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Emile comments on Do you believe in consciousness? - Less Wrong Discussion

-4 Post author: natural_number 03 October 2010 12:10PM

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Comment author: Emile 03 October 2010 05:38:19PM 5 points [-]

Do you believe in consciousness?

If you do what exactly would you define it as?

What's the point of asking whether I believe in X if I'm allowed to come up with my own definition for X?

Say you're talking to people who just came back from exploring the wilderness. Isn't your question equivalent to asking them "Is there an item on your map labeled 'Mount Snowtop'"? People can come up with whatever labels they want for their map, the most important issue is how much they reflect the territory; having labels that 'carve reality at the joints' (i.e. having similar labels for similar things and different labels for different things) is a nice second. Whether any label has a specific name like 'consciousness' is way less important.

Comment author: natural_number 03 October 2010 05:42:58PM 2 points [-]

What's the point of asking whether I believe in X if I'm allowed to come up with my own definition for X?

you use your own definition of consciousness, the one you used before reading this post.

not some bizarre definition invented just to exploit some technical hole in the question