Philosophy can’t have "a scientific basis.
If an idea has a legitimate scientific basis, then it’s not philosophy - it’s science. Philosophy explicitly addresses ideas for which there is not, and in most cases there can’t be, a legitimate scientific basis.
Conveniently enough, I just wrote another response to the thread, since there was more I wanted to say on the topic, and it addresses this.
It’s not a matter of not having the tools to test theories of consciousness - it’s more fundamental than that. We are consciousness. When we theorize on consciousness, we are engaging in consciousness. It’s inescapable - it’s the very thing that makes it possible to theorize. And it’s entirely experiential - you necessarily experience your own consciousness and cannot possibly observe anyone else’s. We are each and all, and necessarily, behind a veil of perception. It’s literally impossible for it to be otherwise - to somehow step outside of consciousness and observe it, since the only thing that can meaningfully observe it is that same consciousness.
Yes - we can concevably at least make some good guesses regarding the physical processes that correspond with our experiences of consciousness, but that’s necessarily the extent of it. Again, it’s not simply that we don’t have the tools to do more than that, but that it’s inherently impossible for it to be otherwise.
This is still nagging at me - there’s more I want to say. So, another response.
This particular theory is a pretty good illustration of the unfortunate ignorance of philosophy I mentioned, but an even better one is mentioned in the article - “the popular claim, advanced by philosopher Nick Bostrom and taken seriously by physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and David Chalmers, among others, that our reality is a simulation being run on a computer, as in The Matrix.”
That’s not just pseudoscience, but embarassingly ignorant. If these people had even the vaguest understanding of the idea, they’d recognize that it’s about as far from science as it’s possible to get.
The whole concept was first popularized by Descartes in the 17th century. He presented it as the possibility that one’s perception of reality could be manipulated by an “evil demon,” but the underlying concept was the same as “the Matrix.”
But the thing is that it was never intended to be an actual theory of perception and consciousness - rather it was a thought experiment meant to illustrate the fact that it could be the case that our perceptions of reality are controlled by an evil demon (or are a computer simulation), and we could never know.
The exact point is that it’s literally impossible to somehow step outside of our perceptions and our consciousness and analyze them, since any observations we might make are and can only be products of the very perceptions and consciousness we’re trying to analyze. So they could be entirely right or entirely wrong or anything in between and we could never know, since they simply are and can only be whatever they are.
As far as that goes then, it not only falls astray of but pretty much explicitly illustrates the distinction between science and pseudoscience.
And if Tyson et al had even the faintest understanding of philosophy - if they weren’t blinded by some ludicrously ignorant species of reductive physicalism - they’d already understand that, and recognize how foolish it is to treat the Matrix, or any other such idea, as a legitimate theory.
I’m pleased to see this.
In recent decades, science has been trying to move into areas, like consciousness, that are really philosophy, and all that does is fuck things up for everyone.
Yes - of course it’s pseudoscience - it can’t help but be, since it’s all untestable.
The problem is that, by labeling it “science,” whatever it is that someone proposes is immediately treated by devotees of scientism as certain fact, when in reality it’s philosophy, and thus “fact” is a quality it can’t even possess. And that’s doubly a problem because not only is it not and can’t ever be legitimately treated as fact but, not to put too fine a point on it, when it comes to philosophy, all too many scientists don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. In ways, many of them are even more ignorant than laypeople, since they tend to disdain and thus ignore the philosophy that’s gone before them.
As, for instance, is illustrated by the notion addressed here - anyone with a genuine understanding of Hume or Descartes could’ve told them that they’re necessarily merely speculating and will never be able to do otherwise, since consciousness is exclusively experiential - it can’t even be observed, much less isolated or tested. It can only be experienced, and every experience of it is necessarily unique and wholly internalized.
This is pretty accurate, but it should be noted that ALL ideologies can be and often are treated essentially as religions.
They all serve as dogmas and myths around which a set of true believers congregate, who then alternate between telling each other their myths of inherent superiority, proselytizing non-believers and lashing out at the followers of competing sects. They all lay out moral guidelines by which they can both affirm the faithful and condemn the heretics and unbelievers. They all demand absolute submission and attack any sign of deviation, and since they’ve defined themselves as inherently morally superior, they consider any of those attacks to be self-evidently morally justified. They all have a hierarchy (whether formal or informal) by which dogma is disseminated to the faithful, with the view (again, whether formal or informal) that ideas that have not been sanctioned by the designated people somehow don’t qualify.
And, pointedly, they all have their own “Satans” - the ideas and/or people that they can generally be counted on to blame for whatever evil might arise.
I don’t even understand this headlong rush for an app. And especially being so desperate for an app that you’d use one that embeds ads unless you pay to remove them.
It just seems completely backwards to me.
With Reddit, it made sense - it was awful in a mobile browser, the official app was complete garbage, and either way it was buried in ads So you could (and I did) use a third party app and get a cleaner and more useful interface and no ads.
But Lemmy’s already fine in a browser and it’s ad-free. So what’s the point?
I could maybe see, somewhere down the road when the apps are complete and established, it might be interesting to experiment with some and maybe find one that’s got just the features I like most. But that’s not what I’m seeing. What I’m seeing are people desperately clamoring for an app - any app - it doesn’t matter how primitive and janky it is - they just desperately need to have an app right now, today, this instant. As if lemmy is completely unusable without one.
And it’s just… not that way at all. Sure, it could be better, but it’s fine.
So I just don’t get it.
I think that one of the most common ways by which the devotees of reductive physicalism try to make it appear to be a valid position is by positing a false dichotomy by which they then sneeringly characterize anything that’s not simply physical as “mystic.”
The fact that it’s an emergent phenomenon with no physical manifestation.
I think we’ll be able to (and in fact we already can to some notable degree) track neuronal activity in a brain and map it and interpret it, so we can make reasonably solid guesses regarding its nature - general type, intensity, efficiency and so on - but we can never actually observe its content, since its content is a gestalt formed within and only accessible to the mind that’s experiencing it.
There’s nothing at all “mystic” about that - it’s simple logic and reason.
And, by the bye, it’s also much of why actual philosophers rejected reductive physicalism almost a century ago.