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Cogito ergo sum

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Is Epiphenomenalism Irrational?

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  • Is Epiphenomenalism Irrational?

    Here is one objection by Roderick Fitts

    The epiphenomenalist claims, as knowledge, that brain events produce mental events, and that the latter are causally inefficacious–presumably, this also includes beliefs. In effect, he’s claiming that he’s previously witnessed the evidence and logically established that his viewpoint is true (i.e. that he believes he has knowledge). While at the same time, his position as an epiphenomenalist implies that his beliefs and observations have nothing to do with the fact that he’s now advocating that position, as such advocacy would be the exclusive result of brain events (recall that only physical processes are causally effective, on his view). By his own theory, he’s being made to believe and produce epiphenomenalist “word sounds” by brain activity, which make his claim to knowledge meaningless.

    http://www.philosophyinaction.com/blog/?p=2809
    So the upshot, the epiphenomenalist would have us believe that his position is true, or is genuine knowledge, but conscious understanding has nothing to do with with why he holds this position. So conscious knowledge of Epiphenomenalism plays no role in why one may believe in the theory, therefore he has no claim to actual knowledge. Which seems self-refuting.
    Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

  • #2
    Originally posted by seer View Post
    Here is one objection by Roderick Fitts


    So the upshot, the epiphenomenalist would have us believe that his position is true, or is genuine knowledge, but conscious understanding has nothing to do with with why he holds this position. So conscious knowledge of Epiphenomenalism plays no role in why one may believe in the theory, therefore he has no claim to actual knowledge. Which seems self-refuting.
    Your link is so bad. It says:

    what are the arguments and evidence in favor of this position, one might ask?

    Strictly speaking, there are none.
    This is total nonsense. We have plenty of lines of evidence that epiphenominalism is true. Here is just some of it:

    None of the below experiments are explicable on substance dualism/interactionism.

    Internally generated preactivation of single neurons in human medial frontal cortex predicts volition.

    Highlights:

    -Recording the activity of 1019 neurons while twelve subjects performed self-initiated finger movement, this study shows progressive neuronal recruitment over ∼1500 ms before subjects report making the decision to move.
    -A population of 256 SMA (supplementary motor area) neurons is sufficient to predict in single trials the impending decision to move with accuracy greater than 80% already 700 ms prior to subjects' awareness. Furthermore, they predict, with a precision of a few hundred ms, the actual time point of this voluntary decision to move.
    -Using an SVM classifier to predict the time point at which the subject reported making the decision to move, the algorithm detected the occurrence of the decision in 98% of the trials and only missed W in 2% of the trials.

    Reading My Mind

    Highlights:

    -CBS 60 minutes report from 2009 showing how fMRI imaging can recognize with a high degree of accuracy the contents of thoughts about objects like a hammer, a window, an apartment etc.
    -Report reveals there are enough similarities between different people such that once enough people's brains are measured when thinking about an object, a person who never scanned can have their thoughts predicted with 100 percent accuracy when thinking about those objects.

    Predicting free choices for abstract intentions

    Highlights:

    -Researchers are able to show that the outcome of a free decision to either add or subtract numbers can already be decoded from neural activity in medial prefrontal and parietal cortex 4 s before the participant reports they are consciously making their choice.
    -Previous findings have been mostly restricted to simple motor choices.
    -In the current study, participants were not cued to make decisions at specific points in time but were allowed to make decisions spontaneously. By asking participants to report when they first consciously decided, we could investigate what happened in the brain before the decisions were consciously made. We found that both medial frontopolar cortex and posterior cingulate/precuneus started to encode the specific outcome of the abstract decisions even before they entered conscious awareness. Our results suggest that, in addition to the representation of conscious abstract decisions, the medial frontopolar cortex was also involved in the unconscious preparation of abstract decisions.

