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Thok
Oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
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 Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 5:59 pm Post subject: 41 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| But from having the experiences alone, without seeing the physical things going on inside, while having the red, green and blue experiences, she does not know which is which. |
Only because you don't allow Mary to be able to detect/test the physical communication of her eyes with her brain. So yes, when you deny Mary a physical aspect, she can't detect something. That doesn't require subjective experience to be true.
Basically red/green/blue end up being shorthand for "my cornea encode this light wave signal in this manner to my brain.
| Quote: |
| If I'm measuring my own brain waves against when I say I'm having subjective experiences, what will that tell me about a significantly different kind of system (an alien, or a robot) that behaves similarly to how I behave. |
I hope you never have to try to communicate with somebody in a foreign language. They won't be speaking English, and it won't be possible for you to translate their vocabulary into something that resembles English, since how can you be sure their behavior reflects your own?
(For a less strawmanny argument, once you have a some idea what sentience actually is, you try to abstract it away from brain waves into a more general model, and then see if there are other complex system that the more general model will apply to. See for example gravity: a simple example involving an apple falling from a tree is eventually abstracted to all matter, even though most matter doesn't have the same structure as an apple.) |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 6:17 pm Post subject: 42 |
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| Thok wrote: |
| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| But from having the experiences alone, without seeing the physical things going on inside, while having the red, green and blue experiences, she does not know which is which. |
Only because you don't allow Mary to be able to detect/test the physical communication of her eyes with her brain. So yes, when you deny Mary a physical aspect, she can't detect something. That doesn't require subjective experience to be true.
Basically red/green/blue end up being shorthand for "my cornea encode this light wave signal in this manner to my brain. |
Sorry, I've no idea what your saying. Unless you're just denying there are the subjective experiences of colors, in which case again, I know I have them. Or unless you're affirming that yes, the nature of the subjective experience can't be understood from knowing all the physical facts that allegedly produce it (which is the whole point of the thought experiment).
| Thok wrote: |
| Quote: |
| If I'm measuring my own brain waves against when I say I'm having subjective experiences, what will that tell me about a significantly different kind of system (an alien, or a robot) that behaves similarly to how I behave. |
I hope you never have to try to communicate with somebody in a foreign language. They won't be speaking English, and it won't be possible for you to translate their vocabulary into something that resembles English, since how can you be sure their behavior reflects your own? |
I don't see your point.
| Thok wrote: |
| (For a less strawmanny argument,... |
OK, I didn't see point because there wasn't one? Let's go for non-strawmanny.
| Thok wrote: |
| ... once you have a some idea what sentience actually is, ... |
Meaning? What it correlates to, physically? How? Isn't that the crux of the problem?
| Thok wrote: |
| ... you try to abstract it away from brain waves into a more general model, and then see if there are other complex system that the more general model will apply to. |
But I have no way to know if it applies, as I can't observe whether any other systems are sentient.
| Thok wrote: |
| See for example gravity: a simple example involving an apple falling from a tree is eventually abstracted to all matter, even though most matter doesn't have the same structure as an apple.) |
But I can easily observe that other matter is the same as the apple with respect to gravity. Not so with sentience. |
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Thok
Oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 6:53 pm Post subject: 43 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| Sorry, I've no idea what your saying. Unless you're just denying there are the subjective experiences of colors, in which case again, I know I have them. Or unless you're affirming that yes, the nature of the subjective experience can't be understood from knowing all the physical facts that allegedly produce it (which is the whole point of the thought experiment). |
I'm claiming that your subjective experience of color is really an physical experience that your brain has simplified into something you consider subjective.
When you see red and think it is pretty, what's really going on is an extremely complicated system of neurons being fired, hormones being released, muscles being extended or retracted, and other chemical processes; moreover, your body and brain is continuously reacting to all of these reactions. The "subjective experience" is just a simplification of this complicated process, because it is extremely unproductive to track every single reaction your body has; "Red is pretty" is a fairly good summary of the process. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 8:21 pm Post subject: 44 |
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| Thok wrote: |
| I'm claiming that your subjective experience of color is really an physical experience that your brain has simplified into something you consider subjective. |
When you say "consider" subjective ... this is not a naive conclusion. The naive (primitive man's) conclusion would likely be that the redness is out there, in the world, something of the apple or the blood or whatever thing in the world is being seen as red.
