From the article you presumably didn't read... https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/...
Can you expand on that? Is this something specific to consciousness, or do you think it equally unjustified to assign an evolutionary purpose to osmos...
Wittgenstein was talking about sensical language, not merely the possibility of forming words. the words the 'The Jabberwocky' all make a kind of flow...
To eat the red berry and not get sick because it's ripe. It is. That's why those two conditions are...conditions. We try to help colour-blind people s...
This seems a completely unreasonable strawman of the direct realist position. It is that we are detecting a property of the external object, not that ...
An orchestra produces a Beethoven symphony. Do you find that equally impossible? Is an orchestra the same kind of thing as a symphony? OK... Conscious...
Indeed, but it's not really about my definition of what function means in the abstract so much as the requirement for one from anyone proposing such a...
The set {all things inside this box} is not the same as the things inside the box. The set could be empty. Just like the set {6,7,8,9} is neither 6, 7...
Yes (though I'd quibble with 'bizarre'). The expression "one's own private thought" is a placeholder into which any private thought can go. It itself ...
Indeed. I should have written... What I don't seem able to do is give a similar account of what using a word privately to refer to one's own private t...
How? By what mechanism are they 'referring'? I might say, for example, that when I say "give the hat to John", my use of 'John' refers to John via dra...
How can it do either to you? You are you. You think of an X, then use the word 'x' to privately refer to the X you just thought of? But you're already...
Before people get too carried away with this "what it's like" nonsense, an admonitory... https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/is...
I agree, but, for my part I don't think it's so much about default positions as coherent ones. I cannot make sense of a complaint that a question has ...
I'm sorry for missing this one, I did read it through and thought the question was rhetorical. I agree that phenomenal consciousness is a mental proce...
It wasn't. Good. So we can conclude that mental activity requires additional glucose. Now where is your example of additional glucose requiring featur...
I'm not quite sure what you're after, but this was a classic https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15041139/ But what we're talking about here is an activit...
That is my argument, yes. If 'experiences' are some kind of mental activity, and evolution has not yet produced features which are energy intensive bu...
For a start, what it 'shows' is the empirical data, what the authors 'say' is the conclusion they draw from it, which is not that same as the empirica...
That's not evidence of an internal 'experience'. It tells us what happens in different regions of the brain in response to stimuli. Your claim is that...
Purpose. Are you deliberately ignoring this entire line of argument for a reason? All traits which carry significant cost (calorie or otherwise) demon...
It is an unfortunately pervasive attitude, ignoring the difference between disagreeing and misunderstanding. That one does not agree with a conclusion...
I explained that. Thinking is one of the most calorie intensive actions we do. The brain is a very expensive organ. There are no examples in the natur...
I more that if no one can put in even an example answer, they type of thing expected, then I don't see how anyone can support the claim that no satisf...
I find this kind if thinking really insulting. Neuroscientists are clever enough people, their intellectual capabilities should not be in question. As...
Exactly. so what is the equivalent situation with 'seeing red' to which you want to extend this physiological response? Your argument so far seems to ...
I start from a principle that features of human physiology evolved within a system where their cost did not exceed their survival benefit. In such a s...
Right. So what's the point of it? If what we're sensing is not a property of anything external to the system doing the sensing, then why is that syste...
No. I asked for answers. I'm asking what kind of answer would be a satisfactory one. Just an example. Like if someone asked "why do cars have wheels?"...
Yes. Primarily 'feeling' is a term we use for multiple meanings, one of which is a summary of your mental state "how are you feeling today?". So "I fe...
Ohh, that's even more interesting! So what mechanisms are in place to determine whether the human trainers are seeing post hoc rationalisation in appr...
Then how do you know that the answers given so far are unsatisfactory. If I went into a room searching for something and you asked what it was I was l...
Yes, that's something like I thought it might work, only in my thinking, the mere act of translation would weigh statistically in the model. It's got ...
Right. so if it's not a property of external world objects, then what's your theory as to why we sense it? And how do you justify undermining the curr...
I'll ask you the same as I ask everyone who asks this question... ... What would an answer look like? Give me an example answer. It's doesn't have to ...
Gods, you can't even follow a fairly simple line of argument. I'll make it as simple as possible... You said - Russia would have been better to have f...
I'm guessing (not knowing the mechanisms) that it seeks out preferentially information in the language it's asked in? I'm think if it had to look some...
Now you seem to be going back to semantics. Sure, 'feel' can be used to describe more than directly sensing something. But we 'feel' the grass beneath...
No, You're talking about Europe in order to avoid talking about the misery their policies have caused other nations in the developing world. I'm talki...
No. The experience of 'redness' is ruled out by there being no evidence, nor need, for any such thing. Then you've misunderstood my view. First person...
So? In what way does that make it any better? Part of the problem here is that the 'peace and prosperity' enjoyed by the West is bought at the expense...
Fascism is a pretty general term these days, but it's exact meaning isn't the point. Indeed. Rest assured I'm pissing more people off in the real word...
It's not the foundation that's inconsistent and illogical, it's the manifestation. One can reasonably hold an ideological position that we ought maxim...
Yes, but why? I've given an account of the need to reduce external surprise from both an evolutionary perspective and from a purely systems theory per...
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