Londoner wrote:I don't really understand what point you are making. You wrote: If you don't have it (consciousness), then I guess I'm not talking to anybody. I was pointing out that you cannot know whether I have consciousness or not (because I might be a machine, a figment of your imagination, etc.)
So your guess that there is a conscious person behind my posts is just that; you are the one who thinks there is a cause (me) and an effect (my posts).
It's the only assumption worth considering. If one of the other assumptions is true, there's absolutely no point to the conversation. So you might be a machine or a figment -- but if you are, who cares? Then the whole exchange is just stupid, because I'm talking with an entity that cannot invent anything, cannot be taught anything, or cannot change its mind. I may as well talk to a wall.
Are you a wall?
I don't know how your reactions come into this. We are discussing consciousness; I am saying you can't deduce the existence of something called 'consciousness' by observing other people.
I didn't, and I don't have to. I know myself. Once I do, it takes only a very modest level of faith to suppose someone other than me might exist: indeed, it looks like basic epistemological humility, and a very good bet: for again, I'm not a solipsist. You'll search in vain for someone to defend that view here. But the view you're suggesting as an alternative amounts to solipsism.
As to consciousness, you rightly point out that it not supposed to be material. But we can't define it entirely by negatives. You say it is ' inextricably tied to things like "identity," "morality" and a whole bunch of other universal but non-material things'. So is this to say that 'morality' and 'identity' (and others) are 'things'?
Only in the broadest sense. Physical entities are "things," but so are abstractions like "courage" or "love." All are nouns: some are concrete, and some are not.
I cannot disagree that we have the concept 'morality' (or 'consciousness'), but there is no mystery where concepts come from; we create them.
Prove it. Plato thought we got them from the realm of higher forms. Objectivists say they are real-world entities we are interpreting. Theists say they are grounded in God. Metaphysicians say they're metaphysical. Dualists say they are one of two kinds of entity in the universe, and Idealists say that they ARE reality....
Refute all those other views, and MAYBE your view becomes the default, provide no new views emerge while you're doing it. Otherwise, there's simply no reason to give it that status: it hasn't earned it.
But I got the impression that the argument was the other way round, that concepts emerged from our consciousness.
I did not say that. That would be a form of Idealism.
But you keep begging the question. I might argue you don't make any choice either, That you react in a deterministic way.
That's not a question: where's the question mark? It looks like a statement.
I know you don't think this, but that it what we are discussing here, whether there is this mysterious medium 'consciousness' that allows you to escape from the sort of determinism that governs everything else.
Well, we don't actually know that Determinism governs ANYTHING, to be honest. But if we did, perhaps this would indeed be the next question. But I think "How much of the world is Deterministic" would probably be the better one, then. So maybe yours would be third.
Again, you are positing this mysterious non-material layer where all this activity takes place. It seems unnecessary.
Couldn't disagree more. What is very clear is that Determinism grounded in Materialism can do absolutely
nothing by way of explaining consciousness. That's a good
prima facie reason for rejecting it...especially if, as you and I believe, consciousness is real. If you don't believe it, of course, then we're not talking to each other at all.
...this doesn't seem so remarkable that we need to posit some 'thing' unlike anything else in the universe in order to explain it.
That seems to me obviously untrue. I think it's very remarkable. But take a look at somebody perhaps more sympathetic, such as Thomas Nagel. I won't bother to explain it here, because he does a nice job. And despite being a confirmed Atheist, he sees that consciousness is a most remarkable and atypical phenomenon.
It is a pity you will not describe where the difference is between humans and other animals.
The line you're drawing is in the wrong place; that's why. The real line is between conscious entities and non-conscious ones, not between entities of differing levels of consciousness. They HAVE important differences, to be sure: but that's not the essential question of consciousness, because it's already conceded to exist in some form even in lower animals.
OK. Well, if 'consciousness' is something supernatural, then it explains why we are unable to describe it, or define it. (But then we have the usual problem with supernatural entities, how do they react with the material world? You would still have to have some sort of interface between the immaterial and the material, at which point it would no longer be supernatural.)
Not so. To be "natural" is, among other things, "to be governed by natural laws."
Let's take an entity that we both agree doesn't exist: say, ghosts. If ghosts existed, they would interact with the natural world, but not be governed by its laws. Natural science would remain unable to describe them, since it by definition limits itself to the purely empirical. But that would be caused by science's self-imposed parameters, not by the non-existence of the supernatural phenomena in question.
So 'consciousness' takes its place alongside God; being spiritual it cannot be investigated through science.
Add the word "exhaustively," and you're probably right. Put it between "investigated" and "through." There's no reason we might think it has to be impossible to get some knowledge of the supernatural world, if such exists, through the natural world. It just wouldn't ever be a complete view.
Likewise, we can learn some things about consciousness through observation of ourselves and others; but we can't be quite sure, or present a complete theory, because that's
indicative evidence, but not
exhaustive.