    Tracking the Unconscious Generation of Free Decisions Using UItra-High Field fMRI

    Highlights:

    -Researchers show that it was possible to decode the decision outcomes of such free motor decisions from the pole of anterior medial prefrontal cortex (BA 10) and the precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), up to 7 s before subjects were aware of their intention.
    -Taking into account the temporal delay of the BOLD signal (which is in the order of a few seconds), it is possible that these signals reflect processes up to 10 seconds before the actual decision.

    Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain

    Highlights:

    -Taken together, two specific regions in the frontal and parietal cortex of the human brain had considerable information that predicted the outcome of a motor decision the subject had not yet consciously made. This suggests that when the subject’s decision reached awareness it had been influenced by unconscious brain activity for up to 10 seconds.
    -The temporal ordering of information suggests a tentative causal model of information flow, where the earliest unconscious precursors of the motor decision originated in frontopolar cortex, from where they influenced the buildup of decision-related information in the precuneus and later in SMA, where it remained unconscious for up to a few seconds.

    There Is No Free Won’t: Antecedent Brain Activity Predicts Decisions to Inhibit

    Highlights:

    -Our main argument is as follows: Libet et al, (1983) had suggested that decisions to inhibit action have an important role in freedom of will, because, he argued, they do not have any obvious unconscious neural precursors. In Libet’s view, this makes decisions to inhibit crucially different from decisions to act, for which, he claimed, there is a clear unconscious precursor. Libet’s dualistic notion of “free won’t” has been criticised on theoretical grounds. However, in our view, a stronger rejection of “free won’t” could come from actually showing that a decision to act or not can be driven by a preceding, presumably unconscious neural activity. Our results identify, for the first time, a candidate unconscious precursor of the decision to inhibit action. These results count as evidence against Libet’s view that the decision to inhibit action may involve a form of uncaused conscious causation.
    -The dualistic view that decisions to inhibit reflect a special “conscious veto” or “free won’t” mechanism is scientifically unwarranted.


    Further evidence that the brain causes the mind:

    1)The evolution of species demonstrates that development of brain correlates to mental development
    eg “We find that the greater the size of the brain and its cerebral cortex in relation to the animal body and the greater their complexity, the higher and more versatile the form of life” (Lamont 63). Lamont, Corliss. The Illusion of Immortality. 5th ed. New York: Unger/Continuum, 1990.

    2) Brain growth in individual organisms:
    “Secondly, the developmental evidence for mind-brain dependence is that mental abilities emerge with the development of the brain; failure in brain development prevents mental development (Beyerstein 45). Beyerstein, Barry L. "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi Phenomena." In The Hundredth Monkey. Edited Kendrick Frazier. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991: 43-53.

    3) Brain damage destroys mental capacities:
    “Third, clinical evidence consists of cases of brain damage that result from accidents, toxins, diseases, and malnutrition that often result in irreversible losses of mental functioning (45). If the mind could exist independently of the brain, why couldn’t the mind compensate for lost faculties when brain cells die after brain damage? (46).” Ibid

    4) EEG and similar mechanisms used in experiments and measurements on the brain indicate a correspondence between brain activity and mental activity:
    “Fourth, the strongest empirical evidence for mind-brain dependence is derived from experiments in neuroscience. Mental states are correlated with brain states; electrical or chemical stimulation of the human brain invokes perceptions, memories, desires, and other mental states (45).”

    5) The effects of drugs have clear physical >>> mental causation
    Daniel Dennett superbly opines:


    It continues to amaze me how attractive this position still is to many people. I would have thought a historical perspective alone would make this view seem ludicrous: over the centuries, every other phenomenon of initially "supernatural" mysteriousness has succumbed to an uncontroversial explanation within the commodious folds of physical science... The "miracles" of life itself, and of reproduction, are now analyzed into the well-known intricacies of molecular biology. Why should consciousness be any exception? Why should the brain be the only complex physical object in the universe to have an interface with another realm of being? Besides, the notorious problems with the supposed transactions at that dualistic interface are as good as a reductio ad absurdum of the view. The phenomena of consciousness are an admittedly dazzling lot, but I suspect that dualism would never be seriously considered if there weren't such a strong undercurrent of desire to protect the mind from science, by supposing it composed of a stuff that is in principle uninvestigatable by the methods of the physical sciences.

