[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

[Emlyn]

On 28/11/05, gts <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> It may be no coincidence that small children intuit pan-psychism. They
> talk to what we consider inert objects. Children are naive to think inert
> objects can understand words and respond, but perhaps their basic
> intuition is correct.
>
> -gts
>

Or, our brains might have evolved primarily to cope with complex
social networks composed of other humans, and so we have a model of
other which goes rampant and attributes "like-me" to dollies and cars
and Talking Eliza software. And attributes the making of the whole
world to something "like-me", ie: God.

What you are proposing is a sort of strong-dualism, which
interestingly sits very comfortably with strong materialism.
Materialism says "there cannot be consciousness, so you can disregard
it and play on". Strong dualism says "there must always be
consciousness, so you can disregard it and play on". Any disagreements
are about angels dancing on a pin. In practice, they appear to be
wholly compatible.

In contrast, it's the view that there is something to consciousness,
something special that we'd have to discover and do to imbue our
mind-children with subjective experience, that is at odds with these
views.

--
Emlyn

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