Second, that simplification must be a physical process, however simple or complex, which in the end produces something physical which correlates to the subjective experience.
To say that physical something IS the subjective experience calls greatly into question what you mean by "is". It also takes us no closer to saying whether or not any or every other physical something, similar or not, IS a subjective experience.
| Thok wrote: |
| When you see red and think it is pretty, what's really going on is an extremely complicated system of neurons being fired, hormones being released, muscles being extended or retracted, and other chemical processes; moreover, your body and brain is continuously reacting to all of these reactions. The "subjective experience" is just a simplification of this complicated process, because it is extremely unproductive to track every single reaction your body has; "Red is pretty" is a fairly good summary of the process. |
There's nothing there I couldn't program a computer to do. "red is pretty" is a subjective opinion about an experience. There need not be an opinion for there to be an experience, and there need not be any subjective experience to produce the above described behavior. |
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Thok
Oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 8:42 pm Post subject: 45 |
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| Quote: |
| To say that physical something IS the subjective experience calls greatly into question what you mean by "is". It also takes us no closer to saying whether or not any or every other physical something, similar or not, IS a subjective experience. |
I'm saying the subjective experience is the output of the physical process that simplifies the much more complicated physical process.
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| There's nothing there I couldn't program a computer to do. |
So? I don't see why this is an issue. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 9:08 pm Post subject: 46 |
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| Thok wrote: |
| I'm saying the subjective experience is the output of the physical process that simplifies the much more complicated physical process. |
So we can discard all that complex stuff that came before and just look at the physical representation of the output. How is it perceived as a subjective experience of redness?
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| Quote: |
| There's nothing there I couldn't program a computer to do. |
So? I don't see why this is an issue. |
Because I've no more reason to believe the computer has something like my subjective experiences of colors than I do to believe my car does. |
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BraveHat
Last of the Daedalians
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 9:11 pm Post subject: 47 |
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| Zag wrote: |
| I wrote: |
| But since there can be absolutely no scientific evidence that the processes of the central nervous system is connected to a subjective experience of them, one has to assume a connection to come up with that definition, which was the point of the beanbag/child example. |
Huh? It's very easy to show the connection. Cut your optic nerve, and you'll stop experiencing redness. Cut your spinal column and you'll stop experiencing pain in a whole lot of your body. |
Don't forget that I defined the conditional before assenting in my original post:
| I, in the original post, wrote: |
| Extro, if we take the term "evidence" to mean specifically scientific evidence, or evidence that can be intersubjectively verified, a term you expounded upon in the thread, then I readily agree with the your first two premises... |
By "scientific", I was specifically talking about intersubjectively verifiable evidence. Of course there is subjective evidence to me of connections between the processes of my body and my subjective experiences, but since I can't prove that to anyone else, it is not evidence that fits the agreed-upon criterion.
Now, I have knowledge that I am sentient. Whether or you not want to call that knowledge faith or anything else, and whether or not you are interested in it, is beside the point. The point is only that I agree with extro on his two points that my knowledge of my own sentience is both true and unable to be intersubjectively verified.
| Zag wrote: |
| You act as though you've demonstrated that experiencing pain is something more than the neurons firing which indicate pain to what you refer to as your consciousness. You haven't. |
Why would I need to demonstrate that, if it can't even be demonstrated (scientifically) that I even have a consciousness? I know I do, but I certainly can't demonstrate that. Obviously, from my subjective point of view, the experience of the firing neurons is more than just knowing about them, it's actually feeling them. But from a scientific point of view of view, there is no feeling involved, only knowledge.
| Zag wrote: |
| There's a whole spectrum of sentience. It's much easier to relate to in, say, chimpanzees who exhibit communal grooming. But the fact that a fly will fly off when something large is slamming towards it is the same basic sentience that you imagine that you experience, just a simpler form. The fly's reaction is something that we can pretty completely explain with the organic chemistry of its body. The fact that yours is many orders of magnitude more complex does not mean that it is a fundamentally different thing. It's just more complex. |
You are just comparing behaviors and processes, not experiences. No one can possibly have intersubjectively verifiable data on what it's like to be that fly flying off.
