On 17 February 2014 06:07, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 17 February 2014 08:39, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 2/16/2014 5:14 PM, David Nyman wrote: > > > > On 17 February 2014 00:12, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> I don't think so. We know where the values of the Mars Rover are > encoded > >> and how they affect its behavior and we know how we could change them. > >> That's about as good as reductionism gets. > > > > > > But now aren't you just substituting value as an epiphenomenon of > physics in > > place of consciousness? Stathis could just as easily say that this was > > merely a manner of speaking and whatever occurs is simply a consequence > of > > physical causation. > > > > > > I and I would agree with Stathis - except for the "merely". I think > Bruno > > was right when he observed that "epi" doesn't mean anything in this > context. > > Stathis doesn't think that consciousness is separable from the physics; > it's > > just talking about the same thing at a different level. We don't call > life > > an epiphenomena of biochemistry. And I regard "meaning" in the same > way, or > > as Dennett calls it "the intentional stance". > > I think if I say consciousness is an epiphenomenon of biochemistry I > should also say that life is. And should you not go on to say that biochemistry is an epiphenomenon of physics and physics is an epiphenomenon of .... well, something that is not itself epiphenomenal, I guess? The way you formulate the problem seems to tend to the conclusion that any and all appearances should strictly be considered an epiphenomenon of something more fundamental that cannot possibly be encountered directly. And, moreover, there is no entailment that any such something be straightforwardly isomorphic with any of those appearances. I'm not saying that this view is incoherent, by the way, but do you agree that something like this is entailed by what you say? David > We don't say that, because while life is > mysterious, it is not quite as mysterious as consciousness, and it > seems to me that much of the philosophical discussion about > consciousness occurs mainly because it seems mysterious. As a person > somewhat familiar with biology I can see how life emerges from > biochemistry, but I can't see how consciousness does in quite the same > way. To put it differently, I can't imagine all the biochemistry being > there but life absent, but I can imagine all the biochemistry being > there but consciousness absent (though further reasoning may show that > that to be impossible). But maybe that is just a failure of > imagination. > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > > -- > 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.
