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Originally posted by lord of the mark
If I built something made of electronics, that reacted to the same inputs with the same outputs as my brain does, could we say its "mind" was any different? Yet its physical make up would be different, right? Weigh different, different elements, etc. Its physical attributes would be different from my brains, yet its mental attributes would not be.
If I built something made of electronics, that reacted to the same inputs with the same outputs as my brain does, could we say its "mind" was any different? Yet its physical make up would be different, right? Weigh different, different elements, etc. Its physical attributes would be different from my brains, yet its mental attributes would not be.
As I mentioned earlier, this is the most important feature. A theory of consciousness needs to explain how a set of neurobiological processes can cause a system to be in a subjective state of sentience or awareness. This phenomenon is unlike anything else in biology, and in a sense it is one of the most amazing features of nature. We resist accepting subjectivity as a ground floor, irreducible phenomenon of nature because, since the seventeenth century, we have come to believe that science must be objective. But this involves a pun on the notion of objectivity. We are confusing the epistemic objectivity of scientific investigation with the ontological objectivity of the typical subject matter in science in disciplines such as physics and chemistry. Since science aims at objectivity in the epistemic sense that we seek truths that are not dependent on the particular point of view of this or that investigator, it has been tempting to conclude that the reality investigated by science must be objective in the sense of existing independently of the experiences in the human individual. But this last feature, ontological objectivity, is not an essential trait of science. If science is supposed to give an account of how the world works and if subjective states of consciousness are part of the world, then we should seek an (epistemically) objective account of an (ontologically) subjective reality, the reality of subjective states of consciousness. What I am arguing here is that we can have an epistemically objective science of a domain that is ontologically subjective.
We could imagine a zombie that behaves and talks just like you, but doesn't have any conscious experiences. When he looks at the blue skie, for example, his eyes point toward it, pick up the light waves and the info is sent to the brain to get processed. But since he doesn't have any conscious experiences, all this isn't accompanied by the subective experience of seing the blue skie. Would you say that zombie LOTM has a mind like yours?
The question is whether, if I were in a state (call it heaven if you will) where there was no possibility for inputs and outputs to the "physical" world, would it be possible to call whatever what was going on "mental activity" or even to say that "I" existed. The mind body problem seems more tractable than the question of what it means for the self to exist.
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