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Pablo_Stafforini comments on Books on consciousness? - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: mgg 23 September 2014 10:28PM

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Comment author: Pablo_Stafforini 24 September 2014 04:35:22AM * 4 points [-]

David Chalmers' The Conscious Mind is excellent, and no, you don't have to agree with its conclusions to agree with that characterization. If you lack the time to read an entire book, try Consciousness and its place in nature instead.

Few philosophers are worth reading; Chalmers is definitely one of them.

Comment author: summerstay 24 September 2014 04:22:48PM 2 points [-]

There's a reason everyone started calling it "the hard problem." Chalmers explained the problem so clearly that we now basically just point and say "that thing Chalmers was talking about."

Comment author: mgg comment score below threshold [+] (4 children)

Comment author: pragmatist 24 September 2014 08:02:38PM * 3 points [-]

If you genuinely find this hard to imagine, I recommend that you read the book. I suspect you are in for a big update if you do. Despite being ultimately wrong (in my opinion), Chalmers' treatment of consciousness is the most sophisticated and careful that I have seen.

He is aware of all the obvious (and many of the non-obvious) criticisms of the whole zombie thing, and addresses them in the book.

Even if you end up disagreeing with his conclusions (as you probably will), I'm fairly sure the book will significantly reconfigure how you think about the problem.

Comment author: mgg 24 September 2014 08:30:06PM 1 point [-]

OK, given the strong reaction to my comment I will check it out. I'd love to be in for a big update, but the whole zombie thing is so generally perplexing how anyone can take that seriously without being outright dualistic that it'll really be a huge update for me.

Comment author: pragmatist 25 September 2014 12:34:14PM 3 points [-]

Well, Chalmers is outright dualistic, so that's not the update I was talking about. What I think you will find unexpected is that someone who identifies as a dualist can still have a deeply intelligent take on consciousness that is both scientifically-minded and fully cognizant of the standard physicalist arguments.

Comment author: mgg 26 September 2014 05:18:33PM 0 points [-]

Alright. I've read the first few page or so of the first link "Consciousness and its Place in Nature", and it seems to boil down to "We can think of zombies without our current minds seeing any major issue (a priori!), therefore consciousness isn't physical."

Pablo_Stafforini comments on Books on consciousness? - Less Wrong Discussion

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