In reply

[Anonymous No.17424527]

Answering
>>17424466
>A number of scientists and philosophers, including William James, Karl Popper, John C. Eccles and Donald Symons, dismiss epiphenomenalism from an evolutionary perspective.[21][22][23][24][25] They point out that the view that mind is an epiphenomenon of brain activity is not consistent with evolutionary theory, because if mind were functionless, it would have disappeared long ago, as it would not have been favoured by evolution.
Because it was pruned.
That the mental state is useless does not mean that the process of creating it is. Maybe creating this mental state is an important process in the brain, which cannot be decoupled from consciousness. Or maybe consciousness is a side effect of our brain process. Maybe it is a side effect of all decision making of a high enough level.
... And the scariest of all, maybe we will evolve away from it. There are quite a few animals with useless evolutionary remnants.
I'll give you that it is a good point and complicates the question

[Anonymous No.17424536]

>>17424527
Not literature

[Anonymous No.17424540]

>>17424536
I qouted a man who qouted an article, which is scholarly literature. Sneed.

[Anonymous No.17424548]

>>17424536
Yes it is retard read the sticky

[Anonymous No.17424564]

>>17424527
Not really compelling
>That the mental state is useless does not mean that the process of creating it is.
The process wouldn't have had such a huge side-effect of creating the entire mind, which is a central part of every human alive.
>And the scariest of all, maybe we will evolve away from it.
No, we're not. The ability to use our mind efficiently is basically a central trait of intelligence which results in higher presence of attributes that encourage reproduction (e.g. wealth).
Epiphenomenalism was destroyed by Darwin, but it had already been retroactively refuted by Spinoza.

[Anonymous No.17424672]

>>17424564>>17424527
you use the word mind for a placeholder like religious ppl use god or universe to talk about their sacred texts.
so wtf do you call mind

[Anonymous No.17424728]

>>17424564
I use a lot of 'maybe' because we have no idea what the process of consciousness is. If we take the side of epiphenomenalism then it may be possible to evolve away consciousness - you will still have logical process, still have emotions, still act exactly as you are acting right now, but you will lack this bizzare quality we have which is consciousness. Or maybe evolving away consciousness will neuter our behavior in some way, but because it is a necessary side effect.
And it could be, for example, a necessary side effect of all our decision making. A suitable large process for a large side effect - if it is even a large side effect. Who says it is large? You? Me? We are that side effect.
Are animals conscious?
>>17424672
Mind is consciousness, brain is the physical thing behind it.

[Anonymous No.17424853]

>>17424728
IMO epiphenomenalism refers to a pre-reason consciousness (subconscious) where you didn't have images and concepts but just physical cause-effect. Then somehow we evolved "mind" or "consciousness" which is a branch of our self and collaborates with the subconscious whereby it's given compressed signals (concepts/images) to juggle them (reason) by specific rules (logic) and help the self survive more and more efficiently by predicting future (foreseeing and planning).

tl;dr Epiphenomenalism explains the subconscious not the conscious mind

[Anonymous No.17424868]

>>17424853
>subconscious
Meant unconscious* probably. I didn't read Freud. I'm talking about Kant's (non-transcendental) aesthetic

[Anonymous No.17424875]

>>17424853
Yes but if it's all just the result of neurons firing, then these juggling of concepts is all happening automatically, without (you) achtually deciding. (You), infact, could be just a side effect of the decision making of the brain needing a logic figure that has self interest, or something like that. This figure actually having consciousness may be just a side effect.

[Anonymous No.17424892]

>>17424875
Nah, neurons fire the way they fire because of how I decide to reason. It's about practical free will.

[Anonymous No.17425189]

>>17424892
That is also possible. As I said, consciousness is down to faith at this point. I heard someone say there is research pointing to decisions being made in the neurons before awareness, but I don't know if he was talking truth. I plan to check it out in the future.

[Anonymous No.17425224]

>>17425189
> decisions being made in the neurons before awareness
Sure, but decisions are the result of a thought process

[Anonymous No.17425333]

>>17424527
Locke's tabula rasa is complete and utter hogwash, and demonstrably false.
In spite of this, it has persisted as an implicit foundational pedagogic principle to much social detriment.

[Anonymous No.17425351]

>>17424540
Have fun with the 3 day ban when the mods ban you cunt.

[Anonymous No.17425352]

>>17425224
What I'm saying is the thought process exists, and runs. But let's say it happens before you ever perceive it. In effect, when you decided to yourself which ice cream to eat it was already decided by the neurons. You can argue that it's basically a shadow you deciding the same as you and that's it's effectively you but that's more about how you define 'you'. This is digressing to definition of self.
The feeling of 'I am choosing' is a bit of a lie. The way I think about is similar to zen walks: you can easily turn off the brain chatter and observe how your body still walks around normally and decides which ice cream to eat and if you're good you can observe thoughts rising without 'you' thinking them.
I digress. The point is even if it's a result of thoughts, the decision which ice cream to eat can be totally physical - some kind of logic process in the brain. Machine learning comes to mind, but I don't know enough about how that works to compare.

[Anonymous No.17425357]

>>17424527
>>>/his/

[Anonymous No.17425360]

>>17425351
My country uses dynamic ip. Smiling nerd smiley.

[Anonymous No.17425366]

>>17424527
Hello, my name is Hsu Wittgenstein. I am a continentalboo (thats fan of western philosophy for all you Taoists).