On 26 June 2014 15:05, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 6/25/2014 4:08 PM, LizR wrote: > > On 26 June 2014 10:58, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 6/25/2014 3:07 PM, David Nyman wrote: >> >> On 25 June 2014 22:01, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Note that I have not argued that the ability to 3p engineer consciousness >>> will do anything to explain or diminish 1p conscious experience. I just >>> predict it will become a peripheral fact that consciousness of kind x goes >>> with physical processes or computations of type y. >> >> >> As a matter of sociology, you may well be right. But that apart, why >> wouldn't such putative 3p "conscious processes" be as vulnerable to >> elimination (i.e. reducible without loss to some putative ur-physical >> basis) as temperature, computation, or any other physically-composite >> phenomenon? >> >> You mean reducible in explanation, but not eliminable in fact. >> Temperature is explained by kinetic energy of molecules, but you can't >> eliminate temperature and keep kinetic energy of molecules. There's a >> difference between eliminating in an explanation or description and >> eliminating in fact. >> > > I must admit I can't see that personally. If temperature is, in fact, > molecular kinetic energy, then it doesn't actually exist at any level, it's > just a convenient fiction, surely? > > > Why not say it's a convenient quantity. It's the average of some > microscopic variables. If the microscopic variables are reified, why not > their average? >
OK, it's a convenient quantity. The reason to "reify the microscopic variables" is that (according to primitive materialism) you aren't reifying them, they are what actually exists. -- 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/d/optout.
