David Nyman wrote: > 2009/8/24 Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com>: >> 2009/8/24 David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com>: >> >>> In the example of the alien brain, as has been pointed out, the >>> context of meaning is to be discovered only in the its own local >>> embodiment of its history and current experience. In Stathis' example >>> of *our* hypothesized observation of the alien's behaviour - whether >>> simulated or 'real' - any meaning to be found is again recoverable >>> exclusively in the context of either its, or our, historic and current >>> context of experience and action. It is obvious, under this analysis, >>> that information taken-out-of-context is - in that form - literally >>> meaningless. The function of observable information is to stabilise >>> relational causal configurations against their intelligible >>> reinstantiation in some context of meaning and action. Absent such >>> reembodiment, all that remains is noise. >> Wouldn't the meaning (to the alien) still be there if the brain did >> its thing without us understanding it, creating its own context? You >> can divide it into two interacting parts, one the brain proper, the >> other the virtual environment. The brain finds meaning in and >> interacts with the environment, but to an outside observer it all just >> looks like noise. > > Yes, exactly - that's what I intend by: "any meaning to be found is > again recoverable exclusively in the context of either its, or our, > historic and current context of experience and action". "Either its > or our" here splits into: > > 1) Any meaning available to the alien would be situated in terms of > its locally embodied historic and current interpretative context. > 2) Any meaning recoverable by an observer would be bounded by her own > historic and current interpretative context. > 3) No meaning is recoverable outside the foregoing interpretative contexts. > > I should perhaps emphasise that purely for the purposes of the > argument I'm assuming brain = mind to be a one-for-one correlation. > > Having said all this, it is interesting to reconsider your formulation > "the brain did its thing without us understanding it, creating its own > context". What is it about *being* the brain that causes this context > to be self-referentially available, but hides it beyond possibility of > recovery from 'observation'? Again this is the crux of the question > that Peter poses. If one hold that *all* the information is in > principle available to external observation, how could the foregoing > be true? And indeed, if one consistently follows an eliminativist > path, one cannot consistently hold it to be true; rather one must hold > that colour-blind Mary, because of the extraordinary scope of her > 'objective knowledge' of colour, has in fact no surprises in store > when she finally 'sees redly'. > > Can this be made plausible? Well, oddly, if I try this for size in > the form of a gedanken experiment, I can find one - and only one - way > to make it so. It is to conclude that - given Mary, for the > experiment to be viable, must possess the intrinsic capacity for > colour vision - her interpretation of the objective data is so > complete that it permits her to *imagine redly*. IOW the > meaning-in-context for Mary - the immediate local effect of > stimulation of her retinas by red-wavelength light - is in fact > recoverable in the context of her locally available interpretative > capacities, just as it will be again when she finally leaves the > laboratory.
Yes, I think that's right. But Mary could not arrive at this by studying *only* brains. She would have to know about light and evolution and the actions of others. Brent --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
