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Is physicalism coherent ? (self.DebateAnAtheist)

concuniverse が 投稿

Most people on this sub, and the main atheism subs seem to be physicalists. That is, you largely don't seem to believe that there are non-physical things. I am surprised by this, because philosophical this sort of attitude is fairly controversial, and definitely a minority position (look up "reductive materialism" if you want the academic version).

The question of whether and how science should explain non-physical entities if we accept their existence is of interest. But I'd just like you to consider a few paradoxes I think come up if you do believe that there is no non-physical world:

  1. If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location ? Assume total sensory deprivation, and the brains are physically identical. Which brain are you ? If I destroyed your brain when I made the copy, does that mean that you in fact survive ? If the universe is infinite, surely an infinite number of such copies will exist at all times. Why are you the person you currently are and not one of the other copies ?

  2. Suppose you are totally blind, but are an expert in neuroscience, ironically with a specialism in color perception. In theory, would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color, simply based on your hypothetically perfect understanding of the brain states involved in color perception ?

  3. Following (2), if we accept that the blind neuroscientist will never know what it feels like to perceive red, surely this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity etc. which causes the "qualia", as you can have perfect knowledge of the brain activity, and not have perfect knowledge of the "qualia". If the "qualia" is still something physical, where is it ?

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[–]the_sleep_of_reason 35 ポイント36 ポイント  (24子コメント)

I am surprised by this, because philosophical this sort of attitude is fairly controversial, and definitely a minority position

Accept: physicalism 599 / 1803 (33.2%)

Lean toward: physicalism 382 / 1803 (21.2%)

Accept: non-physicalism 273 / 1803 (15.1%)

Lean toward: non-physicalism 248 / 1803 (13.8%)

Results within members of philosophy faculties or PhD holders

Does not look like a "minority position" to me at all actually.

[–]segFault11235 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (0子コメント)

What the hell is up with all those two-boxers? I was fine with everything until I got to Newcomb's problem, and now everything has been brought into question :P.

[–]Crazy__Eddie 49 ポイント50 ポイント  (17子コメント)

  1. Both me and not me. It has my personalty and memories, so it is me. It has a different POV from which it observes its surroundings so it's not me. As time progresses this difference in POV will continue to diverge and it will be less and less me.

  2. Yes, I could know exactly what brain states my brain would enter upon seeing a color. This is not the same as my brain actually being in those states.

  3. No, it does not suggest qualia is a real thing. It's not even a coherent idea. Qualia are functionally equivalent to there being no such thing as qualia. Being blind, my brain would never enter the specific states I would know happen upon seeing color. I would know exactly what it would feel like but I would not have ever experienced it--unless I could trigger those states through some sort of manipulation (being incredibly knowledgable this isn't absurd). You could argue it either way...I know what it feels like because I know what it would feel like...but I don't because I never experienced those specific states.

Have a read of Dennett's "Robot Mary" essay. Get a copy of "The Mind's I". These questions of yours are not even all that interesting. There's a whole lot more weird shit to contemplate, and dualism does nothing to answer the questions but say, "This is where the magic happens." It's answering the question before even asking it. If you want to accept the world as it is you have to accept its absurdities and uncertainties. You can't just stick a magic man and other crap and call it an understanding.

[–]Crazy__Eddie 51 ポイント52 ポイント  (14子コメント)

In fact, I'll paraphrase a story from "The Mind's I".

A dualist was just totally sick of living. Nothing mattered and no amount of medication could solve his melancholy. He hated everything about his life and saw no hope for the future. So he decided he would commit suicide.

Problem is though that he did not want to hurt the people who loved him. Luckily for him he found out about this magic pill that would destroy his soul but leave his body intact and behaving just as he would if he were there. It would make him a zombie and he would no longer have to live his terrible existence, but nobody would be the wiser.

So he got one of these pills and right before bed he took it, happy in the knowledge that he would never wake again but nobody would know he was dead. He slept soundly and peacefully through the night, and at around 2am his soul died.

The next morning his soulless body awoke. It looked around and exclaimed, "That god damn pill didn't work! I'm just as bad off as I was!"

[–]dem0n0cracy 9 ポイント10 ポイント  (0子コメント)

You're a cool guy Eddie.

[–]TheMedPack -3 ポイント-2 ポイント  (12子コメント)

The next morning his soulless body awoke. It looked around and exclaimed, "That god damn pill didn't work! I'm just as bad off as I was!"

But no one had the experience of saying that, so the sounds that the body produced constituted a false, or perhaps meaningless, statement. What is this supposed to show?

[–]bitscones 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (11子コメント)

The story is intended to make one consider certain peculiarities inherent to the idea of dualism. For example, what is the meaning of a "soul" in a physical system that functions identically to one where a soul is not present? One might also be lead to question why a soul is even valuable when every aspect of one's identity is defined by physical attributes of matter or even why it would be that such a thing as a soul should exist at all beyond the reasoning that "it feels like I have a soul".

[–]TheMedPack -2 ポイント-1 ポイント  (10子コメント)

For example, what is the meaning of a "soul" in a physical system that functions identically to one where a soul is not present?

In this case, first-person experience--which isn't a matter of externally observable function.

One might also be lead to question why a soul is even valuable when every aspect of one's identity is defined by physical attributes of matter

It's valuable because from my point of view, my conscious experience is everything I am and have; it's literally the world to me.

or even why it would be that such a thing as a soul should exist at all

Consciousness is mysterious, to be sure, but its reality is undeniable.

[–]bitscones 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (9子コメント)

Consciousness is mysterious, to be sure, but its reality is undeniable.

The existence of consciousness does not necessarily imply the existence of a soul. As you've stated, the existence of consciousness is "undeniable" (too strong of a description for my taste, but close enough for the sake of argument), but the existence of a soul is much more debatable.

In this case, first-person experience--which isn't a matter of externally observable function.

A dualist would presume that this is the case, but the purpose of the story is to make you consider that since the constituent properties of experience (such as pain, pleasure, emotions, and in this case emotional pain to the point of suicidal depression) are a purely physical phenomenon, it is not such a stretch to consider that it is all a physical phenomenon.

It's valuable because from my point of view, my conscious experience is everything I am and have; it's literally the world to me.

The entirety of what constitutes a "point of view" (i.e. the full range of sensory perception) is defined exclusively by physical phenomenon. Even the concept of value is a concept that only exists in physical space of your brain. The story tries to illustrate that the idea that a non-physical "point of view" existing independent of everything that defines the point of view is something of an unnecessary conception that doesn't need to exist.

[–]TheMedPack 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (8子コメント)

The existence of consciousness does not necessarily imply the existence of a soul.

Some people refer to nothing more than consciousness by the word 'soul', but yeah. The question is whether consciousness is physical; we don't need to introduce an ambiguous word like 'soul'.

the purpose of the story is to make you consider that since the constituent properties of experience (such as pain, pleasure, emotions, and in this case emotional pain to the point of suicidal depression) are a purely physical phenomenon

If by 'constituent properties' you're referring to certain brain processes, then that's entirely uncontroversial. But if you're referring to the phenomenological aspect of pain etc, it begs the question to say that it's purely physical. The story seems to elide this distinction in a way I'm not sure is honest.

The entirety of what constitutes a "point of view" (i.e. the full range of sensory perception) is defined exclusively by physical phenomenon.

Isn't this just begging the question again? It isn't mere sensory perception that constitutes a point of view in the relevant sense; Roombas and thermostats have a rudimentary, and probably meaningless, kind of 'sensory perception'. What constitutes a point of view in the philosophically interesting sense is the subjective experience of sensory processes, and that's something we can't just assume is physical.

[–]bitscones 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (7子コメント)

Some people refer to nothing more than consciousness by the word 'soul', but yeah. The question is whether consciousness is physical; we don't need to introduce an ambiguous word like 'soul'.

Sure, but then I'd have to refer back to my original statement in the context of your reply:

or even why it would be that such a thing as a soul should exist at all beyond the reasoning that "it feels like I have a soul".

That question isn't intended to interrogate why consciousness should exist at all, but rather, why do we expect that a non-corporeal essence extant from the physical body should exist at all? The story intends to show that the brain makes no distinction regarding the possible embodiment of a soul. Even without a soul, the person in the story is still able to introspect upon their existential anguish because it is a brain that does this, not a soul, and unless one is inclined to favor solipsism, the idea of an introspective human that lacks consciousness contradicts the common acceptance that other humans are apparently conscious. Of course, the story does not logically demonstrate that consciousness must be physical, but it alludes to the idea that non-physical consciousness is unnecessary to explain everything we accept as part of the human condition.

What constitutes a point of view in the philosophically interesting sense is the subjective experience of sensory processes, and that's something we can't just assume is physical.

No, we can't assume it is physical, just as we can't assume it is the opposite either, and the crux of what I'm saying is that the story intends to suggest that the physicalist explanation is good enough, even if not clearly demonstrated. That is to say, a non-physical explanation of consciousness is an extra step that there may not be a compelling reason to take.

[–]TheMedPack 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (6子コメント)

That question isn't intended to interrogate why consciousness should exist at all, but rather, why do we expect that a non-corporeal essence extant from the physical body should exist at all?

There's no reason to expect that. But the problem is that we each have infallible assurance that (at least our own) consciousness exists, and at present we can't see even in principle how consciousness fits into the physical world as we understand it. This is why many people are open to the idea that consciousness is a nonphysical phenomenon.

the crux of what I'm saying is that the story intends to suggest that the physicalist explanation is good enough, even if not clearly demonstrated.

On the contrary, the fact that the person's mental life comes to an end while the body carries on in a functionally indistinguishable way illustrates the apparent fact that consciousness is something additional to the physical activity of the brain. At least, this is how someone who doesn't already agree with the story's intended conclusion will interpret it.

[–]bitscones 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (5子コメント)

we can't see even in principle how consciousness fits into the physical world as we understand it

We certainly can in principle, we just haven't determined a way that we might test such possibilities. For example, it may simply be that subjective experience is a necessary functional component of cognition. It could also be that the sensation of consciousness arises from an inherent property of the universe under certain physical circumstances. There is nothing to rule out these possibilities in principle, but it does seem unlikely that we could ever test them.

Certainly there is also a long historical precedent for apparently inexplicable phenomena being later demystified through a physical explanation.

the fact that the person's mental life comes to an end while the body carries on in a functionally indistinguishable way illustrates the apparent fact that consciousness is something additional to the physical activity of the brain.

Now that's begging the question. Setting aside the fact that the person's "mental life" most certainly does continue (as mental processes are unambiguously a function of physical phenomena), you are assuming the existence of a non-physical consciousness in order to suggest that it is distinct from the physical body by virtue of the fact that the physical body remains unaffected by its absence. One who does not favor the idea of a non-physical consciousness could easily explain this by asserting that a non-physical consciousness simply never existed in the first place. The fact that you feel aware of your own subjective experience does not in any way prove that the sensation is fundamentally non-physical in origin and the story attempts to suggest that it takes an unusual (though not necessary incorrect) assumption to believe that consciousness isn't a physical phenomenon (because everything that we know to exist is a physical phenomenon) .

[–]segFault11235 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Have a read of Dennett's "Robot Mary" essay.

Did you mean "What RoboMary Knows"?

[–]mattaugamer 21 ポイント22 ポイント  (7子コメント)

I think part of the problem lies in your definitions. By and large atheists do believe in non-physical things. Math. Language. Honour. Love. Many abstract concepts exist that are not physical, but still meaningful.

What we don't typically accept are supernatural entities, and with good reason. The existence of the category itself has not been established even remotely.

Brain thing

I don't know. I suspect if you made an identical duplicate of my brain, including electrical signals that the duplicate brain would at least think it was me. This again comes down to definitions. What do you consider "me"? I would honestly say that was NOT me and that when you destroyed my brain you destroyed me. It's basically the broom, right? Buy a broom and replace the handle is it the same broom? What about if you replace the handle and then later replace the head? Is it still the same broom? I would say yes. Though it contains none of the same material, it has all joined the "broom pattern" so to speak. The handle joined the broom, now becoming part of the pattern, part of the definition of that broom. Another broom, no matter how similar it looks, is not the same broom.

