On 12/29/2017 4:51 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 23 December 2017 at 02:13, Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 12/22/2017 4:50 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 22 Dec 2017 23:16, "Brent Meeker" <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 12/22/2017 6:31 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes"
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
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?
I
've been pondering how to respond to your question. We've been round
the block on this on numerous occasions. I get the impression that it
isn't so much that you don't already understand what I'm getting
at, but rather that you get an opportunity of rejecting what I
suggest in favour of your preferred alternative. However, as I've
said before, an alternative argument isn't quite the same thing as a
valid counter-argument. My own persistence in pursuing this line
is not, as you sometimes appear to think, some sort of dogmatic
adherence to computationalism, far less an attachment to mystery per
se. It's just that I continue to see a distinction where you do not,
or perhaps find merely trivial, or somehow intractable in any terms
you would find acceptable. Anyway, all that said, I'll attempt a
general characterisation of irreducibility in the context of a theory
of mind, although it essentially recapitulates my explication of the
Dream Argument, which you previously were kind enough to compliment.
OK, you're just saying emergence is cannot be traced backwards to
achieve reduction; that emergence is irreversible. That's not apparent
to me, but it's plausible.
So, before you can have a theory of mind, you need to have a theory
of a mental agent, or knower.
Well you went right off the rails there. Long ago Bertrand Russell
noted that Descarte was wrong when he bottomed out his doubt on "I
think, therefore I am." He should have only concluded, "There is
thinking." whether there is an "I" to do it needs to be inferred.
Minds are distinct from brains in that their field of application is
knowledge
But knowledge about what? Is it merely the Cartesian knowledge that
"There is thinking" or is it knowledge about "stuff" that makes "a world"?
rather than information or
physical
action. To understand a brain is to understand how a physical system
translates action received as input into action emitted as output.
Distinct from this, a mind requires to be understood in terms of a
theory of a knowledgeable agent: i.e. agency
as
actionable
knowledge within and in terms of
a distinguishable phenomenal reality
in which the agent is embedded
.
OK.
This in turn is to say a reality that
is distinguishable from, and
fails of explicit characterisation
in
,
strictly reductive terms,
That seems to be assuming what was to be argued/explained/proven? Are
you just asserting that "knowledge" and "agent" cannot be characterized
in reductive terms. It would seem what is missing is motive and intent,
but those may be explained in terms of evolution, DNA, and memories.
although its is implied
,
or more strongly
,
entailed by a hierarchy of reductive theories of information,
mechanism and physical action.
But you're asserting the entailment can't be read in the other direction?
In bald terms, it differentiates the irreducibility of the
phenomenology of perception *in its own terms* as distinct from those
of any reductive counterpart (e.g. 'neural correlates') with which it
may be associated.
But isn't that the same with any emergent phenomenon? It has its own
terms distinct from its reductive counterparts? Aren't you avoiding
reductionism simply by asking too much of it?
Such a theory is explicitly differentiated from
any reductive theory
whatsoever (i.e. it is a 'vaccine' against the otherwise completed
project of reductionism)
Suggesting you think of reductionism as a disease (making me suspect
your attachment to mystery).
although it cannot
,
and must not attempt to,
evade the necessity of seamless entanglement with precisely corresponding
reductive
theories of information, mechanism and physical action, without which
it would literally be uninformed, inconsistent, disabled and indeed
disembodied.
Does this help at all?
Yes.
Brent
"Plato wanted us to turn around and look at the light, but all human
progress has been made by studying the shadows."
--- Sean Carroll
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