For the sake of the argument, it doesn’t make any difference that we can’t write a computer program (BTW, can’t we? are you absolutely sure about theoretical impossibility of literature-detecting neural network?) to detect both. For literature we know that it is an emergent phenomenon and we have a solid understanding of what it means for some text to be considered a piece of literature, even though the exact boundaries of literature might be vague.
For literature not only we can point our finger to it but also we can give more precise definition. For consciousness we have no clue what it is. We suspect that consciousness in particular and personal identity in general might be just one type of qualia among many others; but then we have no clue what is qualia.
Consciousness could be an emergent phenomenon (like literature) or fundamental property of our universe. We don’t know and there’s no good reason to prefer one speculation over the other.
Im not saying that you can’t have a neural network that detects literature. I see no reason for what literature is to be incomputaple, I was aiming more for the idea of a complex vague intuitive boundary. Detect literature is not nearly enough to specify a particular program. As opposed to detect primes.
And no, consciousness is not a fundamental property of the universe.
Donald, I’m interested to hear how you know that consciousness is not fundamental? And how do you know it’s the property of brains? I’m inclined to think consciousness is both fundamental and not produced by brains. I’d be interested if you could provide an argument against this position.
For the sake of the argument, it doesn’t make any difference that we can’t write a computer program (BTW, can’t we? are you absolutely sure about theoretical impossibility of literature-detecting neural network?) to detect both. For literature we know that it is an emergent phenomenon and we have a solid understanding of what it means for some text to be considered a piece of literature, even though the exact boundaries of literature might be vague.
For literature not only we can point our finger to it but also we can give more precise definition. For consciousness we have no clue what it is. We suspect that consciousness in particular and personal identity in general might be just one type of qualia among many others; but then we have no clue what is qualia.
Consciousness could be an emergent phenomenon (like literature) or fundamental property of our universe. We don’t know and there’s no good reason to prefer one speculation over the other.
Im not saying that you can’t have a neural network that detects literature. I see no reason for what literature is to be incomputaple, I was aiming more for the idea of a complex vague intuitive boundary. Detect literature is not nearly enough to specify a particular program. As opposed to detect primes.
And no, consciousness is not a fundamental property of the universe.
Donald, I’m interested to hear how you know that consciousness is not fundamental? And how do you know it’s the property of brains? I’m inclined to think consciousness is both fundamental and not produced by brains. I’d be interested if you could provide an argument against this position.
Do you have any objective evidence supporting this claim?
If that’s just your assumption it would be helpful to clarify it in your essay, as the rest of your arguments follow from it.