other-roads@
webtv.net (S T O R A G E) wrote in news:3268-489224A8-426
@
storefull-3151.bay.webtv.net:
Yikes, that post must have been a bear to put together. I'll try to
respond to the main points.
> Publius: The mysterians, of course, will want to know how a physical
> system manages to "symbolize" that information in that particular
> manner "Why doesn't all this symbolizing go on "in the dark?").
> They're entitled to some kind of answer.
> BR: But no one can posit anything naughty like "pan-symbolism" as an
> answer, right? That would be like saying that gravity existed before
> hydroelectric dams needed it.
It is more like trying to explain light by saying there is light (or
perhaps "proto-light") in all things, which just happens to be released
sometimes, from certain things but not others, without explaining what
distinguishes those things from others, or what is required to
"release" it. That would be a pseudo-explanation which is irrefutable in
principle, and which answers none of the substantive questions we would
have about light. It is an explanation on the same order as "goddidit."
> BR: If whatever enabled brains to create mental states wasn't
> ubiquitous in matter, then the success of that would be hit and miss.
It is hit or miss. Most natural systems, including most biological
systems, are misses.
> BR: Are you trying to claim now that bolts, gaskets, etc aren't moving
> before they're assembled into an engine?
No. But they don't have HP or RPMs. The engine won't display those
properties either, until it is started. Then it will exhibit measurable
properties that its components don't.
> BR: Wasn't intended as a parallel to semi-zombies except in regard to
> both being initially puzzled by the auditory experiences that "hearing
> people" refer to. An android would come closer to the literal zombie
> role because it could be programmed to pretend that it is having
> expriences (matching the right "qualia talk" up to its sensory
> information); but disqualified because it only looks externally
> person-like. A human semi-zombie might learn to "try" to deceive like
> that eventually, but not in early years. The deaf, of course, could
> never carry out a deception for long; reading lips is one thing, but
> not receiving data from a radio announcement is another.
A "zombie" which can discriminate sounds, colors, odors, and all the
other sensory imputs detectable and differentiable by humans will have a
use for the same vocabulary, and learn it in the same way, as humans
(assuming the zombie can also speak). If the zombie says, "The light
ahead is red," or "I smell barbeque," it will not be deceiving anybody,
even itself. When we hear such reports from other humans, we do not take
them to be referring to any internal states of the speaker, but to
something in the external world *discernible* to the speaker. We assume
the speaker has such internal states, but really don't care whether he
does or not. As far as we know everyone around us is a "zombie." Our
relationships and interactions with humans and "zombies" would be
identical. Moreover, if we asked a "zombie" outright whether or not he
experienced any internal states when he saw red, smelled BBQ, etc., he
would answer "Yes" --- truthfully. He would pass a polygraph test.
> BR: With this annoying usenet provider, I can't even promise I'll
> address that in a separate post either today or tomorrow. It struck me
> that you might unknowingly(?) be arguing (in your response over there)
> for proto-panpsychism (or a pan-dual-aspect version of materialism
> anyway) if "mental properties" are physical properties that emerge
> from previous physical properties (conventional or non-brute
> emergence). That was necessary for explaining how the brain knows
> about qualia, etc.
No, it's not dual-aspect or proto- anything. "Brute emergence" is a term
concocted by mysterians pre-committed to dualism --- who hold that there
are two irreconcilable *metaphysically real* realms, the physical (or
material) and the phenomenal, and that the challenge is to explain how
the two can become intertwined, or how one can give rise to the other --
how entities with only "physical properties" can generate, or even
interact with, "phenomenal properties." The problem is with that
premise.
There are subjective phenomena (the phenomena of experience), and there
are a multiplicity of them, but none of them have any "phenomenal
properties" which must somehow be derived from the physical properties
of physical things (which would require some kind of magic, given the
metaphysical irreconcilability of those two realms). Subjective
experiences, the phenomena of experience (e.g., the phenomenal
experience of "redness"), are the tokens deployed by a system capable of
cybernetically modeling itself to represent the differing,
distinguishable states of it various subsystems. Any system capable of
constructing such a self-model and differentiating those inputs will
experience a subjective state --- a distinct, ineffable internal state
corresponding to each of those discriminable input signals. The question
we need to be asking is what kinds of systems might generate such
states, not why those states, or distinguishable experiences, have the
"properties" they do. They have no properties; they are the primitive,
unanalyzable, homogeneous, raw data of a conscious system. They are the
elemental building blocks from which "reality" is constructed by that
system.
BTW, doing away with the "phenomenal realm" does away with the "physical
realm" at the same time. It is the dichotomy itself which is the source
of the trouble.
> BR: Was "dark matter" originally posited for its predictive powers, or
> instead to explain how certain situations got to be how they are in
> the cosmos? Was evolution originally posited for predictive powers, or
> instead to explain how the current situations of life forms got here?
> Do geologists only examine terrestrial features to predict the
> presence of resources (like oil), or do they also study them to figure
> out how they got they way, to decipher what happened in the Earth's
> past?
Theories, and the various entities and forces they postulate, are always
originally contrived to unify a set of known data into a coherent
pattern. But many patterns can be drawn around any set of data. (Give
some kids a connect-the-dots puzzle without numbering the dots, tell
them, "try to connect them in a way that makes sense, adding more dots
if you need to," and see what they come up with). But we take as
"correct," or at least useful, a theory which predicts future
observations, and suggests where and how to make those observations.
I.e., we would not accept evolution or geophysical theories as credible
explanations of "how things got that way" unless they led us to new
knowledge. (and we certainly would not consider them "explanations" if
they were untestable in principle, as Andy thinks panpsychism may be).
Dark matter and dark energy scarcely qualify as theories. They say no
more than, "Something (some causal entity or force) must exist to
explain these otherwise inexplicable phenomena." Well, OK. Now what?
[Snipped remainder on "brute emergence," covered above.]
> For now I'm going to have to cut-off before the finish, as this is
> taking an eternity.
Doesn't your ISP supply Usenet access as part of the package? Most of
them do. For a reader, I'd recommend Xnews. Excellent and free.
