On Sunday, February 23, 2014 6:51:21 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: > > On 23 February 2014 19:04, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> >> After all, the standard objection to starting from the putative >>> universality of consciousness is why does it appear that so much of the >>> world of appearance is *unconscious*? >>> >> >> That is the only criticism that I have come up with so far of my own >> position that has some potential. >> > > Then it is the one you should concentrate on. >
Yes, I already have. As I explain, it's not actually a problem, but it does require more of a counter-intuitive solution than most of the other criticisms I get (which are straw men from the start). > > >> It is very hard to imagine that what we see as inanimate objects could be >> just the tip of an iceberg of non-human storytelling, >> > > You might be surprised how similar this analogy is to my personal metaphor > for the sensible worlds of CTM. That's why I sometimes call it the > Programmatic Library of Babel. If Borges had known about CTM, I'm sure he > would have relished it. > CTM was the closest thing to how I conceived of metaphysics before I stumbled on the deeper necessity of sense. The idea of sensible worlds of CTM is not objectionable to me at all, except that computation does not require sense, and has no plausible use for it. > > >> however, it really is no more far fetched than imagining the underlying >> microphysics of any given object. >> > > True dat. > > >> All that it really means is that the relation that we enjoy with the >> world is in some sense the fundamental relation of all natural phenomena. >> > > But what sense is that? You say that it is the relation of common, > ordinary sense, as though that alone will prime our intuition to leap the > gap between the human scale and that of - well what precisely? > I don't think that there is a gap. Our ordinary sense - the practice of participating in aesthetic experiences is exactly what is happening on every level of physics and at every time in history. The content is different, obviously, but the fundamental capacity to relate is the same, and it is the polar opposite of computation. > Are we perhaps to suppose all conceivable relations to be those of > reciprocal perception and acting-upon? > Yes. All relations diverge from the nesting of that capacity. > That's out there as the poetic precursor to an idea. Gregg Rosenberg, for > example, has re-analysed the notion of causality from first principles in > order to argue that the effective (i.e. motive) notion of physical > causality at the micro-scale cannot be fully coherent without a receptive > (i.e. sensory) dual. But he struggles mightily to cash this out > consistently at the macro-scale. I'm not suggesting that this is > necessarily precisely equivalent to your basic assumption, but I do believe > that you cannot avoid a similar struggle with these difficulties because > they are inherent in the topic. > He'll have problems if he assumes that the microphysical appearance adds up to macrophenomenal content. That problem goes away with the primoridial identity version of pansensitivity. We begin with metaphenomenal content, so that all distinctions between micro and macro, physical and phenomenal are embedded at the higher level. The microphysics that we see through our body does not match the microphenomena. Physics can be thought of as alienated phenomena nested in discrete rows across space, while phenomenal experience would be nested as a single figurative column through time. The nesting is orthogonal. Coincidences synchronize events on multiple physical scales and build on meaningful associations in many seemingly different semantic contexts. The relation of physical and phenomenal is basically one of accelerated coincidence. http://s33light.org/post/77527626589 If you try to force panpsychism into an emergence model, then yeah, it won't work. You have to think of consciousness as relativity and the speed of light all rolled into one. > All of the objectionable anthropocentrism can be potentially alleviated by >> applying exponential filters of insensitivity >> > > No doubt, if we can indeed elucidate precisely what is entailed by > exponential filters of insensitivity. > I call it eigenmorphism. I don't know that we need to publish a theory about how it works at this point, for now, I think its enough to point in this general direction and see how it might plug into existing physics. > > >> which are proportional to distance, scale, and unfamiliarity. It would >> make sense also, >> > > Make sense to whom? I'm not being facetious: we should be very careful in > theory-making that we are not merely projecting terrestrial notions of what > makes sense on to the cosmic scale. You yourself have used the analogy of > the Galilean paradigm replacing the Ptolemaic and there are countless > others. > Makes sense in terms of 'if we start from this premise that the universe is a capacity to feel, that partitioning feelings would be an important development. > > >> that in a universe produced from the start as an experiential phenomenon, >> that the partitioning of experiences, particularly those which are to >> contain psychologically sophisticated participants, must be especially firm. >> > > Must be indeed. But how specifically? > How do you turn your desire to move your hand into the neurological changes which move them? The neurological change is the expression of what you actually are. These primitive levels of sense are beyond the question of 'how', they are more in the neighborhood of 'how else?' > > >> It may not be possible even for my hypothesis to gain traction on these >> grounds. It may be too much of a spoiler and too many storylines would have >> to be dropped. >> > > Well this is the interesting and also the hard part. Your doubt does you > credit. But I really think you may be making it harder by setting your face > so resolutely against CTM, or at least what such an approach has to teach > us (which is really Bruno's fundamental aim). > I am not against what CTM can teach us. For practical applications, it is going to be computer science which gives us access to the right tools. It's only when it comes down to deciding what to say to the doctor or understanding the big picture that it steers us in the wrong direction. > I'm sure there must be a more mutually informative way of approaching such > über-puzzling issues that isn't merely a wearisome recycling of yes-it-is > no-it-isn't. > It's going to be the technology that will make the sense based ontology a more and more attractive model over time. It has political implications too though. As a society we are imperiled by blind faith in quantitative assumptions that are embodied socially and economically. The more important contribution of MSR or something like it is to bring science, philosophy, and spirituality together in a much more effective way. Craig > 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. 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