Colour thing

No idea. But I don't believe that someone who is blind from birth can have a knowledge of what colour is. What's that got to do with anything?

Qualia thing

No, a person who is blind, esp from birth doesn't experience colour. There is no qualia. Our sense of colour is literally a sense, it takes input from the eyes and is interpreted by the brain. That's not a philosophical stance, it's a scientific fact. There are physical things all through this chain. The colour is a wavelength of light. The nerve pulses that send vision from the eyes are chemical. The signals in the brain that process it are electrical.

All of this exists in a material world, and none of it suggests a deity.

[–]whiskeyandbear 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

It feels like no one here is properly acknowledging the problem of the first one. It's saying there is no difference between the you that thinks it is you and what you actually experience. It is pointing out that there is an experience of you that doesn't correlate to the material you are. Imagine that this is actually the way in which they will use teleporters, they will create a copy of you, destroy you, and create the exact same and recreate it. In your answer you say that you will no longer be this person, suggesting there is more to this experience. What we consider you is not the point, it's what you would consider you.

[–]concuniverse[S] -4 ポイント-3 ポイント  (5子コメント)

Thank you for this reply.

Well, I agree that nothing is supernatural. I think there's a danger in theology of pointing out "God" or any other big metaphysical concept as being somehow distinct from everything else. If a God exist it is by definition natural. To digress slightly, it's impossible to even conceive a "miraculous occurrence", because for it to be real, there have to be "natural" physical processes (and non-physical processes ;) ) behind it.

So, if I push this rather further, if you agree that someone blind from birth can't ever understand what it's like to experience colour, do you accept that knowledge of the "what is this like" of colour is independent of any possible knowledge about the physical structure of the universe ?

[–]mattaugamer 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (3子コメント)

I don't really get your last question. Can you clarify?

[–]concuniverse[S] -3 ポイント-2 ポイント  (2子コメント)

Well, do you think it makes sense to talk about a set of "non-physical entities" which would include my subjective experience of the colour red etc. ?

[–]mattaugamer 19 ポイント20 ポイント  (0子コメント)

No. I think that's nonsensical. It's not an entity.

[–]DeusExMentis 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I think what's really going on is that your "non-physical entities" are actually ways of talking about physical things.

One way of describing a complex set of quantum-level physical interactions is to set forth a formula describing how the wave function evolves as you advance your value for the t variable.

Another way of describing the same set of quantum-level physical interactions may be to say, "I am hungry."

They're different ways of talking about what is, at bottom, the same thing going on.

[–]darkstar47 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (0子コメント)

if you agree that someone blind from birth can't ever understand what it's like to experience colour,

I don't have a complete understanding of the process, but photons excite receptors in the eye, which create electrical signals that are processed by the brain.

So even if someone was born without eyesight, it seems theoretically possible that artificial receptors could transmit electrical signals to the right places in the person's brain, thereby giving them sight. And with sight, an understanding of colors.

You would not even need receptors, unless you wanted to give the person the ability to "see" the reality around them. You could transmit the information from a movie, video game, or a still photo of a rainbow and get the same ability to understand colors.

[–]bicubic 18 ポイント19 ポイント  (2子コメント)

Here's a possibility: Physicalism is coherent, but your understanding of it is not.

It's possible that someone here will find the right concise arguments to resolve this for you, but all I'm going to do is to suggest you read more. I'd suggest you avoid works by pure philosophers and instead read works by theoretical physicists who have a strong interest in philosophy. Sean Carroll's book The Big Picture is the best that I am aware of for this, but David Deutsch's book The Beginning of Infinity is also excellent.

[–]faithdoubter 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I second the suggestion on Deutsch's book...... it is a helluva read.

[–]shaon0000 14 ポイント15 ポイント  (10子コメント)

Please define a non physical entity. In particular, please ensure it is sufficiently different from a physical entity, such that any non physical entity can be verified as non physical.

[–]TheMedPack 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (9子コメント)

Abstract objects aren't physical. An abstract object is generally defined as an object that isn't located in space and time and doesn't enter into causal interactions. Standard examples include mathematical entities, concepts, propositions, properties etc. These can be verified as nonphysical in that it's unintelligible to ask, for instance, where they are or how to move them to other places.

[–]shaon0000 7 ポイント8 ポイント  (1子コメント)

So then what OP meant by non physical entity are human made axioms and abstractions?

[–]TheMedPack 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Whether they're human-made is a deep, difficult, and historically controversial question. But yeah, those are the sorts of things that would qualify as what OP was talking about.

[–]marcinruthemann 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (6子コメント)

Abstract concepts are product of brain structure and activity. If you can provide an example against that claim, please share.

[–]Deris87 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (2子コメント)

That's a shifting of the burden of proof, but it would be fair to say there's no evidence that abstract concepts exist anywhere but in human minds.

[–]marcinruthemann 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Maybe, but insisting on non-physical origin of math poses a much bigger problem. You need to create a whole realm, universe, or whatever to explain math. Either that, or just the brain hypothesis.

[–]Deris87 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I agree, there's no evidence and no good reason to believe that abstract objects actually exist in some platonic realm, but the language we use in these kinds of discussions is important. The way you phrased it is technically an argument from ignorance fallacy, and we jump down the throats of theists doing that all the time (and rightly so). I'm not saying you're wrong in disbelieving in platonic entities, but there's no need to overreach.

[–]TheMedPack -1 ポイント0 ポイント  (2子コメント)

For example, the geometrical features of space existed long before there were brains. For another example, pi existed long before it was discovered by humans. For yet another, the laws of logic applied before we discovered them. I could go on.

[–]marcinruthemann 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

geometrical features of space

Find me an ideal circle in nature. That 's an interpretation.

pi existed long before it was discovered by humans.

It didn't.

the laws of logic applied before we discovered them

How do you know, if there was no language they act upon?

[–]TheMedPack 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Find me an ideal circle in nature. That 's an interpretation.

Geometers can show it to you if you ask. You'll get rigorous definitions and everything.

It didn't.

Sure it did. It wasn't up to us what the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter would be.

How do you know, if there was no language they act upon?

It's not up to us whether P & ~P is possible or not; it just isn't, regardless of our opinions.

[–]mhornberger 14 ポイント15 ポイント  (32子コメント)

Physicalism was just what I was left with when I stopped believing in magic. We physicalists do acknowledge the existence of mathematics, language, emotion, hopes, dreams, etc. For us they're qualities of, or relationships between, or phenomena arising out of or dependent on physical processes, physical reality. "Physical" isn't relegated to what you can poke with a stick.

If you believe that "you are your brain"

I am not my brain, no more than I am my foot. My sense of "I" comes from processes in my brain, yes, but that's a different statement.

what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location ?

Then that copy too would have a sense of self. He would be an individual unto himself, and would feel the need for self-preservation and all the rest. We might start off as identical, but since our experiences would be different then we would quickly diverge.

As an aside, I'd recommend the great book Permutation City, which explores these ideas in great depth. Many of Greg Egan's other novels and short stories also explore the same territory.

Which brain are you ?

"I" is a first-person experience. The other instantiation of "my" brain pattern (which would quickly diverge from the original) would be its own "I".

[–]JoelKizz 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (5子コメント)

Physicalism was just what I was left with when I stopped believing in magic.

How do you define magic?

[–]mhornberger 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (4子コメント)

An occult force working from outside or behind the mundane physical world.

[–]JoelKizz 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (3子コメント)

Would you say that as long as a force is empirically measurable then that force is not magic?

[–]mhornberger 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (2子コメント)

But magic, supernatural forces/agents etc are thought to intervene in or have influence in the physical, mundane world. God is thought by many to answer prayers, for example. The force doesn't stop being occult or supernatural just because it becomes measurable (i.e. has some effect) in this world.

[–]JoelKizz 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Yeah but you don't believe those forces exist right? I'm asking if a "force" is indeed empirically measurable is that enough to make it non-magical?

[–]mhornberger 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I don't believe in them, no. I don't think the claim that something is supernatural or magic even makes sense, on critical examination. But I also believe you can never prove there isn't "something else." I can never prove there is no magic. I can never prove that a specific event wasn't magic. I just see no reason to think magic actually exists.

But I routinely hear believers call events miracles from God, so they do seem to believe that there are supernatural forces working in the world. I even have Christian acquaintances who think that demons are actively working to undermine God's work in the world, meaning they think there is a cosmic battle between Good and Evil playing out in the world around us.

I'm asking if a "force" is indeed empirically measurable is that enough to make it non-magical?

That's an odd way to parse it. I guess a parallel would be that, since I don't think unicorns exist, if we found something, it sure wasn't a unicorn. But then you have the black swan problem, so I don't think this works too well.

It isn't so much that I know things can't be magical (I don't know that) rather I don't see any basis by which we could call a given thing magical. I don't know for an absolute fact that the TV in the next room isn't a Deceptagon-like being plotting my demise, but I also see no reason to think that Deceptagons or their ilk actually exist. So the odds on the TV plotting against me seem slim.

[–][削除されました]  (6子コメント)

[deleted]

    [–]mhornberger 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (5子コメント)

    "I" is a first-person experience

    Is this how you're defining "I"

    That's both the dictionary definition and the colloquial usage.

    What constitutes experience?

    Again, I'm using words in their conventional, more or less dictionary sense.

    Is there an experiencer?

    There is a sense of one constructed by our brain, yes. Any being with the capacity to plan, think ahead, contemplate different courses of action, would have to have some sense of a first-person perspective. This is where I am, this is where they are, etc.

    Or is there just experience occurring?

    You dying in a car wreck and dying in a car wreck occurring are not the same things, and I suspect you can predict the difference. "Dying in a car wreck occurring" happens all over the world every day, but you survived because those events happened to other people. Me eating a sandwich and a sandwich being eaten aren't the same things. The sandwich only nourishes me, keeps me alive, if I'm the one who eats it. I am a different, distinct organism from Cher or Donald Trump or you. What point are you trying to drive towards with these questions?

    [–][削除されました]  (4子コメント)

    [deleted]

      [–]mhornberger 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (3子コメント)

      Or are you saying that it must be the case that anything which can do these tasks must have a first person experience?

      Closer to this, but I'm not saying that it would have to be to the level of an "experience," much less that it would necessarily entail the capacity to reflect on it or slice and dice its meaning. Even a Roomba needs some sense or internal modeling of a first-person perspective, emphasis on "some." The unit has to know where it is in relation to a ledge, for example. But even at this rudimentary level there is still the kernel of a self, because something has to be differentiated from the other somethings around which the first something must navigate.

      But why not 'we'?

      Because it doesn't mean the same thing. If I lock you in a cell and don't bring you food, you'll starve. "We" (the royal we) could be well-fed and comfortable, but one of us will starve to death. This doesn't hinge on verbiage. You can use other labels if you like, but the underlying facts remain the same. A sandwich being eaten and you getting to eat the sandwich are not the same things. Only one nourishes you.

      Or perhaps there are many different experiences occuring that provide a perception as if there is one entity doing all of it and experiencing all of it.

      Perhaps I'm just a Boltzmann brain and I'm imagining all of this. Perhaps this, perhaps that. I focus on how I and others actually engage the world. There is a vast sea of possibilities that we can't prove false. But I want to know how people actually think the world is, and why they think so.

      It's not clear to me what you mean when you refer to yourself.

      When you cross the road, do you take care to avoid getting hit by cars? Do you pause in the middle of a busy street to parse what the "I" is you're trying to preserve from being hit by a car?

