On 17 February 2014 21:45, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote:
<snip> >> > > You misunderstood my meaning. I said that I don't believe that you >> cannot *possibly* understand comp, assuming you ever give it proper >> consideration, but I see no evidence that *in fact* you have ever >> understood it sufficiently well to refute it. Indeed your peremptory >> dismissals always seem to me to be based on one misunderstanding or >> another, but you never consistently engage with the argument to the point >> where these misunderstandings could be resolved. >> > > If that's true, it is only because being consistently engaged with the > argument entails that I accept a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature > as axiomatic. > Sure, I get that you reject comp, and hence would say no to the doctor. That is your right. But on the other hand can you really be certain that it constitutes a fundamental misunderstanding if you consistently plug your ears to any argument that might persuade you to the contrary? Ah, but in your view the other hand conceals the Kool-Aid and now we know what happens to those who succumb to its deadly allure. <snip> >> > > >> The first is modelled as arithmetic (representing any first-order >> combinatorial system) and the second as a class of indexical arithmetical >> truths. The fact that the latter is encountered after the former *in the >> argument* should not mislead you into supposing that this recapitulates >> some actual sequence of creation, or that one is more "fundamental" than >> the other. That would be to mistake the argument for the thing argued for. >> > > I'm not making that assumption, I am questioning the assumption that "a > class of indexical arithmetical truths" is equivalent to an aesthetic > quality. > You're not questioning it, you're asserting that it cannot possibly be true. But how can you know a priori what sort of "thing" equates with aesthetic quality? Sure, you can respond by saying that you know it by direct acquaintance. But how do you know that indexical arithmetic truth is not known by direct acquaintance? According to Bruno, that's precisely its defining characteristic. A fortiori, it corresponds to what the machines claim for themselves. It is impossible for you to know a priori that such claims are false, but your own direct acquaintance and the similarity of your own claims might, on the other hand, nudge you towards an empathic suspicion that they might after all be true. Ah, but there's that other hand again... >> So granting that comp can indeed faithfully represent the necessary >> reciprocity between function and appearance entails the acceptance (i.e. of >> the force of the cumulative argument) that the latter *just is* coterminous >> with arithmetical truth in some adequate sense and that this is >> *necessarily* the case from the outset. It is not a bolt-on extra to >> computation. >> > > There is no bolt-on extra because the definition of consciousness being > used is already amputated from all of its non-computational significance. > You haven't justified this claim. > It is like taking the color wheel and saying that since values of HSV can > me mapped to it, then knowing HSV coordinates will allow a blind person to > see color. > But this analogy suggests itself only because you have decided a priori to disbelieve some body that claims to be able to see what you can and behaves perfectly consistently with these claims. > <snip> > >> >>> References to Kool-Aid generally have to do with its availability in >>> Guyana, rather than the US. >>> >> >> Ah, I hadn't made the connection with Jonestown. What a revolting >> comparison. >> > > It's a pretty common idiom in the US. Or it was. > That doesn't make the comparison any the less revolting. > <snip> > > >> As I argue above, this does not entail any discrimination between the two >> as to which is the more fundamental; if anything it is the entire system of >> reciprocity that is fundamental, in a Platonic rather than an Aristotelian >> sense. >> > > "it is the entire system of reciprocity that is fundamental" > > YESSS. I call that 'system' sense. Only its not a 'system', because a > system can only function if there is a sensible context in which systemic > qualities can be experienced. > Just so. Now if you reflect on this remark perhaps you may get an inkling of where your general ideas and Bruno's schema might intersect. <snip> >>> >> > >> >> >>> but sensory experience doesn't fall out of either one - not unless you >>> smuggle the possibility of it in before the fact. >>> >> >> But that is not necessarily so, as I argue above. I must admit that it >> used to seem obvious to me that this must be so, and indeed the force of >> arguments like Searle's depend on this native intuition, or common sense if >> you prefer. My position was that sense is sui generis and irreducible and >> that neither of these characteristics could conceivably be successfully >> captured by any objective model except as an optional extra that could just >> as easily be omitted. But I am less certain of that now, and the reasons >> for this stem from a range of considerations that tend to the same >> conclusion. I've mentioned some of these before, but perhaps chief amongst >> them is the fact that the entities captured by comp plead for their own >> incontrovertible access to indexical truth precisely as we do ourselves and >> hence to deny them that truth begins to seem tantamount to solipsism, or >> worse. I can't absolutely rule out the possibility that I'm merely >> succumbing to some arithmetical version of the pathetic fallacy, but I no >> longer think that this is as "obvious" as it might at first appear. >> > > I agree that it is not obvious, but that is only because we are bumping up > against a new understanding. When 'Birth of a Nation' was first shown in > theaters, people jumped out of the way of the train on the screen. We are > not dealing with an obvious form of puppetry which exploits 3D syntax, this > is orders of magnitude more sophisticated. The computational ventriloquist > exploits 4D tropes which are at or exceed the level of public awareness > that we are accustomed to. It's hypermechanism - more akin to something > like automatic writing or a Ouija board than a conventional program. Of > course its going to reflect the common sense which all 4D experiences share > - but it reflects them generically and impersonally. There is nobody home. > It is a commercial storefront. > I'm afraid that all the above remarks make clear to me is the peril of becoming intoxicated by one's own facility with metaphor. <snip> > > It is infinitely easy, because aesthetic qualities are not necessarily > limited. There is nothing to prevent sense from making itself form-like, so > it is form-like. > > >> As I suggest above we need to do more than propose some vaguely >> plausible connection between function and appearance; we need to elucidate >> a principled reciprocity between them, or at least the general shape of >> one. >> > > The general shape is tessellated, non-orientable, anomalous symmetry. It > is the relation of literal to figurative, spatial to narrative, entropy to > significance, etc. > I seem to lack any relevant reference points with which to make sense of all this unfamiliar terminology. I was rather hoping you might begin at some common point of departure that we could agree upon and attempt to proceed step-wise from there. <snip> > > >> This is where I think panpsychist ideas tend most often to reveal their >> lack of traction on the core problems and indeed it is why I gave up on >> them. Just how are we to suppose such primitive sensory-motive interactions >> relate to everything else that we seek to explain? Are we to suppose that >> they are simply the interiority of what manifests as exterior interactions? >> > > Yes, what manifests locally as exterior (to our body) is actually interior > in an absolute sense (to eternity). > That what manifests locally as exterior (to our body) is actually interior is not in dispute; witness the discussion with Stathis. > >> If so, this might suggest a sort of primitive inner view of physics, but >> what further motive is there to conclude that any arrangement of >> micro-views carved at those particular joints would result in a >> qualitatively singularised view of a macroscopic world? >> > > Think of how the pixels of a screen render a singular image. It isn't that > they are joining together and producing an image, but the complete > opposite. We are eliding the differences between the pixels - we substitute > a richer aesthetic whole from the fertility of our own perspective by > ignoring low level partitions. > But this passes much too quickly over the question of who or what is eliding these differences and, more particularly, how. If you can actually propose any kind of principled (i.e. not merely poetically suggestive) schema for how "pixels" at the level of strings, atoms, molecules, cells etc. might be understood as merging or resolving into a singularised, macroscopic appearance of a world complete with thoughts and feelings, I would venture to suggest that this might ultimately be hailed as the greatest single insight since Darwin's. Can you? > > >> Conceptual issues of this kind are often summarised under the grain and >> binding problems and I have never seen any proposed panpsychist resolution >> of them that really convinced me it had much traction (although I must >> admit that Gregg Rosenberg gets closer than most). >> > > The binding problem dissolves because all phenomena are bound on one base > level, and their appearance of disentanglement depends on the constraints > of insensitivity of any particular perspective. > Sure, why not? Suggestive metaphors are ten a penny. But how, specifically? > <snip> >>>> >>> >> As to understanding your position, I am perfectly open to such an >> understanding if you could only help me towards it by answering questions >> about it as clearly and directly as you can. From what I have read of your >> website I would say that you are clearly aware of much of the historical >> material on the topic but I haven't read anything there that convinces me >> that you have either an original or a satisfactory take on the problems. If >> you wish you might start by addressing the combinatorial issues I outlined >> in my preceding comment. >> > > The combination problem stems from the limitations of our perception. > Virtually every problem stems from the limits of our perception. The question remains: how specifically to evade those limits in this particular case? Space and time are forms of insensitivity, or entropy. We have to turn the > whole thing inside out and see public appearances as the tokenized, reduced > form. > I don't see that the idea that public appearances are a tokenized, reduced form - the epistemological avatars, as it were, of a veiled reality (to adopt a phrase of Bernard d'Espagnat) - is in dispute, modulo an eliminativist position on consciousness that hardly anyone on this list is willing to seriously argue for. Again, witness the discussion with Stathis. Consider the total activity of the brain over a human lifetime to be a > single mountain range with many peaks.The brain does not put our reality > together, it breaks it apart into the reality of many levels of bodies. > Yes, but how, specifically? Again one might speculate on how the interiority of the structure of a brain might fragment along the interfaces of any of its constituent parts, but the fact that this seems to lead anywhere but the destination we seek seems all too frustratingly obvious to almost everyone. > <snip> > >> >>> If I sound like a lawyer, it's not to evade questions, but to show why >>> they are irrelevant. >>> >> >> But you haven't succeeded in showing that. You have merely reiterated it. >> Over and over. >> > > I think that I have succeeded in expressing it adequately, but you are > overlooking it, over and over. Not that it would matter, but I do talk to > lots of people and some of them do actually get it. > I wish you luck with a more receptive audience. 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