On 15 February 2014 20:14, David Nyman <[email protected]> wrote: > On 15 February 2014 02:45, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote: > >> If that is so (and I agree that it is, since I am not a physical >> eliminativist) it is still consistent with the physical processes still >> being *sufficient* to produce consciousness. It would only not be sufficient >> if some further ingredient were necessary beyond the matter in the right >> configuration. > > > I've been reflecting on our exchange on the subject of reference. The > assumption that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of physics would entail, I > suppose, that we shouldn't think of physics itself as "referring" to > anything at all. The idea is that we can always give a fully sufficient and > closed account of any sequence of events in fully-reduced physical-causal > terms. One could make an analogy, for example, with watching a movie on an > LCD screen, in terms of which the "dramatic events" must always be fully > reducible to some sequence of illumination of the screen pixels (so that the > drama is an epiphenomenon of the pixel-physics). > > For this analogy to be transferable to the mind body problem, we must > further assume that the "dramatic interpretation" which, in the case of the > the movie must be provided externally, is somehow internal to the > epiphenomenal causal logic and the physics on which it supervenes. If this > is granted, the epiphenomenal "dramatis personae" then have access to a > logic of reference that somehow "travels on" the underlying ontology, but is > ineffective in it. As in the movie analogy, there is a dramatic logic that > supervenes on the physical level, but is no more effective in physical terms > than we would expect the characters in a movie to be in changing the > underlying pixel-physics. > > If the foregoing is to make any sense, we are forced to the view that all > references to such dramatis personae are, in the end, merely a manner of > speaking, and that consequently *all* such gross or macroscopic references > are, strictly speaking, epistemological (i.e. they are all internal > references to epiphenomena of some fully-reduced physical ontology). Funnily > enough, I recently heard Jaron Lanier expressing just such a view (at least > as a possibility). > > Do you agree that your views imply that "reality" is in some sense like > this?
Yes. Quick answer, I'm traveling. -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
