Posted by John Tchoe on June 20, 19101 at 19:32:52:
In Reply to: I think you’re overlooking something. posted by Noctillucent on June 20, 19101 at 17:12:37:
&$60Noctillucent>
: When viewed from the third-person point of view, the situation I described is NOT a contradiction. We merely see two distinct and identical looking bodies making very similar claims about being you. This is how you’re considering it.
&$60/Noctillucent>
In the mind-as-brain, physical view, at the moment two bodies begin to exist, there are two, separate consciousnesses.
&$60Noctillucent>
: However, consciousness itself NEVER exists from a third-person perspective. It exists exclusively from a first-person perspective.
&$60/Noctillucent>
Of course not. The first-person perspective IS consciousness.
&$60Noctillucent>
When seen from this viewpoint, the contradiction takes force.
&$60/Noctillucent>
I'll take your word for it, but I don't see a contradiction at all.
&$60Noctillucent>
: Obviously you cannot experience both intense pain, and no pain, at the same time. This is a logically impossible state. Yet to locate your first-person experience in one brain and not the other begs the question as to who is experiencing the other. If not you, then who?
&$60/Noctillucent>
My identical twin brother, who happens to have the exact same set of memories as I did up until the moment of our separation.
&$60Noctillucent>
: Since the other brain meets every physical qualification for producing your consciousness,
&$60/Noctillucent>
You're going to have to clarify what you mean here, because I do not accept your definition of the brain "producing" consciousness, like a by-product. Consciousness IS the brain.
&$60Noctillucent>
if the experience produced is not ‘you’ in the first-person sense, then obviously there is something about your personal consciousness that cannot be reproduced and accounted for in terms of a physical brain.
&$60/Noctillucent>
You're talking in circles here. I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
As I see it, my identical twin brother is NOT me. He is much more SIMILAR to me than anyone else on earth, but I am separate from him, and he from me.
&$60Noctillucent>
: It’s too bad the writers of the show didn’t think more clearly about the problem, as they could have produced a wickedly stunning philosophical argument for why the mind is more than brain stuff.
&$60/Noctillucent>
I think the writers of the show wrote a functional story from a very simple premise, which as I see it has no problems.
In your response, you completely ignore my basic point, which is that you see consciousness as separate and independent from the human brain, a product like sweat or sound, rather than an integral part of it.
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