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Capla comments on Can science come to understand consciousness? A problem of philosophical zombies (Yes, I know, P-zombies again.) - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: Capla 17 November 2014 05:06PM

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Comment author: Capla 17 December 2014 10:22:56PM 0 points [-]
Comment author: [deleted] 17 December 2014 11:10:56PM 0 points [-]

I think I'm trying to point at a different issue altogether. The great Rationalists of history (Leibniz, Spinoza, Descartes) all left maps, with their own idiosyncracies. The ancient East left a variety of different maps. The Greeks left a few different versions too.

Our current map, seems to have redundant features. For example. Is there a significant difference between mind and consciousness? Hypothetically, if we came to fully understood mind, what would be left to know about consciousness?

Comment author: Capla 18 December 2014 12:29:23AM *  1 point [-]

I'm not sure what you mean by "mind" or "consciousness." I usually think of a mind as the content of a consciousness. I don't know yet if that is an artificial distinction.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 December 2014 01:46:41AM 0 points [-]

Couldn't one equally suggest that consciousness is content of a mind?

I could be missing something, but I guess the approach I'm saying is identify certain concepts and then label them.

And so far, I haven't seen much in the way of a standard distinction between consciousness and mind and experience and qualia and phenomenal reality, ect.

Comment author: Capla 18 December 2014 05:24:10AM *  1 point [-]

You have a point.

"Minds are made of thoughts."

Is that a coherent thing to say?

Comment author: [deleted] 18 December 2014 05:40:36AM *  0 points [-]

Does having a thought make something a mind?

Or does having a mind make something think?

I think the most honest thing to say is that as of right now, there isn't a material, or spatial, or temporal description of how these things are related. Which comes first temporally, which is larger spatially, which is more complex materially. None of those questions have answers.

I think we can say with a pretty straight face that we all have subjective experiences. How that involves minds creating consciousness or consciousness creating minds is something of which I'm skeptical.