    Daniel C. Dennett, "Consciousness in Human and Robot Minds,"
    Again, as the great Michael Tooley puts it:
    (1) When an individual's brain is directly stimulated and put into a certain physical state, this causes the person to have a corresponding experience.
    (2) Certain injuries to the brain make it impossible for a person to have any mental states at all.
    (3) Other injuries to the brain destroy various mental capacities. Which capacity is destroyed is tied directly to the particular region of the brain that was damaged.
    (4) When we examine the mental capacities of animals, they become more complex as their brains become more complex.
    (5) Within any given species, the development of mental capacities is correlated with the development of neurons in the brain
    Michael Tooley, "Opening Statement" in William Lane Craig and Michael Tooley debate, "Does God Exist?"

    From fundamental science:

    Seriously, The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Really Are Completely Understood:

    In this case, one hypothesis says that the operation of the brain is affected in a rather ill-defined way by influences that are not described by the known laws of physics, and that these effects will ultimately help us make sense of human consciousness; the other says that brains are complicated, so it’s no surprise that we don’t understand everything, but that an ultimate explanation will fit comfortably within the framework of known fundamental physics. This is not really a close call; by conventional scientific measures, the idea that known physics will be able to account for the brain is enormously far in the lead. To persuade anyone otherwise, you would have to point to something the brain does that is in apparent conflict with the Standard Model or general relativity. (Bending spoons across large distances would qualify.) Until then, the fact that something is complicated isn’t evidence that the particular collection of atoms we call the brain obeys different rules than other collections of atoms.
    So, we have plenty of lines of evidence in support of epiphenomenalsm, and plenty of lines of evidence against interactionism, which is the view that mental properties with no direct physical.

    For arguments against interactionism and dualism, see here:

    Objections to Dualism Motivated by Scientific Considerations

    -Arguments from Human Development
    -The Conservation of Energy Argument
    -Problems of Interaction
    -The Correlation and Dependence Arguments
    Blog: Atheism and the City

    If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
      Your link is so bad. It says:
      Nonsense Thinker, he is not speaking of scientific arguments, he is speaking of good logical or philosophical, again:

      The epiphenomenalist claims, as knowledge, that brain events produce mental events, and that the latter are causally inefficacious–presumably, this also includes beliefs. In effect, he’s claiming that he’s previously witnessed the evidence and logically established that his viewpoint is true (i.e. that he believes he has knowledge). While at the same time, his position as an epiphenomenalist implies that his beliefs and observations have nothing to do with the fact that he’s now advocating that position, as such advocacy would be the exclusive result of brain events (recall that only physical processes are causally effective, on his view). By his own theory, he’s being made to believe and produce epiphenomenalist “word sounds” by brain activity, which make his claim to knowledge meaningless.
      Tell me Thinker, exactly what did he get wrong here?
      Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by seer View Post
        Nonsense Thinker, he is not speaking of scientific arguments, he is speaking of good logical or philosophical, again:
        Nonsense? Really? You think none of my empirical evidence means anything? You are on the hook to show how it is wrong, and provide one piece of evidence that
        shows your view is true.

        If you want to be respected as a rational thinker, you must engage with the evidence against your position. Right now, the evidence puts you in a logical conundrum.

        First LFW is incoherent. You basically admitted that, and that you cannot show it to be coherent and decide to believe it on faith. You didn't even try. I can't take you seriously if you do that. Second, LFW is in violation of physics. So you either have to show me how the soul/mind - or whatever you want to call the part of humans that is not matter and energy - is (A) compatible with the Standard Model and gravity, or (B) violates the Standard Model and gravity. If it is compatible, show me where in the Standard Model and gravity does this non-physical thing exist and interact with your atoms. If it isn't compatible, show me where this non-physical thing violates the Standard Model and gravity by pointing to one piece of evidence that demonstrates this.

        Of course you will never even try, because your views are faith based and you cannot be taken seriously.


