Post by shawnhartnell on Oct 9, 2016 11:03:55 GMT -6
No, so far I've not really talked about the hard problem of consciousness. I'm still flushing out what consciousness is here. See in my eyes, we can't even begin to explore the "hard problem" until we truly understand what consciousness is. As you well know it gets infinitely more complicated as we begin to step toward trying to solve the "hard problem" (hence the term itself). I suspect if we can come to truly understanding consciousness we may gather pieces which chip away at the "hard problem". So once again, you are on the money here, buddy.
Your suspicions are shared with practically all neuroscientists in the field. But, they're a bit like underwear gnomes. You know like :
1. Gather pieces which chip away at the "hard problem"
2. ? ? ?
3. Hard problem solved.
A black box? Kinda... actually no not really, it's more the reverse. I don't think that we are capable of grasping the totality of something from which we are trapped within. I use Schrodinger's cat as an example, because of the conditions of the experiment and its familiarity to most thinkers. So what do we really know about it? There's a cat who's trapped in a box, with a timer and poison (I think radiation); The box is sealed. From the outside... we don't know if the cat is alive or dead, until we open it up and see for ourselves ala observation. What about the cat though? What does the cat know? It might know it is in a box. it might know it is near a source of poison. It might know it is sick or healthy. I will even allow that the cat might know there is something beyond the confounds of the box, but it has no idea what is out there, or even if what it perceives as real within the box is accurate. You see both perspectives offer the same problem, we are not seeing the entirety of picture. I would say that we can't know its entirety, because we cannot step outside of our consciousness. Is any of this making sense?
I agree that we're stuck within our own subjective experience, and that it's useful to recognize it as such and with that understanding, to examine it objectively. I prefer the metaphor of living within a "one-man matrix".
rectalnethervoid.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-one-man-matrix.html
As for Greater Magic, the definition is extremely subjective as well!
How so?