On 12/30/2017 4:40 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 30 December 2017 at 23:38, Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
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.
Well, I respectfully disagree with Russell, as have many others. What
he says strikes me as obviously false on its face. Thinking, sensing
or perceiving are always relative to the assumed point of view of a
particular agent, 'owner' or knower.
"Assumed"? Why not inferred...as Russell would have it. "Assumed"
seems like the weakest possible reason.
Whenever that's not made explicit it turns out to be a tacit
assumption, as in my imputing it to you. But my imputation of thought
and so forth to you is always on the basis of your assumed point of
view, because what other motivation would cause me to distinguish this
Cannot parse. What does "this" refer to? And how is your imputation
based on my assumption?
from your overt behaviour, which in purely physical terms serves as
its own explanation?
My typing serves as its own explanation?
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"?
The latter, ultimately. Knowledge as a broad spectrum, but always
distinguished from information processing, mechanism or physical action.
Again, you insist on a distinction whose existence is the point in
question. Why is knowledge not merely information processing leading to
appropriate physical action?
Hence knowledge of phenomena in general; of concrete, material
realities; of the 'stuff' of a world, in short.
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.
Don't be daft. Of course knowledge can be reduced to all manner of
things with which it is correlated; and that correlation is of course
ther knot at the heart of the problem that requires disentangling. But
it can't be so reduced *in its own terms*, that's the point.
Don't obfuscate. Nothing is ever reduced in it's own terms. Reduction
means to explain in terms of relations among simpler terms.
And those terms themselves can't be dismissed, except at the cost of
the disappearance of phenomenal reality itself.
So you say.
And of course it's that very realisation that motivates all the
charlatanry about 'seemings' and 'illusions' that we've previously
discussed (with references). But of course even if we were to accept
(under sufferance) this deliberately obfuscatory terminology,
Now you are reading minds and discerning motives?
why shouldn't we seek to further explicate the specifics of 'seeming'
or 'illusion' ? Or are these words merely deployed as a barrier to
further questioning?
It would seem what is missing is motive and intent, but those
may be explained in terms of evolution, DNA, and memories.
Not really. All those are already sufficiently accounted for by the
'bottom-up' causal level of physical action; they don't demand further
causal assumptions. All these so-called emergent levels are useful,
intermediating explanatory assumptions, because this is how things
seem to us. But it is precisely this 'seeming' that is demanding a
more fundamental explanation.
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?
Not at all. That's exactly Bruno's point. But then you need a
plausible theory and an adequate motivation for deploying it. Now you
assert, essentially, that consciousness is simply coterminous with
sufficient intelligence. That may indeed be the case, but it's not a
convincing *explanation*, since it's also perfectly plausible that
intelligence could function identically on purely physical arguments
with no appeal to any mental concepts whatsoever.
But it's not perfectly plausible. In fact it's not plausible at all and
everyone on this list has found philosophical zombies to be implausible.
You've also argued that to want more than this kind of engineering
association is to demand too much of explanation itself. Again, I
think the least that Bruno has achieved is to show that this need not
at all be the case. At the very least, that should be enough to give
you pause in your somewhat dogmatic assertion of this point.
My assertion is far less dogmatic than Bruno's. I don't claim that
models based on infinite chains of inference are a good model of human
consciousness.
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?
I know you keep banging this drum, but no. We're back at Telmo's
point. Emergence is indissolubly associated with thought, perception
and explanation itself; it simply isn't an additional ontic fact. So
of course we can *speak* of any putatively emergent phenomenon -
water, life, the Republican Party, what you will - in its own terms.
But those terms are always promissory notes to be cashed out in the
only truly negotiable terms, namely those of observed phenomena, the
very things I am asserting fail to be further reducible *in their own
terms*, and hence whose irreducibility cannot be avoided in any
satisfactory explanation.
Now I'm confused again. These terms which fail to be further reducible
in their own terms (which is trivially true of everything) and emergence
isn't an ontic fact (which is trivially true of all emergence) ARE
modeled by Bruno's reduction to computations?
Brent
Brent
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).
You're being silly again. Vaccines are used to prevent contagion in
the first place, not to treat disease. The contagion in question here
is the overapplication of a powerful process beyond the point where it
ceases to be able do the job for which it is designed (a practice also
to be studiously avoided in medicine, for that matter). The power of
reductionism is that it lets us get to the bottom of things. Trouble
is, it doesn't offer a corresponding ladder to ascend back to where we
began, because its effectiveness is all from the bottom up. It gives
us extraordinary power to differentiate, but no corresponding
integrative insight, except by assumption of an un-argued-for identity
with the thing with which we began. So when we come to perception
we're stuck with manifestly daft proposals like the idea that
neurocognition and phenomena are 'identical' (in some uniquely
non-identical manner, presumably) or, more incomprehensibly still,
that the latter are 'illusory'. That sort of thing is the true
mysterianism; my hope is that some useful illumination remains to be
shed on it.
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.
Good. How, exactly?
David
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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