/philosophy/ - Philosophy

Sure friend.

>conscious being. And that's the trap (of our mind) if a human or any other living creature perceived as a bunch of interconnected particles it becomes obvious that the consciousness is nothing but an ability of such a particles group to react (change its state) to another group of particles.

Whoever said this made a mistake. They assumed they knew something when in fact they knew nothing. If someone were to define consciousness by what it is used for, or what it accomplishes, or what side effects it has, they would be lead quite astray. So when they define consciousness in terms of something it allows, which is reaction to events, they err. Additionally, it seems they made another error when they assumed it is consciousness that allows reaction at all. Rather, the reaction might be a capacity that does not belong to consciousness and they mistakenly attributed it to consciousness, then made the already mentioned error.

Does this at all clarify anything, or would you like more assistance friend?

ok, let's put consciousness aside for a moment.

do you see any substantial difference between toilet flush and humans' brain? Substantial besides form, size, weight, color...

>>7568

>do you see any substantial difference between toilet flush and humans' brain? Substantial besides form, size, weight, color...

Of course, I think anybody would say there are many differences - only someone without honesty would say otherwise. I believe the question is not whether they are different, but in what way they are different, correct?

no, the question is really if they are qualitatively different. Both are made of interconnected particles, both react to incoming disturbances. So I don't see any difference. Do you?

did I just reply to my own post? How can I add further reply to a reply? It doesn't look like the most comfortable discussion engine...

>>7570

You'll have to elaborate further, what does two things being made of the same material have to do for them being qualitatively different or not? Further, you'd have to justify the "both react to incoming disturbances", what exactly do you mean?

ok I see the question became rather meaningless. So again I have to bring a bit of context. Originally I wondered about consciousness which is usually thought to be confined in a humans' heads. And since everything is to comprehended by comparison I decided to compare it with a toilet flush and didn't find any qualitative differeneces. By qualitative I mean something that would be completely absent in one of the considered object.

>>7573

If I might suggest so, we ought to follow the learned exampe of the Stranger from Elea and divide as we can along the real classes until we reach what we are interested in. Otherwise we should fall into the same trap, and place our statesman alongside the pig farmer. And that won't do, not at all for us.

So let's try to start from the top, at the highest level you can imagine, and we will divide each time until we reach our answer. You can choose if you'd like to approach first an attempt at consciousness, or if you'd like to locate the brain and toiler flusher in their appropriate places.