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And it isn‘t just a number. A number doesn‘t feel like anything but pain does feel like something. It would be honest to admit that we don‘t know why conscious

• gosub100 2y ago
  > A number doesn‘t feel like anything but pain does feel like something. so it's not "just a calculation"? I am NOT trying to make a joke/reference to Clinton, but I think in these philosophical conversations, we have to step back even further and question what our definition of "is" is. Again, I'm a CS grad who has never taken philosophy, so I'm sure this has been explored to death by people who own this field. But there's absolutely a point in philosophy where you can't even rely on "what is true": slamming my fingers in the doorway IS painful (to me), but it IS also "just a calculation" to almost everyone else in the universe. Just as Einstein proved, two observers can experience different realities, fundamentally, two mutually exclusive truths can exist simultaneously (it does not hurt YOU when I put my finger in the doorway and slam the door).
  • haswell 2y ago
    > but it IS also "just a calculation" to almost everyone else in the universe What do you mean by "just a calculation" here, and how does everyone else's experience of pain apply? You seem to be implying that for everyone who is not the 1st person subjective experiencer of pain, the only possible representation of that pain is some form of "calculation". You seem to further imply that this reduction somehow says something specific about the nature of pain itself. Am I reading this right? Sure, you could choose to use some process of calculation as one way to measure pain, but this isn't the only way to conceptualize it, nor is it the only way that people experience it. e.g. mirror neurons are interesting to consider. We have in our brains these neurons dedicated to experiencing what we observe others experiencing. We cringe when we see someone suddenly become involved in a painful accident. We recoil when we see something horrific. The nature of what the observer experiences is almost certainly very different than what the person in pain is experiencing, but there's a shared experience for those in proximity. Whatever pain is or isn't, the fact that its effects can be localized to a single person and the fact that it may be calculable in some way seem unrelated to each other. > two mutually exclusive truths can exist simultaneously (it does not hurt YOU when I put my finger in the doorway and slam the door) You hurting your finger in the door and me not feeling the exact thing you experienced are independent facts about the state of the world when the door slamming occurred. Mutual exclusivity seems misapplied here.
    • altruios 2y ago
      > We have in our brains these neurons dedicated to experiencing what we observe others experiencing. We cringe when we see someone suddenly become involved in a painful accident. We recoil when we see something horrific. The nature of what the observer experiences is almost certainly very different than what the person in pain is experiencing, but there's a shared experience for those in proximity. That is an assumption, and a dangerous one at that. What you speak of is a kind of 'empathy', a feeling of emotions by Proxy... not everyone actually has that... some people don't cringe at other's pain, for some: their pupils dilate. That's a tangent to the current discussion, but yeah... some 'calculate your pain', other's 'calculate the pleasure your pain cause in them'... But to add to the discussion, pain isn't localizable to one person, not always, at least... so is emotion/feeling mappable a calculation of the neurons? (maybe/probably)
      • haswell 2y ago
        My point wasn't to claim that everyone experiences empathy in the same way, or even that everyone has it, but to point out that pain can't be reduced to "calculations". It's a low resolution substitute for a deeply complex interplay of physical, biological and social phenomenon.
    • gosub100 2y ago
      >You seem to be implying that for everyone who is not the 1st person subjective experiencer of pain, the only possible representation of that pain is some form of "calculation". Not exactly. I'm showing the abusrdity of people who think that the brain is just a computer and that its results: "just a number" fly in the face of their reality of experiencing pain. If it's just a number, why don't they slam their hand in the door and show us? > You seem to further imply that this reduction somehow says something specific about the nature of pain itself. Am I reading this right? By their own definition, "the nature of pain itself" is just a number, just a result of a huge calculation of trillions of neurons with substantially higher numbers of networks. The terrifying sound, the facial expressions, the visceral "gut-feeling", thats all just pattern recognition (on your behalf), there's nothing more to it than a calculation, right? > Mutual exclusivity seems misapplied here. technically correct but only because we could, in theory, both inflict pain on ourselves simultaneously using the doorway.