I challenge you: your best alternate to materialism

[tsig]

And yet another point goes sailing over your head.

Or, rather, sailing over where your head would be if you were anywhere in the vicinity of the actual discussion taking place. But you're not. You're off in another room, ranting at thin air.

No one is addressing your claims about the "simplest state of existence", doron. No one cares.

Come back when you have a coherent definition.

This is like having a conversation with a new age random phrase generator that uses key words from the post to generate a reply.

 

[doronshadmi]

This is like having a conversation with a new age random phrase generator that uses key words from the post to generate a reply.

In your case this is exactly not having a conversation at all (yet) (http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10439158&postcount=1444).

Maybe you can start it from http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10440785&postcount=1481, who knows?

 

[Belz...]

Only if awareness if known only at the level of thoughts (http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10437465&postcount=1409).

Awareness at the level of thought.

Sounds about right.

You still haven't demonstrated that thought isn't material, by the way. That would be a crucial first step. If thoughts are material, there is no need for neutral monism.

 

[Belz...]

No, thoughts are only the multiple expression of direct awareness of the simplest state of existence, which transcends any variant phenomena including thoughts.

Unproven assertion.

So Mr. Belz... after all you have no case.

Again, Doron, you simply don't understand the things you post. The photon isn't being slowed down. It's been absorbed (destroyed) and re-emitted (created). That's the cause of the speed reduction. When the photon exists, it is at c.

Why do you have a problem with that ?

 

[Belz...]

I googled and read up - and I find nothing but contention and lack of consensus. So, it leaves me with 2 options, option 1, I accept there is a lack of consensus and in fact no claims of any workable theory of brain as computer (or definition of "is" as behavior), or option 2, I accept the bumper sticker wisdom of a few anonymous characters on one of many forums on the internet.

I'm sticking with Option 1.

That's odd because the first one I just looked up is:

Compute: to determine by calculation; reckon; calculate:

Yeah, that's exactly what the brain does.

Where, exactly, do you have a problem with the brain being a computer ?

 

[doronshadmi]

It's been absorbed (destroyed) and re-emitted (created).

Nonsense, the wave pattern of it was changed (as seen by the illustration in http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10441071&postcount=1487), nothing was destroyed or created.

As clearly has been said by the researcher:

"So we measure the speed of a single photon as it propagates." (its wave aspect was changed).

"And we find it's actually being slowed below the speed of light."

"But once that pattern has been imposed - even now the light is no longer in the mask, it's just propagating in free space [in vacuum] - the speed is still slow."

You simply ignore the wave-particle duality of a given photon, that can be changed form particle into wave form, and still it is a single photon.

Why do you have a problem with that (is it because you wrongly think that photons are like tiny objective billiard balls that their position and momentum are both accurately measured in the same time) ?

 

[Belz...]

Nonsense

Yes, I know you think reality is nonsense.

I'm fully aware of the particle-wave duality.

 

[Nonpareil]

This is like having a conversation with a new age random phrase generator that uses key words from the post to generate a reply.

And which keeps interjecting into other, more coherent discussions to claim that something not directed at it is wrong because it doesn't address its claims.

 

[doronshadmi]

Yes, I know you think reality is nonsense.

I'm fully aware of the particle-wave duality.

Dear Belz... you ignore the results of this research exactly because you are not fully aware of particle-wave duality.

 

[Belz...]

Dear Belz... you ignore the results of this research exactly because you are not fully aware of particle-wave duality.

No, it's because I understand it more than you. Your ignorance of all things physics is killing you, here.

You lose.

 

[Dancing David]

So a robot exhibiting all the behaviours of a human is self-conscious (not including the bodily functions)?

No, a robot exhibiting all the behaviors of self-consciousness is self conscious.

 

[LarryS]

No, a robot exhibiting all the behaviors of self-consciousness is self conscious.

I'm curious what you (and others here in this thread) mean by 'behaviors'? Do you mean specific testable behaviors like tests suggested by Tononi or Koch? Do you mean specific brain activity that we may be able to link with awareness in humans? The above too seem way too theory-laden (or healthy human biased)

Or, do you mean the 1st person behavior of self-consciousness?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Why is it everyone who discovers solipsism acts like they are the first one to ever think of it?

 

[Nonpareil]

I'm curious what you (and others here in this thread) mean by 'behaviors'? Do you mean specific testable behaviors like tests suggested by Tononi or Koch? Do you mean specific brain activity that we may be able to link with awareness in humans? The above too seem way too theory-laden (or healthy human biased)

Whatever qualities your definition of consciousness requires.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Listen you can't explain the third person subjective qualia of the experience of the duality of the nature of being with sprinkles without Woo.

 

[Nonpareil]

Listen you can't explain the third person subjective qualia of the experience of the duality of the nature of being with sprinkles without Woo.

You can if you eat the sprinkles.

 

[Belz...]

Why is it everyone who discovers solipsism acts like they are the first one to ever think of it?

+1.

 

[realpaladin]

^ Yup, +1 for being bang on the money.

 

[abaddon]

Why is it everyone who discovers solipsism acts like they are the first one to ever think of it?

I'm guessing it's because it has a certain seductive charm to some people when encountering it for the first time.

 

[punshhh]

That is exactly the point. You can't. There is no difference.

That may sound like a logical (or rational in some way) train of thought, but it is full of holes and smacks of the naivety of this sciencism based thinking.

Because, if something acts exactly in all situations as if it is self-conscious, it is self-conscious.

Fine, but it doesn't act exactly the same unless the hardware is the same. To say otherwise is to ignore the nature of the hardware and the intricacies of how that hardware performs (acts, or behaves) in the carrying out of the observed computation and to consider only the appearance of the behaviour which is perceived on the human scale, I.e the scale to which the sensory apparatus of the human body have developed over time. On other scales such as microscopic the behaviour is quite different in each potential class of hardware, which is forming the basis of the behaviour on the human scale. Meaning that the overall behaviour is different in each case, while appearing identical on the human scale.

Being "clones" or copies or whatever term you want to use has nothing to do with it. Being made of meat as opposed to metal has nothing to do with it. Having the same sensory apparatuses or not has nothing to do with it.

unfortunately you have just compounded the naivety I have just described.

It really is that simple.

It isn't that simple at all. I keep dropping in different problems with this conclusion and you just ignore them or brush them aside as irrelevancies, while repeating the same unsupported mantra.