On 17 Aug, 01:02, Rex Allen <rexallen....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
Hi Rex
Recalling your interest in Chalmers: I was re-reading "Facing Up to
the Problem of Consciousness" recently, and I realised - I think for
the first time - that his own "double-aspect theory of information" is
effectively a reformulation, in less 'professionally-embarrassing'
lingo, of eastern metaphysics! AFAICS he's basically saying that a)
'intrinsic' existence is qualitative; and b) the 'physical' is based
on second-order 'causal relations' derived from an 'extrinsic'
viewpoint embedded in a). It's worth quoting his short excursion into
metaphysical speculation at the end:
"This could answer a concern about the causal relevance of experience
- a natural worry, given a picture on which the physical domain is
causally closed, and on which experience is supplementary to the
physical."
Hm... Worrying indeed! He goes on to say:
"The informational view allows us to understand how experience might
have a subtle kind of causal relevance in virtue of its status as the
intrinsic nature of the physical. This metaphysical speculation is
probably best ignored for the purposes of developing a scientific
theory, but in addressing some philosophical issues it is quite
suggestive."
Of course, he could as well have said:
"The informational view allows us to understand how the physical might
have a subtle kind of causal relevance in virtue of its status as the
extrinsic nature of experience. This metaphysical speculation is
probably best ignored for the purposes of developing a scientific
theory, but in addressing some philosophical issues it is quite
suggestive."
So IOW the "subtle causal relevance" of what he terms the intrinsic is
in constituting what exists. Not so subtle perhaps ;-) And the - no
doubt equally subtle? - relevance of the extrinsic is in being the
shareable account of what happens after that. I guess one might
indeed find this "suggestive"!
http://consc.net/papers/facing.html
David
> On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Bruno Marchal<marc....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> > "I exist" could be, perhaps, tautological. But "Reality"? I don't
> > think so. Certainly not from inside.
>
> What is reality, beyond our conscious experience of existence?
>
> > The conclusion will be that consciousness, or anything apprehended by
> > a person in some stable way has to be realted to an infinity of
> > relations between numbers. And most are not "caused" by a rule-
> > following system.
>
> Given an infinity of relations between numbers to work with, wouldn't
> pretty much everything be representable? If so, then what is the
> significance of being able to represent the contents of our conscious
> experience, including a represention of our lack of comprehension as
> to "how a symbolic self-representing relation individuate into an
> incommunicable, non doubtable, lived qualia"?
>
> In fact, here, this pen on my desk. To me, that pen now represents my
> lack of comprehension as to how a symbolic self-representing relation
> individuates into an incommunicable, non doubtable, lived qualia.
> There, that wasn't so hard. What is the significance of this? If
> there's no significance to my pen representing this, then what is the
> significance of using relations between numbers to represent the same
> thing?
>
> >> So I can (sort of) see how a logical machine might symbolically
> >> represent reality in this way. BUT, this doesn't answer the question
> >> of why there should be a conscious experience associated with the
> >> machine symbolically representing reality this way.
>
> >> Does it?
>
> > It does not. That is why it is the assumption of the theory. The
> > working hypothesis. The light in the dark.
>
> Okay this is related to my point above and is the core of my problem
> with your view, and with physicalism due to it's similar assumption.
>
> > And then, the beauty of it, is that, ONCE the assumption is done, we
> > can understand fully and rationally why we cannot understand how a
> > symbolic self-representing relation individuate into an
> > incommunicable, non doubtable, lived qualia.
>
> Your "understanding" boils down to: here is a mathematical model that
> represents our situation, and which may have some practical use in
> predicting what we will observe in the future. Why will it correctly
> predict what we observe? Because that's the way things are. Will it
> always predict what we will observe? Well, either it will or it
> won't. We can't know in advance. We'll see.
>
> What we CAN be sure of is that with an infinity of relations between
> numbers at our disposal, if at some point we observe something that is
> inconsistent with the predictions of this model, we can find a NEW
> model that is consistent with both old and new observations!
>
> So, please see my last response to Brent about subjective explanations
> and virtual-gas, I think it's relevant!
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Tue Aug 25 2009 - 06:50:06 PDT