LGP Philosophy Discussion Thread

[columbia]

I was getting my coffee the other day and the lady at the cash register had down syndrome. She was very happy, very pleasant to be around, and as we left, I said to my wife, "If I ever own a business like this, I'd hire someone like her over some random teenager any day of the week." And she asked if being happy and pleasant is a part of having down syndrome, and I had never thought about it before. I don't think I've ever met some one with down syndrome that wasn't happy. I've met some that are shy and take some time to warm up to people but once they have, they are the most pleasant people to be around. Is it that they do not develop past that state you're talking about of being intrinsically happy? In any regard, I've been around a lot of children down syndrome through volunteer work and teaching, and there is not a single group of people that I would rather hang out with. When they are in that constant state of happiness (sure, they get angry or sad just like anyone else, but for the most part, they're happy) it's hard not to be happy as well.

Do you think that's an issue of self-awareness?

[Kraftster]

Oh I agree with that. In terms of competence, there's no question that the stage1->stage4 structure applies.

I'm just talking specifically about happiness. If we try to use the same idea and apply it to happiness. And if Stage 1 and Stage 4 are the same, I guess that makes the continuum not that at all--it makes it a circle. Which is kind of fascinating to me.

i.e., we're always striving to get back to where we started. I think there's probably some sort of Buddhist undertones there. (Note, I know practically nothing about buddhism). Something like, happiness is a circle just as life is a circle, where we seek to go back to being part of the universe as opposed to our conscious selves.

[count2infinity]

I really don't know. I know that doctors often say things like "they'll never get past the mental point of an x year old" where x varies depending on the condition. I have a cousin who was deprived of oxygen at birth and had irreparable brain damage from it. She's 28 now and has talked and acted like a 2 or 3 year old for years now. I often wonder if she's aware of her condition. If she knows that she's a little different from everyone else, or if she's blissfully unaware. I like to think the latter, and thus is just in that state of unawared happiness.

[shmenguin]

people are naturally happy, until outside factors interfere. look no further than an infant before they cut their first tooth, and one after. my daughter never had a care in the world before she had her freaking teeth come in.

i could never achieve stage 4 without the assistance of drugs. i'm diagnosed OCD - my brain chemistry won't allow me to be unconscious about anything.

[Kraftster]

Do we live an era of extreme banality, or are things always this way?

[columbia]

It's more obvious, courtesy of the Internet.

[Kraftster]

Yeah, I think you are probably right. I was going to say that social media is fostering banal existence, but perhaps it is actually just putting on display what has always been there.

[Troy Loney]

Televsion. The ultimate passive activity.

[columbia]

Something like Facebook does make it worse, which is why I look at it in the morning and no more for the rest of the day. I'd get rid of it, but too many people are expecting to find me (and i guess everyone) there and email seems to be a dying medium.

[largegarlic]

I wonder about this too. On the one hand, Plato was already complaining about the hoi polloi in the 4th Century BCE, what with their love of plays, poetry, drunken "symposia", and stupid demagogues. On the other hand, you would have to think that the advent of TV and internet has greatly increased the opportunity to indulge in the common tendency to be distracted from serious thought (as I type a post on a hockey message board instead of working).

[shmenguin]

Do we live an era of extreme banality, or are things always this way?

I think you're just getting older

[Willie Kool]

So then I was thinking, well, how would that continuum work for happiness? In order to have the same progression, it would be:

unconscious unhappiness-->conscious unhappiness-->conscious happiness-->unconscious happiness

But as I've been thinking about the happy-about-the-whole-thingers, I've been thinking of them as stage 1, which I've thought of as unconscious happiness. So what is the continuum then? Is stage 1 really the same as stage 4? And if so, should I think of people living happily at stage 1 as really any less than someone living happily at stage 4?

But, I want to work with the idea of this continuum

I don't think you can. Is it even possible for someone to be unconscious of their own mood?

