Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 3:18 pm
Sculptor wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 12:41 pm
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 9:59 pm
That suggests that the reason we talk about consciousness is entirely disconnected from the fact that we are conscious. Like if you removed the conscious experience from our bodies, our bodies would continue talking about conscious experience in exactly the same way we do now, except they'd be lying.
I don't know about you guys, but I definitely think the reason my body talks about conscious experience is directly related to the fact that I'm having conscious experiences.
But isn't the whole point of PZ is that from my perspective you are just saying that, because you could well be a PZ.
And by reflection, I am a PZ to you.
I don't look at it as being a "looking at you from my perspective" situation, and more a "looking at myself from my own perspective" situation.
If you could remove consciousness, somehow, from me, supporters of PZ suggest I would behave the same way as I do now. Well, one of the things I do now is I talk about conscious experience, the ineffably rich nature of conscious experience. If one wants to suggest that consciousness has no casual affect, that means that the reason I wrote the words "the ineffably rich nature of conscious experience" is entirely disconnected from the fact that I'm having those experiences, and that a zombie without those experiences would be writing the same thing.
Prima facie I see no problem with that, but then how would you ever know you had done it? If PZs are a meaningful idea (which I doubt) then either they are viable with a consciousness or not. You place your money; you takes your choice. Buy since these "supporters" whoever they are cannot create a PZ, then they an say what they like and you can counter whatever they say.
There is evidence from PET scans that we make decisions before we are consciously aware of them; the PET scanner being able to predict a decision before a "conscious" choice it made. But what this would mean for the long term prospect of an organism never being able to reference the consciousness is another matter.
But I'm fairly confident that the reason I'm writing those words very much IS causally connected to the fact that I'm having those experiences. And I wouldn't expect a being without those experiences to write those words.
But then were you not conscious of your own actions, you would not expect anything; not even the Spanish Inquisition.
It would seem more reasonable that consciousness is a dialogue we have with our material elements within the cerebral cortex; a complex exchange of checking and rechecking, and this interaction is common to all mammals to different degrees.
None of this leads to "free will" which seem to be a claim about making capricious actions regardless of this internal dialogue, and with disregard for learning, motivation, necessity, survival instinct, emotional states.. ad infinitem which condition our eventual choice. The fact that it might be "free" is only to the degree that we are not compelled from exogenously. But just because our choice is endogenous does not mean that is it not wholly determined. It is determined by who and what we are. Each choice of the moment is only useful important and valid, if given the same circumstance we would act exactly the same way given the same determinants.
That is compatibilism.