[ExI] Science or Scientism?

[Will Steinberg]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 12:23 PM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 10:47 AM Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> *> I don't know what you think makes a Jupiter brain that contains
>> uploaded humans conscious, but somehow doesn't make groups of corporal
>> humans jointly conscious. *
>>
>
> I don't see how I could think that either, so it's a good thing I don't.
>

I'm not sure what we even disagree about!

I suppose the difference is in what we believe is the degree of unification
between what you refer to as "brute facts".  In the same way the
electromagnetic and weak forces and then the strong force unify at high
energies, I think that consciousness, at some level, has to be contiguous
with the rest of reality.  In other words I don't believe there is more
than one or possibly two brute facts per universe, and I also think it's
probably true that this brute fact is similar or the same for different
universes.  They would be something like 'AND' and 'NOT'.  I think the
symmetry breaking leading to differentiation happens when this brute
factuality butts up against itself.  And in general that these facts are
recursively defined and that it may indeed be turtles all the way down.

I just think it is silly to believe that the other brute facts you refer to
(such as the fundamental forces) are ubiquitous throughout the universe,
but the brute fact of consciousness/qualia only occurs in brains.  As I
have said, that seems akin to the belief that gravity only exists on Earth.

Furthermore, I don't think that it makes sense to make judgments on what is
or is not a brute fact when we still have so many unknowns, such as dark
energy/matter.  For all we know, it could be just as likely that these
unknowns are related to consciousness as they are related to something like
gravity or electromagnetism.  Of particular note would be the idea that we
can look at a system like a human brain and try and describe everything
that is there in terms of ways we currently understand the universe (such
as energy, matter, &c.) and yet there still seems to be an extra brute fact
there which is called consciousness, that appears to have an effect on the
other forces present in reality.  And that this is similar to the idea that
we can try and describe cosmic entities in terms of those understood
aspects of the universe and yet there still appears to be a heretofore
unknown fact in the form of dark energy/matter that exists beyond what we
know and also has an effect on the other forces present in reality.
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