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Good morning Station! Is Matter Conscious?
6 months ago
@satch Thanks for giving me the general idea. · 6 months ago
@arkaeriit yeah, haha, I agree it's not obvious
So while the hard problem of consciousness is supposed be something like "there is something that it is like to see red which can be reduced to the interactions between component parts of the brain," mathematics show us how patterns, symmetries, and relationships between things can be abstrated totally from the underlying things. So, the "something that it is like to see red" can exist as a result of brain interections without fundamentally having anything to do with neurons. Consciousness is not tied to brain material.
Please excuse the oversimplifications here, as this is a topic for a long essay, not a short post. · 6 months ago
Could you give some details on how algebra makes you think physicalism is true? don't really see an obvious link. · 6 months ago
As for the hard problem of consciousness, I’m unconvinced that there is a problem. While I feel that some form of dualism is possible in so far as it is conceivable, physicalist explanations are perfectly satisfactory to me. My reasons for this are too complicated to go into depth about here, but they come from my understanding of mathematics, especially abstract algebra. · 6 months ago
In my opinion, however, this isn’t a very useful question, even by the standards of philosophy. It seems to me that composition is irrelevant, and perhaps entirely illusory. I am skeptical that the hard problem of matter will ever be solved. · 6 months ago
I ask this question mostly in jest, because it the question we are currently discussing in my philosophy class. To frame the question a little better, the hypothesis that matter is consciousness is an attempt to get rid of the hard problem of consciousness (why is there something that it is like to exist) by combining it with the hard problem of matter (we know how matter relates to itself, but what IS it). · 6 months ago