Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
> Perspectival Ubiquity
> From the perspective of any one instance of S(.) within the structure, no
> matter how huge and complex it is, there is a 'perspective' view of any
> other point in the structure. That 'view' is the view that is 'as-if' you
> walked all the way down to the bottom of the hierarchy to a common
> ancestor (parent) S(.) element and then walked all the way up the
> structure to the S(.) that you are viewing from wherever you were. This is
> a direct causal chain. Connected/organised S(.) literally are
> causality/causal chains.
>
> This property is inherent or intrinsic or innate to any structure of S(.),
> regardless of the details of S(.). I posit that this 'visibility', or at
> least the potential for it, is fundamental to the generation of qualia.
Yes, good language. 'This visibility, or at least the potential for
it', is the heart of my intuitions about the primacy of the 1st-person
- i.e. 'I' am an indexical lens on a manifestly/ ubiqitously/
unmediatedly/ relflexively/ revealingly behaving 1st-person gestalt
(badly needs abbreviating, but all the adverbs are required).
> If one S(.) has some sort of proto-experience, then cohorts of S(.) acting
> coherently will combine their proto-experiences in the manner of the
> collective behaviour of the cohort.
>
> Having arrived at this point we have said nothing about the nature of
> "what it is like" i.e. that the visibility thus conferred has any
> particular quality to it..light, sound, taste and so on. You can imagine
> this is being cohorts of S(.) behaving in different ways for different
> subjective qualities.
Yes, this is in essence what I've been trying to express in my dialogue
with Peter, where I've used 'structure' as the static equivalent of
'behaviour'. He doesn't believe that qualia have this aspect of
structure or behaviour, and I'm not sure how debatable this is
indexically, but IMO it's strongly suggested by experiential
correlation with physical processes. The fundamental
'what-it's-likeness' of cohorts (or modalities) of qualia is
incommunicable, though not incommensurable, because they are the
instantiation of information, not information itself, which is
abstracted from their structural/ behavioural relations. This primary
representation appears analogically (i.e. what it's *like*) with
digital-ness a second-order derivation (using analogic qualia as bits).
> B) The structure expresses a quale. The structure behaves quale-ly. From
> the perspective of being the structure that does this behaviour quale-ness
> is experienced. In the direction of the quale is perceived a 'perspective
> view' of character 'qualeness'. (tough language, this!) This is 'matter'
> but has intentionality. It is intrinsically 'about' something elsewhere.
Yes, this reiterates the point about analogy or metaphor. Language is
rooted in metaphor, and the 'what-is-it-like?' regression has to
originate somewhere. This point of origin is the 'like this!'
character of 'qualeness'.
David
> David Nyman:
> >
> > Colin Hales wrote:
> >
> >> There is no dualism here. The simplest solution is a monism of a
> posited
> >> structural primitive, say, S(.). The universe is a structure of
> organised
> >> S(.). One type and one type only. The structure itself is simply and
> necessarily a hierarchically organised massive collection of S(.). In this
> >> hierarchy the behaviour that generates appearances and that which does
> not
> >> are indistinguishable. The whole question changes to one of visibility.
> >
> > Absolutely.
> >
> >> Make sense? I'll keep saying this until it sinks in. Somebody other
> than
> >> me
> >> has to see this!
> >
> > Yes, it makes a lot of sense, and reminds me of long hours over the
> decades struggling to visualise how various 'observer perspectives' would
> map in detail to my 1st-person experience (a career in software
> engineering also presents many opportunities for meditative waiting!)
> 'Saving the appearances' was my point of departure, because it seemed to
> be mostly ignored in standard theoretical treatments, apparently in
> pursuit of some mirage of methodological 'rigour' - myopia, it seemed to
> me. Also, all those 'quantum collapse' notions involving 'the observer'
> seemed to be blind to the fact that this seemingly
> > influential chap was simply a non-isolatable element of the network of
> interacting information under 'observation'.
> >
> > My question about observing from the perspective of the 'gestalt' (maybe
> this isn't the best word) was posed in this spirit. That is, each one of
> my list of 'observables' makes sense to me from this perspective, but not
> from that of a classical 'nameable' 1st person. QM/MW is just one way to
> conceptualise the structural/ behavioural aspects of this, but my starting
> point is: given these experiences, 'from what experiential perspective
> would the situation look, feel, sound, taste, smell, like this?' And the
> answer always seems to be 'from the point of view of the universe,
> delimited by these information horizons.' This for me is the fundamental
> 1st-person perspective.
> >
> > David
> >
>
> How about this:
>
> When you have a hierarchical structure of a single posited primitive there
> is a fundamental property that is inherent in the structure as a whole.
>
> This is as follows:
>
> Perspectival Ubiquity
> From the perspective of any one instance of S(.) within the structure, no
> matter how huge and complex it is, there is a 'perspective' view of any
> other point in the structure. That 'view' is the view that is 'as-if' you
> walked all the way down to the bottom of the hierarchy to a common
> ancestor (parent) S(.) element and then walked all the way up the
> structure to the S(.) that you are viewing from wherever you were. This is
> a direct causal chain. Connected/organised S(.) literally are
> causality/causal chains.
>
> This property is inherent or intrinsic or innate to any structure of S(.),
> regardless of the details of S(.). I posit that this 'visibility', or at
> least the potential for it, is fundamental to the generation of qualia.
> =======================
> Additivity
> If one S(.) has some sort of proto-experience, then cohorts of S(.) acting
> coherently will combine their proto-experiences in the manner of the
> collective behaviour of the cohort.
>
> Having arrived at this point we have said nothing about the nature of
> "what it is like" i.e. that the visibility thus conferred has any
> particular quality to it..light, sound, taste and so on. You can imagine
> this is being cohorts of S(.) behaving in different ways for different
> subjective qualities.
> =========================
> Here we have at least the basics of the production of a quale. There are a
> raft of other issues before you can locate these things in brain material.
> But at least the hierarchical structures have these innate possibilities.
> =========================
> Now consider this:
>
> A) The structure expresses an atom (a subset of collaborating S(.) behaves
> atom-ly). The structure is not 'about' an atom. It 'is' an atom.
>
> Contrast this with:
>
> B) The structure expresses a quale. The structure behaves quale-ly. From
> the perspective of being the structure that does this behaviour quale-ness
> is experienced. In the direction of the quale is perceived a 'perspective
> view' of character 'qualeness'. (tough language, this!) This is 'matter'
> but has intentionality. It is intrinsically 'about' something elsewhere.
> =========================
>
> We easily recognise A as being matter.
>
> Q1. What would we recognise as B?
>
> A1. It is not matter in the sense we know it. I'd call it 'virtual
> matter'. From the point of view of being the structure behaving quale-ly,
> it is acting 'as-if' some other part of the structure interacted with it.
> More than that the interaction is transient. The structure has to
> repeatedly behave as if interacting with the selected other part of the
> structure. This suggests repetitious behaviour of matter will be
> associated with the arrival of virtual matter.
> ==========================
>
> So you can see that with simple about the nature of hierarchical
> structures we have made some headway as to how qualia may be possible.
>
> Have a think about it, anyway...
>
> colin
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Received on Tue Aug 15 2006 - 15:50:56 PDT