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Well, let’s start with the absolute minimum figure of a hundred trillion unique neural connections. In each brain. Of course content is stored subsymbolically - it's just thresholds, synaptic weightings and so on - nothing means anything at this level...

There isn’t. That’s why it is called the problem of other minds. You could try doing it by trial and error, but it would be NP hard. In other words you wouldn’t be able to make any progress before the heat death of the universe. Of course, that only works if you deny mental events and are just...

Sure, but that wouldn't be the killer problem. So let’s say you have mapped both brains perfectly. Now you need to translate the subsymbolic mapping of each brain so that it makes any sense to the other brain.

I’d say they were well behind the curve... Try this from 1865 (p382) https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6xhFAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA382#v=onepage&q&f=false As the Smithsonian points out...

Surely the whole thing falls apart here: For the argument to work there has to be a single point - the electrode - fulfilling the same role Descartes gave to the pineal gland. Not only does no such place exist but the microstructure of every brain is entirely different. There's no technology...

I suggest you look into that claim a bit before carrying on this argument, because this is starting to feel a bit like kicking a man while he's down.

I think you need to take a very long hard look at you premises on both sides of your argument. First can you tighten up your language so that it's clear what you are trying to argue, because applying Grice to everything you say is getting dull. I assume you are not trying to say that 'you...

I don't agree with your premises or your logic. We don't start as some sort of Lockean tabula rasa that creates itself out of observation. We start with basic physics creating something that evolves and then a very very long period of evolution that eventually sets up something that interacts...

There are philosophers on this forum?

Do I. I thought I clarified the difference between two ways of using the word dimension. So to be clear, do you think that time, as the fourth dimension, has the same relation to the third dimension as the third dimension has to the second?

You'll struggle to find a philosopher who is working in this sort of area citing Descartes approvingly. Scientists or science fundies just uncritically accepting Descartes' nonsense? there's plenty of that around. I'm fucking Pavlovian...

I'm unaware that it has fallen out of favour. Perhaps you can explain the reasons? I'm sorry you feel that way. I envy you your certainty. However I'm still keen to understand why. In that case I must have missed it. A link would be lovely.

Yes. Now explain how your earlier argument accommodates this. When we are talking about this sorts of physicist then the two are functionally equivalent. I'm not incompetent and I certainly am a rock solid logician which means I can usually work it through if I have to. I'm a passionate...

I'm pretty certain I'm a physicalist. Let's say I self identify as one, so stop repressing me! That's news to me and most most recent neurobiologists. Perhaps a little argument will help me understand the error of my ways. Or has Unter bitten you and turned you into a zombie of the sort that...

Yeah - Edwin Abbot dealt with this in detail a century and a half ago - 3d bank robbers reaching into unbreakable vaults, for example

I'm not so sure about this. The whole point about time dilation is that it only happens relative to something else - it's about the interaction between two frames of reference. There's no such thing as mere high speed - it's always an interaction between two frames of reference any one of which...

I'll say it again: i'm as hard core a physicalist that you can get. I don't deny anything mental. I'm also pretty sure that people who deny the existence of the mental are either called behaviourists or eliminativists depending on whether they want to deny the cognitive or the affective. I'm...

Past, present and future are states of organisation. They get reorganised into the states that compose the present. The rules of the reorganisation are what we call the laws of physics. Simple. It gets reorganised into something else. All the proper physicists I know are very clear that the...

That's why I very deliberately framed it in a relative context. ...now, the next moment and the moment... Terms like 'future' and 'past' really only make sense locally, conventionally and as a matter of relation, given propagation of effect. As you said earlier, the universe doesn't care...

Gavagai!