= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
handoflixue comments on The Fabric of Real Things - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (305)
Koan 2:
"Does your rule there forbid epiphenomenalist theories of consciousness - that consciousness is caused by neurons, but doesn't affect those neurons in turn? The classic argument for epiphenomenal consciousness has always been that we can imagine a universe in which all the atoms are in the same place and people behave exactly the same way, but there's nobody home - no awareness, no consciousness, inside the brain. The usual effect of the brain generating consciousness is missing, but consciousness doesn't cause anything else in turn - it's just a passive awareness - and so from the outside the universe looks the same. Now, I'm not so much interested in whether you think epiphenomenal theories of consciousness are true or false - rather, I want to know if you think they're impossible or meaningless a priori based on your rules."
How would you reply?
Draw a Venn Diagram, with "things that are causes" and "things that are effects" (get-caused-by-other things). The intersection in the middle is "reality"
Consciousness, in this model, is "effect, but not cause" - it doesn't change any of our anticipations about the rest of the universe, and is therefor meaningless (but not intrinsically impossible)
Psionics, in this model, is being asserted as "cause, without effect" - either it actually is effected by the state of reality, and thus correlates with reality (in which case it is part of "reality"), or else it is not correlated to reality and thus cannot produce useful information on the state of said reality.
Note that "cause, without effect" does include the possibility of "a particle and anti-particle spontaneously enter the universe AND have a measurable effect on said universe before vanishing". I can't think of any reason to conclude that this is impossible, and it would certainly be meaningful. The point still stands that such events would by necessity be random processes, not ones that correlate with the world - you can't gain actual information on what card someone drew this way.