On 31 Aug, 17:57, David Nyman <david.ny....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> 2009/8/31 Flammarion <peterdjo....domain.name.hidden>:
>
> > If the lower level is discarded, the qualia aren't there. So where
> > are they?
>
> Since you find this mode of thought so uncongenial, let's focus on
> this single issue for now. I don't want to say that lower levels are
> completely discarded, since that of course would not meet the case.
> I'm saying that they are qualitatively discarded *at their own level*
> (i.e. 'forgotten') though still contributive to levels constructed in
> terms of them. What I'm trying to steer you towards is that
> postulating either brute qualitative 'consciousness' or brute
> qualitative 'unconsciousness' gets us nowhere, and for the same
> reason: ex nihilo nihil fit, and hence on this basis either everything
> is conscious or nothing can be. Rather I'm suggesting that we wonder
> about what could be 'memorable' (or not) *in context*. In this way we
> could start to think about how contexts could emerge in terms of which
> specific contents could be retained or discarded. I think that a
> little introspection shows that what is not remembered in context is
> as good as unconscious.
>
> David
That says nothing about qualia at all.
Do you think Chalmers suggestion that qualia are intrinsic properties
of fundamental particles is feasible or not?
>
>
>
> > 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 - 10:34:51 PDT