| Thok wrote: |
| ust for the record, would you consider somebody with multiple personality disorder to potentially have multiple version of sentience, or just one? |
I wouldn't know how to quantify sentience, since it has no clear boundaries. I don't even understanding the meaning of the phrase "multiple versions of sentience"??
| extro wrote: |
| I wrote: |
| Since there is no scientific evidence tying sentience to any physical processes or conditions, I contend that the simplest description if sentience is that it exists here |
"here" meaning ...? Pure solipsism, you and you alone have sentience? |
No, meaning I have sentience, without supposing anything else does or doesn't. This is the simplest scientific description. It doesn't get me very far, but that only means science can't get me very far with it. A description that is not falsifiable is not scientific. There is no way to conduct experiments whose conclusions support or deny the postulation that everything has sentience. Neither can we scientifically support or deny that only I have sentience, or that only things that process information have sentience, or any other description. The only description that is scientific is a reiteration of the observation, namely that I have sentience. Or sentience is "here". Here, meaning, at least in the presence of the observer. This contention would be solipsism if I was completely relying on science for everything I believe to be true. Thankfully, I'm not.
| extro wrote: |
| So then, given the unique circumstances of your observation of sentience, wherein regardless of whether there is a correlation between it and you, it and humans, it and things with DNA, it and things that "process information", or no correlation between it and anything more than between it and anything else ... wherein regardless of whatever possibility, you could only possibly observe sentience in yourself, from this you would deduce, among all the possible kinds of correlations between sentience and something, and there being no possible explanation for such a correlation (not simply no known explanation), which would you conclude most likely to be correct? |
Scientifically speaking, there is absolutely no grounds for determining likelihood of one over the other. "Here" means "at least where the observer is". You seem to want to categorize sentience as a property of an object, like mass or density, but the impossibility of tying it to any physical component makes that use of it absurd. Who's to say that my brain, for instance, doesn't have it's own subjective experiences apart from "mine". To say "I have sentience" makes use of an ill-defined "I". What is "I"? My body? Parts of my body? My brain? A part of my brain? Where exactly is my consciousness? There can never be a clear intersubjectively verifiable answer to that question. I think what Zag has an issue with, is your attempt to use sentience, in the specific way we're defining it, as a subject of scientific inquiry. It can't be used as a such. It is merely an observation that can't be expounded upon scientifically. Any "simplest description" of it serves no scientific purpose.
_________________
"I am declaring it a terrible tragedy for me to die. You may disagree..." --Antrax |
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Chuck
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 9:26 pm Post subject: 48 |
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| Yes! I have no reason to believe that sentience isn't everywhere and, since I have no reason to believe it's tied to the physical world, I have no reason to believe it's not all identical. After all, what would cause it to be different from place to place? So sentience is everywhere and it's all copies of mine. I'm everywhere. I'm immortal. I'm God. |
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BraveHat
Last of the Daedalians
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 9:36 pm Post subject: 49 |
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No scientific reason. Scientific. I meant for that post to illustrate the limits of science, rather than the probability of Chuck's divinity (which I'm sure is very probable nonetheless, but that's because of subjective experience)
_________________
"I am declaring it a terrible tragedy for me to die. You may disagree..." --Antrax |
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Thok
Oh, foe, the cursed teeth!
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 9:42 pm Post subject: 50 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| Because I've no more reason to believe the computer has something like my subjective experiences of colors than I do to believe my car does. |
Obviously, your car and computer aren't sufficiently advanced enough to have subjective experience of color. Start programming; I expect something by the end of the year.
