SiriKeeton
New member
What solution to the hard problem of consciousness Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia do you think is correct?
I thought about it for a long time, and ultimately concluded physicalism is right. Of course, consciousness doesn't "feel" like physical operation of the brain just like water isn't literally seen as made of ball and stick molecule models with "H2" and "O" on it, but in my opinion, there is no reason to expected consciousness is anything but a physical process in the brain. This is evidenced by the fact that altering brain operation alters our consciousness.
There's an argument against physicalism that interested me for a long time, called the zombie argument. It posits that in theory, there could be beings/an universe where everything is the same but while brains operate in the same way ours do, they don't generate qualia. However, I came to the conclusion that it's absurd because if that's the case, consciousness has no actual role and is just "windows dressing" on the actual operation of the brain - which is IMO not just an absurdity - and one that isn't even good for preserving a sense of "specialness" or souls for humans - as it's even worse than physicalism in that regard as in a way it says that consciousness is useless) but also is an unprovable theory, unlike classical dualism which at least posits an extra-physical component that actually does something. This article puts it better than I do Zombies! Zombies? - LessWrong 2.0
On the other hand, I reject eliminative materialism's thesis that mental phenomena/consciousness don't exist - not only does this contradict our self evident conscious experience, but also saying stuff like "show me one atom of consciousness" doesn't make sense as many real phenomena are, while made of smaller elements, emergent, that is, they emerge out of arrangements of smaller parts that by themselves lack this property - human brains are made of elementary particles but those aren't conscious while our brains are. Now, consciousness IMO isn't a binary state and I think it's clear at least other mammals have lesser forms of it, but I think it's safe to say atoms and electrons making up the brain don't - thus the brain and many other things are in a way more than a sum of their parts while requiring no immaterial substrate.
Thoughts? I can summarize these views as physicalism/reductive (not elliminative) materialism which is a subset of monism. What are your views on philosophy of mind?
I thought about it for a long time, and ultimately concluded physicalism is right. Of course, consciousness doesn't "feel" like physical operation of the brain just like water isn't literally seen as made of ball and stick molecule models with "H2" and "O" on it, but in my opinion, there is no reason to expected consciousness is anything but a physical process in the brain. This is evidenced by the fact that altering brain operation alters our consciousness.
There's an argument against physicalism that interested me for a long time, called the zombie argument. It posits that in theory, there could be beings/an universe where everything is the same but while brains operate in the same way ours do, they don't generate qualia. However, I came to the conclusion that it's absurd because if that's the case, consciousness has no actual role and is just "windows dressing" on the actual operation of the brain - which is IMO not just an absurdity - and one that isn't even good for preserving a sense of "specialness" or souls for humans - as it's even worse than physicalism in that regard as in a way it says that consciousness is useless) but also is an unprovable theory, unlike classical dualism which at least posits an extra-physical component that actually does something. This article puts it better than I do Zombies! Zombies? - LessWrong 2.0
On the other hand, I reject eliminative materialism's thesis that mental phenomena/consciousness don't exist - not only does this contradict our self evident conscious experience, but also saying stuff like "show me one atom of consciousness" doesn't make sense as many real phenomena are, while made of smaller elements, emergent, that is, they emerge out of arrangements of smaller parts that by themselves lack this property - human brains are made of elementary particles but those aren't conscious while our brains are. Now, consciousness IMO isn't a binary state and I think it's clear at least other mammals have lesser forms of it, but I think it's safe to say atoms and electrons making up the brain don't - thus the brain and many other things are in a way more than a sum of their parts while requiring no immaterial substrate.
Thoughts? I can summarize these views as physicalism/reductive (not elliminative) materialism which is a subset of monism. What are your views on philosophy of mind?