Jul 3, 2020 07:26 PM
(This post was last modified: Jul 4, 2020 04:23 AM by C C.)
BACKGROUND: the hard problem of consciousness.
Thoughts on the Hard Problem
https://evolvingthoughts.net/2020/06/30/...rd-problem
EXCERPT: . . . These presuppositions are automatically assumed to be real; after all, we all have experiences of the world, of being ourselves and not someone else. We all have a phenomenologically unique state of awareness of ourselves. Nobody could deny their reality, right? Hold my beer…
I want to suggest three things:
- - -
Alter Ego / Devil's Advocate: Looks basically like more denial of sensations and thoughts having manifestations. Would have expected more from John S. Wilkins than jumping on a fashionable, lunatic bandwagon.
This is what Eric Schwitzgebel calls the "inflate & explode" tactic of eliminativists, illusionists, phenomenal nihilists, etc. Where the self-evident experiences or manifestations of vision, hearing, touch, smell, etc are erroneously conflated with a particular scholar's conception or description of consciousness. If the latter has vulnerabilities, then so does your consciousness (or the latter goes down the drain along with the former).
As a figurative example, in the 19th century William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) proposed that the sun’s heat was produced by the impact of meteors continually falling onto its surface. Now imagine that because his conception of the sun was incorrect, judged faulty, etc -- that the sun itself was dismissed afterward as imaginary. Which is to say, science would never move on to nuclear fusion as an explanation, due to the sun being pronounced as no more valid than Lord Kelvin's way of describing the solar situation.
In Wilkins' case here (which is pretty typical) he flits about conflating consciousness with various "definitions" or word constructs of the past/present, which he either criticizes or feeds from, and then suggests that the focus of the hard problem (experience) is itself just an illusionary figment of language or whatever nonsense. (When you stub your toe, does the pain feel like a religious belief? When you watch a sunset, is that really nothingness masquerading as something?)
Since verification of any object or circumstance depends upon vision, hearing, sight, touch, etc having exhibited content (even symbols and language of reasoning/arguments depend upon being manifested!) -- then declaring that the content actually isn't there as an internal state of brain processes, etc (nothing more than invisible matter as usual) sets up the consequence of all knowledge being potentially fictional or unconfirmed. As if the offshoots of postmodernism needed more craziness to grab and run off with to undermine WEIRD civilization.
Thoughts on the Hard Problem
https://evolvingthoughts.net/2020/06/30/...rd-problem
EXCERPT: . . . These presuppositions are automatically assumed to be real; after all, we all have experiences of the world, of being ourselves and not someone else. We all have a phenomenologically unique state of awareness of ourselves. Nobody could deny their reality, right? Hold my beer…
I want to suggest three things:
- There is no reality to these experiences
- They are just names for perspectives
- Substantive nouns for processes is where we get confused
- - -
Alter Ego / Devil's Advocate: Looks basically like more denial of sensations and thoughts having manifestations. Would have expected more from John S. Wilkins than jumping on a fashionable, lunatic bandwagon.
This is what Eric Schwitzgebel calls the "inflate & explode" tactic of eliminativists, illusionists, phenomenal nihilists, etc. Where the self-evident experiences or manifestations of vision, hearing, touch, smell, etc are erroneously conflated with a particular scholar's conception or description of consciousness. If the latter has vulnerabilities, then so does your consciousness (or the latter goes down the drain along with the former).
As a figurative example, in the 19th century William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) proposed that the sun’s heat was produced by the impact of meteors continually falling onto its surface. Now imagine that because his conception of the sun was incorrect, judged faulty, etc -- that the sun itself was dismissed afterward as imaginary. Which is to say, science would never move on to nuclear fusion as an explanation, due to the sun being pronounced as no more valid than Lord Kelvin's way of describing the solar situation.
In Wilkins' case here (which is pretty typical) he flits about conflating consciousness with various "definitions" or word constructs of the past/present, which he either criticizes or feeds from, and then suggests that the focus of the hard problem (experience) is itself just an illusionary figment of language or whatever nonsense. (When you stub your toe, does the pain feel like a religious belief? When you watch a sunset, is that really nothingness masquerading as something?)
Since verification of any object or circumstance depends upon vision, hearing, sight, touch, etc having exhibited content (even symbols and language of reasoning/arguments depend upon being manifested!) -- then declaring that the content actually isn't there as an internal state of brain processes, etc (nothing more than invisible matter as usual) sets up the consequence of all knowledge being potentially fictional or unconfirmed. As if the offshoots of postmodernism needed more craziness to grab and run off with to undermine WEIRD civilization.
