Neuroscientist loses a 25-year bet on consciousness — to a philosopher

Daylight63 said:
I know you aren't a scientist, but just as an aside: a theoretical physicist often still uses experimental data from others to do their work. It's true in all aspects of " theoretical" science.
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Thanks for admitting I was correct that Einstein never built any physical models. He was a pure theoretical physicist.

Wow Captain Obvious, for stating the obvious. Naturally, theoretical physics and experimental physics work hand in hand. The experimentalists work to confirm the hypotheses of the theorists. Case in point: Einstein didn't do any experiments to confirm his theory of general relativity. It was validated experimentally by Arthur Eddington.
 
Cypress said:
Thanks for admitting I was correct that Einstein never built any physical models. He was a pure theoretical physicist.
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Thanks for finally admitting that Einstein didn't come up with Relativity from whole cloth and that he DID rely on actual experimental science as well.
 
ZenMode said:
I'm not saying our brains can't come up with new ideas or concepts, but even those are based on past experience and knowledge. For example, a second grader, with a typical second grade understanding of science, is not going to sit in a room for the next two years and come up with Einstein's theories.
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Human knowledge is an accumulation which builds upon previous knowledge. It's like a pyramid. Without the previous knowledge, even Einstein wouldn't have come up with his theories. If Einstein had been born and raised in a mud hut deep in the Amazon, he'd still be smart would how could he possibly think of his theories about math and physics if all the math and physics he knew about involved making huts, canoes and spears?

There's a reason why the burning of the Library of Alexandria was considered a tragedy for all humankind. Lots of knowledge there even if mostly history.

The Burning of the Library of Alexandria | OSU eHistory

ehistory.osu.edu ehistory.osu.edu
 
Daylight63 said:
Thanks for finally admitting that Einstein didn't come up with Relativity from whole cloth and that he DID rely on actual experimental science as well.
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I never said that.

One can come up with utterly orginal ways of looking at the world, even after taking college math classes and reading the existing conventional scientific literature.

If Einstein had been born among the Australian aborigines, he never would have been able to transcend and see beyond conventional physics. Einstein had to learn the principles of Rhiemann geometry to make his vision of spacetime geometry work. That doesn't detract from the originality of his idea.

Your free to believe the theory of general relativity wasn't an utterly original intellectual achievement, That's your choice
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Human knowledge is an accumulation which builds upon previous knowledge. It's like a pyramid. Without the previous knowledge, even Einstein wouldn't have come up with his theories. If Einstein had been born and raised in a mud hut deep in the Amazon, he'd still be smart would how could he possibly think of his theories about math and physics if all the math and physics he knew about involved making huts, canoes and spears?

There's a reason why the burning of the Library of Alexandria was considered a tragedy for all humankind. Lots of knowledge there even if mostly history.

The Burning of the Library of Alexandria | OSU eHistory

ehistory.osu.edu ehistory.osu.edu
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Of course.

I have about two dozen posts on this board stating that the knowledge and ideas 99 percent of people have are derivative.

It takes the rare person, like Einstein, to start out with our baseline of existing knowledge and be able to transcend and see beyond the conventional physics of his day
 
Daylight63 said:
Way back in the late Medieval Period when I was in undergrad I was taking a philosophy class. We were discussing Hume and Empiricism (not the Hume of JPP).

The professor was making the point that you can't ever establish a causal relationship that can be experienced for anything. So the example he gave was you walk into a room and flip a lightswitch. The light comes on.

Are they causally related in a truly empirical sense? No. You are not experiencing the causal connection. For all you know it is pure unadulterated chance that correlates the light switch with the light coming on. You can make no inference about the causal connection other than to say that on repeated testing each time the switch was flipped the light came on. But you have no proof that it isn't purely random.

It seems that is what you are doing here.

We discussed the concept of "wetness" which is very real but CANNOT BE FOUND IN ANY SINGLE ITEM IN A SYSTEM. You can't take an atom of hydrogen and say "This will be wet!" Because wetness doesn't exist at the atomic level. In fact it is, essentially, nothing in itself. It is a feature of a ensemble of things: the chemical bonds that make up the larger molecules, how the molecules interact and how the surface energy of the surface it lays on relate to the features of the material you put on it.

In essence there is no such thing as "wetness" in any physical sense. There is an EFFECT of wetness which exists as a function of the ENTIRE SYSTEM.

So why must mental states be somehow DIFFERENT?
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you wasted your money on college.
 
Hume said:
shut up stalker
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Why don't YOU shut up for a change. All you ever do is yell insults at people and scream for attention by telling everyone how you are so not interested in whatever the OP is about.

And you have some bizarre mental fixation that people stalk you. You are one of the most unsettling people I've ever met. Truly mentally disturbed.
 
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