On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 2:21 AM, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote:
> What you're not seeing is that low level behavior is sometimes > determined by high level motives (and vice versa). That's not > debatable, it's a fact. If your view does not allow for that, then > it's your view that is conjuring magic to explain it away. Substance > monism is pathalogically superstitious against meaning and teleology, > even to the point of denying it's own functionalist fetish. It's confusing to say high level factors affect low level factors. The economy is a high level factor, which emerges from the activity of people interacting with each other and with their environment. The economy affects the behaviour of people: if the price of a commodity goes down, people are less inclined to buy it. However, this does not mean that it has a causal efficacy over and above the behaviour of the system's components. We know that the economy is entirely explained as the result of the components interacting with each other, and we know this even though it is in practice impossible to predict what exactly these components will do. >>An ion channel will open not because the appropriate ligand >> has bound, but all by itself. > > If I get mad, then the ion channels involved in anger-related neural > pathways open. They are not forced to by an exterior gravity, they are > compelled to from the interior. No no no! The ion channels open when you get mad because the appropriate ligand binds to them. At every point in the neural pathways there is an identifiable physical reason why something happens, which leads to a chain of events resulting in you yelling at me for being obstinate. The anger qualia supervene on this chain of physical events. The anger qualia cannot in themselves have any effect on matter. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
