3 ms·

> You can't but that doesn't change the mechanism of arriving at beliefs. I’m trying to question the coherence of the proposition itself, and not trying to ref

> You can't but that doesn't change the mechanism of arriving at beliefs. I’m trying to question the coherence of the proposition itself, and not trying to refute an argument in favor of it. > You yourself can also never physically check say Plato's skull either but I doubt that deters you from thinking he had a brain. The Plato’s brain question (PB) confuses me, but here is my attempt at an analysis. First, I think PB is tricky in the same way that all historical propositions are tricky. And I think this trickiness is different than the trickiness around the proposition “other people are conscious”. Second, here is a scenario that I think is like PB. Consider the proposition, “The Great Wall of China exists.” I’ve never been to China, but say you go and tell me that you saw the wall. And in principle I could go see the wall for myself. But now what if the wall is destroyed before I go to see it? Was the proposition that, “The Great Wall of China exists”, coherent before the wall’s demise, but now incoherent? But if you tell me, “I am having subjective experiences”, how can/could I ever in principle examine this for myself, as I could the Great Wall?

Tenoke 5y ago
>I’m trying to question the coherence of the proposition itself, and not trying to refute an argument in favor of it. The point is that just because you can't prove something to yourself it doesn't make the belief incoherent. And you can use your other tools to arrive at likelihoods for said belief. At any rate, there's plenty of things we believe about say quantum mechanics without being able to observe them directly by using theory and observing secondary effects. In theory it's also possible to eventually have an exact definition of what we mean by consciousness, figure out which parts of the brain are relevant in what ways and observe secondary effects and use theory to confirm others have it same as with QM. It's all caused by physical effects and at a higher level than things we already reason about just fine.
- burrows 5y ago
  > The point is that just because you can't prove something to yourself it doesn't make the belief incoherent. If a proposition doesn’t make predictions about my empirical experience then what is it saying? And if a proposition does make such empirical predictions, than it’s effectively just a name for those predictions. That’s essentially the view I’m coming from. > At any rate, there's plenty of things we believe about say quantum mechanics without being able to observe them directly by using theory and observing secondary effects. I don’t know any physics so I can’t comment. Why are propositions about consciousness different from propositions about faeries?
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    >Why are propositions about consciousness different from propositions about faeries? Ultimately they are not. It's just that the evidence points towards an extremely low chance of fairies being real and extremely high chance of others being conscious in a comparable manner to how you are conscious.
    - burrows 5y ago
      So then is one of these propositions true? Every North American faerie weighs more than 10kg. Every North American faerie weighs 10kg or less.
      - josephcsible 5y ago
        Both of those propositions are true. I don't see the connection to consciousness though.
        burrows 5y ago
        Are there truths that are neither tautological (mathematical) nor empirical? I would suggest those statements are only meaningful if in principle we could measure the weight of a faerie. As another example, I suggest that “Every idea weighs more than 10kg” and “Every idea weighs 10kg or less” are both not meaningful, because it is not possible to measure the weight of a given idea. And so consider a claim like, “Consciousness has property X”, how can I decide whether or not such a claim is true? edit: That last claim should have been, “Some other person’s consciousness has property X”.

Tenoke 5y ago

>I’m trying to question the coherence of the proposition itself, and not trying to refute an argument in favor of it. The point is that just because you can't prove something to yourself it doesn't make the belief incoherent. And you can use your other tools to arrive at likelihoods for said belief. At any rate, there's plenty of things we believe about say quantum mechanics without being able to observe them directly by using theory and observing secondary effects. In theory it's also possible to eventually have an exact definition of what we mean by consciousness, figure out which parts of the brain are relevant in what ways and observe secondary effects and use theory to confirm others have it same as with QM. It's all caused by physical effects and at a higher level than things we already reason about just fine.

burrows 5y ago
> The point is that just because you can't prove something to yourself it doesn't make the belief incoherent. If a proposition doesn’t make predictions about my empirical experience then what is it saying? And if a proposition does make such empirical predictions, than it’s effectively just a name for those predictions. That’s essentially the view I’m coming from. > At any rate, there's plenty of things we believe about say quantum mechanics without being able to observe them directly by using theory and observing secondary effects. I don’t know any physics so I can’t comment. Why are propositions about consciousness different from propositions about faeries?
- Tenoke 5y ago
  >Why are propositions about consciousness different from propositions about faeries? Ultimately they are not. It's just that the evidence points towards an extremely low chance of fairies being real and extremely high chance of others being conscious in a comparable manner to how you are conscious.
  - burrows 5y ago
    So then is one of these propositions true? Every North American faerie weighs more than 10kg. Every North American faerie weighs 10kg or less.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      Both of those propositions are true. I don't see the connection to consciousness though.
      - burrows 5y ago
        Are there truths that are neither tautological (mathematical) nor empirical? I would suggest those statements are only meaningful if in principle we could measure the weight of a faerie. As another example, I suggest that “Every idea weighs more than 10kg” and “Every idea weighs 10kg or less” are both not meaningful, because it is not possible to measure the weight of a given idea. And so consider a claim like, “Consciousness has property X”, how can I decide whether or not such a claim is true? edit: That last claim should have been, “Some other person’s consciousness has property X”.