On Thursday, February 20, 2014, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> > On 19 Feb 2014, at 17:18, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > > On 18/02/2014, David Nyman <da...@davidnyman.com> wrote: > > >> I think if I say consciousness is an epiphenomenon of biochemistry I > >> should also say that life is. > > > > > > And should you not go on to say that biochemistry is an epiphenomenon of > > physics and physics is an epiphenomenon of .... well, something that is > not > > itself epiphenomenal, I guess? The way you formulate the problem seems to > > tend to the conclusion that any and all appearances should strictly be > > considered an epiphenomenon of something more fundamental that cannot > > possibly be encountered directly. And, moreover, there is no entailment > > that any such something be straightforwardly isomorphic with any of those > > appearances. I'm not saying that this view is incoherent, by the way, but > > do you agree that something like this is entailed by what you say? > > I'm making a case for reductionism. If biochemistry necessarily leads to > consciousness > > > Biochemistry or anything Turing universal. > > > > then I don't think this is any different to the situation where > biochemistry necessarily leads to life. > > > Ah! > But then life is clearly a 3p phenomenon, so why make consciousness an > epiphenomenon? Of course consciousness is "only" a 1p phenomenon, but it > can make sense (indeed as a sense maker or receptor). > > Bruno > Maybe the 1p/3p distinction is a failure of imagination. It's obvious that the phenomenon of life is "no more" than the biochemistry, but maybe if we could simulate the biochemistry in our heads we would intuitively see any 1p aspect it has as well. -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
