The point isn’t that we should ignore him. The point is that your assumption that the difference between Tom and a healthy brain is relevant to this question is (at least as yet) undefended.
If you don’t consider anything I’ve said on this question over the last twenty comments or so to provide meat for inference, then I think we can classify it as “just a hunch” for purposes of this conversation.
Maybe you could point me to something specific? In reviewing our conversations, I found statements of this inference, but I didn’t find a defense of it. At one point you said you took it to be obvious, but this is the best I could find. Am I just missing something?
I accept that you consider the items on which I base the belief that brain structure constrains the set of inferential relations that an evolved brain can traverse to be inadequate evidence to justify that conclusion. I don’t expect repeating myself to change that. If you genuinely don’t consider them evidence at all, I expect repeating myself to be even less valuable.
If you genuinely don’t consider them evidence at all, I expect repeating myself to be even less valuable.
I consider it evidence, just weak and indirect in relation to (what I take to be) much stronger and more directly related evidence that we can assume that anything we could recognize as thinking is something we can think. Such that, on balance, I would be surprised to hear that there are such thoughts.
It sounds like we’ve pretty much exhausted ourselves here, so thanks for the discussion.
The point isn’t that we should ignore him. The point is that your assumption that the difference between Tom and a healthy brain is relevant to this question is (at least as yet) undefended.
Maybe you could point me to something specific? In reviewing our conversations, I found statements of this inference, but I didn’t find a defense of it. At one point you said you took it to be obvious, but this is the best I could find. Am I just missing something?
I don’t know if you’re missing anything.
I accept that you consider the items on which I base the belief that brain structure constrains the set of inferential relations that an evolved brain can traverse to be inadequate evidence to justify that conclusion. I don’t expect repeating myself to change that. If you genuinely don’t consider them evidence at all, I expect repeating myself to be even less valuable.
I consider it evidence, just weak and indirect in relation to (what I take to be) much stronger and more directly related evidence that we can assume that anything we could recognize as thinking is something we can think. Such that, on balance, I would be surprised to hear that there are such thoughts.
It sounds like we’ve pretty much exhausted ourselves here, so thanks for the discussion.