4 ms·

Apply Occam's Razor. You're not concerned with it because it doesn't concern you. You're offering a tautology.

morpheos137 6y ago
The theory that consciousness exists IS a tautology itself. I think therefore I am. So what new information does that tell me?
- RichardCA 6y ago
  You asked the question, "Why is the hard problem a problem?" There's a documentary where someone asked Richard Feynman why magnets work, he spends almost 10 minutes talking about how a scientist assigns meaning to a question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lL-hXO27Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lL-hXO27Q "When you explain a 'Why', you have to be in some framework where you allow things to be true." So what I would say is that people generally allow Cartesian Dualism to be "true" and that's the thing that needs to be challenged. Sometimes this is called Nondualism or Nonduality. If you look at it that way, the idea that the consciousness problem is an appropriate area for inquiry seems like a straightforward idea. As far as Carl Sagan being wrong, he was big on the idea that our subjective minds are just a thing that hydrogen atoms do, if you give them billions of years to do it. But he never came out as a Strict Materialist. He also liked to poke holes in religion but never came out as an Atheist. Yes, he was being clever and cute about it. But I don't think that makes him wrong, just that he was onto something more subtle about the nature of what we are. Human beings are a way for the universe to know itself.
  - morpheos137 6y ago
    >As far as Carl Sagan being wrong, he was big on the idea that our subjective minds are just a thing that hydrogen atoms do, if you give them billions of years to do it. That is a beautiful thought. But it is not clear life is inevitable at all. We only have one example of a planet containing life. The normal flow of the universe is toward increasing levels of entropy. I suppose gravity wells containing stars reverse this on some scales. The early post big bang universe was in an extremely low entropy state. Personally I am not a materialist. I also do not believe that we know what we are talking about when we attempt to talk about consciousness. I think the noun is imprecisely defined.

The theory that consciousness exists IS a tautology itself. I think therefore I am. So what new information does that tell me?

RichardCA 6y ago
You asked the question, "Why is the hard problem a problem?" There's a documentary where someone asked Richard Feynman why magnets work, he spends almost 10 minutes talking about how a scientist assigns meaning to a question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lL-hXO27Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lL-hXO27Q "When you explain a 'Why', you have to be in some framework where you allow things to be true." So what I would say is that people generally allow Cartesian Dualism to be "true" and that's the thing that needs to be challenged. Sometimes this is called Nondualism or Nonduality. If you look at it that way, the idea that the consciousness problem is an appropriate area for inquiry seems like a straightforward idea. As far as Carl Sagan being wrong, he was big on the idea that our subjective minds are just a thing that hydrogen atoms do, if you give them billions of years to do it. But he never came out as a Strict Materialist. He also liked to poke holes in religion but never came out as an Atheist. Yes, he was being clever and cute about it. But I don't think that makes him wrong, just that he was onto something more subtle about the nature of what we are. Human beings are a way for the universe to know itself.
- morpheos137 6y ago
  >As far as Carl Sagan being wrong, he was big on the idea that our subjective minds are just a thing that hydrogen atoms do, if you give them billions of years to do it. That is a beautiful thought. But it is not clear life is inevitable at all. We only have one example of a planet containing life. The normal flow of the universe is toward increasing levels of entropy. I suppose gravity wells containing stars reverse this on some scales. The early post big bang universe was in an extremely low entropy state. Personally I am not a materialist. I also do not believe that we know what we are talking about when we attempt to talk about consciousness. I think the noun is imprecisely defined.