2009/8/31 Flammarion <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>:
>> It's more an attempt to characterise our
>> metaphysical *situation*: i.e. the intuition that it is enduring,
>> immediate, self-referential and self-relative. Actually, reflecting
>> on exchanges with Bruno, I wonder if one might well say that this
>> position is globally solipsistic.
>
> That reads like a contradiction in terms to me
Etc, etc....
Peter, I must say that I sometimes find your style of commenting
unhelpful. Any attempt to set out one's ideas - however inadequate
the result may be - must rely on some sequencing of thought in which
an earlier statement may depend on a later. Consequently when you
interpolate the flow of the narrative with constant expostulations of
this sort I have to wonder how much time you permit to elapse before
concluding that what I say must be incoherent, deluded, or simply
wrong. Any of the foregoing might indeed be true, but since I don't
force you to make comments on what I write, we might both gain more
from the exercise if you made it more readily apparent that you reach
your conclusions a little less precipitately.
David
>
>
>
> On 30 Aug, 22:21, David Nyman <david.ny....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>> 2009/8/28 Brent Meeker <meeke....domain.name.hidden>:
>>
>> > Ok, so you want to solve the "hard problem" right at the beginning by
>> > taking conscious thoughts as the basic elements of your ontology.
>>
>> No I don't - that's why I said I'd rather not use the word
>> consciousness. What I have in mind at this point in the argument is a
>> primitive, not an elaborated, notion - like PM vis-a-vis materialism,
>> or AR vis-a-vis comp.
>
> Then it is going to meet similar objections: we do not introspect a
> featureless Primary Consciousness, we introspect a kaleidoscope of
> thoughts sensations and moods.
>
>> It's more an attempt to characterise our
>> metaphysical *situation*: i.e. the intuition that it is enduring,
>> immediate, self-referential and self-relative. Actually, reflecting
>> on exchanges with Bruno, I wonder if one might well say that this
>> position is globally solipsistic.
>
> That reads like a contradiction in terms to me
>
>>Just as we intuit the first person
>> as a stubbornly solipsistic,
>
> does that include the 99.99% of people who intuit that
> solipsism is crazy?
>
>>self-referential, self-reflecting
>> attractor in an otherwise unconscious flux, we can intuit the
>> integration of all such perspectives as a truly global solipsism.
>>
> ?????
>
>> The attribution of 'conscious' and 'unconscious' can then be seen
>> relative to perspective.
>
> But if everything is conscious, then a lot of the attributions
> are false
>
>> The solipsism is justified in each
>> perspectives' assessment of itself as uniquely conscious, simply
>> because this is true relative to its own self-reflection; what lies
>> behind the mirror's surface is no longer self but 'other' (or IOW
>> one's generalised 'unconscious').
>
> Crikey!
>
> Look, if there is more than one consciousness then solipsism
> is false, and it is therefore unjustified.
>
>>But the saving grace is that this
>> can be intuited as equally true for all other perspectives.
>
>
>
>
>>Aside
>> from this though, there is more to be said on the subject of
>> instantiation, which is what I think Chalmers is really driving at -
>> see below.
>>
>> > But you could suppose that all
>> > possible (logically consistent) monads exist and then try to solve the
>> > white rabbit problem, why do some things happen and others don't (at
>> > least apparently).
>>
>> I don't of course have any special insight here, other than the
>> obvious comment that there appear to be two approaches: contingent and
>> everythingist, each with its characteristic problems. We can only
>> hope that there may in the end be an empirical resolution to this.
>>
>> >> "Once a fundamental link between information and experience is on the
>> >> table,
>> > I don't know what that means.
>>
>> I'm afraid I must refer you to the original:
>>
>> http://consc.net/papers/facing.html
>>
>> > ?? Is momentum an intrinsic or extrinsic property of an electron? What
>> > about spin? I'm not sure this 'extrinsic'/'intrinsic' distinction means
>> > anything.
>>
>> Well, you must be the judge. Either it doesn't mean anything, or it
>> means everything. Of course words are not in themselves realities.
>> Whatever exists presumably does not "possess properties" whether
>> extrinsic or intrinsic.
>
> Why on earth not?
>
>> But we may take 'intrinsic' as a bare
>> solipsistic self-reference,
>
> That isn't even remotely what chalmers means.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_and_extrinsic_properties_(philosophy)
>
>>and 'extrinsic' to refer to any further
>> conceptual attribution whatsoever. Under this characterisation, any
>> description or formulation of spin is an extrinsic reference, but the
>> implied solipsistic self-reference is intrinsic. In the philosophic
>> tradition, I suppose intrinsic could also be seen - more or less - as
>> referring to Kant's "ding an sich selbst", as long as this is
>> understood as encompassing appearance within its ambit.
>
> It just mean non-relational.
>
>> When Chalmers characterises 'experiential properties' as intrinsic, I
>> would translate this as a claim about instantiation, and indirectly
>> about substitution level. What he's saying essentially is that the
>> fundamental 'entities' of physics, characterised purely extrinsically,
>> are content-less placeholders for algebraic relationships. For such
>> extrinsically-defined relata to be instantiated solipsistically
>
> ???
>
>> necessitates translation through the filter of an appropriate theory
>> into intrinsic differentiables (e.g. hypothesised as 'number' in the
>> case of AR). The intrinsicality points to the fact that we lack the
>> means to characterise such differentiables inter-subjectively, except
>> ostensively.
>
> ????
>
> No, he's just talking about properties of individuals that
> are in fact entirely "proper" to those individuals and
> not a realtion to something else.
>
> > They are the domain of the "true but not provable"
>> precisely in that they *constitute* a level of instantiation. What
>> can be abstracted from that level is restricted to its extrinsic
>> relationships, but these can be re-instantiated, and consequently
>> facsimiles of the original can subsequently be referred to by
>> ostension.
>>
>> The notion of substitution level itself stands in need of more complex
>> elaboration. For example the emergence of persons and their
>> distinctive appearances can be seen as supervening indirectly on a
>> primitively differentiable solipsistic substrate only through many
>> layers - i.e. substitution levels - of complexity (e.g. via the UD
>> mechanism in the case of comp).
>>
>> David
>
> Crikey...you don't half like interjecting the word "solipsistic" into
> other people's ideas.
> >
>
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Received on Tue Sep 01 2009 - 00:46:51 PDT