On 10 Jun 2014, at 13:37, David Nyman wrote:
On 10 June 2014 04:09, meekerdb <[email protected]> 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.
By contrast, there is no need to grant the phenomena of temperature
or heat any such supernumerary reality. 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.
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.
Ah! I remind you get the point. Still not sure many see it.
Self consciousness can become equivalent with the knowledge of at
least one non justifiable truth, but the raw consciousness remains
problematical and it seems I have to attribute it to all universal
numbers, perhaps in some dissociated state.
Bruno
David
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