From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Jun 30 2003 - 21:54:26 MDT
Emlyn writes
> Personally, I've been finding continuing thinking on the nature of
> consciousness quite unsettling. The problem is as follows:
>
> Axiom: I am.
> Tenuous hypothesis 1: I have sensory input implying
> other stuff, and so it is too. [Too what, tenuous?]
> Tenuous hypothesis 2: I am part of the set of other stuff.
You better jolly well believe that you are part of the
other stuff. The materialistic hypothesis is everything
that we could ask for: for four hundred years it has had
an unbroken track record of success, it's simple, and
it's almost free of contradictions (and they're tiny).
> (much deduction, investigation, leading to negation of concept of conscious
> self; self is an illusion, "I" am just a pattern of information)
Well, it depends (of course) on what we ought to
properly believe the "self" to be. I think that
there exists a proper notion of self completely
compatible with materialism.
> I find that if I take Tenuous Hypotheses 1 & 2 as axioms, I produce the
> result:
>
> Result: I am not.
It looks probable to me that your notion of self is such
that you do not have one.
> By my original axiom, I now have A and ~A. I've just flushed reality down
> the toilet. What is existence?
The self-awareness of certain machines whose ability
to map their environment extends warily into mapping
themselves as a point in their environment?
> I can't fault the materialist viewpoint, because I can't support the
> alternative; the closer I look, the more it appears that there is no
> possible role at all for any proposed non-physical piece of consciousness.
Yay.
> So intelligent thought is a purely physical phenomenon, about information
> processing. Which means that "I" am not; "I" am an illusion (fooling who?
> what?).
It seems to me (or if you prefer, to this instance of Lee Corbin)
that there probably exists a satisfactory meaning to be associated
with "I" also. I am finding that emphasizing the difference between
Tegmark's "frog perspective" and "bird perspective" helps clarity
an old dichotomy.
> I can only find paradox at the base of any search for an explanation of the
> only phenomenon in the universe that I can definitely call axiomatic (that I
> am). To me, it is more clearly evident than the existence of anything else.
Yes, I totally agree.
> But apparently it cannot be true.
> Help.
Well, our course of action is clear! We need only reform our
notions of "I", "me", and "self" so that the inconsistencies
disappear. Now it has appeared to many thoughtful people that
this cannot be done without doing excess violence to what those
tokens conventionally mean. The same fate has befallen "free
will".
But I, and also a number of thoughtful people, think that (unlike
"phlogiston" and "soul") all of the above can be used to usefully
communicate, and that all of the above can refer to objectively
evident pieces of reality.
Lee
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