[Kraftster]

I was cleaning out my DVR recently and finally watched the Morgan Spurlock "Inside Man" on living forever. Part of the show involves him discussing living forever with Ray Kurzweil. They end up talking about this concept of uploading the human brain into a computer and that as a means of living forever. When I frequently discuss wanting to living forever with coworkers and friends, they often ask me if I'm talking about uploading my brain into a computer and living forever viz-a-viz artificial stimulation within the computer.

I have not read much on this concept, but I have always had a real intuitive problem accepting how it would result in me--this instantiation of the consciousness borne out of the particular collection of matter and chemicals that are in my brain--living forever. As someone that naturally seems to have physicalist leanings (without being particularly well-read in the area), it would make sense to me that the brain is reducible to it's physical parts and nothing more. This means that consciousness is nothing more than something that exists in the physical world. If that's true, then it should be well within the realm of possibility that my consciousness could at least theoretically be replicated.

The hang up that I've always had is how could my consciousness--Me with a capital 'M'--this instantiation of Kraftster's consciousness--transfer to the computer? Wouldn't the machine "me" be Kraftster Consciousness 2.0? How does that benefit Me in terms of living forever?

That got me wondering whether I need consciousness to be something non-physical in order to have there be something special about this first instantiation of Kraftster consciousness? That lead me to listen to a couple podcasts on consciousness--one interview with David Chalmers and one with Dan Dennett. Chalmers talks about philosophical zombies, and Dennett refers to the problem as the "zombic hunch." It's really good stuff.

As I understand it, a philosophical zombie is a being that looks and acts like a human in every possible way, except that, the zombie is not conscious. The zombie might act like it has consciousness and might even tell you that it does, but it does not. Chalmers says the fact that we can conceive of the philosophical zombie suggests that zombies could exist. What I think he's getting at here is a refutation of the physicalist view of consciousness. He would basically say that we have no way of proving--through imaging, physical dissection, etc.--that the zombie is or is not conscious. That subjective experience that is consciousness is not reducible to something physical in the way that everything else in the world might be. What then, is consciousness?--is the idea. Dennett basically suggests that these people who are afflicted by the "zombic hunch" and who cannot shake it (i.e., Chalmers) need therapy. He does not agree with the leap that because the zombie is conceivable it could exist. But, more fundamentally, he believes that the whole thought experiment is basically premised upon consciousness being something that it simply is not.

I found it very interesting, and I hope to fit in some further reading in the near future.

[Willie Kool]

Dennett basically suggests that these people who are afflicted by the "zombic hunch" and who cannot shake it (i.e., Chalmers) need therapy.

IMO Peter Hacker sums it up pretty well:

“The whole endeavour of the consciousness studies community is absurd – they are in pursuit of a chimera. They misunderstand the nature of consciousness. The conception of consciousness which they have is incoherent. The questions they are asking don’t make sense. They have to go back to the drawing board and start all over again.”

[largegarlic]

I was cleaning out my DVR recently and finally watched the Morgan Spurlock "Inside Man" on living forever. Part of the show involves him discussing living forever with Ray Kurzweil. They end up talking about this concept of uploading the human brain into a computer and that as a means of living forever. When I frequently discuss wanting to living forever with coworkers and friends, they often ask me if I'm talking about uploading my brain into a computer and living forever viz-a-viz artificial stimulation within the computer.

I have not read much on this concept, but I have always had a real intuitive problem accepting how it would result in me--this instantiation of the consciousness borne out of the particular collection of matter and chemicals that are in my brain--living forever. As someone that naturally seems to have physicalist leanings (without being particularly well-read in the area), it would make sense to me that the brain is reducible to it's physical parts and nothing more. This means that consciousness is nothing more than something that exists in the physical world. If that's true, then it should be well within the realm of possibility that my consciousness could at least theoretically be replicated.

The hang up that I've always had is how could my consciousness--Me with a capital 'M'--this instantiation of Kraftster's consciousness--transfer to the computer? Wouldn't the machine "me" be Kraftster Consciousness 2.0? How does that benefit Me in terms of living forever?

