On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 4:03:29 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Craig Weinberg > <whats...@gmail.com<javascript:>> > wrote: > > >> All I am saying is that you should start with something that is not > >> already loaded with your conclusion, then reach your conclusion > >> through argument. If I "intend" to do something I do it because I want > >> to do it. On the face of it, I could want to do it and do it whether > >> my brain is determined or random. You can make the case that this is > >> impossible, but you have to actually make the case, not sneak it into > >> the definition. > > > > > > I'm not trying to sneak anything into the definition. The case that I > make > > is that while it could be locally true that a given person could > > theoretically want something intentionally even if their brain were > > completely driven by unintentional influences, it doesn't make sense > that > > there could be any such thing as 'intentional' if the entire universe > were > > driven exclusively by unintentional influences. It is like saying that a > dog > > could think that it is a cat if cats exist, but if you define the > universe > > as having no cats, then there can be no such thing as cat-anything. No > > thoughts about cats, no cat-like feelings, no pictures of cats, etc. In > an > > unintentional universe, intention is inconceivable in every way. > > You say "it doesn't make sense" that intentional could come from > unintentional but I don't see that at all, not at all. You claim to > have an insight that other people don't have. >
Lots of people have had this insight. You say that intentional could come from unintentional, but anyone can say that - what reasoning leads you to that conclusion? What leads an unintentional phenomena to develop intentions? > > >> We are talking about third person observable determinism only. > > > > > > Who is? > > We are, because this is the normal sense of "determinism" and I > thought this is how you have been using it all along. It's possible > that you don't disagree with me at all if you were not actually > talking about this. > Third person always appears unintentional, but it is no more of a reality than the first person experience of intention. That's what I am saying about the symmetry of private and public perceptual relativity. The universe seems intentional on the inside, unintentional on the outside. >From a cosmic perspective, they are two sides of the same coin. > > >> The > >> brain could be third person observable deterministic and still > >> conscious. > > > > > > The third person view always seems unintentional (deterministic-random). > > That goes along with it being a public body in space. You can't see > > intentions from third person. > > That's right, you can't see consciousness, but you can see if it's > deterministic in the usual sense. So do you in fact agree, after all > this argument, that the brain could be deterministic in the usual > sense? > No because some of what the brain does is determined by consciousness which we are aware of and understand. We could write off every spontaneous change in brain activity as random, just as we could write off every unexpected change in the traffic flow of a city as random, but that's just how it would look if we didn't know about the contribution of conscious people to those patterns. > > >> So you claim that if the hydrogen atoms in my body were replaced with > >> other hydrogen atoms I would stop being conscious? > > > > > > No, I think all hydrogen represents the same experience and capacity for > > experience. > > So their history is irrelevant: No, their history is crucially important - it's just the same for every atom. > all the atoms in my body could be > replaced with atoms specially imported from the Andromeda Galaxy and I > would feel just the same. > Yes, but they could not be replaced with tiny sculptures of hydrogen or simulations of hydrogen. It has to be genuine hydrogen. Craig > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
