Posted by John Tchoe on June 26, 19101 at 13:37:06:
In Reply to: Re: Consciousness IS the brain? posted by xls on June 26, 19101 at 08:53:20:
Guess jpg of Renoir is a reflection of Renoir, but what I wanted to say is that if there *can* be an instance of something on a separate medium then it is a separate thing not identical with the medium.
<JT>I see what you mean. I think we're at the point where we really need to be careful with what we mean by the words we use. "A Renoir" can mean "a copy of a Renoir," right? Both "Renoir"s are the same word, but mean different things.
I'll use the word "consciousness" to refer to the first-hand experience of human existence, and "mind" to mean the physical state of the brain at any given time. So a mind can be copied, but a consciousness cannot. In the "Star Trek" example above, Riker's mind was copied to form two consciousnesses.</JT>
I didn't say that, that consciouness is non-computable is an argument of Penrose, also Chalmers said that consciousness is fundamental.
<JT>I'm not familiar with the work of either man, so I can't really comment here, except to state that reality is fundamental, not consciousness. Otherwise, we'd never be surprised! But perhaps this isn't the way that was meant.</JT>
This is the framework of modern science what is necessary in order to determine science and is absolutely enough for science because all what is necessary for science is the ability to explain. Without that framework science would not have such ability because it would not be determined then how to treat such phenomenons as consciousness. I think Chalmers explained it better but Penrose made mistake trying to substantiate it with Godel's theorem. At least it is not convincing for me because say we can describe a process by an algorithm with "while" loops, Godel's theorem says nothing about that. But as I said, this substantiation was also unnecessary. So in accordance with that, this is the framework of modern science (to be exact, of the very last decade of modern science) and we, discussing science here, have to remain within science. To be honest, this would be some fudge otherwise, so I think that it is better to be constructive.
<JT>Whoa. You lost me there. I guess this is where the "advanced" part of "Advanced Philosophy" comes in. [shrug] If you could clarify some of the concepts and define some of the theorems, I will be able to participate further.</JT>
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