        Tell me Thinker, exactly what did he get wrong here?
        Beliefs are brain events and brain events are causally efficacious. So right there in his first sentence he's wrong. He's assuming a dualistic ontology in his criticism of epiphenomenalism, and then tries to claim the latter is incoherent. That's like me assuming an atheistic ontology and then criticizing theism because it's inconsistent with it. How foolish can you be?
        Blog: Atheism and the City

        If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
          Beliefs are brain events and brain events are causally efficacious. So right there in his first sentence he's wrong. He's assuming a dualistic ontology in his criticism of epiphenomenalism, and then tries to claim the latter is incoherent. That's like me assuming an atheistic ontology and then criticizing theism because it's inconsistent with it. How foolish can you be?
          But epiphenomenalism is dualistic, you told me that yourself, that brain states were not the same as mental states. I believe you called it property dualism. But the larger point is how can you claim knowledge if our conscious understanding plays not role in understanding? This would also apply to your scientific studies, and all knowledge,
          Last edited by seer; 01-08-2016, 02:25 PM.
          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by seer View Post
            But epiphenomenalism is dualistic, you told me that yourself, that brain states were not the same as mental states. I believe you called it property dualism. But the larger point is how can you claim knowledge if our conscious understanding plays not role in understanding? This would also apply to your scientific studies, and all knowledge,
            Property dualism is completely different from substance dualism. It describes the same thing -- the brain, and says that it has both physical and non-physical properties. It doesn't say that there is some kind of space ghost floating inside your body like the substance dualists believe. It says each mental event is identical with a physical event. And as such, when the brain processes information properly and understands something, the consciousness does too.

            Your view has many unanswered puzzles that you have not even attempted to explain:

            (1) How can people have parasomnia, a condition where people can act and behave normally, and even commit murder, without even being consciously aware? If consciousness is what makes people animated due to the soul, this would be inexplicable on your view.

            (2) You still need to explain how it is possible for the soul to interact with the physical body in a way that is either (a) compatible with the Standard model of physics, or (b) incompatible with the Standard model of physics. Is the soul is compatible with the Standard model of physics, then it must use only the forces within it - electromagnetism, strong/weak nuclear forces. But these forces are no different in your body then any thing else, like a rock. If the soul is incompatible with the Standard model of physics, then it must violate it, which means we should be violating the laws of physics every second we're awake. But no study shows this, so you'd need to provide empirical data showing a true violation.

            (3) How are animals able to behave and exhibit basic levels of rationality and react appropriately to their environment if they have no souls and are just made of atoms? The mere existence of a monkey doing math would violate your whole view. Instinct cannot explain this.

            Basically you have a dilemma that you must deal with in order for thoughtful people to take your views seriously. You cannot just ignore them and keep asserting your view is correct like a broken record.
            Blog: Atheism and the City

            If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
              Property dualism is completely different from substance dualism. It describes the same thing -- the brain, and says that it has both physical and non-physical properties. It doesn't say that there is some kind of space ghost floating inside your body like the substance dualists believe. It says each mental event is identical with a physical event. And as such, when the brain processes information properly and understands something, the consciousness does too.
              Nonsense Thinker, how many times have you told me that our conscious understanding plays NO ROLE in the the process. So how does our consciousness understand anything, if it plays no role, including the ability to understand? Now you are changing your mind? That introspection does play a role in discovering truism or knowledge?

              And it goes something like this: If we have knowledge about epiphenomenalism, then we know about the existence of the mind, but if epiphenomenalism were correct, then we should not have any knowledge about the mind, as it does not affect anything physical.

              How is that coherent concerning any knowledge claim.

              Basically you have a dilemma that you must deal with in order for thoughtful people to take your views seriously. You cannot just ignore them and keep asserting your view is correct like a broken record.
              This thread is about epiphenomenalism.
              Last edited by seer; 01-11-2016, 11:59 AM.
              Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by seer View Post
                Nonsense Thinker, how many times have you told me that our conscious understanding plays NO ROLE in the the process. So how does our consciousness understand anything, if it plays no role, including the ability to understand? Now you are changing your mind? That introspection does play a role in discovering truism or knowledge?

