[ExI] Consciousness as 'brute fact' and meta-skepticism

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Sat, 8 Feb 2020 at 05:23, Will Steinberg via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> >It has always bugged me when otherwise rigorous science-types claim that
consciousness JUST IS. That it is (to paraphrase John) "how data feels to
be processed".  Or that it is an 'illusion', ignoring the fact that the
idea of an illusion already presupposes a consciousness to experience said
illusion.

>In my opinion, this kind of 'it just is' is the least skeptical, least
scientific view you could take.  Imagine saying "gravity is just the way
mass feels to be close to other mass", or worse "gravity just IS"; "gravity
is an illusion."  Why is consciousness the only aspect of reality that
people so staunchly refuse to consider deeper explanations for?  It's crazy
to me that seemingly everything but consciousness warrants closer
investigation, mathematical interpretation &c., while consciousness itself
is "it's too mysterious, don't think about it okay?"

With any natural phenomenon we reach some bottom level of explanation and
then say “it just is”. A deeper explanation may come along later but at
some point it has to stop, or we would have an infinite regress.

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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