On Wednesday, February 19, 2014 11:28:18 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: > > On 19 February 2014 14:17, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com<javascript:> > > wrote: > > You're talking about the special case of human experience, human bodies, >> etc. I'm talking about the ontology of the nature of any possible awareness >> in any possible universe. >> > > I'm not really sure what distinction you're trying to draw here. The > dictionary tells us that ontology is the study of the categories of being > and existence. We must assume that since there is awareness it must inhere, > in some sense, in whatever exists, but that alone doesn't take us very far. > Since not everything that exists makes any claim to be aware the > interesting part is trying to elucidate the specific conditions that > differentiate the presence of such claims from their absence. >
Except that the nature of awareness seems to be to undersignify other kinds of awareness. We can't trust that what we see of other things is enough to judge whether or not there is a claim to be aware there. From what we have seen in neuroscience so far, there does not seem to be any distinction between the brain, parts of the brain, individual neurons or parts of neurons which suggest that one level would begin to suddenly be aware. > > A computational theory is a variety of idealism whose natural ontological > homeland is Platonia. One can say that its specific ontological category is > arithmetical, but this means only that the platonic existence of arithmetic > suffices for a model of computation. That said, the specific conditions > that differentiate claims of awareness from their absence will be > epistemological rather than ontological, which is to say that they will > require a theory of knowledge. > I disagree. The conditions that differentiate claims of awareness from their absence have nothing to do with knowledge. There is no 'claim' of awareness, there is only the presence of aesthetic phenomena - experiences. Knowledge is derived from the logical comparison of multiple experiences. It has all kinds of sensory and sensible per-requisites that must be in place - expectations of causality, reliability, significance, etc. The theory of knowledge itself requires a theory of pre-epistemic sense. > Computational theory leads to a repertoire of logics which (so far) seem > capable of supporting the necessary epistemological distinctions with all > their accompanying modal complexities. > Sure, not surprisingly. Computational theory gives us a marvelous set of Legos with which we can build Lego houses, Lego brains, Lego behaviors...but they are empty without some mode of aesthetic participation. > > If CTM is true, then all the foregoing is also true in the necessary sense > (i.e. platonically). Consequently, rejecting it on the basis that numbers > aren't real, or that computation can't differentiate awareness from its > absence, amounts to a rejection of Platonism. > Yes, I partially reject Platonism. > Such rejection implies the Aristotelian view that awareness and its > artefacts (such as numbers) supervene, in some unspecified and rather more > problematical way, on primordial stuff that cannot be further explained. > No, my rejection also includes the Aristotelian view also. There is no primordial stuff, only a primordial capacity: the capacity for nested sensory-motive participation, aka sense. You are living your life, and it includes the perception of having a body in a world of bodies, but the bodies are no more primitive than the experience of them. You can have an experience without a body (as in it is hypothetically conceivable) but there can be no body without an experience of it. There can be no intangible, invisible, silent, unconscious phenomenon which nonetheless can be considered to exist in some way which could entail the future development of any experience of itself. > But your theory requires that this primordial stuff be sensory and so, > No, I'm saying that the primordial identity is the capacity for sense itself - there is no 'stuff'. I'm talking about what order itself actually is. You're not getting down to the ground floor, you're in the lobby. > as I argue above, amounts to the claim that sense or awareness properly > inhere in whatever exists. > Gotta turn it around. There is no "exist". There is "seems present from some sensible perspective". > So we can grant this and the difficult part still remains: what conditions > differentiate specific claims of sensory awareness from the absence of such > claims? > To reiterate, there is no claim of awareness, there is only the direct experience of it. > Given that challenge, I frankly still don't see why you would reject > computational theory as an attractive candidate for that role. > Because awareness cannot improve the function of a computation. Everything that can be conceived of within computational theory can be just as easily conceived with the absence of all aesthetic qualities. The Pythogorean theorem does not need a triangle, it just needs an arithmetically defined relation. The need for the triangle itself is what comp can't explain. Craig > David > -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
