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One troubling analogy would be occasionalism. Occasionalists believe that in order for cause and effect to work, God has to intercede. This rather elegantly de
by pasabagi 5y ago
One troubling analogy would be occasionalism.
Occasionalists believe that in order for cause and effect to work, God has to intercede. This rather elegantly deals with a whole load of theoretical problems around causal realism.
If you were an occasionalist, you might think, if such a thing as a 'god-of-the-gaps' exist, it should be possible to build a device that mimics its powers, a 'god machine'. Such a device would be very useful.
Except, if occasionalism is wrong, and the universe simply doesn't work like that, it's obviously going to be totally impossible to build a machine that replicates the effect, or to understand how the effect could function.
What if consciousness is just another 'god-of-the-gaps', and we can't replicate it or understand it, because it's fundamentally a nonsensical concept?
- yetihehe 5y ago> If you were an occasionalist, you might think, if such a thing as a 'god-of-the-gaps' exist, it should be possible to build a device that mimics its powers, a 'god machine'. Then that occasionalist god might interfere and break your machine and maybe break you too for trying to emulate a god.
- randallsquared 5y agoThis is Dan Dennett's "illusion of consciousness".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- davidhs 5y agoWhat if we have the misconception of thinking we are a physical person in a physical world that has access to a weird mind? What if instead they physical brain is simulating the universe we find ourselves individually in, and we are only simulated, and we infer a physical world. You can at least scientifically model and test this.