On 27 July, 02:45, Colin Hales <c.ha....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> The assumption in your comments is that there is/needs to be 'mind
> stuff' is wrong. /ALL/ of it is "some undescribed stuff", not just that
> resulting in mind. The assumption in your statement is that we need
> something extra just to explain mind pressupposes that everything else
> is sorted out. It hasn't. It never has been. The singular unique feature
> of mind is not 'stuff', it is merely the perspective of it .... first
> person.
Hi Col
My somewhat poetic references here to mind-stuff or dreams relates, as
in the original post, to one of Bruno's characterisations of the
'world-view' of COMP as the dreams of the machines. Any 'stuff' in
the context of COMP, I take it, would be numbers (I can't help adding
'in some sense') and would of course be the *universal* stuff. As I
think you know from the prior thread, and our previous engagements, I
take a monist view, for what I take to be strong logical grounds, and
I try to apply this to whatever ontological schema is under
consideration. Consequently I can't think 'everything else is sorted
out' until this embraces mind and body as different aspects of an
integrated whole. The sorting out would be what I called a
correlative synthesis, which is what COMP attempts to be. This is not
to say that COMP is per se correct, but that any other schema must
confront the same issues head on - as of course your own approach
attempts to do. Sorry for any confusion, but I think we're still
broadly in agreement, as before :-)
David
> David Nyman wrote:
> > Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
> > machines. Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
> > helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
> > my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far. I
> > hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
>
> > THE APHORISMS
>
> > We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
>
> > What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
>
> > Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
> > - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
> > itself).
>
> Yes. This is the big issue.
>
> (a) Descriptions of 'how it appears to us' (empirical science by the
> awake scientist!)
> and
> (b) Descriptions of 'what it is that appears to us as it does' (science
> of a noumenon)
>
> ....cannot be the same set of descriptions to the one in which 'the
> appearances' are being delivered. Especially when (b) descriptions are
> responsible for creating the way it appears in (a). Seems fairly self
> evident. Assuming (a) and (b) are identical (or that (b) is
> unapproachable) is not justified.
>
> The assumption in your comments is that there is/needs to be 'mind
> stuff' is wrong. /ALL/ of it is "some undescribed stuff", not just that
> resulting in mind. The assumption in your statement is that we need
> something extra just to explain mind pressupposes that everything else
> is sorted out. It hasn't. It never has been. The singular unique feature
> of mind is not 'stuff', it is merely the perspective of it .... first
> person.
>
> ask this instead....
>
> What kind of universe is it (= wots the stuff?, (b) and its behaviour)
> such that a 'first person perspective' can result in which it appears
> (a)-ish to us all, and in particular, makes a brain look brain when it
> is delivering the first person perspective which delivers (a) to us?
>
> Does X being self-evident classify X as an aphorism? I think not.
> :-)
> col
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Received on Mon Jul 27 2009 - 05:09:43 PDT