On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 Tom Bayley <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I think explanations are important to prove causation ;-) and it's > interesting that you can break this example down. Each explanatory step is > materially plausible (it has a satisfactory public explanation), right up > to the perception of the light. But the qualia (qualium?) itself doesn't > have a public description, and there isn't any sense of satisfaction that > it has been explained. > Does the chain of questions "what caused that?" ever come to a end? If it doesn't then you can keep asking that question forever in infinite regress; however if it does come to a end, if A caused B and B causes C and C causes D and that's all there is then once we've said that C causes D we've said all we can say and we know that D is a fundamental thing in the universe; although it might not be the only fundamental thing, there might be other sequences of "what caused that?" questions that come to a different end. Most members of this list insist that consciousness is fundamental but it's clear they haven't thought it through because after saying that they demand to know how D causes consciousness. I think that D is information processing and once you say that consciousness is the way data feels like when it is being processed you've said all you can say about the matter because consciousness is fundamental. If that leaves you with a sense of dissatisfaction that's just in the nature of fundamental things, but I doubt you'd be any happier if the chain of questions "what caused that?" never came to a end and it was like a onion with a infinite number of layers with one mystery always inside another. And after all, the sequence either comes to a end or it does not, neither possibility is likely to leave you entirely satisfied. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
