The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #86289   Message #3754055
Posted By: Paul Burke
27-Nov-15 - 05:57 PM
Thread Name: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
Sorry Amos, tautology. Or perhaps infinite regression. What does "aware" mean without consciousness? Think a bit more. Also Keith's reference to Boltzmann brains- it seemed clever in 19-oh-whatever, but misses the point totally. It is in fact the aposciencis of solipsism.

I'd get away from that sort of stuff- it drives you mad like it did Cantor. Better to limit the scope, operate on that level, and state the limitations at the start. Dennett did a good job in "Consciousness Explained" (trades descriptions act warning) by describing some of the limitations of consciousness- like it's demonstrable that however conscious you may be, it's not there all the time.

Where a lot of chatter falls down is that you can't talk about time being produced by a temporary fluctuation of a universe, because "temporary" implies....