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> I will apply Occam's razor to that additional law until there is evidence for it. Fair enough, but Hume already did that for laws (causality). We don't obser
by goatlover 7y ago
> I will apply Occam's razor to that additional law until there is evidence for it.
Fair enough, but Hume already did that for laws (causality). We don't observe laws, just constant conjunction. B always follows A, so we say law C is the cause of that. Or description, if one doesn't like the implication.
Adopting a Humean approach, there is already evidence that consciousness is conjoined to certain neural activity. But, that can work just as well for IIT as it does Chalmers.
And I have no idea whether causal laws exist or what consciousness is. I guess IIT is as good an approach as any.
- mannykannot 7y agoI have noticed a tendency, in philosphical discussions in general, for one party to hoist the discussion up from a specific issue to a very general and fundamental level. It is all very well to say that we can have no certainty whether causal laws exist or what consciousness is, but we must recognize that if that is one's argument, then one has effectively terminated the discussion as irresolvable: no matter how much empirical evidence emerges, it is not going to be enough to overcome this response. If one takes this way to leave the discussion, then there would be more than just a hint of motte-and-bailey equivocation if one were to then re-enter it with a specific claim, such as that Chalmers or Searle or Koch have a plausible argument that consiousness cannot possibly be this or that. As it happens, I very much doubt that IIT is on the right track, but at least it is (or was, initially) an attempt to find out what consciousness is, rather than what it is not.