On 10 June 2014 21:04, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > I would argue that, at the ontological level, the explanation *does indeed* > make heat, or temperature, "illusory". The whole point of the reduction is > to show that there could not, in principle, be any supernumerary something > left unaccounted for by an explanation couched exclusively at the > "primordial" level, whatever one takes that to be. Given that this is the > specific goal of explanatory reduction, what we have here is a precise > dis-analogy, in that there *is indeed* a disturbingly irreducible something > left behind, or unaccounted for, in the case of consciousness: i.e. the 1p > experience itself. > > You're simply assuming it's unaccounted for. The hypothesis was that there > might be a theory which was successful in "reading minds" and "predicting > thoughts" based on physical observation of a brain. I'd say that is all > that can be done; to ask for more is just anthropic prejudice about what an > explanation should look like - it's like asking, "But why does gravity want > to pull things together?"
But I strenuously reject that this is a gratuitous assumption in context. In fact, you appeal to the same assumption in your statements above. You hypothesise a theory capable of describing and predicting mental states entirely on the basis of their correlative 3p phenomena. Any such reduction cannot, even (or especially) in principle, say anything distinctive about the mental states themselves - the 1p side of the correlation. In the very enterprise of reducing them to purely 3p terms, *without loss*, it renders itself constitutively incapable of accounting for them as distinctively irreducible phenomena in their own right and in their own terms. But then the claim that it is unreasonable or meaningless to enquire beyond this point, rather than erecting some absolute barrier, is in practice a constraint of the particular metaphysical posits one has chosen to work within. > By contrast, there is no need to grant the phenomena of temperature or heat > any such supernumerary reality. > > Grant? There's no need to grant anything "reality". It's sort of an > honorific we give to theories we believe (or at least seriously entertain). I wouldn't get hung up on any particular language here. I simply meant that nobody needs, or would seek, to suppose that it is "like anything" for a system to be at a particular temperature, to put it baldly. Temperature is ultimately an explanatory device, albeit a precise, pervasive and extremely useful one. By contrast, only those on an eliminativist track would seek to deny that it is irreducibly "like something" for a system to be in a conscious state. Consequently, in the last resort, we could in principle dispense altogether with any appeal to the phenomenon of temperature and nothing essential would change. Temperature is straightforwardly reducible to its constituent parts *without loss*. It is at this point that any analogy with consciousness runs out of road. > Primordial matter, as it were, in its > doings, need take no account of such intermediate levels, which, by > assumption, reduce without loss to some exhaustive set of primordial > entities and relations. > > That sounds very anthropomorphic and psychological - as though primordial > matter was Mother Nature and took account or ignored things. In a straight > forward mathematical description you can look at a certain integral and say, > "That's the temperature." and there isn't any formulation in which such a > value does not appear, it's a necessary aspect. I have tried to be clear as possible that I am specifically *not* focusing on modes of explanation here: it's accepted that temperature is a well-defined and useful explanatory device. My point was specifically that we do not have to assume that any such intermediate explanatory level is in any way relevant to the operation of its (assumed) ontological reduction. In that very specific sense there is indeed (at least in principle, which is what we are considering here) a "formulation in which such a value does not appear", and this without loss to that operation, or indeed any other consideration, explanation excepted. The distinctive difference between temperature and consciousness is then that, although (by assumption) an analogous 3p reduction can in principle be performed, one can no longer say that this is *without loss*. I seem to be repeating myself here. But to reiterate once more, if we are tempted to see this as a sign that the search for further explanation is futile, we should first reflect whether we have hit the buffers of a particular explanatory strategy, rather than the limits of explanation tout court. > The problem is that, in the final analysis - and it > is precisely the *final* analysis that we are considering here - such > theories need take no account of any intermediate level of explanation in > order to qualify as "theories of everything", since any phenomenon > whatsoever, on this species of fundamental accounting, can always be reduced > without loss to the basic physical activity of the system in question. > > Or in