David, IZ, Brent: do you have some fairly acceptable (for whom?) ID about that darn 'vita'? That would ease the problem to accept or reject EV. Some people 'ride' the Terrestrial Biosphere churning of C-based molecules (some add: M&R = metabolism and repair) but there may be more to it. And if there IS more to it, there may be special circumstances (even qualia?) to get *into* it (EV?) It does not hurt if one is clear about the topic. Semantics is a big trap. JM
On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 8:26 PM, David Nyman <[email protected]> wrote: > On 27 April 2012 21:16, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > > > And the EV is supposed to be analgous to qualia? But that paralell > > doens;t work. The EV is dismissable > > because there was never prima facie evidence for it. > > > > > > Then why was it widely believed to exist?...because somethings were alive > > and other seemingly identical things weren't. > > Peter and I are of course making the same point. I agree that, at the > outset, "life" and "consciousness" display an appealing explanatory > symmetry, in that we can seek an reductive account of both in terms of > constituent processes. But that apparent symmetry fractures on closer > analysis. The more that putatively "conscious processes" can be shown > to be so reducible, the more this highlights the explanatory > redundancy of the entire class of first-person phenomena. In the case > of "life", it is surely obvious that we need anticipate no conceptual > residue after explanatory reduction. But the troublesome resistance of > first-personal phenomena to such reductive elimination is equally > manifest to all who can suppress the urge to bolt for the denialist > exit. > > Precisely because this point is indeed so obvious, and because I've > never felt that you are personally of the eliminativist persuasion, I > fail to understand why you persist in presenting the putative > equivalence of these two concepts as though it were unproblematic. > I'm puzzled as to exactly what is your point. Is it your hope that a > sufficiently sophisticated understanding of the physical correlates of > conscious behaviour will somehow dissolve the presently intractable > distinction between third and first-personal accounts of consciousness > in some conceptually utterly novel way? Or do you anticipate that we > might just settle for a sufficiently rich articulation of "conscious > behaviours" as a closing of the conceptual account? > > David > > > On 4/27/2012 12:00 PM, 1Z wrote: > > > > On Apr 27, 7:13 pm, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > > We never explained where the elan vital was or where it came > > > > from. We just came up with a different kind of 'explanation'. > > > > And the EV is supposed to be analgous to qualia? But that paralell > > doens;t work. The EV is dismissable > > because there was never prima facie evidence for it. > > > > > > Then why was it widely believed to exist?...because somethings were alive > > and other seemingly identical things weren't. > > > > > > However, qualia > > are prima facie evidence for everything > > else. I can;t just pretend that my pains don't hurt, etc. > > > > > > We don't pretend things aren't alive either. > > > > Brent > > > > -- > > 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. > > -- > 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. > > -- 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.
