On 31 Aug, 00:21, David Nyman <david.ny....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> 2009/8/28 Flammarion <peterdjo....domain.name.hidden>:
>
> > 1. It seems reasonable that relations must have relata. However,
> > relata
> > need not have a rich set of properties. You could build a physical
> > universe out
> > a single type of particle and various relations.
>
> What we're trying to get to here, remember, is *many* intrinsically
> differentiable forms of instantiation.
I thought we were trying to get at an analysis of Chalmers's theory.
I can't make sense of the above (instantions of what?)
>Hence for what you say to meet
> the case (which I would certainly not reject out of hand), any unique
> intrinsic nature you envisage for the particle would need to be
> capable of emergence, purely in virtue of combination in terms of its
> various relations, into many such intrinsically differentiable forms.
forms of what?
> Does that seem feasible on this basis?
Let's work on "comprehensible" for the time being...
> > 2. Someone's perceptual data are already encoded relationally in the
> > matter
> > of their brain, so if qualia are intrinisc properties of relata,
> > something needs to arrange
> > that they encode the same information, so some novel laws ar required
> > in addition to novel
> > properties,
>
> I'm not sure if I follow you. Nothing is 'already' encoded.
Yes it is. That is fact, it is known from fMRI technology.
> As I
> said to Brent, we mustn't be misled into supposing that the state of
> affairs to which we refer literally 'possesses properties'.
You have said it , but you haven't said why. That there are some sorts
of things with some sorts of properties is about the least contentious
claim I can think of.
>As I see
> it, the 'perceptual data' consist in;
>
> 1) An instantiation or substitution level which is self-referentially
> organised in terms of intrinsic differentiables in intrinsic relation.
I don't have the faintest idea what that means. By perceptual data, I
mean
detectable changes in neurological activity, the kind of thing
neuroscientists
study.
> This is the qualitative 'causal level' and as such exists independent
> of any extrinsic characterisation. It makes no reference outside of
> itself.
> 2) Second-order 'extrinsic' accounts abstracted from and referring to
> level (1). These accounts are themselves also instantiated at level
> (1).
>
> In terms of the above, the 'laws' are simply whatever regularities are
> abstractable at the level of the extrinsic account (2). The
> instantiation level is not in itself abstractable, but can be
> nonetheless be referred to ostensively via the exchange of relational
> data. As Chalmers implies, the 'subtle causal effect'(!) of the
> instantiation is to provide a substrate of realisation without which
> the extrinsic account lacks any referent. Consequently any
> characterisation of level (2) accounts as independently 'causally
> closed' fundamentally mistakes the direction of inference.
>
>
>
> > 3,. The Grain problem
>
> I really can't fathom why anybody thinks that there is a grain
> problem. ISTM that this is taking full-scale reflective consciousness
> altogether too much for granted. One might as well complain that
> there should be a grain problem with respect to matter - after all,
> why isn't the brain just explicable at the level of molecules, or
> atoms.
It is.
> I think, to use Chalmers' notorious terminology, that the
> grain problem is susceptible to 'easy' solution. For example - and I
> emphasise that this is merely suggestive - conscious perception as we
> know it provides us with an experience of time which is utterly at
> odds with either flux or block temporal models - i.e. the notions that
> time at the 'objective' level is either utterly ephemeral or
> enduringly spatial.
That we experience a "specious present" rather than an infinitely
thin time-slice is very easily explained by data storage, which is
itself
easily explained itself as a by product of data-transmission
latencies.
I agree there is a problem with the block model.
I have no idea what this has to do with the GP
> On the basis of this we might well suppose that
> any experience even approximating to subjective consciousness is very
> far from supervening directly on some process naively considered as a
> simple traverse 'through time'.
But the claim that qualia per se are the intrisic properties of
fundamental particles is a claim that cosnc. or that aspect of consc.
*does* supervene directly on the fine-grained physical structure. You
are not *resolving* the problem, you are just saying the initial claim
is
false.
> We should instead perhaps envision a) highly-evolved, multi-level,
> subject-relative processes of abstraction, synthesis and editing with
> b) high dependence on successions of (very) short-term memory-based
> gestalts that instantiate the qualitative temporal content of the
> 'specious present', c) whose adaptive function - to speak
> teleologically - is to mediate sophisticated discrimination of, and
> response to, co-evolving environments.
So where are the qualia in all that?
> In the first place, some such
> notion is justifiable as a rationale for the very expensive adaptive
> machinery represented by full reflective consciousness. But more
> fundamentally, such a gedanken experiment allows us to see that it is
> naive to conceptualise 'experience' as qualitatively uniform and
> indiscriminately available 'through time' to reflective subjective
> consciousness. Rather, we should expect that 'low-grain' generative
> process will indeed be discarded (i.e. 'forgotten') at the level of
> the reproducible temporal content of any self-conscious subject
> capable of supporting and articulating such experience.
If the lower level is discarded, the qualia aren't there. So where
are they?
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Received on Mon Aug 31 2009 - 08:18:03 PDT