/lit/ - Literature

fucking moron

>>16679182
Fpbp

>>16679135
Based and naturalpilled, except for the "tiny robots" analogy.

>>16679135
I don't understand how someone like Dennett can spend decades thinking about consciousness and the brain and still believe this nonsense. Fpbp

>>16679182
okay. go ahead and define "soul" from a metaphysical perspective, then. surely you know what you're talking about.

>>16679199
Saying that you don't operate under a metaphysical perspective is like saying that you don't have an accent.

dennett loves to reify a functionalist description of consciousness as if it's an ontological entity, begging the question instead of answering it, and then when pressed, deny the reality of even that "entity" by claiming it's actually made up of smaller, non-conscious, material entities

how can someone with so little to say about, and so little INTEREST in, the problem of consciousness have written so many fucking books about it?

it's like if i wrote two dozen books on what gravity ultimately is and why it works the way it does, and i just kept saying "sometimes stuff can act on other stuff at a distance." and when someone told me this is a description and not an explanation, i only ever responded "haha idk stuff is just stuff and moves around sometimes i guess, are you some kind of kook who believes in spooky 'metaphysical' things like laws of physics?"

>>16679216
okay. let's say we all take a metaphysical stance on existence. go ahead and explain to me what a "soul" is if it isn't a bunch of neurons.

>anime poster
>brainlet
checks out

>>16679182
fpbp

>>16679232
it's because he's p-zombie

>>16679135

>>16679135
Yikes dude I'm dumb as rocks beautiful even i know thats stupid
Just because animals don't communicate their knowledge of being their species does not mean they are not aware they are their species

>>16679398
It's a goddam ontological discussion philosophy has been having for goddamn 2000 years. Neoplatonic reversion, Kants manifold, we've had tiny robots in philosophy. Because now you call them robots doesn't make them any less philosophical arghagfdsdfsa asdfl;d

>>16679464
>>Just because animals don't communicate their knowledge of being their species does not mean they are not aware they are their species
is that true? How do you know?

>>16679135

Midi-chlorians!

Based!

>>16679569
Experiments have been done. They recognize their peers as well as other species.

>>16679569
What would be the reasoning for them not being able to discern like species? From a biological perspective, in-group preference makes sense for special survival; why would it remove the ability to tell species apart?

>>16679398
>the food in that picture
Not even titties can distract me from how fucked that is

>>16679398
The ability to contemplate and understand abstract ideas. This includes both forward thinking in the more practical sense and discerning the nature of God and the soul

>>16680270
>The ability to contemplate and understand abstract ideas.
So neuronal activity. that's what the op is saying.

>>16680476
What causes the neuronal activity to contemplate itself?

>>16680501
for the stuff you're talking about, vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2)

>>16680573
None of that means anything to me

>>16679135
Why does this faggot go to such ends to pretend he's British as saying, "jolly well know"? What neuronal activity explains that type of oily affectation?

>>16679135
>When Dennett was six years old he suffered a significant injury from being dropped on his head by his mother. This resulted in a severe traumatic subdural hematoma causing significantly lower functionality in the right brain hemisphere.

>>16679182
fpbp

>>16679569
how you ever even observed an animal? they know damn well who belongs to their kind and who doesnt

>>16680647
What is that kind of hat called?

>>16680879
A microfiber after-shower cap for Asian women

>>16679135
How thrilled do you think old Giulio was to be the ground for the evolutionary expression of the coronavirus? And why oh why did he do something so... immaterial as express with his dying breath that neurochemical fantasy "love" for his wife (he was way past breeding age.) I shudder to think why he grasped after that... but it's just the robots talking after all, so there's that consolation.

>>16679135
OOOOOH MY GOOOD

he's right

>>16679569
It's legit sad we need basically an entire cottage industry to pander to the anemic ontologies of faggots who have never stepped foot outside the city in any capacity. Even just a few minutes of observing of an animal will refute the myth of the biological machine.

Philosophy should be barred to anyone below 30 and who hasn't spent at least a year living in the wilderness or something. If you want to be a calculator, then be my guest faggot, just leave the rest of us out of it.

>>16679135
http://www.jaronlanier.com/zombie.html

>>16679182
https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/08/06/that-time-daniel-dennett-took-200-micrograms-of-lsd/

my gf from 2015 was a Pinker and Dennett worshipper.
She started an argument about the non-existence of god with everybody who'd lend her an ear - and everybody lend her an ear because she was extremely hot.
Turned out she was an alcoholic and ended her academic career.
Now she's dating a Muslim.
She was a pole dancer, best piece of pussy I ever had

>>16681563
Then I guess I have no choice in thinking Harris is a retarded fag :P

>>16681675
Refutes how? Your pure assertion demonstrates nothing.

