-- by matter forming various differnt kinds of structure. The problem is, that while a)-c) is not all that can be said about first personhood, it is pretty much all that *is* said in your various definitions [*]. Not only is it not necessary to treat such a 1st person as ontologically primative, it is hardly even coherent , since such a 1st person is clearly complex. > I'm convinced this puzzles and confuses others > too, leading to IMO pseudo-problems like 'intelligent zombies', and > pseudo-solutions like dualism. OK: now we seem to be getting to the nub of the problem. Consciousness and qualia. IOW, 1st-personhood divides into two problems: an Easy Problem of a)-c); and a Hard problem of d) qualia and e) incommunicable experiences. Now: if qualia are the only aspect of 1st-personhood whose emergence form structured matter is "fishy", why not make qualia ontologically fundamental, and keep the Easy aspects of 1p-hood as high-level emergent features ? (It's not just that we don't *need* to treat the a)-c) as primitive, it is also that we can't! A structure that contains representations of other structures is inherently complex!) ( I am taking it that qualia are basically non-structural [**] ) > So it occurred to me: supposing one > were to think of the world not as a collection of 'things' (or as I > think physics teaches us a 'field' differentiated into apparently > individual 'things') but as a 'big person' (or a big personal field, > differentiated into apparently individual persons). Is that idea even coherent ? How can a universal Person contain representations of what is outside itself ? > I'm sorry if this sounds like Teletubbies, but I'm not going to deploy > my jargon this time! We're here because the 'big person' is here and > we're a part of him (her/ us?). Now this 'big person' would have to be > conscious in parts, and unconscious in other parts, but it then ocurred > to me that this is *exactly* analogous to our own situation: we are > indeed conscious in parts and at times, and unconscious in other parts > and at other times. The distinction seems to arise from local strucure > and function. And therefore doesn't require any personhood apart from those structures and funtions. > Everything else really follows from this, and personally I've found > that thinking in this way dissolves the sort of conceptual confusions > that I've mentioned - same structure, same function, same first > personhood (no zombies, no dualism). But always *some* first-personhood, or how else could it be universal ? > The rest of course, is the > infamous 'easy problem', on which I have no particular purchase. > > Now that I've put it in this I hope disarmingly naive way, you may wish > to request clarification on any point, or you may feel that you simply > disagree, or aren't interested. As ever, I'd be pleased to hear from > you. > > David > [*] 1) FP1g - primitive 'global' first person entity or context 2) FP1i - individual person delimited by primitive differentiation (which is agnostic to comp, physics, or anything else at this logical level) 3) FP2 - narrative references to first persons, as in 'David is a first person', an attribution, as opposed to 'David-as-first-person', a unique entity. 4) TP - third person, or structure-read-as-information, as opposed to structure-demarcating-an-entity 1) First person 1 (FP1) - the point-of-view that is directly claimed by an individual (FP1i) such as David or Peter, or what is generally meant when the word 'I' is directly uttered by such a person. 2) First person 2 (FP2) - representations of an FP1 point-of-view as modelled within members of the FP1 community. The usage of 'David' or 'Peter' in point 1) exemplifies one type of such representation, whose presumed referent is an FP1i person. [**] Consciousness is a problem for all forms of materialism and physicalism to some extent, but it is possible to discern where the problem is particularly acute. There is no great problem with the idea that matter considered as a bare substrate can have mental properities. Any inability to have mental proeprties would itslef be a property and therefore be inconsistent with the bareness of a bare substrate. The "subjectity" of consciouss states, often treated as "inherent" boils down to a problem of communicating one's qualia -- how one feesl, how things seem. Thus it is not truly inherent but depends on the means of communication being used. Feelings and seemings can be more readily communicated in artistic, poetice language, and least readily in scientifi technical language. Since the harder, more technical a science is, the more mathematical it is, the communication problem is at its most acute in a purely mathematical langauge. Thus the problem with physicalism is not its posit of matter (as a bare substrate) but its other posit, that all properties are phycial. Since physics is mathematical, that amounts to the claim that all properties are mathematical (or at least mathematically describable). In making the transition from a physicalist world-view to a mathematical one, the concept of a material substrate is abandoned (although it was never a problem for consciousness) and the posit of mathematical properties becomes, which is a problem for consciousness becomes extreme. What Is Physicalism Anyway ? Quantities, Qualities and Russell's Alternative.` Our unwillingness to identify the physical and the mental is at heart a descriptive problem. (There is a class of objections, based on causality, and another on intentionality which I will get onto in due course). Detailed physical descriptions just don't capture the "feel" of conscious states. This is brought out in Frank Jackson's parable about Mary, the neuroscientist who, imprisoned in a monochrome environment, knows all there is to know about colour perception in principle, but is still surprised by the actual experience of colour on her release. Yet there is a wealth of evidence that the mental is strongly correlated with the physical. One way out of this impasse is that physical descriptions do not "capture" the mental, but the mental is nonetheless "there". This is a kind of two Language view. It is a departure from the strongest varieties of Physicalism without entertaining any supernaturalism about the mind. (Of course, if in some underlying way the mental is the physical, albeit under a different description, there is no causal problem.The mental story , in terms of intentions and actions, and the physical story in terms of neural firings and muscular twitches are two different descriptions of the same event, so neither the physical nor the mental is squeezed out of the causal picture). But why don't physical descriptions capture the mental? Consider the way physical theories are verified. An experiment is set up; a theoretical calculation is made of the expected outcome; the experiment is performed and a comparison is made between expectation the actual outcome. The outcome matches the expectation , or it doesn't. But the outcome and the expectation relate to instrument-readings. There is no further requirement to capture the essence of the thing being investigated. The height of a column of mercury in a thermometer is not very much like heat (subjectively or objectively!), but that doesn't matter; it only matter whether it is the expected value of not. The instrument reading only has to track -- vary in line with -- the underlying phenomenon. The other ingredient is the theoretical apparatus, the graphs and formulae used to generate the expectation. These are abstract mathematical structures. If the theory is correct, the abstract structures it uses will stand in a certain relationship to the real phenomenon, one of "modeling" or "mapping" it , so the interrelationships of the elements of the abstract theory will mimic the structure and behaviour of the real phenomenon. nothing further is required, and this relationship of modeling between theory and reality is itself an abstract structure. So these are the ingredients of physical: modeling, mapping, isomorphism, abstraction, relation, quantities. But it is almost tautologous that the real world cannot be made of those ingredients alone (particularly that is can't be a mere abstraction). Thus we have candidates for real properties of the world not captured by physics: concreta, intrinsic properties and qualities. The last is of the most interest, of course. The resemblance between "qualia" and "quality" might not be coincidental. Qualities might be intrinsic to matter yet incapable of being "seen" through the "spectacles" of physics. Our own qualia might be a direct insight into these qualities, not something else in disguise. We need not suppose that all qualities are like human qualia; qualia might be only a tiny subset of the possible range of qualities. Not all qualities need to be had consciously by a being with a mind (human qualia are necessary constituents of full human consciousness, but might not be sufficient constituents). If they are, and they are intrinsic to matter, that suggests panexperientialism. If not, there is an extra factor to conscious experience beyond the nature of experience itself. An objection that could be raised at this point is that if qualia are intrinsic to the matter of the brain, and we have a direct insight into them, they should give a fine-grained physical picture of the brain. Another is that we are not not conscious of all our mental contents -- most of what is going on in our heads it unconscious. So there is a "grain" problem -- relating to the amount of detail in the contents of consciousness -- and, relatedly a "level" problem. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---Received on Wed Aug 09 2006 - 08:04:56 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Feb 16 2018 - 13:20:12 PST