Maybe we couldn’t, but A is simply asserting that containership is a concept beyond its parts, whereas I’m appealing directly to experience: the relevance of this is that whether something has experience matters. Ultimately for any case, if others just express bewilderment in your concepts and apparently don’t get what you’re talking about, you can’t prove it’s an issue. But at any rate, most people seem to have subjective experience.
Being conscious isn’t a label I apply to certain conscious-type systems that I deem ‘valuable’ or ‘true’ in some way. Rather, I want to know what systems should be associated with the clearly relevant and important category of ‘conscious’
My thoughts about how I go about associating systems with the expectation of subjective experience are elsewhere and I have nothing new to add to it here.
As regards you and A… I realize that you are appealing directly to experience, whereas A is merely appealing to containment, and I accept that it’s obvious to you that experience is importantly different from containment in a way that makes your position importantly non-analogous to A’s.
I have no response to A that I expect A to find compelling… they simply don’t believe that containership is fully explained by the permeability and topology of containers. And, you know, maybe they’re right… maybe some day someone will come up with a superior explanation of containerhood that depends on some previously unsuspected property of containers and we’ll all be amazed at the realization that containers aren’t what we thought they were. I don’t find it likely, though.
I also have no response to you that I expect you to find compelling. And maybe someday someone will come up with a superior explanation of consciousness that depends on some previously unsuspected property of conscious systems, and I’ll be amazed at the realization that such systems aren’t what I thought they were, and that you were right all along.
Are you saying you don’t experience qualia and find them a bit surprising (in a way you don’t for containerness)? I find it really hard to not see arguments of this kind as a little disingenous: is the issue genuinely not difficult for some people, or is this a rhetorical stance intended to provoke better arguments, or awareness of the weakness of current arguments?
I have subjective experiences. If that’s the same thing as experiencing qualia, then I experience qualia.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by “surprising” here… no, it does not surprise me that I have subjective experiences, I’ve become rather accustomed to it over the years. I frequently find the idea that my subjective experiences are a function of the formal processes my neurobiology implements a challenging idea… is that what you’re asking?
Then again, I frequently find the idea that my memories of my dead father are a function of the formal processes my neurobiology implements a challenging idea as well. What, on your view, am I entitled to infer from that?
Yes, I meant surprising in light of other discoveries/beliefs.
On memory: is it the conscious experience that’s challenging (in which case it’s just a sub-set of the same issue) or do you find the functional aspects of memory challenging? Even though I know almost nothing about how memory works, I can see plausible models and how it could work, unlike consciousness.
Maybe we couldn’t, but A is simply asserting that containership is a concept beyond its parts, whereas I’m appealing directly to experience: the relevance of this is that whether something has experience matters. Ultimately for any case, if others just express bewilderment in your concepts and apparently don’t get what you’re talking about, you can’t prove it’s an issue. But at any rate, most people seem to have subjective experience.
Being conscious isn’t a label I apply to certain conscious-type systems that I deem ‘valuable’ or ‘true’ in some way. Rather, I want to know what systems should be associated with the clearly relevant and important category of ‘conscious’
My thoughts about how I go about associating systems with the expectation of subjective experience are elsewhere and I have nothing new to add to it here.
As regards you and A… I realize that you are appealing directly to experience, whereas A is merely appealing to containment, and I accept that it’s obvious to you that experience is importantly different from containment in a way that makes your position importantly non-analogous to A’s.
I have no response to A that I expect A to find compelling… they simply don’t believe that containership is fully explained by the permeability and topology of containers. And, you know, maybe they’re right… maybe some day someone will come up with a superior explanation of containerhood that depends on some previously unsuspected property of containers and we’ll all be amazed at the realization that containers aren’t what we thought they were. I don’t find it likely, though.
I also have no response to you that I expect you to find compelling. And maybe someday someone will come up with a superior explanation of consciousness that depends on some previously unsuspected property of conscious systems, and I’ll be amazed at the realization that such systems aren’t what I thought they were, and that you were right all along.
Are you saying you don’t experience qualia and find them a bit surprising (in a way you don’t for containerness)? I find it really hard to not see arguments of this kind as a little disingenous: is the issue genuinely not difficult for some people, or is this a rhetorical stance intended to provoke better arguments, or awareness of the weakness of current arguments?
I have subjective experiences. If that’s the same thing as experiencing qualia, then I experience qualia.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by “surprising” here… no, it does not surprise me that I have subjective experiences, I’ve become rather accustomed to it over the years. I frequently find the idea that my subjective experiences are a function of the formal processes my neurobiology implements a challenging idea… is that what you’re asking?
Then again, I frequently find the idea that my memories of my dead father are a function of the formal processes my neurobiology implements a challenging idea as well. What, on your view, am I entitled to infer from that?
Yes, I meant surprising in light of other discoveries/beliefs.
On memory: is it the conscious experience that’s challenging (in which case it’s just a sub-set of the same issue) or do you find the functional aspects of memory challenging? Even though I know almost nothing about how memory works, I can see plausible models and how it could work, unlike consciousness.