility is a whole different bag of worms, don't you think? Can you look at the civilization around you, all of it, all of human civilization...this monolithic edifice to human consciousness (however imperfectly described or known), and convince yourself that it conferred no reproductive advantages whatsoever?
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