[ExI] Wernicke's aphasia and the CRA.

Gordon Swobe gts_2000 at yahoo.com
Fri Dec 11 22:18:15 UTC 2009


--- On Fri, 12/11/09, John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> You don't know how biological brains work and yet
> you think human beings are conscious, or at least you do
> when they are not asleep or dead. You make this distinction
> by observing their behavior. 

No, I simply notice that my brain has this feature called consciousness. My consciousness seems very much part of the physical world; it goes away temporarily if I get whacked in the head by a baseball bat, or fall asleep and don't dream, or if any number of other things happen. 

I notice that other people have brains too. I can only infer those other brains have consciousness, but if I don't make that inference then I have fallen into solipsism. 

> And I think it would be useful if philosophers took a freshman course 
> in biology because if consciousness is not a byproduct of intelligence, > if it is not the feeling data has when it is being processed

I don't know about "byproduct of intelligence" (depends on what you mean by the word byproduct -- see my conversation with Stathis) but clearly consciousness does indeed have something to do with "the feeling data has when it is being processed". So I don't know with whom you think you have a disagreement. Certainly not Searle or me.

> As I said before in the history of the world the
> study of the concept of the soul has never produced one
> useful insight.

What soul? 

If you hope to refute Searle's position then you need first to understand him. Like most naturalists, he respects science and the scientific method. He makes no mystical claims about consciousness except in your misinformed imagination.

> The Identity of Indiscernibles supports my ideas not
> yours, it says that if I exchange you with an exact copy of
> you NOTHING has changed.

Nobody here has claimed that a clone of a human brain does not have the same properties as the original. 

-gts


      



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