Philosophy Now Forum

I meant that the experience of yellow is probably identical to some brain event that can be "objectively" described, but this can not be proven. But this should be the default guess, not the magic of strong emergence. By "identical to" I can only assume you mean "correlated...

I am puzzled that so many writers assume – usually with no attempt at justification – that moral responsibility has something to do with determinism, or more specifically with being an “ultimate cause”. What makes this puzzling is that it seems to be almost universally accepted in common usage that...

How does all this apply to the phenomena of consciousness? The fact that the brain is the most complex and dynamic compact structure known to science shows that there is scope for a hierarchy of structures of logical relationship to form that has far more levels even than that of a single cell, and...

"...a property is emergent if it is a novel property of a system or an entity that arises when that system or entity has reached a certain level of complexity and that, even though it exists only insofar as the system or entity exists, it is distinct from the properties of the parts of the sys...

And, while remaining within the objective framework , it's possible with sufficiently advanced technology to tell "what experience feels like", but that doesn't help us to actually make the objective -> subjective transition. It is not possible to tell someone blind from birth what the ex...

2+2=4 only exists as part of our abstract thinking, but subjective experience itself is CONCRETE, it's objectively happening. It is truly happening, but that doesn't justfy the word "objective", which is the one thing it isn't. In fact it's the only thing we can tell for certain to be hap...

But the hard problem of consciousness is the problem of the first person "subjective" what it's like experience vs the third-person "objective" materialist structural explanations. The whole point is that this isn't a higher level behaviour, saying that the subjective emerges ou...

If cause & effect is the rule for a person (where he's pushed from behind as just another domino in a line-up of dominoes),then even the brightest, the most conscious, of us -- the one you might is say is most free -- is just an event. What you conceive of as freedom isn't . There is no such th...

I'm a bit confused by the gist of this post. It seems like you're wanting to dispute something about standard views of moral culpability, but it's not at all clear to me what you're disputing. Your post reads mostly like a summary of standard views. The essential point is the difference between mor...

But the hard problem of consciousness is the problem of the first person "subjective" what it's like experience vs the third-person "objective" materialist structural explanations. The whole point is that this isn't a higher level behaviour, saying that the subjective emerges ou...

Strong emergence (hard emergence, the whole is more that the sum of the parts) is the most commonly accepted form of magic in science. It demonstrates the unashamed incompetence of many scientists when it comes to philosophizing, when it comes to trying to make sense of the world. Unfortunately I c...

Emergence is not at all the same as evolution (since it applies equally to inanimate entities such as bubbles), ... I'm sorry to be contrary, Roger; and you probably find it a pain that I'm showing up again, because I'm going to throw a little sand in the works. But it's all to the good if you're s...

Almost all of science - all except for the physics of space-time and fundamental particles - deals with “emergent” entities and properties, but the significance of this concept is, it seems to me, often misrepresented or misunderstood. Here is a brief summary of what I think are the key points, and ...

Almost all of science - all except for the physics of space-time and fundamental particles - deals with “emergent” entities and properties, but the significance of this concept is, it seems to me, often misrepresented or misunderstood. Here is a brief summary of what I think are the key points, and ...

Almost all of science - all except for the physics of space-time and fundamental particles - deals with “emergent” entities and properties, but the significance of this concept is, it seems to me, often misrepresented or misunderstood. Here is a brief summary of what I think are the key points, and ...