4 ms·

You may be right about where the burden lies, but your explanation renders the thermostat conscious. Edit: I should put that differently. Your sense of the cr

You may be right about where the burden lies, but your explanation renders the thermostat conscious. Edit: I should put that differently. Your sense of the criteria by which the problem may be considered solved does not preclude thermostat consciousness. And if that is allowed, then yes: the problem is solved. But I sense, again, the assumption of physicalism (or ontological naturalism), and I don't know why that premise admits of no dissent or argument.

ncmncm 5y ago
When a term is undefined, any application of it is undecidable. Are you conscious? Is the thermostat? Y/Y, Y/N, N/Y, N/N are all equally valid conclusions.
- sramsay 5y ago
  Would you accept the statement "If physicalism is true, then there is nothing here to explain." I'm not setting a trap. I'm just trying to clarify your position.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    If physicalism is true, then there is nothing here to explain. If physicalism is not true, then there is nothing here to explain. Biologists used to talk about a "vital force". Alive things had it, dead things didn't. Now biology is mature enough to recognize that there is no such force. People chasing consciousness are in the position of the biologists who insisted, in the face of biochemistry, that there was still a vital force. There is a physical phenomenon: we observe people insisting there is such a thing as consciousness. Why do they do this? That is something an explanation could address. Not everybody insists. Are people who don't not conscious? What is common to everybody who insists, and also everybody they insist it about? They all observe themselves experiencing, and act on those observations. So, if there is anything to be defined, it is probably defined by that. We could make a machine that perceives, and perceives itself perceiving. If that machine would not be described by insisters as conscious, I would expect a reason why not.

ncmncm 5y ago

When a term is undefined, any application of it is undecidable. Are you conscious? Is the thermostat? Y/Y, Y/N, N/Y, N/N are all equally valid conclusions.

sramsay 5y ago
Would you accept the statement "If physicalism is true, then there is nothing here to explain." I'm not setting a trap. I'm just trying to clarify your position.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  If physicalism is true, then there is nothing here to explain. If physicalism is not true, then there is nothing here to explain. Biologists used to talk about a "vital force". Alive things had it, dead things didn't. Now biology is mature enough to recognize that there is no such force. People chasing consciousness are in the position of the biologists who insisted, in the face of biochemistry, that there was still a vital force. There is a physical phenomenon: we observe people insisting there is such a thing as consciousness. Why do they do this? That is something an explanation could address. Not everybody insists. Are people who don't not conscious? What is common to everybody who insists, and also everybody they insist it about? They all observe themselves experiencing, and act on those observations. So, if there is anything to be defined, it is probably defined by that. We could make a machine that perceives, and perceives itself perceiving. If that machine would not be described by insisters as conscious, I would expect a reason why not.