And therein lies the rub. If you acknowledge it as problematic you risk being called a mysterian :biggrin:
But hey...that's okay, it's all simply some folk psychology illusions you have to punch through before you are free from such burdens of thought :wink:
What is there to reconcile? Obviously Idealism is the only tenable position :smile:
I have met people at college who support ideas that there are simply no subjective parts to explain to begin with, nor any thing that is not purely materialistic and can be understood with time. I try to...
In many situations people can cheat to get ahead -- whether it involves stealing, lying or things of that nature -- they can do this and in many situations know that they can "get away with it" and yet do not act in that way.
Why? And does this conflict with your last statement as quoted?
I would not. I like who and what I am (mistakes and all). I am not interested in the transhumanist efforts.
I am a skeptic and do not believe a complete TOE will ever be produced.
They would make mistakes with an exponentially far greater set of repercussions above and beyond a factor of 1...
Not relevant? That really depends on your perspective. I happen to think it is quite relevant for my life. It affects how I perceive the world and I think it has a large impact on how I live my life and questions of 'certainty' and 'truth'. My entire world view is hardly made up of my...
We have a knack to dismiss it as silly because it downright scares us to truly consider it and the implications. I used to be terrified of the concept and would get a panic attack just thinking about it.
However it remains one of the most important concepts in philosophy (particularly...
Reality is not objective (in many senses).
#1 Not objective because I don't think you will find total agreement for what this thread comes up with.
#2 Because everyone's experience and belief systems are different.
#3 Because we don't have a god's-eye view to sufficiently say what it is or...
I would say that basing belief of others' consciousness based on behaviorism breaks down with a much simpler argument: if we sufficiently programmed a humanoid-like (appearance wise) robot that was intelligent but without any consciousness. From a behavioral standpoint it does all it needs to...
Can we rule out Thor?
Anyways:
1.) I for one do not accept the 'traditional conception of consciousness based on chemistry and electrical signals'.
2.) I absolutely do not accept consciousness as a computation -- while a programmer (or team of programmers) could instantiate something...
If the simulation itself is just manipulating your senses (brain in a vat) then in fact you might reason that something was off. The amount of time depends on when you 'entered' the simulation, though (at what age) as it perhaps might be able to sufficiently fool your reasoning abilities from...
What makes you think / take the step between 'have' and existence? Same goes for the step of thinking -> existence in terms of Descartes' quote. That is just what most people 'believe' with common sense, but can they prove absolutely that one depends on the other?
That could go back into an...
*snip*
Is the visual perception used to gather scientific data and to ‘learn’ the rules of reasoning not a series of ‘experiences’ much like that meets that the definition of a certain subset of the so-called 'qualia'? Are the words we read off of paper, computer monitors and elsewhere not...