[MD] The Edge 2006 Annual Question

[ian glendinning]

Hi Scott,

This takes me back a few years to my first few exchanges on MD, when I
first used the term "bootstrap".

Firstly Yes, even from a physicalist point of view, first cause needs
explaining. It is not exempt from that. It's just the hard bit, the
hole that can only be nibbled at from the outside edge, with a few
bits of conjecture thrown into the middle, so we can review the
ripples at the edge of the unknown.

The point I made (repeatedly now) is that your choice of that
something (rather than nothing) cannot be entirely arbitrary or
arbitrarily fantastic. The more complex the something, the more is
unexplained. That's all.

Are some things ultimately unexplainable ? Maybe, but that'll be for a
reason that itself can be explained - something Godelian I'd guess.

BTW the "eventually get around to" language is pejorative rhetoric.
People have been "around to it" for millenia, they're just getting better at it.
Ian

On 1/13/06, Scott Roberts <jse885 at localnet.com> wrote:
> Ian,
>
> Ian said:
> As I said before ... so you have something unexplained, even if you
> invent the category of things that don't need explanation. I'm sure
> the physicalists would not be alone in crying - Foul !
>
> Scott:
> What I was trying to distinguish in that category business was my view (that
> consciousness is not the sort of thing that "explanation" applies to, since,
> like value, it is fundamental) from (a) the usual physicalist view (that it
> is something that eventually we will get around to explaining as emerging
> from a non-conscious universe) and (b) the view of Colin McGinn that, though
> he is a materialist of some sort, claims that consciousness is not
> fundamental, yet is unexplainable.
>
> And did I invent the category of things that don't need explanation?
> Wouldn't you say that physical reality does not need explaining, given that
> you are a physicalist? Or do you think "why there is something rather than
> nothing" could conceivably have an explanation?
>
> - Scott
>
> On 1/12/06, Scott Roberts <jse885 at localnet.com> wrote:
> > Ian,
> >
> > Ian said:
> > Scott I agree with your points.
> > Something I said earlier in another conversation with you was that
> > this ineffable gap may be a common theme in any metaphysics, but the
> > size and complexity of the gap in terms of the explanation missing
> > does of course vary. This is the point I have against people like
> > yourself, who (seem to) claim that the gap is bootstrapped by
> > pre-existing "sophisticated" consciousness.
> >
> > Scott:
> > I'm not sure I understand the last sentence. But in any case,  I don't see
> > consciousness (or DQ) as being a gap in "things that are explained (or
> > explainable)" -- that's only a problem for a physicalist. Rather, I see
> > consciousness as not belonging to the category of things explained,
> > unexplained, explainable, or unexplainable.
> >
> > - Scott
> >
>
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