FFFFUUUUUUUUUU

[Elder Iptuous]

I require giant robots that run like horses.

For some reason, I found that hauntingly poetic and awesome.  And now I want one.

I established a goal to create a walking robotic mount in my life.  I'm thinking bipedal in the vein of an dinosaur, though.  like a larger version of Peter Dilworth's Troody.

If it was conscious, that would make it extra smooth.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I require giant robots that run like horses.

For some reason, I found that hauntingly poetic and awesome.  And now I want one.

[Shai Hulud]

I hate dualism.

I agree, and Chalmers is a fool.  His whole argument about philosophical zombie is begging the question.  It presumes that there is a difference between a normal human and a zombie, or rather that a zombie is logically possible.  But if we're working under the assumption that physical systems give rise to apparent dualism and subjective experience, it is nonsense to talk about divorcing that sort of "rich inner life" from an exact physical duplicate of that system.  Put another way, you can't have a Chalmers zombie because it is just a person.  

(1) Zombies are conceivable.

(2) Whatever is conceivable is possible.

(3) Therefore zombies are possible.

I wouldn't grant the first premise.  A physical duplicate of a human that doesn't experience qualia is sort of like Chomsky's colorless green ideas.  It's not really "conceivable" even though we can think about it.  If certain physical processes give rise to consciousness, they will always give rise to consciousness.

By that rationale we are basically sophisticated chat bots.

If you aren't a dualist, how are we not like sophisticated chat bots?

[Jasper]

By that rationale we are basically sophisticated chat bots.

If you aren't a dualist, how are we not like sophisticated chat bots?

Presumably computers do not experience.  Is the human brain mere clockwork, or is there a unique attribute of sufficiently reflective social brains that give rise to our inner reality?

[Cain]

Bump.

PD's (ie; mine and Cainad's) favourite philosopher turned fantasy fiction writer, R. S. Bakker, has a lot of interesting thoughts on consciousness, self-hood and neuroscience research.

Here is a paper he wrote:

"Evidence from the cognitive sciences increasingly suggests that introspection is unreliable – in some cases spectacularly so – in a number of respects, even though both philosophers and the 'folk' almost universally assume the complete opposite. This draft represents an attempt to explain this 'introspective paradox' in terms of the 'unknown unknown,' the curious way the absence of explicit information pertaining to the reliability of introspectively accessed information leads to the implicit assumption of reliability. The brain is not only blind to its inner workings, it's blind to this blindness, and therefore assumes that it sees everything there is to see. In a sense, we are all 'natural anosognosiacs,' a fact that could very well explain why we find the consciousness we think we have so difficult to explain."

[LMNO]

We are all Dunning.  We are all Kruger.

[Cain]

He also frequently writes things like this:

Back in the 1990′s whenever I mentioned Dennett and the significance of neuroscience to my Continental buddies I would usually get some version of 'Why do you bother reading that shite?' I would be told something about the ontological priority of the lifeworld or the practical priority of the normative: more than once I was referred to Hegel's critique of phrenology in the Phenomenology.

The upshot was that the intentional has to be irreducible. Of course this 'has to be' ostensibly turned on some longwinded argument (picked out of the great mountain of longwinded arguments), but I couldn't shake the suspicion that the intentional had to be irreducible because the intentional had to come first, and the intentional had to come first because 'intentional cognition' was the philosopher's stock and trade–and oh-my, how we adore coming first.

Back then I chalked up this resistance to a strategic failure of imagination. A stupendous amount of work goes into building an academic philosophy career; given our predisposition to rationalize even our most petty acts, the chances of seeing our way past our life's work are pretty damn slim! One of the things that makes science so powerful is the way it takes that particular task out of the institutional participant's hands–enough to revolutionize the world at least. Not so in philosophy, as any gas station attendant can tell you.

I certainly understood the sheer intuitive force of what I was arguing against. I quite regularly find the things I argue here almost impossible to believe. I don't so much believe as fear that the Blind Brain Theory is true. What I do believe is that some kind of radical overturning of noocentrism is not only possible, but probable, and that the 99% of philosophers who have closed ranks against this possibility will likely find themselves in the ignominious position of those philosophers who once defended geocentrism and biocentrism.

Note: that's just an "ordinary" blog entry for him.

[Elder Iptuous]

nice stuff, Cain.
thanks for the links and keywords.

[LMNO]

Gracious.  That's some dense material.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Dear fucking god. Thank you for reminding me why I hate philosophers.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Gracious.  That's some dense material.

"Dense", to me, implies a lot of meaning packed into few words. You seem to be using it to mean the exact opposite?

[LMNO]

To understand exactly what he was calling bullshit on, took a little time.

[Elder Iptuous]

To understand exactly what he was calling bullshit on, took a little time.

as long as it can be parsed with some effort, then i really like stuff like that.
i end up with a dozen tabs open for definitions of various terms, and sometimes don't make it through the original entry before wandering off into the topic, but i usually learn quite a bit.

there's enough 50 cent words in the linked blog entry that i feel a bit richer having read it and looking up the various terms.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

To understand exactly what he was calling bullshit on, took a little time.

The thing is, I agree with him. I mean, just by default, his perspective on empiricism is the natural and obvious one to me, and what he's arguing against is exactly why I hate philosophers.

But jesus fuck, he also writes like a philosopher, which makes me want to slam heads into wet rocks.

I suppose he has to write like that, since he's not writing for scientists, he's writing for other philosophers.

[Cain]

Yes, he has some other posts where he uses his more normal writing style, which is very eloquent (as you'd expect from a professional writer).

He's also fully aware that the language of philosophy is probably second only to the language of critical literary theory in terms of being incomprehensible to outsiders.  He has in fact written an (as far unpublished) parody literary novel based around this premise.