On the other hand, it’s often a good idea to be wary of answers that seem overly complex and ponderous, since they may actually be avoiding the crux of the question, dressing up a lack of knowledge in swathes of obscurantist verbiage.QUOTE]
LOL. Sorry, but I got a kick out of your “fancy talk.”
The interplay of “presence” and “absence” is involved in language. Take naming for instance. To be able to name something, we have to be able to “appreciate” it whether it is "present’ or “absent”. Or more exactly, to appreciate this “something”, e.g., a tree, as remaining the same whether it is “present” or “absent” - it remains “there” in the world even I am not present to perceive it.
This is what makes science, i.e., “objective” knowledge, possible.
Typos:
I understand the mind well enough to know that it is more than the sum of fMRI imaging.
No, I’m actually being quite objective about it. I have been a lifelong skeptic and credulity is a sin in my eyes. My observations are based on these facts:
As for Dawkins, he has given the lie to his excuses numerous times over the years. For every reason he’s given for not debating Craig, he’s debated someone who matches the profile.
So our concept of the ‘thereness’ of other things is intimately tied to the notion of an objective reality, one that is there to be perceived rather than one we create subjectively inside our own heads. Perhaps it is the case that our ability to consider our selves - our conscious awareness - as persisting in time is tied to our tendency to perceive that other entities seem to do the same; essentially, we conceptualise ourselves as objects. So which of these came first?
)No responses!
Perhaps because it lacks the motivation to distort our perceptions to fit with preconceived or pre-programmed notions?
Modern philosophy has been plagued with this question. Once your epistemology “dictates” that we are aware only of our private sensations, or internal phantasms, or mental representatives, you’re stuck inside your solipsistic “dungeon”.
Why would you say that a “biological computer” necessarily lacks free will or responsibility?
Do your hold your computer responsible for its operations?
It is often the case that pragmatism cuts through a great deal of philosophical speculation - to ask, “What difference will it make if this belief is true?” is a way of clarifying what we think about a given conundrum. What difference would it make to me, to my experience of the world, if solipsism were true? My answer would be that if I do indeed create the reality I experience, there are times when I would definitely have created it differently to how it turned out - like the occasion on which I broke my arm falling off the back of a van, or when my dog died from cancer. If I had creative control over my experience, these and probably many other things as well would not have happened.
Perhaps, if Ray Kurtzweil is correct, computers will hold us humans responsible for our actions.
Funny you should say that. I quoted Huxley in another thread earlier. I’ll do it again, except given the scenario you describe, it would be altered to, “Oh, brave new world with no people in it!”
My computer is not a biological computer. ಠ_ಠ
Yeah, that’s kind of the problem with the whole worshiping a “higher authority” thing.
Kurzweil said that the worst opponent of the Singularity was fanatical Humanism. I find that idea interesting.
The problem with rejecting the “higher authority” thing is that one is left worshipping one’s own moral authority!
Yet he favours fanatical AI…
The only problem here is that in order to embrace any supposed “higher” moral authority, one has to trust one’s own moral intuition to determine if such an authority is actually worth embracing.