| Quote: |
| So we can discard all that complex stuff that came before and just look at the physical representation of the output. How is it perceived as a subjective experience of redness? |
Your brain has some ROM-like area to store current memories, and connect them with previous memories and language processing. Which can again be treated as a physical process. So yeah. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 9:52 pm Post subject: 51 |
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| Quote: |
| I think what Zag has an issue with, is your attempt to use sentience, in the specific way we're defining it, as a subject of scientific inquiry. It can't be used as a such. |
I'm out all day on responding via iPhone, which is painful at length, but my impression is more that Zag believes if it's not subject to scientific inquiry, it isn't part of reality. I've made clear it isn't subject to scientific inquiry, at least not without a radical modification of what we mean by scientific ... but it is absolutely real, and if one wants to understand reality, one does not discard the nature of sentience from consideration. It is real, and how it fits in with everything else that is real (which is subject to scientific inquiry) is still subject to reasoned consideration. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 10:36 pm Post subject: 52 |
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| Thok wrote: |
| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| Because I've no more reason to believe the computer has something like my subjective experiences of colors than I do to believe my car does. |
Obviously, your car and computer aren't sufficiently advanced enough to have subjective experience of color. Start programming; I expect something by the end of the year. |
You described a kind of behavior and processing, I said I can program a computer to emulate it, and you said "so?" ... And that you don't see an issue with that. So I need not demonstrate. But if I were to demonstrate a computer, with peripherals, having subjective experience of color, what sort of test would you use to determine if I had succeeded?
| Quote: |
| Quote: |
| How is it perceived as a subjective experience of redness? |
Your brain has some ROM-like area to store current memories, and connect them with previous memories and language processing. Which can again be treated as a physical process. So yeah. |
How is it perceived as a subjective experience of redness? Were you answering that? |
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BraveHat
Last of the Daedalians
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 10:47 pm Post subject: 53 |
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| extro wrote: |
| I've made clear it isn't subject to scientific inquiry, at least not without a radical modification of what we mean by scientific... |
Great! Then I can settle the dispute right now:
Zag: Generally, the scientific search for truth says to find the simplest description of reality that fits observable phenomena.
Extro: Regarding the truth that sentience exists in the universe, and the lack of any evidence tying it to any particular physical processes or conditions, wouldn't the simplest description be that sentience exists everywhere?
Me: That isn't relevant to what Zag is talking about, which is the scientific search for truth.
The End.
Tangent:
| extro wrote: |
| It is real, and how it fits in with everything else that is real (which is subject to scientific inquiry) is still subject to reasoned consideration. |
Completely agree, but what is your reasoned consideration for thinking that sentience exists in all things? The "simplest explanation" is useful in scientific inquiry, but now that we've eschewed science as a foundation, what is the reasoning behind considering omnipresent sentience as your model of reality? The following is my reasoned consideration for thinking that sentience exists in things similar to me:
1. I have sentience
2. I have a body
3. Every time certain things happen to my body, the character of my sentience is effected. (example: every time I press an ice cube to my face, I have a subjective experience of coldness)
4. I can reasonably conclude from 3 that physical processes and conditions which are subject to scientific study are connected to my sentience.
5. Everytime I have certain subjective experiences, my body reacts in certain ways (example: every time I have an experience of extreme hopelessness, my eyes get teary)
6. I can reasonably conclude from 5 that my sentience is connected to certain physical processes and conditions which are subject to scientific study.
7. Since I can reasonably conclude both that certain physical processes and conditions which are subject to scientific study are connected to my sentience and that my sentience is connected to certain physical processes and conditions which are subject to scientific study, I can reasonably conclude that similar processes and conditions are connected to sentience and that sentience is connected to similar processes and conditions.
8. Bodies like mine exhibit similar processes and conditions.
9. I can reasonably conclude from 7 & 8 that bodies similar to mine are connected to sentience and that sentience is connected to bodies similar to mine.
A rock does not exhibit any process or condition similar to processes or conditions that consistently cause me to have certain subjective experiences, so what cause do I have to assume a rock is sentient?
_________________
"I am declaring it a terrible tragedy for me to die. You may disagree..." --Antrax |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Sun May 06, 2012 2:41 am Post subject: 54 |
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| BraveHat wrote: |
| That isn't relevant to what Zag is talking about, which is the scientific search for truth. |
But there was the suggestion that anything not amenable to scientific investigation is not real.
| BraveHat wrote: |
| ... what is your reasoned consideration for thinking that sentience exists in all things? The "simplest explanation" is useful in scientific inquiry, but now that we've eschewed science as a foundation, what is the reasoning behind considering omnipresent sentience as your model of reality? |
We haven't eschewed scientific inquiry, but noted that sentience is not intersubjectively verifiable, thus in that one regard, not amenable to pure scientific inquiry. There is nothing to suggest we should toss Occam's razor aside when intersubjective verifiability fails.
| BraveHat wrote: |
The following is my reasoned consideration for thinking that sentience exists in things similar to me:
1. I have sentience
2. I have a body
3. Every time certain things happen to my body, the character of my sentience is effected. (example: every time I press an ice cube to my face, I have a subjective experience of coldness)
4. I can reasonably conclude from 3 that physical processes and conditions which are subject to scientific study are connected to my sentience.
