And I'm saying that that is nonsense. My position would be that the sentence "The brain is programmed to behave as though life is happening to someone" is actually comprehensible to most people and means just what it says. Though I would agree that using the term consciousness or awareness in place of life is actually a better option to get things more clear.
There was no argument about it being comprehensible. The point was about how meaningful the point was.
What others have posted in the past is up to them. This is what I'm saying... No woo. No soul. No spirit. And absolutely no observing self.
Which takes us back to the questions, yet again, of what your definition of an "observing self" is, whether we should accept your definition, and whether it would actually have the implications you're claiming it has. So far, based on what you've said and described about the answer to the first one, the answer to the second and third seem to be very clearly "no."
Still, feel free to try to enlighten me about what you think are the actual criteria that generally makes something an "observing self" and why it supposedly cannot be the case under materialism, without invoking something like a soul or spirit.
Aridas,
Do you believe that someone is reading this post? That there is an observing self called Aridas that is doing the reading?
If you answer No, then all cool. What are we really discussing?
If you answer Yes, then hopefully you can get a glimpse of what materialism is up against here. Instinctual Blindness.
For all
useful and meaningful versions of the words "someone," "observing self," and the like, the answer is clearly yes, despite your attempt to hand wave that away as "Instinctual Blindness." Why would we accept an utterly useless definition in the place of a useful one, when the utterly useless definition is only being pushed as one part of an attempt to add a thin veneer of validity to blatant fallacy?
Frankly, to be clear, an AI that could "understand" the data and meaning in the post would very certainly count as an observer and potentially also an observing self under materialism, with all the related implications.
No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm not denying the validity of any perceived phenomena. I'm pointing out that the observer does not actually fit into any category of conscious phenomena.
If we use Ned Block's terms, phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness, I'm saying that this observer does not exist in either. What exists is the sense that it exists. What exists is the belief that it exists. What exists is the behaviour as though it exists.
The observer is akin to an unexamined assumption.
For most purposes, social and survival purposes, this does not matter. Having the belief and behaviour of an observer, or an experiencer, are fine. Just believing and behaving a certain way can get the job done.
But when you try to establish the actual veracity of scientific method you need to take into account the actual absence of an observer. It means that objectivity does not actually exist. There are no actual subject-object boundaries because there is no actual subject.
No. More specifically, for your argument here to have any value, we would have to accept your implicit special pleading. There certainly are basic assumptions that people are required to make, yes. Such applies to everything related to our fundamentally subjective experiences, not just the scientific method. Any and all remarks about the scientific method, specifically, can only have any actual meaningfulness when one is already past that level. What you're doing here is nothing more than trying to misapply concepts by and while making empty assertions.
Well, this would all be just great and wonderful, bar at least 3 problems...
* an observing self cannot exist under monist materialism. You are thrown straight into dualism, at least property dualism.
Which begs the question of why you're bringing up
materialism monism as somehow relevant in the first place?
* various researchers have pointed out just how the brain creates a sense of personal self via illusion - see Dennett and Blackmore particularly
And? What, exactly, do you think that consciousness is considered by materialists? Something with a distinct physical form of its own, a particular kind of emergent property from a whole lot of rather complex processes, or something else?
* the construction of this sense of an observer can be subjectively witnessed. So your position becomes rather like that of a small child insisting that rabbits can materialise out of thin air, because he's attending a magic show. Once you can spot that the magician has a rabbit up his sleeve, the magic is over.
This... is just you repeating an empty assertion, yet again. Repeating it without actually backing it up meaningfully isn't going to help your case.
Matter can and does produce thoughts. They're not being experienced by anyone.
Again, this is just you continuing to assert that something that fits the definition of the word "person" is not a "person" on the basis of... "because I said so." You could, of course, try to back it up by redefining "experiencing" here to something rather irrelevant to your purposes here, but you're not likely to convince anyone to agree with you about the implications you want it to have.
The Observer is the brain's internalised reflection of God.
In assigning inside and outside so it created a watcher on the outside and a watcher on the inside.
Scientists have largely dealt with the watcher on the outside. But they must still bow and scrape daily to the idea of a watcher on the inside, for fear their travails might lose all meaning...
You should probably do a little introspection when you look back at this post, Nick227. This kind of post is generally a huge red flag when it comes to evaluating how trustworthy the poster is and will generally do far more to convince people that you shouldn't be trusted at all than it will convince them that you actually understand what you're talking about.
Commenting on something noticed is a form of observation.
A potential result of observation, rather than observation itself. Evidence that observation occurred, yes, the observation itself, not so much.
Either way, that's enough of this, for now.
