antigonus comments on Open Thread: September 2011 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Pavitra 03 September 2011 07:50PM

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Comment author: antigonus 29 September 2011 05:17:39AM *  4 points [-]

This isn't actually considered an open question in neurobiology, right?

It isn't a question in neurobiology at all. If consciousness is epiphenomenal, then by definition you can't perform any experiment to detect its existence. And insofar as neurology is the attempt to discover the material composition of the brain and the causal structure of brain events, and epiphenomenalism holds that consciousness is immaterial and causally silent, well...