                And it goes something like this: If we have knowledge about epiphenomenalism, then we know about the existence of the mind, but if epiphenomenalism were correct, then we should not have any knowledge about the mind, as it does not affect anything physical.


                How is that coherent concerning any knowledge claim.
                Once again you aren't listening to me. On epiphenominalism we can consciously understand things, but only if and when our brains process that information correctly. Our conscious knowledge of something is the product of a certain brain state. So if we have knowledge about epiphenominalism and epiphenominalism were correct, this would not in any way preclude our ability to have any knowledge about the mind. The brain states effect things that are physical, and different brain states produce different conscious states of understanding.


                This thread is about epiphenomenalism.
                Nonsense seer. If you want me to believe in substance dualism you have some major dilemmas. Science has already demonstrated your view is false and basic logic can tell us that your view is incoherent. The existence of a chimpanzee proves your view is wrong. Who can take you seriously?
                Blog: Atheism and the City

                If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
                  Once again you aren't listening to me. On epiphenominalism we can consciously understand things, but only if and when our brains process that information correctly. Our conscious knowledge of something is the product of a certain brain state. So if we have knowledge about epiphenominalism and epiphenominalism were correct, this would not in any way preclude our ability to have any knowledge about the mind. The brain states effect things that are physical, and different brain states produce different conscious states of understanding.
                  So our conscious understanding plays a role in discovering or knowing facts? Didn't you tell me that rational deliberation or introspection played no role?
                  Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by seer View Post
                    So our conscious understanding plays a role in discovering or knowing facts? Didn't you tell me that rational deliberation or introspection played no role?
                    You're not listening to me yet again. Surprise. Our conscious understanding is the product of a certain brain state that is the brain processing information properly. And that of course plays a major role in discovering or knowing facts.
                    Blog: Atheism and the City

                    If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
                      You're not listening to me yet again. Surprise. Our conscious understanding is the product of a certain brain state that is the brain processing information properly. And that of course plays a major role in discovering or knowing facts.
                      How exactly does our conscious understanding play a role? What does it do?
                      Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        I have been a lurker for some time, but this particular conversation strikes a chord with an idea that has been floating through my mind for a while now on the soul/brain interface.
                        There has been some rather controversial research that suggests that consciousness comes from “quantum vibrations” arising in microtubules within the brain’s neurons. Because quantum level effects do not necessarily follow the normal rules of cause and effect, I thought this could be where and how the soul interacts with physical matter without the need for any miracle or violation of any physical law or evidence of the soul’s presence.
                        This has led me to a theory that can best be explained with the analogy of a drone pilot. Imagine a drone with an array of sensors and an extremely advanced AI computer. There’s a pilot in some distant bunker whose only perception of the world is what comes to him from these sensors, filtered by the AI. When the AI is faulty or underpowered, his perception may be very incomplete or inaccurate (such as when the drone is drunk, or mentally ill), but the pilot is responsible for making moral choices based on whatever input he has. Note that, because the pilot is not the AI, his own judgment is not diminished by alcohol or brain defects or even age (a six-month old drone has an inexperienced pilot, but not one whose decisions are limited by physically immature neurons). However, once the pilot makes a decision, his commands must then be sent back, and filtered by the very same AI before the drone can act or even know a decision has been made, and that info must then be filtered by the AI back to the pilot before he is consciously aware of the decision he himself made. There are times when, through the fault of the AI, the final decision is not what he desired it to be, so no conscious decision is final until it has filtered up, and then back down, through the brain.
                        So free-will moral decisions of the soul must be filtered from individual neurons up through physical brain processing before any decision becomes concrete, and that must happen before the consciousness becomes aware of what decision the physical brain ended up with, just as the experiments suggest, that decisions are made a fraction of a second before awareness that you have decided.
                        It would also follow that the AI is advanced enough that it can run on autopilot. It doesn’t have to wait for the pilot to tell it what to do. Hence actions at times that you weren’t conscious of; you can sleepwalk through life and no one will be any the wiser.
                        Some of the implications are beyond what I can figure out just by some idle thought-experiments. For instance, memory and most of our personality is located in the physical brain. To what degree the soul/drone-pilot has his own is unknowable. Perhaps the pilot, since he is not physical in nature, has an absolutely perfect memory of everything you’ve ever experienced (and is even aware of spiritual realities that you have no conception of), but he is incapable of making you consciously aware of any of it, since our consciousness is such an intricate dance between pilot-to-drone-back-to-pilot processing of thought.
                        There would be some theological ramifications, such as that infants and the mentally ill would be fully accountable to God for the moral choices they make (not having the immature or faulty brain-wiring as an excuse for whatever the soul opts), but from a human perspective there may be very little capacity for moral choice, or the thoughts and actions may be amoral or immoral. With the mentally ill, you can’t say whether the brain sent the soul a totally distorted view of the world and the soul made the best moral choices it could under the circumstances, or the soul made (or wanted to make) the right choices, but by the time its choices are filtered back through the brain, the person’s thoughts and actions may be at complete odds with what the immaterial soul thought he was choosing. (Think of Romans 7).
                        This is all just idle reflection on my part. I have no idea whether the real answer to the mind/brain or soul/brain mystery has anything at all to do with microtubules or the drone-analogy. But food for thought.
                        Regarding the OP on epiphenomenalism, it is a form of reductionism that is untroubled by the fact that it has reduced reality beyond the foundations of the philosopher’s own philosophy. If one has concluded that thought is an illusion, that consciousness is just a movie being projected onto a screen that noone’s watching, then he probably doesn’t care whether it fails philosophically or logically; philosophy and logic are illusions too. And whatever he thinks or does in the future, or whether his philosophy convinces anyone else to believe as he does, is inevitable yet irrelevant. So what? Life is meaningless, and his only excuse for going on living is that the illusion is not entirely unpleasant or undesired, and he can’t end his own life or the path he’s on unless doing so is inevitable by the laws of physics. So why fight it?

