On 11 February 2015 at 19:03, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> [Brent Meeker] If consciousness were unnecessary it would not be an >> epiphenomenon, i.e. >> something that NECESSARILY accompanies the phenomena of thoughts. Is heat >> necessary to random molecular motion? > > > As I and others have pointed out earlier, you are describing emergence, not > epiphenomenalism (which is a dualist theory of mind made up when Descartes > interactionism was shown to be incompatible with the laws of motion). > > Nothing inherent to epiphenominalism implies that consciousness must follow > from the physics beyond your insistence that it does. If consciousness is due to physics then I think it *can* be shown that consciousness necessarily follows from any physics that gives rise to the behaviour of the putatively conscious entity. I invoke Chalmers' fading qualia argument, which shows that if consciousness were contingent rather than necessary it would be possible to make partial zombies. Partial zombies are absurd; if they are not absurd then we may as well say consciousness does not exist. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
