Bye Bye
Diego Caleiro
Phil of Mind.
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 9:18 AM, David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On 23 February 2010 05:45, Rex Allen <rexallen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> For the reasons I've touched on above I don't see that introducing
the
> idea of a material world explains anything at all. Therefore, I
vote
> for getting rid of 3-p, except as a calculational device.
>
> The idea of a material world that exists fundamentally and uncaused
> while giving rise to conscious experience is no more coherent than
the
> idea that conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused and
> gives rise to the mere perception of a material world (as everyone
> accepts happens in dreams).
>
> What is the problem with this solution?
The problem with it, with reference to the situation as I've stated
it, is that it doesn't take us one step nearer elucidating the
relation between 1-p and 3-p. In Dennett's formulation, there only
"seems" to be 1-p in a uniquely 3-p world; in yours, there only
"seems" to be 3-p in a fundamentally 1-p world. But what neither
"solution" addresses, or even acknowledges - but rather obscures with
these linguistic devices - is what any fundamental relation between
these two undeniably manifest perspectives could possibly be. What we
seek is a penetrating analysis of "seeming" that encompasses both 1-p
and 3-p aspects.
Now of course it's open to you, as you consistently reiterate, to
reject this issue as unworthy of discussion on the grounds that it is
permanently inexplicable. You may be right, but in effect this would
simply exclude you from the community of those who'd like to know
more, even if they're destined never to be enlightened. In my view,
such an attitude is premature.
David
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 8:50 PM, David Nyman
<david.ny...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 21 February 2010 23:25, Rex Allen <rexallen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> So we know 1-p directly, while we only infer the existence of 3-p.
>>> However, you seem to start from the assumption that 1-p is in the
>>> weaker subordinate position of needing to be explained "in terms
of"
>>> 3-p, while 3-p is implicitly taken to be unproblematic,
fundamental,
>>> and needing no explanation.
>>
>> You're right that I'm starting from this assumption, but only
because
>> it is indeed the default assumption in the sciences, and indeed
in the
>> general consciousness, and my intention was to illustrate some of
the
>> consequences of this assumption that are often waved away or simply
>> not acknowledged.
>
> So let's assume that an independently existing material world exists
> and fully explains what we observe and also THAT we observe.
>
> If this reality is deterministic, then what we experience is
strictly
> a result of the world's initial conditions and the laws that govern
> it's change over time. Which means that what we can know about
> reality is also strictly a result of the initial conditions and
causal
> laws, since we only learn about the world through our experiences.
>
> What would explain the all-important initial conditions and causal
> laws? Nothing, right? They just would be whatever they were, for
no
> reason. If they had a reason, that reason would be part of the
> material world, not something separate from and preceding it.
>
> In this case there would be no reason to believe that what we
> experienced revealed anything about the *true* underlying causal
> structure. It could be like a dream or The Matrix, where what is
> experienced is completely different than the cause of the
experience.
>
> Even if what we experienced did reflect the true underlying nature
of
> what caused the experience...what would the significance of this be,
> really? The future is set, all we do is wait for it to be
revealed to
> our experience.
>
> An indeterministic physical world is no more helpful. Here, we
would
> seem to have a range of scenarios.
>
> At one end is pure indeterminism...where there is absolutely no
> connection between one instant and the next. Things just happen,
> randomly, for no reason. No events are causally connected in any
way.
> If transitions between particular arrangements of matter is what
> gives rise to conscious experience, then given enough random events
> every possible experience would eventually seem to be generated.
> However, if any of these experiences revealed anything about the
true
> nature of reality, this would be purely coincidental.
>
> At the other end of the range is a nearly deterministic system where
> only on very rare occasions or in specific circumstances would the
> orderly sequence of cause and effect give way to some sort of
tightly
> constrained but completely unpredictable indeterministic state
> change...which would then alter in an orderly way the subsequent
> deterministic behavior of the physical world as the consequences of
> this random event spread out in a ripple of cause-and-effect.
>
> So our experiences would be completely "determined" by the initial
> state of the world, plus the causal laws with their tolerance for
> occasional randomness, PLUS the history of actual random state
> changes.
>
> This doesn't seem to provide any improvement over the purely
> deterministic option. Each "random" occurrence is just another
brute
> fact, like the initial state or the particular causal laws that
govern
> the evolution of the system (allowing for occasional random events).
> The random occurrences don't add anything, and actually could be
just
> taken as "special cases" of the causal laws.
>
>
>> This, ISTM, is a paradoxical, or at the very least an extremely
>> puzzling, state of affairs, and it was to promote discussion of
these
>> specific problems that I started the thread.
>
> Is it a paradox, or a reductio ad absurdum against the idea that our
> perceptions are caused by an independently existing external
reality?
>
> What does introducing an independently existing physical world buy
us?
>
> So we have our orderly conscious experiences and we want to explain
> them. To do this, we need some context to place these experiences
in.
> So we postulate the existence of an orderly external universe that
> “causes” our experiences. But then we have to explain what caused
this
> orderly external universe, and also the particular initial
conditions
> and causal laws that result in what we observe.
>
> So this is basically Kant's first antinomy of pure reason. Either
> there is a first cause, which itself is uncaused, OR there is an
> infinite chain of prior causes stretching infinitely far into the
> past. But why this particular infinite chain as opposed to some
other?
> In fact, why our particular "infinite chain of prior causes" or
"first
> cause" instead of Nothing existing at all?
>
> It seems that either way (infinite chain or first cause), at the end
> you are left with only one reasonable conclusion: There is no reason
> that things are this way. They just are.
>
> BUT...we could have just said that about our conscious experiences
to
> start with and saved ourselves the trouble of postulating a whole
> multiverse.
>
>
>> Whether one starts from
>> the assumption of primacy of 1-p or 3-p (or neither) the principal
>> difficulty is making any sense of their relation - i.e. the Hard
>> Problem - and ISTM not only that it is Hard to solve, but even to
>> state in a way that doesn't mask its truly paradoxical nature.
>
> It seems to me that there are two easy ways to get rid of the hard
problem.
>
> 1) Get rid of 1-p. (A la Dennettian eliminative materialism)
>
> OR
>
> 2) Get rid of 3-p. (subjective idealism)
>
> For the reasons I've touched on above I don't see that introducing
the
> idea of a material world explains anything at all. Therefore, I
vote
> for getting rid of 3-p, except as a calculational device.
>
> The idea of a material world that exists fundamentally and uncaused
> while giving rise to conscious experience is no more coherent than
the
> idea that conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused and
> gives rise to the mere perception of a material world (as everyone
> accepts happens in dreams).
>
> What is the problem with this solution?
>
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