      If you call the police and say someone is trying to kill you, would it make sense for them to say that it's not clear to them what you mean when you refer to yourself? I'm not asking merely if it would be appropriate in that emergency situation, rather I'm saying it would look like a silly and facile question. The question does not seem deep to me. Are you arguing for something, or trying to coax me towards an idea?

      Sure, our sense of self can be looked at more closely. I particularly enjoyed Metzinger's The Ego Tunnel, and I've read a number of other books on the neuroscience underlying our sense of self. And there are indeed interesting philosophical conundrums, like the teletransportation problem for one example. But in everyday life we know what "I" and "you" mean. When we ask the waiter to bring us a salad, they know to whom we're referring. I'm using these terms in that colloquial, dictionary sense.

      [–][削除されました]  (2子コメント)

      [deleted]

        [–]mhornberger 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

        Being a Boltzmann brain would not imply you're imagining everything.

        I disagree, because it would mean that you and this interaction exist only in my (evanescent) mind. As does my own personal past.

        So in the same sense as Thomas Nagel would you say there is something for what it is like to be a Roomba? Or do you mean that there is information processing happening and that is all.

        That dismissive "that is all" tacked on the end there is problematic. I don't consider those two things mutually exclusive, nor is one deeper than the other. For those of us who think that consciousness, cognition, perception etc are physical processes, "what it's like to be a bat" is information processing, or more completely what it feels like when that process is taking place. The information processing probably has to have a certain level of complexity before any interiority surfaces, and even then it is probably not an on-or-off thing. Some birds (particularly but not only corvids) seem to have some interiority, but as far as we know they don't write soliloquies about the vicissitudes of life.

        There is also information processing in photosynthesis so would you consider a leaf to be experiencing something, or maybe the whole plant?

        No. For mentation to be information processing doesn't mean that information processing is mentation. This isn't an A == B therefore B == A situation. All dogs are mammals but obviously not all mammals are dogs. That being said, plants do sense and respond to stimuli. They also communicate with each other.

        believe in panpsychism

        No, I don't believe in panpsychism. I don't 'follow' anyone, but I am a physicalist.

        these can be replaced by a robot

        Yes, and the robot too would have some internal representation self, some (fallible) way of distinguishing itself from other things in the world.

        yet you might not attribute selfhood to the robot

        I was talking about some representation or tracking of a first-person perspective being necessary. You seem to be discussing something closer to consciousness. I explicitly said that I wasn't talking about a human-level degree of self-awareness, where we can slice and dice what it means when we say "I."

        there may not be any kind of experience occurring for the robot. In the sense of Nagel then perhaps there is not anything for what it is like to be a robot.

        That 'may' and 'perhaps' are important. We can never get "into the head" of other beings, so we can't know what it's like to be a bat, or a slug, or a robot, or anything else. For all you know I could be a philosophical zombie. I could be an android or alien or parasitic space-thing. We infer consciousness or mentation or whatever because we automatically form a theory of mind of whatever we encounter. But we can't really know.

        From those and the ones you've provided it seems you think the notion of identity is so obvious

        I didn't know you wanted to discuss it on a philosophical level. As I've said, I enjoyed Metzinger's book, so that says something about my level of curiosity about the subject, and probably the position I take on it as well. I wasn't trying to be snarky, but I was trying to weed out critical questions from the rhetorical questions I commonly encounter here, the ones intended only to coax me to the epiphany that consciousness can't be physical, thus God, etc.

        No, we do not know what it means. We have come to an agreement about how we should use these words and that is all.

        And as I've said, I'm using the words in the dictionary or colloquial sense.

        We do not typically think of the stomach as being 'I', but in a possessive sense, as in it's my stomach.

        That changes with context, and if I remember correctly Metzinger discusses that at length. Usually, yes, we think of "I" as being in our head, but people at different times will also think of their "gut" or their "heart" when they're relying more on intuition. We also hear about "bone-deep" certainty. But people have known for a very long time that it's the head that, when injured, most affects behavior, thinking, memory etc. Whack someone hard in the head and they almost seem like a different person. I don't think it's surprising that folk wisdom would place the seat of identity in that region.

        Have you thought that maybe these sensations and all of the things that give the coherent feeling of being a me, are individual and separate experiences that have been tricked into thinking there is a single entity doing all of it?

        I don't think 'tricked,' no. At a deep enough level we are colonies rather than single organisms. As "I" type this and sit here in "my" body, "my" cells in this body are outnumbered 10:1 by other organisms, and if they all vanished I probably wouldn't survive. Bacteria, etc. Mitochondria has its own DNA, and is thought to have been an independent organism hijacked accidentally. Our genes can even work against us, and some view us as their vehicles, rather than them as our genes. So we can look at this in a myriad of ways.

        [–]bo3isalright 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (17子コメント)

        I really, really don't understand the quip, if you will, about "magic". Saying there is a separate substance or property that is mental, is not in anyway appealing to some sort of magic force in the same way claiming the existence of God can be seen to do, for example. My position on the matter is that physicalism just simply does not adequately describe my sense experience, there does just seem to be more about an experience than the physical facts, qualia seem to be a very real, evident and apparent thing to me. This isn't appealing to magic to explain something, it really is just observing and describing my experience to me in a better way than the physicalist position does, because I do seem to experience mental states and qualia. Can you explain the "magic" remark?

        [–]mhornberger 9 ポイント10 ポイント  (4子コメント)

        I really, really don't understand the quip, if you will, about "magic".

        Magic to me is any occult force working from outside the physical system. What I meant by "physicalism is what I was left with..." was that, once I stopped believing in 'other' stuff, I was left with physical reality. I don't see any indication of anything else.

        Saying there is a separate substance or property that is mental

        I'm not a dualist, and I haven't seen a case made for dualism. I'm more of a philosophical monist, though I don't see much value today in "substances" as a concept. Substance dualism was, to my knowledge, never quite able to answer how the substances influenced one another.

        My position on the matter is that physicalism just simply does not adequately describe my sense experience

        I don't share that gestalt, but you're welcome to it. I don't engage the world in terms of "substances," not in the philosophical sense. Brains are physical arrangements with physical processes, and yes, emotions, thoughts, aspirations, goals etc show up. And? My sense of awe or wonder at my existence, or that I can think about thinking about thoughts, or my ecstasy at a piano sonata, don't reach back down the levels of existence and make these mental states something other than being dependent on brain states. They don't make anything here non-physical, in the sense that I understand physical.

        You seem to have a different view of what "physical" means than do most physicalists. A thought for me is physical, as is my sense of seeing the color red, etc. Take away the physical processes in my brain, and there is no "I" and no perception of red. Heck, there is not even red, since without the physical substrate there are no photons, no wavelengths, no sensory apparatus, no eyes, no retina, no optic nerve, no brain, no substrate in which the thought can form via an electrochemical pattern.

        Meanwhile, if you stimulate my brain directly you can create any number of sensory impressions, to include the perception of color. Take away all the physical and where is the qualia? It ain't there, because it arose only in the context of, riding on the back of, the substrate of physical reality.

        [–]bo3isalright 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (3子コメント)

        Magic to me is any occult force working from outside the physical system.

        Fair enough, under those terms that makes sense from your point of view.

        I'm not a dualist, and I haven't seen a case made for dualism. I'm more of a philosophical monist, though I don't see much value today in "substances" as a concept.

        Me neither, I would, for reference, say that dualism is utterly flawed as well, but I think there are examples where there does seem to be something other than just the physical in our experience, have you read Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat"? You might find this interesting.

        Brains are physical arrangements with physical processes, and yes, emotions, thoughts, aspirations, goals etc show up. And? My sense of awe or wonder at my existence, or that I can think about thinking about thoughts, or my ecstasy at a piano sonata, don't reach back down the levels of existence and make these mental states something other than being dependent on brain states. They don't make anything here non-physical, in the sense that I understand physical

        Are you assuming the fact that just because these "mental states" are caused by the physical, they must thus be physical themselves? Are these states not non-physical mental states caused by the physical brain? Or would you say they are entirely reducible to physical processes within the brain. If this is your approach then I simply ask, if you knew all the physical facts about a hearing a specific piano sonata, but had never heard it, would you add something to your knowledge of it by actually experiencing the pianist play?

        [–]mhornberger 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (2子コメント)

        there are examples where there does seem to be something other than just the physical in our experience

        We have a different view of what "physical" mean. Physicalists, such as myself, include not just stuff you can poke with a stick, but any phenomenon of, arising from, or dependent on, physical processes.

        Are you assuming the fact that just because these "mental states" are caused by the physical, they must thus be physical themselves?

        As I've said, by "physical" physicalists include things that are caused by, and dependent on, underlying physical substrates and processes. You are using a different, and more restrictive, view of what physicalism means than do any physicalists of which I am aware.

        If this is your approach then I simply ask, if you knew all the physical facts about a hearing a specific piano sonata, but had never heard it, would you add something to your knowledge of it by actually experiencing the pianist play?

        As I've said, the experience of hearing the sonata, and the emotions involved, are also physical, since they play out in, and are dependent on, the substrate of physical reality. They are not "something else," rather they manifest what it "feels like" for a specific arrangement of physical matter being faced with specific physical phenomenon, and undergoing specific physical changes.

        To use a vastly simplified analogy, experiences are ripples on the water. The ripples aren't "something else," rather they are patterns playing out on the substrate of water and energy. Ripples aren't a different or independent "substance." They have literally no existence apart from their existence as patterns in the underlying physicality.

        That doesn't mean they are synonymous with water. They aren't "perfectly reduced to" water. Ripples aren't "just" water. If A == B then B == A and you can just use them interchangeably. Such is not the case here. Ripples, like thoughts, are patterns playing out on an underlying substrate of physical reality. They have no existence independently of that.

        That we can think of them as independent, say the idea of 'red,' all by itself, free of considerations of wavelengths and optic nerves and brains, doesn't make them actually independent. That someone can ask a question doesn't make perception non-physical. That someone can ask what it's like to be a bat, or point out that we don't, and can't, know doesn't make consciousness non-physical. Ultimately we can't get "in the head" of any other being, to include other humans. You don't know for sure that I am conscious. I could be a bot, or even a philosophical zombie. But since you're bothering talking to me, you've probably just made an assumption and gone with it.

        [–]bo3isalright 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

        I think my defintion of physical is perhaps not too narrow, but rather yours is too wide here.

        but any phenomenon of, arising from, or dependent on, physical processes.

        So what about the epiphenomenalist position, that the mind is a dependent by product of the physical. There are still mental states that can't be reduced to physical processes, but they are entirely dependent upon physical process of the brain. Are these mental states physical, are properties of objects really physical? Can I really say that these mental ideas that can't be accounted for by my brain activity are physical? I don't think so. I think there is a distinction to made in narrower terms than you are providing.

        [–]mhornberger 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        I think my defintion of physical is perhaps not too narrow, but rather yours is too wide here.

        My usage is consistent with that of every other physicalist I've encountered.

        There are still mental states that can't be reduced to physical processes

        Are you saying there are mental states not dependent on, or playing out in, physical processes? The mental states result from brain states. Without the brain state, there is no evidence of a mental state, cognition, thought, sense of identity, perception, etc. Mental states don't "reduce to" brain states, rather they are what a physical being 'feels like' when in that brain state. Yes, the feeling experienced during an underlying brain state can be discussed separately from the brain state. Dependency is not identity, but a verbal distinction doesn't make something actually independent.

        are properties of objects really physical?

        Yes, per my usage, and that of every physicalist I've encountered.

        these mental ideas that can't be accounted for by my brain activity are physical?

        What mental ideas do you have that are independent of brain and brain activity? How did you reach such a conclusion? Saying "science can't explain ___ to my satisfaction" is not an argument for your thoughts being independent of the substrate of physical reality.

        I think there is a distinction to made in narrower terms than you are providing.

        I acknowledged the distinction between a thought and a brain state. The thought is the experience of having the brain state. They are not identical, so cannot be reduced in the A == B sense. That A and B are not "the same things" doesn't mean B is independent of A. Here B is still a product of processes in, or is an experience of patterns in, A.

