A bit late to the party but here are my two cents about Dave's fundamental 6
questions:1) Is an *Experience* a whole or a composite? Rather a composite
because a perception needs a perceiver which has always a subjective viewpoint.
This includes a rating if the perceived object or action is good or bad for the
perceiver.2) Does an *Experience* have duration? Yes, because the perceiver
needs time to perceive and process an event3) [... snipped ...]4) Can
*Experiences* be categorized? Certainly, most importantly in good or bad, in
positive or negative, in pleasant or unpleasant6) Does *Experience* 'exist'
apart from an experiencer? Probably not since there needs to be an observer or
experiencer for which the experience is private and subjective. Rich Sutton
says "in science, this is almost the definition of the subjective/objective
distinction: that which is private to one person is subjective whereas that
which can be observed by many, and replicated by others, is
objective"http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/SubjectiveKnowledge.html6) Do
*Experiences* persist? Perhaps as memories? I would say objective experience is
when something can be measured by an instrument, while subjective experience
needs a judge or jury. Take for example sports: the speed of downhill skiing
can be measured, but the beauty of figure skating needs a jury. What we
remember of subjective experience is the jury's rating.-J.
-------- Original message --------From: glen <geprope...@gmail.com> Date:
2/16/23 11:03 PM (GMT+01:00) To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM]
Nick's Categories Well, I maintain significant skepticism about any coherent
utility functions underlying the machines that do the discretization. The
concept of utility seems to *need* a somewhat unified/singular, and perhaps
exogenous, agency, which makes it circular reasoning in this context. (Note
that I defend circular reasoning almost always and everywhere.)But the main
point, going back to DaveW's questions:On 2/4/23 07:46, Prof David West wrote:>
1) Is an *Experience* a whole or a composite? > 2) Does an *Experience* have
duration> 3) [... snipped ...]> 4) Can *Experiences* be categorized?> 5) Does
*Experience* 'exist' apart from an experiencer?> 6) Do *Experiences* persist?
Perhaps as memories?These are all questions brought (back) to the fore in the
resurgence of panpsychism. There's simply no evidence-based reason to reject
counter-intuitive concepts like electron consciousness or societal/galaxy
consciousness. Anyone who's been caught up in any kind of mob *experiences* the
mob's consciousness as something separate and higher order than your own. And
if we can go up, why can't we go down, too?I also don't treat bricks as if they
have the *same kind* of consciousness/experience that *I* have. Same with the
cats. But I do tend to treat them as if they have *some kind* of
experience/consciousness. The use of a brick as the example, can be another
attempt at an (fallacious) incredulity argument. But using trees makes the
argument interesting, especially superorganisms like aspen groves ... or maybe
mycelia is an even better foil.Yes, we all project/impute the structure of our
psyche on the things around us. But just because we do that does *not* mean
those things don't have psychic structures of their own. By asking structural
questions of experience monism, DaveW is probing exactly where such concepts
are weakest. The questions deserve authentic attempts at answers.On 2/16/23
13:25, Steve Smith wrote:> > On 2/16/23 11:26 AM, glen wrote:>> I don't grok
the context well enough to equivocate on concepts like "have" and "category of
being". But in response to Nick's question: "What is there that animals do that
demands us to invent categories to explain their behavior?", my answer is
"animals discretize the ambient muck". So if categorization is somehow
fundamentally related to discretization, then animals clearly categorize in
that sense.> > .. or more elaborately? "life *transduces* gradients and
spectra (light, sound, chemistry) and then *thresholds* the results into what
we would nominally call "discrete categories". The actual definition of those
categories, the stimulus-response patterns are actually built upon (created
under the shaping of) some kind of utility function (variations on survival in
some sense). One step removed from this is to begin to "name" these
categories and modulate and relate (adjectives and verbs) them to one another
and from that build elaborate models of cause/effect that can be used to
leverage our sensory inputs in pursuit of optimizing said utility functions?
Semiotic theory probably already has a suite of terminology for this?> >> But
Nick does follow that question with this "experience" nonsense. So my guess is
there *is* some sophistry behind the question, similar to EricC's incredulous
response to DaveW's question about phenomenological composition of
experience(s). What I find missing in Nick's (and EricC's) distillation of
experience monism is an account of the seemingly analogous position of
panpsychism. > I don't know if I am fully untangling this construction: I
personally am drawn (intuitively) to panpsychism but more in abstract theory
than in practice. I rarely treat a brick or stone as if it has any level of
sentience, yet I do grant (impute) *something* like sentience onto more complex
units. That would be especially life itself, and especially life at my
personal scale such as a tree or a horse, while it might be easier to ignore
whatever complex adaptivity a protozoa or an entire forest or coral reef or the
biosphere as a whole might have (because it is out of my physical/time scale).
But many artifacts in my world which I have an intimate relationship with, I
tend to impute *some* sentience (or at least agency/identity) onto? House,
Vehicles, Garden, some toolsets?-- ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙
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