Re: Are First Person prime?

From: David Nyman <david.nyman.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 21:33:08 -0000

1Z wrote:

> 1) the don't seem to have, and they *are* what they seem
> 2) they are incommunicable in mathematical, and hence
> sructrural terms.

1) Well, this obviously depends on the subject of the seeming. To me,
'red', 'middle C', or 'bitter' all *do* seem to possess a sort of
directly sensed 'vibrational' quality that is essential, for example,
to why I would feel they were 'like' or 'unlike' other colours, sounds,
or tastes, or where they would *subjectively* lie in 'spectra'
analogous (but not identical) to those of 'physical' properties.

2) They are by definition incommunicable in mathematical or any other
language, but this does not in my *experience* equate to their being
'structureless' in *feel*. If I attempt to imagine what the 'bare
substrate' would *feel* like, I am frankly at a loss because it *seems*
to be devoid of content - what would there be to be 'felt'? But beyond
the substrate we have the equally fundamental IMO notion of
differentiation (a neutral term I'm using because it isn't committed to
a purely 'physical' view) and it seems to me that the intersection of
substrate and differentiation could well *be* the direct experience of
content. I also call such content 'structure' because it is
differentiated but if you'd rather reserve this for the relational
idea, so be it.

> Correlation is not identity.

Precisely. But the correlation of qualia with structurally
differentiated 'physical' phenomena leads to the intuition that qualia
themselves may be an *experiential synthesis* based on structural
differentiation of the same bare ('property-less' in your own terms)
substrate. The substrate, as you say elsewhere, provides enduring
existence within which the properties manifest and change. I'm
suggesting that the *existence* of the differentiated substrate
*synthesises* the qualia (i.e. they entail multiple differentiations)
and the mutual *relations* of the differentiated substrate *are* the
'properties'.

BTW, when I meditate on a substrate whose differentiation resolves into
'me' 'you' and other persons, I tend to 'take it personally'. The
'impersonal' gaps between persons are IMO no different in kind than the
gaps between my own experiences at different times, places, branches of
MW, etc. The substrate is in these terms a single 'potential
experiencer'. The actual experiences it possesses are then a function
of an infinite network of differentiation. I've said something
elsewhere about the implications of this for the perception of time
both as discrete, rather than totalised, experiences, and as a
'dynamic' quale, mediated by discrete 'capsules' of locally-delimited
information.

> Mutual relations are not internal relations. Purple
> lies between red and blue, but being told that
> doens't tell you what purple looks like unless you
> already know what red and blue look like. Realtional
> information about colours does not convey the colours
> themselves.

Nothing can 'tell you what purple looks like'. Purple is a medium that
carries information, not information itself. However, the *feel* of
purple may seem related to the *feel* of blue. Isn't this ultimately a
matter for each 'seemer' to meditate on?

> If that were the case, there would be no HP, and threfore no
> need for any first-personness worth arguing about.

I don't think that the HP is a useful idea. I think there is existence
and this is something I 'take personally' because it *seems* to
manifest as me, and other mes, all of whom I find it intuitive to
conceive as subsets of a much Vaster me, with 'conscious regions' (e.g.
'me yesterday', 'me on the branch where I didn't have that last beer',
'Peter five minutes ago') and 'unconscious regions' (e.g. 'me after
that last beer', interstellar space, a rock). The EP is the observable
behaviour (information content) of all this, insofar as we have access
to and can make sense of it.

> That is still pure Chalmers -- natural supervenience is not identity,
> after all.

Well, if 'experience' is the fact of *being* differentiable existence,
and 'the physical' is the observable relations thereof, then both
ultimately 'supervene' on there being something rather than nothing.
Further correlation is IMO an empirical issue from which might stem a
more robust theoretical model embracing both. If this is the substance
of Chalmers' claim then I suppose I would go along with it.

> > How - by relational modulation of the 0-personal substrate.
>
> If you modulate a bunch of relations , you get another bunch
> of relations. That is no departure from reductive physicalism.

Yes, but that's not what I meant. You experience as the fact of *being*
the 'modulated' (differentiated) substrate, not *observing* it (i.e. as
information). You do of course observe it, but that then is 2nd-order,
the relational level of information, not the substrate level of
existence. This is why I insist that differentiation is as 'primitive'
as the substrate, in the sense that there is nothing in the notion of
'substrate' as a semantic container for 'bare enduring existence' that
would lead you to suppose that it was differentiable. There's no
reducible 'process of differentiation' at this semantic level, but
rather having introduced the notion of difference, you can then
synthesise this into whatever sort of differentiation/ structure/
relation/ content you need for your theoretical ends.

> If you are going to continue being unable to specify what is
> personal about your primordial 1st peson, then that would
> be better, yes.

I don't really want to go back into the word dispute, but as I've
implied above, this may just be an aspect of explanatory style. Of
course I never meant to claim that the substrate is a 'person' as
conventionally conceived, but as I say, I can't help 'taking
personally' the existent thing from which I and all persons are
emanating. I think, imaginatvely, that if one pictures a 'block
universe', Platonia, MW, or any non-process conception of reality, this
is more intuitive, because everything is 'just there' - superposed, as
it were. So, sure there's a 'layer' at which the individual 1st-person
'emerges', but it's taking everything else 'working together' to
manifest it. So in this sense, for me, it's all 'personal'. But maybe
not for you.

