On 2 February 2014 19:31, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: On 2/2/2014 5:37 AM, David Nyman wrote: > > Craig, nothing you have said so far diminishes by a single iota the > significance of the paradox to your theory. It's not so easy to disarm it > as insouciantly interpolating armfuls of non-sequiturs couched in an > impenetrable private jargon. You quote Chalmers, but you consistently dodge > (or perhaps don't really get) the point he is making. His analysis isn't > merely that physics seems to make consciousness causally irrelevant, though > that in itself would be daunting enough. The paradoxical entailment comes > from confronting the stark realisation that, despite this, > physically-instantiated bodies and brains (i.e. the appearances in terms of > which we interact both with "ourselves" and with each other) continue to > behave *as if* they were laying claim to such conscious phenomena. > Furthermore, they apparently do so by means of a causally-closed mechanism > that entails that they neither possess these phenomena nor could plausibly > have any access to them. > > > But the "apparently" in the above is not apparent at all. >
That was a little difficult to parse but I assume you mean that the causal closure doesn't necessarily entail what follows? One could just as well conclude that consciousness is a nomologically > necessary aspect of the causally-close physics; that it's no more > separable than is temperature from molecular motion. > Yes, that is a possible way out of course. One would have to say that on the basis of anything currently known, things appear as I've described them, but that this appearance may ultimately yield to future elucidation of novel nomological necessitation (e.g. Chalmers's psycho-physical laws). I think each of us is familiar with the various arguments on both sides of this debate. I tend to the side that this point-of-view inevitably tends to the elimination of consciousness tour court and not merely in the sense that elan vital or phlogiston were properly eliminated as explanatorilyredundant. I'm ready to be surprised, however. 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 [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
