39
votes
Accepted
How do materialists respond to the thought experiment of the perception of blue and red colors being swapped?
The famous version of this is Twin Earth thought experiment, which explores two worlds which are identical, except one has no H2O. The H2O in this world is instead replaced with a substance XYZ. ...
- 17.5k
36
votes
Why is it impossible for a program or AI to have semantic understanding?
There is a blatant problem with Searle’s argument and it’s quite hard to understand why it hasn’t been pointed out before: None of Mr. Searle’s brain cells understands English, yet he claims that he ...
- 5,243
22
votes
Is it the job of physics to explain consciousness?
The concepts on your question are largely biased. Physics describes, does not explain. See below.
Since it's the job of physics to explain everything in the universe (even indirectly)
False. The ...
- 6,831
22
votes
Accepted
Why is it impossible for a program or AI to have semantic understanding?
I find it odd that his main argument for why programs could not think was that because programs could only follow syntax rules but could not associate any understanding or semantics to words( or any ...
- 2,837
20
votes
What is hard about the “hard problem of consciousness”?
What matters is not the fact that the experience is subjective per se, what matters is that there is no way to share the quality or quale of that subjective experience with anybody else.
If you see a ...
- 2,522
19
votes
Does a rock falling down a hill perform computation?
I think your example is overly complex for the question you are asking. Consider instead a pachinko-like device with a slot at the top, and 4 slots or holes at the bottom. In between the top and the ...
- 624
18
votes
Is it the job of physics to explain consciousness?
As a biologist working in neuroscience with many physicists, I used to get this question a lot. Many physicists seem to believe that prime principles + computational power = infinite explanatory power ...
- 189
16
votes
Accepted
What makes things real?
tl;dr- Depends on a person's level of mental development. The truth's crazy complicated, but we go through stages of understanding.
Stage 1: Realism.
The simplest way to understand reality is ...
- 1,939
14
votes
Does a rock falling down a hill perform computation?
Computation is a deliberate mapping of inputs to outputs according to a finite list of specific instructions. An accidental process cannot be computation. A process with infinite or unknowable ...
- 3,525
13
votes
Is the person in the mirror an example of a philosophical zombie?
This illustrates how removed the concept of 'philosophical zombie' is from reality. The mirror image does not have a brain; it is a trick of light. It is no more a 'zombie' than a photo, a drawing, ...
- 373
13
votes
Accepted
How meaningful is the notion of now here on Earth?
Special relativity has no bearing whatsoever on your day to day activities. If you are moving relative to someone else, then yes in theory you will be time dilated in their frame of reference and they ...
- 13.4k
13
votes
Who am I? Mind, body, mind and body or something else?
You are
ACCORDING TO :
law
A civilian.
society
Mainly your job.
politics
A vote.
your partner
Ask them.
psychology
A vulnerable human being, trying to cope with reality.
intellectually
Someone trying ...
- 1,680
11
votes
What is hard about the “hard problem of consciousness”?
Q: … He phrased the hard problem as “why objective, mechanical processing can give rise to subjective experiences.” I find it difficult to think of this as hard. …
... Then, it seems like this task ...
- 870
11
votes
Accepted
Are pursuing the well-being and reducing the suffering of sentient beings objectively good things?
In the proposition IX, part III of Ethics, Spinoza operates the following reversal of concepts: it is not because we judge that something is good that we desire that thing, but it is because we desire ...
- 5,123
11
votes
Accepted
Is it possible that non-living systems possess consciousness?
I think the jury is still out on this one -- if you could answer it definitively that would be a huge discovery.
The challenge is that we don't have a good theory of consciousness yet. There are ...
- 1,409
9
votes
Accepted
Will computers ever have consciousness?
Will computers ever have consciousness?
Depends on who you ask. 3 possible responses:
Consciousness and the mind are non physical phenomena, and computers are physical systems so, no, computers can'...
- 27.1k
9
votes
Why is it impossible for a program or AI to have semantic understanding?
As I see it, Searle is getting at the point that syntax is algorithmic — a system driven by predefined rules and procedures — but semantics is (as far as we can tell) not. In other words, it's easy ...
- 18.5k
8
votes
How can consciousness be an illusion?
Based on the little information in the freely accessible part of the article, it looks like the author is referring to bundle theories of the self. The illusion in question isn't that we are conscious ...
- 27.1k
8
votes
Is the person in the mirror an example of a philosophical zombie?
Approach 1 - (4) is false.
One line of reasoning has already been presented.
(4). The person in the mirror looks and behaves like a conscious, qualia possessing human: you.
This is false, because ...
- 250
8
votes
Why am I this particular human being?
You could be interested in reading the IV chapter of The view from Nowhere, by Thomas Nagel, since it's all about this topic. His arguments are related to the issue of a subjective/objective view, but ...
- 1,340
8
votes
Accepted
Is there any literature discussing whether all conscious entities are separate, discrete experiencers or a single experiencer?
Mind continuous with environment
There is a considerable body of literature on 'the extended mind'. David Chalmers and Andy Clark are major names here. The basic idea is that 'the mind "extends" into ...
- 35.4k
8
votes
Why is it impossible for a program or AI to have semantic understanding?
Short Answer
There's a number of positions outlined in your SEP link to Searle's Room that make clear that philosophy has not decided by consensus one way or another the question of human and semantic ...
- 22.8k
8
votes
How is AI changing our view of consciousness?
Wikipedia:
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical ...
- 1,680
7
votes
Does truth not require belief?
Under a strict, philosophical, reading of the quote, Dr. Tyson isn't making much sense; interpreting "science" as "the methodology of science" or "the social endeavor of science" this sentence is a ...
- 5,257
7
votes
Accepted
What are book recommendations on Philosophy of Consciousness by contemporary authors?
"19th century philosophers are not necessary to understand contemporary debates" is largely true because modern debates regurgitate ideas and arguments explored at length since Kant. Here is an ...
- 42.5k
7
votes
Is consciousness information?
The problem with the idea that consciousness lasts forever because information is preserved is in the fact that information is being used in two different senses in your question. The differences lie ...
- 2,841
7
votes
What is time for Bergson? And how is it different from duration?
Time, for Bergson, is not different from duration. On the contrary, Bergson's view is that time is duration.
Explanation: Bergson uses the word "time" like all of us do. That is, he uses the word "...
- 7,311
7
votes
Does consciousness exist?
There is a kind of epistemological ‘duality’ to our thinking about consciousness.
In 'The Puzzle of Conscious Experience', the philosopher David Chalmers describes the 'Easy Problem of Consciousness' ...
- 2,689
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