On Jun 15, 1:13 am, "Stathis Papaioannou" <stath....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
What do we lose if we say that it is organisation which is
> intrinsically capable of sense-action, but it takes a substantial amount of
> organisation of the right sort to in order to give rise to consciousness?
> This drops the extra assumption that the substrate is important and is
> consistentr with functionalism.
The 'substrate' to which I refer is not matter or anything else in
particular, but a logical-semantic 'substrate' from which 'mind' or
'matter' could emerge. On this basis, 'sense-action' (i.e. two
differentiated 'entities' primitively 'sensing' each other in order to
'interact') is a logical, or at least semantically coherent,
requirement. For example, if you want to use a particle-force
analogy, then the 'force' would be the medium of exchange of sense-
action - i.e. relationship. In Kant's ontology, his windowless monads
had no such means of exchange (the 'void' prevented it) and
consequently divine intervention had to do the 'trick'. I'm hoping
that Bruno will help me with the appropriate analogy for AR+COMP.
In this logical sense, the primitive 'substrate' is crucial, and ISTM
that any coherent notion of 'organisation' must include these basic
semantics - indeed the problem with conventional expositions of
functionalism is that they implicitly appeal to this requirement but
explicitly ignore it. A coherent 'functionalist' account needs to
track the emergence of sense-action from primitive self-motivated
sources in an appropriate explanatory base, analogous to supervention
in 'physical' accounts. However, if this requirement is made
explicit, I'm happy to concur that appropriate organisation based on
it is indeed what generates both consciousness and action, and the
causal linkage between the two accounts.
David
> On 15/06/07, David Nyman <david.ny....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jun 14, 4:46 am, "Stathis Papaioannou" <stath....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> > > Of course all that is true, but it doesn't explain why neurons in the
> > cortex
> > > are the ones giving rise to qualia rather than other neurons or indeed
> > > peripheral sense organs.
>
> > Well, you might as well ask why the engine drives the car and not the
> > brakes. Presumably (insert research programme here) the different
> > neural (or other relevant) organisation of the cortex is the
> > difference that makes the difference. My account would run like this:
> > the various emergent organs of the brain and sensory apparatus (like
> > everything else) supervene on an infrastructure capable of 'sense-
> > action'. I'm (somewhat) agnostic about the nature of this
> > infrastructure: conceive it as strings, particles, or even Bruno's
> > numbers. But however we conceptualise it, it must (logically) be
> > capable of 'sense-action' in order for activity and cognition to
> > supervene on it. Then what makes the difference in the cortex must be
> > a supremely complex 'mirroring' mode of organisation (a 'remembered
> > present') lacked by other organs. To demonstrate this will be a
> > supremely difficult empirical programme, but IMO it presents no
> > invincible philosophical problems if conceived in this way.
>
> What you're suggesting is that matter is intrinsically capable of
> sense-action, but it takes substantial amounts of matter of the right kind
> organised in the right way in order to give rise to what we experience as
> consciousness. What do we lose if we say that it is organisation which is
> intrinsically capable of sense-action, but it takes a substantial amount of
> organisation of the right sort to in order to give rise to consciousness?
> This drops the extra assumption that the substrate is important and is
> consistentr with functionalism.
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Thu Jun 14 2007 - 21:17:06 PDT