On 12/22/2017 4:50 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 22 Dec 2017 23:16, "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 12/22/2017 6:31 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes" <te...@telmomenezes.com
<mailto:te...@telmomenezes.com>> wrote:
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman
<da...@davidnyman.com <mailto:da...@davidnyman.com>> wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes
<te...@telmomenezes.com <mailto:te...@telmomenezes.com>> wrote:
>>
>> > So we are told. But what if someone could look at a
recorded MRI of you
>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I
write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the
keyboard, and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are
activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely
correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision?
How does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a
zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream
Argument as our point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made
distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question
becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and
sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear
also to refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come
to be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular
way it does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should
perhaps not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as
intrinsic components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be
mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating
transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action.
And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever
detailed level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether
'narrower' or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further
that this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of
mechanisms that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised
'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still
remains of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself
and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within
it, including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a
moment to an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on
an LCD screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails
to resemble point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated
with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising.
But the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the
bulk of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's
brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole
seems possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream
and the mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final
burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter
can no longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a
conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical
theory - adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation
between the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms. At this
point, enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory
that cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the
matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard'
problems seem less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian'
position on matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause
even within physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of
WYSIWYG, in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what
you get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you
need to delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might
then be: The
> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.
David, excellent text.
Taking the cue of your slogan (which I love), see if you agree:
A possible model of what is happening is that there is an
objective
reality that is independent from any of us, and that is made of
matter.
OK, but even saying that is already assuming more than is
actually warranted by the evidence, as your remarks about the
epistemological circularity of emergentism point out. The more
physics is successful in penetrating the mathematical structure
of matter, the less like any naive version of an external 'world'
it appears to be. The culmination of this is the realisation that
the entirety of what we ordinarily take to be 'concrete' reality
must inevitably be an epistemological construct, not an
independent ontological fact, superadded to its
mathematico-physical 'components'.
But that it is a mind-independent ontological fact is part of its
construction, and necessarily so; since what it is intended to
explain is our intersubjective agreement about an external world.
Of course you can reject this and assume solipsism, or simply
assume that the consistency of the "external world" as compared to
dreams and imagination is just an accident.
I fail to see how your second sentence
necessarily
follows from your first. Why would the
assumption of the
mind-dependent
construction of
a concrete, substantial
reality
lead either to solipsism or the conclusion that
the observed
consistencies
are
accidental?
It doesn't. I said that if you /*reject */the existence of a
mind-independent external world, then you will be driven to solipism or
to some accidental correlation with other minds who report things
consistent with your perception (aka the white rabbit problem).
To say that such constructions are dependent on a mind is not at all
to say that they are dependent on one mind alone, or indeed that minds
as a class are independent of anything beyond themselves. The concept
rules out neither a plurality of such constructions nor their
participation in a common causal nexus. My point is rather that this
very causal nexus - ex hypothesi the entire reductionist project -
need not (indeed must not) assume that such 'emergent' levels of
description amount in any way to superadded causal influences. One
might imagine that an omniscient 'observer', in apprehending the
entire causal mechanism at its roots, as it were, would not fail to
comprehend any aspect of its evolution, without reference to any
notion of emergence whatsoever.
I think our disagreement centres, as ever, on different uses of the
notion of an ontology. I'm perfectly willing to agree with you that we
are at liberty to use the term promiscuously depending on context.
No doubt. My slogan is, "Epistemology precedes ontology." You want to
count experiences as elements of ontology, but I think of them as bits
of knowledge, stuff we know. From this stuff we know we infer/invent
models of what exists, which include ontologies.
Indeed this is an indispensable aid to comprehension across a wide
range of fields. But in the present case we must be particularly
careful to eliminate all our tacitly projected 'emergent'
interpretations. Otherwise the danger is that we shall be arguing in a
vicious, rather than a virtuous, circle. And the fundamental premise
of reductionism is that - absent any further interpretation - the
evolution of physical states is an entirely bottom-up process.
I think that's just saying "mind-independent" in different words.
Physics' story of the world is not exactly all "bottom up". It includes
the Past Hypothesis and, in most interpretations, randomness.
Materialism, physicalism, and reductionism are not all exactly the same
thing.
Bottom up all the way down, if you want a slogan. And yet somehow that
bottom up process is tightly implicated in the construction of
'emergent' phenomenal realities that, once apprehended, somehow resist
reduction to their components.
I don't know what that means. Could you be more explicit and give and
example?
Brent
So to assume that this is the case because the emergent levels of
structure are already simply 'there' in the ontology is to assume what
we seek to explain and hence in the relevant sense vicious, not virtuous.
David
Brent
We inhabit this reality, and the matter somehow generates the
minds that dream the dream. The hard problem becomes hard
because the
dream takes a secondary role, and the hypothesized model is
taken as
the "hard truth". This model is very useful: it is a good way of
thinking when one is trying to build rockets or computers.
However, it
should be treated as a tool and not more than that, until further
notice.
OK.
To tackle the "hard problem", a different tool is more
appropriate. This different tool puts the dream at the center
of the
stage. This should not sound crazy, because the dream is more
real, in
a sense. We experience the dream directly, while we only
hypothesize
the objective external world.
Actually, the dream *is*, or more formally corresponds to, the
epistemological reality which the mathematical theory implies or,
more strongly, entails.
Different questions can be asked of this
model, for example: how does the presentation of an objective
external
world made of matter arise at the intersection of our dreams?
Does this go in the direction of what you are saying?
Yes. Bruno has sometimes characterised this as objective
idealism. It takes the basic idealistic intuition and connects it
with reason via an objective notion of mechanism. And in so
doing, it holds out the hope of doing adequate service to both
the epistemological and ontological components of the theory,
without distorting, trivialising, or dismissing either. Perhaps
the most elusive insight in the philosophy of mind is that
neither of these components is truly separable or coherently
eliminable from a viable theory of ultimate origins (aka TOE).
Consequently a successful theory of mind cannot be a last-ditch
addendum, a sort of cherry on the cake, to an otherwise completed
'TOE'. The 'fire' of which Hawking has memorably spoken is, in a
subtle but crucial sense, already present at the origin.
David
Telmo.
> David
>
>>
>> Telmo.
>>
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