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

Will Steinberg steinberg.will at gmail.com
Fri Feb 7 19:33:24 UTC 2020


On Fri, Feb 7, 2020 at 2:04 PM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>   And besides, if you don't like the brute fact idea the only alternative
> is that the chain of "why" questions goes on forever. After all, it is
> beyond dispute that things either go on forever or things don't go on
> forever.
>
>
I suppose my issue is with the proposed 'brutishness' of said fact.  It is
REQUIRED that there is some sort of mathematical-logical-physical
explanation for consciousness.  We have explored the geometry of the
fundamental forces and gotten deeper into things like group theory that add
a lot of explanatory power.  It would seem that there is no reason this
isn't possible for consciousness.  You say it's one of the few things the
scientific model can't help us with, but how do you know that? That is the
sort of anti-skepticism I am talking about.  It makes much more sense to me
to say "it's one of the things we don't know how to do much science on
YET."

Plus, all experiments, in the end, require reporting by conscious
entities.  Scientific instruments are constructed and read by
consciousness.  Doubt can be seeded at any point.
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