Word: mcginn
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...McGinn and Chalmers are among the philosophers who have been called the New Mysterians because they think consciousness is, well, mysterious. McGinn goes so far as to say it will always remain so. For human beings to try to grasp how subjective experience arises from matter, he says, "is like slugs trying to do Freudian psychoanalysis. They just don't have the conceptual equipment...
...consciousness?" Suppose that the physical information representing the "baby crying" hypothesis has carried the day and vanquished the information representing the rival "cat meowing" hypothesis. How exactly--by what physical or metaphysical alchemy--is the physical information transformed into the subjective experience of hearing a baby cry? As McGinn puts the question, "How does the brain 'turn the water into wine...
...McGinn doesn't mean that subjective experience is literally a miracle. He considers himself a materialist, if in a "thin" sense. He presumes there is some physical explanation for subjective experience, even though he doubts that the human brain--or mind, or whatever--can ever grasp it. Nevertheless, McGinn doesn't laugh at people who take the water-into-wine metaphor more literally. "I think in a way it's legitimate to take the mystery of consciousness and convert it into a theological system. I don't do that myself, but I think in a sense it's more rational...
...people who simply take the mind-as-machine idea seriously and ponder its implications. But the actual construction of a robot like Cog, or of a pandemonium machine, makes the hard questions more vivid. Materialist dismissals of the mind-body problem may seem forceful on paper, but, says McGinn, "you start to see the limits of a concept once it gets realized." With AI, the tenets of strict materialism are being realized--and found, by some at least, incapable of explaining certain parts of human experience. Namely, the experience part...
...people who don't share Dennett's philosophical intuitions, these arguments may seem unintelligible. (It's one thing to say feelings are generated by the brain, which Chalmers and McGinn believe, but what does it even mean to say feelings are the brain?) Still, that doesn't mean Dennett is wrong. Some people share his intuitions and find the thinking of his critics opaque. Consciousness is one of those questions so deep that frequently people with different views don't just fail to convince one another, they fail even to communicate. The unintelligibility is often mutual...