The Partially Examined Life
On Ned Block’s “The Harder Problem of Consciousness” (2002) and David Papineau’s “Could There Be a Science of Consciousness?” (2003).
What would give us sufficient reason to believe that a non-human was conscious? Block thinks this is a harder problem that we might suspect. We can’t know for sure exactly what consciousness in us is, so we can’t know for sure what such a being might require (a brain? certain patterns of behavior?) for them to be enough like us that we could safely apply our own experience of our own conscious states to them. Papineau diagnoses this as a fundamental vagueness in the concepts we use to describe our conscious states.
This conversation continues from ep. 218, with guest Gregory Miller from the Panpsycast still with us.
End song: “Mindreader” by Phil Judd as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #98.
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Source
Consciousness is a fractal (independent of scale). There are many layers to consciousness, in many different forms. We are giants made out of trillions of conscious cells. Every vessel of water is a vessel of Consciousness. The cycle of water is the cycle of the Soul. ??? https://youtu.be/YYnZ5ng4az8