Jesse Mazer wrote:
>
>> As I said in the first post: aspect 1 is descriptions of an underlying reality. aspect 2 is also a set of descriptions, but merely of generalisations/abstractions of the appearances in an observer made of . Both aspects are equally empirically supported. You can't give either aspect priority-ownership of the evidence.
>>
>
>
> And why, specifically, would something like Bohmian mechanics fail to qualify as "descriptions of an underlying reality"? is it because it doesn't say anything about first-person qualia, or is it for some other reason? What if we had a theory along the lines of Bohmian mechanics, and combined that with "psychophysical laws" of the type Chalmers postulates, laws which define a mapping between configurations of physical entities (described in mathematical, third-person terms) and specific qualia--would *that* qualify as what you mean by "aspect 1"?
>
Good question.
YES - Bohmian/Stappian/Bohrian/Penrosian/any old quantum mechanics
flavour all fail to predict an observer. Brilliantly predictive OF
observations (appearances) - but that's it. */Dual aspect science
predicts that failure. /*
RE: Chalmers 'postulates' ('law of organisational invariance' etc)
What you are talking about is basically the same thing as 'neural
correlates of consciousness'. Correlating reports of P-consciousness
with neural activity is descriptive: WHAT. Not explanatory: WHY? It is
based on the "Mind Brain Identity" theorem...yet another tedious
cultural agreement masquerading as science that says: "to describe the
brain is to describe the mind". The dressing up with 'psychophysical'
label changes nothing. There is no prediction here. There is merely
correlation based on the same kind of prescriptive deployment of a new
self-fulfilling 'received view'. I hope you can see this.
'Postulates' are just empty declarations. If they fail to make any
predictions they are just a lot of conventions - folk lore - just as bad
as any ascription to QM as ontological. If postulates are contrived to
fit expectations then they are tautologies (in exactly the same way that
computer 'science' computer programs are self-fulfilling tautologies).
This process merely creates a CORRELATE of the observation, not a LAW OF
NATURE.
A real theory would literally predict /a-priori /that our brains should
exist and have the structure they have, that it will be 'like something'
to be the material involved. (It will also be able to make a
scientifically justified statement about the P-cosnciousness of a rock,
a computer and an elephant.) It will predict that: There will be
neurons, assembled into layers and columns like SUCH, that their shape
shall be THIS. That membranes of THAT structure shall be found and shall
be be penetrated by ion channels THUS; That the soma shall be of this
morphogy, and the ion channels shall be of these types and have surface
densities thus...that the composition of the membrane shall be an
ordered but dynamic fluid with lipid rafts doing THIS in THESE cells to
make RED in V4 of the occipital. and so on...
Further more, a complete <aspect 1> will result in F=MA as an emergent
a-priori property of reality, calculated as a statistic of the monism.
It would also predict, a-priori, the gravitational constant as an
<aspect-1> statistic, along with the speed of light C and so on. In
that way the <aspect 1> and <aspect 2> shall mesh, perfectly, both
supported by the empirical evidence (a) by predicting an observer
(structured as per the above) and (b) that the observer shall construct
the law F=MA in the appropriate non-relativistic context of appearances.
<aspect 1> is NOT underling reality, but a description of it. There may
be 100 complete, consistent sets, all of which work as well as each
other. We must live with that potential ambiguity. There's no
fundamental reason why we are ever entitled to a unique solution to
<aspect 1>. But it may turn out that there can only be one. We'll never
know unless we let ourselves look, will we??
<aspect 2> is NOT underling reality, but a description of its
appearances to an observer inside a reality described structurally as
<aspect 1>. 100 different life-forms, as scientists/observers all over
the universe, may all concoct 100 totally different sets of 'laws of
nature', each one just as predictive of the natural world, none of
which are 'right' , but all are 'predictive' to each life-form. They all
are empirically verified by 100 very different P-consciousnesses of each
species of scientist....but they /all predict the same outcome for a
given experiment/. Human-centric 'laws of nature' are an illusion.
<aspect 2> 'Laws of Nature' are filtered through the P-cosnciousness of
the observer and verified on that basis! We need to 'get over ourselves'
yet again, in another round of 'copernican decentralisation' : only this
time in respect of our phenomenal lives and the laws we concoct..
Are we there yet?
Science is really messed up. The 'XYZ interpretation' is a peculiar
cover welded over knowledge, erected by physicists. At the same time
neuroscientists have their own cover welded over their own explanatory
failure: called the Mind-Brain Identity Theorem. The two disciplines
rarely meet on the same ground. Each has the answer to the other's
problem. The system perpetuates. No progress is made. Both operate in
this regime of 'SINGLE ASPECT SCIENCE' for no good reason. This is the
way the 'hard problem' remains hard.
I drew this state of affairs as a diagram in my paper that has been out
there for 2 years. I empirically observe scientists and I report what
they do. What they (WE - I am enrolled this mess too) do is bizarre. The
upgrade from SAS to DAS alters not one single <aspect 2> law. Despite
this we still do nothing...
This thread has revealed the 'Cellular Automata' metaphor as perhaps a
very useful way to describe DAS. I must work on this a bit more. :-)
cheers,
colin hales
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Received on Mon Oct 13 2008 - 00:57:58 PDT