My oral presentation to the Neuphi group at Tufts,
here.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Video: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious
Posted by Eric Schwitzgebel at 8:54 AM
Labels: announcements, metaphysics, stream of experience
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5 comments:
Too bad that a well known university seems not to know how to produce decent sound quality for their recordings?
The argument that a conscious being cannot be made up of conscious parts makes me think of split brain patients, who have their two hemispheres surgically disconnected. And that sort of experimental example seems to indicate that theory is clearly false.
Also, in a way I think that this argument is most obvious for dualists (epiphenomenal ones) in that they sound like they separate out "perspective" (i.e. that there is a thing that it is to be a rabbit – i.e. that qualia exist) from the pattern (i.e. the zombie brain activity) and that if you think about that you can see that any rule at all for constraining the former is unnecessary and unsubstantiated.
Pity they were not able to put up the Q&A as that was the part I was most interested in!!!
GNZ
split brain
http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/ubnrp/split_brain/Behavior.html
GNZ
Yes, GNZ, split brain cases are very interesting in this connection.
I'm not sure why they didn't do the Q&A. I agree that's often where a lot of interesting philosophy gets done. I thought the audience did a good job of pushing on a number of issues.
As there is still unification of self,I doubt wether split consciousness is attributable to the splitting of the brain(perhaps first we require an agreeable definition of consciousness)In response to Anon I am not a dualist:Consciousness is its neural correlates though am a believer in quaila.The answer given to the knowledge argument is that to know a thing under 1 description but not another eg water as wet but not H2O as wet,does not negate the identity,doesn't mean water isn't H2O.However what this answer neglects is the scientific facts of say redness(Mary argument)Redness cannot be reduced to the object to which it belongs for it does not belong to that object,rather it is the red wavelength which is not absorbed;Mary cannot know as knowing would include the contradiction of knowing a not.The mind exists from matter,what is the further argument against quaila.?
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