On 31 July, 14:23, David Nyman <david.ny....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> 2009/7/31 1Z <peterdjo....domain.name.hidden>:
>
> > Since the mental is uncontroversially not a fundamental item in physics. it has to be
> > higher-level or emergent in some way, like shoes and ships and sealing-wax.
>
> Blimey! Thanks, Peter - you couldn't have expressed a circular
> argument more succinctly! However, my reformulation is inevitably
> equally circular (retaining the - presumably intentionally - ironic
> use of 'uncontroversially') viz:
> "Since the physical is uncontroversially not a fundamental item in
> mentality, it has to be
> higher-level or emergent in some way, like shoes and ships and sealing-wax."
>
> So you pays your money.....?
You're doing it again. You are assuming that because the mental
is epistemically certain, it is ipso facto ontologically basic. But
that
doesn't follow at all. I have evidence that the physical is basic --
the whole
of science. You have no evidence that the mental is basic because the
mental
does not reveal its own ontological nature. All you have is the
**epistemic*** claim
that the mental definitely exists, in some sense.
>But no: the insuperable (AFAICS)
> advantage of the second formulation is that 'mentality' (i.e. what is
> real in the sense that I am real) is uniquely given - it is the fons
> et origo of any inference, and hence justifies its direction in the
> second case, whilst annihilating it in the first.
That is another repetition of the same error., taking the epistemic
to be the ontological.
> > But you haven't said what the problem is in the emergence of the
> > mental
> > from the physical
>
> On the contrary, I've said it repeatedly.
Please say it again.
> > For dualism you need materalism AND the
> > mental AND an unbridgeable gap. You keep leaving the gap out.
>
> I'm left with the nagging sense that perhaps we're just violently
> agreeing and the confusion is over semantics. We both require a
> justification for reality-in-the-sense-I-am-real. Obviously this
> requires an account of shoes and ships and sealing-wax not only on the
> basis of our direct knowledge of them in these terms, but also in the
> multiplicity of other ways that directly given elements can be
> re-ordered - including of course those concerned with the heuristics
> of their behaviour, such as whatever version of theoretical physics is
> currently in favour. Neither of us believes that a coherent account
> in terms of more than one ontological mode of subsistence is either
> necessary or possible. But an entity is more than the mere sum of
> whatever properties we can abstract from it. So if what you're saying
> could be reduced to the claim that there must be a unique ontology
> that is consistent with all of the foregoing, and that you prefer to
> call it physical, we could agree.
You still haven't said what the objection is to saying that
the mental emerges from the physical.
> One caveat however - and I think this is at the root of your permanent
> disagreement with Bruno. If we are to accept the 'physical' narrative
> as the fundamental justification of what it is to be RITSIAR, then the
> explanatory entities and relationships deployed for this purpose must
> be justified explicitly and exclusively in terms of 'really physical'
> entities and relations. Consequently, it is incoherent to postulate
> 'functional' relationships across such boundaries as constitutive of
> anything RITSIAR, because this opens up a veritable infinity of
> alternative, arbitrarily abstracted, 'causal' inferences.
Assuming (without justification) that anything can arbitrarily be said
to have
any function. That is an argument you have made elsewhere, it is not
a particularly good argument, and it is not germane to this discussion
> Consequently, and - I can't help adding - *obviously*, since we cannot
> credit *all* of these abstractions with the needful causal potency, we
> are all the more unjustified in privileging any *one* of them.
I have not claimed that mind is an abstraction, so this is irrelevant
> So Bruno's point, fundamentally, is that if we're going to argue for
> functional justification of the mental - in the sense of RITSIAR -
> then said functional entities and relations must be postulated to be
> 'really real'. COMP just axiomatises the functional entities and
> relations that are held to be RITSIAR. Bruno is sometimes a little
> difficult to pin down on the foundational RITSIAR-ness of the 'number
> realm',
That is a massive understatement!
>perhaps because his attention is focused more on what he can
> do with it. But if one simply can't stomach the idea that 'platonic
> numbers' are what is really real, then fair enough.
If one has an argument against them, even fairer.
>But then one must
> abjure functional-computational justifications for the 'mental':
> again, fair enough (it's probably closer to my own prejudice). But
> unless you're an eliminativist about the mental, you can't have it
> both ways.
Of course you can! There are plenty accounts of the mental that
are neither functionalist nor elimintativist. Sheesh.
> > Idealism does not save appearances. It cannot explain
> > how there was a mindless universe for millions of years before
> > life evolved, for instance. Idealists usually have to flatly deny that
> > particular
> > appearance.
>
> But I think we can save them quite handily. First, calling something
> 'idealism' just pumps the intuition that there have to be sort of
> bright images everywhere independent of 'minds'. The problem here is
> that we're stuck with folk vocabulary that drags in extraneous notions
> left, right and centre causing an implosion of the imagination. We
> need to fix this, and I have a couple of suggestions. The first was
> in my reply to Rex, where I suggest, in answer to your implicit
> question above, that the universe has to take things just as
> personally as it needs to exist.
Why, for heaven's sake? That seems completely arbitrary.
