Michael

I'm not totally averse to saying that mental phenomena just is brain activity. What I'm averse to is the claim that being in pain has something to do ...

Yes, I'm just not seeing what you're seeing. Much like with the case of some people seeing the dress to be white and gold and others seeing it to be b...

To quote my favourite book (Dune): It's not unreasonable to assume that there is some organism in the universe that has some sense that we don't. How ...

OK? I can tell you that a particle can't be both positively charged and negatively charged. It doesn't mean that I know what either of those things me...

I burn my hand. I feel pain. I am told by my parents that I must be in pain. I learn to associate the word "pain" with the feeling. I don't understand...

I don't see how it supports your point. As I said before, nobody would ever learn to associate the word "pain" with the feeling that causes them to sm...

Exactly that. I take aspirin because I'm in pain. It's not that me being in pain just is me taking aspirin.

Not really. I'm simply saying that it can be appropriate to say one thing, given the evidence available to us, even though that thing is false. If som...

This is the kind of Wittgensteinian nonsense that I just don't get. You put a red ball and a blue ball in front of me. I can see that one is red and o...

This is misleading phrasing. "Correct" in this sense means "appropriate" or "justified", not "true". Not really. If someone feels what I call "ecstasy...

Ambiguous use of the word "sense" here. The sentence is meaningful and internally consistent, even though we might not understand the motivation of su...

Which is true. I know for a fact that the term "red" covers a variety of different shades. I don't know that what I see to be one shade of red is what...

I don't quite understand the question. Consider this statement: your brother is older than you. If you happen to have a brother then I am talking abou...

Indictment 34 counts of "falsifying business records in the first degree". Statement of Facts

It’s hardly elusive. When I’m in pain it’s pretty obvious. I have a private experience which is immediately apparent to me and I refer to it using the...

It doesn’t have anything to do with grammar. I can be in pain even if I don’t have a language. It’s not as if pre-linguistic humans never had headache...

I can be in pain without talking about it or taking aspirin. I assume you can too. Maybe I’m wrong, but the idea that I can’t talk as if I’m right jus...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-65167017

19:15 for those of us living in the One True Timezone.

It’s not a case of assuming dualism, just as it’s not a case of assuming materialism on the other side. It’s the case that either one finds a physical...

Something like Wittgenstein's argument against a private language? I'm not convinced by it. I made a passing comment about it here.

There are studies that show that decision-making is unconscious, and that conscious decision-making is post hoc. So it could be that the technology yo...

I would say that consciousness causes (some) behaviour, not that (some) behaviour is consciousness. As I mentioned before, I can think many things tha...

That is indeed what we assume. Whether or not it's reasonable is a separate issue. The skeptic who questions the existence of other minds might argue ...

I don't really understand your comments. I accept that consciousness often determines behaviour, and so that behaviour can indicate consciousness. But...

Because I believe it to be so.

Depending on your answer to my question, the other points are irrelevant. Almost nobody denies the causal relationship between brain activity and ment...

No, I'm saying so because I believe it to be a fact. And because it is a fact, what I say is true.

If there's a distinction between mental and physical properties then you accept that a) the mental is non-physical, that b) mental things exist, and s...

I don't understand the question. It is either a fact that intelligent, extra-terrestrial life exists or it isn't. It is either a fact that private exp...

What's the difference between "natural" and "physical"? So are you arguing for property dualism? There are lots of scientific papers on brain activity...

If the phenomenon is mental, and if the mental is non-physical, then the phenomenon is non-physical. That it has a physical cause isn't that it, itsel...

I don't think facts depend on verifiability. It just either is or isn't the case that private experiences exist. I suppose some anti-realists might di...

It's not a bad excuse. The argument is: 1) all physical phenomena is susceptible to scientific analysis 2) we have first-person experience 3) some asp...

Obviously, that's the point. If some aspect of consciousness is non-physical then there can be no scientific (physical) evidence of it. Arguing that b...

Because the purpose of this discussion is to assess the evidence either for or against the neuroscientist's claim that consciousness can be exhaustive...

No it doesn't. If God is real then... If ghosts are real then... If magic is real then... If parallel worlds are real then... I'm not assuming anythin...

If you give me £1,000,000 then I will quit my job. Am I assuming that you have given me £1,000,000? No. Am I assuming that you can give me £1,000,000?...

No I don't. No I don't. Given that I'm not begging the question, as you seem to be, and assuming from the start that consciousness cannot be non-physi...

You can keep repeating this, but it's still wrong. I haven't made any assumptions, and there's only one use of the term "if" in my claim. If conscious...

One if, no assumptions.

It's not pseudo-science because it doesn't claim to be scientific at all. It's just not-science.

I'm not assuming that it's non-physical. I'm saying that if it is non-physical then...

There's just one if, and that is: if consciousness is non-physical then nothing is evidence that consciousness is physical.

I'm just going by his Wikipedia article.

It has philosophical value if it's true.

My response was fine. You accused me of saying something about his work. Given that I never mentioned him or his work, your accusation was wrong, whic...

I don't understand what his theory is, or what "morphic resonances" are. Are they a physical thing? Then it has nothing to do with what I am saying. A...

I'm just pointing out the problem with Isaac's question (as I understood it). It's like asking "what evidence would prove that a non-interventionist c...

Because of Isaac's question to bert1. I understood it to be asking what would count as evidence that consciousness is entirely physical. I think his q...