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

[John Clark]

On Fri, Feb 7, 2020 at 2:35 PM Will Steinberg via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*>  It is REQUIRED that there is some sort of mathematical-logical-physical
> explanation for consciousness. *


And if you discover that X explains consciousness the next obvious question
would be what causes X? And what does "explanation" even mean? It means
describing something complex in terms of something simpler. And if you are
to avoid a chain of "why" questions a brute fact is the only alternative.
And for the life of me I can't think of anything simpler than on/off.

> *You say it's one of the few things the scientific model can't help us
> with, but how do you know that?*


Nobody has ever proposed a scientific exparament that could, even in
theory, teach us anything new about consciousness. That's why although we
know vastly more about most things in our world than we did a thousand
years ago we know as little about consciousness as we did during the Dark
Ages. And I can see absolutely no reason to think this situation is going
to change this year or next year or ever.

> * Plus, all experiments, in the end, require reporting by conscious
entities. *

If so and if I'm studying consciousness then the only one qualified to
perform experiments is me, and the only valid experimental subject is also
me. But as I said I don't believe getting drunk will improve my
philosophical insight.

John K Clark
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