Re: [agi] Web Consciousness and self consciousness

[Tim]

On Sep 14, 2003, at 5:30 PM, arnoud wrote:

Hello Tim,
The other ontological monist stances are philosophical idealism and 
neutral
monism. But almost nobody holds those theories anymore (not?). 
Materialism is
by far the most dominant monist position. Like Fodor said: we are all
materialists now for the same reason Churchill was for democracy: the
alternatives are even worse.

 Physicalism is actually an argument for one type of
description and one principle mode of knowing based on the idea that 
it
is the most common variety of monism. Basically, it is very loaded.
What do you mean?

Well, what I mean by this is that materialism presupposes either a 
pragmatic epistemology - like what you suggest below that materialism 
be judged by the "success of the natural sciences".  Wittgenstein is 
actually useful here if we were to look some of his arguments on 
following a rule or theorem proving and likening that to scientific 
knowledge. If we were to say that the "reason" - i.e. the formula 
representation - for X is Y - where Y is a TOE - than is it in 
particular "privileged" and a unique reference of "reason." I am not 
trying to get embroiled in trivialities here - I think it is important 
that we recognize that materialism is a ontology presupposition which 
has highly prejudicial consequences in invalidating certain modes of 
knowing. I.E. it may be perfectly valid for me to say something like - 
"God told me X" and for that phenomenon to supersede the authority of 
another large set of observations. This is somewhat the epistemological 
position staked out by Reformed Epistomologists such as Plantiga or 
others.

Materialism is to say that through test and observation of experienced 
phenomenon, when have overriding access to the normative patterns of 
the universe we experience. Since the fruit of this is better 
understanding of the set of experienced phenomenon that Materialism 
accepts as valid a priori it is somewhat like an incomplete formal 
system where the particular set mappings are unknown. What happens on 
this, however, is difficult because history has shown that the context 
or frame of mapping is continually needing to be extended (that was my 
point on the TOE-Information-Religious convergence).

To bottom line this, what I am trying to say is that advocates of 
materialism make a lot of assumptions about the justification of its 
knowledge. They are ultimately reduced to a kind of utility or 
pragmatic measure that they take as ultimate. I will deal with the 
issues of this below and show why it leads to postmodern drift.

Now, if we reject the foundationalist interpretation that I am 
supposing, it does not really improve the situation, because the 
coherence of the of explanatory power in ALL matters of value. Notions 
of perceived truth, right, wrong, etc. All have to be satisfied more 
readily or simply as a type of network where the lowest complexity 
pathway is from the observed idea (or state would be better in this 
language) to an accurate projection to the solution space. Even this 
methodology is an assumption (now that I think of it) and might lead to 
circularity. I don't know if there is a way around this in coherence 
theories of truth. I'm not saying one way or another, - just don't 
know.
 I
think this is some of what you were getting at Ben. Right?

It is difficult to see if the Physicalist model (or should I say
materialist? - maybe more sincere) is really coherent in any common
variety.
This seems very odd to me. What is so incoherent about physicalism?

 The Dennett variety is actually rather vacuous in terms of its
epistemological justification. Most consistent thinkers who start off
trying to be good materialist/empiricists within analytic philosophy
tend to degrade into postmodern pragmatists (ala Richard Rorty). So, 
we
need either subjective, shared, or objective truth, with the latter an
impossibility based on the problem of finite induction.
I don't quite follow this train of thought. Physicalism to me is 
justified by
the success of the natural sciences with their materialist ontology of 
atoms,
electrons, molecules and so on. Even the phenomenon of human beings 
that used
to be thought to be outof the explanatory reach of the natural 
sciences is
now more and more understood in materialistic terms. Other projects of
knowing seem to be far inferior, like mysticism, folk psychology,
phenomenology.
Where's the incoherence, the tendency to degrade in postmodern 
pragmatists?

I think what I am suggesting us that the "grounding" of empiricism must 
lie "outside of itself." This is comparable to some of Quine's 
criticisms. Now, the problem of finite induction - i.e. that a finite 
number of observations (taken in itself) can never yield a convergence 
to a true rule. A Pattern or regularity is only so as it represents a 
sampling of set. This set, if unknown (even the essence of it features 
as well as their number are unknown) means that no sampling, no matter 
how large can converge to a particular function that has predictive 
value. Now, the fact that this process does yield valid prediction and 
gives the appearance of progress is suggestive of supplementary 
assumptions about the nature of the universe (i.e. remember the 
transcendental suggestions :-) ). Regularity of the universe and the 
well-formedness of our sensory manifolds to perceive it are necessary 
assumptions. Of course, these CANNOT be validated WITHIN the 
materialist view and its empiricist epistemology. They presuppose it to 
have coherence. Of course, this rubs many original analytic 
philosopher/empiricists the wrong way because it seems incoherent and 
incomplete. To use another Wittgenstein metaphor from On Certainty - 
there is a lot of stream, but no bedrock.

Honesty in this area leads to drift. Rejecting the objectification of 
representations of observations - something that is assumed in the 
scientific method. I am not trying to set up some absolute objective 
stance - so don't take the straw man. My desire is to suggest that the 
recognition of degree assumes difference and the possibilities of poles 
of objectivity. This is something that in most materialist 
epistemologies is take for granted as the carry on a project to create 
a correspondence between the world and lower complexity representation 
that are external to it. Is this not the essence of Occam's razor?

To plot drift,  (looking at Rorty for instance) we see that a rejection 
of the representationalist epistemological project and correspondence 
theory of truth yield a type of story-driven dialogue where the 
criteria for success are mainly tied to certain types of values (i.e. 
the elimination of cruelty). These values are not argued for within the 
grounding of anything just put forward as a "story." This is 
unpalatable for any scientists who clings to the idea of an explanation 
having any "truth," but is utterly consistent with the idea of 
rejecting background assumptions such as those above.

My suggestion is to keep the background assumptions and not be afraid 
where it leads. Even if that world ends up having an ontology of 
complex information bundles and "complex" matter like Aristotelian 
matter, or Augustinian monism.

I think we can want the world to be simpler than it is and ignore 
perfectly good phenomenon. At the risk of being cliche, isn't this the 
Kuhn critique?

Best,
Tim



Bye,
Arnoud
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