Yelling at rice for fun and profit

[SteampunkBanana]

Rack 'em!

[Ratel]

@SamSam

If you had solid proof that consciousness affected reality, then you’d have solid proof against Chalmer’s Zombie argument, and you’d have a fast-track into a tenure position at any Philosophy department you like.

There’s the booby prize of the century. Anyway, Daniel Dennett’s already won it.

I had to grind through Chalmer’s book for a grade: so far as I could tell its only positive contribution to cognitive science was demonstrating that traditional metaphysical approaches to consciousness reduce to absurdity.

But in short, what I’m saying is that if consciousness does not affect reality, then there would be no way for us to be aware of it. Our awareness of it is at the very least an effect on reality, because otherwise, for instance, these comments could not happen.

@SamSam

To put it clearly: there’s no evidence that our brains aren’t simply completely deterministic from first-principles (+ quantum if you’re Penrose, but that’s a stupid argument), and that our consciousness isn’t an emergent phenomenon hitching along for the ride.

What I will say this about Penrose: he lays bare how nonsensical and pointless “free will” would be, if it could be anything.

In a very micro way, all evidence suggest that our brains really are completely deterministic: that we make decisions long before we become “conscious” of them. But it seems pretty clear to me that that “consciousness” is a critical part of the feedback loop that programs that deterministic mechanisms of the brains.