Prolixing on regardless! David Nyman:
> Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
>
> > I'm hoping this also addresses some of David Nyman's queries.
>
> Thanks, yes it does. However, for the sake of clarity:
>
> > > Why not? What *does* implementation consist of ?
> >
> > Being the stuff, the substrate. It's the only thing actually
> instantiated.
>
> So, given your view that there is only 1st-person, and also given that
> our experience is 1st-person, does that imply:
>
> 1) That we are instantiated as the substrate behaving in some specific
> ways that are in principle empirically determinable?
Yes, but only in brain material. It is only there that we get anomalous
presentation of two aspects to the one process... brain and mind. Only there
can a model of appearances and a model of structure be bound intimately by
the special behaviour delivering qualia to us. Brain material is
epistemologically anomalous and unique.
> 2) That such behaviour, presumably, can be construed both as our
> 'ability to perceive' and as our 'perceptions'?
I think I know what you are after. I'd say that one expression of the
'relational structure' is atoms, cells etc which literally are the brain
which, as a result of its behaviour provides 'ability to perceive'. The
'perceptions' are also an aspect of the very same structure behaving
'brainly' but only perceived from the perspective of being the brain.
> 3) If the foregoing two points are ontologogical (what we are), then
> does our epistemology (what we can know) derive from the internal
> relata of the perceptually-derived models thus instantiated + their
> inferred relation to 1st-person referents?
Yes. I know my own and Bruno's terminology is mixed and probably at odds.
Nevertheless I'd couch it as saying that the relational structure is
literally what we are. It provides a first person presentation of a slice
across the structure at a given scale. Our brains are brilliant at capturing
apparent causality within the appearances. That 'capture' formulated into a
statement of regularity in the universe using scientific method becomes what
we 'know' (natural 'laws'), which is identical to a belief. We are not
justified in claiming that we have captured the structure itself, only that
we have captured the behaviour of a representational slice across it (eg at
the level of an atom via instruments, or an elephant by eyeball).
> 4) If there is only 1st person, what is the most coherent way to
> distinguish the ontology of persons (e.g. you, me) from that of
> non-persons (e.g. some volume of interstellar space)? Or, in what way
> is the ontology of non-persons still 1st-person?
>
There are 2 questions that can be asked of every'thing' X in the universe.
Q1 What is X? A1) That which behaves Xly
Q2 What is it like to be X? A2) It is like Xness
Mind is to brain as
XXXX? is to a coffee cup?
The fact that we can only distinguish between the two questions from the
point of view of being a brain does not mean that the two questions are
valid for everything. Space included. It may not 'be like anything' to be,
say, a coffee cup. That is not the point. The point is that the structure
supports the possibility of 1st person presentation and, once we understand
whether the structure of a coffee cup we can than make a scientific
statement about W.I.I.L. to be a hot coffee cup vs a cold coffee cup. It may
be 'nothing', but at least it will be justified to some extent.
There's a real issue here with language. We have words like ontology and
epistemology and atom, mind and brain. I'd like to simply ignore them all.
Being embedded in a relational structure off the type we are enables us to
hold beliefs. Some of those beliefs are phenomenal presentations (redness),
some are visceral(a belief that I have 10 toes, the expression of which is
phenomenally void until recall, the belief is brain material configuration).
Beleifs can be innate (genetically programmed such as the capacity to
breath) and some learned (language). Beliefs can be about the self or about
the natural world outside the self.
My fervent hope is that some of those beliefs will, in the future, include
models of the relational structure that delivers the phenomenality
containing/depicting the behaviours then used to assemble the existing set
of scientific beliefs. All as one consistent system. A 'Dual aspect science'
without all the anomalous thinking and empirically backed throughout (but
initiated in a science of brain material inclusive of a physics of qualia)
That's as complicated as it needs to be.
I think you and I are on the same wavelength here.
Speaking of coffee ..... I'm off!
Colin Hales
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Received on Wed Aug 09 2006 - 20:11:34 PDT