[EGreg]

How do you know that what you say about consciousness isn’t just a language game you play where you define words in terms of other words that are hardly connected to anything?

“What it is like to be a bat”

“What it is like to experience something”

After having seen descriptions of all the physical components of experience:

“It is Qualia! What it is like to see red”

Having been described all the differences between sensing red and green, and people who can’t tell the difference, and the suggestion that maybe what you call consciousness is the collection of abilities to distinguish various things...

“No, it is something more”.

What is it? How is that different than saying there is a “true essence” of a thing, over and above its properties? This is what greek philosophers asked about.

“It is the sense of identity. Integrating into one experience.”

Ok so what about Theseus’ ship? If all the cells are being replaced? What about your gut brain? Coukd it have a separate consciousness living in the same body?

“These are interesting questions”.

Here is a statement I will make:

If you are careful to define your words unambgiously, in terms of RICH connections to other concepts, you will find that you won’t be able to ask a single question about the following subjects without having a straightforward and simple reductionist-sounding answer:

Morality

Consciousess

Existence

[egjerlow]

I'm not really sure what you're arguing here. I would certainly say consciousness is 'something more', and that this something more has to be something non-material (or at least using 'materials' that have wildly different properties than what we observe using the scientific method).

Theseus' ship is a problem for a purely materialistic explanation of consciousness, for, by that account, consciousness should be a function of your material makeup, and yet, it remains constant despite change in both what makes up your cells and the specific configuration of those cells.

As for RICH I don't know what that means.

[Retra]

Theseus' ship is not a problem for materialistic explanations of anything; it's a problem for anybody who thinks the nature of a thing is governed by the words used to describe it.

The fact that you would continue to call a ship the same after exchanging all its parts is not an ontological problem, it is a problem arising from the imprecise use of language or intention to use an approximate/aggregate notion of identity. (I would recommend studying topology for a more modern understanding of this.)

[egjerlow]

And yet, consciousness is something that remains, regardless of whether we name it as such, and regardless of the specific cells that make up our brains. So it's as if it is the only thing that is not named 'by us' and yet remains 'something' independent of its makeup.

[alasdair_]

> I would certainly say consciousness is 'something more', and that this something more has to be something non-material (or at least using 'materials' that have wildly different properties than what we observe using the scientific method).

If you're interested in having that idea challenged, I heartily recommend reading "Godel, Escher, Bach" - the book explains how complexity (perhaps to the point of consciousness) can emerge from "simple" systems.

[egjerlow]

I certainly am interested in this, but I also would like to note that this is not just a matter of something 'more complex' arising and that I lack the imagination necessary to see how something very very complex can arise. Rather, subjective experience is a phenomenon that, no matter how complex your system is, is qualitatively different.

It's not like this is a trivial problem that philosophers of mind have figured out long ago. As someone else mentioned in this thread, it is a very deep problem. If you want to have your view challenged I encourage you to read any introductory book to philosophy of mind.

[alasdair_]

I always like having my views challenged :) can you recommend any particular text or would the top hit on amazon be sufficient?

Also, in terms of GEB, the book shows how self-reference leads to a system being able to make statemets about itself, leading to, eventually, something more than (apparently) the sum of their parts. It’s a funky mix of philosophy and math and I think you’d like it.

[egjerlow]

https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Mind-Short-Introduction/dp...

I'll read GEB :)

[alasdair_]

Thank you! I ended up buying Jaworski's Philosophy of Mind: A Comprehensive Introduction before I saw your comment. So far it's interesting stuff! Many thanks for suggesting this topic :)

[TeMPOraL]

> Theseus' ship is a problem for a purely materialistic explanation of consciousness,

Theseus's ship is not a problem for materialistic views at all. A function of matter configuration is not the same as a function of matter. In the same way, a wave on water is constantly changing its material makeup, and yet you can still call it "the same wave".

> As for RICH I don't know what that means.

Rich, i.e. non-trivial. That is, no tautologies or something slightly above tautology in the depth of information.