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There's no observable effects to distinguish conscious and unconscious molecule. Having a definition that can't be used for experimental validation is not usefu

There's no observable effects to distinguish conscious and unconscious molecule. Having a definition that can't be used for experimental validation is not useful.

CuriouslyC 9y ago
There's no observable evidence for an internal experience in humans either. Each person just extrapolates that belief from their own consciousness. That is what got us into the silly position that animals don't possess consciousness in the first place.
- red75prime 9y ago
  We can talk for hours about consciousness in the sense "what it is like to be bacterium", and it will lead us nowhere, or, better to say, it will lead us all over the place. Ask different philosophers. On the other hand we can agree that we can sufficiently easily distinguish conscious and unconscious human, dog or other mammal. From here we can study which parts of a brain participate in conscious activities, and maybe generalize it for species further away from us.
  - CuriouslyC 9y ago
    Part of the problem here is conflating terms. I define consciousness as the property of having an internal experience. It would be better to describe someone "unconscious" as unresponsive. You don't know that they are not having an internal experience at that moment in time. Even if they told you later that they weren't having an internal experience, that only tells you that they have no memory an internal experience, it does not prove that no such experience occurred. I quit pursuing philosophy as an academic matter when I realized that these sorts of conflations are at the root of most philosophical debates. In fact, I'll go ahead and state that the single most contested subject in modern philosophy is the definition of the word "is".
    - emmelaich 9y ago
      Yes, using natural language, even "formal" natural language to philosophise is like using a mallet for brain surgery. And we don't have anything better.

There's no observable effects to distinguish conscious and unconscious molecule. Having a definition that can't be used for experimental validation is not useful.

CuriouslyC 9y ago

There's no observable evidence for an internal experience in humans either. Each person just extrapolates that belief from their own consciousness. That is what got us into the silly position that animals don't possess consciousness in the first place.

red75prime 9y ago
We can talk for hours about consciousness in the sense "what it is like to be bacterium", and it will lead us nowhere, or, better to say, it will lead us all over the place. Ask different philosophers. On the other hand we can agree that we can sufficiently easily distinguish conscious and unconscious human, dog or other mammal. From here we can study which parts of a brain participate in conscious activities, and maybe generalize it for species further away from us.
- CuriouslyC 9y ago
  Part of the problem here is conflating terms. I define consciousness as the property of having an internal experience. It would be better to describe someone "unconscious" as unresponsive. You don't know that they are not having an internal experience at that moment in time. Even if they told you later that they weren't having an internal experience, that only tells you that they have no memory an internal experience, it does not prove that no such experience occurred. I quit pursuing philosophy as an academic matter when I realized that these sorts of conflations are at the root of most philosophical debates. In fact, I'll go ahead and state that the single most contested subject in modern philosophy is the definition of the word "is".
  - emmelaich 9y ago
    Yes, using natural language, even "formal" natural language to philosophise is like using a mallet for brain surgery. And we don't have anything better.