I've been thinking about Chalmers again lately. I turned to him for reassurance a few years ago when I first encountered and felt threatened by the idea of material reductionism. He makes some excellent points, but as some of his critics have said, it is too early to close the door on a materialistic explanation for consciousness.
Chalmers appears to be a proponent of Strong AI, which is not a position I think is tenable. However, he could well be right that an understanding of consciousness would depend on the discovery of a new property of nature.
I have a loose answer to his Hard Problem that I have been meaning to post about for a few days now. I'll have to go back and check first to see if it is an answer he anticipated.
At the moment I lean towards the Penrose-Hameroff "Orchestrated Objective Reduction" model. Essentially this model proposes that consciousness is a product of certain quantum configurations that exist within the brain. Chalmers did address the idea of "quantum consciousness" with an objection that it still wouldn't explain qualia. In itself, perhaps not, but it's early yet.
It gets very tough to really talk about holism though.
Yes, unfortunately when we make distinctions using language, the human mind tends to want to elaborate upon distinctions and make them "harder" than they may actually be.
I think it takes a careful reading of Gnostic texts to discern if the original darkness indeed has an existence of its own or is rather some derivitive of (ie. or mere absence of) fullness.
Some of the Gnostics were definitely dualists, as were the Manichaeans, Neoplatonists, etc. (and, I would assert, the Christians, too), but dualism is not a necessary component of Gnostic theology and the Valentinians -- with whom I most closely identify -- appear to be monists who consider darkness to be essentially a human cognitive failing and not a "firm" material divide.
no subject
Chalmers appears to be a proponent of Strong AI, which is not a position I think is tenable. However, he could well be right that an understanding of consciousness would depend on the discovery of a new property of nature.
I have a loose answer to his Hard Problem that I have been meaning to post about for a few days now. I'll have to go back and check first to see if it is an answer he anticipated.
At the moment I lean towards the Penrose-Hameroff "Orchestrated Objective Reduction" model. Essentially this model proposes that consciousness is a product of certain quantum configurations that exist within the brain. Chalmers did address the idea of "quantum consciousness" with an objection that it still wouldn't explain qualia. In itself, perhaps not, but it's early yet.
It gets very tough to really talk about holism though.
Yes, unfortunately when we make distinctions using language, the human mind tends to want to elaborate upon distinctions and make them "harder" than they may actually be.
I think it takes a careful reading of Gnostic texts to discern if the original darkness indeed has an existence of its own or is rather some derivitive of (ie. or mere absence of) fullness.
Some of the Gnostics were definitely dualists, as were the Manichaeans, Neoplatonists, etc. (and, I would assert, the Christians, too), but dualism is not a necessary component of Gnostic theology and the Valentinians -- with whom I most closely identify -- appear to be monists who consider darkness to be essentially a human cognitive failing and not a "firm" material divide.