        B can be discussed on its own terms, yes. Love can be discussed on its own terms without resorting to discussions of endogenous opiates, dopamine, etc. But if you take away those brain chemicals, the emotions change. The mental state changes. Making a verbal distinction does not mean the two are actually independent.

        [–]NDaveT 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (11子コメント)

        Why do you think your sense experience isn't physical?

        [–]bo3isalright 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (10子コメント)

        I think there is an aspect of my sense experience that can't be explained in purely physical terms. What is the "redness" I see when I see a red apple? What is the "desire" to perform an action in physical terms? Why can't I imagine what is like to be you, even if I know each and every physical fact that there is to know about you? So, there are two things that make me feel there is something beyond the physical nature of experience, 1. Qualia, 2. The subjective nature of experience. There is simply something more to what I observe than what the physicalist tells me, I don't know exactly what is going at all, but I cannot conveniently ignore these things to fit a world view that tells me only the physical exists, they seem to be an extremely important part of my experience and the nature of the "self".

        [–]NDaveT 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (9子コメント)

        What is the "redness" I see when I see a red apple?

        Photons of certain wavelengths hitting your retina, then being processed by parts of your brain and correlated with memories of other things you've seen so your brain can categorize what you're seeing into things like "apple".

        What is the "desire" to perform an action in physical terms?

        Neurotransmitters attaching to neurons to instill a motivation to do something.

        Why can't I imagine what is like to be you, even if I know each and every physical fact that there is to know about you?

        We don't have the technology for you to know each and every physical fact there is to know about me - not even close.

        There is simply something more to what I observe than what the physicalist tells me

        Couldn't that be because our scientific understanding of the human brain is in its infancy?

        [–]bo3isalright 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (8子コメント)

        Photons of certain wavelengths hitting your retina, then being processed by parts of your brain and correlated with memories of other things you've seen so your brain can categorize what you're seeing into things like "apple".

        No, that is what red is, not the qualia of "redness". I'll use Jackson's classic example to illustrate my point, if a neuroscientist knows all the facts about red, the wavelengths, the physical effects on the eye etc, but lives within a room that is entirely black and white, when she steps out of the room and observes a red apple for the first time, does she learn more about the colour red? Yes, for me she absolutely does, she learns what it is actually like to experience red, so there is something "about" red other than the physical facts.

        We don't have the technology for you to know each and every physical fact there is to know about me - not even close.

        That is not the point, if we did, I would still argue there would still be something I didn't know- what it is actually like to be you. There is a clear subjective nature to experience that seems to be separate from the the physical.

        Couldn't that be because our scientific understanding of the human brain is in its infancy?

        Yes, absolutely, but with the facts available to me currently, I cannot say physicalism adequately describes my experience, so I can't argue for it.

        [–]NDaveT 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (7子コメント)

        No, that is what red is, not the qualia of "redness". I'll use Jackson's classic example to illustrate my point, if a neuroscientist knows all the facts about red, the wavelengths, the physical effects on the eye etc, but lives within a room that is entirely black and white, when she steps out of the room and observes a red apple for the first time, does she learn more about the colour red? Yes, for me she absolutely does, she learns what it is actually like to experience red, so there is something "about" red other than the physical facts.

        What she sees when those photons hit her eye is one of those physical facts.

        That is not the point, if we did, I would still argue there would still be something I didn't know- what it is actually like to be you. There is a clear subjective nature to experience that seems to be separate from the the physical.

        It's clear that it's subjective, but I see no reason to think it's separate from the physical.

        Knowing everything about what a camera is pointed at does not give me the view that camera sees.

        Yes, absolutely, but with the facts available to me currently, I cannot say physicalism adequately describes my experience, so I can't argue for it.

        Everything else is physical so I see no reason to postulate anything non-physical, nor do I have any reason to think my subjective experience is non-physical.

        [–]TheMedPack 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (6子コメント)

        What she sees when those photons hit her eye is one of those physical facts.

        Then it's odd that it can't be expressed in the language we use to describe every other sort of physical fact. This is supposed to be the intuitive pull of the thought experiment.

        It's clear that it's subjective, but I see no reason to think it's separate from the physical.

        One prestigious definition of 'physical' is 'capable of being described in the language of physics'. The neuroscientist knows everything about color vision that's capable of being described in the language of physics, but doesn't know what the colors look like, having never seen them herself. Therefore, what she learns when she sees red for the first time isn't a physical fact.

        [–]NDaveT 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (5子コメント)

        Then it's odd that it can't be expressed in the language we use to describe every other sort of physical fact.

        "I saw red" is the language used to describe it. The only way to reach consensus on what "Red" is is to compare the wavelengths people describe as red and see if they're roughly the same. But that's true of language generally; I don't see how it implies anything nonphysical.

        This is supposed to be the intuitive pull of the thought experiment.

        That must be why I never understood that thought experiment - and still don't.

        The neuroscientist knows everything about color vision that's capable of being described in the language of physics, but doesn't know what the colors look like, having never seen them herself. Therefore, what she learns when she sees red for the first time isn't a physical fact.

        Seems to me it is a physical fact, just one you can only experience by experiencing it.

        [–]TheMedPack 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (4子コメント)

        "I saw red" is the language used to describe it.

        But that's not a description in the sense of conveying the relevant information; there's no physical description (that we can currently conceive of) that could accomplish that.

        But that's true of language generally; I don't see how it implies anything nonphysical.

        It's not true of language generally that an understanding of what's being described requires personal experience of it. That seems to be true only of language that attempts to communicate first-person subjectivity.

        Seems to me it is a physical fact, just one you can only experience by experiencing it.

        One you can only understand by experiencing it. And again, if 'physical' means or entails 'specifiable through physical description', the fact that red looks like this isn't a physical fact.

        [–]TinyWightSpider 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Explain "non-physical things" please?

        Do you consider "matter and/or energy" to be the "physical things" that atheists seem to "believe in" and suggest that there are also things which are comprised of neither matter nor energy?

        [–]dem0n0cracy 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (11子コメント)

        Has any non-physical entity been anything more than something that someone made up?

        [–]concuniverse[S] 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (10子コメント)

        Well, I would consider my perceptions of things to be non-physical entities, following the above argument. Do you think this is coherent ?

        [–]ValuesBeliefRevision 11 ポイント12 ポイント  (8子コメント)

        not unless your perceptions aren't patterns of electricity in your brain, because mine are.

        [–]green_meklar -4 ポイント-3 ポイント  (7子コメント)

        But patterns of electricity happen in other people's brains too, and yet you don't see the colors they see.

        [–]ValuesBeliefRevision 15 ポイント16 ポイント  (1子コメント)

        correct, we do not share brains with other people.

        [–]green_meklar 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Of course, but the point is, even in order to say that you have to draw a distinction between your brain and other brains. A distinction which seems like it can't revolve entirely around electrical patterns because all brains have those.

        [–]NDaveT 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (4子コメント)

        Because our brains aren't connected.

        [–]green_meklar 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (3子コメント)

        Yeah, but that's predicated on there being a 'your brain' and a 'somebody else's' brain in the first place. The electrical patterns alone don't seem to explain that, since all brains have them.

        [–]NDaveT 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (2子コメント)

        Each brain has them but contained within that brain. My cell phone and your cell phone both have memory cards, but my phone can't display what's on your phone's card and your phone can't display what's on mine.

        [–]green_meklar 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

        Of course. And this is fine if all you're doing is describing brains. But it doesn't get to the matter of why you actually experience the perceptions associated with a certain brain to the exclusion of all others.

        [–]NDaveT 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Because I am that brain. It's physically impossible for me to experience another brain's perceptions.

        [–]dem0n0cracy 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        What argument? No. I don't think this is coherent. Duncan Idaho anyone?

        [–]coprolite_hobbyist 10 ポイント11 ポイント  (14子コメント)

        The question of whether and how science should explain non-physical entities

        Are these entities empirical and falsifiable? If not, you are shit out of luck.

        [–]concuniverse[S] -1 ポイント0 ポイント  (13子コメント)

        Well, sure they are. For example, my own experience of pain is empirically verifiable. If I stab myself with a needle, it causes me pain.

        The physical process which causes me to feel pain is not the pain itself.

        [–]dem0n0cracy 14 ポイント15 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        But you're saying that your sense of you isn't physical when we know it is.

        [–]the_sleep_of_reason 8 ポイント9 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        The physical process which causes me to feel pain is not the pain itself.

        The physical curvature of spacetime is not gravity itself?

        [–]ValuesBeliefRevision 7 ポイント8 ポイント  (6子コメント)

        would also you say that "is the physical process that causes you to feel hungry" is not hunger?

        [–]concuniverse[S] 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (5子コメント)

        Sure, my psychological perception of my hunger cannot be deduced simply from what's going on in my nervous system or stomach.

        You might be able to guess what it feels like, but I'd argue you can't know exactly what it feels like to me.

        [–]ValuesBeliefRevision 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (4子コメント)

        my psychological perception of my hunger

        but wait, are you talking about your psychological perception of hunger, or your hunger?

        [–]concuniverse[S] 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (3子コメント)

        well, you can have a behaviourist description of hunger. So I know that the animal's hungry without knowing whether it consciously feels hunger by looking at its behaviour.

        I'm talking about experiencing hunger as a person.

        [–]ValuesBeliefRevision 10 ポイント11 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        which is something wholly different than saying that "hunger/pain is nonphysical" if you yourself are specifying that you're not talking about "hunger, but rather the experience of hunger"

        to drop the act here, I've just flipped the assertion on you - ie distinguishing the "materialistic accidentals" rather than "real hunger" is not of more value or accuracy than distinguishing the physical process from ones mental perception of it. neither is closer to some "true and ultimate hunger"

        [–]dem0n0cracy 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (1子コメント)

        You do realize we are animals....right?

        [–]GingeousC 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        It's not uncommon to say or write "animal" when one really means "non-human animal". I don't know why we tend to linguistically not treat humans as animals; maybe our words or phrases predate our modern biological classification system, or something like that.

        [–]coprolite_hobbyist 7 ポイント8 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Well, then I'm not sure what you mean by 'pain itself', but unless it is empirical and falsifiable, it isn't subject to scientific consideration. You seem to be suggesting that pain is something non-physical, and I don't really see that.

        [–]GregholeZ Warrior 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Pain isn't an entity.

        [–]RandomDegenerator 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        The physical process which causes me to feel pain is not the pain itself.

        Could you elaborate? I personally never experienced anything that was not a physical process (or, more precise, explained by a physical process), so I cannot quite grasp this concept of division between cause and effect.

        [–]NDaveT 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        The physical process which causes me to feel pain is not the pain itself.

        It's not?

        [–]Frix 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (11子コメント)

        If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location ? Assume total sensory deprivation, and the brains are physically identical. Which brain are you ? If I destroyed your brain when I made the copy, does that mean that you in fact survive ? If the universe is infinite, surely an infinite number of such copies will exist at all times. Why are you the person you currently are and not one of the other copies ?

        Simple: my brain is my brain and the copy is another brain. It might be an identical copy at the moment of creation, but it's still not me. And if you kill me but the copy survives then I am dead. The fact that there is a copy is meaningless. The copy-brain is not me.

        Suppose you are totally blind, but are an expert in neuroscience, ironically with a specialism in color perception. In theory, would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color, simply based on your hypothetically perfect understanding of the brain states involved in color perception ?

        In a hypothetical "perfect" understanding then yes: he/she would understand it, that's what "perfect understanding" means. Whether this is actually possible for a human brain to, achieve is another question entirely

        Following (2), if we accept that the blind neuroscientist will never know what it feels like to perceive red, surely this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity etc. which causes the "qualia", as you can have perfect knowledge of the brain activity, and not have perfect knowledge of the "qualia". If the "qualia" is still something physical, where is it ?