Bruno's theory, to the basic arithmetical relations. Sure, but I don't know why you are ignoring the specific remarks that I made about this very point. I took pains to explain that it used to trouble me, as you say above, that the same reduction/elimination critique could be applied to arithmetical relations. I think somebody once called this "nothing butting". But on further consideration it now seems to me that there could be a distinctive and potentially game-changing difference. That is, the emulation of computation and hence the universal machine in arithmetic could motivate the missing relation to a distinctively "supernumerary" domain - the modes of arithmetical truth - that is both irreducible to its base and (possibly) demonstrably coterminous with the specifics of 1p phenomena. Of course I claim no technical competence in any such demonstration. But I can see at least the outline of a re-contextualisation that might permit the extrapolation of explanation beyond what may well appear, under different assumptions, as some sort of absolute limit. David > > On 6/10/2014 4:37 AM, David Nyman wrote: > > On 10 June 2014 04:09, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > >> They're "along for the ride" like temperature is alftr on the kinetic >> energy of molecules. Before stat mech, heat was regarded as an immaterial >> substance. It was explained by the motion of molecules; something that is >> 3p observable but the explanation didn't make it vanish or make it illusory. > > > I would argue that, at the ontological level, the explanation *does indeed* > make heat, or temperature, "illusory". The whole point of the reduction is > to show that there could not, in principle, be any supernumerary something > left unaccounted for by an explanation couched exclusively at the > "primordial" level, whatever one takes that to be. Given that this is the > specific goal of explanatory reduction, what we have here is a precise > dis-analogy, in that there *is indeed* a disturbingly irreducible something > left behind, or unaccounted for, in the case of consciousness: i.e. the 1p > experience itself. > > > You're simply assuming it's unaccounted for. The hypothesis was that there > might be a theory which was successful in "reading minds" and "predicting > thoughts" based on physical observation of a brain. I'd say that is all > that can be done; to ask for more is just anthropic prejudice about what an > explanation should look like - it's like asking, "But why does gravity want > to pull things together?" > > > > By contrast, there is no need to grant the phenomena of temperature or heat > any such supernumerary reality. > > > Grant? There's no need to grant anything "reality". It's sort of an > honorific we give to theories we believe (or at least seriously entertain). > > > One could indeed argue with some force that all such phenomena are > themselves, in fine, specific artefacts, or useful fictions, of > consciousness. That is, they are epistemologically or explanatorily, as > distinct from ontologically, relevant. Primordial matter, as it were, in its > doings, need take no account of such intermediate levels, which, by > assumption, reduce without loss to some exhaustive set of primordial > entities and relations. > > That sounds very anthropomorphic and psychological - as though primordial > matter was Mother Nature and took account or ignored things. In a straight > forward mathematical description you can look at a certain integral and say, > "That's the temperature." and there isn't any formulation in which such a > value does not appear, it's a necessary aspect. > > This was the entire point of the argument (focused on steps 7 and 8 of the > UDA) that Liz excerpted: that there is a reduction/elimination impasse that > needs somehow to be bridged by any theory seeking to reconcile consciousness > and any primordial substratum (or, pace Bruno, hypostase) with which it is > supposed to be correlated. And hence we have an unavoidable problem, up to > this point, with theories based on "primordially-explanatory" material > entities and processes. The problem is that, in the final analysis - and it > is precisely the *final* analysis that we are considering here - such > theories need take no account of any intermediate level of explanation in > order to qualify as "theories of everything", since any phenomenon > whatsoever, on this species of fundamental accounting, can always be reduced > without loss to the basic physical activity of the system in question. > > > Or in Bruno's theory, to the basic arithmetical relations. > > Brent > "In the first sense, to be a realist about quantum mechanics is simply to > think that we should believe in the entities and structures that subserve > its explanatory hypotheses. Put simply, belief goes along with explanatory > success. And must be tempered by explanatory failure." > --- Adrian Heathcote, Quantum Heterodxy, Science and Education, April, > 2003. > > -- > 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/d/optout. -- 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. 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