Daemon

What about "there are lots of different kinds of things in the world?".

Same as sonar, and hearing and smelling then?

The idea, now lost in the mists of time, was that you couldn't explain what vision is like to someone who lacked vision.

I enjoyed your counterexample, but I'm not convinced that the facial exploration expectations should qualify as beliefs. I learned recently how we wor...

Ok, thank you.

Oh, I'm sorry, it was an honest attempt to summarise what you said. Where did I go wrong?

Thanks but I've already eaten. What were you getting at?

Ah sorry, I made a confusing and weak joke. I have had similar experiences. But what is a similar experience to vision, for example?

Could I suggest that neither is "made of" the other? Matter is the stuff you can feel and see.

Thanks to both luck and good management I've never actually had a full bladder so I don't know what you mean. Seriously though, it's only because I've...

Just to make sure I understand, a belief is a thing in your own mind, and also a pattern of behaviour? But for a cat it's just a pattern of behaviour?

That's not talking about their experience of sonar though? We can't talk much (sense) even about our own experiences, to someone who hasn't had such e...

Don't you think it's because of human-style language? Allows us to think in the abstract, frame hypotheses, think about the past and the future, etc e...

Same way you know Khaled.

Humans and other living organisms are special in this regard. The specialness comes about with the development of single-celled organisms, and results...

I may post some examples, but whether this is worthwhile will depend on your response to another question: Would you also hold that your own belief is...

Can an infant have a belief? Can a cat think?

By coincidence I am reading about exactly this amazing research right now, in an excellent book called The Idea of the Brain by Matthew Cobb. He is Pr...

Well I couldn't think of anything, which is why I asked, so maybe that's the answer.

My hypothesis is that I am conscious as the result of very specific and highly organised brain states, and computers, pianos, beaches and waves on the...

Didn't say anything about self-worth did I?

None of these "everything is X" explanations are any good Harry. As I said before, an explanation needs to tell us what is different about different a...

That's correct. I have been paying attention to what you've said, but I'm sorry to say a lot of it doesn't make sense. Because everything is informati...

Can I ask you to explain straightforwardly what your procedure is?

I tested my Perfect Pitch just now. https://audiomack.com/lune-en-papier/song/perfect-pitch

I don't like it because it doesn't explain anything. What we need is to find the differences between things. Waves on the sea, footprints on the beach...

No, I don't think so. The evidence with the tone languages suggests that it's the use of pitch per se that encourages the development of absolute pitc...

I read quite a lot about this topic recently but I have a poor memory and don't remember much of what I read. This is interesting though: I play jazz ...

Was that a mistake Harry?

Well explain where I'm going wrong then, please.

I've read it before. Is the summary in Wikipedia incorrect?

https://www.the-scientist.com/reading-frames/book-excerpt-from-the-idea-of-the-brain-67502 In the 1970s, British researcher John O’Keefe revealed that...

That seems harsh. My imaginary white coated specialist above has explained how those processes are accompanied by experience, so he's solved at least ...

I don't think the white coated specialists have exclusive access, but aren't they likely to be the ones who do provide the answer to the so-called "ha...

Hi Wayfarer, I've seen this said before, but I don't see the force of it. We can explain many aspects of consciousness, using our consciousnesses to e...

But we do know quite a lot about what it's doing, by looking at the activity and what is causing it.

The problem is that this approach explains nothing. What are footprints in the sand? Information. What is consciousness? Information. What is memory? ...

How do you go about drafting your messages here?

No, the amoeba isn't conscious. I was reading the other day about how a bacterium can swim towards a source of nutrition. It can tell when the concent...

All that is true and interesting, but the human capacities you mention are not criteria for consciousness. Other creatures are conscious, like my dog,...

"Inside" isn't really the right word. The mind is constituted by the state of the brain.

It's been said that a machine translation is like a jar of cookies, only 5 percent of which are poisoned.

Some time after his Chinese Room argument Searle wrote that the syntax of the digital computer is as observer dependent as the semantics. That is, the...

Neither is correct. These ideas are based on Cartesian Dualism, whereby the world is divided into exactly two realms, the physical and the mental, the...

This is absolutely hopeless stuff Fool my friend. The camera is not aware of anything in the way you are. It doesn't see anything. How can you have go...

I don't think this is right Bongo. The discussion here is about er conscious humans that are supposed to have illusions about their own consciousness....

So my dog's not conscious?

Then that explains nothing. The whole universe is cause and effect, but consciousness happens in individuated pockets. The "start of it" comes when th...

Was he saying that the sand on the beach (for example) was capable of cognition?

The paper perceives the meaning of your penstrokes and makes the correct words for you to read? And when you walk across the beach, the sand perceives...