        I just told you that I don't accept that the neuroscientist will never know... Did you just pre-suppose an answer? That's not a "gotcha"-question, that's just you being wrong!

        [–]concuniverse[S] 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (10子コメント)

        Okay, regarding point 1, why is it not you ? It's physically identical to your brain.

        [–]ThePantsParty 7 ポイント8 ポイント  (1子コメント)

        Both you and I are looking at these letters I've typed. They're physically identical. And yet, if I turn my monitor off, you can still look at them on yours...how does that work?

        [–]krimin_killr21 -2 ポイント-1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        That confuses the symbol with the thing that symbol represents.

        Your argument would be true if people were defined by their symbols, that is, their bodies. But they're not. They're defined by their personalities. In the metaphor, it's not the letters that count, but the meaning behind them. If I have one copy of his post and you have another, I can delete my copy (by smashing my computer for example) and the post will still exist, so long as any single copy exists somewhere.

        [–]fuzzydunloblaw 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        If I copy you and send the copy off to the movies, are you watching the movie? No, you're wherever you are reading my reddit comment while the physically identical copy is watching the movie. Two separate entities with two separate continuums of existence and increasingly-divergent experiences.

        [–]ValuesBeliefRevision 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (4子コメント)

        for the same reason that a file copied into a different directory is a distinct and separate object which may be acted upon. if you delete file B, file A is still there.

        [–]krimin_killr21 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (3子コメント)

        That doesn't answer OPs argument very well though. The question seemed to me to be, "Is the identical copy you?"

        Just because File B can be deleted, another perfectly valid version of File B (File A) still exists, and saying that File B is gone isn't particularly true. File B is gone in that location, but it still exists wherever File A is.

        The identical copy is you. "I" am not defined by my location, but by the content of my personality and memory. If that survives, so do I.

        [–]ValuesBeliefRevision 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (2子コメント)

        no. file B was created from file A, and having been deleted, is objectively gone. A does not equal not A. file B is not file A by definition.

        [–]krimin_killr21 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (1子コメント)

        But the question is not, "is File A File B?" If it were you would be right, but it's not.

        The issue is that we use the verb "to be" very oddly when talking about people. For example, I might see a picture of myself when I was 8 and say, "That person is me!" But he isn't me. He is an early version of me. That being said, we are very different people. And yet, I still say "He is me!" We treat older and younger versions of a person as the very same person, even though this isn't really true.

        Why am I explaining this? Because OP did that in his intro:

        Which brain is you?

        When OP says is in that sentence, clearly he means to say, "which one is the valid continuation of the pre-copy version of you?" He is using "to be" in the sense discussed above: Is that person a valid continuation of the other. So to clear up confusion, let's replace "to be" with "to be a valid continuation".

        Is File B a valid continuation of File A? Yes. Are both copies a valid continuation of the pre-copy person? Yes.

        [–]DeusExMentis 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        The issue is that we use the verb "to be" very oddly when talking about people. For example, I might see a picture of myself when I was 8 and say, "That person is me!" But he isn't me. He is an early version of me. That being said, we are very different people. And yet, I still say "He is me!" We treat older and younger versions of a person as the very same person, even though this isn't really true.

        You're right, and I've really never seen anyone give a compelling account of personal identity through time that preserves the intuitive sense of it in all respects. I think it might be one of those things we have to do away with as our knowledge of reality improves.

        Related, I think the only real answer we can ever give to the "Is it you?" questions is going to be: "Under what theory of personal identity?" I don't think the notion of an objectively correct theory of personal identity is coherent.

        [–]Frix 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Just because two things are identical doesn't mean they are one and the same. Me and my clone might look alike, act alike and sound alike but we are still two separate entities. What happens to one of them will have no bearing on the other. Therefore they are both distinct individuals.

        [–]mpioca 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        I don't agree with /u/Frix here. If your copies are phisically identical then they must both be you until they start having different experiences. Only when they realize they occupy a different position in spacetime and their experiences diverge, do they become different. But until that, if they have the same physical properties, down to the last quantum state of every neuron, protein, micro RNA, etc... both are you.

        And no, you won't experience two perspectives, our consciousness is a local property of our functioning brain.

        [–]Capercaillie 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Consciousness is not the result of matter interacting with energy. Got it. Same old argument, expressed differently.

        [–]YossarianWWII 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        1. It's a copy of me. I define "me" as my consciousness, and that is linked to the physical substrate of my brain. A copy would have an identical, separate substrate, making it another person who just happens to be identical to me.

        2. I would know what parts of the brain would be stimulated, but I would not be able to actually stimulate them with just my own thoughts.

        3. The brain activity that corresponds to seeing red is very separate from the brain activity involved in visualizing the brain.

        [–]Xtraordinaire 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        1. Can you create a perfect copy of a river? No. You are not a thing that can be perfectly replicated. You are a process. Your brain is a process. The moment you 'create' a copy of the brain, the difference in input sends the copy and the original on divergent paths. And no, neither the copy, nor the original would have any idea who was who.

        2. No because the map is not territory.

        3. No it doesn't. If you use the map to create an amusement park, you can experience the terrain. That is, to stimulate the proper regions of your brain and experience color without eyes. The brain can't distinguish between electrons coming from eyes of flesh and from 'eyes' of metal. Recreate the physical components and get corresponding pieces of qualia.

        [–]CaptaincastleAsk about my cult|mod 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Most people on this sub, and the main atheism subs seem to be physicalists. That is, you largely don't seem to believe that there are non-physical things. I am surprised by this, because philosophical this sort of attitude is fairly controversial, and definitely a minority position (look up "reductive materialism" if you want the academic version).

        I think you're a tad bit off base. I can only speak for myself, but my view isn't "non physical things don't exist" it's "To my knowledge nothing non physical has been demonstrated to exist, nor fully explained to me so as to agree philosophically it is possible non physical things exist."

        The question of whether and how science should explain non-physical entities if we accept their existence is of interest. But I'd just like you to consider a few paradoxes I think come up if you do believe that there is no non-physical world:

        I'm game. I hope there's a Batman reference.

        1. If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location ? Assume total sensory deprivation, and the brains are physically identical. Which brain are you ? If I destroyed your brain when I made the copy, does that mean that you in fact survive ? If the universe is infinite, surely an infinite number of such copies will exist at all times. Why are you the person you currently are and not one of the other copies ?

        OK so let's call me brain A. You copy me, and get B. A is physically identical to B, and thus to outside observers there is no difference. In terms of my subjective experience of consciousness, I have no connection to B. We begin to differ at the moment of creation and are two distinct identities, albeit nearly identical as we had the same 29~ years of experience and environment. If you destroyed brain A then subjectively captaincastle keeps on kicking but brain A's subjective experience ends.

        For all intents and purposes I end, although the world may never know it.

        1. Suppose you are totally blind, but are an expert in neuroscience, ironically with a specialism in color perception. In theory, would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color, simply based on your hypothetically perfect understanding of the brain states involved in color perception ?

        I honestly don't know that I can honestly contemplate this one, as blindness/deafness trips me out. I honestly can't imagine it. Sorry.

        1. Following (2), if we accept that the blind neuroscientist will never know what it feels like to perceive red, surely this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity etc. which causes the "qualia", as you can have perfect knowledge of the brain activity, and not have perfect knowledge of the "qualia". If the "qualia" is still something physical, where is it ?

        Wait, what? Every piece of seeing and processing color is physical. If your computer can't handle a piece of software, it doesn't mean that software is anything special. A blind person's computer can't intake visual data. That doesn't have any extrapolating power to visual data in any way that I can see, though perhaps I misunderstood your question/statement.

        [–]0hypothesis 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location ? Assume total sensory deprivation, and the brains are physically identical. Which brain are you ? If I destroyed your brain when I made the copy, does that mean that you in fact survive ?

        Well, what's a "you" in the first place? While we might have a good definition in terms of what it takes to get a driver's license, we don't have a very good definition of that in a philosophical sense. For example, even minute to minute, we are gaining experiences and having chemical changes in our brains as we live. Is that you from two minutes from now the same as the one from a minute ago? I think that you can argue either way depending on what you call a "you".

        Besides, our cells are regenerating over the years such that the "you" of today doesn't contain much of the material from before. Does that mean that you DON'T really survive over the years as that process happens? Or you do?

        You really can use whatever side you fall on for this question as you do for a copy.

        If the universe is infinite, surely an infinite number of such copies will exist at all times. Why are you the person you currently are and not one of the other copies ?

        Well, the surely part doesn't hold. Infinite doesn't mean "everything". You can have an infinite number of apples and you wouldn't have a single orange. So an infinite universe would not imply that there must be another identical thing out there to what you are.

        As to the other question, even if we grant that there are an infinite number somehow, why is this a paradox? Again it depends on what you call a you, considering the changing nature of our bodies moment to moment. Clearly, if there were two, there would be two beings of identical configurations and quantum states as of that moment, and then they'd immediately not be identical as their perceptions of the same room that they were in would be immediately different. There's just two beings in the universe.

        If the "qualia" is still something physical, where is it ?

        I've always wondered how dualists account for the opposite side of this. If there's something non-physical, how does it interact with the physical at all? And if so, where are those interactions happening? (If "where" makes any sense to something non-physical.) How does the non-physical stuff even follow us around as we walk across a room? I've tried to take the dualist side seriously, and never seen any good answers on would really mean if it were true.

        [–]brojangles 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location ?

        I am my whole body, not just my brain, but if a copy were made of my brain, nothing would "happen." It would just mean there would be two iterations of the same brain. Each would still be it's own consciousness.

        Which brain are you ?

        I possess the original. I fail to see the confusion.

        f I destroyed your brain when I made the copy, does that mean that you in fact survive ?

        No. I'd be dead. Thanks a lot, murderer.

        If the universe is infinite, surely an infinite number of such copies will exist at all times. Why are you the person you currently are and not one of the other copies ?

        By definition, I am always the same one. I really don;t see why you think there's any paradox there.

        Suppose you are totally blind, but are an expert in neuroscience, ironically with a specialism in color perception. In theory, would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color, simply based on your hypothetically perfect understanding of the brain states involved in color perception ?

        I have no idea. Who cares?

        Following (2), if we accept that the blind neuroscientist will never know what it feels like to perceive red,

        I never said I accept that. Prove it.

        surely this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity etc.

        No it means it's created by the brain activity. It is the brain activity.

        as you can have perfect knowledge of the brain activity, and not have perfect knowledge of the "qualia".

        "Perfect knowledge of "qualia" is a senseless statement. There's nothing to know. It's experiential.

        If the "qualia" is still something physical, where is it ?

        In the brain. It never left the brain. If a car does not have headlights, that does not mean that light is not caused by headlights.

        [–]EquinoctialPie 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        To answer your first question, the concept of identity is not well defined in the context of perfect duplication. We've never had to deal with that in a practical setting, so it's never really mattered. If matter duplicators are invented, the definitions will need to be refined. As far as the experience goes, I would expect both brains to feel like they're "me".

        Regarding your second and third questions, the problem of qualia is related to the hard problem of consciousness, and you can hardly fault us for failing to solve a problem that no one is the world has been able to solve.

        I'm inclined to think that everything is physical, because everything we can understand is physical. Before people understood biology, they believed in elan vital, a non-physical animating force. But when it was studied and understood, it turned out to be physical chemistry.

        Maybe qualia will be the exception, but until we actually understand it, we can't say for sure that it's not physical. After all, it is caused by physical things, and effects physical things.

        [–]segFault11235 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        I am surprised by this, because philosophical this sort of attitude is fairly controversial, and definitely a minority position (look up "reductive materialism" if you want the academic version).

        Reductive materialism and physicalism are not always interchangeable.

        I'm also not sure where you got the idea that physicalism is in the minority position, but the one study I found suggests that it is the majority view.

        Now that we have the definitional and bandwagoning problems out of the way, let's look at the actual argument....

