Re: Does Searle's "Chinese Room" argument imply that consciousness is non-scientific?

JGCASEY <jgkjcasey@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 29, 2:03 pm, c...@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:

That's alright Curt I knew you wouldn't be able to explain
how the brain produces the illusion because it is clear you
and no one else has yet worked it out. In the meantime you
can go on pretending I must believe it is something magical,
despite my denial of such a belief, and maybe one day an
Einstein of the brain will work it out and you will be able
to say "I told you so".

My comments about "magical" is one you apparently will never understand
either.

I keep calling your type of belief magical because you think there's
something else there (much like a ghost) that needs to be explained when
there's nothing there to explain. You don't have any basic technology in
your brain that our current robots don't already have. And I know you
understand our current robots, so why are you having such a problem
understanding yourself? It's because you believe you have something _else_
in you which you keep calling conscious awareness. That belief, is what I
call the "I have some magic in me which our current robots don't have
belief".

It's as if I showed you the bent pencil in water illusion and tried to
explain to you the pencil is not bent, but you refused to accept it. No
matter how many different ways I tried to explain to you why the pencil
just looks bent, you keep saying things like, "I knew you couldn't explain
it, maybe one day an Einstein will work it out". The problem is that you
believe the pencil is actually bent, and want someone to explain to you why
it's bent and how it could be bent. When people tell you it's not bent,
you keep coming back with comments like, "your solution to the problem is
to pretend it's not there!".

The problem with consciousness is that it is a bent-pencil-in-water sort of
illusion, but unlike the pencil, we can't examine the illusion from any
other direction. It's as if we can't pull the pencil out of the water, or
stick our finger in the water, or move our view point, to understand what's
going on. All we can do, is look at it from a fixed position, and wonder
why it's bent.

It works like that for our own conscious awareness because we don't have
any other option of how to examine it.

If on the other hand, we could interact with our own brains using high
resolution scanners and probes as I have suggested, it would be the same a
being able to play with the pencil in the water. The illusion would become
obvious to anyone who was given enough time with such a machine just like
the true nature of the pencil illusion becomes obvious once you have enough
time to play with it.

It will take an Einstein to work out how to explain all this to you in
Usenet messages because I've tried many times in many very long messages.
But I know if someone were to build one of these personal brain scanners
and let you play with it, it would hit you one day like a ton of bricks
what I've been trying to get you to understand.

It doesn't take an Einstein to understand that consciousness is an
illusion. Many people have figured this out for themselves. There have
been many books published on the subject by people far more qualified to
explain than I am (like Dennett). Didn't you say you had read his book?
If you still don't understand it, try reading it again. You obviously
aren't getting anywhere by reading my posts. It's certainly beyond my
ability to even explain to you that it is an illusion let alone explain to
why we have the illusion (both of which I understand and have tried to
explain to you many times already).

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

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