I don't think you've addressed my criticism. It is appropriate to assume it does not exist until someone demonstrates otherwise. It is not appropriate to assert baseless that it DOES exist, but cannot be studied empirically. That's frankly rather stupid, and part of what I despise about philosophy.

You don't have to assume something in question exists, you can merely make logical conjectures off an axiom just to see what happens.

Edited June 9, 201312 yr by SamBridge

Response to PeterJ,

To "define" is to set forth some criteria for determining what is or isn't an instance of the thing defined.

A fact is an accurate description of what is. The adjective "factual" merely associates the noun with the category: facts.

Yes. It's not a well-defined term even in consciousnes studies. But I'm sure you know what I mean. The problem of consciousness has a vast literature.

How can I know what you mean if it's not clear that you mean anything at all? Wittgenstein thought it was impossible for one to define a word without referencing public phenomena.
Explicit definition inevitably reduces, for example, 'red' to something like 'the way our eyes and brains process 400-500 THz light'. Thereafter, qualities, relationships, comparisons, etc. for 'red' only need to be logically consistent with that definition of 'red'.

 

Back on point, what is meant by 'consciousness'? You statement seemed to imply that 'consciousness' isn't something that has been shown to arise from matter. Can you define it in such a way that is consistent with that claim about it?

Of course, there's always option two. If you do not know how to define it, how are we to speculate about it at all?

Edited June 9, 201312 yr by Mondays Assignment: Die

You don't have to assume something in question exists, you can merely make logical conjectures off an axiom just to see what happens.

 

That quote is from 3 months ago, but I'll respond to your reply anyway... His axiom was that ESP is real and cannot be studied because it exists "outside the realm of science." The position is nonsense. I could equally tell you that invisible dragons are real or that ass gnomes who grow fruit in your butt hairs are real. They rest on the same footing. Until we demonstrate that ESP (or similar things) even exist in the first place, I would have to argue with anyone who sincerely believes there is any value in speculating about how they work... In speculating whether those ass gnomes use rakes or tractors when harvesting fruit from your butt hairs.

 

Seriously... Would you equally just want "to see what happens" if I asked you how unicorns can fly at all given the way their feathers are spaced and the way their wings connect to their pectoral muscles?

There's plenty of good books on consciousness and Wittgenstein. Let's stick to the topic. If we get into qualia and phenomenology all will be lost. Consciousness was an example of a problem, not an issue here.

Seriously... Would you equally just want "to see what happens" if I asked you how unicorns can fly at all given the way their feathers are spaced and the way their wings connect to their pectoral muscles?

Well, how exactly do we know there aren't invisible unicorns unless we make logical conjectures about their existence and compare it to our experiences and laws of physics? If you don't, you aren't doing anything more than assuming.