On 6 February 2015 at 04:20, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2/5/2015 5:57 PM, David Nyman wrote: > > On 6 February 2015 at 01:01, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > > You seem intent on defining terms in order to dimiss them. For example, >> why is taking "mental" to be re-description of the physical >> "elimininativism"? Does it eliminate the physical or the mental - or >> neither. If I describe heat as the average energy per degree of freedom do >> you think I've eliminated heat? >> > > I'm sorry, but you don't seem to accept the generally understood sense > of eliminativism here. We're not talking about the validity of one or > another re-description, or mathematical model. In purely third-person > terms, of course, one model can be as valid or useful as another, depending > on the purpose for which it is deployed. But what is at issue here is > first-person reality, actuality or truth. which cannot be similarly > negotiated away in purely third-person terms. > > > Right. Any description/model/explanation is going to be in 3rd person > terms. I'm not sure what you think is 1st person. You use reality, > actuality, truth (and the American way?), >
Not for this Scotsman, thank you very much! but why should those be attributed to 1st person experience. It's often > mistaken about reality and truth is a property of propositions - not > experiences. > I've responded to this in some detail on numerous occasions, yet each time you continue to make more or less exactly same comment or ask the same rhetorical questions. We don't seem to make any progress. > > If that reality is defined in its entirety as an alternative > mathematical model imposed on a primary ontology, it becomes *eliminable*, > in the sense of being functionally replaceable by some alternative > re-description. > > > And vice-versa. If you can replace X with Y that doesn't mean you can't > replace Y with X. > Obviously. And your point is? This principle is perfectly obvious in terms of any reductive hierarchy, > > And here you insert the idea of hierarchy and reduction - which I suspect > is because you don't like reductionism. But any explanation/model has to > be in terms of parts and relations we can comprehend and so they will be > reductionist in some sense - and they will also be synthesist in the > opposite sense that the reductionist elements combine to instantiate the > phenomenon. > Frankly I'm beginning to find responding to your straw versions of what I say rather repetitive. Your suspicion of whether I 'like' reductionism or not is neither here nor there. My point has never been to debunk an obviously fruitful way of looking at things but only to question its limitations with respect to consciousness. I know (because you frequently state) that you don't see any principled distinction between reductionist explanations of consciousness and those of any other phenomenon. Or at least you don't believe that explanation can go any further than that. Well, I'm not convinced and I've tried to articulate the basis of that disagreement. So far you haven't advanced a counter argument that convinces me we're even consistently on the same page, let alone one that refutes my points, which is a pity because I would be really interested in such an argument. > > for example in the case you quote above. > > > But it is not perfectly obvious that replacing model X with model Y has > destroyed/dismissed/eliminated X. > You seem to think that I'm using 'eliminate' in the sense of 'disappears in a puff of smoke'. If a model is eliminable it simply means that it is explanatorily redundant or inessential, which follows directly from the reductive hierarchy of explanation. As I've said before, one could argue that the same stricture could be applied to Bruno's reasoning in comp (i.e. why isn't everything just arithmetic?). I've tried to suggest on numerous occasions how this conclusion might be avoided, but I find I lack the will for the moment to repeat those suggestions verbatim, since they seem to leave no impression on you. > >> You seem to have a reflex so that any mention of something physical >> triggers a response that the mental is being denied, eliminated, and not >> properly honored and that someone is claiming "everything is just physical" >> - even though it's been noted that "physical" is not very well defined. >> > > I'd like you to understand that I'm not saying that 'someone is > claiming' any such thing explicitly (although they might be). Rather I'm > trying to make explicit the implicit concealment of such a claim in the use > of particular assumptions and derivations. > > > So you're saying that are thoughtlessly implying that "everything is just > physical" without knowing what they're saying. And I'm saying I have > thought about it and you're wrong. > I'm not sure what you mean here but I'm certainly not saying that you are thoughtlessly implying anything. I am saying however that there are certain consequences to your view of things (insofar as I've understood it) that aren't necessarily explicit at the outset. In point of fact, when we get down to it, you usually end up asserting precisely those consequences: i.e. that explanation is in principle limited to the third-person mode and that consequently any explicable relation between third and first-person accounts cannot advance beyond a certain limit. But ISTM that this leads to all kinds of false problems and hence I am interested (amongst other things) in Bruno's ideas because they seem to suggest a way out of this dilemma. As I've said before, this is interesting to me even if those specific ideas don't pan out, simply because they shine a different light on the problem. > > > > >> Essentially the question seems to boil down, "Can there be an account of >> sequences of thoughts that can be shared?" We all know there are >> explanations in terms of prior ideas, memories, desires. Why should there >> not also be explanations of the same thing in terms of neurons, hormones, >> and senses? >> > > I think you're caricaturing my position. But to answer your question, of > course there can be neurological explanations, but they' won't *in > themselves* be mental explanations, although they can (hopefully) be > associated with them and in that sense shared. I think the nub of our > dispute is that I'm dissatisfied with leaving it at that. Your response is > generally to tell me not to expect explanation to be capable of taking any > other form or going any further. ISTM that Bruno's ideas, regardless of > whether they ultimately pan out, indicate that this isn't necessarily the > case. > > > Bruno reduces both the physical and the mental to computation. He thinks > he has reconstructed the mental, at least the cognitive part, but it > remains to synthesize the physical. > Yes, indeed it does. But at this stage, as I've said, I'm more interested in the potential of his approach for reconstructing the 'false problems' of consciousness. David > > Brent > > -- > 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. > -- 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.
