On 4 February 2015 at 05:11, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote:
> > As I understand it, being an epiphenomenon means one can give a causal > > account of the phenomenon without mentioning it. But the epiphenomenon > > necessarily accompanies the phenomenon. In the case of consciousness > it's > > essentially denying the possibility of a philosophical zombie. > > Yes, that's how I would put it. Trouble is, that's saying both too much and not enough. If one can give a causal account of a phenomenon without mentioning the epiphenomenon then it would seem that the latter has significance only under extrinsic interpretation (i.e. from the perspective of some interested agent). IOW, it would seem merely to be a term of convenience, in the same sense that the economy is a term of convenience for an extrinsic interpretation of the net action of the constituent parts. Consequently to say that it "necessarily accompanies the phenomenon" would appear be true in only a quite trivial sense. What you're saying amounts to the claim that something that apparently has significance only under extrinsic interpretation is actually (and necessarily) the agent of its own parallel but *intrinsic* interpretation. Now the odd thing is that this kind of 'necessitation' can actually make sense, as Bruno suggests, but only under specific a priori assumptions. Under those assumptions, consciousness is indeed just such an 'intrinsic interpretation' that transcends (or 'emerges from') a neutral third-person ontological base in virtue of its analytical truth with respect to an explicit epistemology. Hence it would necessarily be the case (on those assumptions) that epistemology and ontology be inseparable. On this basis, the notion of p-zombies would be frankly inconsistent. 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 [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.
