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

JGCASEY <jgkjcasey@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 30, 2:13 am, c...@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:

There is no extra work needed to solve the mystery of
consciousness because that mystery is already solved.
It's just brain activity. The only extra work here is
to get all the people who still think it's a mystery, to
understand there is no mystery. What it feels like to
be a conscious human is exactly what it should feel like,
to be a robot with a computer brain.

Statements of belief without any reason why it should
feel like anything at all.

I was working on a long reply to your post when I got to this last
statement and realized all my hard work trying to get you to understand
materialism was lost on you. No matter how close you seem to come to
understanding it, you always write something like that last statement and
expose your hand. You are still a dualist who believes humans have a ghost
in their machines no matter how many times you call me dishonest for
pointing this out to you.

The logic which you are unable to follow and keep asking me to explain is
simply the fact that thousands of years of advancements in the sciences and
engineering have shown us that all past beliefs in ghosts, and gods, and
the soul was rubbish. It's shown us that we are nothing but a physical
machine created by the process of evolution which interacts with a physical
environment. Any reference we make to thinks like feelings are actually
just a reference to different parts of body and their behavior.

If you can understand that, which it's clear you don't, you will know why
we feel things and you won't have to keep waiting for me to explain it to
you. It's because we a body.

Now, I've said this 1000 times before, and you still don't understand the
simple significance of what I've been telling you. You keep coming back
with the idea I've said nothing, that I'm just waving my hand, that I'm
using invalid logic, anything you can think of the explain why I keep
talking, but never say anything.

The answer John, is that my message is very simple. My answer is that
materialism correctly describes all of our reality, and that no form of
dualism is correct. But you can't understand simple, because no matter how
much you say you don't believe in dualism, you in fact do, as proven by
your last statement above. The statement you made above, is nothing but
nonsense if you believe in materialism. It only makes sense if you believe
in dualism.

Now, there are people here who seem to believe in dualism, and there are
other people here, which take more of an agnostic approach and choose to
believe we don't have the evidence needed to know what the truth is. I
don't have a problem with them, and I don't waste endless hours posting
messages to them, because they are consistent and logical in what they
write. I just choose to believe something different from them.

But you are a special case John. You keep saying you are a materialist,
but you keep writing things like the message above that makes it clear you
are not. You are not generally stupid, or uneducated, so I keep feeling
that if I write more, you will one day actually understand what the
materialistic answer to the hard problem is. But you can't grasp it,
because you can't escape from your fundamental belief in dualism. But what
drives me up the wall, is that I can't even get you to understand that you
believe in dualism.

The bottom line on all this, is that unlike just about everyone else here,
you don't have a position which is logical. You say one thing, but you
constantly show you don't actually believe what you say you believe. It's
as if you haven't taken any time to actually think about what you are
saying.

I don't care if you choose to believe in dualism, or if you choose the
stance that we just don't have enough evidence to know what the truth is,
but stop saying you don't believe in a ghost in the machine when it's clear
you do.

Until you can understand why your simple comment above is inconsistent with
materialism, there's nothing I'll be able to do for you.

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

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Consciousness: whats the problem?
    ... I don't mind if you choose to believe in DUALISM. ... But you keep trying to put forth the idea that you believe in materialism. ... Some people believe there is one god, ... brain here) that would require a rainbow (read sentience, ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: Science, God, and Free Will
    ... God has certainly limited our ... Hence Dualism asserts the duality of substances. ... that Materialism doesn't explain the facts, ... physics leaves this question to philosophy. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Which Singularity Dont You Want?
    ... Is unitary cognition required for for dualism? ... Then again, so do I, as I can't think of evidence that would convince ... Materialism: "everything is atoms and the void", well quantum fields, ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Does Searles "Chinese Room" argument imply that consciousness is non-scientific?
    ... trying to get you to understand materialism was lost ... wasn't a dualist could "see" it was true no explanation ... I will give again my reason for taking the materialistic ... Dualism has no explanatory power. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: Which Singularity Dont You Want?
    ... >> own subjective experiences come from, and our model of The Way Things ... Not that dualism implies the necessity of life after death. ... > satisfactorily as materialism explains everything else, ... Then it would just be another sort of material thing, ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)