"Just matter? Then tell me why damage to the brain can so drastically affect one's experiences, thoughts, and feelings."
You said "experiences, thoughts, and feelings". Those are all perceived. Thoughts themselves can be traced back to computations. "We" only direct those computations. Feelings are very observably the affects of different chemicals on our brains, released by different stimuli. Experiences... Well, technically experiences (as in what happens to you) aren't necessarily perceived, but neither does brain damage affect what you experience.
And I can't help but notice that you seemed indignant at his calling the brain "Just matter" when that's exactly what you're trying to argue: That "we" are only the matter we're composed of.
Is it because it's special matter? If so, I should warn you that it's kind of hard to argue that we're only matter and then argue that our matter is somehow more special than that of sewage - when tomorrow it could be sewage.
You realize that comparing the human body to sewage is like comparing a multi-million dollar supercomputer to scrap metal, right? One is a massively complex machine the other is inanimate raw material. It takes a massive amount of time and effort to convert sewage into a human being but a couple hours to do the reverse, that's just entropy, it's a law of the universe.
And for the record I don't see any evidence that human consciousness isn't just a feedback system with a metric ton of options.
And for the record: organ transplants, fine; grafting a living central nervous system to an artificial life support system or cloned body, fine if we can figure it out; copying the arrangement of one's CNS neurons to create a simulation of a dead person, not okay.
This is dangerously philosophical ground we're treading, but with this topic it's nigh-unavoidable.
What makes the supercomputer more special than the scrap metal? It's all going to go blooey in heat death eventually, right?
And the hours it takes to make something more complex as compared to making it less complex? Why's it matter? The case is still the same: Matter is matter.
"And for the record I don't see any evidence that human consciousness isn't just a feedback system with a metric ton of options."
And there isn't much evidence to be had, really. The human brain is so extremely complex that one could always suppose that the choices we make can be boiled down to some basic, predetermined computation somehow. I was just explaining how the contrasting worldview works: essentially, that the most rudimentary inputs our brains receive are given by something immaterial, i.e. a soul. Your brain determines whether the appearance of red or blue pleases you more (given that's where your pleasure centers are), but you decide whether or not to wear it on a given day.
There's no solid evidence either way, and likely never will be; you've got to put faith in one or the other. Well, depending on how relevant you see the issue as to your overall philosophy.
"copying the arrangement of one's CNS neurons to create a simulation of a dead person, not okay."
...And this is what gobsmacks me. Matter itself is nothing more than the sum of its properties(mass, charge, weak and strong nuclear forces, etc.) i.e. the information it contains. The concept of representing the information from an entirely matter-based entity (like a human being's brain) onto other media should be entirely compatible with your worldview as you have thus far revealed.
I don't expect anyone's worldview to be complete by any means, but I do tend to get twitchy when it seems inconsistent.
I don't understand where you're getting the idea that matter is nothing more than the information it "contains", it's by definition physical objects. There wouldn't be any physical continuity between me and any simulated copies of me, especially obvious if one or more of them happened to be active while I was alive.
The only reason we know it exists is by virtue of its properties that we can observe. Our record of its properties is the only thing that grants it significance to us.
You could argue that even were we without any senses with which to detect those properties that it would still exist (and, being a weak Platonist, I would agree), but it would not be significant to us in any way if we were unable to derive any information from it. Furthermore, even from a Platonist point of view, it is the information that matter contains (i.e. the natural physical laws it operates under and how it behaves under them) that give it its existence, regardless of whether or not we detect it.
Thus, matter, in any significant way, is information. Without containing information that we can detect, the only manner in which that matter could exist is in the eyes of God himself. And given that you've implied that you are not inclined to believe in that, your definition of matter is thereby limited to the information it contains.
That information is just a way of quantifying what already exists so the human brain can comprehend it more easily. Charge, mass, they're just numbers we arbitrarily assign for convenience.
rhjunior
The brain allows your consciousness to perceive. But the brain alone cannot perceive anything, any more than glasses can see.
-Kire Du'Hai
"Just matter? Then tell me why damage to the brain can so drastically affect one's experiences, thoughts, and feelings."
You said "experiences, thoughts, and feelings". Those are all perceived. Thoughts themselves can be traced back to computations. "We" only direct those computations. Feelings are very observably the affects of different chemicals on our brains, released by different stimuli. Experiences... Well, technically experiences (as in what happens to you) aren't necessarily perceived, but neither does brain damage affect what you experience.
And I can't help but notice that you seemed indignant at his calling the brain "Just matter" when that's exactly what you're trying to argue: That "we" are only the matter we're composed of.
Is it because it's special matter? If so, I should warn you that it's kind of hard to argue that we're only matter and then argue that our matter is somehow more special than that of sewage - when tomorrow it could be sewage.
-Kire Du'Hai
And for the record I don't see any evidence that human consciousness isn't just a feedback system with a metric ton of options.
And for the record: organ transplants, fine; grafting a living central nervous system to an artificial life support system or cloned body, fine if we can figure it out; copying the arrangement of one's CNS neurons to create a simulation of a dead person, not okay.
This is dangerously philosophical ground we're treading, but with this topic it's nigh-unavoidable.
What makes the supercomputer more special than the scrap metal? It's all going to go blooey in heat death eventually, right?
And the hours it takes to make something more complex as compared to making it less complex? Why's it matter? The case is still the same: Matter is matter.
"And for the record I don't see any evidence that human consciousness isn't just a feedback system with a metric ton of options."
And there isn't much evidence to be had, really. The human brain is so extremely complex that one could always suppose that the choices we make can be boiled down to some basic, predetermined computation somehow. I was just explaining how the contrasting worldview works: essentially, that the most rudimentary inputs our brains receive are given by something immaterial, i.e. a soul. Your brain determines whether the appearance of red or blue pleases you more (given that's where your pleasure centers are), but you decide whether or not to wear it on a given day.
There's no solid evidence either way, and likely never will be; you've got to put faith in one or the other. Well, depending on how relevant you see the issue as to your overall philosophy.
"copying the arrangement of one's CNS neurons to create a simulation of a dead person, not okay."
...And this is what gobsmacks me. Matter itself is nothing more than the sum of its properties(mass, charge, weak and strong nuclear forces, etc.) i.e. the information it contains. The concept of representing the information from an entirely matter-based entity (like a human being's brain) onto other media should be entirely compatible with your worldview as you have thus far revealed.
I don't expect anyone's worldview to be complete by any means, but I do tend to get twitchy when it seems inconsistent.
-Kire Du'Hai
Non-existent, that's what.
The only reason we know it exists is by virtue of its properties that we can observe. Our record of its properties is the only thing that grants it significance to us.
You could argue that even were we without any senses with which to detect those properties that it would still exist (and, being a weak Platonist, I would agree), but it would not be significant to us in any way if we were unable to derive any information from it. Furthermore, even from a Platonist point of view, it is the information that matter contains (i.e. the natural physical laws it operates under and how it behaves under them) that give it its existence, regardless of whether or not we detect it.
Thus, matter, in any significant way, is information. Without containing information that we can detect, the only manner in which that matter could exist is in the eyes of God himself. And given that you've implied that you are not inclined to believe in that, your definition of matter is thereby limited to the information it contains.
Does that clarify?
-Kire Du'Hai
Edited at 2012-05-23 07:58 am (UTC)
The way you put it just sounds solipsistic.