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| Credit: Skalle-Per Hedenhös (sic) |
Richard Carrier on the attack...again. An atheist-materialist take on consciousness, et cetera.
Note the claim that some robots and smart cars may be (somewhat) conscious. Insects, on the other hand, aren´t conscious. Neither are octopi. Fish probably aren´t either: "They aren´t really alive, they´re just less dead". And if you´re not conscious, you can´t really feel anything either. So ants don´t feel anything when we dispose of them them using poison. The tuna didn´t feel anything when it was hooked and killed. Pigs do feel and experience things, but since they aren´t self-aware, their lives have no actual value to them. Like pigs to the slaughter! Human babies are more advanced than pigs (this is a veiled polemic against Peter Singer, methinks).
The "existential" consequences of the above are...interesting. So entire *civilizations* can be created simply on the basis of subconscious computation by non-sentient life-forms? I´m thinking of social insects such as ants, termites and honeybees. Where does that leave us in a wholly materialist universe? Note also that robots could (presumably) be made fully self-conscious. Finally, note that consciousness requires "modeling", which seems to imply that consciousness can only ever be "indirectly realist". Are ants direct realists?
OK, here is the link:
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