On 1 February 2014 21:49, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Found it! > > On Friday, January 31, 2014 11:45:24 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: > >> On 31 January 2014 01:52, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> The "we" of individual human beings relies on physical consistency >>> because that is a common sensory experience of the >>> animal>organism>substance context. The substance context however relies on >>> the "we" of the Absolute context. The biological context relies on those >>> "we"s, and the animal context relies on the biological "we"s. It's all >>> nested but the bottom of each extrinsic level is being supported by the top >>> of the previous intrinsic level. >> >> >> I'm not sure I fully grasp all of the above, but I would like to tackle >> you again on the POPJ, because I still can't see how your model can succeed >> in avoiding it. Let me start by telling you about a movie I streamed last >> night - "Inception" (I'm a bit behindhand on popular movies!). It was quite >> an enjoyable yarn, but it struck me as pretty flaky, even as science >> fiction, not least because the plot is built on the idea that dreams could >> be experienced (and even nested dream-within-dream) with near-waking >> "physical" consistency. This got me reflecting on what does indeed >> distinguish dreams from "waking reality" (acknowledging of course that both >> are virtual presentations from the personal perspective). I don't know >> about your dreams, but in mine things have the darnedest habit of >> disappearing or turning into something else when I look away and this, >> presumably, is because sleeping-dreams are different to waking-dreams in >> that their appearances are not in general stabilised by anything >> "extrinsic" to the brain and body. >> >> By extrinsic here I am not committing to the ultimate nature of the brain >> and its environment, merely that all our experiences - metaphorised as >> dreams, or in a more up-to-date image, a multi-player video-game - must >> depend on some generalised and consistent system of appearances for >> consistency and stabilisation. It turns out, indeed, that the system of >> appearances our internal video game depends on is detailed, consistent and >> stable to the most extraordinary degree; let us call this stable, >> exhaustive and reliably causally-complete set of appearances the >> game-physics. And the "avatars" that appear to us within the game - bodies >> and brains, our own and others' - turn out to follow the rules of the >> game-physics precisely in conformity with the set of appearances as a >> whole, to the furthermost extent we can explore. >> >> The logical consequence of the above is just this: Even if you consider >> that the sensory nature of that-which-exists extends, beyond our personal >> virtual presentations, to the whole of "reality itself", one can still not >> avoid the encounter in waking-dreams with avatars (including one's own) >> that cheerfully lay claim to sensory phenomena that are supernumerary in >> explaining their behaviour in terms of its own rules-of-appearance (i.e. >> the game-physics), and which they could not logically have access to in >> terms of those very rules. Hence these sensory phenomena cannot be the >> cause of these claims. This, again is the POPJ. ISTM that it is unavoidable >> in any schema, whether primitive-sensory or primitive-physical, in which no >> further logical entailment is discoverable in the causally-complete >> machinations of the game-physics. >> > > The POPJ is not a problem at all for MSR. > Pleased to hear it. Why? > MSR is a solution to POPJ because judgments are just other kinds of > sensations than public facing sensations. > Doesn't help. In your theory, everything is of course hypothesised to be just one sort of sensation or another - that's obviously the case for any kind of idealist or panpsychist schema. The point I'm laboriously trying to get you to acknowledge is that move doesn't get you off this particular hook. See below. > Judgments are cognitive qualia, and qualia is 1) beyond function, and 2) > transparent and reflective (metaphorically) to other kinds of qualia. > That's as may be, but we're precisely talking about qualitatively-instantiated appearances and likewise the ubiquitous evidence of a rigorous and causally closed set of game-physics followed by those appearances. I take it that you don't deny that this is a defining aspect of your own experience? It certainly is of mine. The stabilisation of experience by stringently rule-following appearances is what I was alluding to in my contrasting of the dreaming and waking states. Instead of starting from the assumption of isolation in which sensations > have to be added on top of our separateness, I start from the assumption of > unity at the Absolute, which is diffracted locally through insensitivity. > Thus in some sense we are all the same experience. In others we are > experience of all organisms. In others we are experiences of animals, etc, > all the way down to our unique narrative experience. With sense as > primordial, all appearances of separation are derived from insensitivity. > You must surely have noticed, if you ever read posts not addressed to yourself, that there have been plenty of discussions recently of "universal personhood" and how in some sense, we could all be thought of as proxies for a multiple-personality compartmentalised by mutual amnesia. But I don't see how this, however poetic and interesting in itself, is at all relevant to the point in dispute. (This by the way, is an example of what I mean by rhapsodising instead of addressing the specific matter at hand.) Revenons a nos moutons, the point is painting the scenario in this way wouldn't be worth a theoretical damn if we had couldn't ultimately account for how "normal" experience could be recovered from it. I assume that a consequence of all of this must be that (at least occasionally!) you acknowledge that the stability of your "normal" experience sensitively depends on these selfsame rule-following extrinsic appearances. I further assume that you are at least aware, even if you do not yourself conduct detailed experiments, that these appearances follow similarly rigorous rules all the way down as far as it is possible to probe. If so, like me, you no doubt regularly find yourself in the presence of appearances that you take to be the bodies of other persons and one that in particular you take to be your own. These bodies, when probed, appear to follow the rules of the game-physics exactly like every other part of the experiential environment. Now curiously, such bodies regularly produce behaviours that you interpret as their laying claim to possessing conscious phenomena. Moreover, on reflection, you notice that your own thoughts, which according to the game-physics can also be "reduced" without remainder to the behaviour of your own brain, lay similar claim to such phenomena. This is where you should feel the POPJ sinking its sharp teeth into the soft body of your theory. And none of this reasoning depends on the ultimate nature of the appearances or any other component of the schema; it's all inherent in the perceived correlations between appearances at different levels. Therefore ISTM that you can only avoid it by denying any necessary correlation between, for example, your thoughts and the game-physics of your brain but then you would have a real problem explaining how those selfsame thoughts get to have any apparent purchase on the game-physical environment to which that brain is connected. Tell you what, it's some paradox this POPJ. Do us both a mitzvah, will you Craig? If you think you really have an effective means of disarming the POPJ, it would be really helpful if you could present it point-for-point in the terms in which I have presented the original argument. The gist of this argument is an attempt to show a fatal contradiction and if there's a flaw in the logic I'm the first person who would want to know about it. So you would be helping me here. The larger point I'm getting at though relates to theories that, in Einstein's words are "too simple to be possible". I have long suspected that physical-primitive and sensory-primitive theories are both, in the final analysis, of this type. The former effectively eliminates the mind, and the latter the body, from their attempts to account for "everything". The value of the POPJ is in showing up the implicit contradictions involved in either of these over-simplifications. David Thanks, > Craig > >> >> I've tried to set out the problem as clearly as I can and I would be >> grateful if you could respond directly with a reasoned consideration of how >> your theory might circumvent this formidable logical obstacle. >> >> David >> > -- > 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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