I recently had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Joel Velasco, an
Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Texas Tech University. Dr. Velasco
specializes in the philosophy of science, biology, and epistemology, and
he also has a firm grasp of many of the arguments related to philosophy
of religion. More info on Dr. Velasco can be found here:
http://joelvelasco.net/. Also present was a good friend of mine, Neil.
We met to discuss the "Screen Argument", which I have been writing on frequently.
http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-screen-argument-re-explained.html
http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2013/10/examples-of-screens.html
http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-screen-argument-further-explained.html
http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-screen.html
I recommend checking out this post from Scientia Salon as well: https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/ned-block-on-phenomenal-consciousness-part-i/
I hope you will enjoy the "fly on the wall" experience of listening in on our conversation.
I would love to hear your perspective on our conversation in the comments.
We met to discuss the "Screen Argument", which I have been writing on frequently.
http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-screen-argument-re-explained.html
http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2013/10/examples-of-screens.html
http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-screen-argument-further-explained.html
http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-screen.html
I recommend checking out this post from Scientia Salon as well: https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/ned-block-on-phenomenal-consciousness-part-i/
I hope you will enjoy the "fly on the wall" experience of listening in on our conversation.
I would love to hear your perspective on our conversation in the comments.
Thank you for posting this. I listened to it the other day and, while I agree with Dr. Velasco that the "screen argument" isn't convincing, I think the position he was defending could have been more clearly articulated. If I understand correctly, you are essentially proposing a form of the hard problem of consciousness; or more generally the difficulty (impossibility?) of explaining subjectivity through objective methods. You are suggesting that this implies that they are different "things", correct? I don't understand why you think that this difficulty implies a separate existence. I do not find a problem in the notion that subjective phenomenon and objectively observed brain states are just two different perspectives of the same thing and we don't know how to translate between them.
ReplyDeleteI suggest reading a relevant post I wrote at
my blog to get a better understanding of my view on this topic. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.