> >
> >
> > It's one of my favourite lines from Hume!.... but the issue does not
> live
> > quite so clearly into the 21st century. We now have words and much
> > neuroscience pinning down subjective experience to the operation of
> small
> > groups of cells and hence, likely, single cells. It's entirely cranial
> CNS.
> > Cortical, Basal, Cerebellum, upper brain stem. So....
> >
> > Q If empiricism demands phenomenal consciousness as the source of all
> > scientific evidence (close your eyes and see what evidence is left.
> QED.) of
> > the science of the appearance of things, then what is phenomenal
> > consciousness itself evidence of?
>
> This is misrepresenting science. Science doesn't aim at the appearance of
> things. It uses appearance, i.e. empirical evidence, to test models which
> go beyond the appearance.
This belief is metaphysics of the kind that has got us into this mess and of
the kind destined to go into the fire along with all the other bollocks of
science folly.
You are assuming laws of appearances drive the universe. You cannot justify
this any better than you could justify the existence of the tooth fairy. The
utility of the laws in predicting appearances is just and only that. End of
story. If what you say is true then when we opened up a brain we'd see the
appearances! We don't, we see brain material.
> If they didn't the models would be mere
> catalogues of data. Phenomenal consciousness is no different.
So you have some sort of misty eyed attachment to the laws that means you'd
ignore blaring evidence just so you're comfy? I want explanations not deemed
truth! If that means admitting we've screwed up our evidence system....so be
it.... (= if we have to let go of 'phlogiston', fine)
And anyway....Yes it is VERY VERY different. Nowhere else in science do you
get 2 presentations of data and ignore one of them. Whatever is claimed
found by neural correlates of consciousness (the science you describe) is
neglected everywhere else in science. For example, if mind is a neural
correlate of brain material, what is the equivalent correlate of, say,
coffee cup behaviour? This inconsistency is simply neglected within science
for no reason. If neural correlates are describing mind in any truly
explanatory way then we should be able to use it to make scientifically
supportable claims for whatever passes for the "something correlates of
coffeecup_ness", even though coffee cups can't actually confirm it. Being a
coffee cup may not entail any experiential life but that is not the point.
The point is being able to make a justified scientific statement about it.
All that can be scientifically claimed about the cup is that there are no
neurons there, so there are no _human_ type experiences. This is not a claim
about the fundamental physics of phenomenality in any other context such as
a coffee cup. For example if the cup is hot versus cold, what might the
difference in experience be? Description (causality apparent in appearances)
is not explanation (underlying causality). Correlation is not causation.
Cakes are not caused by cake recipes....etc.etc.etc... round we go again....
The underlying physics (of which we are constructed) generates the
phenomenality (mind), not a bunch of rules generated by correlating the
appearances supplied BY it. Just like the underlying causality makes a mass
appear like F = MA is being used to drive it. Saying NCC says anything about
what MIND is like using F= MA to make a brick fly. It doesn't make the brick
fly - it says what it will look like to us if it does.
Here's the killer question: Can I build an inorganic artifact out of
whatever comes out of neural correlates science? NO. Good for pathology
detection (such as the coffee cup pathology above) but no use anywhere else.
Cheers
Colin
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Received on Fri Oct 20 2006 - 01:44:50 PDT