>if we imagine ourselves in Times Square on a busy Monday morning, let's say you have an innate knowledge of the walking speed and masses of every individual in the area - would it be possible to predict where everyone would be going based on this data alone? The clear answer is no, the individuals are following the rulesets of their consciousness, higher-order laws that only pertain to the the complex molecular and electrochemical constructs we call life. Thus we see that the intentionality of consciousness cannot be predicted or sufficiently described by any lower order formulas
>Another way to illustrate this distinction with matter and matter that is conscious is an examination of the two broad types of problems that assail human beings. One is a convergent problem - these relate to the dead aspect of matter where the ambiguities of life and consciousness do not interfere. The more people investigate them, such as, what does 1 + 1 equal, the more answers converge on a single solution. The opposite type of problems are divergent. These are problems of the human sphere. What is good government? How do we best educate our children? The more people ask them, the more people tend to diverge or disagree on the solution. Mathematics, the formulas of physics and chemistry are toothless here. These are problems that relate to self-awareness, to subjective states of experience. In summary, consciousness is not reducible to the descriptions of non-living physical systems
What say you, /his/?
If we know everything there is to know about each individual, you could predict their movements and destinations with a fair share of certainity.
>>462124
Speed and distance of feet have nothing to do with consciousness.
If you knew they were hungry or wearing a suit and the time and whatnot, then it becomes a bit easier. Add food preferences, and it narrows down further.
How do we get this data? Ask google.
>>463461
Hunger and the time are not magical forces that no one can decipher.
>>462124
>Thus we see that the intentionality of consciousness cannot be predicted or sufficiently described by any lower order formulas
All you're seeing is that knowledge of mass and walking speed is insufficient to describe and predict the movement of conscious beings. That means more data is required, not that such a prediction is fundamentally impossible.
If you believe that consciousness is a property of the physical universe, and that the physical universe is governed by natural laws, then, given sufficient knowledge of said laws, you would be able to predict the actions of conscious beings with 100% certainty. (Unless the universe is fundamentally random and unpredictable - but that doesn't invalidate determinism, it just means that it's unknowable).
The alternative is believing that consciousness is somehow outside of the physical universe, but, you know, no evidence.
>>463610
You'll get it little buddy, I believe in you
>>463615
Yes, data of their inner conscious states, the logic of which are of a fundamentally higher order than the pure logic of math and physics formulas.
>>462124
This is Husserl right OP? Or some other phenomenologist.
>>463626
No, just a sufficiently advanced understanding of the laws governing the physical universe + a sufficient amount of data about the interactions and properties of the particles making up the universe.
Knowledge of the subjective experience of the people walking around is irrelevant.
>>462124
Fuck, I think about that shit all the time, I always observe large groups of people, trying to figure out where they´re going and why.
Is their a job where you get payed for stuff like that?
>>463617
Maybe not me, but some day we'll de-mistify consciousness so all the people waving their hands around and throwing rhetoric around will learn a thing or two.
Or maybe they'll prove that you actually can't figure it out like they did for the halting problem.
>>463642
Knowledge of the properties of each particle and knowledge of the person's inner states would be one and the same thing. How could atoms possibly tell you in a million years "John doe is feeling nostalgic about his first girlfriend so he's gonna go to this video store that's kind of out of the way to rent the first movie they watched together"? Of course you'd need to know everything about his neuronal activity, but how are you ever going to bridge the gap from "this pattern of brain activity" = "this exact thought" with just biology?
>>463652
I do not think we will ever describe consciousness in reductive materialist terms. There are no good theories that explain why interiority should be accompanied by the behaviors we attribute to living things, instead of just the behaviors themselves
>>463667
Yet. And you have no proof that we will never get one the same way the halting problem has. Yet. Rhetoric such as the above is not good enough, btw
>>463689
I doubt it. Could happen, but I doubt it.
>>463657
You don't need to know about John's nostalgia, although you're correct that with a sufficiently complete picture of the scenario you probably would know about John's inner thoughts in detail.
The nostalgia is not the reason John is going to the store; the nostalgia is simply a perceptual artifact of the natural processes that have caused the universe to place John on his way to the store. John is not deciding to go to the store because of his nostalgia; his inner state is a byproduct, not the cause.
>>463698
You would need to know about his nostalgia. You could not possibly deduce his nostalgia, which thereby the action, from just observing these "natural processes that have caused the universe to place John on his way to the store" because those processes would only have significance for John, and only John. If he gets reminded of the girl because his co-worker was wearing a pink scarf, we'd either have to a) decode his brain activity into articulated thoughts or b) base our predictions on only the bare correspondence of mental states with their actions, kind of like the chinese room thought experiment. Either you must have a full understanding of John's consciousness and the ruleset it operates by or you're groping in the dark.
I don't get why hard determinism somehow means the true motivation for John's actions is entirely out of his control; hard determinism can easily accommodate for the flux of consciousness, it's just that that flux would be too complex to be adequately described by simpler mathematics.
