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> 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 m
by 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 agoSo 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 agoBoth of those propositions are true. I don't see the connection to consciousness though.
- burrows 5y agoAre 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”.