On Jun 9, 2:10 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> Le 08-juin-07, à 18:39, Jef Allbright a écrit :
> I don't believe that people in this list would take consciousness as a
> primary reality, except perhaps those who singles out the third
> "universal soul" hypostasis (the first person, alias the one described
> by Bp & p in the lobian interview) like George Levy, David, etc.
Since my name has popped up I'll stop lurking and come clean! I've
been thinking about this again since reading Galen Strawson's recent
defence of 'panpsychism' in "Consciousness and its place in Nature".
His view is that any 'emergent' phenomenon must supervene on
fundamental properties of the same type - e.g. 'liquidity' is a
characteristic behaviour of a fluid that simply supervenes on the
objective characteristics of its constituent molecules, which in turn
supervenes on quantum-level phenomena and so on down to superstrings
or whatever. But there is no analogous narrative in which it is
correspondingly obvious that 1st-person *experience* should ever
'emerge' from any objective or 3rd-person description, in his view.
Also in mine. Reviewing some of my earlier posts on this subject, I
would now say that my view is that our 1st-person experience is
privileged direct evidence (i.e. the *only* direct evidence we have)
that we, and all phenomena of which we are aware, emerge through
differentiation of a subjective existential field. Such
differentiation may be termed 'sense-action', because it is
simultaneously the self-sensing relationships of (what Strawson terms)
'ultimates' (e.g. vibrational strings) that emerge through
differentiation, and the source of all action and structure. We
abstract our notion of 'physical law' from the inter-relations of such
ultimates, but it is crucial that we do not concretise such 'law' as
some real superadded influence introjected from 'outside' the
existential field. Rather, we take the field for what it is, and
accept that it feels and does as we find it. This is simply wielding
Occam's razor with precision to prevent an infinite regress of
'explanation'. Ultimately, to preserve the appearances, existence must
necessarily be self-actualising , self-motivating, and self-sensing.
By rooting sense-action in the ultimates, we can now embed our own
intuitive sensing and motivation firmly where it needs to be in
ultimate reality. Fundamentally, we do what we do for (something
like) the reasons we believe, and we feel what we feel because that is
(something like) how reality ultimately feels about it. Our actions
emerge from ultimate action, and our sensing emerges from ultimate
sensing. This is crucial for questions of 'free will' and suffering
(which I do not put in scare quotes). Our 'will' is a complex
emergent of ultimate will-to-action, and our painful experiences are
directly inherited from underlying layers of sense-action that
simultaneously motivate our consequential actions.
By contrast, the 'non-conscious' zombie is existentially and causally
disconnected - as postulated, it is abstracted from sense-action; it
cannot see, hear, or feel and hence cannot enact (except in *our*
imagination). No self-sensing = no relationship = no action. The
poor creature is a free-standing 'physical abstraction' - the
uninhabited husk of a self-actualised subject. It's the notion you're
left with when you posit an 'externalised world' (i.e. a model) in
pure intellectual abstraction from concrete self-actualisation.
> With comp neither matter nor mind can be taken as primitive or primary
> reality.
My approach proposes something like a fundamental subjective field as
'primitive' (in an Occamish way). Such a field is not yet mind nor
matter, but both 'mind' and 'matter' emerge from it through
differentiation, with characteristics that supervene naturally on
those proposed as primitive. That is: its fundamental action is self-
motivated and self-sensing, and consequently all complex emergents are
experienced as self-motivated and self-sensing. If valid, this
approach is a knock-down argument against the equation of
consciousness with computation. The reason is that computational
'causation' depends on the introjection of 'rules' from a context
external to the computed 'world', and hence loses contact both with
intrinsic causal self-motivation and the fundamental linkage of felt-
sense and action. Hence any felt-sense a computer may possess as a
concrete object must necessarily be independent of whatever purely
programmed 'actions' it may be instantiating. Also, the notion of,
say, a rock implementing any computation, and hence potentially any
attached consciousness, is likewise struck down by the lack of
coordination between ultimate sense-action and the notional
computational content.
I've written the above fairly quickly and it's probably not very well
expressed, but if anyone's interested I'd be happy to debate and
enlarge. But it expresses why I think Torgny's position is absolutely
untenable. If he were 'unconscious' as he claims he would be a
zombie, and hence, abstracted from the reality of sense-action, he
would exist only in our imaginations.
David
>
> > While I would point out that physics cannot possibly explain
> > everything, being a necessarily constrained subjective model of
> > "reality", I would like to reinforce the point about "consciousness."
> > Consciousness certainly exists, as a description relating a set of
> > observations having to do with subjective awareness, but there is
> > nothing requiring that we assign it the status of an ontological
> > entity.
>
> The importance of being precise! Now I agree with you, although I did
> disagree with your answer to Torgny.
> BTW distinguishing subjective awareness and consciousness is a
> 1004-fallacy ... at this stage.
>
> Also, to say that consciousness exists as a description could be
> misleading. It could exist as a phenomenon.
> I don't believe that people in this list would take consciousness as a
> primary reality, except perhaps those who singles out the third
> "universal soul" hypostasis (the first person, alias the one described
> by Bp & p in the lobian interview) like George Levy, David, etc.
>
> With comp neither matter nor mind can be taken as primitive or primary
> reality.
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Sat Jun 09 2007 - 19:49:17 PDT