Dennett's predecessor brings it all together...

hypnagogue

But I already gave you scientific evidence that you can recognize something without subjectively experiencing it. They are not the same thing, even if they overlap in our usual daily experience; they can be dissociated.

I should mention that the opposite direction works too; for instance, someone with capragas syndrome (I believe that's the correct term but I couldn't verify it with google) can subjectively experience faces without being able to recognize them.

Zero

i'm going to back out now, this is wasting my time and yours, I think. We're both pretty well convinced of our positions. We will reject any argument that the other person has. I'm just going to call it a draw and move on.[:D]

Fliption

Is this a philosophy forum or a kindergarten class? The whole point isn't to "win" anything or even have a "draw". It's to try to understand where the views diverge and why. All of this in an effort to learn.

Zero

Sure, but I know his position, he knows mine, and coming up with more and more elaborate examples of our positions probably isn't going to change his mind or mine. No, it isn't about winning or losing, which is why I don't mind pulling out of the conversation when it doesn't seem to me to be getting anywhere. I figured calling it a "draw" was a more graceful way of putting an end to my end of the discussion.

The semi-traditional way of ending this sort of thing is to say "I give up on trying to convince you, you are too stupid to understand so I'm putting you on ignore, you are a worthless waste of bandwidth!" I've got to much respect for hypnagogue and his posting on this thread to insult him that way, but I wanted him to know I wasn't planning on carrying on my end of the discussion anymore. [6)]

Fliption

I see. I didn't perceive that you were doing a very elaborate job of giving examples or trying to respond to his. That's why I posted my last response. For example, his logical proof (which doesn't prove anything, it just illustrates the problem being discussed), wasn't even addressed by you except to say that assumption number 1 wasn't a valid assumption. Even though in a later post you agreed that it is an assumption you have as well. Mostly, you just ignore the details like these and resort to the "where's the evidence?" type of statements. This topic is about whether consciousness can be reductively explained. The only evidence that needs to be shown is that no one can explain it. This discussion just centers around why that fact will never change. The only evidence remaining for such a discussion is logical proofs.

pelastration

It can be interesting to look to: digital versus analogue.
Digital can never give all the fine-tuning of the analogue world.
Dennett only looks to the digital aspects.

selfAdjoint

Pelastration, could you document that assertion about Dennett? I've read a number of his books and never saw any such limitation.

pelastration

Interesting. Neural science on BBC.
While looking to a hand moving (ie. take a coin, shooting a gun) on a movie ... the brain zone controlling ' the sense of touch' is also activated.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/pr.../sci_act.shtml

direct link to download the realone file: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/ram/sia.ram

pelastration

Thanks selfAdjoint,

It was not coming directly from him but: http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge82.html

Quote: "Experimental psychologist Steven Pinker speaks of "a new understanding that the human mind is a remarkably complex processor of information." To Pinker, our minds are "organs of computation." To philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, "the basic idea of computation, as formulated by the mathematicians John von Neumann and Alan Turing, is in a class by itself as a breakthrough idea." Dennett asks us to think about the idea that what we have in our heads is software, "a virtual machine, in the same way that a word processor is a virtual machine." Pinker and Dennett are talking about our mental life in terms of the idea of computation, not simply proposing the digital computer as a metaphor for the mind. Other scientists disagree (See below: "Is Life Analog or Digital" by Freeman Dyson), but most recognize that these are big questions." end quote.

I maybe over-interpreted. ;-). But I don't like Dennett. So ...

Now that page gives a discussion on digital vs analogue, and Smolin makes this nice remark: "So while the holographic principle says that no observer in the universe can access more than a finite amount of information, that information may be stored in a way that cannot be represented digitally by any computer that could be built inside the universe."