On 9/18/2019 5:39 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
I
On Thu, 19 Sep 2019 at 10:17, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
<everything-list@googlegroups.com
<mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
On 9/18/2019 3:22 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2019 at 08:16, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
<everything-list@googlegroups.com
<mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
On 9/18/2019 2:58 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 4:25 PM 'Brent Meeker'
<everything-list@googlegroups.com
<mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
/> //Haven't you ever awoken from surgery? AG /
/
/
/>> Yes, and I think I was just the same as before and
so does everyone else. But maybe I am fundamentally
different. How would I know?/
>>> You'd ask people who knew you well.
And if you did that you would hear them make noises with
their mouth, but whatever consciousness is it certainly
isn't those mouth noises. If your lucky you may be able to
detect a pattern in those noises that would indicate
intelligence, but you would have to make an additional
assumption to conclude that also indicated consciousness,
namely that consciousness is an inevitable byproduct of
intelligence. In the real world everybody makes that
assumption a thousand times a day because the alternative is
solipsism.
They question was whether you could find out you were
fundamentally different after an operation. Not whether or
not your friends were conscious. Saibal said "No."
apparently based only on the fact that he couldn't trust
introspection. But in that would equally imply he couldn't
tell whether he fundamentally changed from day to day, or
minute to minute. Of course nothing can provide certainty,
but your friends saying you act differently or you don't
would be good evidence. It's the same level of evidence for
thinking one another consciousness, but it's broader since
you might be different in some way you were not conscious of.
And if you were different in some way you were not conscious of,
it wouldn’t matter.
How do you figure that? Suppose you're a murderous psychopath
after the operation. Just because YOU don't remember not being a
murderous psychopath before, it may still matter.
In that case there would be objective evidence of a change and you
would be conscious of this evidence.
You would be conscious of the fact that your friends and other physical
evidence told you that you had changed. You would not need to have any
feeling (gualia) of difference. Which is why we believe that the shared
physical world is more real/stable/fundamental than our qualia.
Brent
But if neither you nor anyone else noticed a change, it wouldn’t
matter. For example, if my colour qualia changed every day, but there
was no objective difference and I didn’t notice any difference, it
wouldn’t matter. It could be argued that such a change is not really a
change at all.
--
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
<mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAH%3D2ypXvvoGn%3DYvoChSL9B0s3-_HEYBnVvGw1%2BWDFH4s%2B%3D%2BPsg%40mail.gmail.com
<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAH%3D2ypXvvoGn%3DYvoChSL9B0s3-_HEYBnVvGw1%2BWDFH4s%2B%3D%2BPsg%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
--
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 view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/3aaba841-3c3c-dc41-e999-c4e2bdb6ed83%40verizon.net.
