On 17 February 2010 02:08, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure in what sense you mean "gratuitous". In a sense it is > gratuitous to describe anything - hence the new catch-phrase, "It is what it > is." If one is just a different description of the other then they have the > same consequences - in different terms. What I mean is that it is superfluous to what we presume is already a complete account (i.e. the 3-p one) of all the relevant events and their consequences. We would have no reason to suspect (nor could we characterise) the existence of 1-p experience if we only had access to the 3-p account. Furthermore, if we believe the 3-p account to be complete and causally closed, we are committed to accepting that all thoughts, beliefs, statements or behaviour apparently relating to 1-p experience are in fact entirely motivated by the 3-p account. This leads to the paradox of the existence of 3-p references to 1-p experiences which simply cannot be extrapolated from the 3-p account (i.e. they are non-computable). >> More problematic still, >> neither the existence nor the experiential characteristics of 1-p >> experience is computable from the confines of the 3-p narrative. > > How do you know that? In my computation of what's happening in your brain > I might well say, "And *there's* where David is feeling confused." Yes, of course. But you can only analogise with some "feeling of confusion" to which you have (or "seem" to have) personal privileged access (this is the really hard bit to keep in mind). Had you no access to such 1-p experience (e.g. you were one of Chalmers' affect-less zombies) you would have no basis from which to extrapolate from the 3-p account to 1-p experience, or even to suspect such a possibility or what its nature could be (hence non-computable). Nonetheless, belief in the causal completeness and closure of the 3-p account simultaneously commits us to believing that all your beliefs, statements and behaviour with respect to "1-p" would be unaltered! This is the paradox. The standard move, which is implicit in your proposal, is to try to wave all this away by asserting the "identity" of 3-p and 1-p. I'm trying to say two things about this: first, it's meaningless to say that two different things are identical without showing how their apparent differences are to be reconciled; second, if we accept this it leaves us in the position of continuing to exhibit every one of our thoughts, beliefs, statements and behaviours with respect to 1-p experience, even though the existence and nature of such phenomena can't be computed from the basis of 3-p, and even in the case that the phenomena didn't exist at all! This doesn't strike me as a satisfactory resolution. David > David Nyman wrote: >> >> On 17 February 2010 00:06, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote: >> >> >>> >>> I don't see that my 1-p experience is at all "causally closed". In fact, >>> thoughts pop into my head all the time with no provenance and no hint of >>> what caused them. >>> >> >> The problem is that if one believes that the 3-p narrative is causally >> sufficient, then the "thoughts" that pop into your head - and their >> consequences - are entirely explicable in terms of some specific 3-p >> rendition. If you also "seem" to have the 1-p experience of the >> "sound" of a voice in your head, this is entirely gratuitous to the >> 3-p "thought-process" and its consequences. > > I'm not sure in what sense you mean "gratuitous". In a sense it is > gratuitous to describe anything - hence the new catch-phrase, "It is what it > is." If one is just a different description of the other then they have the > same consequences - in different terms. > > >> More problematic still, >> neither the existence nor the experiential characteristics of 1-p >> experience is computable from the confines of the 3-p narrative. > > How do you know that? In my computation of what's happening in your brain > I might well say, "And *there's* where David is feeling confused." > > Brent > >> So >> how can it be possible for any such narrative to *refer* to the >> experiential quality of a thought? >> >> David >> >> >> >>> >>> David Nyman wrote: >>> >>>>> >>>>> Is there a problem with the idea that 3-p can be derived from some >>>>> combinatorics of many interacting 1-p's? Is there a reason why we keep >>>>> trying to derive 1-p from 3-p? >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>> I suspect there's a problem either way. AFAICS the issue is that, in >>>> 3-p and 1-p, there exist two irreducibly different renditions of a >>>> given state of affairs (hence not "identical" in any >>>> non-question-begging sense of the term). It then follows that, in >>>> order to fully account for a given set of events involving both >>>> renditions, you have to choose between some sort of non-interacting >>>> parallelism, or the conundrum of how one "causally closed" account >>>> becomes informed about the other, or the frank denial of one or the >>>> other rendition. None of these options seems satisfactory. >>>> >>>> >>> >>> I don't see that my 1-p experience is at all "causally closed". In fact, >>> thoughts pop into my head all the time with no provenance and no hint of >>> what caused them. >>> >>> Brent >>> >>> >>>> >>>> The way out would be if both 3-p and 1-p were reconcilable in terms of >>>> a more fundamental level, in terms of which the special relevance of >>>> each partial narrative was linked to its proper range of outcomes. In >>>> point of fact, of course, this is the "folk psychological" position, >>>> and it seems all too easy simply to dismiss this as terminating in >>>> naive dualism. However, my early-morning musings include a glimmering >>>> of how this might be made to work - without doing terminal violence to >>>> either rendition - but unfortunately there is insufficient space in >>>> the margin of this post to write it down (as yet). >>>> >>>> David >>>> >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "Everything List" group. >>> To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> For more options, visit this group at >>> http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. >>> >>> >>> >> >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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