What's missing are the methods for relating the patterns (including reachability - can you get there from here). It's fideistic to assert monism without giving some hypothetical method by which to resolve even 2 (much less billions) into 1. Consciousness seems to me to be at least a 2nd order effect of experience, i.e. the ability to relate a prior experience to a present experience. There are other higher order effects, too, over and above moment-to-moment continuity of an individual identity ... e.g. across individuals (see someone else grimace in disgust and you experience an empathetic sense of disgust) and across "what-if" scenarios (the ability to expect/anticipate what you might experience in counterfactual circumstances).
By saying an experience is nothing but brain activity, one is also saying that relations (e.g. continuity) between experiences is also brain activity. But transitions between experiences, while still experiences, are of a different kind. So even if (or especially if?) you're a monist, it's naive and wholly inadequate to flatten everything out and just call it all "experience" ... that would be tantamount to claiming hearing the roar of a lion is the same as taking a bubble bath. Pfft. On 05/16/2016 11:50 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Anyway, not sure how the Strawson thing is an antidote to “Thompsonism”. And which, Thompson, by the way. During the time we have been corresponding, you and I, I have gone from being a materialist monist a la E. B Holt (“all that exists consists of matter and its relations”) to being neutral monist at la CS Peirce (“all that exists is experience, and all distinctions we make – mind, matter, your mind, my mind, past, present, future – arise as patterns in experience.” ) There is not a lot of daylight between experience monism and any other kind, but the Peirce way feels just a tad more honest and radical in its monism. On that view, there is nothing outside of experience-- talk of “experience of X” is all nonsense, unless, of course, X is another experience – nor is there any place for experience to be, no brain, no mind, unless these manifest themselves as patterns in experience. Thus, our obligation as scientists is to describe the experiences that a
nchor our references tomind, and brain, and anything else that we might claim to be outside, or beyond, experience. So, how would one anchor in experience, such claims as “consciousness is nothing but brain activity”? -- ⛧ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
