Again, absences cause things. The gardener’s failure to water the plant (an absence) caused it to die. But then, absences should be able to occupy functional roles.
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You can make a mind out of brains (that is, a mind with neural realizers). But then, you can also make a mind out of silicon, at least in principle (A.I.). But by that same principle, you should be able to make a mind out of nothing (absences).
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You just need to arrange the nothing the right way, set it up so that it enters into the right causal relations. Or at least anyone who’s a functionalist about consciousness (and who accepts absence causation) should hold.
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...but why does the granting of causal properties to absences = granting the *right kinds* of causal / functional properties to absences (where “right kinds” = kinds that could plausibly be required for consciousness to obtain)??
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So, to start, take the original tweet in the spirit of partly a troll and only partly a real argument. One thought is: if panpsychism is (vulgarly formulated) the thesis that everything is conscious, well then absences exist (as evidenced by the fact they enter into causal...
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I'm not a fan of causation by absences, but shouldn't the view say that absences have no intrinsic properties (my not watering the garden has no mass) and at least something about consciousness is intrinsic to what is conscious?
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Yeah, I think the lack of an intrinsic nature is the best basis for saying that absences being conscious is less plausible than electrons being conscious. (But: if you’re a functionalist about consciousness, you’ve already given up on intrinsicality, opening the door for
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An absence of something is almost always the prescience of something else. At least it is when the absences enter into causal roles. So a mind made of absences (that enter into causal roles) is not a mind made of nothing.
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Is the idea that any absence is also identical with some presence? So for instance, the gardener’s failure to water the plant is identical with whatever positive event he was doing instead at the time, like taking a nap?
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One possible answer: because absences are facts. The absence of trash is the fact that there is no trash. And we don't generally think that facts are conscious.
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Yeah, if absences are facts rather than events, and then supposing facts are abstract while events are concrete, that could pose a real problem for the argument. A good point.
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