From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Thu Feb 27 2003 - 02:51:43 GMT
Matt S and Matt K,
Below is my argument (from an earlier post) for why one *cannot* go back and
forth between talk of mental states and talk of neural states. To date I
haven't heard any reasoning against this argument (when you , Matt K, said I
begged the question, you referred to what I inferred from this argument, not
within this argument itself). If there is a fallacy -- and there may be -- I
would like to hear it. If there isn't, then I think you need to reexamine
the assumptions you bring to your arguments. If this argument holds up, then
in fact an idea is not material (or spacetime is created by perception, or
both), and so it is our natural assumptions about materiality that need to
be revisited.
- Scott
. Consciousness, or even sentience, *cannot*
evolve out of non-consciousness. To see the problem, take the normally
accepted view of how visual perception works: light bounces off an object,
stimulates the rods and cones in the eye, which stimulate nerve cells, and
(much complexity later) we say "I see the tree". The materialist is forced
to conclude that all that nerve cell agitation is the seeing of a tree. But
this is impossible, if one assumes that space and time are the context in
which all that is necessary to explain perception occurs.
To see this, ask how the excitation of one electron being hit by one photon
can have any *connection* to any other electron that is being, or has been
hit by another photon. For this to happen a signal must pass from the first
to the second, but that signal cannot carry any additional information than
that of a single photon. So unless we assume an electron has memory, and can
distinguish between one photon and another, there can be no greater
experience than that which an electron experiences on absorbing a photon (or
any other single interaction it can undergo, like being annihilated by a
positron.).
This argumentation applies at whatever level of granularity one tries to
think it through. One nerve cell excites others. But unless the nerve cell
itself has memory and is sentient, it cannot make distinctions or note
similarity. But how can it if it has parts (separated in space). One or more
of these parts must be responsible for holding a piece of the memory, but
then that piece has to be combined with others....
There is one out, and that is depending on quantum non-locality. But note
that doing so says that reality is fundamentally non-spatio-temporal, that
*all* spatio-temporal experience arises out of eternity.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt the Enraged Endorphin" <mpkundert@students.wisc.edu>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 12:31 PM
Subject: Re: MD Pirsig the postmodernist?
> Matt,
>
> Matt S said:
> But if a thought could be analysed as being the
> movement of chemicals within one's brain (I know it's
> not that simple) couldn't you apply the MoQ to human
> tissue in the same way as you would to slate molecules
> or magnets and filings, thus casting the intellecutual
> level in the mould of the material.
>
> Matt:
> Sure. If you are saying that we can just as easily say that mental states
> are neural states and that neural states are just as easily framed as
> mental states, then yes. Pace Scott R, who argues that Rorty (my favored
> post-modern) is a materialist, I don't think there is a problem with
saying
> that you can go back and forth between talking about neural states and
> mental states, depending on what you are talking about. I think Scott
> reads the mind-brain identity that Rorty uses in Philosophy and the Mirror
> of Nature as _reducing_ the mind to brain, but that's not the case. I
> think Rorty wants to simply say that some of the quandaries we find
> ourselves in in philosophy can be dodged by moving from talk about minds
to
> talk about something else (e.g. neural states, language). It is about
> moving from an obsolete vocabulary, with all of its incumbent problems, to
> a newer vocabulary, which will naturally raise new problems.
>
> I think Pirsig's fundamental move is to redescribe reality, not in terms
of
> material or ideas, but in terms of value. Technically, there is no
> material in the MoQ. There are only inorganic patterns of value. We
> formally thought of these things as material objects, but the
redescription
> does away with that. Pirsig would redescribe neural states and mental
> states into valuing states. But I don't read Pirsig as _reducing_ us to
> valuing states. I read him as saying that some old problems disappear
when
> you do this (though new ones will certainly arise).
>
> Matt
>
>
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