        The question of whether and how science should explain non-physical entities if we accept their existence is of interest.

        Actually, all it would show is that it fails to explain it. But that would still be a demonstration of sorts. That said, I don't think any such demonstration has surfaced.

        1. If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location ?

        Then there are two of me with identical memories and personalities. It would suck if we both wanted to keep living the life I live now, because only one of us could feasibly do it.

        Assume total sensory deprivation, and the brains are physically identical. Which brain are you ?

        What do you mean by "you"? The paradox you've created is of your own definition, because on the one hand you say there are two of me, but now you say there is only one "me". Obviously it's a paradox, but only because you're asking for something that doesn't make sense. In a pair of identical twins, which one is the real one? Neither, they're both real. Similarly, both "me"s are real.

        If the universe is infinite, surely an infinite number of such copies will exist at all times.

        If numbers are infinite, then surely there is a number between 2 and 3.... oh wait. See the problem?

        1. In theory, would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color, simply based on your hypothetically perfect understanding of the brain states involved in color perception ?

        Nope. Qualia is experiential in nature. I also wouldn't know what it's like to experience pain, or an orgasm, or what it's like to see, for that matter. But just because physical states of things cannot describe experience does not mean that experiences aren't reducible to physical states, even if the explanatory capacity is beyond us (and it's not even certain that it is).

        Following (2), if we accept that the blind neuroscientist will never know what it feels like to perceive red, surely this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity etc. which causes the "qualia",

        Sure, in the same way that watching a digital movie is completely different than looking at the digital bytes that the movie player interprets.

        [–]baalroo 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location?

        There is now another person that shares my past experiences and personality.

        Assume total sensory deprivation, and the brains are physically identical. Which brain are you?

        The same one as before.

        If I destroyed your brain when I made the copy, does that mean that you in fact survive?

        Nope. You destroyed me.

        If the universe is infinite, surely an infinite number of such copies will exist at all times.

        First, an "infinite" amount of space does not mean an infinite amount of all possible things.

        Why are you the person you currently are and not one of the other copies ?

        Why isn't my chair a dragon?

        Suppose you are totally blind, but are an expert in neuroscience, ironically with a specialism in color perception. In theory, would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color, simply based on your hypothetically perfect understanding of the brain states involved in color perception?

        Yes.

        Following (2), if we accept that the blind neuroscientist will never know what it feels like to perceive red

        I do not...

        surely this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity etc. which causes the "qualia", as you can have perfect knowledge of the brain activity, and not have perfect knowledge of the "qualia". If the "qualia" is still something physical, where is it ?

        The "qualia" in an emergent property of the physical things. Ideas and "qualia" of this nature are results that we reach, they are descriptions of the physical, they have no physicality or causal ability of their own.

        [–]Dzugavili 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        philosophical

        I can already tell this is going to be horrifying.

        The question of whether and how science should explain non-physical entities if we accept their existence is of interest.

        Science suggests a lot of your philosophy is constructs that don't exist outside the imagination. Thus, they are of no interest to science as a subject of study. Their usefulness must be demonstrated some other way, and that's up to their proponents.

        So, let's play three questions:

        If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location ?

        I am the original brain, the one still in my head. The other brain might think it's me, but it's SOL in that respect. If you destroyed my brain to make the copy, then I am dead. I guess other-me can have my stuff, I won't be needing it.

        If the universe is infinite, surely an infinite number of such copies will exist at all times.

        I feel I have to point this out as being a particularly stupid thing to say and just wrong. The universe is not infinite. It's just really, mindboggling big, to the point of being practically infinite. In reality, it's a finite entity.

        1. Suppose you are totally blind, but are an expert in neuroscience, ironically with a specialism in color perception. In theory, would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color, simply based on your hypothetically perfect understanding of the brain states involved in color perception ?

        Two thousand years ago, would a surgeon have understood what the appendix is for?

        This question is useless. In theory, yes, you might be able to know what a specific signal looks like to other people -- eg. you might know what patterns look like blue to others. But obviously, you exactly know what they mean, your information on blue is limited.

        Following (2), if we accept that the blind neuroscientist will never know what it feels like to perceive red, surely this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity etc. which causes the "qualia", as you can have perfect knowledge of the brain activity, and not have perfect knowledge of the "qualia". If the "qualia" is still something physical, where is it ?

        I recommend you look up the research on fly vision. Their work on decoding their visual cortex is quite advanced.

        Otherwise, I don't know. Red is a signal from cones in my eyes, and there seems to be a layer of cells in my mind that are specifically focused to this red signal and integrating it to the other signals, and then a feedback system lets me determine just how red I think it really is -- apple, rose, meat, whatever. If you destroy this pathway, I will not recognize red anymore.

        [–]futurespacetraveler 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        because philosophical this sort of attitude is fairly controversial, and definitely a minority position

        Being in the minority, doesn't make it wrong or non-useful. Regardless, exactly where is the controversy? Do you mean the conflict between theistic and non-theistic beliefs? That controversy? That's why this sub exists, so it's not particularly surprising that there exists some, shall we say, disagreement over whether non-physical things exist.

        If you believe there is scientific controversy, then you are very mistaken. I know that discussions about non-physical existence come up, as do many hypotheticals, but it is not controversial in the least. Most folks, at least in my world (physics), consider it a complete non-issue.

        what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location?

        Then there will be two brains with exactly the experiences up to the point of the copy, and thus two people who are, in every meaningful way, me. Neither is magically more me than the other. We both would feel we are the "real" me.

        would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color...

        No. You can't know what it's like to experience something, unless you experience that something. Unless you argue that experience itself isn't knowledge. I would contend otherwise.

        surely this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity...

        That doesn't follow at all. If a brain doesn't experience X, how does that imply that X is therefore a non-brain activity? It simply means that X is an input that the my brain has yet to perceive.

        [–]Orphanlast 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Most people on this sub, and the main atheism subs seem to be physicalists. That is, you largely don't seem to believe that there are non-physical things. I am surprised by this, because philosophical this sort of attitude is fairly controversial, and definitely a minority position (look up "reductive materialism" if you want the academic version).

        Math isn't physical, yet it exists...

        The question of whether and how science should explain non-physical entities if we accept their existence is of interest. But I'd just like you to consider a few paradoxes I think come up if you do believe that there is no non-physical world:

        1. If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location ? Assume total sensory deprivation, and the brains are physically identical. Which brain are you ?

        I'm existence on my own behalf. If there's two people walking around with the identical memories, the original brain would continue perceiving it existence on its own behalf. The new brain would identify itself as me and then do its own thing.

        Identity is something that doesn't physically exist, and technically, doesn't really exist even as a metaphysical concept. People aren't rigid. The things they self identify with differ by the momment. As the new brain continues with its life. It'll form new memories, more differences from the original will form, identities will differ.

        If I destroyed your brain when I made the copy, does that mean that you in fact survive ?

        No. But suppose I was uploaded onto a server and always had a wifi signal to that online identity. When I'd die, for so long as the server can process thought, I'd have survived my physical death.

        If the universe is infinite, surely an infinite number of such copies will exist at all times. Why are you the person you currently are and not one of the other copies ?

        I don't really think this even matters.

        1. Suppose you are totally blind, but are an expert in neuroscience, ironically with a specialism in color perception. In theory, would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color, simply based on your hypothetically perfect understanding of the brain states involved in color perception ?

        Ehhhh... what?

        1. Following (2), if we accept that the blind neuroscientist will never know what it feels like to perceive red, surely this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity etc. which causes the "qualia", as you can have perfect knowledge of the brain activity, and not have perfect knowledge of the "qualia". If the "qualia" is still something physical, where is it ?

        Huh?

        [–]nerfjanmayen 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        I don't know if I'm strictly a reductive materialist, but...

        1) It would be another, separate person who is identical to me

        2 and 3) the parts of your brain that consider the function of your brain and the existence of other minds isn't the same part that actually experiences color. such a scientist probably wouldn't be able to "learn" what it is like to see color, but by physically manipulating or repairing the right part of his brain, he might be able to actually experience it himself.

        [–]bo3isalright 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        I should preface this by saying that I am someone that feels we need to accept propositions best supported by empirical evidence available to us, the mind/body problem is tricky and all the outcomes and solutions create descriptions of experience that seem to sit extremely uncomfortably with me, but some thing weird is definitely going on in this issue. Here's what this debate boils down to for me: reductionist materialism just does not seem to accurately describe my sensory experience at all, because there will always be the issue, and what I feel to be the underlying problem, of the existence of qualia, as Jackson and Chalmers describe, and "subjective experience" as Nagel describes. These issues seem to suggest that

        1. In my experiences, there seems to be evidence of qualia, mental states and a "subjective nature" to my experience, that is- there seems to something more required to describe an experience than just the physical facts of said experience.

        2. Thus, there is something going on in my sensory experience beyond the physical activity of my brain.

        3. Thus, this suggests that all that occurs within my experience cannot be reduced entirely to physical, and the physical alone.

        4. Thus, reductionist materialism seems to be incorrect.

        Now, this doesn't sit comfortably with me, as I previously stated, but to ignore these factors of experience seems to be ignoring integral and necessary components of my sense experience, so I cannot discard them. However, for the record, dualism, both substance and property, is, in my opinion, too problematic to be considered an adequate description of, and solution to, the mind/body problem as well. In having to explain interaction, the dualist is probably up shit creek without a paddle, but equally, I just don't feel that the physicalist answer is the correct one.

        [–]ThatguyIncognito 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        As to number 1, this always strikes me as a semantic question. If I look at a river today and then look at it tomorrow, is it the same river? It depends on how you define it. Just because all of the water is different doesn't mean we give it a new name. But the name we call it is just a convenience, a way of thinking about it.

        It's the same with the self. Am I the same person that I was as a baby? The atoms have all changed, the perceptions and outlooks and most of the personality is different. But we call both me. If we called the baby and the man different things, this would only alter our perceptions, not what's real.

        If I copy the atoms of my brain and body to a new location, is it me? That's semantics. It's a copy of my brain and body to a new location, that's all. You might call it me. You might call it a copy of me. What you decide to call it doesn't change the fact that it's there or what it's made of.

        Our perception of the self is extremely important to us. So some people try to invent a soul that is the essence of a person. But the river doesn't have a soul that lets us call it by the same name despite the change in water. There's no reason to think the person does either. It's how we define what the self is that answers the question.

        If we believe in the soul, same question applies. If Kirk teleports and none of his atoms remain the same but he has the same configuration as the now destroyed original body, does the soul teleport too? If 2 identical bodies are produced at place they teleport to, which one gets the soul? Does the soul split between the two? Does one get a soul and the other doesn't? In which case, what happens to the one with no soul? Which one do we call Kirk and, since there's no physical difference, are they both Kirk?

        [–]scatshot 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location ?

        This is a great episode of Black Mirror.

        [–]logophage 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location

        Then, there will be two brains executing the same "me" personality software.

        [–]ashpanash 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        1) Since I don't consider consciousness to be anything more than the emergent property of complex interactions, neither and both are "me" depending on what metric you are using. If you destroyed the original brain and made an exact duplicate, there's nothing that I know of that says that it shouldn't function exactly as the original brain would have. As for why I'm the person that I am, consider this - I'm not the same person that I was 10 years ago. I'm not even the same person that I was a month ago or 5 seconds ago. So, the answer is - I'm not the same person that I am, and I never was.

        2) If you see someone in the space station and you understand how microgravity works, you understand that they are experiencing a microgravity environment. It shouldn't matter that you've never been to space.

        3) You're confusing a map with a place. More than that, you're treating subjective experience as if it is some kind of objective object. I don't know that the physical is all that there is, or that qualia is even a valid concept. But whatever it is that interacts with the physical brain to produce the sensation and/or memory of seeing the color red, it must have some physicality to it - otherwise it would not be able to interact with the physical brain.

