Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 09:45:14 -0700

Colin Hales wrote:
>>>
>>>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!

What would count as an explanation for you?

>If that means admitting we've screwed up our evidence system....so be
> it.... (= if we have to let go of 'phlogiston', fine)

I don't have either a misty eyed attachment to current laws or a wild-eyed attachment to radical speculation.
 
> 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?

Information processing.

>This inconsistency is simply neglected within science
> for no reason.

No it is only neglected in your straw-man version of science.

>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.

So you want an explanation in terms of the "underlying physics" - the physics of the really real reality. And how will you know when you've found 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.

A little int(F dt) will make a brick fly quite nicely.

>
> Here's the killer question: Can I build an inorganic artifact out of
> whatever comes out of neural correlates science? NO.

What's your evidence for that assertion?

Brent Meeker


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Received on Fri Oct 20 2006 - 12:45:36 PDT

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