[MD] MD Quality, DQ and SQ

[Scott Roberts]

Ian,

Ian said:
Thanks for that David. Really helpful I think.
I think we should have clarified "consciousness" earlier.
I suspected that is what Scott was about, but he was so sensitive to
me suggesting it was a "component" or building-block" of full-blown
higher order consciousness. (Proto-consciousness maybe.)

Scott:
Of course I was sensitive. To start thinking in FM-W terms requires a much 
larger revolution than what you are willing to go along with. Your 
"proto-consciousness" just doesn't make the grade -- it is a way to continue 
thinking in physicalist terms, which FM-W rejects in toto. To put it another 
way, how can you reconcile physicalism with the following (thanks to DMB). 
What does it do to Darwinism, for example?

"Thus, Consciousness is primary, i.e., it is first, prior to everything. Not
before or first in the sense of time or temporal sequence, but prior in the
sense of not being secondary to or derivative from anything else. Hence,
Consciousness is self-existent, i.e., it does not depend upon anything else
for its being and is entirely self-sufficient and complete. In particular,
Consciousness does not depend upon, and is not derivative from, matter,
energy, or any other substance. On the contrary, all experience and all
objects are derivative from Consciousness. Thus Consciousness is
constitutive of all things, i.e., all things are, in their ultimate nature,
nothing but this Primordial Consciousness itself."

Ian said:
If by some fundamental use of the word - some part of nature, that has
simply been involved in the evolution of the world as we know it, like
all other components of nature. Something without a first-person
awareness or intellect or those higher evolved aspects of
conscsiousness, then I have no problem. I though MoQ-ers called it
"quality". I do. (I'm gradually starting to call it "information" so
that other physicists and scientists of consciousness might recognise
it - quality / qualia are dirty words there -  but what's in a name,
it's a matter of what it is.)

Scott:
This I see as an inadequate attermpt to "tame" a mystical view. The 
alternative (e.g., FM-W's) is that nature is entirely subsumed under 
consciousness.

Ian continued:
It's definitely ineffable, hard to explain rationally starting from
anywhere else. Belief in its existence stems from direct experience
AND inference back from other experience with intellectual overlays -
consistency with all experience, if not with clear causal rationale. I
have no problem with this level of "mysticism". Everyone needs a
bootstrap - it's just a question of how fantastic you make it, and
it's chances of fitting consistently with the testable aspects of
experience, without redundant mystical frills. (Parsimony of you like
Scott - I've said several times you seem to have left more unexplained
than I.)

Scott:
David M mentioned Goswami's "The Self-Aware Universe". I would also 
recommend Samuel Avery's "The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness: A 
Physical Basis for Immaterialism". As to who has more explaining to do, that 
will depend on what sort of thing one thinks needs to be explained. This 
(like everything else) changes radically in moving from a physicalist point 
of view to an immaterialist one.

ASIDE for Scott,
In order to preserve an ontological monism - I see this
proto-consciousness as the same stuff as everything proto-physical /
proto-material, not to mention proto-living, proto-social and
proto-intellectual, in every way. I've been happy to call it "quality"
(even if physics may conclude it's information). I'm not happy calling
it consciousness, in the same what as I'm not very happy calling it
physical or material. The history and baggage of the language simply
misleads. This may just be a linguistic affectation on my part, but I
think it helps not to mislead, if at all possible. Why don't you just
call it "quality" like the rest of us ? What's in a name - that's a
serious question Scott. Why not ?

Scott:
Because if one just calls it 'quality', one might be tempted to accept this 
"proto-" view of it. To do that, as I see it, is to preserve ways of 
thinking that stop way short of the revolution in thinking that mysticism 
calls for.

- Scott