On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 7:51:50 PM UTC-4, Tom Bayley wrote: > > > > On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 5:44:23 PM UTC, John Clark wrote: >> >> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 , Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >>> We can write books and other people can read them, so that must >>>>> prove that consciousness is not caused by neurochemistry. >>>>> >>>> >>>> >> What the hell??? >>>> >>> >>> > Books aren't neurological, right? >>> >> >> Right, but they are certainly material. >> >> > There is no direct link between the author's brain and the reader's >>> brain. >>> >> >> There is never a "direct link" between one mind and another, there is >> always a material middle man, usually many, such as photons reflected off >> paper in a book, or air vibrations from vocal cords, or in chemical changes >> in the nerves of fingers, or whatever. >> >> > Just like the light switch >>> >> >> There is not a "direct link" between the light switch and the light going >> on either, the closing of the light switch just caused a current to flow in >> the wire, the current flow didn't cause the light either it just caused the >> filament in the light bulb to get hot, it was the hot electrons in the >> filament that caused the electromagnetic waves to be produced. >> > > I think explanations are important to prove causation ;-) and it's > interesting that you can break this example down. Each explanatory step is > materially plausible (it has a satisfactory public explanation), right up > to the perception of the light. But the qualia (qualium?) >
Exactly. (singular of qualia is quale, btw. pronounced 'quall'). > itself doesn't have a public description, and there isn't any sense of > satisfaction that it has been explained. It's tempting to believe that's > because it's a complicated step, but there seems no obvious way to reduce > it. So as far as I can see it is still only an assumption, with the > hope/faith that some plausible explanation will one day be found. I'm not > sure there are many other widely-held scientific explanations like this one? > That's why the whole picture needs to be turned upside down. Begin with the certainty that there is no complicated step, no simple step, no step at all because no set of steps is any better than magic. There is clearly no functional justification for qualia, no matter how you try to squirm out of it, no programmer has every felt the need to create some universe of feelings and flavors and thoughts to act as a nebulous, epiphenomenal medium between two sets of precise data. All descriptions are private - only some are more basic than others. The descriptions which are beneath the privacy threshold of a given experience are said to be public or 'physical'. Craig > >> >> > you remove any connection between neurons, yet the words of one brain >>> (or brain activity ostensibly associated with the words) are still >>> transmitted from one to the other. >>> >> >> When you write books I don't always read them AND if I don't read your >> book your book still exists, so I can say with great confidence that my >> reading of your books does not cause your books to exist. >> >> John K Clark >> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