That got me wondering whether I need consciousness to be something non-physical in order to have there be something special about this first instantiation of Kraftster consciousness? That lead me to listen to a couple podcasts on consciousness--one interview with David Chalmers and one with Dan Dennett. Chalmers talks about philosophical zombies, and Dennett refers to the problem as the "zombic hunch." It's really good stuff.

As I understand it, a philosophical zombie is a being that looks and acts like a human in every possible way, except that, the zombie is not conscious. The zombie might act like it has consciousness and might even tell you that it does, but it does not. Chalmers says the fact that we can conceive of the philosophical zombie suggests that zombies could exist. What I think he's getting at here is a refutation of the physicalist view of consciousness. He would basically say that we have no way of proving--through imaging, physical dissection, etc.--that the zombie is or is not conscious. That subjective experience that is consciousness is not reducible to something physical in the way that everything else in the world might be. What then, is consciousness?--is the idea. Dennett basically suggests that these people who are afflicted by the "zombic hunch" and who cannot shake it (i.e., Chalmers) need therapy. He does not agree with the leap that because the zombie is conceivable it could exist. But, more fundamentally, he believes that the whole thought experiment is basically premised upon consciousness being something that it simply is not.

I found it very interesting, and I hope to fit in some further reading in the near future.

Yeah, I don't really know about much about philosophy of mind or consciousness, but I was reading some stuff on AI and uploading consciousness, and that forces you to get into some of these issues. It's a really tough question for me. I feel that people who are more reductively physicalist like Dennett are too quick to jump to the conclusion that everything can be explained at the simple physical level. On the other hand, I'm also not too sympathetic to strong dualist accounts that claim consciousness is something non-physical (i.e. spiritual) attached to the physical body. I'm not sure where that leaves me.

[redwill]

An ethical question just for the heck of it. It's one of those "burning-building-can-only-save-one-thing" questions:

You're in a burning building and can only save one thing: An original classic painting (say, a Rembrandt) or a cat. Which do you save?

[shmenguin]

what if it was a dog?

[redwill]

Same difference I say.

[count2infinity]

An ethical question just for the heck of it. It's one of those "burning-building-can-only-save-one-thing" questions:

You're in a burning building and can only save one thing: An original classic painting (say, a Rembrandt) or a cat. Which do you save?

The cat. You can get reprints of the Rembrandt. "But it's not the originallllllllllllll" Who cares? You can't reprint a cat... additionally that painting can't feel the pain of burning, the cat can. And I hate cats.

[redwill]

An ethical question just for the heck of it. It's one of those "burning-building-can-only-save-one-thing" questions:

You're in a burning building and can only save one thing: An original classic painting (say, a Rembrandt) or a cat. Which do you save?

The cat. You can get reprints of the Rembrandt. "But it's not the originallllllllllllll" Who cares? You can't reprint a cat... additionally that painting can't feel the pain of burning, the cat can. And I hate cats.

Give 3-D printing technology a few years. Haha.

[columbia]

Cloning

[PensFanInDC]

An ethical question just for the heck of it. It's one of those "burning-building-can-only-save-one-thing" questions:

You're in a burning building and can only save one thing: An original classic painting (say, a Rembrandt) or a cat. Which do you save?

The cat. You can get reprints of the Rembrandt. "But it's not the originallllllllllllll" Who cares? You can't reprint a cat... additionally that painting can't feel the pain of burning, the cat can. And I hate cats.

I would be interested to hear someone explain their view of why this is not the correct answer (I understand it's rhetorical and there is no right or wrong answer). I can't think of another way to answer it.

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

Easily the cat. Not even a question. The painting can go **** itself

[redwill]

I would be interested to hear someone explain their view of why this is not the correct answer (I understand it's rhetorical and there is no right or wrong answer). I can't think of another way to answer it.

Cats are a dime-a-dozen (<insert standard redwill reference to euthanasia happening in shelters everyday>).

Moreover, what if it was it was a notorious murderer instead of a cat? Or if it was a common housefly?

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

Pretty sure cats don't experience the pain of burning alive every day.

If it was a murderer, screw him, if it was a housefly then that's impractical because I would never be able to get a housefly out.