        [–]Orcoburst 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        If the Universese is infinite, surely an infinite number of such copies will exist at all times. Why are you the person you currently are and not one of the other copies ?

        Why does this come up all the time? Possibilities do not make much sense in an infinite universe. There is an infinite number of numbers between 0 an 1, though none of them is 2 -> an infinite universe does NOT necessarily mean that you exist several times!

        [–]briangreenadams 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (2子コメント)

        I think you probably mean materialist. I am one, but I think most atheists are substance dualists.

        1. I am the first one. Yes, if the universe is infinite there are likely such copies. Yes I would survive the copy unless you kill me in copying or something. There is no inconsistency much less any paradox here.

        2. Not sure what you mean. Seeing is something that happens in the brain. If your eyes are damaged so that your brain no longer gets that electrical input from the optical nerve, you would still remember colour. If your visual brain areas get damaged you would no longer be able to conceive of colour.

        3. Quality is the brain activity of perceiving colour. To show that it is a non physical or non material activity, show me a non-physical or non-material entity perceiving colour. All you have said is that the brain can remember colour if they eyes are lost. Well, the brain is still there and it's memories and visual areas.

        Zero paradoxes.

        [–]SciencePreserveUs 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

        Exactly! I don't get why some people get worked up over questions like this. All of it is dead simple unless you posit some supernatural complications.

        [–]philip1201 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Nearly every puzzle looks simple once it's been solved. We stand on the shoulders of giants. The human brain is built to deal with people, not mathematics.

        [–]mcapello 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (16子コメント)

        Physicalism and metaphysical realism in general are incoherent. Oddly enough, the logic of physicalism entails and requires the existence of unprovable metaphysical substances, the very thing most physicalists want to deny.

        That physicalism is persuasive doesn't surprise me. I can understand its appeal by "everyday" rationalists who would rather not think in detail about philosophical issues: its straightforward and pretty unproblematic (again, unless you stop to think about it). But I find it very odd that anyone who takes philosophy or psychology seriously would hold to such a clumsy view.

        [–]halborn 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (15子コメント)

        Since so many philosophers do tend towards physicalism, perhaps you should consider that it's not so clumsy a view. Perhaps you should read what they have to say about it so that you might understand why it's coherent.

        [–]mcapello 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (14子コメント)

        Since so many philosophers do tend towards physicalism, perhaps you should consider that it's not so clumsy a view.

        Argumentum ad populum, my boy.

        Perhaps you should read what they have to say about it so that you might understand why it's coherent.

        While I appreciate your attempt at condescension, I've had the pleasure of reading many physicalist philosophers, from Dennett to the Churchlands.

        [–]halborn 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (13子コメント)

        Argumentum ad populum, my boy.

        Not at all. It might have been close to argument ad populum if I had said "many philosophers believe it therefore it's true" but that's clearly not what I'm arguing. What I'm arguing is that since many philosophers believe it, many philosophers find it believable. That's a tautology, not a fallacy.

        While I appreciate your attempt at condescension,

        If you think that was an attempt at condescension then I'm sure you'll be impressed when I actually start condescending.

        While I appreciate your attempt at condescension, I've had the pleasure of reading many physicalist philosophers, from Dennett to the Churchlands.

        Then find it less odd.

        [–]mcapello 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (12子コメント)

        Not at all. It might have been close to argument ad populum if I had said "many philosophers believe it therefore it's true" but that's clearly not what I'm arguing. What I'm arguing is that since many philosophers believe it, many philosophers find it believable. That's a tautology, not a fallacy.

        Okay. And you are trying to accomplish... what, exactly? My argument is not "philosophers find physicalism unbelievable", so I'm not sure how this is supposed to be relevant.

        If you think that was an attempt at condescension then I'm sure you'll be impressed when I actually start condescending.

        Forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

        Then find it less odd.

        Why would I?

        [–]halborn 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (11子コメント)

        Okay. And you are trying to accomplish... what, exactly? My argument is not "philosophers find physicalism unbelievable", so I'm not sure how this is supposed to be relevant.

        Then perhaps you should re-read your argument. To paraphrase your statements, you think physicalism shouldn't appeal to philosophers as much as it appeals to laymen. According to philosophers, it appeals plenty. Therefore you should adjust your view.

        Why would I?

        Because you've had the pleasure of reading many physicalist philosophers.

        [–]mcapello 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (10子コメント)

        Then perhaps you should re-read your argument. To paraphrase your statements, you think physicalism shouldn't appeal to philosophers as much as it appeals to laymen. According to philosophers, it appeals plenty. Therefore you should adjust your view.

        That it appeals to many philosophers would not be a valid cause for me to adjust my view, any more than Christianity appealing to many Americans would cause me to change my view, which in both cases is based on their respective rational and evidential merits, not popular appeal.

        Because you've had the pleasure of reading many physicalist philosophers.

        And?

        [–]halborn 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (9子コメント)

        That it appeals to many philosophers would not be a valid cause for me to adjust my view, any more than Christianity appealing to many Americans would cause me to change my view, which in both cases is based on their respective the rational and evidential merits, not popular appeal.

        Do you remember when I explained that I wasn't arguing ad populum? Physicalism isn't embraced by philosophers just because they like it. It's embraced because they are convinced by the "rational merits". There's a big difference between following the majority opinion of a population and respecting the analysis of the experts.

        And?

        And if you don't see why they think physicalism is coherent then you just weren't paying attention.

        [–]mcapello 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (8子コメント)

        Do you remember when I explained that I wasn't arguing ad populum?

        You keep saying that, and yet you keep doing it. Fun-ee.

        Physicalism isn't embraced by philosophers just because they like it. It's embraced because they are convinced by the "rational merits". There's a big difference between following the majority opinion of a population and respecting the analysis of the experts.

        Nevertheless, one can't substitute popularity for rational merit, nor can one simply assume the rational merit is there due to popularity, which is precisely what you're asking me to do here.

        It would be one thing if I adamantly refused to engage the subject on their terms, or had not read their arguments, or did not consider their points in good faith. The non-expert has a rational duty to consult the expert view (of which physicalism is just one example) in order to produce an informed opinion of their own.

        But having done that, and still finding their position wanting (and indeed fundamentally flawed), it would be intellectually dishonest of me to simply lie and say I think physicalism is somehow correct, just because it happens to be popular among (anglophone) philosophers today.

        And if you don't see why they think physicalism is coherent then you just weren't paying attention.

        Well, that's a very lovely assertion, and it does a good job matching your fallacy of popularity. Unfortunately, it's just not my style.

        [–]halborn -1 ポイント0 ポイント  (7子コメント)

        You keep saying that, and yet you keep doing it. Fun-ee.

        Not at all. It seems that you may benefit from a quick refresher.

        Nevertheless, one can't substitute popularity for rational merit, nor can one simply assume the rational merit is there due to popularity, which is precisely what you're asking me to do here.

        I'm not asking you to assume anything, let alone that popularity implies rationality. You see, there's this thing that philosophers do where they carefully explain the support for a position and the reasons why they think criticisms of that position aren't strong enough to counter that support. You don't have to believe them just because they ticked a box in a survey. You can find out why they ticked that box.

        It would be one thing if I adamantly refused to engage the subject on their terms, or had not read their arguments, or did not consider their points in good faith. The non-expert has a rational duty to consult the expert view (of which physicalism is just one example) in order to produce an informed opinion of their own.

        And yet you've so far given me more reason to think you haven't done the reading than to think you have.

        But having done that, and still finding their position wanting (and indeed fundamentally flawed), it would be intellectually dishonest of me to simply lie and say I think physicalism is somehow correct, just because it happens to be popular among (anglophone) philosophers today.

        I'm not asking you to pretend you think it's correct. I made it clear at the outset that I am arguing against the idea that physicalism is 'clumsy', against the idea that it is incoherent and against the idea that its acceptance should be regarded as 'odd'. Nothing near a reversal of opinion, just a smidgen of respect. That you apparently didn't understand this is another sign against your ability to pay attention.

        Well, that's a very lovely assertion, and it does a good job matching your fallacy of popularity. Unfortunately, it's just not my style.

        Oh, it's not your style to pay attention? Well I'm afraid I must insist.

        [–]philip1201 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        1. Each of them would be a version of me. I am this version of me because each brain is only physically in contact with itself and its natural environment, and I am the software of this particular brain. I care about the fate of versions of me more than I care about other humans. I care around people around me so I would be sad if they were to miss me. I would prefer no versions of me die, but if at least one full version of me continues to exist death would be a lot less bad.

        2. Modern expertise in neuroscience isn't detailed enough. All humans regardless of culture associate red with passion and violence, green with fertility, blue with calm, yellow with malaise, etc., because of deep interconnections in the brain. A full understanding of how brains interpret color would require an almost full understanding of the entire brain.

        3. A human brain can't run a full simulation of a human brain. 'Understanding' is a recognition of basic patterns and an ability to recall information from memory so you can accurately simulate a small portion. Anything that would have a functioning model of a human brain (like a supercomputer coded by someone who understands color theory) would have the qualia in it. The qualia you describe are probably a result of the hyperconnectedness I described in point 2. Red feels passionate because there are connections running from optical parts of the brain to limbic, association memory, behaviour-predicting regions, hormonal regulators, etc. Even if you had a way to consciously think about brains in such detail, that simulation would occur in the frontal lobe, not the optical lobe, so there wouldn't be the same connections to your brain outside the simulation. The simulation might have qualia, but you still wouldn't.

        [–]halborn 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        It occurs to me that you're questioning the coherence of physicalism by proposing things that aren't physical. So rather than asking whether physicalism is internally (or self) consistent, doesn't this make the question "is physicalism coherent with non-physicalism"? Wouldn't that make the answer an easy 'no'?

        [–]Doomdoomkittydoom 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        None of your questions are answerable to anyone involved in your questions.

        1. You are sedated, and wake up with an exact duplicate next to you. This is a double blind study, so no one knows which, if any, of you were the one to come into the duplicating facility. No one knows which you is you, least of all the yous. There are now two yous diverging from the duplication experiment. The orderly may come in and say one of you was the original, and by virtue of physically existing prior, you are or aren't the "real" you, but fuck, you going to believe you're not you on the word of someone making minimum wage?

        2. You can understand hyperspace objects without the ability to perceive them. Does understanding a thing mean you perceive a thing? Every child wanders to the philosophical realization, "Is what I see as red what you see as red? (Maybe that's why people have shitty tastes in colors?)" You relabel it qualia and pretend it's another magic juice that makes being human special. You can never know anything else is experiencing "qualia" beyond indirect physicalism coincidence.

        3. Following 2, 3 doesn't follow. Qualia is still the echoing of associations we make with "red." Blind, color blind, or tetrachromic.

        [–]reasonably_insane 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        1. not a paradox

        2. not a paradox

        3. not a paradox

        Nevertheless these are fun topics. You should post them to a philosophy sub.

        [–]sagar1101 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        The question of whether and how science should explain non-physical entities if we accept their existence is of interest. But I'd just like you to consider a few paradoxes I think come up if you do believe that there is no non-physical world:

        Do we have a way to measure or detect non-physical things. Or what indication is there that a non-physical thing exists that interacts with us.

        1. If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location ? Assume total sensory deprivation, and the brains are physically identical. Which brain are you ? If I destroyed your brain when I made the copy, does that mean that you in fact survive ? If the universe is infinite, surely an infinite number of such copies will exist at all times. Why are you the person you currently are and not one of the other copies ?

        It only has the same personality and experiences as me for the first 1 second after that we are different due to different experiences. For the first second we may have the same brain function but person A does not experience the same things as person B because they are in different places so they are different entities even though they are the same brain.

        1. Suppose you are totally blind, but are an expert in neuroscience, ironically with a specialism in color perception. In theory, would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color, simply based on your hypothetically perfect understanding of the brain states involved in color perception ?

        He doesn't know what it looks like but he may be able to comprehend it based on something like the hex color system. I wouldn't be able to distinguish between very similar colors but he may be able to because he is using a more precise method.