>>16679232
It's sounds like you're just mad at people who don't mysticize consciousness (even though mysticism is far mor speculative and far less actionable). How does reductionism deny the reality of experience (how could that reality ever be denied?). What does the term "metaphysical" actually refer to — what kinds of questions aren't actually contained under the auspices of ontology?

Your comment is highly ironic, because consciousness mysticizers contribute little to the debate other than finger-wagging condemnation of actual investigation. In truth I think your ilk are more interested in building fortifications around the 'problem', so that the unexamined space inside can harbour your wishful thoughts about the nature of our existence.

>>16679464
There's a considerable difference between instinctive and explicit knowledge of species, but yes he should've used a clearer example.

>>16681994

>>16682126
>It's sounds like you're just mad at people who don't mysticize consciousness (even though mysticism is far mor speculative and far less actionable). How does reductionism deny the reality of experience (how could that reality ever be denied?). What does the term "metaphysical" actually refer to — what kinds of questions aren't actually contained under the auspices of ontology?

Not that anon, but Kripke and Chalmers already laid out arguments which conclusively prove that other minds (technically not even my mind) cannot grounded in a physicalist picture of the world. We have absolutely zero reasons to believe that any functionalist role is always correlated to a conscious states (and btw nor Dennett nor the Churchlands deny conscious states), since adding consciousness to a system simply does not alter any of ots functions.
Physicalism fails as a general ontology exactly because it can explain, at least in principle, every event and phenomenon in the physical world.

>>16682230
>conclusively prove that other minds (technically not even my mind) cannot grounded in a physicalist picture of the world

That's quite a feat, considering that what it would mean for something to be 'non-physical' can't even be positively defined; it can only be negatively alluded to as a contrast to evident physicality, like the way we use the term 'nothing' in contrast to 'something' (but does 'nothing' itself actually exist?). I'd be interested to hear how one goes from that sort of vagueness to conclusive proof of the non-physicality of minds.

>>16679966
>>16679978
>>16680867
>>16681675
but how can you say that an animal is aware that it is its own species, if that requires them to have the concept of species? Aren't you implying here that the animal has self-consciousness, because to be aware that you are your own species requires the recognition of you as a concept and species as a concept? What if it's unaware that it is its own species, and just behaves as if it is?

>>16681994
woah.. a fantastic story that totally conforms to zoomer christian incel worldview.. this is so believable.

>>16681675
I love this neo-nietzschean bullshit. "You're unhealthy! you're not strong and powerful like me!" This is literally just a coping cognophobia. All you're telling me here is that any kind of science of the mind makes you unhealthy, makes you weak, makes you sad. You are the weak one, you can't bear the possibility of a mechanical universe, it just hurts too much for your sensitive little soul.

>>16679182
This tbqh

test

>>16682498
I would claim that we can be sure that we have the property of consciousness (since you've asked about a positive definition, I'll point out that I'm using thr ones of Chalmers and Kripke, as "subjective phenomenal experience", or "first-personal experience") through an intuition of it. To claim otherwise is to claim that at this moment we're having no first personal experience whatsoever. Notice: this position works even if we concede that we're always mistaken about the facts of our psychological mind, which is to be distinguished from a phenomenal mind: I would go as far as saying, like Searle (and St. Augustine and Descartes before him) that even these mistakes would be sufficient proofs of the fact that we're conscious.
I'll concede that someome who denies this datum can hope to refute those arguments, but I know of no philosopher who does that. Even eliminativists like Dennett and Churchland concedes that there are conscious states (namely, to use Chalmers' words, that all of our neural activity does not function "in the dark"), although they believe that the presence of conscious states in a given body can be inferred from empirical, physicalist proofs. That's what I contest.

I'll admit though, I'm open to change my mind on the status of conscious states as datum, although I have no idea how anyone could argue for this position (since they would have to argue that we are in this moment experiencing nothing).

>>16682904
I'm asking for a positive definition of non-physicality, not consciousness. If you want me to accept a greater probability of the mind being non-physical, or that mind/experience literally precedes apparent physicality (rather than being a physical thing), then I need to at least have some inkling of what that other-than-physical realm is like (i.e. what is your reference point for non-physicality, other than the the physical?).

>>16683175
Honest question: do I need to have such a definition, in your opinion? If I can argue that a property or entity (I'm open to both property and substance dualism) cannot be defined as physical, isn't that enough for their (Chalmers, Kripke, and other proponents of the hard problem) argument, even though I might not be able to define its non-physical ontological status?

>>16683407
I think you need to have at least a hint of some positive description to give it some traction. That the notion of non-physicality is a purely negative concept (an abstract contrast with no apparent concrete relations of its own) makes it a hollow position in my estimation. To say something cannot be defined as physical would seem to necessarily imply some other category, but I don't think that any alternatives have been reasonably established as probable/possible.

What I'm pointing out here is that however incomplete/uncertain a phyicalist picture of consciousness is, you'd logically have to be more skeptical of counter-claims which can't even -begin- to put paint to canvas.