OK, you're conflating mental activity with reports of mental activity. The point is the same: consciousness/mental activity is different than reports ...
fdrake, referencing an authority like Searle IS taking the discussion seriously (I can't find the exact quote-I think it was a Ted Talk). The point is...
I was listening to a philosopher (I think it was Searle) who said (paraphrasing), "Imagine scientists come out with a report that says, "You know how ...
Yes. It is obviously true that reports of consciousness and consciousness itself are different things. In fact, this is so obviously true, I suspect t...
OK, let's start with this one. I said: Do you think reports of consciousness are the same thing as consciousness itself? That's absurd. What more need...
You said: That's a terrible definition of consciousness. Consciousness is more than "just the tendency to be able to report on mental activity". You'r...
Hundreds of years of lack of progress on something so fundamental as consciousness wouldn't be a problem for physicalism? Obviously, at some point (e....
OK, when does the lack of progress become a problem, in your opinion? Suppose we still don't have an explanation for how brains produce consciousness ...
Shouldn't we have some idea, at this point? The mind-body problem has been around since Descartes' time. What progress has physicalism made in solving...
We were talking about definitions, not measures. Any definition of consciousness is incomplete if it doesn't include first-person subjective experienc...
That's an incomplete definition of consciousness. Reporting on mental activity isn't even a necessary condition for consciousness, let alone a suffici...
I don't think even Dennett knows his position anymore. I go over this with my 6th graders. Kids like metaphysics and ethics. They're not good at it, b...
OK, what is your explanation for how non-conscious stuff, when assembled the right way, can produce consciousness? Because that seems like magic to me...
"Qualia" names the set of all subjective experiences: my pain of stubbing my toe, your pain of stubbing your toe, Tom's pain of stubbing his toe, my e...
N: "That's absurd! Rocks don't have minds! Only things that are functionally like humans can have that first-person, mental experience. Other things o...
Yeah. You sound like a panpsychist idealist. That's a contradiction, so, do you believe non-mental stuff exists? If no, then you're an idealist, if ye...
That's a long thread. I guess my salient point is: are you assuming some non-conscious stuff exists? If so, do you believe consciousness comes from th...
"There are generally three possibilities when it comes to what kinds of beings have phenomenal consciousness in a physicalist ontology..." Why are you...
If brains are identical to minds, then talking about brains is the same as talking about minds. If X and Y are identical, then talking about X entails...
If you are equating minds and brains, why are you asking me "what is mind?" I gave you an argument that if minds are brains, then talk of minds is tal...
When I think of my mind, I think of my brain. I equate the two, or rather reduce mind to brain. If minds are identical to brains and two people from a...
I think the grammar maps on to our (correct) intuition that thoughts and minds are things, separate from the brain. The adjectives that describe the b...
I tend to agree. If someone says they're thinking, "Thinking of what?" is a valid question and "nothing" would be a nonsensical answer to that questio...
I'll grant you that we're great at discovering neural correlates of mental states. We've made great stride and will continue to. That's an easy proble...
Yes, there's a strong correlation between brain-states and mental-states and this implies a causation. We've known for a long time that when you damag...
"consciousness is due to a three pound hunk of meat orbiting the sun somewhere". Does this make more sense than the teapot? My non-pithy response: The...
I think that if science was going to solve the Hard Problem, it would have made some progress by now. But we're still just as clueless about how non-c...
When you think of your mind, do you think in terms of physical properties? What color is your mind? What shape is it? What's its volume? What does it ...
Putting idealism aside, yes, we have indirect evidence other people are conscious because they have brains like our own, but there's no way to know fo...
Idealism does not fall prey to the Explanatory Gap/Hard Problem of Consciousness, which imo, is catastrophic for materialism at this point in time. Th...
That begs another question: why don't we have an agreed upon scientific definition of consciousness yet? Maybe 100 years ago that would have been aski...
That's true. We assume other people are conscious because they look like us, and are biological organisms, like ourselves. But we don't know for sure....
Another issue is that the contents of a computer's mind (if it has one) are immune from discovery using scientific methods. The only access to knowled...
Some people are superficial. Some people also get very deep into religion. Why do you think it's either/or? Religious people watch Netflix. It doesn't...
No matter how good technology gets, it won't solve the core mysteries of existence: Why are we here? What's the point of this existence? What's the tr...
The massive amounts of addicts in this country? Food, Facebook, Twitter, sex, drugs of all kinds, you name it. If it brings a person pleasure, there's...
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