Hi Craig Weinberg
I must be a philosopher then, for everything seems to be
a work in progress, if not immediately then afterwards.
But I am for the truth and sometimes, temporarily, seem
to have found it.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/5/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Craig Weinberg
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-05, 09:01:10
Subject: Re: Re: Dualism as a cover-up "solution" to the mind-body problem
I don't know that I'm a philosopher, but it seems to me that I have come to a
conclusion.
Craig
On Monday, November 5, 2012 8:13:38 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:
Hi Craig Weinberg
What they say about economists is also
appropriate to say about philosophers:
"If all of the philosophers in the world were laid
end to end, they'd never come to a conclusion."
Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
11/5/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Craig Weinberg
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-05, 08:04:04
Subject: Re: Dualism as a cover-up "solution" to the mind-body problem
On Monday, November 5, 2012 6:45:50 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote:
Hi Craig Weinberg
The dualisms will work as fictions as long as you don't take
them too seriously.
But keep in mind:
IMHO all of those dualist positions are not logically valid.
Instead, they are phoney attempts to get around the unresolveable
issue that mind and body are completely contrary substances,
and calling them a dualism is just a handy cover-up of the problem.
Only Leibniz can claim philosophical verity by treating boith
body and mind as mind (idealism). Materialist monists
hold that mind is physical, which is nonsense,
and the dualist coverup doesn't solve that absurdity.
My model solves that. Leibniz (and his philosophy isn't the only form of
idealism) was on the right track, but I take it further to say that what we
call mind is descended from lesser forms of sensitivity and greater forms of
intuition, and that in fact the symmetry itself between private time and public
space is the dual aspect neutral monism (I call sense, or signal) which gives
rise to both. This establishes that dualism is a shorthand reduction of what is
actually an involuted monism (like a Mobius strip) which extends ever deeper
into literal public surfaces and private figurative depths.
Dualism doesn't go far enough. It should not only be taken seriously, it should
be taken as the supreme absolute. The capacity for discernment is what the
cosmos is made of. It is subject and object. It is what feels and thinks as
well as what is felt and thought about.
Craig
Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
11/5/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Craig Weinberg
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-02, 08:05:41
Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Friday, November 2, 2012 8:18:29 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
But you can't stay awake unless your hardware allows it.
So what? I can't shoot a gun unless the trigger works. Does that mean I'm not
shooting the gun by pulling the trigger?
You are external to the gun, but you are not external to your brain unless
substance dualism is true.
The problem with substance dualism is that it is redundant and has an infinite
regress problem connecting the two substances. With dual aspect monism, you
don't have those issues so that I can be internal to my brain in some senses,
external to my brain in some senses, both internal and external in some senses,
and neither internal and external in some senses.
Regardless though, even if we said that the sense in which you are literally
internal to the brain of this moment also necessarily means that your brain is
identical to you. It has to be a two way street.
It is completely arbitrary to privilege the spatial-object description of the
phenomenon and marginalize the temporal-subject description. It's like saying
that a movie exists entirely because there are pixels changing. It is not true.
Movies exist because humans make them to tell stories to each other, and the
pixels are there to help tell that storytelling.
This is the primordial relation of all nature. It gets complicated, and as
human beings we are equal parts personal story sequences and impersonal
non-story consequences, but nevertheless, it is ultimately the story which is
driving the bus. The coin has two sides, but the heads side is the side of the
'genuine leader'.
You can't decide to do anything unless your brain goes into the particular
configuration consistent with that decision, and the movement into that
configuration is determined by physical factors.
The movement of the molecules of your brain *is* your decision. That's what I
am telling you but you won't see it. You are only able to see it as a one way
street which makes no sense. What you are saying is like 'water is ice but ice
is not water'. If I feel something when something happens in my brain, then
that means that whatever happens in my brain is also an event in the universe
when something is felt. That means molecules feel and see. You could say that
groups of molecules feel and see, and that's ok too, but you think it's the
'groupiness' that sees and not the physical reality of the molecules
themselves. I am saying that there is no independent groupiness... it is a
fantasy. Incorrect.
That the movement of the molecules of your brain *is* the decision is
eliminative materialism, or perhaps epiphenomenalism.
No, your view has it upside down. The mindset which generates that view is so
absolutely biased that it cannot conceive of turning this simple picture right
side up.
If something looks like particles moving on the outside but feels like
remembering a fishing trip on the inside, that doesn't mean that the memory is
the epiphenomenon. The memory is the whole point of the particles. They have
nothing else to do sitting in your skull but to provide the grunt work of
organizing your access to your own human experiences.
It is not eliminative materialism to say that object and subject are the same
thing from different views, it is dual aspect monism. When I say 'there are two
sides to this coin', your mind keeps responding 'but coins are tails'. He keeps
looking at the universe from an external perspective and then projecting that
world of objects-within-objects as some kind of explanation of the subject who
he actually is. My view is that it cannot work that way.
In any case, the behaviour of the molecules is entirely consistent with
chemistry. An ion channel opens because it changes conformation due to
neurotransmitters binding to it or the transmembrane voltage. Any subjectivity
it may have does not enter into the equation.
What this means is that molecules as we see them are not the whole story, just
as the brain and its actions are not the whole story. We are the other half of
the story and we are not made of neurotransmitters or cells any more than a
song we make up is our body. Two different ontological schemas. Two opposite
schemas twisted orthogonally by the private time to public space juxtaposition.
That may be, but the molecules *entirely* determine the behaviour of the brain.
When I say the words "bright blue liquid" I have changed the behavior of the
molecules of your brain *entirely*. It was not anything but my intention to
write these words to you which made that change. Your brain, it's neurons and
molecules dutifully *follow* my commands from across the internet with no
biochemistry connecting us whatsoever. The reasoning you are using is circular
and disconnected from reality. It makes sense, and again I used to believe what
you believe for many years, but I understand clearly now why it fails to
describe the ordinary reality we experience.
If you know chemistry and you know what molecule is where, you know what
chemical reactions will occur, and if you know that you know how the person is
going to move. You don't know about the person's subjectivity, but you do know
about his behaviour.
Your view can't explain how chemistry knows what "bright blue liquid" means and
why it cares. Your view can't explain how or why anything 'means' anything.
My phone has a one year guarantee, so that it if it fails and can't be repaired
Apple will replace it with an identical phone. Are they opening themselves up
to legal challenge if this is ontologically impossible?
I would imagine that their legal department has defined 'identical' in a
commercially feasible way. They can probably send you a phone with similar but
not identical parts even. If you look at the serial numbers in your replacement
phone, you will readily see that identical is not to be taken absolutely
literally. 'Similar enough for you' is what they mean.
That is the sort of identity I am interested in if the phone is to be replaced:
if it is different in some way I can't detect in normal use I don't care.
Similarly if I were to have parts of my body replaced: if I can't tell any
difference after a few days, that's good enough for me.
You don't care, but the universe does. You cannot be replaced. Parts of you can
be removed and what remains of you can learn to use substitutes, but there has
to be enough of you left to use anything. You can't amputate your head and
replace it with a mannequin and expect 'you' yourself to survive.
Craig
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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