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> The magic element is simply evolution. I can't agree with that. Maybe our brains are not big enough, or complex enough yet to really understand what is going

by Shorel 3y ago

> The magic element is simply evolution. I can't agree with that. Maybe our brains are not big enough, or complex enough yet to really understand what is going on with such complex systems. Evolution may be the mechanism these complex systems exist, but it doesn't explain how they work. Even the simplest artificial evolutionary algorithms have created integrated circuits with features we can not understand or explain. And part of the reason is physical properties of materials, and quantum stuff. The evolutionary algorithm doesn't understand those things, just puts them in some working configuration by chance. Anyway, my point is that we can't also use evolution as a catch-all explanation. Complex things are complex, and they require proper understanding, an engineering understanding, not just the handwaving arguments of philosophers. About consciousness: hardest problem ever. I don't think we will be able to understand it, because we have it and it becomes a kind of strange loop.

namero999 3y ago
It's fairly easy to "understand it" if we don't try to explain it away. Look, no matter what you hold as true, you reach a point where you have to pick your ontological primitive. An as such, you can't "explain it away". It will be your given of nature, in function of which you'll explain everything else. Failing to do so will put you in an infinite regress of finding lower-level explanation forever, which in turn would explain precisely nothing. Even hardcore materialists do this epistemic step: the quantum foam is the given of existence, made out of nothing else other than itself, and whose excitations give rise to the fundamental particles. So, given that we are already committed to such epistemic step, what would be the problem of choosing another ontological primitive and see how we fare? What is the logical argument by which consciousness ought not to be chosen as an ontological primitive?

by Shorel 3y ago

namero999 3y ago

It's fairly easy to "understand it" if we don't try to explain it away. Look, no matter what you hold as true, you reach a point where you have to pick your ontological primitive. An as such, you can't "explain it away". It will be your given of nature, in function of which you'll explain everything else. Failing to do so will put you in an infinite regress of finding lower-level explanation forever, which in turn would explain precisely nothing. Even hardcore materialists do this epistemic step: the quantum foam is the given of existence, made out of nothing else other than itself, and whose excitations give rise to the fundamental particles. So, given that we are already committed to such epistemic step, what would be the problem of choosing another ontological primitive and see how we fare? What is the logical argument by which consciousness ought not to be chosen as an ontological primitive?