This is old hat, but I've been thinking about it on awakening every morning for the last week. Is consciousness - i.e. the actual first- person experience itself - literally uncomputable from any third- person perspective? The only rationale for adducing the additional existence of any 1-p experience in a 3-p world is the raw fact that we possess it (or "seem" to, according to some). We can't "compute" the existence of any 1-p experiential component of a 3-p process on purely 3-p grounds. Further, if we believe that 3-p process is a closed and sufficient explanation for all events, this of course leads to the uncomfortable conclusion (referred to, for example, by Chalmers in TCM) that 1-p conscious phenomena (the "raw feels" of sight, sound, pain, fear and all the rest) are totally irrelevant to what's happening, including our every thought and action.
But doesn't this lead to paradox? For example, how are we able to refer to these phenomena if they are causally disconnected from our behaviour - i.e. they are uncomputable (i.e. inaccessible) from the 3- p perspective? Citing "identity" doesn't seem to help here - the issue is how 1-p phenomena could ever emerge as features of our shared behavioural world (including, of course, talking about them) if they are forever inaccessible from a causally closed and sufficient 3-p perspective. Does this in fact lead to the conclusion that the 3-p world can't be causally closed to 1-p experience, and that I really do withdraw my finger from the fire because it hurts, and not just because C-fibres are firing? But how? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