5. Everytime I have certain subjective experiences, my body reacts in certain ways (example: every time I have an experience of extreme hopelessness, my eyes get teary)
6. I can reasonably conclude from 5 that my sentience is connected to certain physical processes and conditions which are subject to scientific study. |
If by "is connected to" you mean "has an affect on", then we addressed this before, here: http://www.greylabyrinth.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=6810&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=535
and here:
http://greylabyrinth.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=6810&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=555
and probably places in between.
Question: Do subjective experiences, which can't be described or objectively detected or measured, affect physical processes? Not necessarily.
Certainly, all physical processes can be observed (in principle), and a purely physical scientific view would be that we can see what causes what. I don't believe we'll ever see that violated. But if the answer to the question is yes, then we should be able to observe things happening for which we see no cause.
On the other hand, if the answer is no, that subjective experiences have no effect on physical processes, then it's peculiar that I have the sense that the things I say about my subjective experiences ("saying things" being a physical process) are consistent with those experiences.
| BraveHat wrote: |
7. Since I can reasonably conclude both that certain physical processes and conditions which are subject to scientific study are connected to my sentience and that my sentience is connected to certain physical processes and conditions which are subject to scientific study, I can reasonably conclude that similar processes and conditions are connected to sentience and that sentience is connected to similar processes and conditions.
8. Bodies like mine exhibit similar processes and conditions.
9. I can reasonably conclude from 7 & 8 that bodies similar to mine are connected to sentience and that sentience is connected to bodies similar to mine.
A rock does not exhibit any process or condition similar to processes or conditions that consistently cause me to have certain subjective experiences, so what cause do I have to assume a rock is sentient? |
Regarding: "any process or condition similar to processes or conditions that consistently cause me to have certain subjective experiences" ... You only observe a connection here because of the accident that you are in a unique position to know you have subjective experiences.
| here, extropalopakettle wrote: |
I've tested one object for a given property - no more than one. It tests positive. I've no sensible theory that would suggest why that property might correlate with other properties of that object, such that I could expect that property more likely to be present in objects that have those other properties. It is reasonable to wonder what other objects have this property. The possible conjectures are:
1) Only the tested object. Highly impropbable.
2) Only similar objects. But I have not the vaguest theory that suggests a reason between the one property and all the others by which similar objects are similar.
3) All objects.
4) ??? |
You wrote earlier:
| Quote: |
| You seem to want to categorize sentience as a property of an object, like mass or density, but the impossibility of tying it to any physical component makes that use of it absurd. Who's to say that my brain, for instance, doesn't have it's own subjective experiences apart from "mine". To say "I have sentience" makes use of an ill-defined "I". What is "I"? My body? Parts of my body? My brain? A part of my brain? Where exactly is my consciousness? |
I agree with all the questions here. I don't suggest a rock has sentience, in the sense of a sense of being an "I" that is the subject experiencing something. And I hope it's abundanytly clear there's no suggestion sentience implies awareness of surroundings. In humans, these are seperate things. Awareness of surroundings (in one sense of "awareness - we discussed the two radically different senses of the word) is important for biological organisms, and is effected through complex systems that are the product of evolution. Our subjective experiences are of states or processes within that system. I don't agree with the first sentence. For instance:
| here, extropalopakettle wrote: |
Perhaps space itself is sentient, and "I" is a subjective experience space is having when occupied by matter (my brain) that is building a model of an "I" within a model of a world.
