If something "feels nothing" then it couldn't possibly evolve - basically it would be a stone, though possibly a stone carrying information it doesn't even know about itself but other evolved, feeling creatures can analyse ;) On 4 Aug 2013, at 07:33, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/3/2013 3:28 PM, Dan Asimov wrote:
I can't follow those arguments, either.
Conscious awareness may well be a natural consequence of evolution.
But it certainly is not *just* that!!!
It is unlike anything whatsoever that is covered by physics. As far as physics is concerned (and I am not blaming physics for this), the world could just be a totally insensate machine that follows physical laws but feels nothing.
Could it? Is philosopher's zombie possible? It seems to me unlikely that one could construct, grow, or otherwise have something that looks and acts and is physically like a human being but has no subjective experience.
Brent
And (ditto), physics makes no attempt to explain the apparent flow of time that we feel.
I've read that Lee Smolin's new book Time Reborn tries to insert a flow of time, but with almost no reference to consciousness, which I think is a mistake.
--Dan
Marc wrote:
----- . . . I can't begin to follow these arguments [of Penrose et al.] because conscious awareness just seems to me a natural consequence of animals evolving the ability to create and manipulate models. ----- _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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