On 25 June 2014 17:26, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > 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. >
In my experience it isn't just that they don't see it, but that something in them fiercely resists seeing it. And this is, I think, because it violates an implicit tenet of "physicalism", which is that in the final analysis there must be an exhaustive accounting of any state of affairs that makes no fundamental appeal to the first person. From this perspective, consciousness, in the first-personal sense, is considered, in the last resort, as dispensable or else as a kind of epiphenomenal rabbit to be produced at the last moment, by some sleight-of-matter, from the physicalist hat. The problem, however, is that the process of dispensing with the first person cannot itself be achieved without recourse to the "convenient fictions" of that very epiphenomenon, which makes the whole enterprise self-defeating and, indeed, egregiously question-begging. It exasperates me when people adduce phenomena such as temperature or life as analogous to consciousness, without noticing that the analogy is, at best, a half-truth. It is true - or at least plausible - that there might be some discoverable set of physical processes that could, in principle, be shown to be correlated with the conscious states of any physical system we deem to be conscious. But we are also forced to assume - ex hypothesi physicalism - that all such processes are "fully instantiated" entirely at the most basic level posited by the physical theory in question. This poses no problem whatsoever, in principle, for temperature, or life, or any other of the exhaustively 3p-describable levels "stacked" in a virtual hierarchy on the foundation of physics. It is of no import that any higher level is "eliminated" in such a reduction, because it is not, in the end, required to "do any work"; in fact the very success of the reduction is that such levels are revealed, in essence, as convenient fictions. It is uniquely in the case of consciousness that this approach becomes self-defeating, unless we are willing to allow the "convenient fiction" of consciousness itself to be eliminated with all the rest. But then, if we do so allow, the very phenomena on which we have been relying instantly vanish, like the Cheshire Cat, leaving not so much as a smile behind. 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. 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.
