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Sam Harris on why Materialism is Nonsensical

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sciborg2:
The Mystery of Consciousness | Sam Harris


--- Quote ---Consciousness—the sheer fact that this universe is illuminated by sentience—is precisely what unconsciousness is not. And I believe that no description of unconscious complexity will fully account for it. It seems to me that just as “something” and “nothing,” however juxtaposed, can do no explanatory work, an analysis of purely physical processes will never yield a picture of consciousness. However, this is not to say that some other thesis about consciousness must be true. Consciousness may very well be the lawful product of unconscious information processing. But I don’t know what that sentence means—and I don’t think anyone else does either.
--- End quote ---

TaoHorror:
The Samster is fun to read. Appears no gains still on where our thoughts come from and worse, the activity we witness in the brain does not seem near enough to produce our conscious experience which occurs without error - unless it doesn't as we can see with survivors of brain trauma/damage. I wonder what fractured/damaged consciousness is like ... but I'm not so curious to find out. That really horrifies me - that one day I fall to cracked/missing parts of consciousness, seems like it's hell, but maybe only as viewed by others - do sufferers actually suffer in such a state, or as their conscious is impaired maybe their experience of suffering is also impaired ... or maybe not and our mind is caged. I have no mouth, but I need to scream.

TLEILAXU:

--- Quote from: sciborg2 on October 20, 2018, 11:31:44 pm ---The Mystery of Consciousness | Sam Harris


--- Quote ---Consciousness—the sheer fact that this universe is illuminated by sentience—is precisely what unconsciousness is not. And I believe that no description of unconscious complexity will fully account for it. It seems to me that just as “something” and “nothing,” however juxtaposed, can do no explanatory work, an analysis of purely physical processes will never yield a picture of consciousness. However, this is not to say that some other thesis about consciousness must be true. Consciousness may very well be the lawful product of unconscious information processing. But I don’t know what that sentence means—and I don’t think anyone else does either.
--- End quote ---

--- End quote ---
Sam Harris seems to have run into the "Hard Problem of Consciousness", i.e. the relationship between conscious experience and physical processes. If you ask me personally, it's just a trivial non-problem. Why is it such a big deal that we "can't explain consciousness" in intentional terms or what have you? A physical description would be enough, and even if that's not tractable, approximations will do fine. I don't feel uncomfortable thinking about how my conscious experience is the result of proteins opening and closing due to ion concentrations etc. a trillion neurons etc.

TaoHorror:

--- Quote from: TLEILAXU on October 21, 2018, 08:49:33 pm ---
--- Quote from: sciborg2 on October 20, 2018, 11:31:44 pm ---The Mystery of Consciousness | Sam Harris


--- Quote ---Consciousness—the sheer fact that this universe is illuminated by sentience—is precisely what unconsciousness is not. And I believe that no description of unconscious complexity will fully account for it. It seems to me that just as “something” and “nothing,” however juxtaposed, can do no explanatory work, an analysis of purely physical processes will never yield a picture of consciousness. However, this is not to say that some other thesis about consciousness must be true. Consciousness may very well be the lawful product of unconscious information processing. But I don’t know what that sentence means—and I don’t think anyone else does either.
--- End quote ---

--- End quote ---
Sam Harris seems to have run into the "Hard Problem of Consciousness", i.e. the relationship between conscious experience and physical processes. If you ask me personally, it's just a trivial non-problem. Why is it such a big deal that we "can't explain consciousness" in intentional terms or what have you? A physical description would be enough, and even if that's not tractable, approximations will do fine. I don't feel uncomfortable thinking about how my conscious experience is the result of proteins opening and closing due to ion concentrations etc. a trillion neurons etc.

--- End quote ---

But how/why does consciousness arise from that? If nothing else, it's a cool mystery worth exploring - might find some cool stuff.

Callan S.:

--- Quote ---Consciousness may very well be the lawful product of unconscious information processing. But I don’t know what that sentence means—and I don’t think anyone else does either.
--- End quote ---

Removing 'information' and using 'physical interactions', I don't know why he'd say he doesn't understand it. Maybe he expects to suddenly understand every little part - but that's like looking at a print out of code for a program and if you don't understand all of it then you don't understand any of it. It's just giving up.

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