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As a materialist, I am not particularly taken by this particular argument (which is not to say that I would summarily reject other arguments to the same end.)
by mannykannot 6y ago
As a materialist, I am not particularly taken by this particular argument (which is not to say that I would summarily reject other arguments to the same end.)
It's weakness, I think, is in the claim that the United States has all the types of properties that materialists tend to regard as characteristic of conscious beings.
If you favor some form of panpsychism (especially in the form that, for example, regards buildings with thermostats as conscious), I imagine you are probably well-disposed to this view, but if, like me, you feel that this is an unhelpful generalization that equivocates over some important differences between thermostats and self-aware organisms, then the problem with the author's thesis is that we do not really know what it is about the latter that is truly characteristic of conscious beings in a causal sense.
Here's an analogy: amyloid plaques seem to be characteristic of Alzheimer's disease, but we don't know if they are a cause, a consequence, an epiphenomenon or even just coincidental, so we cannot assume that a treatment clearing the plaques would cure the disease.
Therefore, I don't hold out much hope for the argument presented here contrubuting much towards our understanding of the causal mechanisms of self-aware consciousness.
- smitty1e 6y agoI guess whoever controls the definition can do the required gymnastics. However, even if we define "memory" in terms of artifacts like buildings and books, the place where these United States as such actually make decisions is unclear. Jokes about Congress aside, those chambers are comprised of 535 arguably sentient individuals, not a single hive mind driving the country.
- coldtea 6y ago>Jokes about Congress aside, those chambers are comprised of 535 arguably sentient individuals, not a single hive mind driving the country. So? Sentient individuals could just as well play the role of neurons (or similar) in a larger groupping - where their own sentiousness (sic?) doesn't matter at that level, it's their collective output that matters...
- smitty1e 6y agoRoughly to the extent that plush toy proteins in one of Alton Brown's zanier food chemistry scenes from "Good Eats" are actual protein.
- mcguire 6y agoYou have expressed my objections to this argument better than I can. I have no particular a priori problems with the idea of a distributed consciousness---even for the US. But I find the evidence of conscious behavior in the article rather unconvincing. Is consciousness really the simplest explanation of its behavior?
- mensetmanusman 6y agoIf you’re a materialist, there is no reason to have hope, you’re just reacting to stimulus.
- sjwright 6y agoNot at all. Hope and love don’t need to have any meaning in the wider universe in order for them to have meaning to me. Serious question—how does the notion of "hope" become any more concrete in the non-materialist view? Perhaps your immortal soul can "hope" that it hasn't been attached to a physical body with a physical brain tumour pressing upon its physical amygdala. Personally I cannot see how non-materialism usefully solves any criticism of materialism. All the same problems exist, except you're just pushing them back to a different plane of existence where they can be conveniently disposed of with appeals to mysteriousness.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoEither everything matters, or nothing matters. Choose one, and follow the resulting consequences.
- mannykannot 6y agoTrite aphorisms don't matter, but I don't think that means nothing does.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoRejecting one aphorism is proclaiming the other
- shoemakersteve 6y agoI really don't understand how you could come to that conclusion. Whether something matters or not is entirely subjective or depends on context. Like, what does that even mean? My happiness matters very much to me, but doesn't matter at all to someone who will never meet me, or to the orbit of the earth around the sun... Yet the mass of the earth objectively matters very much to its orbit around the sun, and to many other things that would be affected by earth having a different mass. Maybe you mean, does it matter to me personally? Even then, I can't possibly see any reason why it would have to be all or nothing. Some distant galaxy on the other side of the known universe doesn't matter at all to me and likely never will. The current temperature outside matters to me a fair bit though, because it'll influence how likely I am to want to avoid the cold, or how long I stay outside. Like I'm just trying to figure out if you're actually trying to say something meaningful or just saying something vague and abstract to try and sound "deep".