On 2/5/2015 12:52 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 8:54 AM, David Nyman <da...@davidnyman.com
<mailto:da...@davidnyman.com>> wrote:
On 5 February 2015 at 13:35, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com
<mailto:stath...@gmail.com>>
wrote:
On 4 February 2015 at 12:49, David Nyman <da...@davidnyman.com
<mailto:da...@davidnyman.com>> wrote:
> On 3 February 2015 at 23:11, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com
<mailto:stath...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>> An epiphenomenon is a necessary side-effect of the primary
phenomenon.
>> The epiphenomenon has no separate causal efficacy of its own; if it
>> did, then we could devise a test for consciousness. This, by the way,
>> does not imply that consciousness does not exist or is unimportant.
>>
>> The parallel examples I would give are emergent phenomena such as the
>> economy. You might say this is not the same thing because it is
>> somehow obvious that the economy is "just" the behaviour of its
>> component parts while this is not obvious for the brain and mind.
This
>> may be a valid point, but what is its significance, in the end?
>
>
> Well, you still haven't addressed the reference issue (you didn't the
last
> time I asked you either). On the face of it, your position would
appear to
> be that there is no such reference; i.e. that everything is indeed
'just'
> the behaviour of its component parts, whatever we suppose those to
be. But
> if so, what are we talking about? Indeed, in what sense are we even
talking
> at all?
What if it could be shown that consciousness necessarily supervenes on
certain types of functional organisations, realised in any substrate,
in any universe, under any physics? Would you still consider there was
a reference problem?
My position essentially is that the reference issue is an artefact of a
false
construction of the problem area. It arises whenever consciousness is
relegated to
the role of a brute (because unexplained and a posteriori) add-on or
accompaniment
to a causally-independent primary physical ontology. This in effect gives
rise to a
form of implicit dualism that leads more or less directly to such
absurdities as
philosophical zombies. Describing consciousness as an 'epiphenomenon' of
physics
tends to this kind of error, IMO.
I think this is very well put. Epiphenominalism doesn't mean supervienience or
emergence, it is a form of dualism, as shown here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DualismCausationViews3.svg
This looks like dualism in name only to me. The "mental" is just a different model of the
same process modeled physically. Just as thermodynamics is different model for
statistical mechanics.
The "mental" is just a different model of the same process modeled physically. Just as
thermodynamics is different model for statistical mechanics.
Brent
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