> It all depends on what you mean by physical. For me,
> what physicalism means beyond materialism is that
> all properties are quantitiative and relational. A consequence
> is that there is no layering of any significant kind.

You're on to something here, I think. Of course you're right that the
physical description renders the other 'chemical', 'biological' etc.
schemas redundant. However, this is clearly not the case
experientially, and this seems a very fundamental distinction. 'Form'
for example exists experientially where it is a redundant concept
physically (though not Platonically). So there is something that is
producing a 'layering' that is shaping what we experience and in what
way. I've already suggested that experience is the fact of *being* the
structured substrate, and when we start to conceive the structure in
terms of behaviour (i.e. treat it dynamically) what emerges may well
display the characteristics of a perceiver+perceptual model system.
These characteristics would include the 'forms' of its perceptions and
the modalities of their qualia, including the 'dynamic' quale of
temporal experience. This would yield a relational treatment of
experience which would could be correlated to whatever degree with a
physical description. The results of this would be an empirical test of
conjectured 'supervenience' relations.

David

> David Nyman wrote:
>
> > 1Z wrote:
> >
> > > Why shouldn't they denote that ? And what has that to do with
> > > substances ?
> > > The inside/outside distinction can be asserted is a single-substance
> > > universe. The inside/outside distinction is enough to found the 1st/3rd
> > > person divide, what
> > > do you need a multiplicity of substances for.
> >
> > I agree. I was setting it up to knock it down.
> >
> > > It is not clear why they should be that fact. For one thing,
> > > qualia seem not be structures in themselves. For another
> > > the perceiver-perceptual-model is 3rd-personal comprehensible
> > > and therefore part of the Easy problem. So you are simply
> > > declaring that the HP rides on the back of the EP, for
> > > reasons that canoot be undeerstood within the EP -- just as
> > > Chalmers does.
> >
> > I don't see why you're resistant to the idea that qualia could have a
> > structural aspect.
>
> 1) the don't seem to have, and they *are* what they seem
> 2) they are incommunicable in mathematical, and hence
> sructrural terms.
>
>
> > For one thing, they seem to be systematically
> > correlated with physical phenomena (light, sound) which are structural/
> > relational.
>
> Correlation is not identity.
>
> > Also, they seem experientially (at least to me) to display
> > mutual distributive relations that are analogous to, say, the frequency
> > distribution of the colour spectrum.
>
> Mutual relations are not internal relations. Purple
> lies between red and blue, but being told that
> doens't tell you what purple looks like unless you
> already know what red and blue look like. Realtional
> information about colours does not convey the colours
> themselves.
>
> > So I don't see the suggestion that
> > different qualia are different structural modulations of a substrate as
> > so counter-intuitive.
>
>
> If that were the case, there would be no HP, and threfore no
> need for any first-personness worth arguing about.
>
> > As to HP 'riding on the back of' EP, I'd rather put it that they are
> > correlated, but probably don't map in a simple, one-to-one, 'identity'
> > relation.
>
> That is still pure Chalmers -- natural supervenience is not identity,
> after all.
>
> > If this is simply 'neutral monism', so be it. Insofar that
> > have been disagreeing over terminology, this is entirely fruitless, and
> > we should try not to dispute any more over words. Perhaps I could
> > replace the form of words 'global 1st person primitivity' with 'global
> > neutral (0-person if you like) primitivity', as long as this is
> > understood to be the backgound from which 1st-persons, under suitable
> > conditions, emerge.
>
> If you are going to continue being unable to specify what is
> personal about your primordial 1st peson, then that would
> be better, yes.
>
> > > AFAIC that amounts to saying they supervene on the physical --
> > > on the 0-personal.
> >
> > No, that's going too far, IMO. I'd rather have them both mapping onto a
> > neutral substrate that is basic.
>
> AFAICS, that *is* supervening. What do you think
> supervening is ?
>
> > As I concede above, we could call this
> > 0-personal, but this is surely not baldly equivalent to 'physical'.
> > Just as we schematise the physical into chemical, biological,
> > physiological levels etc, there may be analogous but different
> > 'experiential layering' supporting the emergence of the conscious
> > modalities we in fact encounter.
>
> If they are not all just structure, there must be, yes.
>
> The claim of physicalism (as opposed to materialism, or
> neutral monism) is that everything is just
> structured matter, and that all the layers reduce to
> physics.
>
> > > >and
> > > > different types of structure yield different types of qualia.
> > >
> > > How and why ?
> >
> > How - by relational modulation of the 0-personal substrate.
>
> If you modulate a bunch of relations , you get another bunch
> of relations. That is no departure from reductive physicalism.
>
> > Why -
> > because of the infinite (or at least Vast) possibilities of modalities,
> > range, etc. inherent in this, on the analogy of the physical/
> > relational correlates (light, sound, taste, etc).
> >
> > > That would be equally true of a 0-personal substance, ie matter.
> >
> > But a 'neutral (0-personal?) substrate' is not a rigidly 'physical'
> > one, if that's what you intend by 'matter'.
>
> It all depends on what you mean by physical. For me,
> what physicalism means beyond materialism is that
> all properties are quantitiative and relational. A consequence
> is that there is no layering of any significant kind.


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Received on Sat Aug 12 2006 - 17:35:11 PDT

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