>That, if you like, is the degree of
> 'mentality' (one of the terms that probably should be retired) you
> might expect to exist before life evolved. And you're right to
> specify 'evolved' because whatever we mean by mind in the organic
> sense would of course be vacuous if in constitution and function it
> offered no evolutionary advantage.
>
> This leads to the second suggestion: what we call 'mind' is the
> evolved capacity for representation, memory and intention directed
> towards an environment, resulting from selected-for elaborations of
> primitive but critically-similar potentials. Of course, this is the
> standard direction of any explanatory thrust, but with the critical
> stipulation that we must be able to preserve the appearances from soup
> to nuts: this is, as you point out, the nub. Again, I don't insist on
> any particular vocabulary, only the necessary sense. As Popper
> remarks, debate about words is futile - just clarify your terms until
> the problem emerges precisely, or goes away.
Repeating that we need to save the appearances does nothing to save
them
> Of the above factors, the one that bears, I think, most on the
> 'appearance of mindlessness', is memory (a point made by Russell in
> his neutral monist guise). Essentially, we're 'conscious' of what we
> can remember - this is inherent in the sense of re-presentation. So
> it may not in fact meet the case to hold that we're 'unaware' of what
> we don't remember so well, but rather that 'primitive' awareness is
> swamped in our memory by repeated re-presentation of dominant
> higher-order themes.
You cannot derive an "is true" from a "might be true".
You have no need to struggle to come up with a panpsychist
theory, since you have no valid objection to physicalism.
Your argument so far has been based on two dubious premises --
that eliminativism and functonalism are the only physicalist options,
and that functionalism is arbitrary and in-the-eye-of-beholder.
>In fact, introspection reveals the constant
> coming and going of 'awarenesses' of every type and degree, shading to
> ultimate forgetfulness. IOW, 'consciousness' is just taking
> particular things *so* personally that everything else is forgotten.
>
> So that, if you like, is the 'appearance' of mindlessness.
>
> David
>
>
>
> > On 30 July, 23:55, David Nyman <david.ny....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> >> 2009/7/30 1Z <peterdjo....domain.name.hidden>:
>
> >> > Cart before the horse:
> >> > Why should anyone believe in an ontological gap that isn't backed by
> >> > an explanatory gap?
>
> >> Why indeed?
>
> > Weren't you arguing for one?
>
> >> > The mere existence of the mental implies nothing whatsoever
> >> > about any dualism any more than the simultaneous existence
> >> > of cabbages and kings.
>
> >> Well, I don't disagree with that, although I'm not quite sure what you
> >> intend by the dismissive 'mere'. Our disagreements haven't usually
> >> been about the necessity of dualism, which I think we both abjure, but
> >> rather whether mind is an abstraction from from matter or vice versa.
> >> I'm not sure we'll ever agree on that.
>
> >> > Dualism requires an ontological divide--not
> >> > a mere difference of kind--and an ontological divide requires
> >> > explanatory irreducibility.
>
> >> Couldn't agree more. However, my starting point is that the existence
> >> of the mental (not to struggle over terminology) is indubitable, which
> >> makes the direction of abstraction mandatory if we want to save
> >> monism.
>
> > That doesn't follow at all. The epistemic fact that we are more sure
> > of A than B doesn't imply any metaphysical fact that B is reducible to
> > A rather
> > than vice versa. The epistemic arrow and the metaphysical arrow are
> > two different arrows. Since we are macroscopic, we are constructed to
> > have
> > better access to high-level phenomena such as chairs and rocks than
> > the
> > fundamental particles that comprise them.
>
> >> Unless one denies reality to the mental (i.e. eliminativism)
> >> I'm saying that further insistence on a material ontology in the usual
> >> sense is an implicit commitment to dualism.
>
> > THat doesn't follow either. For dualism you need materalism AND the
> > mental AND an unbridgeable gap. You keep leaving the gap out.
>
> >> Specious relationship
> >> terms such as 'functional equivalence', 'identical to', 'inside of'
> >> and the like just mask this, IMO, and under examination can be seen to
> >> imply two-ness, not one-ness.
>
> > Those positions have thei critics, but calling them
> > 'specious' is not criticism
>
> >> Further, in addition to its obvious (at
> >> least to me) merit of 'saving the appearances',
>
> > Idealism does not save appearances. It cannot explain
> > how there was a mindless universe for millions of years before
> > life evolved, for instance. Idealists usually have to flatly deny that
> > particular
> > appearance.
>
> >> this narrative seems
> >> to serve the rest of the story at least as handily as the
> >> 'externalised reality' version. But I don't imagine we'll ever agree
> >> on this either.
>
> >> BTW, perhaps I should clarify what I mean by 'the usual sense' of
> >> materialism, because it may be that this is part of any confusion.
> >> This sense is, I take it, the doctrine that reality is 'nothing but'
> >> the material. Stating it this way of course commits you, under
> >> monism, to a purely abstract conception of the mental.
>
> > I am not sure what you mean by abstract. Since the mental
> > is uncontroversially not a fundamental item in physics. it has to be
> > higher-level
> > or emergent in some way, like shoes and ships and sealing-wax.
>
> > But you haven't said what the problem is in the emergence of the
> > mental
> > from the physical
>
> >>The
>
> ...
>
> read more »
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Received on Thu Aug 06 2009 - 01:58:45 PDT