On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote: > Yes, I am a product of evolution and I am conscious. >
I'm glad we agree on that. > > This does not imply that evolution produces consciousness. > Of course it does. > You can propose a theory on how consciousness emerges from, for example, > brain activity. I know of no such theory that doesn't contain a huge > explanatory gap. > Explanations be damned. Although it would be nice to know it is not necessary to understand how X causes Y to understand that X does indeed cause Y. > if you are are logical man you must also agree that it is almost certain >> that intelligence and consciousness are inextricably linked. >> >> > Linked in what sense? > in what sense "in what sense"? > > I have no doubt that intelligence produces the content of experiences > that make me human, and I have little doubt that intelligence is a product > of evolution, > Then what are we arguing about? > but I stop at that point. > That's fine with me, that's as far as you or I need to go. >>> Suppose, for example, that everything is conscious. >>> >> >> >> But that can't be because I know for a fact that even I am not always >> conscious; I'm not conscious when I'm in a deep dreamless sleep or when >> certain chemicals (or even simple elements like the noble gas Xenon) enter >> my brain. >> > > > No you don't know that for sure. You just assume it from a lack of > memories. > And perhaps dinosaur bones and my brain and memories of John Clark being a child and the entire universe was created just 30 seconds ago; but I sorta doubt it. >> And I also know for a fact that those very same chemicals degrade my >> ability to behave intelligently, and that's exactly what you'd expect if >> Darwin was right. >> > > > Again, all I believe that can be said about this is that these chemicals > change the contents of your experience. > ALL?!! If you subtract the contents of your experience from your consciousness there is nothing remaining. > Darwinism is a theory on the origins of biological complexity. > Yes. > Atoms are not part of biological complexity, and they are not predict to > not exist by darwinism, > Yes but Darwin's theory is not a theory of everything, he never even claimed to be able to explain the origin of matter so he made no prediction of any sort regarding atoms. Darwin freely admitted that his theory can't even explain the origin of life, but he can explain how life can go from bacteria to a human being, and that's not a bad day's work. > If conscious is a product of biological complexity > If? IF!! We have excellent scientific evidence that it is; in fact I can't imagine how the evidence could get any better. > then you are right. > Then I am right. > To make a case, you have to propose a theory that addresses the hard > problem. > The hardest part of the hard problem is understanding exactly what a hypothetical solution to the hard problem is supposed to do. > > Again, I am not claiming you are wrong. What I am claiming is that we > are all ignorant on this issue. > We don't know how intelligence causes consciousness, we don't even know if such a explanation exists; and my hunch is that it does not and that the linkage is fundamental, that is to say it's a brute fact. But as I said before none of this matters because if the evidence is good enough (and in this case it certainly is) then it is not necessary to understand how X causes Y to know that X causes Y. > > > you can't propose an experiment that tests the claim that you are > conscious > True, and I love the Scientific Method but I don't need it to prove to myself that I'm conscious because for that I have something even better, direct experience. > or that I am conscious to a third party. > Third parties be damned. Conscious beings other than John Clark may or may not exist, I don't need to make any assumptions about that one way or the other to deduce that the neurons in my brain somehow work together to produce both intelligence and consciousness. I don't know how they do it but the evidence is overwhelming that they do. 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
