Philosophy Now Forum

I guess the short answer is that qualia needs reside within the mind rather than the object. Pain is an example of qualia. So if I were to put my hand on a hot plate, I would feel pain. However, I cannot claim that somehow the pain resides within the object (hotplate). I'm sorry, I am not being cle...

Interesting article in pn 93 :) http://www.shunyatapress.com/ Physicalists such as Dennett and Dawkins would allow for the possibility for the possibility for humans to build a computer so complicated that it would mimic the consciousness of a human. Their position is that consciousness is a proper...

Hi Ginko, I like your analogy! There is no euphoria on my part when I beat you. I might ACT like I am delighted with the win, but is is only an act. Perhaps a useful question is.... What will it take for me the human to buy in to the act put on by you the virtual software based chess partner? It se...

When you talk about sensations of redness and pain as being a subjective nature of brain activity, then you are obviously talking about an argument for qualia. I think there is qualia and I also think that the physicalist explanation does not do justice to our mental lives. So we obviously share a ...

I think I can see where you are coming from . This could be along story, but if I were you I would do away with the term, 'awareness' and replace it with the term, 'informed behaviour'. So rather than talk about the endospores exhibiting awareness, we could say instead that they exhibiting a type o...

About that philosophy of science we are talking if we don't know : what the vacuum is, what the quantum particle is ( they say it is math point), what an electron is (electron has six formulas and many theories) what is the reason of 'dualism of particle' ? . . . . etc =. Yes that is a very good qu...

This reminds me of Searle's Chinese room argument. We can have a long and involved conservation about this, but in the end I will make a confession. I am not a person, You have been discussing this with a machine. Once you know this would will probably lose interest in the discussion. What if you f...

Being human is wrestling with the real world. That's what it's always been, agreed. It doesn't necessarily follow that it will therefore always be that way. What do I say, life is wrestling with the real world. There would not have been any life otherwise. Agreed. You can't buy everything with mone...

double posted, sorry.

You and Gee want to use 'awareness' in an Aristotelian way. Matter behaves in a way in accordance with its telos. Not sure I understand how you inferred that I have an Aristotelian\teleological view of matter. I was merely pointing out that Chaz's inference that there is no consciousness to be foun...

Do you not think that this 'evidence' of awareness, is distinctly different from 'consciousness'? What you are calling 'informed behaviour' is an automatic response caused by the genetically established modes of behaviour, and as deterministic as say the orbit of a planet. Few suggest that the plan...

Back to the topic. Following is, hopefully, a link to a Microbiology site. I got this site information from Wiki, and it deals with endospores. For those who don't know, endospore is bacteria that has put itself into a hibernating dormant state. Endospore are impervious to most things that would ki...

There is nothing wrong with my argument, and every thing wrong with your analogy - that's the point. You can never talk about a thing for which you have no evidence; it is absurd. Precisely. You can never claim something lacks a form of consciousness when you have no evidence. That is absurd and it...

But back to my original topic, if you stepped on my toe, I would feel it because of my nerve endings; if you stepped on grass, grass does not have nerves, so would it be felt? experienced?; if you stepped on an egg, would the egg feel it? My toe, grass, and an egg are all alive, so all have some fo...

Perhaps we could say that the easy problem of consciousness is the imitation of consciousness, by the zombie or the machine. Now or in the future we can get a computer to display emotions and demand its own personal space, but it would only ever be an ACT on the part of the computer or the zombie. ...