                        PS. I know this post is too long, and most people won’t bother reading the whole thing. If it’s not of interest, don’t read it; I won’t be offended.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Just Passing Through View Post
                          This is all just idle reflection on my part. I have no idea whether the real answer to the mind/brain or soul/brain mystery has anything at all to do with microtubules or the drone-analogy. But food for thought.
                          Regarding the OP on epiphenomenalism, it is a form of reductionism that is untroubled by the fact that it has reduced reality beyond the foundations of the philosopher’s own philosophy. If one has concluded that thought is an illusion, that consciousness is just a movie being projected onto a screen that noone’s watching, then he probably doesn’t care whether it fails philosophically or logically; philosophy and logic are illusions too. And whatever he thinks or does in the future, or whether his philosophy convinces anyone else to believe as he does, is inevitable yet irrelevant. So what? Life is meaningless, and his only excuse for going on living is that the illusion is not entirely unpleasant or undesired, and he can’t end his own life or the path he’s on unless doing so is inevitable by the laws of physics. So why fight it?
                          Well I think we can agree on this Just...
                          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by seer View Post
                            How exactly does our conscious understanding play a role? What does it do?
                            When we consciously understand something, it means our brain processed information correctly. The two cannot be separated. The consciousness is just a side effect of this that is impossible without accurate brain states.

                            I don't think P-zombies are metaphysically possible.
                            Blog: Atheism and the City

                            If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
                              When we consciously understand something, it means our brain processed information correctly. The two cannot be separated. The consciousness is just a side effect of this that is impossible without accurate brain states.
                              No Thinker, I asked how exactly does our conscious understanding play a role? What does it do?

                              I don't think P-zombies are metaphysically possible.
                              The point of philosophical zombies is not whether they are metaphysically possible, but that logically you could not know. With Epiphenomenalism the person you are speaking with could have all the same rational reactions that one would expect without the same mental or conscious life that we experience.
                              Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                              Comment

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