        1. Following (2), if we accept that the blind neuroscientist will never know what it feels like to perceive red, surely this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity etc. which causes the "qualia", as you can have perfect knowledge of the brain activity, and not have perfect knowledge of the "qualia". If the "qualia" is still something physical, where is it ?

        The different brain interpret things differently, that doesn't mean that there has to be an outside force controlling it. We are not like calculators or computers where a color is a color. We are closer to monitors. A pure red signal may be sent to the monitor but the monitor may change it slightly.

        [–]Red5point1 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        What does any of what you posted have to do with atheism?

        [–]IRBMe 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location

        Then you would have an exact copy of me in a different location, whose behavior would then begin to diverge. I doubt it would be too unlike having a sudden identical twin who happens to share all of your past memories.

        Which brain are you

        I suspect there would be two brains with two independent streams of consciousness just like two identical twins.

        If I destroyed your brain when I made the copy, does that mean that you in fact survive

        The me inside my brain would die, and the me that has been duplicated would continue to live.

        If the universe is infinite, surely an infinite number of such copies will exist

        Not necessarily. There are an infinite number of integers, yet each one is still unique. A true copy couldn't exist, because each one would have to have a separate position in spacetime, and if the copies are to coexist at the same time then each would have to be made of a separate set of matter too. We can both run the same program on our computers, but while the same code may be running, there are still two distinct processes executing independently.

        Why are you the person you currently are and not one of the other copies ?

        Because the person I am is tied to the physical brain, and only one physical brain can occupy one position in space at a time.

        Suppose you are totally blind, but are an expert in neuroscience, ironically with a specialism in color perception. In theory, would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color, simply based on your hypothetically perfect understanding of the brain states involved in color perception ?

        I believe that would be implied by the perfect understanding of the brain.

        Following (2), if we accept that the blind neuroscientist will never know what it feels like to perceive red

        But I don't accept that.

        [–]Kalcipher 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        1. I consider my senses a part of myself and would say I am neither. Fixing this particular reservation, if neither brain was suffering total sensory deprivation, then I am both brains. If you destroyed my brain when making a copy, then I survived. If the copy was made in a different location, simultaneously, then I arguably teleported. There is a large and possibly infinite amount of such copies existing, and I am currently all of those copies.

        2. Probably not without directly manipulating my brain, since sensory input and intellectual pursuit are processed in much different ways.

        3. No, it suggests simply that qualia is separate from the brain activity associated with the intellectual pursuit of neurscience, the rest is dubious inference.

        [–]DannyCrowbar72 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        1. While that would be a COPY of me, it wouldn't be ME. I am my own conscience. If you destroyed MY brain then I would be dead. I would not survive. The COPY of my brain would hold all the information of a separate but identical me.

        2. Disregarding the irony, I would know exactly what it's like to perceive a certain color, despite not having experienced myself.

        3. Being blind just means that my eyes have no perception of light. Physically, I would never personally experience light or color, but as a neuroscience expert specializing in color perception, I know logically what it would be like to perceive color, despite ironically never perceiving it myself.

        [–]NDaveT 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        1. Depends how you look at it. An outside observer wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The original would no longer exist. The copy would think it was the original, for good reasons.

        2. No, because experiencing something is not the same as having an academic understanding of it.

        3. I don't see how that suggests qualia are distinct from brain activity, just that the brain activity involved in experiencing something is different from the brain activity involved in hearing or reading something explained, which seems trivially obvious. Photons of certain wavelengths hitting my retina will cause different activity in my brain than reading a description of photons of certain wavelengths hitting a retina.

        [–]lannister80 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Which brain are you ?

        There's a separate instance of "you" in each brain. The continuity of your consciousness is an illusion. How do you know you're the same "you" from yesterday? From 5 minutes ago?

        http://existentialcomics.com/comic/1

        In theory, would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color, simply based on your hypothetically perfect understanding of the brain states involved in color perception ?

        I mean, if he could perfectly emulate a brain in his brain, then yes he could. But humans are not capable of that. Hell, we haven't even designed computers capable of that.

        this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity etc.

        No, not at all.

        [–]JupiterExile 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        For 1 - I am whichever brain you are still addressing, because both entities you are positing are independent and in no way continually linked. If you were to ask "which brain is me?" the answer would be "both are". In an infinite universe of indistinct me's, I am the person you are talking to. My sense of self is reliant on the framework of my perception, and given sensory deprivation I can't guarantee my long-term sanity. If there were somehow two distinct entities linked to my brain and my perception, like a remote brain that sent and received signals from my body, I would have to answer that "I" am the sum of those entities. If you copied my brain overnight and destroyed the original, I would have no way to perceive my death; the new me would be "a me" but not "my me"... if you get my meaning.

        2 - I think understanding the brain state related to a color would be different from activating the brain state related to that color. However, if you attached a device that would perceive a color and activate your brain accordingly, you would then perceive the color via the device and cease to be blind. The real question here is akin to describing sensation. If we imagine that somebody can perfectly describe to you the sensation of skydiving, then perhaps their description can cause your brain to enter sufficiently similar states as to effectively experience the sensation. However, your brain does this by relating back to experienced sensations, so the bar for this is higher if you have never felt a sensation of weightlessness, or a strong breeze. For an individual who has never seen before, to describe sight is incredibly difficult. If you directly access their brain and trigger "sight", they will begin to see regardless.

        3 - Understanding of perception of red is not equivalent to perception of red. Understanding the involved brain states does not indicate that the neuroscientist would be able to trigger those states. If they successfully triggered the states, they would perceive red. To rephrase - complete understanding of a blueprint does not imply that the building is built.

        [–]Mathemagics15 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Most people on this sub, and the main atheism subs seem to be physicalists. That is, you largely don't seem to believe that there are non-physical things.

        Not quite. I have merely not been convinced that anything non-physical exists, namely because non-physical is not easily defined.

        I am surprised by this, because philosophical this sort of attitude is fairly controversial, and definitely a minority position

        Has no bearing on the truth of the matter.

        The question of whether and how science should explain non-physical entities if we accept their existence is of interest.

        And requires that we prove non-physical entities exist before it is relevant to discuss.

        But I'd just like you to consider a few paradoxes I think come up if you do believe that there is no non-physical world:

        Aha. Go ahead.

        If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location ? Assume total sensory deprivation, and the brains are physically identical. Which brain are you ? If I destroyed your brain when I made the copy, does that mean that you in fact survive ? If the universe is infinite, surely an infinite number of such copies will exist at all times. Why are you the person you currently are and not one of the other copies ?

        Given that brains change constantly due to change in experience, I am evidently -this specific- copy. Unless you're making sure every brain experiences exactly the same thing.

        And even then... well, I am this brain, and the other brains are other versions of me. We're exactly alike. But I'm not them, because I am only my specific brain in this specific skull, in this specific location, at this specific time. A perfect clone of me wouldn't be me; there would be two versions of me, neither more "correct" than the other, but I wouldn't be him, and he wouldn't be me. In the same way that you could in theory have two identical snowflakes; that evidently doesn't make them "one".

        This is, in other words, not a paradox.

        Suppose you are totally blind, but are an expert in neuroscience, ironically with a specialism in color perception. In theory, would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color, simply based on your hypothetically perfect understanding of the brain states involved in color perception ?

        Ask a neuroscientist. But I'd guess no. Also, this is not a paradox either. It's just a good question.

        Following (2), if we accept that the blind neuroscientist will never know what it feels like to perceive red

        In theory, if we somehow mapped the neurological pattern that occurs when you percieve red, and activated that neurological pattern through electrical stimulus (somehow, it would be pretty difficult given the fact that the neuroscientist's eyes are obviously defect, but it is in theory possible), you should (Again, in theory) be able to make him see red.

        At least based on my layman's understanding of the topic.

        surely this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity etc. which causes the "qualia",

        As I said, the fact that it is humongously improbable and difficult to cultivate such qualia in a blind person does not make it impossible. You haven't demonstrated that it is impossible on a theoretical level, even if it never will happen in practice.

        as you can have perfect knowledge of the brain activity, and not have perfect knowledge of the "qualia". If the "qualia" is still something physical, where is it ?

        Well, I think I've covered why I think this conclusion is based on faulty premises, therefore making the question redundant.

        [–]Morkelebmink 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        1. I don't care about what if scenarios. I reject them out of hand. Show me WHAT IS. Not what if.

        2. Again a what if scenario, I am neither a neuroscientist, nor blind. Try again.

        3. I have no idea what you are even saying.

        [–]palparepaDoesn't Deserve Flair 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Regarding points 2 and 3, let suppose that the answer is no, that there is something to gain from the experience itself. That even if I know everything there is to know about 'red', once I experience 'red' by myself, I gain some knowledge.

        Now apply this to the tri-omni god. Does God know how lust feels? [related video]

        [–]OhhBenjamin 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        Which brain are you?

        I'm still my original brain, the copy is the copy, we have an identical but separate brain which will diverge more and more the more we have different experiences that affect our brain.

        Suppose you are totally blind, but are an expert in neuroscience, ironically with a specialism in color perception. In theory, would you be able to know what it would be like to see a specific color, simply based on your hypothetically perfect understanding of the brain states involved in color perception ?

        I don't think that follows apart from simply not having that sense the brain has also not developed the parts of itself that needs to understand seeing.

        Following (2), if we accept that the blind neuroscientist will never know what it feels like to perceive red, surely this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity etc.

        Qualia is your subjective experience so they wouldn't be any the wiser.

        [–]ChurroBandit 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        If you believe that "you are your brain", what happens if I create using some advanced technology a perfect copy of your brain in a different location ?

        Nothing controversial. I perceive no difference, and the copy feels like it was teleported, or whatever. Was that supposed to be a tricky question?

        Suppose you are totally blind, but are an expert in neuroscience, ironically with a specialism in color perception.

        I don't know, we'd have to try it. What implications does this have for anything? Suppose you were a virgin, but had studied sexology to an exhaustive extent. Would you be able to imagine what sex is like? Maybe! Or maybe your conception of it would be a little off. Maybe we can find a neurologist who is an expert in telling if people's conceptions are accurate. This would make a good episode of a science tv show, perhaps.

        Following (2), if we accept that the blind neuroscientist will never know what it feels like to perceive red, surely this suggests that the "qualia" (your perception of color) is a distinct thing from the brain activity etc

        Why would a physicalist grant that perception is distinct from brain activity? If that's what you meant, then it seems like 3 is non-sequitur.

        Or do you mean that our own brains are incapable of perfectly simulating an experience purely by looking at exactly what neurons fire when another person experiences it? If so... yep. We are not sysadmins of our brains. We gotta make do with the limitations of our imagination software. What implications does this have for anything?

        [–]KimaniSA 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

        1. I'm still whatever instance of myself that has been continually existing since before the brain-copy was produced. A computer program running on two different computers can be running exactly the same process in complete sync with each other, but they're still easily understood as independent instances. That there is a copy of me is irrelevant to my experience of myself. If I was killed at the same time you created a copy of me somewhere else, this instance of me would still experience death, and therefore wouldn't "survive". That there is a completely unrelated instance of a person that just so happened to have a copy of my memories leading up to that point is irrelevant to that. I'm not sure why this is a paradox?

        2. Depends how you define "what it would be like". I'm sure such an expert could go into great detail on the process of visual sensory input and how colors are involved. They probably couldn't fully empathize with the emotional aspect of such sensation, though. The same thing could be said for something like fighting during World War 2. I could very well learn a lot about it, and even study very emotionally charged first hand accounts of doing so. But I wouldn't know, personally, "what it would be like".

        3. I'm not following you. Why would this imply the "qualia" are non-physical? The emotional memories of experiencing the qualia are merely one kind of data stored by neurons, while the quantitative and factual understanding of that qualia itself is another kind of data stored by neurons.

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