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So we think we know what the world is made of...

#1
C C Offline
http://iainews.iai.tv/articles/a-new-mod...s-auid-510

EXCERPT: [...] Old model #1 is materialism – also known as physicalism – which says that consciousness is a function of organised matter. The problem with materialism is that on any known view of what matter is, consciousness is palpably not a function of it. This is the lesson of the famous set of arguments about matter and consciousness in philosophy: the superscientist Mary, philosophical zombies, the inverted spectrum, etc.

Old model #2 is dualism, which says (negatively) that consciousness is not a function of organised matter, and (positively) that consciousness is a basic element of nature something like time, space, gravity, or indeed matter itself. The problem with dualism is that it can’t explain how consciousness is integrated into the rest of nature in the way it palpably is. That is the lesson of another set of arguments in philosophy that are famous but not quite as famous: the exclusion argument, the nomological dangler argument etc.

So both old models fail, and we need a new one. What would it be like? Well, don’t ask: is consciousness a function of matter? Ask instead: what is matter such that consciousness is a function of it? If no known property of matter can answer this question, the natural inference is that some unknown property does. So the new model says there are unknown properties of matter that, perhaps together with known properties, account for consciousness....
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#2
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:So both old models fail, and we need a new one. What would it be like? Well, don’t ask: is consciousness a function of matter? Ask instead: what is matter such that consciousness is a function of it? If no known property of matter can answer this question, the natural inference is that some unknown property does. So the new model says there are unknown properties of matter that, perhaps together with known properties, account for consciousness....

Neutral monism? Property dualism? Nonreductive materialism? Assuming consciousness is a function of matter at all. To me it seems quite superfluous. Like the majestic colors of a sunset, or a rainbow, or musical appreciation. Consciousness may not have any functional value, but rather inherent value. As Chalmers points out, we could be intelligent logical zombies and probably survive even better without this inefficient tendency to be conscious of our inner experiences.
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#3
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(Apr 9, 2015 12:23 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: Neutral monism? Property dualism? Nonreductive materialism? Assuming consciousness is a function of matter at all. To me it seems quite superfluous. Like the majestic colors of a sunset, or a rainbow, or musical appreciation. Consciousness may not have any functional value, but rather inherent value. As Chalmers points out, we could be intelligent logical zombies and probably survive even better without this inefficient tendency to be conscious of our inner experiences.

Extrospective and introspective manifestation [my direct-to-the-point synonym for "experience"] really is just a brute add-on that lacks any precursors or non-fringe theoretical furniture to fall out of in the physical sciences [footnote#1]. Manifestation doesn't have a potential causal role except as an explanation for why the vast majority of people report these varied sensory showings and their content (i.e., that our thoughts, body sensations, and perceptions do have exhibited content as opposed to everyone being evolutionarily pre-programmed to lie about or deny the nothingness that matter is otherwise supposed to be wallowing in).

It seems, however, that if the manifestations had something to do with the literal way that microphysical "stuff" exists (as opposed to scientific and everyday macroscopic representations being such), then that intrinsic character could become the more legitimate causal agency [footnotes#2,3]. And the celebrated extrinsic character of things existing outside themselves (but unshown when without consciousness) is then demoted to simply a cognitive method of mapping the functional relationships between slash among individual entities. Rather than how they exist independent of that particular approach to understanding them.

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Footnote#1: For me, "information" is just a useful conception superimposed over matter/energy organizations and dynamics. It doesn't actually appeal to anything ontological or causally potent except in perhaps theories that hypothesize two-state bits literally existing as fundamental building-blocks at the base of reality. The latter might entail elemental manifestations or something at that level like panprotoexperientialism, but they're rather fringe hypotheses and thus don't count as any mainstream physicalist remedy for the hard-problem anymore than what I mention in the second paragraph above. Thus, with popular hand-waving appeals to "information" dispatched, the reason I could say that. [Also, I don't know how labeling environmental energies as "information" would automatically endow such with manifestations (consequently yielding panexperientialism) anymore than the brute association of manifestations with neural correlates [and "information"] in the brain. Or: When did manifestation become part of the necessary structure or definition of the information concept?]

Footnote#2 (Michael Lockwood): Do we therefore have no genuine knowledge of the intrinsic character of the physical world? So it might seem. But, according to the line of thought I am now pursuing, we do, in a very limited way, have access to content in the material world as opposed merely to abstract casual structure, since there is a corner of the physical world that we know, not merely by inference from the deliverances of our five senses, but because we are that corner. It is the bit within our skulls, which we know by introspection. In being aware, for example, of the qualia that seemed so troublesome for the materialist, we glimpse the intrinsic nature of what, concretely, realizes the formal structure that a correct physics would attribute to the matter of our brains. In awareness, we are, so to speak, getting an insider's look at our own brain activity. --1998, p.88, “The Enigma of Sentience”, in Hameroff, S.R. et al, 1998, 83–95.

Footnote#3 (Wikipedia): First Jackson argued that qualia are epiphenomenal: not causally efficacious with respect to the physical world. Jackson does not give a positive justification for this claim—rather, he seems to assert it simply because it defends qualia against the classic problem of dualism. Our natural assumption would be that qualia must be causally efficacious in the physical world, but some would ask how we could argue for their existence if they did not affect our brains. If qualia are to be non-physical properties (which they must be in order to constitute an argument against physicalism), some argue that it is almost impossible to imagine how they could have a causal effect on the physical world. By redefining qualia as epiphenomenal, Jackson attempts to protect them from the demand of playing a causal role.

Later, however, he [Jackson] rejected epiphenomenalism. This, he argues, is due to the fact that when Mary first sees red, she says "wow", so it must be Mary's qualia that cause her to say "wow". This contradicts epiphenomenalism. Since the Mary's room thought experiment seems to create this contradiction, there must be something wrong with it. This is often referred to as the "there must be a reply" reply.
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