When I suggest perhaps nothing is non-sentient, I hope it's obvious I don't mean a rock is aware of it's surroundings. But is the space occupied by the rock aware of the state of that space - some subjective experience of mass, etc, and/or whatever is associated with the matter of the rock? |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Sun May 06, 2012 3:03 am Post subject: 55 |
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From an evolutionary perspective, if subjective experience is "special", in the sense of that it requires special complex systems like brains to produce it, and it isn't purely an accident that brains that produce the right behavior for survival also happen to produce sentience, then sentience must in some way affect behavior, for evolution to select for structures that give rise to sentience.
But how can sentience affect behavior? That would suggest that when we look at how the brain functions, we see non-physical causes - things that can't be explained.
| extropalopakettle wrote: |
Now, the truth is, I'm not sold on epiphenomenalism. I alluded to that here, in post 468
| extro...* wrote: |
| And I've noted before that we happen to live in a world where the so-called "butterfly effect" reigns supreme. Our physical existence was determined by random mutations (and selection). Randomness at the microscopic level (the only level where true randomness exists) has a great effect on things at the macroscopic level. But physical randomness is an untestable hypothesis. If I record the timings of decay of each of a number of atoms of radioactive isotopes, or any other physically random events, I only see that they conform to randomness in a statistical way. Out of the countless number of sequences that conform to randomness statistically, if I carefully choose one to suit my needs, it isn't random. |
That last sentence is saying, essentially, IF sentience affects the physical, it could in principle do without leaving evidence of anything but randomness. There are microscopic quantum level random events occurring in our brain, as elsewhere in the universe, that completely alter the outcome of macroscopic events.
This touches on the notion of free will, which, like sentience, we have no evidence for.
If physical process A deterministically causes subjective experience B, which in turn deterministically causes physical process D, and we have no way to see B, then objectively, it appears as if physical process A determinstically causes physical process D.
But now suppose physical process A deterministically causes subjective experience B, to which there is some "free will" response affecting microscopic random event C, which in turn deterministically causes physical process D. We have no way to see B, or to detect C as anything but random. We see A influencing D, but with some random contribution to the causal link between A and D.
However, that's all hypothetical, and could never be shown to be the case. But it would at least be consistent with a sometimes compelling sense that sentience, subjective experience, in all it's vivid brilliance, must serve some purpose, and not be purely an inconsequential epiphenomenon.
And again, if that's what "mind" is - this consciousness of subjective experience, which can't be detected, which arise from the physical, though not pure epiphenomena, but coupled with some sort of "free will" that is an actual cause behind what theory says are, and what can't be detected as other than, random events at a microscopic level, that affect macroscopic outcomes - if that's what mind is, in all that, there's absolutely not a thing to suggest it's limited to living things. |
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Deception
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Sun May 06, 2012 4:10 am Post subject: 56 |
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| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| There's nothing there I couldn't program a computer to do. "red is pretty" is a subjective opinion about an experience. There need not be an opinion for there to be an experience, and there need not be any subjective experience to produce the above described behavior. |
Do you think that the way the neurons in your brain fire and the way that hormones are released in your body which precede you saying "red is pretty" after seeing red for the first time could cause any feeling other than "red is pretty"? |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Sun May 06, 2012 4:43 am Post subject: 57 |
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| Deception wrote: |
| extropalopakettle wrote: |
| There's nothing there I couldn't program a computer to do. "red is pretty" is a subjective opinion about an experience. There need not be an opinion for there to be an experience, and there need not be any subjective experience to produce the above described behavior. |
Do you think that the way the neurons in your brain fire and the way that hormones are released in your body which precede you saying "red is pretty" after seeing red for the first time could cause any feeling other than "red is pretty"? |
I believe subjective experiences are probably determined (or very largely so) by certain physical things, if that's the question. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Sun May 06, 2012 2:50 pm Post subject: 58 |
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Wow, hard to believe this was nearly ten years ago. Time flies. Discussion about consciousness in the context of evolution. It's a bit difficult to read at points due to weird nested quote formatting, and participants jumping in late with the usual confusion between consciousness and behavior well after it was cleared up for other participants.
Starts here on page 4, post 127:
| here, Mikko wrote: |
| What is the evolutionary explanation for consciousness? |
Ends somewhere around here on page 8, post 288:
| here, BraveHat wrote: |
| I believe in a universal consciousness. ... |
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