All,
For those who are following the seminar, we will read Searle (Reductionism and
the Irreducibility of Consciousness) and Wimsatt (Aggregativity: Reductive
Heuristics for Finding Emergence). I originally thought we would do only
Searle, forgetting how short it was. We need to do more than ten pages a week
if are going to make any headway in the book in 13 weeks.
Just by way of introduction, I hate the Searle (which I think is a pile of
hopeless blather) and love the Wimsatt (which has become the foundation for all
of my thinking about emergence). My philosophical mentors tell me that they
both are among the finest philosophers that we might read on any subject and
any respect that I might earn with my mentors from liking Wimsatt is countered
by my disparagement of Searle. The Searle article will grist in the mill of
those of you who feel that consciousness is something special and the Wimsatt
article grist in the mill of those of you who feel that emergence is
commonplace.
I wish I could draw more of you on the list into an exploration of these
texts.. Here, for instance, is a snippet from the Searle article to tempt Russ
Abbot:t
"I think ... that we ought to be amazed by the fact that evolutionary processes
produced nervous systems capable of causing and sustaining subjective conscious
states. But ... once the existence of (subjective, qualitative) consciousness
is granted (and no sane person can deny its existence, though many pretend to
do so), then there is nothing strange, wonderful, or mysterious about its
irreducibility. "
All the best,
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu)
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
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