Rex Allen wrote:
> A further thought:
>
> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 4:34 PM, David Nyman<david.nyman.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>> Of course a computational narrative may turn out
>> not to be the way to go, but I strongly suspect that we still await a
>> revolution in - well not physics, but..what? being-science? (gawd) -
>> that will be in a primary sense generative of persons prior to the
>> generation of appearances. IOW, there probably has to be some sort of
>> fundamentally implicate-explicate-superexplicate thingamijig going on
>> out there - er, I mean in here.
>
> So if you describe a process that generates persons, how will you
> explain the existence of the generating process?
>
> So if something produces consciousness, what produces the producer?
>
> So yes, I've no doubt that one can "explain" consciousness by pointing
> to some more fundamental process that you infer from the contents of
> our conscious experience.
>
> But since this more fundamental substrate in turn requires an
> explanation, your net explanatory gain is ZERO.
>
> The only thing we have direct access to is our conscious experience.
> Trying to explain the existence of this conscious experience in terms
> of what is experienced inevitably leads to vicious circularity.
If you explain the existence of a pain in your tooth by a cavity the experience may lead
to a dentist - and less pain in your experience.
>
> So one arbitrary solution is to cut the circle at some preferred point
> and declare what's found at that point to be "fundamental" and
> everything else flows from it.
>
> To me a better solution is to start at the start, and just accept that
> consciousness exists first, uncaused and fundamental. The contents of
> our conscious experiences exist second, and derivatively.
I'm actually in favor of circular explanations. I think circular explanations can be
virtuous as well as vicious.
Brent
>
> Where and how do these secondary things exist? In the same place and
> in the same way that the things that we perceive in our dreams exist.
>
> >
>
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Received on Fri Jul 31 2009 - 23:19:22 PDT