On Thursday, October 10, 2013 6:53:18 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>
> On 11 October 2013 11:37, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com <javascript:>
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, October 10, 2013 4:32:54 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
>>
>>> On 11 October 2013 04:54, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Unless a machine used living organisms, molecules would probably be the
>>>> only natural things which an experience would be associated with. They
>>>> don't know that they are part of a machine, but there is probably an
>>>> experience that corresponds to thermodynamic and electromagnetic
>>>> conditions. Experiences on that level may not be proprietary to any
>>>> particular molecule - it could be very exotic, who knows. Maybe every atom
>>>> of the same structure represents the same kind of experience on some
>>>> radically different time scale from ours.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Wow! Molecular experiences! That seems......far out, man. Could you get
>>> me some of whatever you're taking? :)
>>>
>>
>> You mean can I get you some molecules to interact with the molecules of
>> your brain :)?
>>
>> If we have experiences, and we are made of molecules, then what would be
>> the logic of an arbitrary barrier beyond which non-experience suddenly
>> turns into experience? If molecules don't need experiences to build
>> biology, and stem cells don't need experience to build nervous systems and
>> immune systems, then I find it pretty improbable that a particular species
>> of animal would suddenly be the first entities to ever experience any part
>> of the universe in any way, just because it makes it easier to to do the
>> things that every other organism does - find food, reproduce, avoid
>> threats.
>>
>> This is an interesting reversal of the usual argument of people like
> Daniel Dennett, which goes something like "we are made of molecules,
> molecules can't have experiences, therefore we don't really have
> experiences, we just think we do." -- Obviously paraphrased to absurdity,
> but that's the basic idea as far as I can see. Your argument uses the same
> logic, inverted - "we have experiences, we're made of molecules, therefore
> molecules have experiences!"
>
> Nice, although I feel that by stopping at molecules you're denying the
> fact that quarks and electrons obviously have experiences too, and perhaps
> even free will ("Shall I be spin-up or spin down today?")
>
I am more inclined to think that quarks and electrons actually *are* the
experiences of atoms. When you use your body to use another collection of
bodies to tell you about other bodies, what you get is something like the
fairy tale of matter (except it's really an anti-fairy tale). As far as I
can tell, there is no reason to assume that it is possible for anything
other than experiences to exist. Something that is not experienced, and can
never be experienced in any way, either directly or indirectly, is
indistinguishable in every way from nothing at all.
As far as free will goes, my guess is that as we move further from our own
scale of perception (I call pereptual inertial frame, because that is
exactly what it seems to be) down to the instant of wavefunction collapse,
or out to the open ended frame of 'fate', free will and probability are
fused together. The dualistic sense that we have that makes our free will
seem so personal and the world's causes so impersonal (either
mechanistically determined or probabilistic - either way unintentional) is
that every inertial frame acts like a lens (metaphorically) to bend the
image of experience into this dipole of participation.
The only question to me is whether we just happen to be right smack in the
middle of this continuum, in the most fertile band where the dipole has
grown the most polaraized, or whether that too is a function of perceptual
relativity (I call it eigenmorphism
http://multisenserealism.com/thesis/6-panpsychism/eigenmorphism/)
As far as the Dennett comparison, I think that's reasonable, although I
think that it actually makes sense my way, and is absurd Dennet's way,
where we just "think" that there is a such thing as thinking??
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