[Gay State Conservative]

Sounds like denizens of the Faculty Lounge with too much time on their hands,having already gotten sexual favors from students for certain “considerations”.

[usconservative]

I’m not reading this, it’s too long. I just want to know if I’m a denier or not. :-)

[gunnyg]

Grok this?

[WayneS]

Anyone who has ever seen or heard or smelled anything knows what it is; anyone who has ever been in pain, or felt hungry or hot or cold or remorseful, dismayed, uncertain, or sleepy, or has suddenly remembered a missed appointment. All these things involve what are sometimes called “qualia”—that is to say, different types or qualities of conscious experience. What I am calling the Denial is the denial that anyone has ever really had any of these experiences.

The solution is simple. When someone denies the existence of conscious experience, punch them in the mouth or stub a cigar out on their arm. Then simply say: "Thusly I have proven the existence of consciousness - case closed". Then fart on them...

[circlecity]

This is the natural consequence of a post-modern worldview which denies objective truth. It also denies Descartes’ first axiom, “I think, therefore I am”.

[kanawa]

cogito ergo sum

[unlearner]

Science has failed to provide an explanation for consciousness because it has been looking for something too elusive: mind being an emergent property of matter (and the brain in particular).

There are three similar theories that could explain why:

1. Biocentrism—the theory that consciousness creates reality.
Was discussed on FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3549290/posts

2. Conscious realism—the theory that the objective world, i.e., the world whose existence does not depend on the perceptions of a particular observer, consists entirely of conscious agents.

Here is the abstract on an introductory paper:

“Despite substantial efforts by many researchers, we still have
no scientific theory of how brain activity can create, or be, conscious
experience. This is troubling, since we have a large body of
correlations between brain activity and consciousness, correlations
normally assumed to entail that brain activity creates conscious
experience. Here I explore a solution to the mind-body problem
that starts with the converse assumption: these correlations arise
because consciousness creates brain activity, and indeed creates all
objects and properties of the physical world. To this end, I develop
two theses. The multimodal user interface theory of perception
states that perceptual experiences do not match or approximate
properties of the objective world, but instead provide a simplified,
species-specific, user interface to that world. Conscious realism
states that the objective world consists of conscious agents and
their experiences; these can be mathematically modeled and empirically
explored in the normal scientific manner.”
http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/ConsciousRealism2.pdf

3. Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe
http://www.ctmu.org/

[Sans-Culotte]

Whut?

[sparklite2]

Some people have denied the existence of consciousness:

---

Think = am.

Like anything else, though, it can be taken too far. I’m thinking of the Freeper who told me trees were conscious.