Recent content by SMERSH

The paradox in this thought experiment (which duplicated "copy" will "I" subjectively be in ?) I think touches on something that I think is still very poorly understood in current scientific and philosophic discourse. As I have posted in some other threads, I think this is the concept of a...

Interesting discussion. A few thoughts. By "random" I assume the definition of an event or events without a "cause" to such an event. I think if there exists ANY such "random" events without cause then logical induction implies the idea that ANY imaginable (or unimaginable) event is not...

A lot has been discussed/posted about various models/theories to explain consciousness, the systems of laws, fundamental physics, emergence, upward and downward causality etc. However I think too much of these theories focus on GENERAL universals and ultimately on the mechanisms, but not on...

I have a great deal of regard for the general concept of vagueness, however I think it lacks a "completeness" to it. It's hard to describe clearly but it in seems to completely abandon any unchanging universal "absolutes". Yes, a lot of modern physics seems to chip away at any "absolutes" in...

I think this goes back to your previous posts about vagueness. I think the greater the vagueness of any two systems, the more similar and indistinguishable they are. At some point in "time" in the past, either we presumably did exist but had no "history" to speak of because this was at...

I respect that opinion, but the problem I see with this is that your explanation is not logically complete. There was a starting point (let's say time 0) at which our "histories" or "development" were identical a priori. So at that point, how was this overarching system of laws (including the...

Interesting posts by apeiron and others, but I have a few thoughts. I consider the term "consciousness" to involve TWO fundamental properties: (1) The "process" aspect of it (for lack of a better word) - such as the dissipative structures, various computational/mathematical and other...

I understood you were advocating for the second view and I merely meant you stated it well, although I did not agree with it, and you have made some very interesting points. I think one of the problematic ideas with reductionism is that something that is complex must necessarily be less...

Well said. The second view seems to me too reminiscent of a return to classical reductionism, that this I-ness is a construct of smaller less complex subunits (activities or processes) as opposed to an independently "thing" that exists in itself (or that has a strongly emergent property and...

I have seen your previous and current posts about this very interesting description of a sort of symmetry between local and global, top down and bottom up causality and it appears to be consistent with the idea that the rules that govern this universe we are in tend to be highly if not...

I think you do have a point that caution is required when dealing with the possible implications of our current knowledge of quantum physics and applying it in general to metaphysical ideas. That is why these ideas are as I described in the original post are (needless to say) highly...

It seems to me a lot of what quantum mechanics is essentially saying is that "causality of any given event is equal and opposite to the causing event" - leading to entanglement. This is in some way analogous to the Newton's laws of "action and reaction are equal and opposite". What I...

You are right, these case reports of some babies born with no apparent sense of pain are tragic events, however I do not think these babies are an example of the scenario I describe in the original post. Why? Because it seems to me these babies have not only lost ability to sense pain but...

Physical state to subjective "Qualia" and evolution - why? I'll try to make the points I'm getting at as concise and clear as possible. We all have sensations/emotions of pain, joy, hot, warm, cold, fear, curiosity, and the direct senses of light, sound, etc. Let us for the moment...