Hacker News Reader

Comment by egjerlow | Hacker News Reader

I'm not really sure what you're arguing here. I would certainly say consciousness is 'something more', and that this something more has to be something non-material (or at least using 'materials' that have wildly different properties than what we observe using the scientific method).

Theseus' ship is a problem for a purely materialistic explanation of consciousness, for, by that account, consciousness should be a function of your material makeup, and yet, it remains constant despite change in both what makes up your cells and the specific configuration of those cells.

As for RICH I don't know what that means.

View on HN

Theseus' ship is not a problem for materialistic explanations of anything; it's a problem for anybody who thinks the nature of a thing is governed by the words used to describe it.

The fact that you would continue to call a ship the same after exchanging all its parts is not an ontological problem, it is a problem arising from the imprecise use of language or intention to use an approximate/aggregate notion of identity. (I would recommend studying topology for a more modern understanding of this.)

And yet, consciousness is something that remains, regardless of whether we name it as such, and regardless of the specific cells that make up our brains. So it's as if it is the only thing that is not named 'by us' and yet remains 'something' independent of its makeup.

> I would certainly say consciousness is 'something more', and that this something more has to be something non-material (or at least using 'materials' that have wildly different properties than what we observe using the scientific method).

If you're interested in having that idea challenged, I heartily recommend reading "Godel, Escher, Bach" - the book explains how complexity (perhaps to the point of consciousness) can emerge from "simple" systems.

I certainly am interested in this, but I also would like to note that this is not just a matter of something 'more complex' arising and that I lack the imagination necessary to see how something very very complex can arise. Rather, subjective experience is a phenomenon that, no matter how complex your system is, is qualitatively different.

It's not like this is a trivial problem that philosophers of mind have figured out long ago. As someone else mentioned in this thread, it is a very deep problem. If you want to have your view challenged I encourage you to read any introductory book to philosophy of mind.

I always like having my views challenged :) can you recommend any particular text or would the top hit on amazon be sufficient?

Also, in terms of GEB, the book shows how self-reference leads to a system being able to make statemets about itself, leading to, eventually, something more than (apparently) the sum of their parts. It’s a funky mix of philosophy and math and I think you’d like it.

https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Mind-Short-Introduction/dp...

I'll read GEB :)

Thank you! I ended up buying Jaworski's Philosophy of Mind: A Comprehensive Introduction before I saw your comment. So far it's interesting stuff! Many thanks for suggesting this topic :)

> Theseus' ship is a problem for a purely materialistic explanation of consciousness,

Theseus's ship is not a problem for materialistic views at all. A function of matter configuration is not the same as a function of matter. In the same way, a wave on water is constantly changing its material makeup, and yet you can still call it "the same wave".

> As for RICH I don't know what that means.

Rich, i.e. non-trivial. That is, no tautologies or something slightly above tautology in the depth of information.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com