Month: October 2023

Bull Meets Shovel: Could Consciousness be a Conjuring Trick?

Top o' the Stack.

Thomas Beale writes,

Getting back to the topic of consciousness . . . . I think you will find this Royal Institution lecture by British neuropsychologist Nicholas Humphrey of interest.
 
He provides an outline of subjective phenomenal consciousness and how it could have evolved. One very interesting claim is that sentience could not have arrived prior to the evolution of mammals, since a) their neural transmission speed is much greater than cold-blooded animals and b) mammals are not tied to specific environments since they have inbuilt thermoregulation.
 
I interpret his claims as being a candidate for what Nagel seeks in his monograph Mind and Consciousness (2012) (a naturalistic theory of subjective consciousness) and also as refuting the general position of Dennett, i.e. that consciousness, qualia etc are just an illusion. Personally I think Dennett has failed to understand what he himself is saying when he claims that conscious experience is an 'illusion', as if calling it such makes it unreal.
 
Anyway, I believe you may find this an hour well spent.
 
Thanks for the link, Thomas, but I have only so many shovels. Given the bull your man has already spread, in the 2013 piece to which I respond in the Substack entry above, I am not inclined to waste fifty minutes watching a slow-moving video. Is there a transcript? Maybe he has come up with something better this time around. I rather doubt it. 
 
Perhaps you can summarize Humphrey's latest stab at the 'hard problem.' What is his solution? But first tell me what you accept and what you reject in my Substack article.
 

Is Illegal Immigration a Crime?

It is. Nancy Pelosi and other prominent Democrats have been lying to us. Illegal immigrants are subject to criminal penalties. While improper entry is a crime, unlawful presence is not a crime. One can be unlawfully present in the U. S. without having entered improperly, and thus without having committed a crime. 

If a foreign national enters the country on a valid travel or work visa, but overstays his visa, failing to exit before the expiration date, then he is in violation of federal immigration law. But this comes under the civil code, not the criminal code. Such a person is subject to civil penalties such as deportation.

So there are two main ways for an alien to be illegal. He can be illegal in virtue of violating the criminal code or illegal in virtue of violating the civil code. 

Those who oppose strict enforcement of national borders show their contempt for the rule of law and their willingness to tolerate criminal behavior, not just illegal behavior.