....Those who reject a physicalist ontology of > consciousness must find ways of modeling it as a nonphysical aspect of > reality. Thus those who adopt a dualist or anti-physicalist > metaphysical view must in the end provide specific models of > consciousness different from the emergent models.
Actually this can be false if one realizes that consciousness need not be modeled - indeed must not be modeled - as entitative - if it is to be correctly understood. Consciousness is not an example of something. It isn't something. It is existential not essential. So it comes down to what the word "model" means. If by that you mean an entitative description of something that exists "in the world" then I think that no specific model will ever be found for consciousness and that having one, or attempting to find one, would be distortive. Of course you have said modeled "as an aspect of reality" which is not limited to presence in nature, so maybe your use of the word is actually correct. I tend to think of "modeling" as "objectification" and subsequent determination of the rules of objective interaction instead of phenomenological or metaphysical description. But maybe that is wrong. I am not sure why I think the word "model" need be used that way. Perhaps because it implies the separation of what is meant from the meaning itself? I am not saying that "consciousness" does not have a meaning that it cannot be understood and that the word does not have a meaning. However this meaning ultimately is existential. And that means it is at that nexus where meaning and what is meant are not distinct. Your post is fascinating that is for sure. It also does not mean that the content of consciousness and the sequence of experiences that one has, or potentially can have, cannot be mapped onto a physical structure and then, by predicting the physical future via physical theory and doing the inverse map we can then even determine what the content of the future consciousness will be. Nor does it mean that "killing" does not "cause" "death" and sex does not "cause" "life" - and both sex and killing are ultimately physical acts. (Interesting that one is considered "ethical" and the other not) But this is no great insight and is not in the least dependent on neurology. One can already do this based on simple object models. For example just look down at the current computer screen and you can predict to a large extent what you will experience if you shut the computer off. You can also predict, - not advocating it however ;) - that if you were to remove your eyeballs that you would be what is called "blind". There are a host of other conclusions that we have made for years. Way before neurology ever entered the picture people who were called "crazy" were called "sick in the head". Now they are just more detailed. For example I don't think it has been long that people have know that the back of the head is particularly relevant for vision and I am sure currently they have a lot of the processing mapped out. Both substance > dualists and property dualists must develop the details of their > theories in ways that articulate the specific natures of the relevant > non-physicals features of reality with which they equate consciousness > or to which they appeal in order to explain it. You have to be careful. You are assuming that consciousness has a nature. That can mean that conscious is natural. It actually is not natural. It is existential. To put it another way, consciousness is never positionally conscious of itself. To paraphrase Sartre consciousness is always a non posititional (or non - thetic) consiousness (of) itself else it would be an unconsciousness. But this does not imply that consciousness can ever be thetically conscious of itself (or of anothers consciousness). It is sort of like consciousness will be as a mirror reflecting into a mirror if it ever were to attempt to become conscious of itself and there would be no content. Now this all presupposes that consciousness experiences itself as an it-self. There are experiences in which the notion of separation of self from the experienced goes away and there is then an experience in which consciousness is what it experiences, or better experiences being what it experiences, or even better experiences being experience, or even better experiences being, or to put it as best I can experiences Being, or realizes Being Being, or Is the realization of Being Being (obviously struggling for the phrase here maybe becomes Experiencing Experiencing Experiencing? - where the first "Experiencing" is nominative, the second, verbal, and the last directly objective but in which the meaning of these categories have completely broken down and one sees their essential unity in the true meaning of Being - sorry - best I can do - maybe Vam can help or maybe Molly can help). These experiences are foundational for a true understanding of the meaning of consciousness itself, its existential nature, and at the same instant foundational for the meaning of all Being to include objective being and in particular material objective being or matter as described by physics. Rosenberg argues the relational-functional facts must > ultimately depend upon a categorical non-relational base, and he > offers a model according to which causal relations and qualitative > phenomenal facts both depend upon the same base (this, as you can > probably judge from the awkwardness of the language, is difficult > stuff) Wow. Definitely will be checking this out. Thanks! . Some quantum theories treat consciousness as a fundamental > feature of reality (Stapp 1993), and insofar as they do so, they might > be plausibly classified as non-physical theories. The general > response to Dennett has been to ask what he has developed a theory of > (Block 1994). Thanks again! Block?! Wow... Thanks. Do you know of any contemporary living philosopher who is - making progress is probably the wrong word but - lets say doing original work? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
